First off, the changes to the new “tier” of HC dungeons are looking fun and I like the direction that was taken with these in the next phase.
That being said, I can’t help but notice an imbalance when it comes to one of the buffs:
[Shield of Thorns] - Enemies take 1000 to 1400 damage each time you dodge, parry, or block their attacks.
Even right now, prot paladins and warriors are the preferred tanks when it comes to most of the content, including dungeons. If the buff goes live in this state, tank DKs and bears are going to be even less desirable than they already are.
My suggestion: Increase the damage dealt by the debuff and limit it to dodge and parry only.
+1 from me. As an altoholic used to play different classes and different roles, I have also noticed some of these mechanics/affixes work better for certain classes than others. I guess that’s a product of introducing more modern mechanics into an old game where every class work slightly different and by design does not have an answer for everything.
This is a fair point - yes, most people would prefer a mediocre tank over none at all. But already, people are looking down on non-shield tanks and only take them out of necessity. Blizz is making up completely new mechanics for the new tier of HC+ and they have free reign over whatever changes they make to the Gamma dungeons, so I just don’t get why would they widen the gap between the strongest and the weakest tanks even further.
Other tanks already do roughly ~2x the damage of blood DKs with the same level of gear (pallies can do even more). With the new tank buff this might turn into 3x and people will start noticing that having a pally tank is essentially like having a 6th guy with like 4k gs in the party lmao
I can only speak for myself on this one. But the issue isn’t lack of group invites, it’s that the actual gameplay to handle and/or counter certain mechanics simply is obnoxious and unfun for certain classes. Healing in Oculus is a great example. On one hand, you have resto druids blanketing the raid with instant hots while moonfiring the images, with no drawbacks whatsoever. On the other hand, you have resto shamans, who have basically only casted heals, next to no instants, and will get constantly interrupted if they dare to try to cast a heal. And the only way to mitigate this is by manually running around the whole platform whacking all these images with auto attacks (and a shock every 6 seconds), before you might be able to land some kind of heal. And then it might already be too late.
I mean, you will most likely still come out successful. But your clunkiness and inability to deal with these mechanics in a sensible manner is both holding your group back, and is just not fun or good gameplay, in my opinion. Every group with a resto druid will just baseline have a better and more enjoyable time under these circumstances, period.
Everyone is gonna be using RDF to queue for Gamma dungeons, If some ape (and i think the number of said apes is gonna be very low) decides to drop group they’re gonna get the debuff and you’re gonna be able to queue right back in.
Not taking Diminishing Returns into account, here are the raw total avoidance stats (excluding miss chance) of each class in phase 3 bis gear:
Prot Warrior 76%
Prot Paladin 65%
Blood DK 53%
Bear 39%
With just those stats you can see that prot warrs have almost double the avoidance of bears already. But that’s not even the whole picture.
There are a few things that really make both prots shine - the extra block talents and abilities, all of which are unaffected by diminishing returns.
Prot pallies get extra +30% block with holy shield up and another +10% extra with redoubt.
Prot warriors get 100% block chance for 10 seconds on 30s cooldown in bis gear, which means virtually every trash pack they’ll absolutely wreck the mobs for 10 whole seconds.
So in practice, both prots will have roughly double or triple the amount of total Shield of Thorns procs compared to DKs and bears.
This is NOT a problem, the only thing people care about when getting a dungeon tank is finding anyone willing to tank. Block tanks are no doubt better for dungeons, but it’s really not a significant factor given the difficulty level and progression placement of dungeons.
It’s casual catchup content, all people want is someone who will play tank. You don’t care about this, I don’t care about this, nobody cares about this.
I do care though, as blood I’m already feeling like an inferior tank so I don’t see the reason why the gap between the better tank classes and the weaker ones needs to be widened.
No? Blood has a bit more survivability in certain situations, prot warrs in comparison have significantly superior AOE tanking, better damage, less spiky damage taken and superior utility. In ICC when all tanks will get -20% dodge, blocking will have even more impact than it does currently.
You feel like the inferior tank class in dungeons where people will take literally any tank that is willing to tank? Blood isn’t an inferior tank in raiding, the only place where tank spots are limited.
In dungeons, which is what we’re talking about there are not enough tanks to fill all the groups. In ICC Prot Warrior is not as good as Blood DK overall, even bosses like Saurfang where they can Shield Block on every taunt, generally speaking Blood DK is a better tank.
Blood DK also has the best snap threat in the game due to the silly modifier on Icy Touch. The only tank with any real advantage is Paladin. Which brings me to Lich King, the only fight with a real need for AOE tanking, you’re using a Paladin to MT that.
I’ve literally never seen anyone specifically looking for a Blood tank for any raid except VoA. It’s pretty much always paladin and rarely warrior if the group needs sunders.
Yes, people take blood tanks out of desperation pretty much and they’ll likely continue to do so in Gamma dungeons. Not exactly an exciting prospect.
Care to explain your position, or did you just wanna take a drive-by dump in this thread?
You’re crying over dungeons. NO ONE checks what class is tanking, only ilvl/gs. Everyone invites first tank available, especially when you’re getting RDF in next phase that will be even less a problem (as if it was before).
About mechanics:
block is only good vs fast weak hitter and since you brought ICC to the topic - bosses hit like truck, so silly 1-2k blocks 10% of the time won’t make any difference
Blood DK has Will of the Necropolis giving him lots of EHP, warrior doesn’t have such talent
utility is debatable - aoe stun is nice, but so is grip, rarely raid spells are reflectable, DK has much better aggro though lower dps, but dps isn’t tank’s job in this xpac
less spiky damage taken? How? You’re counting those silly blocks?
Admit it, you’re just having a bad day/week and you’re looking to vent somewhere.
Yes, I run a lot of them and I’m having issues with strong tanks being made stronger by added new mechanics and weaker tanks being made weaker by comparison. Problem?
Any group that wants to pull more than one pack at a time will definitely not take a blood tank. Thought that’s a minor occurence admittedly.
“Bosses hit hard so reducing how hard they hit won’t make any difference”
fair point, it is a great talent. I did say blood tanks have better survivability though.
it’s not debatable really. They have a unique raid dps cooldown, unique health buff for the raid, prot warriors are also the only ones who sunder without losing anything and can do so multi-target. Having better damage can also be considered a raid buff essentially, since the difference is significant enough.
DK does have better single target threat but it’s pretty much total overkill. A good warrior will never have problems holding single target threat, and will have incomparably better aoe threat.
Those “silly” blocks do smooth out the damage curve, yes. Just look at the logs. Warriors atm have over 20% chance to block baseline and can guarantee blocks for 10 sec every 30 sec. The silly block absorbs 2k+ and has a 60% to absorb double that. So in ICC it’ll be 3k/6k. Not so silly imo
You’re completely clueless… DKs have lots of dodge and parry which completely negates damage, while warriors have silly block to reduce damage by maybe 2% from 10% of the hits. It is way better to have more health and damage reduction than random chance to block small portion of damage.
Try to sweat little less over facerolled content.
Go frost/unholy with tank items for speedrunning dungeons.
It is. Other warriors/rogues can provide armor reduction, it’s not big deal. Health buff isn’t unique to prot warrior, it can also be provided by fury and arms.