Aren’t casts for tanking a bit bad counter-intuitive? You even get delay on your casts for every melee-hit you get.
I gave enough explanations already.
Exceptions dont make the rules. Monks dont use those buttons as often as Black Out Kick or Tiger Palm (to name a few). Those are the bread and butter spam buttons, and those are melee range.
The only way to make casted melee range spells work is to give then an 8 yard range. No chance to make them work otherwise. And the fact that out of all the melee specs you could only mention monks that have TWO spells dosent change that fact.
All I said is that if you want to make a whole spek who casts stuff all the time (unlike monk that does it ocasionally)… you would end up with a spec with everything having an 8 yard range. Which by defenition would make it a ranged spec. A bad one at that, because you have to deal with all the melee mechanics with out any of the benefits of being at ranged.
Also. Enh USED to hard-cast lightning bolt. Not anymore. Its instant cast. WHY ? That should make you think a bit.
Well you can include an immune on this pretty easily, but a caster tank would need a lot of instant spells to fight against other tanks.
And we already have tanks that are lacking behind in terms of balance, so unless they start to balance tanks on regular basis, adding another one would just create again more disparity between tanks.
Already only for this i am not really hoping for more classes/specs.
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Void elves have a racial ability that gives them immunity to pushbacks. Nothing is impossible with the right implementation.
Spinning crane is the bread and butter on aoe. But really it’s no problem, you can move during it and you can cancel it. I guess the biggest problem is that using interrupt or another utility spell cancels the channeling, but that is caster life all the time.
In any case I didn’t say all tanks should be casters. I said one tank could be a caster for those that enjoy that playstyle. That also could involve instants as all casters have, maybe some channeling, maybe able to move during casting their filler like ele could cast bolts during mop etc. With the right implementation it is possible. Not trusting that they can do it is another topic.
I mained enh once upon a time and don’t remember having problems in raids. But no m+ back then so there is no comparison to current game.
I used to play raids back in the day. And a hard casting melee was possible because raid mechanics were much easier than they are today. Today there is ZERO chance to have a Enh hard cast lightning bolt. It just wouldent work. Plus M+ of course. Even Delves.
And im not against a “caster tank”. As in: A mage/warlock with a tank spec.
But it would not be a “caster” anymore. As you correctply pointed out, you would need a ton of instnat cast stuff to make it work. So he would not be “casting” anything anymore in the literal sense of the word.
So… for the same reasons that hunters are a “ranged spec” that cast stuff. And Survival hunter is the MELEE spec of hunters… Which use instant cast versions of spells the other hunters have.
A mage would have its caster/ranged specs… PLUS its Melee tank spec… And I dont see anything wrong with that.
All I am saying is that its pure fluff. I just dont see a tank hard casting fireballs like a mage work. He would need a complete re-design of all mage spells to make them all instant cast. Like what happened to Enh shamans.
So its would not be a “caster playstyle” anymore. It would be a mage tank, pure fluff and “RP immersion”. And that is also a legitimate reason to ask for a mage tank, dont get me wrong…
But if blizzard ever decided to make it, the playstile would be a dissapointment to many that were expecting to hard-cast fireballs at melee range. Anyone that wants to know how that would feel, they can get their mage DPS join an M+ and deliberatelly sit at melee range next to the tank for the whole dungeon run to get a feeling as to what that would look like.
I didn’t mean a ton of instant casts as in barely casting at all. But there are several mechanics already in game that counter movement needs. Either have a spell castable during movement like scorch, have some instants that would not be priority when stationary but are available when moving, have a trigger off gcd that enables you to cast during movement or make the next spell castable during movement, have instant movement spells like a short blink or even a combination of all these.
It’s not like casters are by default the never moving turrets. They have experimented with different mechanics over the years while always holding the caster title for the caster specs.
It’s not possible to imagine a current spec being the melee caster because current specs are not designed to play melee.
You are correct. But as I already mentioned earlyear, all those “fixes” would require the abilities to have some range built into it. Melee abilities require you to be in contact with the mobs hit-box.
So if you make a spec that uses a majority of those type of skills. A majority of those skills would NEED to have some range built into it. So… it would be a ranged spec because none of those skills require to be at melee range.
And it would bust the tanking balance too. Because a tank that dosent need to be at melee range for anything has infinite kyting potential. That is why tanks usually have mostly melee skills. To force them to get hit at melee range and use their active mitigation tools. And if they dont, they pay the price (agro problems).
That was my point.
I don’t think there is a big problem with range. It’s something I forgot to mention earlier. Tanks don’t work as dd. If they are actively tanking, as in hold aggro, they are either melee by default, at least for melee hitting mobs, or kiting.
Pala for example has most of their core rotational spells either ranged or aoe. It still is a melee tank balanced with all the others (Well now it’s meta but not because of that). It doesn’t even hold the best at kiting title as far as I know. Not sure how much dh is nerfed atm but it used to excel in kiting metas. So having like half the kit with more range or even some spells with 40 yard range wouldn’t break the role by default.
Of course a frost mage tank ultra slowing all the trash and perma kiting while full dpsing from range would be op. It would have to be balanced in a way.
That is why it needs to stand on consecration. That is how they make them sit at melee range and force them to use their active mitigation.
Otherwise Paladins would just run around and never get hit by anything.
Yes. That is the idea.
Kiting implies not hitting the mobs. So you are not actively holding the aggro. Mobs can loose it.
Its the trade-off of tanking. You can run and kite, but you cant hit the mobs either. No aggro. No resource generation. Nothing.
And for this tradeoff to work you need to make sure that there is a benefit to being at melee, and serious drawbacks for not being at melee.
In SL with the kyting DH meta, the TLDR of that technique is for the DH to run in with CDs on. DPS as much as possible to gather aggro and then when CDs expire kyte the mobs. Hoping that the DDs kill them before he looses the agro. Because he cannot build anymore agro at that point.
Absolutely. And I know exactly what they would need to do to achieve that goal.
They would need to apply the limitations other tanks have. Making this mage-tank spec more similar to a tank than a mage. A bit disappointing as I said before.
Yeah of course. They would have tradeoffs and it would be optimal to stand in melee range.
Pala can perma kite, it’s just not optimal. You also must build threat first as you say. Consecration doesn’t need them to stand in melee range. Not that it’s needed if you are not getting hits, but you just cast it on yourself. You can also perma kite with no external slows if you have the slowing consecration talent. I never had problems with necrotic in pugs for that reason.
True. But todays tanks (and all other classes) have nothing to do with what they used to be in SL.
Sadly kiting is much more punished today than it used to be.
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The megacorpo syndrome, where passion and creativity get smothered.
To add to that, there were so many years where there were also incentives to hire people for things other than merit in their craft in the US, especially in California.
or
make tanks do as much damage as a DPS
thats the only TRUE fix ( in pvp would be nerfed )
Why would anyone play dps in M+ when tanks have way more survivability and the same dps?
blizzard could implement a limit to tanks per group
party = 1
raid = 2
it isnt hard to do
I have no idea how since we just make our own groups (and honestly i do not think blizz should).
i dont know how you cant grasp what im saying though
…
you would still be able to make your own groups. but have a limit on tanks to invite
a message could pop up saying " you already have a tank in your group, invite declined "
{///is tank in group Y / N }
…if Y … decline invite
…if N … accept invite
the code would be that simple tbh
How about a buff/debuff that changes depending on if there are 2 or more tanks in the group (based on the instance)?
Honestly I have yet to see a raid group in an instance that takes more than 2 tanks for anything.