Giving it an option to tank removes your ability to heal or DPS?
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No but I do the point here at least. If the class gets tanking then every spell or ability in the class tree and baseline has to be evaluated to make sure this tank is still going to need healing and be leaving the others behind in power.
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Why would they need to retool every ability? Your reaching here… need I remind you that Tanks in classic had all the same abilities as their DPS specs… Tank Stances are what changed values on us, and we still have them today, only they arn’t toggles anymore but rather built in passive modifiers. It’s a simple matter of adding +X% aggro generation -Y% base damage to the new spec, the same way ALL TANK SPECS WORK.
Sure a new spec means they need to add a few new abilities and add a whole third talent tree… oh no… not a little bit of effort… heaven forbid they have to do anything at all…
No they don’t… they just have to determine where the class sits on survivability and create defensive skills for the tank that bring them up to where they want the tank to be. As stated already, passive modifiers to base damage and threat. And then compare it’s performance to existing tanks and tweak values as needed… it’s not the huge undertaking you think it is.
It’s almost like each class has a limited amount of gap closing/mobility, self healing, durability, damage output, and base stats. If the baseline exceeds other tanks in any of these while meeting the rest or excelling in multiple then you can only really bring that tank to competitive or high end content or you are doing yourself and your friendly players a disservice. People prefer Blood DK tanks atm and do their absolute best to avoid bears for a reason.
Comparing modern tank design to significantly older ones is also an exercise in futility. Just adding threat generation does not address any of what I said were actual problems.
They have been working on DF for quite a while and intend on it being launched by the end of year because subs for retail are… crumbling and they want to push the numbers back up for their Q4 this year or Q1 next year. Profits matter to Actiblizz. Telling the devs to completely retool their entire new class to fit in a tank spec while also being in the middle of redoing every other class is also not an intelligent decision… especially when they already said that the Evoker is currently intended and designed to be a flavor of ranged class.
I say give dh wod demo with that meta build transform and burst with ranged spells
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You have no idea what you are talking about. You say the tank with the most mobility is most in demand? Sorry… that’s Not Blood DK, that’s DH… highest damage tank is most in demand? Again, that’s not Blood DK, that’s a tie between Pally and Druid…. Highest mitigation? Monk wins there… SL what was Blood DK’s niche again? Oh right, self healing… Blood DK’a are desired in high end content because they can self heal like nobodies business freeing up the Healer to be a 4th DPS. Vengeance DH’s would be just as desirable but, they have worse mitigation and a higher skill floor, making it significantly harder to find good DH tanks.
And DHs would be more in demand if in addition to their current mobility they either did enough damage to end fights faster were more durable. Again it’s like you read my post but didn’t read what I wrote.
The idea is that there is a baseline for each thing every tank brings and then each unique tank stands out in one or more ways (like DK with how crazy the self healing is granting them the ability to pull more with less potential downtime) means that they become a desired class. If DH was marginally more durable or brought enough extra damage to the table then you would want to bring that because the extra mobility allows everything to go ‘faster’ in an instanced setting while enabling easier kiting strategies as needed. It’s really not a hard concept to grasp. The best tank is the one that allows the run to progress the fastest and all of those attributes (plus general utility that I forgot to put in there) matter to the run as a whole the further you go into challenging content.
Retooling the Evoker class completely at this stage of the design (were in beta not a preliminary alpha) while also expecting Blizzard to re-balance 35 other class/specs aside from Evoker and to then add a new tank spec on the class that is being designed primarily as a ranged spell caster/healer just isn’t optimal.
It’s the only way to be sure.
I leave yall for lunch and all of a sudden you make progressive debateses regarding evoker tanks, so proud rn 
Still some of yall not catching on and arguing nonsense that’s getting debunked but please keep bringing valid arguments that can actually be discussed and debated.
#Tankforevoker2022
Nutts- there is a full evoker tank tree currently designed with various iterations of spells and and talents, i will try and get you the link (its a huge excel sheet). So its actually not even that hard and the ground work is there.
You could design an entire Support tree for Rogue or Tank tree for Priest. It doable. You can force it to work. But it doesn’t matter if it’s fundamentally separate from the philosophy espoused by Blizzard on the topic.
(Recording not available, but summary as follows:)
Dracthyr Tank spec is unlikely. This is a spellcaster class at its core. The class is initially only going to have two specializations, but if they do have a third, ranged dps and healer is where they’re focused.
Blizzard, for good or for ill, sees spellcasting and tanking as mutually exclusively, no matter what “Technically…” or “Actually…” arguments you throw out there.
The desire for a draconic tank is legitimate. But contorting Evoker into the role is a dead end, especially when there are better options to fulfill that fantasy.
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VALID!
Now how many times has blizzard told us they know what we want, we tell them no that’s not it, they insist on it, then realize sometimes what players want is different from what developers want, and that sometimes, in right situations, giving the players what they want ends up being the right call with great results for both the player and the developer.
Dragon flight isnt out yet, nothing is final till it is. Its a long shot but people want evoker tanks and if enough of them speak up about it and all the valid reasons why it makes sense, works, and fits, then yeah Blizzard might actually listen. They’ve been doing a lot of that in the past few months. the framework is already there. If you think adding an extra spec is detrimental to the game by all means speak up as well, so far the only actually complaint is from competitive tanks not wanting to have/maintain another raid ready tank in case it becomes meta (this is an inherent problem to the tanking role due to only needing 2 in a raid group, not the class). It also doesn’t speak to M+ or pvp both of which would benefit from evoker tank. The rest is literal BS from people trying to prevent someone else’s fun while not actually losing anything themselves.
Everyone quotes an article/vod/interview that was preplanned rhetoric shortly after the announcement of Dragonflight. Since then, people have played alpha. People have played beta. We are still in beta. There have been changes, some announced some not. This is the time to tell them what we think, and tank spec is something the player base does want. As you stated, legitimate. And there are many ways to go about giving that to us. Now what we really want to discuss and display for them is that for every reason given against there can be more given for dracthyr evoker caster intellect based tank. So please (and i mean this to everyone not you personally), give a valid argument against so that we may retort the logic and stop trying to to hush us up or discourage us away from a great idea we are trying to relay to the developers.
IDK how far up you went but there are some plain stupid things like “they have soft underbellies therefore cant tank”
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What are your thoughts on playable Drakonids, with access to tank classes?
For me, that would fulfill the draconic tank fantasy infinitely more than a Dracthyr Evoker tank. I don’t know about others, but as someone who has played a draconic tank in other games, I instantly think of stuff like this…
… when people talk about draconic tanks.
Unless we’re playing as an actual dragon-sized dragon, if we’re stuck playing as humanoids, the above is how I envision playable draconic tanks.
my personal opinion, why cant they be one and the same? like that would be the transformation they undergo in tank spec, maybe not even that but something even more bad a$$ that we haven’t thought of but Blizz has. That is somewhat the fantasy but WoW has a way of doing a one up on somethings some times and gives us something really cool. I think this is their chance. Evoker is cool just missing that icing on the cake and i think this would be it.
Just silly side note here but you can have a passive talent the visually alters your character into a more buffed armored magic glowy dragon tank thing that still flies with grace and elegance.
I think it would dilute the fantasy of both.
The Dracthyr, representing the erudite and graceful elements of the draconic fantasy.
The Drakonid, representing the sheer physicality and demanding presence of the draconic fantasy.
They can’t focus on both with a single entity, because if you combine them, you just have a full-fledged dragon, which they said was not a viable option in the announcement trailer.
i think thats where me and you separate. The first iteration of evoker was very thin and flimsy, now it has 4 different sizes. it can be its own unique dragon thing and i would prefer it to be a little different than other fantasy architypes because this is wow. We have orcs and humans but night elves, mecha gnomes, various furies, and other uniquely imitated concepts which work in our world. Thats what im asking for, something capturing the concept of dragon, drackthyr, drakanoid caster tank mo fo which fits as the perfect third spec for evokers. Deathwing’s forged elite
Subverting tropes is cool, unless your subversion serves nothing and undermines the essence of the trope. Imagine how epic it sounds being a limp lizard. Can’t imagine why anyone would be turned off by this…
Also you’re right, a walking lizard isn’t a dragon. That’s the whole problem.
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This is where your problem is… you see people asking for Evoker tank as asking for Dracthyr to be any other class… you’re not even remotely on the same page as everyone else… the Draconid fantasy you want will come after DF… but for the rest of us, this is the ONLY chance we have. We won’t get this fantasy later through another class. Evoker is it, and if the third spec ends up being something else then the fantasy is dead in the water for the rest of us.
THIS is the fantasy of the Evoker… only we’re humanoid still… but ability wise and functionality wise, they BEHAVE like they ARE full sized dragons… You think that being humanoid immediately disqualifies them from behaving like full sized dragons, when it doesn’t. People asking for Evoker tank want to see that side of the class fantasy explored more. The more feral dragon instincts, brute strength as well as intellect… not afraid to get up close and personal, and to make themselves a target.
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… you know protectors like the Black Dragon Flight that created them.
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They literally said that it did in the announcement panel.