PSA: Kiting as a tank is necessary in m+

Community General Discussion
141

Got it. The benefits of some tanks ability to do their jobs at range is an emergent feature that doubles on any additional benefits they may have when standing still. I can see that.

Maybe a threat ring that diminishes if the tanks exceed 20 yards from the target, so it becomes more of a dance? Or that tank skills have a Holy Paladin like mastery: they lose efficacy the further from the mob they are? (Could see some odd synergies with paladin and Avenger’s Shield when tryng to force-in caster mobs, though, as well as possible DKs using DnD at range.)

But, nonetheless, thanks for the insight and taking time to detail your perspective.

142

Wouldn’t do any good. Most kiting is done between like 8-15 yards from the nearest enemy.

You’d likely need to combine a bankable grace period and a threshold from melee range for a satisfying solution. Melee range would also be more intuitive, as you’d have an indicator right there (via your melee skills) as to whether you’re in or out. No dancing around some 17-19 yard transition zone; you’re committed, or threat over 2nd highest is draining.

143

It would also get really trixy in X axis “engaged” spaces.

144

I don’t know where you got that from, because it is patently false. Tanking means holding onto threat so others don’t die and helping them kill the enemy. A dead tank results in a dead group, so they better do whatever it takes to stay alive. If that means running away and letting the boss chase you for a few moments, by gosh you better do it. And if you seriously think tanking is just standing there holding enemies in one spot doing some kind of mitigation and a little dps, you are wrong.

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145

Kiting as a tank only makes it harder for your [melee] dps to kill them.

This is why many groups will only take 1 or none.

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146

That is not true… if anything is the other way around, melee can move while dealing damage it is absolutely no problem for them, DH may struggle a little bit.

Many classes have ground are and all their DPS is lost if the tank keeps moving the enemies around… this also makes it harder to cleave… it is just not good.

That is not tanking, Tanks do NOT need to kite at all… I have seen tanks doing these and not even taking damage from pulls (which last forever thanks to them)… this is just not what Tanking is. (It also almost always ends as a wipe and tank leaves or something… a lot of new tanks think this is how Tanking is and think their teams are bad or something when in relaity they are the ones causing the wipes).

Only reason to Kite is on Necrotic or stuff like that. SInce the first week(s) was Necrotic I imagine this is what caused new players to think this is how tanking works.

147

The question is what is the healer mana doing at that time… the only way for tanks to NOT take damage is to kite or for their self sustain to net off the damage (which is very limited on some tanks)… so maybe we are just talking about different levels of keys and gear.

I have already shifted to minimal play this xpac (because I was not enjoying it) but tanking in weeks 1-3 heavily involved necessary kiting now that everyone has shifted from ilvl170 to ilvl200+, maybe kiting is not as necessary as it once was.

148

Back in the Legion design previews - Guardian was listed as:

Taking the form of a great bear, the guardian druid becomes a massive wall of fur, claw, tooth, and rage, aided by the forces of nature, standing between allies and any opposing threats.*

"Taking the form of a great bear, the guardian druid becomes a massive wall of fur, claw, tooth, and rage"

Powerful themes fuel the Guardian Druid, but the gameplay falls short of delivering on them. In particular, Guardian Druids have had a strong emphasis on avoidance, dodging attacks more than almost any other tank, with abilities accentuating that. However, this doesn’t mesh well with the image of the tough and sturdy bear. We want Guardian Druids to survive through their sheer tenacity, thick hide, massive resilience, and strong regeneration. To this end, we’ve redesigned several parts of the Druid combat ability toolkit to instead focus on those core defensive ideas—health, armor, mitigation, and regeneration—while deemphasizing dodge.

So it’s clear that Guardians were designed with the intent to face tank damage the majority of the time.

However, In general, you have a few options when a tank is taking excessive damage.

  • Increase Defensive capability Through Gear, Talents, External buffs, Soulbinds, Enchants, Flasks, etc.

  • Increase incoming Healing throughput to offset the increased incoming damage.

  • Lower the incoming damage (such as through Debuffs, CC, other means)

  • Increase group damage (so the tank is taking extreme damage for a shorter duration)

But because they don’t want tanks to require as much skill as previously, we’ve seen the across the board removal of debuffs such as Attack Speed reduction, a vast minimization to defensive focused player cast buffs, and limited gearing options.

When combined with a timer and the rewards scale with how fast you clear, damage becomes the ideal choice if you are trying to maximum rewards per clear. If you minimize the healing load, suddenly the healer can DPS also and hey, more damage!

You address this by doing one/more of the following:

  • Restore complexity of the Gearing / Buff / Debuff system to allow you to conditionally address challenges across multiple axis to a greater degree than today.

  • Making certain NPCs require tanking. Everquest had a mechanic known as ‘Summoning’ which would warp your character into melee of the NPC if you out ranged it once it hit 95% health. This prevented group intended content from being kited to a large degree and forced groups to figure out ways to keep the tank alive since they tank was going to take damage and anyone else getting hit was likely going to be one rounded.

  • Lowering threat to the point that if the tank isn’t actively hitting it - it’s going to go after someone else. The issue here is outside of very high keys, more people can take 2-4 rounds of a single NPCs damage without major concern. If however it hit hard enough to one round people than threat as a concept for survival would be a factor.

  • Decoupling the amount of rewards from the timer.

149

Tanks are SUPPOSED to take damage… Tanks’ kits are designed around taking damage: Mitigating it, healing, or both.

It is not about being not necessary, if you are kiting as a tank you are being a bad tank… You are not going the extra mile by kiting… it is quite the opposite.

Also, in the first weeks there was “Necrotic”… and I have already addressed it.

And as I have said… there are situations in which you might need to kite… but few., really few and circumstantial on mechanics…

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150

There are two issues here, one is the game never teaches the importance of interrupts. I’ve run into people in mythics who didn’t even know their class had an interrupt.

The second issue is that DPS aren’t the ones who are usually punished when something doesn’t get interrupted. The tank and healer take the punishment a vast majority of the time. If failing to interrupt when appropriate caused DPS to do 50% less damage all the time, you can bet your rear end that DPS would learn to interrupt.

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151

I would imagine this is another healer. sometimes kiting is necessary. but that time is certainly not on pull, like many tanks choose to do. And the sort of slow tanking that many do just doesn’t make any sense unless it’s a massive pull. Just stay completely still until you need to get out, then gtfo all at once.

But the main problem I see is that healers have no concept of cooldown usage. No situational awareness. They let themselves get too far behind at the wrong times. Most dmg is very predictable. Like a tank, you have to know the dungeons and know when dmg is coming so people are topped.

And ffs, stop hanging on to your cds. On fort week, you should be basically blowing you entire load, just like the dps, on trash. You guys hang onto cds for idk what

152

I am so glad I am not doing that content. As melee I hate when tanks kite mobs.

It most certainly is true. Melee lose dps when they constantly have to chase mobs.

153

Could this partially explain why I might be struggling so much as a healer, when the tank is completely stationary and I’ve blown all my cooldowns as druid? Not sure if I’m just bad, or if group has issues, too…

154

Exactly! Nobody is saying tanks should just stand in massive slams, but that’s different from running away from everything all the time, which is not tanking.

This is not about standing in Odyn’s ultimate, or refusing to reposition Hyrja. (Sorry for the old examples, they were just the first ones that came to mind.) Those are legitimate needing-to-move mechanics. They’re also not the same thing as kiting all the time.

Draven has a soulbind ability that does that, but I don’t think it’s unlockable with the current renown cap.

But if dungeon design makes it impossible to take advantage of things like that, then what would be the point of having it exist? Was the soulbind design team just not talking to the dungeon design team about how they expected tanks to play? (I guess that is actually possible, but if so, the conflict needs to be resolved, and I for one vote to resolve it in favor of allowing tanks to tank most attacks while remaining in melee range of what is attacking them.)

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155

I guess it just depends on the class, if your class has ground AOE or cleave you will lose damage, regardless of melee or ranged.

I kinda forgot so many melee DPS also had ground AOE.

156

I am not sure if you actually tank or not… there are many many points in a dungeon where a tank will take excessive damage and the healer will need a few casts to get the tank topped back off, its at these points kiting is warranted, to give the healer time to bring the tanks health back up, cooldowns and active mitigation will only cover so much.

Then there is also things like spiteful, where healers stay locked in combat and cannot drink to replenish mana between pulls… healer mana matters in M+, the quicker you can go from pack to pack and the more mana your healer can keep from pack to pack the quicker the dungeons go.

Again maybe its when you do content that is above your gear level but these moments occur with more and more frequency the higher you climb.

Go play a healer, dps have it very very easy. Healers not only have to manage the tank, the dps health, dispels and often ancillary tasks like managing the maze in mists.

157

Either you are tanking badly, or you haven’t gotten a single good healer this season.

I’ve already addressed the fact that one of the first affixes on this season was necrotic and that might have made some new tanks think that is how tanking works.

And My Tank is DH… use demonic spikes and heal… running away won’t solve your problems that will only make it harder for your team.

If you are constantly kiting you are NOT being a good Tank and I say this as someone who has tanked undergeared… they few times I have been in precarious sitatuios are because I got distracted or bored and stopped using my defensive cooldowns.

Do you need to move as a tank? yes, in most scenarios. Moving is not kiting.

Your opinion makes you look like a bad tank, you are a DH… there has to be something you are not doing if you are constantly in situations were you need to kite.

158

Probably both.

Depends on your team, and yes our leech is not bad.

Keyword constantly… obviously you spend time in melee generating aggro (with spikes up), once you run out of spikes/feldev is blown… you have the choice to use/save meta or kite if your health drops, you can use brand on one tough mob I spose but generally you can kite them and avoid all damage from them.

Heres a few times where I would kite:
You mentioned necrotic reset but I would also kite on grievous+low health
Highly bolstered packs (especially near death)… yes you are not supposed to kill them too far apart but can go offtrack and need to be adjusted on the fly.
Particularly nasty enraging packs

Depending on the space available storming and spiteful can also be worth kiting to move mobs out of hazards.

Kiting for the sake of kiting or “constantly” kiting I will agree is bad but to say it is not necessary or should never be done is just as false. I think its a skill tanks need to have in the toolbox.

159

Use your sigils, SIgils of misery, sigil of silence and sigil of chains.

Edit: If you got nothing up… nothing to answer damage and you are about to die then you must’ve done something wrong. That is the exception, and you should not get to that scenario…

IF you get to that scenario kiting is not a “tool” it is more like an emergency thing you do out of desperation to remain alive, you should not get to that scenario where literally all abilities are on CD and you have nothing you can do to survive.

160

Yeah, if a warrior isn’t helping tank via piercing howl while tank kites on necrotic then that warrior is bad. Knowing is half the battle.