From my experience physical threat is like 50% of my threat. So I still feel he’s gimped.
Well, are we lying tho? I don’t think anyone would consider shaman tanks on par with the tank classes. That said, if you’re in an instance and/or encounter and you perform the role of tank. Were you the tank? yes. Absolutely. Does that mean that Shamans can fill that role as easy as the tank classes? no. Nor can they do it for every occasion either.
I think a lot of the commenter’s issues has mostly to do with the denial that a shaman tanked X mob or X instance.
I just think we just need more data. This is the first guy I’ve seen attempt it. Can he do it again? and consistently? if so then he can do the job, and it’s not that RNG reliant. If this is the only instance of it happening ever then it might be just luck like you pointed out.
That’s just it, I don’t consider it “performing the role” if you had to keep rolling the dice until your numbers lined up nicely. That was the case of the Karazhan clear, where out of sheer luck fights like Prince and Netherspite just decided to not land a Crushing Blow and let the Shaman live.
Outside of him snagging higher ilvl gladiator gear, there isn’t much room to grow and he’s already in a lot of S2 already. His current survival stats leave him open to sudden death should his resistances roll a 25% or 50% check instead of a 75%. Even if he improves his play so he stops taking 2-3 Blaze tics before moving and stops getting the raid breathed on, a melee/Blaze combo with low resistance means death for him.
I’d be more inclined to agree if there was a lot of room for growth but it just isn’t there. There’s only so much Stamina you can pack into a maxed out FR set.
I pointed out luck not because this is the first time, but rather I can look at his logs, see him spike down to 18% health, look at the hits that took him there, and very easily see that had he taken worse hits due to RNG, he’d have been dead.
We’re going to see a fair bit of luck in Wrath when undergeared tanks try to do hardmodes… and its going to be ugly. EH checks get real serious.
So you’re only saying the tank would have died to bad RNG? Wouldn’t most tanks die from the right combination of bad RNG? You’re always making excuses, 2nd.
But would you say, people who win the lottery aren’t rich because of RNG? Would you deny their reality of having tons of money? Since mathematically it improbable to do, thus it doesn’t count?
So what I am getting out of this, is that 1 side says if you can tank a raid or dungeon 1 time, that makes you a tank…and the other side says you need to be able to tank something 9 out of 10 times successfully to be a tank?
I kind of lean to the 9 out of 10 times. I mean, if my mage happens to pull aggro of a boss, and I keep aggro, and the healer heals me through it, does that make me a tank?
Personally I consider a tank any class I can be comfortable calling on to be dependable enough to win 75%+ of the time as long as they aren’t morons.
Honest question, if that Shaman were to tank this 10 times, on average how often would he be successful? If it is 50% then is he really a tank from luck? Or is it 75%+ where you feel decent going into the raid to not fail?
Bit hard to precisely calculate without knowing his exact Avoidance numbers and whatnot. I don’t have the breakpoint weights for spell resistance in front of me either so I can’t tell you exactly what chance he’d have of eating a 25% or 50% hit, instead of a 75% hit. The percentages most people remember and use are the AVERAGE resistance you are expected to see over an infinite amount of combat time. 365 puts that average at 75%, but reality shows us that we can get dramatically lower averages than that on top of the fact that I don’t think a purely elemental melee swing can be 100% resisted, which artificially lowers the total resist average further.
I want to say the 25% and 50% resists account for like 10-12% of the table, which makes this Shaman’s death scenario about as common as a Crushing Blow (which is 15%). But it isn’t enough to just say “so about a 10-15% chance of sudden instant failure” since these values are applied to small chunks of a much longer fight, repeatedly, over and over, until the Shaman dies or the mob does. That’s why such small percentages (and these aren’t small) matter a lot, because it doesn’t matter that you survived the first 50 hits, it was the 51st that landed too hard for you to handle that killed you, and now you’re wiping.
If this were a different game setup where picking up dead Tanks was just part of the process or mobs required Kiting as a full time gig to alternate with Tanking or similar, the binary wouldn’t be such a problem. But WoW is decidedly balanced around everyone putting forth a minimum threshold to guarantee success, not highly likely of success.
This is going to be a big sticking point for the meta in Wrath. A lot of bosses have explicitly strict EH thresholds that must be met to survive the encounter and if you don’t meet them, you don’t win. There’s going to be whining galore that Tank X can use personal CDs only to endure it whereas Tank Y needs external CDs to do it. I find it amusing that EH is even being mentioned in TBC because every real Tank effortlessly clears the EH bar by wearing prior tier or even worse in some cases. Only Shaman trying to Tank encounter this issue.
I totally agree that on the Flame he did have good luck this time around. I’m just saying lets wait and see if he can consistently do it again. If he can’t, that would be the answer.
On things like Kara though. Shamans can tank that no problem and have been doing that for a while. Same with heroics, normals, some bosses in SSC/TK. Those were not once and never could do it again scenarios.
Yes! this 100%. Anyone can get threat on a mob and just out of luck survive it (although doing it on something like FLK’s add, as a mage, from beginning to the end would be quite the feat I must admit).
However, aside from the Flame scenario, there have been many examples of shaman tanking dungeons and some raid encounters every week. Would those encounters be easier with one of the tank classes? yes! but that shouldn’t take away from the evidence that a shaman could fill in such a role.
My point about referencing Kara was when Kara was the only game in town along with Mag and Gruul. Post nerfs and two and a half tiers worth of gear later, I fully expect a Shaman to be able to do the older stuff and I’m not really bothered one way or another by it anymore than I am that a Priest can go Holy Nova clear Deadmines and RFK.
This brings another good point, how many healers should a tank need?
If a Shaman needs 3-4 healers on something that another class needs 1-2, is that tanking? What if the shaman needs 3 and the other class needs 2? Is that tanking?
This becomes a nit picking point here and I don’t know what I would consider tanking.
I mean, if a raid with a Shaman as tank takes 75 minutes because of the extra healers needed and lack of dps for those slots, and a Pally tanks it and it is done in 45 minutes, is it fair to say the Shaman tanked it? I guess in the literal sense yes, but I wouldn’t consider the Shaman a tank in this example because of the amount of extra help that was needed, I mean a Hunter pet might be able to do something similar with enough help.
BUT…if it took the SHaman led raid 55 min and the Pally led raid did it in 45 min, and they could do this 75% of the time with success? Yeah, I would consider the Shaman a tank.
My main question has always been, can the Shaman hold aggro with a raid full of DPS all going balls out? If they can then great, lets talk about it, but if they can’t we are back to gimping the raid to call someone a tank?
You’re writing this out with a somewhat implied tone that Wrath is going to be challenging. The pet of a hunter wearing quest greens could probably tank Naxx. Outside of a couple of hardmodes , Ulduar is easy as well. All raids have 10 man versions too, which feature softer hitting bosses.
If a raid brings a second boomkin or a second rogue, would you not call these players DPS? Just because it’s not an optimal raid composition doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
