Tank Kiting Meta

Community General Discussion
1

Do people actually enjoy this?

I don’t know who decided that tanks should be made out of paper in PvE… or that trash mobs should be more dangerous than boss fights… but I do NOT enjoy this.

I can appreciate hard content. I want the content to be challenging. I want to be pushed and fail and overcome a skill hurdle. I love games that punish players for making mistakes. I love souls-like games because they can be challenging… but I absolutely hate the kind of difficult that Blizzard employs.

I’m a firm believer that if I stand in a telegraphed attack… I should get killed… but this gameplay of ranged tanking/slow/kiting is just absolutely miserable to play in. I despise it with every fiber of my being. It is literally antithetic to the tank fantasy and it forces me to play the game in a way that I do not enjoy… regardless of which tank spec I am playing on.

What are your thoughts?

6 Likes
2

Welcome to affixes. Next week bosses will me much harder and trashes trivial.

Tank kiting is only meta because most people chose to push their keys/IO rating during the Fortified weeks because its a lot easier to play around/kite/CC/aoe down trashes than it is to perfectly execute a boss that pretty much oneshots people with most of their mechanics starting at +15s and over.

3

I think blizzard is trying to put more emphasis on CC and snares, but it just backfires as the general population is GO GO GO!! HIT EM ALL!!

1 Like
4

Punishing =/= Challenging.

I wish people would stop equating the two. Punishing is making one mistake and it ends you. I really hate too much of this.

Challenging still requires skill but it takes a few mistakes to put you under. You still have a chance to recover using your skill and come out on top.

I much prefer the second, I detest the first.

1 Like
5

There’s a reason M+s go from 2 to 20+. Play where your comfortable.

6

I guess the question is, what level key is he talking about?

7

Considering kiting isn’t really necessary until 13-14, i assume that’s it.

8

If you don’t like kiting, do keys with lower skill requirements.

9

…Mostly, but I feel the tuning’s off, and I feel the power of kiting isn’t well budgeted into the tank’s kit.

It’s almost as if they were all balanced around the same kiting-exclusive power, and then relative mobility was added without parity thereafter, imbalancing their total capacities.

I’d prefer the relative strength of kiting not be so high as to deemphasize the remaining portions of our kits and for it be an about as necessary, but more accounted for, portion of particularly agile tanks’ kits.

1 Like
10

I agree it goes against the traditional sense of tanking. If this was a 3 dps scenario or whatever then it makes sense but when you have a tank it’s just bad design.

2 Likes
11

No.

Tanks weren’t built to kite. Hunters and frost mages were.

5 Likes
12

If I was actually tanking keys I would totally not enjoy it.

Unless of course I’m a VDH :roll_eyes:

13

I tank to take punches to the face, not to run away. If I wanted to run away from combat I wouldn’t be playing a game with war in its name.

This one of the biggest reasons I shelved my main who was primarily a tank. That and the prot warrior changes suck in general.

2 Likes
14

It’s not fun, but it is a core design of Vengence.
Either nerf Vengence or buff other tanks.

That’s why I’ve shafted my prot warrior and wait for the next meta to shift in.

15

Kiting is very antithetical to the tank fantasy.

1 Like
16

Buff other tanks slightly, sure, but don’t nerf Vengeance just for its ability to kite, nor nerf mobility itself.

Just make mobility a less sustainable way to protect oneself, such as by increasing base threat generation but having tank (or lead) threat drain over time spent outside of melee range.

1 Like
17

I wouldn’t be bothered if there were a less mobile tank that could actually soak damage… but none of the tanks can actually withstand the kind of damage that mobs put down… and most healers don’t seem to have the throughput yet to keep a tank alive through it.

Warriors have it pretty rough, cause they can’t build as much threat at a range, don’t have the self healing, and frequently have to choose between spending rage on survivability or generating threat. It doesn’t even matter how mobile they are.

My group is primarily focusing on breaking into +10 keys right now. I’m not gonna act like we’re allstars or anything. Most of us are pretty average players.

And kiting is absolutely required well before +13s. Especially on Bolstering and Fortified weeks. There are quite a few packs that have tank buster mechanics.

If there were no timer, CC would be more of an option… but it’s not time efficient to CC 2-3 mobs on large pulls.

I know the direction most people are gonna take this is “you’re bad cause you can’t kite” and that really isn’t what this is about. I know people are going to say things like “just do keystones at the level you are comfortable with” and I appreciate that, but again… not what this is really about.

It’s about “when I am kiting, I’m not enjoying myself.” It’s a design philosophy that I do not enjoy… and there is no other way to progress.

To me, kiting is kind of like cheesing an encounter. People who are good at it have definitely honed a skill and I respect it. I’m not trying to diminish that. What I don’t like, is that it’s required to progress because blizzard isn’t capable of making content hard without forcing players to cheese the content.

It would be different if auto attacks were all telegraphed and there were some built in dodging system. But the game isn’t designed that way. Auto attacks are largely unavoidable damage if you’re in range of using melee attacks… so it doesn’t really make sense to have a challenge mode that punishes you simply for being in melee range.

Yes… I could absolutely get better. I could start getting good at the kite meta and try to help carry my group into +15s. And for a lot of people I’m sure my opinion means nothing unless I’m out crushing +20 keys or something… but this is really about playstyle and my personal opinion/enjoyment of the kiting meta.

The discussion isn’t intended to be about skill. It’s about “are we having fun while doing it.” Because I’m not enjoying it… and I don’t see it growing on me.

6 Likes
18

What M+ level does that become a thing? I’m much more casual and only up to M6 ish and I’m ok, but I presume that changes fast after that?

19

Once you start having to deal with the 3rd affix it starts becoming more necessary. Necrotic / Grievous will start ruining your day if your healer can’t top you off or you can’t drop your necrotic stacks. Pulls with mobs that bleed or stack armor debuffs start getting fairly hard to deal with… especially if your DPS aren’t killing things very quickly.

Prideful is kind of a gamechanger, cause you need to completely change your route/path and will need to start making some really challenging pulls in order to actually make the timers/not get completely screwed by prideful spawns.

20

I agree. Give us something hard to do that’s not just running away from the mobs. The whole reason I stole all this plate armor off corpses was so that I could take some hits!

2 Likes