Everything is viable, S3 is probably the easiest season since either S3 of SL or maybe even S4 BFA. The issue more comes in the realm of when the game is easier, the utility and functions a spec can bring start to sway and stack the deck.
Monk is the best tank at smoothing out damage, Prot Warrior is almost immune to physical damage. Neither of those really feel like anything in an expansion where no tank is ever in a situation where they feel threatened.
VDH isn’t brought for it’s damage, it’s damage is nice. It’s utility, and specifically it’s ability to lock down packs and prevent others from taking damage through stopping casts from sigil of silence, chains, and misery is what’s putting it over the edge. Tank DPS doesn’t mean anything when everyone is 2 chesting a +20 with relative ease.
VDH is extremely bad in a vacuum, it’s okay for a raid tank so they’re numbers aren’t artificially inflated like Prot Paladin and BDK, they don’t have hard counters to most of the affixes like Paladins do, they’re just unbelievably solid because of their utility that was over buffed going into this season.
Most tanks will not be as good as VDH and Prot Paladin because we can’t stop the group from dying, they can. Bulky offense and damage prevention overtook everything because of how tipped the scales are. It’s the same reason why Aug is only getter better this season, and probably will continue to get better and better. Defensively, Aug removes 4 keystone levels for the tank, so that niche that BrM and Warrior have? Immediately gone. When Disc and MW are so popular right now, and the Aug is providing so much passive defensive utility and gives them basically a 30% throughput buff by just existing the healers are barely every having to transition from a passive healing phase (through firstweaving/throwing renewing mists out for MW and applying atonement through prayer/shielding the tank for disc) it’s not unreasonable why even though this is the easiest the game has ever been the meta is shifting heavily and downstreaming into niches.
This topic could be simply, “why do top players gravitate to the same 1-3 specs?” Some of the very top keys are prot pallies. Perfect 17.5% popularity won’t happen regardless of how close the tuning is.
Nvm that top teams copy each other’s discoveries and those specs are sometimes required to make them work. So gravitation is even more pervasive and likely.
I’ll never understand people who nit pick tuning based on popularity.
I 0refer charts/lists like this: https://u.gg/wow/tier-list/tank-rankings it does have VDH as S rank tank, but there is no tank under B rank and it actually shows how each tank does on DPS and HPS. Monks do more DPS and HPS, BDK does more HPS (keep in mind, this may be just self healing).
I agree with you. The tanks are very close, but with every season the most popular tank is picked by Naowh, Dorki and Andy. They are the ones who come up with the top strats that everyone adopts in keys 3-7 below them and just like with raid, a lot of people learn from watching videos.
I know some people will show up and say something like, “I don’t care what those people do” or “who?”. Truth is, not everyone needs to know who they are for 50% of the tank population to follow their lead.
If you choose to play prot warrior, you’ll have to develop your own methods to deal with each and every pack and boss in m+. Sure, you can check what Plka and Sense are doing (and I absolutely encourage it), but playing that spec not only has the 1% or so tuning debuff, but also the 97% knowledge and experimentation debuff.
You can either go with the flow (of information) or resist it. Most people prefer to ride the current and there’s nothing wrong with that.
A large number of my 20+ keys this season have been tanked by bears and BDK if not all of them actually? I’ll have to double check. I don’t think it’s inherently bad if at the very top there is a meta. Every game has it, LoL, OW, etc.
This would be a huge issue if every tank besides 1 was struggling to tank a +15-20.
I wouldn’t trust the DPS numbers on those charts at all. I do overall around 120k most dungeons, and I see a lot of VDH tanks doing closer to 200k. VDH is doing a ton of damage right now and they have a lot of utility which is why they’re the most used IMO.
Thank you for proving that people can’t critically think. Ever think that the charts might be the average, or what the normal is across all levels? or did that escape you in your race to be “right”?
Top players will likely SMASH the numbers on the charts, but poor players of the specs will drage the average down, as will having the numbers from across ALL key levels. You likely are doing keys with very geared and skilled players, or higher keys then most do, so your numbers will be higher.
Next time you want to try an call ranking charts out as wrong, try and think about what information is likely included in it. I mean hovering over the ? for tank DPS even says: “for tanks we opted to sow their aggregated DPS score as a temporary place holder as we search for a more valuable metric that tank players care about”.
Hmm, aggregated, could that not mean, like I said, from across all dungeon, gear and skill levels?
VDH is still the second highest tank DPS, and with their utility likely pushes them into S rank.
Note I am not saying you are wrong here, just that you showed lack of thought in your argument against the charts. The biggest thing about charts is a lot of the time, there as a “your mileage may vary” aspect and there is nothing wrong with that, but to act like the chart can’t be trusted based on personal experience just reeks of elitism when the chart takes the information from as many sources as the makers of the chart deem needed.
No one cares that BrM is doing 10k more DPS than VDH. They pick tanks for their utility. No one can compete with VDH utility and Pal are a close second.
This is mostly the result of how many obnoxious, group-wiping casts are in this season. Silence Sigil plus Oppressing Roar is a huge duration silence. There are places in almost every dungeon where that AOE silence turns a dangerous pull into a trivial one.
Says the guy ranting about a chart on icy veins… Looking at logs the very top tank dps in various keys is typically monk which is doing 232 in some keys like Black Rook Hold with a Demon hunter doing 210. So maybe you should read the following at the top of your precious tier list:
“We calculate each spec’s Tank rankings by evaluating DPS and HPS scores from the very best players and factoring in the frequency of each spec’s appearances in the highest rankings of the current Mythic+ season. We believe this gives the most accurate rankings of every Tank spec’s performance at the highest levels of endgame PVE gameplay.”
So the actual top tanks are doing far more than what they’re advertising here. So as I said, I wouldn’t trust DPS numbers on those charts at all because the logs say otherwise. Seeings as I parse in the mid 90s and up in most keys I think my experience is valid and checks with the logs.
So you don’t trust a chart made from information pulled from the Blizzard API? Of one can’t trust information from Blizzard, what can they trust? Logs are all well and good, but in order to be counted on logs, the logs have to be submitted, not everyone does that. There is also a good chance that your logs are included in the information the chart provides, but it alos provides information from those that have not logged.
More or less you are saying you don’t trust the charts because they don’t fit your narrow data points and instead of admitting that your points could be missing some data, you would rather push your narrative like an elitist prick.
I have zero tank preference at the moment. I’ve done keys with VDKs, Bear tanks, BDKs, Prot Palys, etc. I build my group around the comp that I need and some of the cleanest runs I’ve had has been with bear tanks.
No I’m saying I don’t trust the charts because they don’t match the 1000s of logs that exist already. It takes a minute to check logs and see that what they’re posting is wrong. Here is an example.
People like to think clear imbalances but currently this is the best tank balance been all expansion. Im doing 23-27s on all tanks except brew (sorry just could not be bothered gearing brew this time) and the only tank that felt op was vdh in no coms groups that struggled to interrupt.
Favourite to play has been moonfire bear and prot warr.
Ok, I looked myself up on warcraft logs, I do 1 of each M+ dungeon each week, yet for DHT, they only have 2 data points for me. And all other dungeons don’t match my Raider.io record, by your logic, I should not trust the logs at all since they don’t match other sources of data. Thing is I do trust the logs, for things I know I can count on them for (personal performance on things that did get logged) but I will always go for the larger number of data points when it comes to charts and rankings.
You keep going on and on about logs and how the chart does not match instead of thinking on why that may be. Here is a hint:
Logs: takes people actually uploading logs for the data to be included
CHart: made from Blizzard API, can pull information that is both in the logs and not in the logs.
You are talking about somethign with thousands of data points, the chart could have 10s of thousands or more, of course the chart would not match if they pulled more information.
Brew - Dispel, Ring of peace , 4% avoidance in 8 yards, 8% healing in 8 yards, Mystic Touch, Good damage
What makes paladin and DH so strong is the AOE silence allowing them to gather and hold down caster mobs. 5 second AOE silence that can be used twice lol. Meanwhile other tanks have to rely on teammates to interrupt caster mobs to gather them.