I wonder if OP complained about Warriors during BFA. I’m going to assume not.
Difference is what the community considered as bad tanks last expansion did not feel this bad. This is the worst tanking has felt in a while. Even as a Blood DK after they were nerfed to the ground after S1 you could complete max level keys without having to spend the entire dungeon kiting unless it was necrotic. As of right now vengeance is looking like what Blood DK looked like in S1 BFA with 40%+ representation in 15+ and we know what happened to them. Not only that but it looks like Vengeance will be taking over the raid scene if they continue to scale well. They have the highest representation in heroic and the 2nd highest representation in mythic. Watch as all the brewmasters reroll in S2 if this continues. Then you will have 1 tank that dominates the raid and M+ by a mile. I can tell you people are already rerolling because they don’t trust Blizzard to do the right thing.
It’s still a little early in the season and things will likely even out a bit more in the coming months as far as representation in the ~15 key range. For the record BFA S4 actually saw pretty decent overall representation even at the 20+ level. Vengeance was also really strong during the time as well. I’m aware corruption played a role.
Ideally everyone wants all tanks to be buffed. I would even argue to buff vengeance mitigation a bit as well. Put an end to all tank kiting unless its necrotic or you are pushing +20 something level keys. I just don’t have a lot of faith in these developers.
1 Like
I think kiting is/would be fine if it was reserved for real “Oh Snap” moments, as opposed to being really necessary for a ton of pulls.
Like your DPS goes too ham and suddenly that big boy mob is big bolstered, so you kite it for a little bit to save the pull. No problem. Your friend body pulls because he hates you and enjoys seeing you in anguish. Kite is A-Okay. But you walk into a dungeon expecting to spend 75% of it running from things throwing glaives behind you? Not so fun.
3 Likes
I find relentless inquisitor works great for my pally. Haste IS survival for a prot pally. More shields and more self heals with lots of haste. I tried the shield talent and HATED it. It KILLED my damage with almost NO help on survivability
1 Like
My bear can do most pulls without a hitch. But yeah, my damage intake is spikey on my Prot Pally but the self heals is amazing with wog.
Im finding that healers are doing trickle heals to me. I have given up on being kept up by a healer. I have to heal myself.
I mean it was like 20% of my healing in the +9 I did last night in which the healer died at 75% on 2 different bosses (which means I was spending more holy power on healing than normal, reducing the % of absorb). But I’m also running the AS legendary to make that talent stronger.
The % will go up on weeks where more time is spent on trash (and without dead healers).
Maybe they took a lesson from DE team wand wants tank to run like an angry chicken
I am a bear. I love myself. But if Blizzard wants to pump some steroids into my hairy paws, I will gladly /dance for it
Is Fort/Raging still a combo?
That’s going to be a fun week on the forums.
My favorite part is you didn’t mention warrior. Prot is so irrelevant 
I was CCing the bolstering mobs in the +7 HoA I just did, and it worked nicely. Unfortunately, higher keys require so much of a time buffer that you pretty much can’t do that.
CCing bolstering mobs seems necessary with necrotic, as it lets you pull more and CC them for kiting, but the timer has done away with a lot of old dungeon pacing…which I personally find a little sad.
TBC and vanilla had limited CC classes, so it was unfair to DPS who couldn’t do it, but it made difficult pulls you prepared for seem more meaningful. I use that term lightly, because trash being ‘meaningful’ is…well, let’s just say I remember Shattered Halls having MS mobs that would wreck my tank without CC.
Bringing a mage or rogue to CC one or two of them felt fantastic, and that’s the meaning I’m referring to.
Sorry, tangent…
I guess it would make more sense to me if we were talking about content you are geared for. If you are a prot warrior who is geared just enough to do +6’s, and you go into a +6, youll be perfectly fine. If you are a prot warrior geared enough to do +6’s and you are trying to do +14’s, the proper response is “lol, yea i dont have the kit or gear for that yet”. Not to look at people who are trying to super leap frog content who are putting together full meta groups and saying “hey, i cant do that, nerf those guys!!”.
It would be like me questing out in the world as an arms warrior struggling to kill things 5 level’s above me while i look over and see a hunter doing it with a pet tanking for him. He has the kit to do things like that. He is the exception, not the rule.
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.
I miss the good old days when tanks just stood their ground and took it in the face. Now they have to run away from the trash.
1 Like
If you don’t CC in Mythic+, you ain’t timing that key bro. Gotta have those stuns, interrupts, snares, slows going out like candy on Halloween.
1 Like
Tanks do stand their ground in content they have the gear for. If you start doing content way above your gear level, like way higher keys than you are geared for, then yea, you might not want to get smacked in the face.
Yours was an eloquent and reasoned post and not done in a way to negate or put down other classes, but simply comparison. Sometimes some people just can’t help themselves…
1 Like
I have been tanking in this game since, well forever. Loved my prot war, but BFA turned me away from it. I went to my DH during then, have fun playing it. Obviously, I’m a little biased towards my DH and love that we are in a good state. That being said, absolutely the other tanks, especially blood dk and prot war need help.
I hope that they just buff the other tanks up instead of nerf hammering VDH. Maybe give Prot war their Defensive Stance back, buff ignore pain’s absorb, and I think they should just make it so Spell Reflect was like what it was back in Legion, lasts 5 seconds with no limit, and maybe make thunderclap snare stronger.
As for the Blood DK, I haven’t really played one since Cataclysm so I don’t know really what to do with them, other than maybe increasing their self-healing and armor, maybe make Death and Decay or blood boil snare to assist with kiting, maybe their raise dead minions are stronger and can taunt. Not a developer so just spit balling here.
Please don’t nerf Vengeance, please buff the other tanks, that is what needs to be done. I think nerfing vengeance will just make the problem worse for everyone not better.
2 Likes
Wow the top elite players in the world choose the best option to win with. Next you’ll tell me the top athletes all choose to strength train and eat a diverse, nutrient dense diet 
nerf weight training, quality protein and vegetables!