Mists of Pandaria

[Lantyssa]

Yes, I've read it all.  Saying "make it more interesting" does not make it more interesting.  If that worked I'd be telling myself "make more money".

How to do tanking right: leave the requirements to tank successfully as they are now, but gives tanks more interesting things to do that can influence the success of their group.

If faceroll equals success, then what can you possibly do to make it more interesting?

I suppose group shield walls and whatnot are something, but if you don't need those to win, then are they really interesting?  If you do need them to win, they're you're changing play styles.  It means either the tank, the healer, or even the dps needs to be more on the ball.  Then you're getting into paradigm changes and why not just play GW2 where roles aren't so fixed instead of trying to change WoW yet again?

[Paelos]

<How to do tanking right and wrong>

Do you actually tank anything? Or is this another one of those scenarios where you are again talking completely out of your ass? Because the more I read everything you say, the more I realize that not only do you not have any idea what's actually fun in this game, but you have no idea how to play any actual role that matters.

[Sheepherder]

I'm a disc priest (I was Holy in Wrath). Like I said, I didn't heal in TBC (was playing my rogue) but I do know that disc barely existed as an actual spec in its own right.

Wrath healing was awful. "snipe each others heals so this guy doesn't get globaled" + "infinite mana" + "super twitch heals". Ughhhh. I like managing my mana. It's what makes healing actually somewhat interesting and strategic. Looking at everything through the prism of "nerf" vs "buff" isn't helpful.

Disc priest that didn't like Disc.  Huh, guess that explains our difference of opinion: you're a crazy person.

[Ironwood]

Sorry, Rokal, I think that it's once again YOU missing the point.  I have a Warrior, DK, Druid and Pally and Tanking is what I've done since the game launched.

Want the truth ?

Here's why people don't tank :

You are expected to lead the group and other people are FUCKING MORONS.

It's that simple.

And you know who the biggest morons are, I find ?  The ones who try to tell me how to 'tank better'.

The Irony.  She is Thick.

[Rokal]

Do you actually tank anything? Or is this another one of those scenarios where you are again talking completely out of your ass? Because the more I read everything you say, the more I realize that not only do you not have any idea what's actually fun in this game, but you have no idea how to play any actual role that matters.

I tank an alt FL raid every week on my prot warrior, run 5-mans, and also tanked a decent amount of raids/dungeons on my bear druid in Cata. Needless to say I've done more tanking in Cata than you, someone with infinite opinions about the state of the game who I'm not sure is actually playing it.

Here's why people don't tank :

You are expected to lead the group and other people are FUCKING MORONS.

Of course this is why people don't tank. Have I ever suggested this wasn't the primary reason?

[Paelos]

I tank an alt FL raid every week on my prot warrior, run 5-mans, and also tanked a decent amount of raids/dungeons on my bear druid in Cata. Needless to say I've done more tanking in Cata than you, someone with infinite opinions about the state of the game who I'm not sure is actually playing it.

Armory link or STFU.

EDIT: Actually don't even bother: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/cenarius/Roksana/simple My guess is that is you. The guy who started tanking in Cataclysm.

[Rokal]

Warrior
Druid

And for good measure:

Paelos right?

To be clear, here are the reasons people don't tank, in order:
1) Nobody wants to lead groups, especially random groups
2) Tanking is boring. Gameplay is boring, stats are boring, personal progression doesn't exist

#2 is the one we've been talking about them trying to fix in MoP

Edit:

The guy who started tanking in Cataclysm.

Actually I started tanking in TBC, but achievements and other ways of tracking a character's history weren't added until the pre-Wrath patch of TBC. I fail to see what this has to do with your point. I do tank in WoW currently. You don't. Super fun cat-fighting aside, my opinions about tanking in WoW are based on regularly playing a tank, not random statements pulled out of my ass.

[Paelos]

Yep, that's me in all my outstanding glory.  

You can tell exactly the point where I said fuck this game by simply looking at the gear. I believe the exactly date was one year ago on 3/14/11.

Now that we know you actually have a warrior tank (but for some reason completely ignored tanking in Wrath), I have to ask: Why did you skip Wrath tanking? That was THE defining moment where tanks became relevent for most players.

[Rokal]

I skipped Wrath almost entirely, not just tanking. I believe the only character I got to level cap during Wrath was my Priest and I was only subbed for ~2 months. Hence why I still don't have a beta invite for MoP with my Annual Pass.

(It's okay though, my roomate has a beta invite and Monks look really half-finished/buggy right now so no rush) 

[Zetor]

Have we come to armory epeen measuring?   (I've totally been tanking since vanilla btw~)

I -sort of- agree with the idea of having cool abilities that can bail out a group -- things like brezzing the healer as a druid or DK, etc. LOTRO has a lot of these skills and its class design is one of the reasons I still (occasionally) play that game. However, I don't think those should (only) be given to tanks. I'm pretty much controlling the entire flow of dungeons *as it is* on my tank, but feel a lot weaker on my dps characters - yeah, I can burn stuff down and cc, but that won't save the group against a boss when the tank/healer stand in fire. I feel almost powerless on my healers, lifegrip aside.

[Rokal]

Healers have a decent selection of these abilities too. Every healer besides resto druids and holy priests gets a group-wide damage mitigation cooldown.

I think group utility/damage cooldown abilities would make tanking more interesting, but it's not enough. The basic gameplay still just isn't very rewarding.

There is a reason that they stuck with 'maintain threat' so long as tank gameplay: they couldn't think of anything else that would actually be fun.

The "active mitigation" model they are going for in MoP has the potential to be even less fun. 'Active mitigation' is just a step away from what makes Leather tanking classes obnoxious to play in other MMOs. Nobody wants to keep a cycle of buffs/mitigation abilities going constantly to make sure they don't give their healer a heart attack.

So how does Blizzard solve the fact that tank gameplay is boring with threat removed from the equation? I don't know. We could have a discussion about it, or you guys could derail the conversation by asking for my Armory links and reminding me that tanking is unpopular. 

[Paelos]

Part of the things you could do when you were a tank in Vanilla or TBC was save groups by playing well and having better gear. An overgeared tank could stay upright, extend fights, save healer mana, and improve your chances of success.

I'll point to one thing they have to remove if you want tanking to "matter" anymore. Enrage timers. The advent of enrage timers makes tanking worthless. The only measurable benefit of a good tank vs. a fantastic tank in a raid format would be the ability to stay alive and cost your healers less mana. However, if every single boss has an enrage timer, staying alive longer or conserving mana is not going to mean a hill of beans.

[caladein]

Disc priest that didn't like Disc.  Huh, guess that explains our difference of opinion: you're a crazy person.

Disc was so awful in during the shield spam part of Wrath that I unsubscribed for most of it.  Holy Paladin was slightly less terrible, but having your tank be at risk of being globalled was not fun.

I definitely prefer the mana management game to the spam best button game.

I'll point to one thing they have to remove if you want tanking to "matter" anymore. Enrage timers. The advent of enrage timers makes tanking worthless. The only measurable benefit of a good tank vs. a fantastic tank in a raid format would be the ability to stay alive and cost your healers less mana. However, if every single boss has an enrage timer, staying alive longer or conserving mana is not going to mean a hill of beans.

You're ignoring tank DPS, which is pretty damn important on tight enrage timers.

[Ingmar]

Tank conventional wisdom has always been that our dps doesn't matter, which has always really irritated me.

[Rokal]

Enrage timers are a mechanic to prevent bringing additional healers to trivialize content. I can't think of any 5-man fights in Cata that had enrage timers, since the 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps composition is pretty much set in stone, so you really only see enrage timers in raid content where extra healers could really throw the balance of fights out of whack. If you could restrict groups from having too many healers, then remove enrage timers, that would be one way to make playing your tank well matter. Pretty messy though.

Ultimately it would lead to more stressed out healers, as if the content is balanced as an endurance race, your healer(s) are going to get blamed when they run OOM, not the tank that might not have been using any mitigation abilities. The impression I get is that most players don't really enjoy endurance fights either.

[Paelos]

My point is that Blizzard shifted towards the DPS being important with enrage timers, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. Probably because more people played DPS. I can't guess at the reasoning, but they probably thought it was a good thing that fights can't be "cheesed" by staying alive.

And yes, my point is about raiding, not the dungeons. That leaves your tank with basically 3 jobs if it's not about them helping to stay alive longer.

1 - Control adds
2 - Pass the boss off when it does some kind of debuff
3 - Move the boss when it does a debuff

[Fabricated]

The "soft" enrage mechanics where bosses steadily do more and more damage or their mechanic slowly becomes unmanageable have been the least irritating to me. Usually because it lets your DPS not be spectacular if you can come up with some crazy bullshit near-exploit way to survive the soft enrage a while longer. Most of the fun(niest) kills I ever got in WoW were kills where literally everyone died at the same time as the boss because we stretched it THAT much.

Not counting blowing up the raid after Aran dies if he cast Flame Wreath right before going down. You were required to blow the raid up if that happened and I always did it because as a tank I lived.

[Ingmar]

I do like there to be the occasional Heigan where you can punish the people who screwed up by making them sit there through a 30 minute slow boss kill.

[Fabricated]

I do like there to be the occasional Heigan where you can punish the people who screwed up by making them sit there through a 30 minute slow boss kill.

"Punish" in the sense where my old guild's worst players got to go get another beer while we finished the fight. We used to fuck with people who died during long boring fights like Grobbulus and Heigan by battle-rezzing them after they immediately got up to go grab a beer or smoke and seeing how long it took them to realize they had anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute to get back to their PC before they ate another death worth of repair costs (we didn't give any guild-repair money to anyone for a long while since our crafters/AH Barons didn't trust the guild bank system).

[Merusk]

I always loved both those scenarios.

We had a pally tank on.. shit I think our first Malcazar kill.. who was the only one alive for the last 3 mins of the fight.

[Nevermore]

The fuck is a tank supposed to do to influence success or failure more?

Did you seriously not even read the last page? Examples of "How tanks could influence groups more" already given are things like giving them more cooldowns with self control (Lay on Hands, Death Strike), or the ability to impact or plan for a bad situation with something besides taunt (group-wide damage reduction similar to Rally Shout or group-wide shield wall). Every attempt at actually discussing this topic has been de-railed by people who continue to miss the point. Yes, we know tanking is the role with the lowest representation. Making tanking more interesting and giving you the ability to improve as a tank doesn't have to mean scaring more people away from tanking. If done well it could result in more people playing tanks.

How to do tanking wrong: leave tanking the way it is now, but make it harder for tanks to do the things they're already doing. Leaving shield block the way it is but making it harder to get the rage to use it is doing tanking wrong. The best example of this is leather tanks in other MMOs, where you have to keep up buffs on yourself in order to get the mitigation of a plate tank. You have to work as a tank just to get the mitigation that other tanks get passively, and your group suffers if you fail to keep them up. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm not saying "give tanking a skill curve so that you can tell the good tanks from the bad tanks!"

How to do tanking right: leave the requirements to tank successfully as they are now, but gives tanks more interesting things to do that can influence the success of their group. Taking the T13 4-piece bonus and making it permanent (shield walls for group) is a start. Stampeding roar is another good example. You don't have to use it, ultimately your group is responsible for getting out of the fire. But if you're paying attention as a tank you can use it to increase the chance that your group actually will get out of the fire and succeed.

The correct answer is 3) Leave tanking the fuck alone.

I tanked with both a DK and Druid, and a Paladin while leveling.  At no point was tanking boring or not 'interesting' enough.  My decision to tank or not was almost exclusively dependent on my willingness to lead and heard cats or if I just wanted to take it easy and practice my dps rotations.

[Ashamanchill]

Bang-a-rang. Pretty much that. I love where druid tanking tanking is at right now, and to tell the truth I liked it even more when i was just swiping spamming. I used to figure that was what druid tanks were for. That was their flavour. If I wanted another tank I could pick up the more challenging ones. However Rokal, I know you don't like it, so that may not have much mileage with you.

We actually agree on my original statement. The changes, as they stand right now on beta, suck. Almost every druid and warrior poster seem to say this. I don't mean the philosophy behind them (which I do disagree with, but can live with), but the actual implementation of it.

I'm just hoping it won't become one of those things that sticks with GC (or whoever is responsible for them), and they refuse to drop.

[Sjofn]

I do like there to be the occasional Heigan where you can punish the people who screwed up by making them sit there through a 30 minute slow boss kill.

The main reason to raid right there, imo.

[caladein]

I'm of the opposite school in that I really didn't want to DO a long kill just because some people were incompetent.  I'd just call a wipe and we'd go again.

[Ingmar]

I'm of the opposite school in that I really didn't want to DO a long kill just because some people were incompetent.  I'd just call a wipe and we'd go again.

My theory on this topic was they'd just fail again a couple times and it would take the same amount of time anyway.

[Paelos]

I'm of the opposite school in that I really didn't want to DO a long kill just because some people were incompetent.  I'd just call a wipe and we'd go again.

My theory on this topic was they'd just fail again a couple times and it would take the same amount of time anyway.

My theory is, you got somewhere better to be today champ?

[Rasix]

I do like there to be the occasional Heigan where you can punish the people who screwed up by making them sit there through a 30 minute slow boss kill.

Nothing quite like doing a marathon Heigan and then losing out on the loot to someone who died in the first minute.  Exhausting fight if your guild is composed of mainly bad players.

[Merusk]

I'm of the opposite school in that I really didn't want to DO a long kill just because some people were incompetent.  I'd just call a wipe and we'd go again.

My theory on this topic was they'd just fail again a couple times and it would take the same amount of time anyway.

My experience backs-up your theory.   So often an evening of fail after fail after fail on Sindragosa until, when we got the kill, it was because the 3 people with bad connections/ a complete inability to move when marked weren't there.

[Rokal]

I tanked with both a DK and Druid, and a Paladin while leveling.  At no point was tanking boring or not 'interesting' enough.  My decision to tank or not was almost exclusively dependent on my willingness to lead and heard cats or if I just wanted to take it easy and practice my dps rotations.

I really don't think the problems with tanking are very obvious in 5-man content. You've got more distractions, the pace of the content is quicker, and you're the defacto leader. Ice-bolt spam being boring wouldn't be as obvious in 5-mans either for mostly the same reasons. If you step into something like LFR which has 25-man boss health pools, is slower paced, and has most of the mechanics removed, you'll start to see the issues with tank design that aren't there for healers or dps.

Threat is now meaningless and almost all of your abilities are about building threat. It's still sort of useful in 5-mans because you can lose threat if dps tries very hard and ignores the target everyone else is on, but it's not useful in slower paced content with less enemies. Tanks have to pump out what seems like 80% less threat now to maintain aggro. You can imagine how healers might also feel broken if groups took 80% less damage than they do now. You could keep casting heals, but it would quickly become obvious that most of your heals weren't really accomplishing anything and your role would become boring without some changes.

I'd like to think it's possible to fix tank gameplay without making tanking 5-mans more of a hassle (or even resulting in making tanking 5-mans more fun). Hell if the 4.3 dungeons are any indication, even with an active mitigation model tanks could completely ignore their abilities and still roll through 5-mans in MoP.

The reason we're stuck with two potentially boring tank designs (fight for threat vs. fight for the mitigation that used to be passive) is because nobody has come up a better design. It doesn't help that people would rather cat fight and do silly bullshit like Armory pissing contests than imagine how to make the game better than it is.

[Paelos]

The reason we're stuck with two potentially boring tank designs (fight for threat vs. fight for the mitigation that used to be passive) is because nobody has come up a better design. It doesn't help that people would rather cat fight and do silly bullshit like Armory pissing contests than imagine how to make the game better than it is.

We're stuck with boring ideas because the trinity is pretty boring. What you need is more crossover abilities like tanks that can support their own healing through the threat they deal, and healers that can spread more healing by damage they do on mobs.

The problem I can see with that is it screws with pvp.

[Malakili]

The reason we're stuck with two potentially boring tank designs (fight for threat vs. fight for the mitigation that used to be passive) is because nobody has come up a better design. It doesn't help that people would rather cat fight and do silly bullshit like Armory pissing contests than imagine how to make the game better than it is.

We're stuck with boring ideas because the trinity is pretty boring. What you need is more crossover abilities like tanks that can support their own healing through the threat they deal, and healers that can spread more healing by damage they do on mobs.

The problem I can see with that is it screws with pvp.

The real problem is that combat is still a real time interpretation of D&D turn based combat.  Until we get RPGs which get beyond that and have some real iteration on the ideas which might come out of that direction, we are going to be stuck with boring combat one way or another.  It has less to do with the trinity and more to do with the fact that no matter what you do with the numbers of it, this kind of combat just isn't especially exciting and engaging for its own sake no matter how you cut it.  

[Typhon]

You basically just said, "trinity isn't the problem because trinity is the problem".

[Malakili]

You basically just said, "trinity isn't the problem because trinity is the problem".

Not really, you could do the trinity in ways that have much more engaging actual gameplay that makes people feel more engaged and interested in what they are doing.  The reason we don't is because this type of combat is stuck in a turn based paradigm.  Although the fact that you apparently associate the two so closely also shows another part of the problem.

[Merusk]

People think they want skill-based reflex-gameplay until they get it.  Then they say "Oh, fuck this shit" because you can't ever get better and wind up permanent fodder. 

Trinity-MMO gameplay (In fact.. just use DIKU, it's the convention.) reflects what the audience wants from that market; Time invested = ability.  Just because YOU don't find it exciting or engaging doesn't mean that it isn't.  I find it plenty of both when done right, as do others.

[Paelos]

I still think tanking problems generally go away when you remove hard enrage timers.