/sigworthy


I think you just summed up WoW's attrition in one sentance. <straightface>

 

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Wow, what a whine-fest.

I fail to see any logical argument of why the change isn't good. Shifting threat management to mitigation management seems logical and should've been done ages ago (like the Transmogrifier).




So therefore don't improve anything ever... If they want to improve QoL or attempt to make the game better, what's the problem? If they f@#% it up, then complain.

There will be less tanks in LFD and less healers. Less healers because each time the tank does not effectively manage his mitigation they have to compensate making their job more "catachallenging".

I swear they just want the game to be miserable. This sounds more like another pvp tweak. Threat and the stats associated with it aren't really in pvp but the rest are.

 

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Catachallenging....rofl!

 

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I don't see why we don't have both mechanics at varying times, /shrug.

 

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If they actually manage to make the game better, fantastic! I'm all for market-based informed improvement. Please see Bewhatever's post.


Blizzard has yet to demonstrate their ability to do this over the last 6+ years (including beta).


see also my post stating that I believe the concept is a good one. I've seen this implemented elsewhere.


In theory, active mitigation is a good one. My concern is about Blizzard's implementation.


That's an opinion on the information currently at hand, and past observation/pattern recognition of Blizzard's development process/performance.


If you feel this is whine, hand over the cheese.


edit for typos

 

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I *LIKE* threat mechanics as a tank. That's always been my tank philosophy - a tank's primary job is to hold aggro, secondary job is to survive it. Survival is partially passive, partially active, and partially the responsibility of the group (healing, external cooldowns, etc.) but threat is ALL about the tank and is the tank's job. Even things like Misdirect and Tricks are just temporary little doodads to help with immediate threat - I would argue that they really aren't needed and that people should just play a tad smarter...

But anyway, yeah, I love threat mechanics, it's what makes it interesting to play a tank - choosing the proper attack in a 6 second cycle, choosing the proper talents to optimize those attacks - gearing for hit and expertise - that's the fun stuff imo...

Mitigation management is passive, abilities are on long cooldowns, and most of all, mitigation/survival relies MOSTLY on hitpoints on your gear and whether or not your healers are awake. Sure, there's some "move out of the fire" stuff, but that applies to mostly everyone, not just tanks. Sure there are mechanics where you want to step away from a mob and then get back close to them as they do something like a frontal cone AOE attack or whatnot, but again, those events are infrequent relatively speaking to events during which you augment your threat.

As a DPS character, it was also fun to work within the boundaries of threat mechanics. It made it so that you had to also play with a little bit of intelligence and even "feel"...


Dumbing this down is just going to suck imo. All those stupid "is it better to have 300 more HPS or 1% less chance for the boss to dodge my attack" are now going to default to having 300 more hps - how fkn boring is that? OOohhh.. how thrilling, I put an armor patch on my brand new Leggings of the Impenetrable Bulwark... whee... hay gais, I'll be autoattacking the boss here with a drinking bird on my last stand/shield wall/enraged regeneration macro so I use that stuff on cooldown while I watch this episode of <insert tv show here>. Let me know when it's time to send tells for loot.

 

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Threat was an issue big time in vanilla - "GUYS DON'T DPS UNTIL I GET TWO SUNDERS ON THE BOSS FFS!!!"

Old school Onyxia was ALL ABOUT threat manageemnt... I remember vividly going up to Ony and disengaging on my hunter during phase 1.

Then BC came out - druids and paladins had ridiculous threat, warrior threat was trashed to near uselessness due to rage issues (presumably in an effort to make people switch over to druid and paladin tanks). Threat in the end of BC was pretty good all around after modifying down druid and tank threa and fixing warrior tank threat. I still remember it being a huge accomplishment to take on Shattered Halls heroic as a warrior tank with a 5-man and no CC classes in the group. As the BC talents came out, warrior tanks were allowed to join the AOE threat party finally, making it not just something for druids and pallys.

WOTLK - threat not a big deal for anyone really. DPS had to play REALLY stupidly or the tank had to play REALLY stupidly to have major problems. Tank threat fluctuated a bit here and tehre by class as the devs messed with class mechanics, but generally threat was pretty solid overall for everyone. You still had to work at it (pally tanks notwithstanding lol), and it was your primary job as a tank, but it was pretty reliable.

 

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See, myself, I only tanked heavily as a paladin during the later stages of TBC and early WotLK. So threat management was never a thing for me. I instead enjoyed seeing how much damage I could mitigate, how well I could move bosses around to keep my DPS safe, and how I could use my secondary paladin skills to make everyone's life easier. Paladin tanking always felt more like playing a RTS than a MMO to me.

Overall threat just felt like an awkward mechanic that developers carried over "just because". It detracted more than it contributed, from a gameplay perspective. It figures Blizzard would be the company to vastly trivialize it, probably with an eye to remove it nearly entirely soon. Despite how much they copy or iterate, they often are the pioneers when it comes to basic/core mechanics.

But I do feel bad for tanks still playing WoW that enjoyed threat management. I mean, it was a huge part of their responsibilities and if they enjoyed it, well, crap.

I still don't like how the B Team feels they need to complicate things otherwise. One step forward, two steps back. Story of Blizzard since GC took over.

 

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Haha this is an awesome statement here (the bold). Inb4 the Paladintankingishardyo! and Iwasapaladintankb4righteousfury crowd decides to try to deny the truth of what you're saying lol. Yes, I can understand your perspective as a paladin tank. I tanked enough with a paladin to know the truth of this.





For me the mechanic of threat was integral to raid encounters. It's what made tanking feel immersive to me. It's what let my little video game imagination make me think of the tank as a heroic character and not just a big fat sack of hitpoints, a stupid meat shield... What's not heroic about Boromir *tanking* 78 Orcs and keeping their attention while the Hobbits escape? Sure he died in the effort but the fkn healers were asleep at the wheel and his shield wall and last stand were both blown already!

 

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