What blows....palidian tanking.Follow

It's not that bad.

The HoPo mechanic will take some time to get used to - and the WoG/SoR usage of HoPo is new to me.... But after a little practice - I've started to figure it out.

I'm not sure why people have the idea that a starting tank in barely adequate gear (read: doesn't even have gear from normal 5 mans) should be able to tank groups of heroic mobs with little or no risk.

A starting tank has 65 levels to learn how to tank and use CDs properly. You can practice every single heroic instance on normal mode first - learn the pulls, learn the mob abilities, and learn the bosses. In WotLK though, you didn't even have to know the instances. You just slap on some tank gear, jump into a heroic, pull a group, and faceroll your way to victory. That's a BIG problem for the game.

There is so much exaggeration coming from players in this patch, it's unreal. If you're having trouble in current heroics, it's a L2P issue. The paladin tanks I've seen in heroics (running Arms on my warrior to try to figure out the mechanics /gasp) have for the most part done wonderfully. Threat is hardly an issue, even when I Mortal Strike -> Rend -> TClap -> Bladestorm.

So you don't want it to be "faceroll easy" but you want to be able to, pre-80, jump into a pack of seven level 80 mobs and kill them all while taking no damage?

Then again, I know those mobs. Converted Heroes for the A Valiant's Field Training quest. I used to fly down and land on the middle one of a pack of seven, as any spec, and kill them all while taking no damage. Ret, holy, prot, it didn't matter. Partly because their HP was lower than most level 80 mobs, partly because they hit for nothing. Maybe they've been scaled properly now, I'll have to go check.

Either way, pulling 7 mobs that are higher level than you and dying without a healer should be NORMAL.

It's an attempt to change the AOE-fest mindset. It's going to be rough, considering that even the hardest hitting heroic mobs won't kill a DPS through heals, but it needs to be done.

I feel partly to blame, of course, for being one of those prot paladins in BC that bragged about tanking Heroic Shattered Halls whole rooms at a time without CC. I'm trying to make for that now in two ways:

1. I don't taunt off people who obviously pulled the wrong target. They need to stop being stupid, so I let them die. All non-plate classes have their durability costs raised, so it's even better. They die and I taunt off the healer.
2. As a healer, I don't heal those same people and I pray the tank is either slow to taunt or refuses to. Again, let the bad players pay for their bad playstyle.

Gonna quote myself here..

First off - Not a troll - Slow week at work....

Second - I the above quote is simply wrong. The word "Required" might techincally save the argument, but the standard answer to new tanks looking to get into heroics was always: Def Cap (Heroic) + 24,000HP *Roughly (Though you could technically enter with less) If you wanted to show up to the group and have people know you were serious - You wanted to start out with about that much. 17k is a very conservative estimate... Maybe you could argue for 20k - and confining yourself to some of the easier instances - But I don't think 17k & H.UP, H.Oc etc.... That seems a bit unfair to try to assert that. *Edit: I started at 20 and struggled with the RNG - so it's do-able, but not great...

Now a days you want to be about 10k higher than your estimate. 30k ~ is about Naxx level tanking. I'm not downing the LK on a weekly basis and I'm currently self buffing to 42ish (I think). I recall our DK MT was around 32k in Naxx and that way out classed my mere 29k (After buffs) *Again - these are all estimates for the average player in an average 5man or raid.

Edited, Oct 15th 2010 3:19pm by Borsuk

24k for starter heroics? I once tanked sapph in 3.1 or 3.2 (I forget which) in gear that gave me about 21-23k health BUFFED. The heals said I was easier to heal than most tanks they saw. I handled KT's adds on that SAME run. I tanked naxx25 on my dk back in 3.0 as an unholy tank (As in no ds spam.) in blues with a COUPLE of purples up until Gluth who ate my face because I forgot to put my tank helm back on and got critted.

I'll give critproof though. That was easy enough to reach at around 17k or so with the trinket from Hol. And yes, for Starting heroics, you don't walk into H up with that much and expect to tank it unless your heals are damn good.

I'll put it this way, I did my first H ToC clear with around.. I think 20k self buffed if even. Easy run, no wipes, and the heals were like-geared (They just knew to dispel the poisons, as did I). Wrath heroics (icc instances aside, those places would DEVOUR you at these gear levels.) weren't made all that hard. Unless I'm just amazingly lucky/stupidly gifted, and I'm neither.

EDIT: And Yos, for the taunts have you tried training? Mine are both right there on my bars.

Also try this /castsequence reset=7 Judgement,hammer of the righteous,holy wrath,hammer of the righteous, judgement,hammer of the righteous,shield of the righteous

I put out more threat doing it by clicking the spells separately but that should hold you on single target. Just remember your AS whenever you have a free second or so. As much as I'm ******** about this I still hold threat amazingly well when the dps don't suck and remember they can't AOE right off the damn bat anymore.

And Holy power.. yeah it goes up too slowly for prot, that's my biggest issue with it. If they started us off with 3 rather than 0 and made it NOT regen automatically in combat (as in out = regen, in = you have to use CS or hammer.) And made hammer have like a 50% chance to generate 2 then things would be PERFECT,

Edited, Oct 15th 2010 5:23pm by Sirfailalot

Well to be fair, before Wrath it wasn't this way. It actually took some effort to tank. Between the CC, maintaining uncrushable (and making sure not to let mobs ever hit you in the back) and working mobs over one at a time because Tank aoe threat was like it is now, normal hasn't been normal for quite some time.

Poldaran is right though. It's just Wrath brought about the age of laziness in WoW.

It's not hard to macro a skull to a mob as the tank. All you need to do is tell the dps to attack skull. If they can't do that then they deserve their incoming repair bills. I'm looking forward to seeing some tanking (and DPS) finesse in 5 mans in the upcoming expansion.

The Brute Force AOE style of WotLK tanking hasn't taught players any skills. Drop Wrath's generation into a Burning Crusade heroic like Magister's Terrace and most would likely writher and die in their own QQ.

True, I wasn't around much pre bc, did no end game. I was still into monster hunter back then :P But for the never let them touch your back thing, yeah that's still around now. It's just that healers have gotten so insane it doesn't matter unless you're actually fresh to 80 and can't take 3 seconds of beating.

Actually there's even an addon to autoskull your target after so many seconds. It can be inconvenient if you have to swap your target for too long though. (I REALLY hope it isn't bannable.) Called Skull me.

It's been amazingly useful in what few runs I've done since 4.0.1. I'm actually enjoying myself, it seems about 90% of the threat scare is from casters doing absolutely retarded amounts of dps. I still say new tanks just getting started are going to have to wait till Cat or find guild groups sadly. They just will NOT have the power to pull the threat. Even in full regular instance gear.

Well, it's the first serious gameplay change I've seen hit my prot paladin since 2.4. I'm a little shocked to see my aggro generation so heavily altered, and the new holy mechanic does seem very un-polished. So what's there to it? Adapt. Learn rotations, mark, and forget about our signature consecrate tanking. We do take a lot more damage now, and we output significantly less. Holy shield as a proc seems very odd too.

Good : New mechanics, hopefully with content rightly adjusted to it (current content feels clumsy).
Debatable : I'll see far fewer prot tanks if this holds running into Cata.
Bad : Fewer tanks means longer waits in LFG for non tanking classes,
Say what? : Blizzard had expected non-tanks to tank easy heroics by switching a few pieces of gear. This change seems to indicate the opposite.

Bottom line : L2P new mechanis, reroll or change specc.

I'm loving this thread.

I won't spend much time on WotLK tanking. I think this says it all.
arthoriuss

Glad to see I wasn't the only one. 6969 was time to watch a movie while tanking.
MOVING ON TO 4.0
Starting with the biggest change, Holy Power. It brings us back to the screen, watching our PRIORTY rotation, and forcing us to change our spell choice as we charge it up. I like to think of it as a Master's Wheel. 3 rings of threat. In the most outer ring, you'll find your starting agro, or casters who don't care to get so close to our Shield of Rightenous(SoR) or Smite as I like to look at it. With those you can pull them in with our Avengers Shield(AS) or keep minor agro with Holy Wrath(HW). Our Second ring, usually those casters coming in because or AS or incoming mobs. Consecration(Con) and a solid Judgement will keep them coming closer or inside easy agro. And then your inner ring. Hammer of Rightenous(HoR), and Seal of Truth(SoT), and Con to some extent. Tab targeting is a must here. Build stacks, and hit that SoR or Crusader's Strike (CS), depending on the situation, on your lowest threat target. Pop AS whenever the cd comes up (love that proc) and you should be fine.

Coming back to to Poldaran's thought and Arthoriuss's comment, DPS need to learn AGAIN, to watch that Omen meter. I personally have 3 80's, 3 lvl 51, and a 73 lock. DPS is BORING, epically in WotLK (though I'm liking the changes to Hunters and Shamans...the classes I've messed with since 4.0 and have hope that Blizz has kept up the work and made DPS something to enjoy again). So with Cat and 4.0 they have one more thing to worry about, as it was in BC. Watch your agro and focus fire! As for our part, I agree with Poldaran's comment.
Or even a kill order! Skull, X, Square...ect.
Keybind them, use them! I personally use Raidicon, aviable at Curse. I haven't since 4.0 came out, but for the most part I've been lvling new guild members, so I haven't had the need. But I'm assuming that you just need to goto the ToC file and update the version or load out of date UI's. One click and they know which target you will be ontop of, or which one you've switched to. DPS can also make a macro to auto target Tank's target. If you are oldschool, it's usually "F2", "F". Not that hard.

In closing I like this one from toolofjesus:

Though Blizz has done a good job on making the number-crunching a bit easier for those of us you don't visit our beloved EJ site (LOTS OF LOVE TO YOU GUYS OVER THE YEARS!!), they have made playing a toon much more fun. Starting with, YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY WATCH THE SCREEN MORE THAN 75% OF THE TIME!!! :-) The changes, even from someone who doesn't like change, are great! It will take some time to learn, to adjust. But in the end I think they have made the game so much more interactive and playable that more and more people will stay with WoW and contintue to make it worth Blizz's time to keep this game at the #1 slot.

Edit
Raidicon no longer works. I've found a replacement called RaidIconBar. Go figure. Actually I like it better. Mark your targets guys!



Edited, Oct 24th 2010 6:05am by Simskin

I think overall the tanking changes have been done well. Defence is a thing of the past. The change to make all the classes talent in crit immunity (a la feral druids) was the right decision to make. It was a stat that made initial gearing down right hard for some players but became meaningless as you geared up. Strength now gives us Parry rating and Parry rating will have the same diminishing returns that dodge has making it easier to balance the two stats out by just looking at percentages.

The Prot Paladin mastery combined with the new and improved version of Block mitigation is a really, really good pick up for us too. A 40k physical hit that was blocked prior to 4.0 would have seen maybe 3k mitigation whereas now the block will mitigate 12k(30%). Block has now become a great form of mitigation. Getting to 102.4% at 85 should be possible making Prot Paladins seems like a really good non spike damage MT.

You really need to forget about the AOE threat capabilities and start concentrating on getting your marking and line of sighting skills up. Come Cataclysm CC will be very important. Your going to have to learn when to hold back on spells that cleave, make sure you target casters with you Avenger's Shield and LOS them behind pillars or walls. In quite a few dungeons you wont be able to survive tanking entire trash packs so the aoe threat nerf will be a moot topic once Cata hits.

Poldaran is totally right about marking the mobs now.
Pre patch we could just run into any group in a hc, pop aoe and be fine. we were lazy but the dps were lazy as well. Its been a long time sice ive seen the skull used in hc's and dps have basically been allowed to attack whoever they please as it didnt really matter to the tank.
Now its a different story though. As dps i have seen the tanks starting to mark up, and as a tank i have started to mark the skull myself. Still with the lazy dps issue is that they dont seem to understand how things have changed for us now and quite often in the past week i have had dps attacking the group before my initial attacks have even hit a mob or pulling some extra mobs from the next group, just to be nice to me, as you know, we are incapable of deciding when to engage the next group.....
Its been a while but I have started to let dps get themselves killed now if they have been told once already.
learning curve time for all it seems.

One thing that is related to this, but doesn't seem to have been talked about....

We keep saying DPS need to start to think... Well so do the Paly Tanks. I was in H.HoS last night as a Disc. Priest healer. We cleared everything just fine up to the room where you meet Brann (Just prior to the 3rd boss 'event')

So the Paly tank runs into the room of (what?) 4-6 giant/golem things. He attempts to pull all at once. I waited as long as I could, but he started to go <50% and I'm a relatively weak healer ~ So I didn't want to risk it. I shielded, HoT'd, and dropped a PoM on him in slightly longer than 3 Global CD. The tank lost agro and I got 2-shot.

Tanks need to also adjust to the new agro situation and start to manage pulls accordingly. Yes - DPS probably needs to adjust more. But the days of arrogantly strutting into a room and pulling everyone while you ALT+TAB to browse the internet are over....