World of Warcraft™

I'm sorry if this has been discussed a lot already, but I'd like to get a conversation going about the new "Active Mitigation" model that will be coming with Mists of Pandaria.

Personally I'm leaning towards the "not looking forward to it" camp, but here are some of the benefits/problems I see with it:

Benefits:

1. Encourages us to always be actively using our abilities to build up the rage (or whatever resource) needed to use our "active mitigation" ability.

2. Puts more of the control of damage reduction into the hands of the player at the time of tanking, rather than into gear choices that are made while not tanking.

Problems:

1. Being a "slave" to a particular button. Using the new bear ability as an example: Savage Defense. It means we'll have to hit this button every time it is available and we have enough rage.

2. Going along with that, it seems to penalize you when your attention is focused elsewhere, like positioning, picking up adds, taunting, etc. If you stop your rotation for a while to do any of these things, you are suddenly going to start taking a lot more damage.

3. Removes some of the differences between the tanking classes. Right now, there are some tanking classes that are more passive than others. Death Knights are obviously more active, in that they have to use blood strike. Warriors and Paladins are very passive (please correct me if I'm wrong here). Druids are kind of in between, in that we have higher passive mitigation/avoidance while still having to do a particular rotation to maximize our damage reduction.

No, I understand these changes are quite a ways out. I'm really beginning to worry about them and the changes they'll have on tanking.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

Given the way they handled tanks and tank balance all through this expansion I don't think it's wrong to be apprehensive with changes in the next expansion.


That being said, the DK implementation of active mitigation is good. The Paladin system is slightly easier, but also alright. I'm mostly concerned about how Druid/Warrior stuff is gonna turn out.

I like the concept. I don't like the way it's currently being planned.

02/16/2012 12:06 PMPosted by Scoobydoøby

I like the concept. I don't like the way it's currently being planned.

I guess I agree with that.

I'd much rather the mitigation be active as long as we keep up some sort of rotation, kind of like Savage Defense works now. We do have to re-apply pulverize and everything. But there is plenty of time to do it, so moving the boss a bit before doing it doesn't totally messing you up.

Also, letting the pulverize buff wear off doesn't increase your damage dramatically either.

Seems like a good solution is already in place: increase mitigation based on active rotation, but don't make it so heavily required that we become a slave to one button.

I don't mind it being centered around one or 2 buttons (phys/magic), if other abilities still have meaning out side of damage.

Glyphed Shield Slam (Wrath version) was an acceptable active mitigation, it made hitting the mob a good thing, it wasn't enough to kill you on a miss, and it didn't make your playstyle change dramatically.

Deathstrike was the 2nd example, and we now know how much it sucked when your main attack was tied to survival, meaning you needed to throttle damage to be the best mitigator, but it also was avoidable which very often meant death for the DK.

2 very very different models, but DKs prove that putting too much stake in active mitigation is a problem, the Warrior example is a little too passive. A balance between the 2 may be interesting, but the current setup, as pointed out in the Warrior thread, is making rotations too routine, with only a choice between physical or magical defense.

See I think that the choice is fine, provided that we have other buttons in our rotation that contribute. For example Revenge buffing the next Block or Barrier by x%, and devastate providing the snb effect.

Active mitigation is a good concept, active mitigation by healing is not. Hopefully blizzard learned that lesson with DK's finally.

It just seems a bit weird to me to have our resource (rage) tied only to an ability that we'll have to hit as often as possible to maintain surviveability. That's all we use our resource for? That's pretty dull.

agreed. that's why I want our other abilities to do things as well, orofor them to at least enhance that one big ability.

I personally have a "wait and see" attitude.
But, lemme play the devil's advocate and push ideas from the otherside (BTW, this isn't my personal viewpoint; rather a counter to your statement).

Let's say you have a good guild.
Your MT is pretty awesome, and your healerz know what they're doing.
The OT is a tool who has no idea what he's doing, but gets achieve's and gear 'cuz he gets carried.
The MT can't make raid. Suddenly the guild has to pug a new OT and the current OT MT's the weeks raid.

In current state: There's not a huge difference in your raid. Your OT has the gear, and as long as he has the basics of his class (or he rolled a Pally); his gear covers his complete lack of skills.

FF to MoP: The same guild, in the same situation, probably won't down the weeks content.


Right now, in current make-up, the main difference between a crappy tank and a Great tank is 40% gear, 40% skill, 10% talent tree, and 10% reforges/ gems.
If you are missing the 40% skillz, the 60% rest makes up for it.

In MoP the numbers will be drastically different.

I breeze through 8/8 DS with HM-Morchok in under 2 hours mostly cuz myself and our healers are PRO.
In MoP, the gulf between you and the ebay tanks will be a chasm.
Healers won't be able to keep lousy tanks alive (even if they have appropriate gear) because they're so focused moving and adds that they forget to be a steel wall.
-Or they're so busy staying alive that the Boss+adds combo turns into a cluster f***.

I really like how paladins are turning out. Don't really care too much for druid/warrior so far. Trying to keep 100% uptime on SD/SB but more than likely be not possible will be frustrating.

I breeze through 8/8 DS with HM-Morchok in under 2 hours mostly cuz myself and our healers are PRO.
In MoP, the gulf between you and the ebay tanks will be a chasm.
Healers won't be able to keep lousy tanks alive (even if they have appropriate gear) because they're so focused moving and adds that they forget to be a steel wall.
-Or they're so busy staying alive that the Boss+adds combo turns into a cluster f***.

I don't see this as an entirely bad thing. With bad dps or healers it is harder to do dungeons and raids now. Why shouldn't it be harder when your tank isn't a very good player?

02/17/2012 09:51 AMPosted by Snowglobe

I don't see this as an entirely bad thing. With bad dps or healers it is harder to do dungeons and raids now. Why shouldn't it be harder when your tank isn't a very good player?

It should be a little harder, but one tank not being able to mash one button to reduce his incoming damage because he or she is paying attention to other things shouldn't make the difference between victory and defeat.

Also, it's incredibly frustrating to have a whole group suffer due to one person. Right now, a bad tank will make the run harder, but not impossible. In MoP it seems that a bad tank will make the fights MUCH, MUCH, MUCH harder.

Also, it's incredibly frustrating to have a whole group suffer due to one person. Right now, a bad tank will make the run harder, but not impossible. In MoP it seems that a bad tank will make the fights MUCH, MUCH, MUCH harder.

As it should be.
Tanks are the center of any PVE encounter.
Being able to carry a lousy dps isn't a big deal (you just might now make enrage timer)
Being able to carry a lousy healer is a hindrance, but not the end of the world.
Being able to carry a lousy tank should mean your group goes no-where.

Tanks are a small niched role.
Weeding out baddies is never a bad thing.
One button mashing for a tank SHOULD mean total defeat. If you can't bring skill by the time you get to current raiding content, then tanking isn't for you.

For tanks: skills > Gear every day of the week.

Awesome tanks on new tanking toons should be raid worthy
Cr@ppy tanks that are decked out should make their healers cry.

I want to be brought to my raid for my ability to play, not because I had random drop boost my gear.

As it should be.
Tanks are the center of any PVE encounter.
Being able to carry a lousy dps isn't a big deal (you just might now make enrage timer)
Being able to carry a lousy healer is a hindrance, but not the end of the world.
Being able to carry a lousy tank should mean your group goes no-where.

no. too many people play this game at a level that isnt appropriate for 5 man content, not even considering raiding. asking 8 million of the 10 million population to learn to tank exactly like so, or else fail, isnt in the cards.

realistically, content should not require a tank, instead it should require a hell of a lot of coordination between the dps and the healer to barely squeak by, except for bosses, which simply require someone to have the tank talent tree. that talent tree should contain enough basic mitigation and avoidance, etc, so that the person can be over healed a ton, but the group still finish. (assuming good dps and healer)

now, in a raid setting (non-LFR) the tank should have to perform at some level of talent that excludes about 66% of the player base or else be carried by healers that exceed the skill of 80% of the player base.

i would much rather see encounters tuned so that a bosses melee attack isnt what kills anyone. rather, its the mechanics and specials that do, and a lack of responding to them is what will fail a raid.

because anything else? its making it harder for the healers, not the tank.

I like the idea of AM. It makes sense that tanks should be using our abilities to tank rather than being half a DPS that can take a hit. That being said, I'm terrified of what blizzard is going to do with it. They do not have a good track record when it comes to releasing things that are broken right off the bat, or would obviously have scaling issues later. (Math is hard for game developers apparently...)

They somehow released ret with cataclysm in an extremely broken state even after months of beta testing. They took 3 tiers to fix death knights when it was obvious that they were going to be broken by the end of T11 Heroics, and then when they fixed DKs, they suddenly went to the absolute best tanks for dragon soul. They needed constant passive buffs to hunters and ele shaman just to make them viable each tier, and constant nerfs to holy paladins just so they wouldn't be the only viable healer in the game. And then there was that whole thing where enhance shaman were scaling better off spellpower weapons than agi... and the list goes on...

I honestly don't trust blizzard to balance a system that would actually make or break my raid.


On the bright side though, we're getting so many new self heals that even if I am broken in a raid environment, I might finally be able to do some reasonable soloing.

02/17/2012 07:03 AMPosted by Scoobydoøby

agreed. that's why I want our other abilities to do things as well, orofor them to at least enhance that one big ability.

It's a good thing to want. The private conversation in a public forum over in yonder threads hasn't put any thought into it, but the current rotation can be modified to facilitate active mitigation. No silly bucket to fill as often as possible, no confusing exceptions to resources costs.

02/18/2012 06:44 AMPosted by Aedilhild

agreed. that's why I want our other abilities to do things as well, orofor them to at least enhance that one big ability.

It's a good thing to want. The private conversation in a public forum over in yonder threads hasn't put any thought into it, but the current rotation can be modified to facilitate active mitigation. No silly bucket to fill as often as possible, no confusing exceptions to resources costs.

Yea it would be pretty simple, and it could potentially allow those abilities to still cost rage, (which I really prefer). Even if they didn't it would be nice to have some more buttons to push that mean more than loldamage.

I want revenge to buff shield block/barrier.

Devastate SPAMMABLE and tied to snb, (though if this were the case it wouldn't be able to cost rage, which is okay.)

Enraged regen to be our 1 minute cd. Its unique from the basic DR cooldowns that other tanks have, and it would be useful for physical and magical damage.

The 2pc bonus on our tier sets is not active mitigation. It's mitigation that we get from doing a normal rotation. Yawn. Active mitigation involves making a decision about when to use a defensive ability. You can use it immediately for a smaller but more frequently occuring benefit, or you can save it and use it on a big ability for a good benefit, albeit rarely. That's fun.

They've already tested active mitigation. It's called the Blood spec of the DK class. It's interesting. It's horribly imbalanced when compared to the more static mitigation models, but taking out static mitigation models solves that problem.