Community Manager
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We’ve recently implemented several hot fixes to adjust tank damage output, particularly area of effect (AoE) damage. Now that Mogu’Shan Vaults is available, and the first week of Mists of Pandaria raiding is about to begin, we wanted to call out what’s changing.
Warriors Warriors have several mechanics that improve their tanking performance when dealing with multiple foes, as well as their damage output against them. Their damage against packs of creatures, especially when three targets were present, was much higher than other tanking classes. While some variance is expected, it was clear that an adjustment was necessary. The primary culprits here were Revenge and Deep Wounds:
Paladins One of our goals with our active mitigation tanking model is that you have opportunities to trade significant survivability for more damage when maximum survivability isn’t required. For example, a Warrior could opt to use their rage for Heroic Strike instead of Shield Block or Shield Barrier. This damage gain is intended to be relatively small, and not worth the loss in survivability when actively tanking. However, for Protection Paladins, this trade-off was much too lucrative. For maximum survivability, Protection Paladins are intended to use Seal of Insight, since it provides a buff to their self-healing, and also provides a significant self-heal on their melee in combination with Vengeance. Unfortunately, when using Seal of Insight, their damage was too low compared to the other tanks. When using Seal of Truth, their damage was too high. So, we’ve increased Protection Paladin damage in general to compensate for Seal of Insight’s relatively low output, while simultaneously reducing the damage of Seal of Truth to bring it into line.
Druids Bear tanks have been in a decent place, but we were a little concerned about their sustained area of effect damage. This update to Thrash should address that.
Monks We’re really excited about how Brewmaster Monks are turning out. They can still stand a few tweaks though. Their damage, especially AoE damage, was relatively low, and they lacked a way to apply Weakened Blows to a large pack of creatures (which all of the other tanks have).
Death Knights While Blood Death Knights have been higher on damage than most other tanks, we’re expecting that the adjustments we’re making to the other tanking classes will close the gap. While we haven’t made any changes to Blood lately, we will be keeping a close eye on it. |
#1
10/2/2012
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Edited by Killmour on 10/2/12 6:19 PM (PDT)
It's funny you guys make these changes now when it was like this all 5 years of beta. Whats a beta for guys?
Edit: I like the changes, but come on, can we fix things before the day of. |
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LOL and to think i was going to reroll for a pally or druid lol ORC DKS ALL THE WAY.
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reducing the damage of Seal of Truth to bring it into line. 80%? Are you kidding me?? When trying to inflict damage, SoT is the best tool Prot had! Where do I show up with a pitchfork and torch!? NO NERF FOR SEAL OF TRUTH! |
Um, it got increased by more than 60%. Right now it's at 14.1% AP per tick, which is a ~88% increase over the previous value of 7.49%. Was there another buff in there somewhere? I can't find anything dating back to September 1st. Also, the impact damage was buffed to 19.1% from 16.2% as well, which is a ~18% increase. I don't remember seeing another Thrash buff in any of the patch notes, data mining, or class analysis posts. |
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Avengers shield was already hitting to hard; at low levels this is going to be ridiculous.
(85-89 avengers shield was about 35-40% of my damage done) |
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So as a tank that switches targets to apply SOT to multiple targets how does this affect me?
Do I now use insight since the bonus dmg is insignificant for both soloing and 5mans? |
They are doing allot of dps on single targets too. Will DK tanks get a dps nerf because they are better; as you did to warriors aoe dps? Maybe keep two eyes on it. |
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Wait ... Warrior AoE is being nerfed??
What brought you to that decision 0.o (I'm guessing it was the 75k dps we were pulling on trash packs :P ) But still. WTB reduced TC cooldown. |
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Edited by Omegal on 10/2/12 7:19 PM (PDT)
I feel like the revenge fix was def needed but deep wounds is excessive. I think you're going to find that both is too much. Heck, you might have just fixed revenge by removing/reducing the frequency of the proc instead (maybe an internal CD?). It was only really broken because it essencially had no cd on larger groups that caused tons of cd resets.
the deep wounds change is aso going to affect our single target a little bit too, and we're already pretty low on single target compared to other tanks (unless we're making healers angry and spamming heroic strike instead of trying to stay alive)
^ |
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Paladins So prot paladins are expected to use Seal of Insight while tanking? (Let's assume a single-target for these purposes). Also, I know Holy Wrath wasn't seeing a lot of action in my rotation prior to this buff: do you think this will put it ahead of Consecration again? |
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Honestly shocked diseases didn't get nerfed.
/shrug |
Free advertising. |
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Holy Wrath is the knob that gets turned up? I guess? I haven't felt it was a worthwhile button to push ever since the AOE cap was applied to it. Maybe Blood Boil should have the same principle applied, 10k damage split between all targets.
Tanking with Seal of Insight feels wrong now, always has. I want to manage my status with the tools I have, not with a little bandaid. It's like enchanting Mending on a tanking weapon - you can, and it helps, but why? If we are pushing attacks to generate HP, leading to more uses of SotR, that will naturally make our damage go higher. The numbers by Theck this morning about how higher expertise leads to better spike management is a case where damage will go up. SoT might be the right knob to turn, but this feels extreme. I'd almost rather tank with Seal of Justice than Insight. |
I had no idea. |
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How do you rebalance tank DPS and have Blood DKs come out unscathed. Like, what are you guys observing exactly?
And like the green text states above, not entirely surprised about Prot Warrior cleave damage going down (i.e. Revenge), but Deep Wounds nerfed by 50% is over the top, especially in the context of some of the other changes. |
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Edited by Unruhe on 10/2/12 7:52 PM (PDT)
Just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly:
Warriors Blood DK are doing higher damage, so let's nerf warrior damage? 'Cause that's what it looks like. Is there anything to compensate the warrior DPS loss on a single target? I'm assuming Deep Wounds isn't a major factor for single-target DPS, but doing 50% less of it when a Blood DK already outdamages you seems a bit unfair for the warrior. |
