Topic
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FAQ & Informal Tank Comparison
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Happy healers make for happy tanks. |
1 Tauren Shaman
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Edited by Kangamooster on 2/18/13 1:45 AM (PST)
Generally the issue is that a bunch of people never play tanks that they heal (or vice versa).
Makes me grind my teeth when I see a Paladin using LoH on me after a big burst of damage followed by literally nothing else, or something where I automatically will mitigate immediately after. For example, Shadow Breath taking me to 20% - that doesn't need a LoH on my monk, I'm going to immediately Expel Harm twice and done. :/ That's just learning damage patterns though, and the really good healers will have that down pat. Most of them don't know or care to know though, which is a real pity in my opinion. |
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Edited by Slashlove on 2/18/13 1:47 AM (PST)
He's not the one that made post #31. He is the person who post 31 is addressed to. Who gets hit by mogu warriors or pandaren? The same people who get hit by Mantid Rares. Anyway, when you are sitting at 40% health, and you are about to get hit by an attack that will take off 50% of your health, hitting a self heal after the fact doesn't help. Unless you're a Wrath Pally you don't have negative health. 40-50=dead. Why are you pretending this is difficult to understand? Using Barrier after getting to 40% health is textbook use of an absorb after taking damage. That's just learning damage patterns though, and the really good healers will have that down pat. Most of them don't know or care to know though, which is a real pity in my opinion. It's the kind of thing that made Baleroc fun. Identifying healers who never originally learned the concept of healing after swing timers was totally awesome. |
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Why is my post causing so much drama and conflict?
This is exactly why I used the word "usually" in my comment. :P I am well aware of this, though I'd argue that, depending on the size of the hit, using Barrier beforehand is probably the smarter idea, because huge damage spikes tend to make healers waste mana on Flash Heals and stuff. Yes, I'm mostly considering Impale sorts of mechanics, but again. This is why I said usually. ----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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Hmm. True. Regardless, my original, main point still stands. Warriors are the only tanks with no non-CD self-heals and it does make them more proactive. Your shield barrier does squat if you don't take any damage after you hit it, or if you hit it and the damage you take afterwards isn't too significant. Any absorption that doesn't get used is basically the same as overhealing. And yeah, while absorbs and heals, in practice, usually serve the same purpose, they do have a few differing uses and it's still worth pointing out. ----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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Edited by Slashlove on 2/18/13 2:12 AM (PST)
Your shield barrier does squat if you don't take any damage after you hit it, or if you hit it and the damage you take afterwards isn't too significant. That's dangerously close to the logic of people who argue that stuff like AD is wasted if you don't proc the heal though. The point of a Barrier is to actively absorb damage during that 6s window. If you didn't take damage through it, and/or the shield didn't break, Barrier did the exact job it was still meant to do, make you take no damage for the duration, and will continue to do the same job for your survival while it has the same cooldown as "no-cooldown" heals that heal for pretty much the same amount that Barrier can absorb. The difference comes from the resource gain pattern - as well as the fact that other specs do have resource-affecting cooldowns (like Inc/Zerk or HA). |
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I can see your point, but do keep in mind that Barrier only has a 6 second duration. That's only 4 melee swings, and if you get lucky with avoidance, or even blocks, the rest of the absorb is wasted and you'd probably have saved your healers more trouble if you'd popped it before whatever knocked you down.
And again, I'm not saying "Hey, using Barrier after a damage spike is useless!" because it's clearly not, it's just that as I see it, one of the main uses of Barrier is to stop the damage spike ever happening in the first place. Which isn't to say it's not totally useful at other things. It's simply more proactive than, say, WoG. Look at it another way. If you're at full health, and you WoG before a damage spike, you've done squat. If you're at full health and you barrier before a damage spike, you've reduced the damage. Again, not disagreeing with you. Barriering after damage is still useful. It's just barriering before damage is more useful than WoGing before damage. My main point is still "warriors prevent damage from happening, while other tanks also have more tools to recover from damage." I had another point too, and now I've forgotten it. ----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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1 Tauren Shaman
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Shield Block is insanely OP for its relative cost? |
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It is a bit. And damnit, Barrier's getting nerfed slightly :( ----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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I'm still not convinced that it's going to be all that noticeable. I mean yes, it's a straight nerf if you look at it as how strong it would be otherwise, but given the fact that vengeance was changed to ignore armor mitigation after 5.0, it means that higher passive mitigation levels in 5.2 won't result in reduced vengeance like they would have had vengeance not changed. If that makes any sort of sense. |
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It's been far too long since I looked at the patch notes, but it's mostly a nerf at high vengeance levels, isn't it? I honestly don't remember, but I do believe it was a warranted nerf.
----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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Shield Barrier now scales approximately 10% less efficiently with attack power. The base damage of Shield Slam and Revenge has been increased by 150%, but these abilities now scale approximately 10% less efficiently with attack power. So yeah, less scaling from vengeance, but since vengeance is not getting reduced by increased armor levels, I'm not really sure it's going to be an actual reduction in output, or at least, not much of one. |
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Yeah, lets base our tank strategies on tanking when you have no one else in your group. Sounds like a good idea to me!
Slashlove corrected you because you were not accurate.
Oh you, are you saying a warrior can mitigate more incoming damage over a period of time by popping shield barrier when said warriors AP is rocking? After a good solid hit, for example? That's crazy talk! Someone haul this person off to the stockade.
The issue, and this was a point I made in the other thread, is that one mans reactive is anothers proactive. I can "react" to the DBM timer that says I'm about to get hit with ability X by popping Y, or I can "proactively" pop Y in order to avoid the incoming damage from X. In either case the exact same sequence of events happen. DBM warns, tank pops, damage is removed (via mitigation/heals/absorbs). You could just as easily argue that the tank popping their self heals after the hit are being proactive by planning ahead and not popping it before the big hit. It's meaningless without context. The important issue here isn't whether something is reactive or proactive (that requires context), it's that Chellar's original addendum was wrong. Barrier mitigation scales with AP which scales with vengeance which scales with incoming damage, meaning barrier before a large hit and barrier after a large hit are often not the same thing. Often times you will actually mitigate more damage by popping it after the fact.
You're backpedaling while attempting to not give up your point. Just give it up. None of it matters except in context, if a healer is familiar enough with the warrior's performance during a specific mechanic to know they don't have to worry past the initial hit, they may be more than happy to heal them up using inexpensive heals even if it looks scary. You can't say for sure, but what you can say for sure is that the statement you made about barrier being the exact same both before and after that hit is factually incorrect, and if people who don't know better take it to heart, you've done them a disservice. |
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Look at it another way. If you're at full health, and you WoG before a damage spike, you've done squat. If you're at full health and you barrier before a damage spike, you've reduced the damage. That's not quite another way though. All that says is what I originally said - that you MUST use a heal after, but you can use an absorb either before or after. The absorb before will reduce the spike, but by nature absorb less damage. The absorb after comes after the spike, but by nature absorbs more damage due to Vengeance. You end up more or less even. Plus by nature, you can have low Rage Barriers rolling on things that don't hit very hard. I can see your point, but do keep in mind that Barrier only has a 6 second duration. That's only 4 melee swings, and if you get lucky with avoidance, or even blocks, the rest of the absorb is wasted and you'd probably have saved your healers more trouble if you'd popped it before whatever knocked you down. 4 melee swings plus whatever incidental raid or aura damage, plus 4 swings is from one mob, so multiple mobs changes things. It requires a hugely lopsided situation to come about, as opposed to anything you'd actually tank on a usual basis. |
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First comment, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Vengeance scales less well from things that aren't melee swings (Because it scales with unmitigated damage, and things that aren't melee swings usually aren't mitigated by armour, which means you lose a good 60% or something like that, it's too late for me to do actual maths, of the vengeance gained), so while yes, you do get a bigger barrier after a damage spike, I think you're possibly overestimating the size of it. Though again, I could be wrong on that. I don't pay enough attention my vengeance.
Secondly, your reasoning is dangerously close to the old "Total damage reduction is the most important thing! Don't worry about getting full CTC cap, you should be focusing on reducing as much damage as possible!" flawed reasoning. Thirdly, proactive vs. reactive. When I say proactive, I mean, preventing damage before it happens. When I say reactive, I mean healing damage after it happens. That's all. And lastly, like I said, the whole reason I put "usually" is because I realise that Slash is correct, and depending on what's going on, barriering after a big hit can be as useful as barriering before a big hit. My main point behind the "not going to do as much" is my reasoning that preventing a spike is usually better, for your healer's stress level sake, than recovering from it. I really should've clarified that in my original post, but I think I was in a hurry to get to work or something like that. Seriously though. Stop overanalysing what I'm saying. I'm not disagreeing with you. All my original point was was "warrior active mitigation prevents damage before it happens and doesn't have a real, active mitigationy way of recovering from damage after it happens, unless more damage is about to happen again, in which case, you're just preventing more damage." ----- Combat tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859 |
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I know. I had a hard time categorizing some of the active mitigation systems. There are a couple other approximations buried in there, as well. If people think it's important enough to warrant a note, I'll change it around.
Yeah. Again, I see it as sort of a blob, with paladins hanging off the easy side and monks hanging off the hard side. We've moved beyond WotLK Feral DPS, thank goodness. Again, though, subjective, and I didn't want to make any objective claims of difficulty.
Did you know that was accidental? It wasn't until I began looking over monk ability names that I realized what I'd done. MY SUBCONSCIOUS WAS SPEAKING TO ME AGAIIIN
Thanks! I'm surprised (and glad) I got it right, to be honest. I don't play a monk. I never played one on beta. My monk reached level 7 before I abandoned her to work on my Druid. Everything in that section I got by staring at the WoWhead talent calculator and monk ability list for an hour and a half. |
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Edited by Slashlove on 2/18/13 3:33 AM (PST)
First comment, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Vengeance scales less well from things that aren't melee swings (Because it scales with unmitigated damage, and things that aren't melee swings usually aren't mitigated by armour, which means you lose a good 60% or something like that, it's too late for me to do actual maths, of the vengeance gained), so while yes, you do get a bigger barrier after a damage spike, I think you're possibly overestimating the size of it. Though again, I could be wrong on that. I don't pay enough attention my vengeance. The change to specials is less about armour - that still applies, they made specials work off "As if you were not taking it over 20 seconds, but over 60 seconds" type thing. Functionally, it just meant that you don't get QUITE as big a payoff as when Prot Paladins could stand in Annihilate and have one Execution Sentence alone do more damage than an entire Rogue could, but you still get a payoff. Did you know that was accidental? It wasn't until I began looking over monk ability names that I realized what I'd done. I blame Vodka. |
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There was this one time we were doing this drinking game and all I had with me was a bottle of straight rum.
After the first half, that was NOT pleasant. |
