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Beta
What's the feeling on the various tanks in Cataclysm?
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Post by
inthane
I've got one of each ready to go to 85, and I'm wondering what the beta impressions are of the various tank classes at this point. As an outside observer, my own personal feelings from reading beta reports (yes, I admit I know very little about the actual beta) are:
Druids: Lost their instant AOE spam, didn't get a whole lot back in exchange other than a new silence ability that brings them up to the back of the pack when it comes to stuns and silences, in that they actually have one that can be used in melee. Pulverize still strikes me as an ability added just so that Blizz could point at it and say "hey, we did something for feral tanks!"
Paladins: Lost the 96969 rotation, sounds like their new priority queue is almost as complex as Feral DPS, maybe down one step from it. Their automatic death save ability got turned into a button press, but that's long overdue. Other than that, looks like they have a large toolkit for handling all kinds of wacky situations.
Warriors: I've done very little with my warrior since he hit 80, but my gut feeling is that they've changed the least. Nothing much to back that up. Given that druids already look at the warrior toolkit with serious envy (silences! multiple kinds of charges!) I think they're looking pretty good.
Death Knights: ...ok, I'm totally lost on this one. Haven't done much with mine other than level him, and I've seen a fair bit of QQ about how they've been nerfed even more.
My "gut feeling" is that Warriors and Paladins are going to be the "go to" tanks for the first tier of the expansion, with a further gut that Paladins are again going to walk away with the "We're Blizzard's Chosen Child" award. I'll also admit I'm operating on bare minimum data here, and I'm wondering what other people think about the various tanks out there.
Post by
Sakkura
Warriors: I've done very little with my warrior since he hit 80, but my gut feeling is that they've changed the least. Nothing much to back that up. Given that druids already look at the warrior toolkit with serious envy (silences! multiple kinds of charges!) I think they're looking pretty good.
Ehh... You haven't heard about the rage overhaul? Trust me, warriors are facing dramatic changes.
In any case, how much a class changes doesn't predict how well the class will perform, or how it will feel to play it.
Post by
inthane
Agreed, but I'm trying to get a feel for who got the nerf bat and who the chosen one is. My quibble on druids is that (as someone who has played a druid tank) druid tanks didn't get a lot of new tools, and had their main claim to fame (swipe) hit pretty hard with a nerfbat to bring it in line with tanking talents that other classes have.
And I had forgotten about the rage overhaul - having something to do when you get rage capped sounds pretty awesome, actually. Once again, druids out in the cold. ;)
Edit: Before people start reading it as Druid QQ, I'm not really concerned - I'm going to probably be putting my druid out to farm for this expansion anyways. Just trying to pick a good tank for my guild.
Post by
Sakkura
Hard to say which tanking class will be "best" when they are far from done with balancing the numbers. AFAIK they aren't terribly far past the placeholder stage.
Post by
Azrile
All of the tanking classes have basically been morphed together in Wotlk. The only really drastic thing being changed is that all of them are having their spammable AOE abilities drasticall nerfed. Like you, i've played them all and with the exception of DKs, they all played very similar during most of Wotlk.
All of them are still going to be similar now. Instead of spamming your AOE ability, you are now going to be doing a lot more tab-targeting.
Probably the biggest change though is you are going to have to start using the raid-icons on mobs for CC though.
Post by
660436
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Post by
Adamsm
Seeing as CC is cool again in Cata......
Post by
sutasafaia
Ugh, tab targeting is the reason I stopped playing a tank for most of the game and didn't pick it up again until Wrath. I have nothing against tanking being more challenging but tab targeting is very unreliable, half the time you target something across the room and end up hitting it instead.
Post by
woohaa
DKs need some work still. they did an initial pass on Blood when the changes first came out but haven't revisited it yet. They just did unholy so i'm hoping they'll revisit blood and polish it up a bit. It's still a bit rough around the edges. The new rune system doesn't work well for tanking. You use 3 main abilities. Deathstrike, Heartstrike, and Runestrike. DS and HS use runes so it feels like everytime you use one it activates a 10second cd. runestrike has the resources but the avoidance requirement limits the ability and is a bad GCD filler. Atm it feels more like a proc that has priority above all else. Runic Empowerment is basically worse then palys complaining about the randomness of holy power. Atleast, you know your gonna get holy power...you have no clue which rune will recharge and you don't even know if it will in the first place. The new Deathstrike and the mastery Blood Shield work pretty well as a gimick block. As far as aoe threat goes...there doesn't appear to be any threat issues. But the rotation is awkward at best. It's not random...just awkward because of the runes required. DKs still retain their role as the Def CD tank. But since some of the CDs use runes it's hard to have one available to use the CD. The talent tree itself is pretty good. Maybe slightly bloated. You can easily spend more than 31 pts in the tree.
Post by
649209
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Post by
382219
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Post by
Sakkura
They changed the less of all. Some buffs here and there, but pretty much the same.
Blood and Thunder!
Pretty much the same except they dramatically changed our resource mechanics and removed on-next-strike abilities which had been a core mechanic for warrior threat generation. Yeah, not much change there...
Post by
382219
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Post by
Sakkura
Not really changed. And Heroic Strike wasn't fun, really... You could just keep it spammed.
It really is changed. And whether Heroic Strike spam was fun is completely irrelevant, it's still a huge change.
Post by
inthane
I thought druids got an AoE bleed or an ability that did a bleed when swipe was used, I could be wrong but I doubt their AoE threat will drop all that much (at least throughout the fight.)
They do get a new ability (
Thrash
) at L81, but the big "claim to fame" that druids had (besides massive health pools) was the ability to spam swipe like nuts - they were awesome at holding both existing mobs and adds in mobile fights. Now AoE isn't as important in Cata (you'll be using swipe and thrash occasionally to hold mobs close so they don't go munch the healer, but the main focus is going to be pre-marked single-target kill order) and druids are losing their massive health pools, so there isn't a whole lot to distinguish them from other tanks.
Post by
inthane
Also, yes, after looking at the warrior stuff, warriors are pretty changed - between heroic strike and their new "I just hit 100 rage, so let's boost damage and increase rage cost to burn it off" ability, it's looking pretty hot.
Post by
Varaconn
Not really changed. And Heroic Strike wasn't fun, really... You could just keep it spammed.
It really is changed. And whether Heroic Strike spam was fun is completely irrelevant, it's still a huge change.
It's a fair change, but compared to some other class changes, it's quite minimal. The generation mechanic for rage is different, but the concepts are still the same.
Post by
Sakkura
It's a fair change, but compared to some other class changes, it's quite minimal. The generation mechanic for rage is different, but the concepts are still the same.
Nah, the way it is used is also completely altered. No more on-next-hit abilities. And Inner Rage affecting the way rage is used and how your abilities perform. It's a radical redesign.
Post by
Varaconn
And yet it's still not as radical as other classes.
Post by
Sakkura
And yet it's still not as radical as other classes.
Definitely more radical than druids. Debatable compared to DKs and paladins. Eg. holy power is completely new, but (prot) paladin mana is essentially unchanged in that you're not supposed to run out by doing your tanking rotation.
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