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Q u o t e:


And punching the 96969 keys for 10 minutes does require skill? Spamming Swipe or heroic strike is some masterful accomplishment?

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The rotation has more into it than "If I don't push this button, I'll die" is the point GC was trying to make.

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Q u o t e:
Ok, let's assume for a moment that Blizzard reverts the crushing blow change made in 3.0, and mobs three or more levels above you (i.e. raid bosses) can once again land crushing blows. Let's further assume that Blizzard reverts Shield Block to the pre-3.0 version and buffs Holy Shield to 50% block.

What do you do with DKs/Druids? Since they can't block, they'll need some means to soak the crushing blows - which means significantly higher health and armor than Warriors/Paladins. This makes Druids and DKs automatically the best magic damage soakers (since block is worthless against magic), and also pushes them uncomfortably close to the armor cap (which causes scaling issues).

The problem isn't crushing blows themselves - it's how to balance non-blocking tanks to handle crushing blows without making them overpowered in other areas of tanking or causing scaling issues.

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Simple answer?

You don't balance the non-shield tanks to be able to take crushes.

What does this do?

DKs and Druids become the magic soak tanks and Warriors and Paladins are the physical damage tanks. Intersperse raids with various encounters that incorporate both types of damage and everyone has fun.






Oh wait. I forgot. If you're not tanking the boss the game is a pile of *@%#.

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Q u o t e:
Simple answer?

You don't balance the non-shield tanks to be able to take crushes.

What does this do?

DKs and Druids become the magic soak tanks and Warriors and Paladins are the physical damage tanks. Intersperse raids with various encounters that incorporate both types of damage and everyone has fun.

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The problem is that for the majority of bosses most of the damage taken is physical. This design would relegate Druids and DKs to the handful of encounters that are primarily magic damage - essentially turning them into gimmick tanks.

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Q u o t e:

Hitting the IBF key every time the boss starts casting the mega-blast requires rocket science?

Gimme a break.

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Those types of abilities are in the game to prevent Rogues and Hunters from tanking bosses like they could do in TBC. Not to make the game difficult for tanks.

My only question is what happens when a druid or dk is tanking one of the various hard-modes, and one of their "haha you die now" abilities crushes on top of that. Just try and imagine hard-thorim's unbalancing strike crushing your fellow tank.

While it might fix the wars and pallys, it just shifts the imbalance to the dks and druids.

I'm not saying were equal, or even close, but crushing blows coming back is not the answer.

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Q u o t e:
OH LORD this would be sooo terrible lol. if our block was percentage based, in theory.. deadmines would be as difficult as ulduar. granted you 35,000 additional hitpoints in ulduar to work with.. and deadmines mobs could never ever kill you.

ok so its not at all the case. but you'd still only block like 5 damage from a defias when you should just kill it outright using damage shield.

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i said when you block with your shield, it automatically blocks a percentage, and on top of that blocks an additional flat rate. this allows block to scale with how hard the incoming hit is, but still keeping it viable for all the little tiny crappy hits.

should block receive this much of a buff? yes it should god damnit. if anything the only thing OP about it would be its synergy with the on use ability "shield block" but in all honesty we could use a buff to that cooldown anyway. just remove glyph of shield wall and id be happy.

im tired of having to allocate stats into a crap mechanic because the gear with block on it wastes ilvl points. it makes sense and you know it.

edit: and the damage from damage shield is based off of sbv. this wouldn't change at all so whats your point?

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Q u o t e:


The problem is that for the majority of bosses most of the damage taken is physical. This design would relegate Druids and DKs to the handful of encounters that are primarily magic damage - essentially turning them into gimmick tanks.

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Just because most damage is physical doens't mean that physical damage taken by the tank is what is the deciding factor to whether he lives or dies.

Take the damage intake mechanics of Sarth 3d for example. The life threatening portion of the damage is not physical, it's magic.

Any boss that has a tank killing attack can have that attack be physical or magic, with a simple code change. Rarely does a boss' melee attack have the capability to kill a tank, without some sort of special attack connected to it.

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Q u o t e:
That's not really true.

For starters, parry gibbing was a very real threat. It still is; most druids don't stack expertise to get unparryable, and even if they wanted to it would be very difficult given itemization constraints (rogues don't care about expertise that much by comparison). It's not as crucial as it is for warriors, and DKs don't care as much about gibbing, but it's still a constraint to worry about.

I've thought about this before too - if expertise was a crucial tanking stat for druids lest they take some horrible crushing string and almost every boss could parry gib, this would be an interesting way to make druids care more about getting certain DPS gear over PvP/polar gear. The problem is what it does to the other tanking classes.

Second, the 'window of time' we're talking about is somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds.

Third, because of the way hit tables work, crushings and avoidance kind of have a poor effect. Namely, as you get more avoidance the chance that any given hit you take will crush increases. This makes damage even more spiky, and thus problematic.

Fourth, there's no guarantee that cooldowns will let you survive for long enough. 15% of all attacks were crushing blows, which meant that you had on average a 2% chance per any set of two attacks to get two in a row. That's a lot, and will happen more than every minute. If you gave druids a couple of minute-long cooldowns that might work though, and it would make druid tanking a bit more interesting.

Hmm. I'll have to think about this more.

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Yeah, like I said I dont know much about druids. I was kind of tossing them in with dks. Whatever they have currently, in my theoretical world of crushes, druids and dks would have similar stam mit avoidance and cds.

I would argue that parry gibs still arent that likely. Imo 1 parry isnt a gib (I think it turns a 2.4 sec swing into ~1.6-2.4). The chance that you get double-parried, and both attacks around that time are crushes has got to be very low. I can understand the problem of sharing gear with rogues though. I guess rings/necks/etc with expertise on them would become very very sought after by druids cause the leather itself wouldnt have much =/

Crushing blows is something they should ahve enver removed, and I think GC even regrets doing it now. The reason tehy removed it was, ebcasue tehy didnt think DKs would be able to tank if crushing blows were in the game.


They wre wrong, with the abilities that DKs ahd at WotLK launch they could have easily handled crushing blows. Instead they replaced crushing blows with a mega attack on a timer, this catered to DKs even ore, that always had an on demand CD to blow for any mega attack.

If they ahd kept, the BC design philosphy for tanking, druids probably would not ahve gotten nerfed at all, and the DK nerfs would have been much less. All-in-all the game would have been in a much better place from 3.0 untill now.

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Q u o t e:
A blocked hit for a palladin or warrior in BC was the same amount of damage (or close enough) to a crushing blow a druid was taking. It was fairly balanced because, in the end, the same DTPS was the same across the board.

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Except that in order for Druids to take Crushing Blows they had to get armor to cap. And then in Sunwell when avoidance was so high, Druids were capable of both getting max armor and so much avoidance as to really trivialize encounters without radiance. Sure, the avoidance issue is lessened, but even so they would have to nerf druid avoidance or mitigation talents into the ground if they let them reach the armor cap, and doing so introduces other scaling problems.

So we would have to assume they would go with some other method to remove crushing blows (and likely use a similar method with DKs), but at that point it becomes a case of asking yourself if you really want to even have crushing blows in the game or not? Why not just balance the Shield bearers around letting their shields do more work instead?

Because clearly tanking needs to be as RNG oriented as possible.

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Q u o t e:
Except that in order for Druids to take Crushing Blows they had to get armor to cap. And then in Sunwell when avoidance was so high, Druids were capable of both getting max armor and so much avoidance as to really trivialize encounters without radiance. Sure, the avoidance issue is lessened, but even so they would have to nerf druid avoidance or mitigation talents into the ground if they let them reach the armor cap, and doing so introduces other scaling problems.

So we would have to assume they would go with some other method to remove crushing blows (and likely use a similar method with DKs), but at that point it becomes a case of asking yourself if you really want to even have crushing blows in the game or not? Why not just balance the Shield bearers around letting their shields do more work instead?

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Funny that you mention Sunwell, where druids were undisputed kings with crushing blows removed from all but 1 of the boss mobs. Ask any healer who was easiest to heal on Brut and I guarantee you they will say the druid was - keeping retardedly high avoidance *after* radiance, still armor capped, much more hp, and no crushings. You can't mention Sunwell or radiance without including the fact that druids weren't eating crushings in there the same as they aren't now. Druids did trivialize encounters in there compared to the other tanks, about to the same extent as DKs are doing to the other tanks now.

Its even funnier that everyone is completely oblivious to the fact that druids now have a psuedo-block that outperforms warrior's block in pretty much every scenario (with much more intelligent benefits from itemization for it) while still keeping a massive hp and armor lead at the cost of around 5% avoidance - I'd make that trade in a heartbeat. If barkskin was ~40% dmg reduction like IBF it would be no contest, even DKs would be shutout alongside the shield tanks.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done before the classes are on equal footing. The right solution would to see every tank class at the same hp/armor/avoidance range with basically cookie cutter cds across the board (and having the same reliance on outside cds as each other), the old warrior shield block reimplemented, and DK's given something similar to Savage Defense. Any other way will always create a disparity on one/a few/most encounters and there will always be complaining about it because guilds will definitely min/max and focus around it.

Homogenization has already taken its toll, but now it seems even more is the only way to equal things out to what tanking in Wrath was portrayed to be at launch. I honestly never expected "all of the tank classes will be able to tank everything almost equally" to turn into "a DK can tank everything you can better, and more - why would we want you?" or "having a warrior/pally MT in Ulduar is turning on hardmode before you even zone in". I've seen those lines time and time again.

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Q u o t e:

Why couldnt crushing blows be put back in? A warriors shield block would have to be reverted (or in some other way prevent them from taking crushing blows) and dk/druid armor would have to be buffed up again, so they were flirting with the cap. Other than that its an almost ready-made fix.

It even makes sense from a roleplaying point of view. A deathknight might have heavier armor, and take more punishment before dying, but lacking a shield, it feels like he could take a brutal hit once in a while. Holding a shield might not absorb much damage from a giant monster, but it guarantees the monster wont ever get a completely clean shot at you.

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I don't know if you found it this way, but back when I first got to the endgame, at 70 (I started in TBC), if you wanted to tank heroics or raids you had to be both uncrittable (490 Defence, thankyouverymuch) and uncrushable (102.4% total block+avoidance). That made gearing both simple (all else pales before those two requirements), very difficult (juggling gear to reach those thresholds), and very boring (little choice of gear combos that would do the job) until you got into T5 content and could branch out into threat pieces, block pieces, pure avoidance sets, stamina sets, and so on. I love the flexibility in gear these days, in that once you've made the 540 Defence threshold there are immediately choices about how to gear from there, and bringing back crushing blows would remove that for shield wearers, especially with Diminishing Returns are they are.

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Q u o t e:

What do you do with DKs/Druids? Since they can't block, they'll need some means to soak the crushing blows - which means significantly higher health and armor than Warriors/Paladins. This makes Druids and DKs automatically the best magic damage soakers (since block is worthless against magic), and also pushes them uncomfortably close to the armor cap (which causes scaling issues).

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The solution to this (though I don't think crushing blows should return) could be to make block work in some way vs magic damage. It makes sense vs many magical attacks that a big lump of wood and/or metal, probably enchanted, between you and the attack should mitigate some damage (OTOH the same argument can be applied to armour, and that's a huge can of worms).

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Q u o t e:

only usable by shield wearers (i.e. pallies and warriors) and they dont take itemization points to allocate.

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And shamans. :)

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Q u o t e:


I like Angua's explanation.

Crushing blows were basically like another way for mobs to crit -- sometimes (and you didn't know when) a really big hit was going to come. It might have made healing exciting but the only way to handle it tanking was to randomly throw up your short cooldown defenses and hope that sometimes they overlapped. Of course sometimes you'd get a crushing blow right after a normal hit and a special attack and you'd be liquid.

The way more bosses work these days is that a big hit is going to come at reasonably predictable intervals. If the intervals aren't predictable, at least they have cooldowns so you know when they aren't going to happen. Then timing the use of your cooldowns with these big hits is a test of skill for the tanks, and often the healers.

We recognize that blocking no longer provides the mitigation it once did, and we think that is a problem. But we don't think bringing crushing blows back is the way to fix it.

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lol not a great post.

You guys have gotten absolutly every prediction about WotLK tanking incorrectly, and it all started with the idea that an unblocked attack was going to the new crushing blow.

Druids had been eating crushing blows without issue all through BC, so they already had the tools in place to deal with it.

DKs were designed around chaining CDs together, given the strength of these CDs at WotLK launch, DKs would ahve easily been able to ahndle Crushing blows, and the endless string of DK nerfs would probably not have been needed.

removing crushing blows was indirectly a massive nerf to both warrior and pally tanking, and I can;t believe you didnt see it, and still don't see it.

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Q u o t e:


lol not a great post.

You guys have gotten absolutly every prediction about WotLK tanking incorrectly, and it all started with the idea that an unblocked attack was going to the new crushing blow.

Druids had been eating crushing blows without issue all through BC, so they already had the tools in place to deal with it.

DKs were designed around chaining CDs together, given the strength of these CDs at WotLK launch, DKs would ahve easily been able to ahndle Crushing blows, and the endless string of DK nerfs would probably not have been needed.

removing crushing blows was indirectly a massive nerf to both warrior and pally tanking, and I can;t believe you didnt see it, and still don't see it.

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You do realise that the "crushing" flag would probably just be turned off on any bosses that matter even if they still existed?

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Q u o t e:
You guys have gotten absolutly every prediction about WotLK tanking incorrectly, and it all started with the idea that an unblocked attack was going to the new crushing blow.

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That was a player prediction before the devs took it to heart...

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Q u o t e:
Druids had been eating crushing blows without issue all through BC, so they already had the tools in place to deal with it.

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Except that letting Druids get to the armor cap in the lowest tier has all kinds of problems, from itemization (lack of scaling) to trivializing content (70% DR vs 75% DR is 1/6 less damage intake) and the other half of the Crushing Blow soaking is the higher health pool that can also make magic damage soaking too good for that class.

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Q u o t e:
DKs were designed around chaining CDs together, given the strength of these CDs at WotLK launch, DKs would ahve easily been able to ahndle Crushing blows, and the endless string of DK nerfs would probably not have been needed.

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Unless they could chain those cooldowns seamlessly, then no that wouldn't have dealt with crushing blows well. And that brings potential PvP problems, such that DK cooldowns need to become less effective in PvP or some need to be removed from PvP. Chaining cooldowns really just makes DKs too good a tank unless they get completely battered when a cooldown is not up.

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Q u o t e:
removing crushing blows was indirectly a massive nerf to both warrior and pally tanking, and I can;t believe you didnt see it, and still don't see it.

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I don't think the problem is that removing crushing blows made the other tanks too good, but that shields didn't scale well enough, when everyone was predicting that shields would scale too well. Effectively, Warrior & Paladin mitigation didn't scale well enough through blocking to match the scaling that armor provided. That seems closer to the problem than the lack of crushing blows.

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Q u o t e:
retardedly high avoidance *after* radiance, still armor capped, much more hp, and no crushings. You can't mention Sunwell or radiance without including the fact that druids weren't eating crushings in there the same as they aren't now. Druids did trivialize encounters in there compared to the other tanks, about to the same extent as DKs are doing to the other tanks now.

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Except that now Druids aren't armor capped and have a lesser HP lead over other tanks. In part that is a response to lack of crushing blows, but lets be honest, as a figure in total damage taken, Crushing Blows are really a failure - they only increase a boss's melee damage output by 7.5%.

What crushing blows really do is increase spike damage - the reason why Druids were so much easier to heal on Brut had nothing to do with lack of crushing blows, but because they reduced physical damage intake by 75%, and 75% DR compared to even 70% DR is a 1/6 reduction in damage taken per hit.

Druids had higher health & armor to soak crushing blows, but without them in Sunwell, they became OP. Druid armor & health has been reduced in Wrath to compensate for lack of crushing blows, reintroducing them now would require the return of the superior health & armor that Druids had in BC, or an implementation of some other method to deal with crushing blows (preferable due to the effects that high armor values have on the game in general).

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Q u o t e:
Any other way will always create a disparity on one/a few/most encounters and there will always be complaining about it because guilds will definitely min/max and focus around it.

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Anytime someone says that the only way to make something work is to do it their way triggers immediate suspicion in my head. People love to say that Blizzard implements "lazy" solutions to problems, but too often I see solutions posted that are basically "give me what they have and we'll be equal".

Lets be honest with ourselves. There are plenty of possible solutions to every problem. The answer to any given disparity does not need to be homogenization.

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Q u o t e:
Homogenization has already taken its toll, but now it seems even more is the only way to equal things out to what tanking in Wrath was portrayed to be at launch. I honestly never expected "all of the tank classes will be able to tank everything almost equally" to turn into "a DK can tank everything you can better, and more - why would we want you?" or "having a warrior/pally MT in Ulduar is turning on hardmode before you even zone in". I've seen those lines time and time again.

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Of course, Ensidia got a world first with a Warrior tank. I won't dismiss that Warriors & Paladins have problems, but I think people tend to exaggerate them a bit. Just because you see a forum quote saying "DKs are OP" or "Paladins are gimp" doesn't mean that they are, or that having one immediately makes content easier or harder.