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Q u o t e:


If that were true, then the Icecrown aura would be a Mortal Strike debuff instead of an avoidance nerf.

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Um, isn't this because of the stats that will be on Icecrown gear, not the current stats? As in, we're at ~55-60% avoidance now (which can work for raiding) but in order to inflate IC gear to higher Ilevels, you'd have to put even more avoidance on them which would then cause an imbalance?

Also, as was mentioned, you tried to make the argument that EH is harder to calculate with cooldowns in the picture, but most cooldowns are pretty much identical, and where it matters, Paladins have the best cooldowns in addition to the best EH anyway?

Again, I don't want to be a broken record, but scaling for EH seems unbalanced already, and when we see the final numbers on regular mode IC gear, and start IC hard modes...I'm a little afraid that it's going to be totally out of whack for warriors, and DKs would only be good on "Vezax" fights with predictable burst to match Cds against.

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That was also a raid where Warriors were the only main tanks by design, and Paladins and Druids were AoE and OT's by design. So ... the design has shifted, and it's hard to really say that because Sunwell Radiance existed that it will be the same thing now with Icecrown Radiance.

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Druids were actually the best tanks in Sunwell dude.

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Why can't you compare cooldowns though? Shield Wall=shared by DKs+Paladins almost exactly, Druids have one that's at 1/2 effectiveness for 1/2 cooldown. Last Stand is shared almost exactly by most DK tanks (most DK tanks are blood and have vampiric blood), and Druids (survival instincts). Only the "third" cooldowns really vary much, and they're usually the least potent.

edit: You didn't really answer the question now that I read it again either...but the implication is "No, no EH changes are currently being discussed". Would you be able to move fast enough to change the situation if it became an issue though? We'd hate to see a "well, sorry Warriors and DKs, that you're not able to tank this encounter, but we'll make sure it's fixed by cataclysm".

Again, there's a lot of very easy math, which can include cooldowns, that Druids+Paladins have a sizeable advantage over the other two classes, which will scale even higher with new gear. Unless you know that IC encounters won't focus on tank EH (which would be a big departure from previous dungeons), it seems like it's a big issue.

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Actually he did answer the question. He said EH is not the end all be all stat no matter how many temper tantrums, faulty math and flat out lies you try to throw at it.

EH is nothing but a glorified step function, it doesn't even come close to representing reality. You can fudge the corners a little bit to account for healer reaction time and lag, making it more t#@*!zoidal instead of rectangular but that's it.

As long as you're on the same plateau EH is a worthless comparison between tanks.

That's not to say the tanks are perfectly balance, but EH is in no way shape or form anywhere close to a viable benchmark.

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If that were true, then the Icecrown aura would be a Mortal Strike debuff instead of an avoidance nerf.

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I'm not really sure what you mean by that. The boss cooldowns that matter currently (Impale, Frozen Slash) aren't dodgeable, which means EH is the only thing that matters for those moments.

There's a misapprehension in these forum debates that we're arguing over tank choices that have a large degree of impact, i.e. a tank can choose a different way of gemming/enchanting that impacts his health by more than 3-4k health. This is rarely the case.

Nor is it really a case of choosing between God mode health/zero avoidance or dodge tank mode/clothie health. Tanks are always moving within a spectrum on these two scales, often simply by taking a default upgrade in gear. It's simply the case that a tank who makes choices based on his positioning on the avoidance scale isn't rewarded - the only way for a tank to survive key moments in boss encounters is based on his EH. EH isn't flavour, it's an encounter requirement.

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If that were true, then the Icecrown aura would be a Mortal Strike debuff instead of an avoidance nerf.

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You should do that anyway, just to troll the healing forums.

Are you kidding me...? This old Druids have more HP than us it's not fair argument again?

Hello.. I don't block and I don't parry and now whatever slight advantage I had in dodge just went poof.

If anything Druids need even more EH than we have now.

100k hp will be gimp.

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What I was trying to say above was that a half strength cooldown that is available twice as often is not the same. You can multiply the numbers to convert them to the same relative uptime but that doesn't mean they are of the same utility.

Would you rather have a cooldown that prevented 90% of incoming damage once a fight or a cooldown that prevented 5% of damage eighteen times a fight? You might be able to make arguments for both, probably depending on encounter specifics, but I find it hard to argue that the decision is irrelevant.

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You said Avoidance is also an important variable.

So if Paladins have more avoidance and better cooldowns than Warriors, why do they have more EH?

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What I was trying to say above was that a half strength cooldown that is available twice as often is not the same. You can multiply the numbers to convert them to the same relative uptime but that doesn't mean they are of the same utility.

Would you rather have a cooldown that prevented 90% of incoming damage once a fight or a cooldown that prevented 5% of damage eighteen times a fight? You might be able to make arguments for both, probably depending on encounter specifics, but I find it hard to argue that the decision is irrelevant.

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Do you guys account for the fact that DK "cool downs" have 10 second timers if they use their normal threat rotations?

I would really love the answer to this, as its a huge pain to not be able to hit the button whenever I REALLY need a CD.

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Are you kidding me...? This old Druids have more HP than us it's not fair argument again?

Hello.. I don't block and I don't parry and now whatever slight advantage I had in dodge just went poof.

If anything Druids need even more EH than we have now.

100k hp will be gimp.

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You're pretty dumb. For one thing, you do block. For another, you don't parry but you dodge twice as much as us.

You will still have 3% less avoidance than Warriors.

A 20% dodge nerf to a Druid is the same as a 20% nerf to a Warrior except your Savage Defense will be even better than block against bosses.

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Are you kidding me...? This old Druids have more HP than us it's not fair argument again?

Hello.. I don't block and I don't parry and now whatever slight advantage I had in dodge just went poof.

If anything Druids need even more EH than we have now.

100k hp will be gimp.

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rofl at bolded. I haz no shield, i haz no block. SD is a lie!

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What I was trying to say above was that a half strength cooldown that is available twice as often is not the same. You can multiply the numbers to convert them to the same relative uptime but that doesn't mean they are of the same utility.

Would you rather have a cooldown that prevented 90% of incoming damage once a fight or a cooldown that prevented 5% of damage eighteen times a fight? You might be able to make arguments for both, probably depending on encounter specifics, but I find it hard to argue that the decision is irrelevant.

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GC, when tanks talk about EH, we are almost always NOT averaging in cooldowns.

We agree with you. Cooldowns matter. That's why we talk about them. But EH matters too :p And since no matter what class you are, there will be significant portions of any fight in which you do not have cooldowns up....we mostly talk about EH in its purest passive form, which is exactly what you heard it was when you first started tanking: EH = HP/ (1-DR).

Tank EH has significant disparities right now. On the passive level. It's not yet so bad that a druid with Barkskin active has more EH than a warrior with Shield Wall active; I feel like you'd agree that that was way out of whack, considering the cooldowns of those abilities. But it's pretty bad.

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What I was trying to say above was that a half strength cooldown that is available twice as often is not the same. You can multiply the numbers to convert them to the same relative uptime but that doesn't mean they are of the same utility.

Would you rather have a cooldown that prevented 90% of incoming damage once a fight or a cooldown that prevented 5% of damage eighteen times a fight? You might be able to make arguments for both, probably depending on encounter specifics, but I find it hard to argue that the decision is irrelevant.

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Ok, granted, Bears are different. That doesn't change the fact that the other 3 tanks are almost perfectly identical in that cooldown. Likewise, 3 of the 4 tanks have an almost identical "Last Stand", and the Paladin one is undeniably better (an "always on" DR portion+GS effect compared to a temporary DR/health boost).

My point is that while there are differences in the cooldowns, there's not really that many anymore; and it's not really accurate to say "you can't calculate EH because the cooldowns are different". Even with the differences, the differences are small enough that "general" EH discrepancies aren't hard to calculate.

Bottom line, it's very easy to see and prove that DKs+Warriors are lower in EH; even if you pointed at DK cooldowns and say "look, look, their cooldowns give them EH at faster intervals, and that gives them a Niche(!!!!)". Even if you said that though, there's no way you can point at warriors and say their EH isn't inferior to Paladins in pretty much every way.

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I'm not really sure what you mean by that. The boss cooldowns that matter currently (Impale, Frozen Slash) aren't dodgeable, which means EH is the only thing that matters for those moments.

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Which means that, if the important abilities are not affected by avoidance, then avoidance is near useless in these situations, and EH triumphs. However, if our EH NEEDED to be nerfed, then they would either make bosses hit faster and somewhat lighter (ala Ony whelps in Boss form) or make healing a 10% health tank back up to 100% harder (ala Mortal Strike debuff).

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You're pretty dumb. For one thing, you do block. For another, you don't parry but you dodge twice as much as us.

You will still have 3% less avoidance than Warriors.

A 20% dodge nerf to a Druid is the same as a 20% nerf to a Warrior except your Savage Defense will be even better than block against bosses.

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Druids don't dodge twice as often. Druids have the lowest avoidance out of all of the tanks, but they have the highest health to balance this.

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I mean, I could understand his argument if Warriors didn't exist in their current state. DKs have less EH than Paladins, but more avoidance and better cooldowns. Druids have more EH than Paladins, but again Paladins have more avoidance and far better cooldowns. Warriors are just flat out worse then Paladins (and probably DKs) in every conceivable way. At least you can claim they have better cooldowns than Druids, but that's a real stretch.

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Not particularly a stretch. As GC said in his first post He and probably most others would take a short duration long CD 80% (or in the case of warriors 60%) damage reduction over a long duration 10% one even if the effective damage mitigated was identical. Last stand and Survival instints are efectivly identicale. Frenzied regen and Enraged regen provide the same healing outside of rage starved situations. That leaves shieldwall and barkskin. For saveing a tanks ass from a huge incomeing spike its prety hard to argue the difference between 60(40 glyphed) and 20% damage reduction even if you can use the weakest one more often. The more powerful reduction will save a tank in situations the 20 does not.

To be honest I think druids need a glyph of barkskin that is the reverse of the shieldwall glyph, increases the CD and the % of barkskin. The EH of the druids are still up there but not nearly what they were in days long gone. That lower % CD was reasonable when EH was quite a bit higher on druids but these days EH is much closer to the others.

Good tanks have different gear for different situation. I typically wear my onyxia trinket, it's a 3%ish avoidance piece. But i've been known to assess each boss encounter different and maybe throw my heart of iron back on if it's a boss like anub, or thorims tunnel with those annoying stuns. Places where avoidance has diminished value but a larger health pool may help. I constantly see tanks out there though that put stam in every slot, pure stam, trinkets stam, everything stam. They have 52k health buffed in a raid but they get trucked by bosses. I actually get whispers from healers sometimes asking why I seem a lot easier to heal than the other warrior that has 5k more health than me. For one, the other warrior stacked stam and probably has lower avoidance, and 2, the other warrior is also terrible at keeping thunderclap and demo up or using disarm on something like gormoc(normal only), abilities that also factor into mitigation. Things a healer probably wouldn't notice but another tank certainly does. Healer might notice that person is harder to heal, but not necessarily understand why.

But the common tank measurement for the average wow player is health. I've been turned down for stuff in favor of the other tank that has more health, less threat, less avoidance, and doesn't utilize their abilities for crap meaning the boss is probably hitting them 20% more often, and with more damage each swing because they aren't debuffed....all because the common believe in community is health> all. But this is just pure ignorance of tanking.


Edit:
my only peeve with druids is threat more than anything. All other tanks have to sacrifice some form of tanking stat, be it avoidance, or health, for threat. Druids come ad advantage of first, not needing defense, so right off the bat having more ilvl points to go to health pool, or agility, which is both avoidance and threat and scales so well i ntheir favor that a druid tank, when well geared enough, has retarded threat without actually going out of their way to make it. As a warrior I have to actually use a hit gem here and there, usually hit+stam just to make sure i cai be even remotely close to hit cap, cause every miss counts cause threat can be dicey with a feral druid that can do 10k dps single target in your raid. :\ I can't wait til 4.0 and we all can ignore defense as a stat and focus on real stats.

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Q u o t e:

Would you rather have a cooldown that prevented 90% of incoming damage once a fight or a cooldown that prevented 5% of damage eighteen times a fight? You might be able to make arguments for both, probably depending on encounter specifics, but I find it hard to argue that the decision is irrelevant.

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Right now compared to warriors druids already have a cooldown that is up 100% of the time and it's called having 25% EH more than warriors... Having different cooldown is fine, but the EH numbers need to be closer so that when you aren't using a cooldown you aren't so vulnerable.

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You said Avoidance is also an important variable.

So if Paladins have more avoidance and better cooldowns than Warriors, why do they have more EH?

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Where do we have more avoidance than warriors?

"Better cooldowns" is an opinion, not fact.

I wish people would stop this 'You have more health, I want that health or it isn't fair!" nonsense. I've posted this at least twice in the past week but: 4 different classes with the exact same cooldowns, the exact same health, the exact same abilities and the exact same threat generation would be bad for the game.

It's fine to be concerned about threat generation and survivability, but you should point out what you lack (not that we haven't heard the warrior stance on things 50 million times already) rather than cry for nerfs on the other classes. Tanking classes are closer than they have ever been. All tanks can tank every encounter. No class makes it significantly easier.

I totally agree with GC though. Many people on these forums and on other sites underestimate cooldowns a lot. Barkskin does not equal Shield Wall. Ardent Defender does not equal Last Stand.

The only real concern I have seen is that DK's are worried that their threat will suffer. They are not QQ'ing, they are worried and going about it in a sensible way to find out what they can about the situation.