In most of the posts lately and in an alarming amount of developer rhetoric, context seems to take a back seat to philosophical design decisions. What, exactly, does that mean?

In regards of WoW, context means the world and in regards to balance it means the world which an ability or advantage exists in. I'll give everyone an example, if paladins took 10% more damage than every other tank but took 20% less from demons (And only demons), that would be terrible if only 10% or so of the bosses were demons.

However, what if all bosses were demons? What if the developers decided that every boss was a demon, all the time. Then the "niche" advantage would become a normal advantage, one available in a majority of "encounters" in the game. So, in WoW, what makes something niche and what makes something fundamental?

The developers do.

One thing we have noticed throughout WoW is that specialized mechanics are often limited in boss fights unless the boss is specifically designed for them. Disarms, Stuns, Silences and other things in the game often don't work on bosses. This has to do with how dynamic encounters are already--Players can literally think of hundreds of strats that the developers probably never dreamed about to defeat any given boss. So as a developer, limiting the tools makes development and "tuning" far easier.

Often times if specialized abilities, like say charge or BoP (Hand of protection) confer an advantage, its an afterthought, an accident. For those of you working on hard mode Anub, you might know that the availability of 2-3 BoPs can make the encounter significantly easier. However, the need for BoP is hardly something designed into every encounter, it simply works on anub because the fight happened to cater to it. Just like how BoP was a useful tool for bloodboil ect.

Interruptions are another good example of a niche. In Ulduar only 3 bosses really needed interruptions, of those 3, only 1 would be beneficial if the tank alone could do them. This is because tanks often don't get to the hit cap and more often than not, if you need an interrupt, you want a DPS doing it to make sure it goes through....Why?

Because if the boss is interuptable, than most likely the developer INTENDED you to hit EVERY interrupt. This makes missing one due to RNG an extremely bad move. However, the core of this statement is the INTENT to design a fight with an interruption effect. These fights are rare and in the minority, much like fights where BoP is extremely useful or where a druid can use innervate/Brez.

Is having sunder an advantage? Yes but it isn't an advantage in all situations, many other things need to fail (Like the absence of any rogues or other warriors) for it to be a true advantage.

Is having cleanse an advantage? Sure---but its the same as sunder, its an advantage but one that is easily and NORMALLY made up for by many raid groups.

This is in stark contrast to FUNDAMENTAL systems, which are designed into every encounter in the game. The tools that almost all tanks share as follows.

Damage reduction
Damage avoidance
Damage soaking
Threat

You can advance these tools through various mechanics but the above "facets" of tanking are designed into 99% of wow encounters, because its HOW THE GAME WORKS. You can rarely get around them because they are such core parts of the game philosophy (And frankly code).

Advantages in the above field(s) is almost ALWAYS an advantage. Its *rare* for a fight to be designed in the absence of the above mechanics. Its NOT an afterthought when more armor makes a difference, its ALWAYS on the forefront of design when a tank is rewarded for more mitigation, because again, that is how the game system works. The entire idea of progress, is, in fact, based around increasing the effects of these systems (Better gear=More mitigation, for example.).

Where as things like BoP or Intervene or Death grip might provide an advantage as an afterthought or maybe a cool little trick that the developer worked in, more health will ALWAYS be an advantage, on nearly every, single fight. If it didn't work like this, then gear progression and many other systems in WoW simply would not work.

This is the difference between fundamental and niche.

This is why, GC, that differences in EH, Mitigation and Avoidance are so much more profound than if a class has the ability to sunder or to cleanse or to Death grip. When some tanks have 10% advantages in these fields, those advantages persist in EVERY encounter.

Good post. I think we tend to get caught up in the details too much whether a specific ability is especially useful in one encounter or instance.

While I agree with you that the core "facets" of tanking are not balanced at the moment, I would also add that one of the main difficulties in balancing such "facets" is that you're not balancing apples to apples. All tanks strive for mitigation, avoidance, EH and threat but all take different routs to get to the same destination. For example, a tank with a shield vs a tank who blocks with his face both are trying to achieve survivability but one may prioritize certain stats that the other wouldn't. Since the mechanics differ between the tanks, trying to balance across that barrier could get a little murky.

Alt thread title: "flavor vs. balance"

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Q u o t e:
This is why, GC, that differences in EH, Mitigation and Avoidance are so much more profound than if a class has the ability to sunder or to cleanse or to Death grip. When some tanks have 10% advantages in these fields, those advantages persist in EVERY encounter.

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But how can a warrior tank without applying Sunder?!?!

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But how can a warrior tank without applying Sunder?!?!

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If we weren't required to, we generally wouldn't apply sunder(devastate) much. If for some redonkulus reason we had a 2nd prot warrior dpsing using devastate, we'd be able to forgo putting up the initial 5, and refreshing it when we had better cooldowns up. Shield Slam, Revenge, Shockwave, Conc Blow, refreshing demo+thunderclap+shout, and of course the eternal heroic strike spammin...we have plenty to keep busy with.

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But how can a warrior tank without applying Sunder?!?!

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If Shield Slam has no cooldown I'll be spamming it every GCD.

Great post. In b4 the overflow of paladins.

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If Shield Slam has no cooldown I'll be spamming it every GCD.

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That'd be some amazing rage income you have going on there, I'd venture to say so much incoming damage the inferior warrior tank wouldn't be able to live through it.

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That'd be some amazing rage income you have going on there, I'd venture to say so much incoming damage the inferior warrior tank wouldn't be able to live through it.

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Haha. Good point. Maybe I can convince Blizzard to make S&B proc off Shield Slams too. =P

(The above comment was sarcastic by the way!)

Good post. Still if paladins were to be 'balanced' I'm pretty sure they would have to make paladin mechanics at least more fun to be acceptable.

ATM paladin tanking is very very bland and non-exciting.

An ability like holy wrath is extremely fun when you can use it. Seeing holy bolts of light pewpew your enemies and stun them is fun.

69696969 rotation is not.

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Good post. Still if paladins were to be 'balanced' I'm pretty sure they would have to make paladin mechanics at least more fun to be acceptable.

ATM paladin tanking is very very bland and non-exciting.

An ability like holy wrath is extremely fun when you can use it. Seeing holy bolts of light pewpew your enemies and stun them is fun.

69696969 rotation is not.

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Flavor of the month paladin reporting in here (^^^^). No, paladins need to be balanced so that people like you will go back to what they enjoy playing rather than spewing opinions like this.

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I love tanking as a paladin, but I do what is best at the moment rather than using a macro or blindly doing 969 regardless of the situation.

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969 isn't used in all situations but really. When you do change your rotation its not very exciting.

AoE = Consecrate first priorty followed by HotR and HS.

Burst = Judge > close gap > SHoR > HotR

Movement fights = drop consecrate and 969 as normal while weaving in AS in conc spot if possible

Once you have mastered those there really isn't much you can do to improve as a paladin tank.

Using hands effectively is fun and I'd like to see more things like that added to the paladin class.

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Are you kidding? Not an advantage in all situations?

Are you aware of how much DPS a rogues loses doing expose?

Are you aware of how much DPS a hunter loses specing for sunder?

The only spec that can adequately sunder without completely gimping themselves is a fury warrior, and even then its still a fairly large dps loss.

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you are wrong.

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Are you kidding? Not an advantage in all situations?

Are you aware of how much DPS a rogues loses doing expose?

Are you aware of how much DPS a hunter loses specing for sunder?

The only spec that can adequately sunder without completely gimping themselves is a fury warrior, and even then its still a fairly large dps loss.

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Most raiders know that you spec for the raid, not yourself. I feel bad for your guild if you do raid.

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Assuming I'm understanding you correctly, we don't balance tank survivability around utility abilities like say Cleanse or Death Grip. We try to make sure all the classes have a certain number of those. We do balance survivability around cooldowns that affect survivability. My recent caution to not over-interpret effective health was that A) cooldowns matter, and B) it's difficult to quantify those cooldowns as part of EH. (Avoidance matters too. You may not gear for it, but it matters and you'd notice it if it was gone.)

I totally agree about the context part as well. I try and say often that the encounter is everything. Most of the time when players are posting from the point of view of who is the best tank or whether a certain tank is a liability to the raid, what they really mean is "on Sartharion +3, Mimiron hard, Vezax hard, Gormok hard or Anub'arak hard" because those are the most challenging encounters in which to keep a tank alive.

If Sindragosa is the hardest boss in Icecrown, and if she does a ton of magical damage, and if Unholy death knights have a much easier time tanking her because of this, then you'd see a lot of arguments over magical mitigation and cooldowns.

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How are you going to work around "Unhittable" Warriors who tanked all four adds for Heroic Anub? Yeah, 20% is a pretty high avoidance hit, but what's to stop tanks from going the "unhittable" route with "lower" boss damage/hit?

Maybe I'm seeing a problem that isn't there, but to me, lowering avoidance for two tanks (and not touching Block for two others), seems to me that the Block tanks could (in theory) have a big EH (heh heh) advantage over Druids and DK's, if they go "unhittable".

Warrior Shield Block is an amazing ability, especially in the context of Anub Heroic with how fast those four adds attack. What's equally amazing is the fact that SBV can get *that* high. And assuming bosses don't swing 16x per second, it will make Paladins with that kind of gear nearly as powerful. Though I further suspect that boss damage won't be lowered all that much (maybe stay what it is now in TotGC?). :P

Just thinking out loud here. :P

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Assuming I'm understanding you correctly, we don't balance tank survivability around utility abilities like say Cleanse or Death Grip. We try to make sure all the classes have a certain number of those. We do balance survivability around cooldowns that affect survivability. My recent caution to not over-interpret effective health was that A) cooldowns matter, and B) it's difficult to quantify those cooldowns as part of EH. (Avoidance matters too. You may not gear for it, but it matters and you'd notice it if it was gone.)

I totally agree about the context part as well. I try and say often that the encounter is everything. Most of the time when players are posting from the point of view of who is the best tank or whether a certain tank is a liability to the raid, what they really mean is "on Sartharion +3, Mimiron hard, Vezax hard, Gormok hard or Anub'arak hard" because those are the most challenging encounters in which to keep a tank alive.

If Sindragosa is the hardest boss in Icecrown, and if she does a ton of magical damage, and if Unholy death knights have a much easier time tanking her because of this, then you'd see a lot of arguments over magical mitigation and cooldowns.

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However, (I assume you read my post), I believe (assuming my math was right) that there are tanks that are more favorable across the board (mitigation, avoidance, and total health).

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Assuming I'm understanding you correctly, we don't balance tank survivability around utility abilities like say Cleanse or Death Grip. We try to make sure all the classes have a certain number of those. We do balance survivability around cooldowns that affect survivability. My recent caution to not over-interpret effective health was that A) cooldowns matter, and B) it's difficult to quantify those cooldowns as part of EH. (Avoidance matters too. You may not gear for it, but it matters and you'd notice it if it was gone.)

I totally agree about the context part as well. I try and say often that the encounter is everything. Most of the time when players are posting from the point of view of who is the best tank or whether a certain tank is a liability to the raid, what they really mean is "on Sartharion +3, Mimiron hard, Vezax hard, Gormok hard or Anub'arak hard" because those are the most challenging encounters in which to keep a tank alive.

If Sindragosa is the hardest boss in Icecrown, and if she does a ton of magical damage, and if Unholy death knights have a much easier time tanking her because of this, then you'd see a lot of arguments over magical mitigation and cooldowns.

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So if that is how you balance how do you justify paladin>warrior in avoidence, cooldowns and effective health?