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Q u o t e:

fine, how about if you spec tanking, it deletes your paladin healing tree and all your healing abilities

if you spec resto, it deletes your feral tree and you can't bearform

sounds fair, right?

and by delete i mean it's gone forever. reroll your char if you want to change

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Cool. Do we get two other DPS/tanking trees to choose from afterwards? I mean, I'd love to get rid of my resto/balance tree if it meant I could go for the DW tanking tree or the DW DPS tree for ferals. That'd be awesome.

Make it so, blizzard! You know, because it's not balanced that warriors get two ways to do melee DPS and ferals only get one. And it's REALLY unfair that DKs have THREE different ways to tank, whereas druids only have one.

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Q u o t e:
This is a total slap in the face! I can't believe that blizz allows this to continue...
I have been a warrior since vanilla and this outrage cannot continue!!!!1!11!
i mean, 4+ years without a single healing buff blizz??? srsly?
Paladins are totally taking my raid spot for heals now. What's next? tanking???


edit: too much?

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Actually due to the last patch paladins are the preferred tank all pugs and most guild raids because of superior single target and aoe threat not to mention much more survivability the reason you do not see it in the major guilds is because they are much more reluctant to replace there seasoned veteran tanks in the progression content.

Paladins now also do equal damage with a warrior and have less damage spiking due to a much steadier supply of resources and so many instant abilities.

And lets not forget the buffs bubbles and steady supply of heals even from the dps spec through Art of war procs for Flash of light or the grand daddy of all heals Lay on hands Judgment of light and Divine storm

Believe me man I rerolled a paladin from a warrior a while back the only reason she is not my main is because I am waiting for the loot pinata of emblems of triumph dropping in heroics so I can get geared enough to toss her into the same content my warrior already does.

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Q u o t e:


exactly. being different is good. being balanced is good. those are not mutually exclusive categories.

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A class can be both different and balanced according to the definition of balanced. Your definition of balanced however, is not the same as GC's or the rest of Blizzard's, not right now anyway.

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Q u o t e:

if you like how a priest plays, you get the added benefit of being a better healer than a druid. if you like how a druid plays, you get the added benefit of being able to spec as a tank if you want. i don't see your point here

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How does being able to tank have any bearing on my ability to heal? Why bring the healer that is weaker by design just because he can tank, when that isn't why we brought him in the first place? It isn't as if mid-fight you can change to Bear form and be able to taunt and hold aggro sufficiently (or stay alive for that matter) if you are a Tree Druid. Unless I can readily access both methods of play, or all methods of play for that matter, when it counts (ie during a boss or a fight), then right now Blizzard states that unless you are comparing Pure DPS to Hybrid DPS, there will be no differences (by design, practice and implementation are a work in progress) between hybrid roles, regardless of the number of roles available.

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Q u o t e:

"because you enjoy it" is not a balance based reason to why anyone would roll any class. a character could shoot rainbows for 0 damage and entertain a 4yr old playing the game. "daddy i want to shoot mo wainboez!" that doesn't make the class balanced. balance in a game should stand on its own merits, not be propped up by any arguments of how enjoyable that class is to play. apples to oranges.

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Enjoying a class often has little to do with balance as you say, but it is by no means an invalid reason to play a class in any particular role. There are those that have argued that even though Druids may be the most OP of all tanks of all time, we are so boring to play that no one does. Enjoying the game play of a class is just as much as important and deserving of development time as is many other things, balancing included.

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Q u o t e:

no one is going to reroll 100% of their raid to clear one encounter when its been shown that it's completely unnecessary. your hyperbole in this case is not based in reality

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But hyperbole with a small semblance to reality are acceptable? Tonytony, the point of the extreme example is that using your OWN QUESTION "Why bring X over Y?" would apply in a very extreme way on that fight because to not bring a raid full of just those classes, you are probably gimping yourself. However, as you stated very plainly, you don't need to go to such crazy extremes to get the job done or to have fun or to have a balanced game. You bring the Priest healer over the Druid healer because you need Fort/PW:S/External CDs/etc. The fact that the Druid healer can be a tank has ZERO bearing on my choice of grabbing him for a healer slot. None. I couldn't care less if he has a Feral spec or Feral gear or not, he's there to heal, not to DPS or tank. And if he's designed to be specifically inferior by a noticeable degree, then I'm not going to take him at all because I can just get a less hybridized healer to do a better job. That's not balanced and why you think it is is just dumbfounding.

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Q u o t e:


You're talking about differences among the tanking classes. Yes, there are differences. Some of those are going to be bigger factors in some fights than others. But every class can still tank every encounter within a reasonable degree of success than each others.

Your "wide margin of snap threat" might be a big deal for you. For others it's the difference in whether the tank can apply the Demo Shout debuff, or how much mana it takes to heal that class, or whether the damage is spikey or smooth, or whether the class requires a high degree of skill, or how easy it is to gear, and so on. It's not ever going to be identical as long as the classes have different abilities and stats, so our goal is just to get things close enough. "Close enough" is very subjective so it doesn't surprise me that it varies a lot from player to player.

By contrast, if we had followed the BC-style of tank specialization (which we started to do when we first announced the DK), it would be something like this:

Warrior - best single-target tank.
Paladin - best tank for large groups.
Death knight - best tanks for highly magical fights.
Druid - best off tank, since the player can dps with largely the same spec when not needed.

Then even 10-player raids would probably need to keep a stable of all 4 tank classes around and switch people out (or at least flip specs) from encounter to encounter. I know that design is appealing to some players because at least they would get to feel very important for some fraction of the encounters. But it just doesn't work well with our LK philosophy of giving players a lot more flexibility in who they bring to a raid, which we ultimately think is more important. In LK, almost every player with an interest in raiding can manage it. Even if you are interested in cutting-edge raiding, almost every player can manage that too, regardless of spec, with just a couple of exceptions (maybe Arms and Subtlety at the moment). If you want to feel important, my advice is be a dependable player who does yourjob and doesn't cause a ton of drama for your raid. Again too much of the community, IMHO, wants to be important because they bring a mandatory buff or are declared "the best" spec or class in their role.

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Care to give any insight on what raises a red flag of not being "close enough" then? Perhaps some of the posters that are more disgruntled with the current tanking balance would be able to better articulate their arguments to the rest of us if they had more of a glimmer of what it is that catches your attention to nerf this DR over here, or buff this Avoidance over there, or etc etc.

Or are we just going to get a "when it feels not close enough" :P

Is the answer...


"If you can all tank it without any class having a noticeably harder time then that's close enough"


"it" being any given encounter.

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Q u o t e:

You can only perform one role at a time.

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So what there is a role I cannot perform at all

The arugment pures had that blizzard caved in to was
Since class A can only perform 1 role they should be better at it than Class B Who Can perform 2 roles

By that same logic Class B who can only perform 2 roles should be better at least 1 of the roles than Class C

Instead blizzard looks the other way because they are afraid of repeating past mistakes and having all 3 way hybrids shafted back into healing.

Simple fix to ensure that did not happen would be to give each spec a unuiqe buff
(oh noes Bring the player not the class motto fails here)

Though that motto has already failed with paladins due to Sanc/kings judgments and soon to be Divine Sacrifice

I think as long as no class makes it significantly easier (and by that I mean cheesing encounters, hello 1 minute IBF and boss abilities with a 1 minute cooldown) then the differences in tanks are good. Everything the same would be boring. Everyone being within 3k health, 3k armor, exact same threat generation or 5% avoidance of eachother, with a shield wall, a last stand and identical talents would be dull and take away the special feeling of each class. I'm sure they want you to pick the class you enjoy most, probably because of the play style - not pick whichever because they are all the same.

The 'bring the class, not the player' phrase has been interpreted in many different ways. I took it to mean that everyone is close enough that it matters not who you bring. Some people are taking it to mean that every class is identical - when that is not the case and it would not be fun if it were.

I think they've been successful with that philosophy. Every tank can tank every encounter. There are some that have the slight edge on some encounters - so what? That's flavour.

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Q u o t e:
I think as long as no class makes it significantly easier (and by that I mean cheesing encounters, hello 1 minute IBF and boss abilities with a 1 minute cooldown) then the differences in tanks are good. Everything the same would be boring. Everyone being within 3k health, 3k armor, exact same threat generation or 5% avoidance of eachother, with a shield wall, a last stand and identical talents would be dull and take away the special feeling of each class. I'm sure they want you to pick the class you enjoy most, probably because of the play style - not pick whichever because they are all the same.

The 'bring the class, not the player' phrase has been interpreted in many different ways. I took it to mean that everyone is close enough that it matters not who you bring. Some people are taking it to mean that every class is identical - when that is not the case and it would not be fun if it were.

I think they've been successful with that philosophy. Every tank can tank every encounter. There are some that have the slight edge on some encounters - so what? That's flavour.

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That's stupid flavor.

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Q u o t e:
Tell me how many healers a 10 man has, and how many tanks does it have? Once again, this makes no sense, and healers really need some more homogenization, or are you just ignoring the fact that a lot of people see Druids as the best healer right now because of their ability to HoT the whole raid and/or heal a tank?

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Your average 10-man will probably have three healers and two tanks.

You can go with two healers, but you're going to cut it close unless you're outgearing the content in question.

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Q u o t e:


That's stupid flavor.

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Why is it stupid? If all tanks were exactly identical, that would be stupid. However, all tanks have fights they shine on, and all can do every encounter fine. The tanking 'balance' is closer than it has ever been before and that is a good thing.

That's not to say some issues shouldn't be addressed, but said issues (particularly block) have been acknowledged and will be looked at probably for next expansion.


e: spelling

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Q u o t e:

Tell me how many healers a 10 man has, and how many tanks does it have? Once again, this makes no sense, and healers really need some more homogenization, or are you just ignoring the fact that a lot of people see Druids as the best healer right now because of their ability to HoT the whole raid and/or heal a tank?

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Because PW:S on the whole raid while a Paladin can solo heal two tanks with Beacon is totally unheard of? Average 10man raids are 2-3 Healers depending on the fights in question and the healers you have access to.

Shaman make excellent healers but they operate very different from the way a Druid or a Priest will heal up the raid. For most fights it is pretty negligible in difference because all you care about is that people don't die. On a fight like Anub though, the mechanics there are so specific and the fight itself is so tightly tuned that a Shaman dropping a bomb Chain Heal on low people during Swarm is far less appealing than a Priest refreshing PW:S.

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Q u o t e:


You're talking about differences among the tanking classes. Yes, there are differences. Some of those are going to be bigger factors in some fights than others. But every class can still tank every encounter within a reasonable degree of success than each others.

Your "wide margin of snap threat" might be a big deal for you. For others it's the difference in whether the tank can apply the Demo Shout debuff, or how much mana it takes to heal that class, or whether the damage is spikey or smooth, or whether the class requires a high degree of skill, or how easy it is to gear, and so on. It's not ever going to be identical as long as the classes have different abilities and stats, so our goal is just to get things close enough. "Close enough" is very subjective so it doesn't surprise me that it varies a lot from player to player.

By contrast, if we had followed the BC-style of tank specialization (which we started to do when we first announced the DK), it would be something like this:

Warrior - best single-target tank.
Paladin - best tank for large groups.
Death knight - best tanks for highly magical fights.
Druid - best off tank, since the player can dps with largely the same spec when not needed.

Then even 10-player raids would probably need to keep a stable of all 4 tank classes around and switch people out (or at least flip specs) from encounter to encounter. I know that design is appealing to some players because at least they would get to feel very important for some fraction of the encounters. But it just doesn't work well with our LK philosophy of giving players a lot more flexibility in who they bring to a raid, which we ultimately think is more important. In LK, almost every player with an interest in raiding can manage it. Even if you are interested in cutting-edge raiding, almost every player can manage that too, regardless of spec, with just a couple of exceptions (maybe Arms and Subtlety at the moment). If you want to feel important, my advice is be a dependable player who does yourjob and doesn't cause a ton of drama for your raid. Again too much of the community, IMHO, wants to be important because they bring a mandatory buff or are declared "the best" spec or class in their role.

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You know you could of just kept that philosophy and made the gap between specializations small enough so that all could do the job yet large enough the raid would notice the difference.

With dual spec keeping a tank of every class in the raid should not be a real issue specially considering all but 1 of the melee classes is a hybrid it would of also helped to ensure there was a proper mixture of melee vs ranged in the raid not to mention no class would consistently get left behind.

Should also consider the next hybrid class to be healer/tank only I know not having a dps tree would be hell to level but I am sure a Masochist like myself would role one.

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Q u o t e:

Your average 10-man will probably have three healers and two tanks.

You can go with two healers, but you're going to cut it close unless you're outgearing the content in question.

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Its more about how bad your DPS is compared to your healer's skill.

When you say druids need a dps nerf you should probably put that as two categories because it's pretty clear your talking about feral dps and not caster dps.

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Q u o t e:
Why, this makes so much sense with the made up rules and numbers.

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Q u o t e:
When you say druids need a dps nerf you should probably put that as two categories because it's pretty clear your talking about feral dps and not caster dps.

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Stating druids have specs for both ranged and melee dps is probably not a good idea in this thread considering it is already full of people complaining you have more options than them yet are willing to overlook that Feral allows you to perform 2 roles all by itself.