http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677352541&sid=1

Heh, after all the "We don't want it". Oh well, it does keep in line with what they wanted, for us to take smoother damage. The real interesting question is, was it inevitable and for a fun discussion, what do you think they could've done to prevent it?

Some points that have been made.

1. They're still looking in to the effect on Rune Strike.
2. They haven't commented on Revenge.
3. This will NOT affect DR in any way shape or form. GC has flat said it's after DR.
4. This does NOT affect bears worse than other tanks. If anything, it's better for them.

I love the term Icewell.

I declare this the official discussion thread for Icewell Radiance.

I love that they don't like tanks with spiky damage intakes.


...warriors say lolwut?

It's the official admission that their WoTLK tank scaling algorithms failed.

Better this than 2-shotting bosses.

I'm not really surprised given how high we all started in terms of Avoidance and the overscaling of gear beyond what they originally planned.

Similar oversight to the Druid scaling in TBC with epic gems and tons of gems slots except this time it pretty much applies to all tanks, even Druids with the lowest Avoidance scores.

/shrug

Does this mean more healer regen nerfs? Or is that going to be dealt with in the hardmode encounter side of the design?

I thought it was fairly catchy albeit pretty easy to come up with :)

P.S. Well I think it was fairly obvious it was going to happen again. Our avoidance levels are once again up near where they were in Sunwell. The concept of the "OMG don't gib me bro" boss was getting old for the 25'ers. I admit though in 10s it doesn't seem quite as prevalent but there are still some pucker your cheeks bosses even in 10s.

As a side note, this makes the 4pc T10 Pally bonus more interesting.

Id rather them just take 20% dodge and some parry from all tanks right now while buffing all stam on tank items by X or something.

My favorite part about that post is this:

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Q u o t e:
The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more "spiky" than is healthy for raiding

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To me that really feels like they're taking a tone of, "it's the players fault things are like this." In addition the post goes on to say, "we've done everything we could, but we just had to re-implement Sunwell Radiance." Not once do they say, "we messed up, here's how we're fixing it."

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Q u o t e:
My favorite part about that post is this:



To me that really feels like they're taking a tone of, "it's the players fault things are like this." In addition the post goes on to say, "we've done everything we could, but we just had to re-implement Sunwell Radiance." Not once do they say, "we messed up, here's how we're fixing it."

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They've actually said what they did wrong many times. What GC is saying in this thread right now has been said in the past on these boards many times. Specially on the Healer board.

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Q u o t e:
Our original estimations for tank avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the expansion.

The Cataclysm design will keep tank avoidance at more manageable levels. The loss of defense skill counts for a lot right there. We are also considering giving bosses expertise or other ways of baking in Icewell Radiance -- basically the concept that bosses scale with gear rather than just hitting harder and taking more hits.

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One question Ghost, doesn't this avoidance nerf increase the need for effective health balance, more than ever? If tanks are expecting to be hit a majority (~65%)of the time as opposed to the current ~45%, then it would seem logical that tanks who can take the hits more easily would have an even larger advantage, yes?

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Q u o t e:
Our original estimations for tank avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the expansion.

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That's a lame excuse.

Why didn't you just make sure that the higher-level gear did not have more avoidance than was originally intended, but increased other stats (threat/stamina/bonus armor) instead?

Out of curiosity, what will happen for tanks who have less than 20% dodge? Is it in our best interests as tanks who have parry and block to drop all the dodge we can (including talents and such?) to get well below 20% dodge base and try to up our other avoidances?

On a side note, I love the idea of making healing less about spamming buttons and I love not dying in two hits; this of these questions more of a devil's advocate of how we might game the system, not something I might actually do.

Will this be an overall nerf to tank survivability, or will it be compensated for in boss swing damage?

So which tank class is this going to hurt the most and which class should comparatively benefit the most?

Eh, I could sort of see this coming. Unfortunate, though. When a lot of tanks could hit 60% avoidance in BiS Ulduar gear, I think a lot of us knew it was a problem. 60% was a good thing for BT back in BC, so to have it in a mid-tier raid was too much.

It's actually pretty equal, it's a 20% avoidance nerf across the board. It /will/ make hitting the 102.4% avoidance/block mark for paladins a choice rather than almost required though.