I've been meaning to write a post about tanks in Mists of Pandaria for some time now. With all the changes that have happened since Cataclysm to now (Vengeance, active mitigation, etc) tanking has become a very different experience all together. It's still the part of the game I love the most. I've done a little dps in Cata and in MoP as well, which is fun, but my heart just isn't in damage dealing. I find myself always putting survivability first, for myself and others, picking specific talents just to help mitigate damage to me or the raid. But really how much has it changed from say the Wrath model?
Reminiscing Time!
Well, and I've probably pointed this out before, I played a protection warrior during Wrath of the Lich King until the last few months of the expansion when I switched to my death knight. Warrior tanks back then had a pretty rough playstyle, at least in terms of managing threat. See, vengeance didn't exist back then and there was no such 5x threat modifier from any stance or presence. As a warrior, I most definitely had to work for threat. I'm sure a lot of people remember that time. I'd charge in, Thunder Clap, move the mobs after they collapsed on me, use Shockwave to stun them and gain a decent amount threat and then start target cycling. Man, that was a fun time. Shield Slam one target, Thunder Clap, tab to the next, Devastate, Shield Slam, tab again, repeat until dead. Possibly have to taunt mobs back. Keeping track of what I've hit and what I haven't was fun before I started using Threat Plates.
Moving on, Paladins during that time had a much easier job in terms of threat. As I tend to joke, it was basically drop Consecration, go AFK to make a sandwich, come back and everything is dead. For some reason their threat was crazy high for aoe. Warriors did amazing single target threat, but were completely outclassed by pallies. I was able to actually out threat paladin tanks on my warrior when it was just the boss, but that was the only situation.
The Here and Now
Blizzard has done a decent job balancing threat between the tanks. It's still not perfect, but it's no longer as disproportionate as I illustrated above. In the past, tanks struggled to keep threat against high dps classes as gear would increase. Tank damage wouldn't really scale all that much and was quickly eclipsed by the dps. In response, tanks gained a 5x threat modifier to help counter that problem. But even after that it was possible to out threat a tank as a dps. So Vengeance came into play, and it's been pretty amazing. A lot of dps classes complain about it because it can increase the damage of a tank to dps levels and even surpass them on a lot of fights. This is very apparent while leveling in dungeons, but really, 5-mans aren't exactly the measure of balance when it comes to things like that. Nonetheless, this problem occurs less frequently in raids, but it's still present. Tanks can sometimes pull of some crazy high numbers depending on the fight. Wind Lord Mel'jarak and Iron Qon are two decent examples of that.
So now Blizzard is nerfing vengeance to 1.5% of unmitigated damage. I don't see a huge problem to this aside from a pride thing for me. I liked doing enough damage to be competitive with the dps. But damage isn't my primary responsibility, so I'll quickly get over that. A lot of tanks are really upset over this change, which I don't fully understand. The change is being made to reduce the desire to single tank fights that weren't designed to be single tanked. But it is what it is. People will always complain when something is changed. Can't please everyone and all that.
So Vengeance is Great, Right?
There is a particular issue I've had with vengeance for the entirety of this expansion that I don't see a ton of people touching on in forums and such. The issue is that three out of the five tank classes have their active mitigation scaling through attack power. So that means that they become more survivable as they take more damage, as odd as that sounds. Take paladins for instance, all of their self healing and Sacred Shield scale with spell power (which is based off of 50% of AP for protection paladins). This is why we were seeing a protection paladin tanking Wind Lord Mel'jarak solo and not only destroying all the dps on the meters, but also crushing the healers in HPS. A monk's Guard ability also scales through AP. Warrior's Shield Barrier does as well. While Guardian Druids and Blood Death Knights are left in the dust. The only thing they get from vengeance is more damage and threat, which, doesn't even compare to some of the monk's abilities such as Keg Smash. That ability generates a ridiculous amount of threat.
In addition to this issue, I've also noticed some inconsistencies with vengeance. I currently tank alongside a Brewmaster Monk. Our gear levels are very close, around 2 item level difference. Yet he seems to always gain a fairly large amount of vengeance more than I do in normal tank swapping fights. When I trade, I have 70-80k vengeance and when I get him back, the monk has 110-120k. Neither one of us took any crazy spike damage and the duration was pretty much the same. I don't really understand this since vengeance is supposed to be calculated based on unmitigated damage. Unless, of course, it isn't really calculated that way. The only thing really different in terms of our mitigation is the fact that my baseline avoidance is higher, but his can easily surpass mine with Elusive Brew and my armor is obviously higher. But neither of those should factor in if it's truly based on unmitigated damage. It is based on that, right? RIGHT?!
Shanthi and I were discussing tank classes just last night and brought up guardian druids. Neither of us could think of a single one that raids, so I decided to check out their abilities to see why they wouldn't be a desirable for a raid group. It seems like every single one of their abilities is designed to either dodge melee attacks or increase armor. So I'm sure they're good in fights with just physical damage. I mean, there's tons of fights in this game that fit that description. I don't know what Blizzard is doing with them, but right now it seems like they've been mostly ditched for the expansion. I can only hope that they'll get some love in the next expansion.
