Tank Threat - How Important should it be?

[Tev]

Just noticed a big blue post recently by GC on tank threat (sorry, I don't have a direct link available, but you can view it on MMO champions). This made me curious as to what peoples opinions are regarding threat... So;

[Tev]

Ok, I got that link, sorry for the delay.

Ghostcrawler Battle.net Blog Post

[lythac]

Threat should be important but not to the point it discourages players from tanking.

Reading in another thread it seems that 2 main tanks are needed for 25 man raids and 1 for a few bosses. Threat cannot so tight that the 3rd tank who might become a tier behind on gear (being DPS main spec) is unable to hold threat. This causes threat to be a non issue for equally geared tanks/DPS if the tank is playing correctly.

It should be an issue for an average, undergeared tank compared to a well played, geared DPS.


I almost wish Vengeance had different stacking mechanics/limit for Normal mode and Heroic raids, so threat is easier in Normal modes enabling everyone to get to play and see content and also giving the better tanks a challenge and choices to make between threat stats/mitigation.

[Tev]

To be honest, I don't care for venegence at all. It feels like a hastily thought out band aid fix to the problem.

The Problem - Tank Threat Scaling

Why is it a problem? - DPS out scale tank threat due to tank focus on non DPS stats.

Solution? - Have tank threat scale on tank stats and mechanics.

At least that is what they had for a while with gaining dps stats from things like Stam for pallies and Armor for warriors. To me I cannot understand why they changed from this line of thinking (that worked!) other than they wanted change for the sake of change.

I think part of my personal problem with the whole thing is that threat plays too big of a part in design... no DPS wants to hold back or sit down, it's not fun. Instead of forcing people to hold back, they need to re evaluate the encounter design. If the encounter designers don't want dps spending 100% time dpsing the boss, then give them a reason not to, i.e. something else to kill or do (like running for their life). If DPS have to start throttling (for reasons other than mana), simply because the mechanics of the game dont allow the tank to establish enough threat, well.... where is the fun?

It becomes frustrating for the tank, frustrating for the dps, patience will wane, and everyone will run to the boards to vent.

[Sabindeus]

At least that is what they had for a while with gaining dps stats from things like Stam for pallies and Armor for warriors. To me I cannot understand why they changed from this line of thinking (that worked!) other than they wanted change for the sake of change.

Because they didn't want tanks to have tons of AP from Stamina or other tank stats while not actually tanking.

[theckhd]

I read this post last night, and came to the conclusion that Ghostcrawler has no idea what threat is like in current raids.

• If threat is supposed to matter, why is it completely irrelevant in raid encounters right now?
• What leads you to believe that Vengeance, as currently implemented, is an appropriate fix, given that it's the sole reason that threat is irrelevant in raid encounters and "more difficult" (but still relatively trivial) in 5-man instances?
• What leads you to believe that a mechanic that causes DPS swings in excess of 200% is a "good" mechanic?

As much as I hate to say it, they just ought to either:

1. nerf Vengeance to 2-3% of our hit points instead of 10%. I can already hold aggro in heroics with no Vengeance stacks at all. It only takes about a 30% Vengeance stack (3% max health) for me to have a healthy threat lead over my DPS in raid encounters. By the time I get a full stack, I often have more threat than the top 3 or 4 DPS combined, and I'm still generating threat 2-3x faster than they are.
   
   At 10% of hit points, Vengeance is giving around 15-20k Attack Power depending on buffed health and gear level, while our base AP is around 10-12k. That's just too huge of a swing to be properly balanced between heroic 5-mans and raids. If it were 2-3%, it would give 3k-5k AP, which would still be more than enough to maintain a comfortable threat lead and use utility/healing abilities as necessary.
   
   The issue, of course, is one of scaling though. 3% might not be enough to keep us ahead of the DPS, while 10% would. However, in that case, they should...
   
2. Set a minimum health value for Vengeance, and only give 10% AP for health above that value. As it stands now, it seems like they're balancing Vengeance for the final tier of this expansion. That means that up until that last instance, threat will continue to be irrelevant for tanks. It's a shame if that's intentional, but there's no evidence to the contrary at this point.
   
   If instead, Vengeance gave 1 AP for every 10 hit points over 150k, then we'd currently be getting around 1k AP from Vengeance, and our DPS wouldn't fluctuate as significantly with Vengeance. Tune threat modifiers, DPS, and the HP->AP conversion appropriately so that we're able to hold threat right now, and as the expansion goes on we should scale exactly the same way a DPS would. That way threat is never irrelevant, and we would actually have to consider balancing threat stats and defensive stats rather than ignoring threat stats entirely for the first 3 patches of the expansion.

[Sabindeus]

Well theck he definitely said it might need some tweaking. I think they're waiting for more data from current raids before they change it. I think a healthy nerf to the cap would be appropriate as you said in option 1.

[Dantriges]

Well we currently are dumping threat into survival via WoG. If selfhealing is part of our intended survival kit, via dumping holy power into WoG they can´t tune threat tighter for us.

And we have to see what happens in the following tiers. pala threat was insane during Naxx, we could take a coffe break and hold threat. It´s a good question what happens when DPS have better stats than they have now.

And, well vengeance is a stupid mechanic.

[Worldie]

Well the main problem is that currently i tank with Seal of Insight (glyphed), spam Word of Glory (glyphed) every 3 HP, and still am generating 2-3 times more threat than our best DPS.
Being able to trade threat output for survivability is a good thing, but being allowed to completely ignore TPS in favour of surivabilty is bad design in my opinion.

[Tev]

Because they didn't want tanks to have tons of AP from Stamina or other tank stats while not actually tanking.

And that is because, as I understand it, of PvP. Because venegence is dispellable it (and I use the term loosely) "works". The problem is venegence doesn't work, the current tuning for it works so that either it on par for instances, really good in heorics, but overpowered in raids, or par for raids, weak in heroics, and useless in instances. It's not just the amount of ap it gives that is the issue, but the stacking rate that'll make it a nightmare to properly adjust. It's like trying to balance a steel bearing on the head of a needle.

It seems they took out complex calultaion mechanics (ArP) from the players and gave them to themselves instead.

[Sabindeus]

Because they didn't want tanks to have tons of AP from Stamina or other tank stats while not actually tanking.

And that is because, as I understand it, of PvP. Because venegence is dispellable it (and I use the term loosely) "works". The problem is venegence doesn't work, the current tuning for it works so that either it on par for instances, really good in heorics, but overpowered in raids, or par for raids, weak in heroics, and useless in instances. It's not just the amount of ap it gives that is the issue, but the stacking rate that'll make it a nightmare to properly adjust. It's like trying to balance a steel bearing on the head of a needle.

It seems they took out complex calultaion mechanics (ArP) from the players and gave them to themselves instead.

No it's also because of PvE. They didn't want the correct DPS spec to be Prot wearing DPS gear.

[Kelaan]

I wish that vengeance lasted longer. It'd be fine if, after the first couple of pulls in a dungeon (or by the time you got to a boss) the stack had not completely fallen off. If they think the average vengeance is too high, they could make it grow more slowly, or cap at a smaller amount.

In general, I like the idea. I think we'll see its value more once people are in gear with DPS bonuses (T11) whereas we're in gear with survival bonuses.

[fudomyou]

The decay speed has been a big source of annoyance for me, too. I'll pull a group from judgement range right at the end of a pull as long as the healer mana's okay and CC set up, and while the mob is walking 30 yards I lose 2000 AP. It's just far, far too swingy at the moment. It's also annoying to blow a cooldown with a disc priest and 5 seconds later I'll have no Vengeance at all.

[Xequecal]

Threat should be easy. Having threat be "hard" causes significant problems, mainly:

1. The entire raid is "skill-capped" at the level of the main tank. Any DPS that are better players than the main tank see that skill go to waste because they hit the aggro ceiling.

2. The entire raid's DPS is dependent on the MT's gear, so he must be defaulted everything. Yeah, that's drama no guild needs.