The sweet vengeance

[Worldie]

Disclaimer: this is a "racist" post. No i'm not calling anyone nigga, but this topic is a little way to get my tankadin frustration out.

Once there was TBC.
And there were Prot paladins.

We have been pointed by everyone at the start, as the loltanks. We have fought (is it written like this? <.<) our way against all the racism and discrimination.
We had less HP, less threat, no panic buttons. All we had were flashing lights, Lay on Hands, and a fucking bubble.
Yea our Divine Shield, which was the damnation of all the paladins, not only Protection ones. We couldn't get any boost, because "we could become immune to all damages for 12 seconds!"... yea, with Mass Dispell , and half of bosses mechanic that ignored the bubble.
2.3 came, we got more stamina, we still lacked everything else, and warriors eventually got more threat from the expertise introduction.
Zul Aman came as well, the very first istance which abused of the prot paladin mechanic.
2.4 came as well, with Sunwell, a good place for us...

Still, what are we at the end of TBC? Even if many of us managed to get a spot in a proper guild, and eventually some of us are main tanks, or officers, or whatever in them, still loads of paladins face the "Paladins are offtanks". Too many mechanics that don't favour us, and when there's a mechanic that favours us, it's a "gimmick" or can be done by a holy paladin with prot gear.

Now... there is WotLK (beta, still wotlk).
I've been trolling warrior forums for a bit.
And i can say i'm quite amused from what i read.

What have paladin got in wotlk?

We got shield slam. No, we got a revised, and better version of shield slam. Our Shield of Righteous scales better than shield slam, and generates more threat.
We got eventually a second single-target threat skill, like Swipe, with high threat component.
We got the gear synergy we always wanted: finally we don't need to stack over nine thousand stats.
Our Holy Shield was boosted, and finally with the CD not overlapping with the duration.
We got our panic button: it's not as good as Shield Wall, but Lay on Hands is good as well to have. We also have a raid-wide panic button (!), which is superior to shield wall.
We got the so loved Thunder Clap, so noone will again say that we take more damage cause we lack it, and eventually DPS warriors will not be anymore penalyzed if we tank... no, we actually got a raidwide DPS increase when we tank, due to OUR 3% crit, and Rogue's Improved Expose armor.

What did warriors get?
They got a couple of aoe skills, which are still far from Consecration, and reduction in the CD of challenging shout.
They got Shield block nerfed, and they lost the "every hit is blocked", thus losing mitigation against us.
They got a ... wait, Offtank skill? 5% more dodge to another tank, with a few less threat in change? sure!. And, a semi shield wall every 30 seconds for 6 seconds? SURE.
But they got Shield Wall and Last Stand... hey, anyone see the shield wall like... our bubble? Their curse... as long as they got it, that counts for everything they don't have... If they want more mitigation... heh but you have shield wall, makes up for it!


QQ? yes, but this time it's not us.

Will WotLK be the era of the Protection Paladins? Maybe
Are the warriors (clueless ones, mostly) QQing heavy? Yes

I always wanted tank equality... still... i like the idea to be, for once, the Main Tank, where all the scrub with rage are the "lol warriors can't tank".

It's still all beta, and maybe at the end we will suck as much as we did at the start of TBC... but well, dreaming is cool, right?

[moduspwnens]

Hmmm. I agree with this.

[Sabindeus]

you bigot.






>_>

[moduspwnens]

Just don't get too excited... as you said, it is still in beta.

[Worldie]

Yea, but as i said, dreaming is cool.

[PsiVen]

The druid tanks who played TBC beta are snickering right now

I don't think things are as slanted as you're implying here though. Warriors already had these active tanking abilities, and their threat just went through the roof too. There's room for compromise though if things get out of hand: I will be perfectly happy if they give warriors and druids more AoE tanking buffs, for example.

[moduspwnens]

I thought about starting a thread about Druid tanks, because the current mechanics, with crushing blows removed, favor Druid tanks for mitigation. However, realistically, there's not much to discuss until we see how much armor druids are getting for gear.

[Worldie]

I know that their threat is fine as well.

But the clueless mass.... they don't.

[PsiVen]

I thought about starting a thread about Druid tanks, because the current mechanics, with crushing blows removed, favor Druid tanks for mitigation. However, realistically, there's not much to discuss until we see how much armor druids are getting for gear.

Well, we can think about it as a TBC analogue:

For example in Sunwell I have a little under 70% armor mitigation with Ironshields+AF/Insp up, which on important mitigation fights is usually at very high uptime. Hence a druid takes about 15% less damage which is compared against 10% + Shield Block + passive ~30% block for warriors and 6% + block every single hit for paladins. This is at the extreme endgame level and seems fairly balanced; at the other extreme of raiding gear druids tend to have to have either lower avoidance or lower health to go with their far superior armor.

If it rolls out like TBC I think it will be very well balanced, though I can't speak for DKs who I know little about.

[Mavrix]

In the end, we should all be hoping for a stable level of equality and equivalent raid utility for the 4 tank classes. Otherwise, someone's going to get nerfed . . . and as was pointed out, Druids got hit the last time and it took them quite a while to get buffed back up.

[Mordinm]

If it rolls out like TBC I think it will be very well balanced, though I can't speak for DKs who I know little about.

I remember Druids when TBC rolled out, a feral being my first 70. From the 2.0 patch to present they cut our threat by a little more then half. Tier 4 and 5 were complete crap with no extra armor. Best in slot for legs and belt were quest reward greens. Best trinkets in the game were both from the old world. Especially in tanking it comes down to gear, which is why blizzards "consolidation" of tanking gear worries me. They've done very badly at itemizing in the past and tend to be agonizingly slow to correct their errors.

[Coristad]

I can't help but feel that we are being set up by Blizzard .... to be the main tank of choice. Bear with me for a minute.

We all know that both tanking and healing are fairly thankless jobs, which is why both roles tend towards burnout. Both are also essential. I wonder if what is going on is a move towards reducing the number of both required for a raid to function, which allows more people to play lolDPS, which is "more fun".

For example, Ret pallys are also going to be able to heal melee. We don't know if it's significant or not yet, but that's more healing than you had before. Pallies can bubble and now soak a massive amount of raid damage. Maybe if you were planning to run 10 mans with 2 tanks and 3 healers, you could now do it with 1 tank and 2 healers, and I think that Blizz wants that one tank to be us.

I just can't help but think "be careful what you wish for"...

[Coristad]

double post ftl

[AutomaticZen]

Give me mana on Block/Dodge/Parry or give me death!

[Vanifae]

I don't get it.