Sanc, Kings and Balance to other tanks - read carefully

[majorwoo]

I am aware of the countless threads out there, I'm not looking to rehash it all. What I am looking for, is a specific subset of the questions raised by the entire debate, which to my knowledge the answers are not as clear as I would like.

I don't want to talk about is kings better then sanc, what I do want to understand is are we balanced compared to other tanks around the idea that we have sanctuary on ourselves (Things like natural reaction and the warrior version which I forget would seem to indicate this). There are obviously many factors involved in this, so I'm looking for informed opinions here - do you think we are, and have you seen anything in blue regarding this.

[Jasari]

No, we're not balanced around the idea that we'll have sanc on us and warriors won't.

[Splug]

Unfortunately, that question is very opinionative in nature. Here's what I understand of the situation:

*Mitigation values are balanced assuming no buffs or debuffs are present from any class, including their own.
*All tanks have a resource system which is self-perpetuated and sufficient on progression-level encounters.
*All tanks suffer from resource starvation when they outgear an encounter without sanctuary.
*Blessing of Sanctuary extends how much equipment you can exceed the encounter by before falling into the second category from the first.
*Warriors, death knights, and druids also benefit from sanctuary on encounters they do not overgear, due to increasing the number of mauls or rune/heroic strikes. The rage/RP that would normally be completely excessive for the rotation can be shunted off into on-next-attack skills; paladins having excessive mana just makes things more consistent, but does not allow the overkill mana from the normal rotation to do anything directly.

Also, the warrior version of sanctuary (stalwart protector) was moved to the arms tree, and then taken out entirely. So there isn't anything comparable for prot warriors.

-Splug

[2ndNin]

Mitigation and threat are balanced around 25 man instances.

25 man instances assume all buffs are present.

In a 10 man, with a non ideal setup, or a 5 man there will be differences in tanks, this is unavoidable without 100% homogenisation.

In a 5 man, your Paladin tank gets 12%/18% DR, Druids 12%/12% DR, Warriors 10%/16% DR.

Kings > Sanc for progression content (if you are going oom you over gear it). Sanc > Kings for farm content. Sanc + Kings > either / neither.

For Warriors, Sanctuary is awesome (100% HS uptime often)
For Druids, Sanctuary is nice (higher rage gains normally)
For Death Knights, Sanctuary is a bonus but their resource system is cooldown based typically
For Paladins, Sanctuary is kindof lackluster in non-aoe situations, and awesome in aoe situations

The resource return on Sanctuary is likely imbalanced, and should be removed to each class separately and tuned, with Sanctuary providing another benefit (or perhaps: Sanctified Kings...)

[Fridmarr]

In thread that announced the damage reduction to shield of the templar, GC kind of mentioned this.

We do test with and without Blessing of Sanctuary, and with and without lots of other raid buffs. It is a big puzzle with a lot of variables.

We like Blessing of Sanctuary as a buff you can put on anyone. However, we might do something like let it benefit the paladin more than other targets. (Self buffing gives a better result than buffing someone else.) Or we might just add more paladin mitigation somewhere else in the tree. That all assumes you are deficient. If 2-5% makes a big difference for you (I don't think it will make that much of a difference, but for sake of argument), then buffing paladins 2-5% when they didn't need it could also make the other tanks non-starters. We'll keep testing it.

Then his next post was...

Okay, here is one change you don't have.

Shield of the Templar now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%.

That leaves a lot open to interpretation maybe they weren't considering sanctuary the way we do, or maybe his data already had the Shield of the Templar change which is why our data didn't match. As an aside, I think it's clear he's going to have to quit making the argument that "the difference doesn't matter." It's a big catch 22 because if it doesn't matter, then it won't hurt to fix it either. It hit him in that thread and I think it got them when they kept saying our health deficit wouldn't matter, right after they nerfed a similar sized health surplus. Now it seems they are looking at increasing it a little again.

Link for Reference: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/5/10532280 ... tions.html

[Mortehl]

Paladins are terrible tanks. We're the worst of all of them. We can't tank anything and our skills are horrible.

Oh, hold on.

/afk for Kel'Thezod kill shot. They want the me as the MT in the middle.

Anyway, that was a jackass statement.

I've done Naxx on live and all the content on beta. We held our own fine through -all- content. The Maexanna was a problem for me on beta, but I eventually figured out how to handle it.

[Fridmarr]

Paladins are terrible tanks. We're the worst of all of them. We can't tank anything and our skills are horrible.

Oh, hold on.

/afk for Kel'Thezod kill shot. They want the me as the MT in the middle.

Anyway, that was a jackass statement.

I've done Naxx on live and all the content on beta. We held our own fine through -all- content. The Maexanna was a problem for me on beta, but I eventually figured out how to handle it.

Umm, I'm trying to figure out who you are replying too and I can't. Did you post this in the wrong thread?