GC and the possibility of Hit & Exp being tank stats.

[Mannstein]

<walks past the water cooler overhearing bits and pieces>

"How bout they just tune Vengeance better?"

<continues walking by after having resolved the issue>

Fixed for you

"Even if we made threat really hard to maintain, tanks would probably still just stack survival stats and get frustrated when they lost aggro."- GC
TBH, when i read(and reread, and rereread) GC, what i read is, "if we change one thing and people do the wrong decision they will be frustraded".


/irony
So the question here is, why are we discussing this? why don't go ahead and do 3stats, (sta, -melle damage, -magic damage), and you just had an ability that did damage and prevented damage? that would reduce the frustations...
/end irony

I might be living on the past, but i liked when i had to compromise between threat and survability, when we had to spend more that 3seconds in "reforging"/picking gear.

On a bright side, i'm expecting on a very bad call, that can be resumed to stack X, that will be buffed then nerfed, so i won't be disapointed.

P.S. Shouldn't threat stats matter to i don't know.. Threat?

[Tev]

The real question is what should tanks be focusing on, threat or survival? If survival isn't the focus for a tank, then something is wrong.

[Flex]

Here's a solution. No more dual avoidance armor pieces. Everything will either contain Expertise or Hit.

Solution via itemization!

[mclem]

<walks past the water cooler overhearing bits and pieces>

"How bout they just tune Vengeance better?"

<continues walking by>

I think they want a situation where hit/exp matters in *all* situations. Tuning vengeance better still doesn't work all that well in a fight where you have the opportunity to ramp up threat without competition for a bit while the rest of the raid deals with some other mob.

[Klaudandus]

Here's a solution. No more dual avoidance armor pieces. Everything will either contain Expertise or Hit.

Solution via itemization!

I agree. I even mentioned this earlier in the thread.

[Digren]

I don't mind stacking threat if I have to, but it does complicate gearing in that I have to balance the needs early in the encounter with the needs later. Threat usually only matters for the first minute. Survival is usually least important in that time (relative to the rest of the fight) because I'm guaranteed to start with a full health bar and a shield or two.

So... what I want is for a threat stat to provide threat early in the encounter and provide survival later in the encounter. Maybe something as simple as expertise: "When being attacked by a target with less than 20% health, expertise increases provides a scaling chance to take 25% less damage per hit". Now you can wear some expertise for early threat, and late in the fight you gain some survival benefit from wearing it. The scaling can be set to change at the soft cap and stop at the hard cap, so that those numbers are easy to follow for both uses of the stat. If the soft cap (26 expertise) yielded a 10% chance for a 25% reduction late in the fight, I'd seriously consider it. The hard cap (56 expertise) could be a 20% chance. Most wouldn't go for the hard cap, but that would make expertise slight more than 26 unwasted.

[Dantriges]

Here's a solution. No more dual avoidance armor pieces. Everything will either contain Expertise or Hit.

Solution via itemization!

They have to put a huge amount of hit and expertise on the items so even when we reforge it away, it still matters.

Or diallow reforging for hit and expertise but we aren´t the only ones.

[knaughty]

2) They could make Armor "stackable" again. This was alluded to in GCs post.

Armor makes the melee hit or the physical damage ability from the boss smaller. No effect on magical damage, but for most bosses this can be ignored. Stamina allows you to soak the damage without dying. They're part of the same combination: Ability to live through boss hit.

Under the old itemisation formulas (WotLK) Armor was far more effective that stamina for live through boss hit and had the bonus of always working - no RNG.

Tanks stacked the shit out of it.

It had a secondary bonus that very few WotLK tanks cared about, which was that it reduced damage taken. But since your healers were always at full mana spamming you with heals, this bit didn't matter.

Cata healing mechanics would have made armor even more powerful and every tank would have wanted every single armor piece. Also, Bears would have been very hard to balance.

So Armor got nerfed out the bumhole and no +armor pieces were itemised.

Same reason there's no +stamina pieces. They'd be too valuable.

[knaughty]

Personally, I wouldn't mind (or be surprised) if they eventually went via consolidation path. As Mastery has successfully demonstrated, it is perfectly possible for a single stat to do 30 different things depending on one's spec. It is not unreasonable if other stats could fulfill multiple roles, as well (though perhaps not quite on the same scale).

Mastery is a special case - it's "Awesome Rating" and to my mind the primary damn purpose of the stat is to try and get some gear commonality happing for clothies. Everything else is "Bonus".

Here's a solution. No more dual avoidance armor pieces. Everything will either contain Expertise or Hit.

Solution via itemization!

It's no solution, because tanks aren't choosing to wear hit gear, they're just wearing "tank gear that happens to have hit".

[knaughty]

If threat were to get to levels where dps was actually in danger of pulling, i'd throw on more threat stats. DPS plays just as important a job as a tank, it's just "easier" to do. If we can't pull threat they can't do their job.

The real question is what should tanks be focusing on, threat or survival? If survival isn't the focus for a tank, then something is wrong.

"Even if we made threat really hard to maintain, tanks would probably still just stack survival stats and get frustrated when they lost aggro."- GC

And he's probably right, too.

Of course GC is right. Limiting the discussion to "Progression Content", unless the entire difficulty of the encounter is "beat the enrage timer" tanks are always going to focus on Job One, which is Don't fucking die!

You can get tanks to wear threat sets - I have a vague recollection I wore block-value and threat for Reliquary of Souls - but you have to de-tune the threat of tank death very severely to make very many tanks switch from "job one" to "job two" (hold threat).

Of course, the real issue now is that Vengeance mechanics make threat stats worthless. A Story...

I did Heroic-Atramedes-25 with the 25-man crew in my guild (I'm a semi-retired 10-man raider doing no hard modes under normal circumstances). I have no heroic gear, the DPS have plenty. I have no threat gear, I'm working on "Nef-10-normal" as my current progression target.

I had no threat issues holding aggro off heroic geared DPS pre-potting and blowing CDs. Tricks, MD, Aggro Dumps, OP Fury Warriors get Salvation. By the time that all wears off Vengeance has kicked in and I can hold threat easily. Of course, for the first 30 seconds of the fight I'm wetting my pants because I've never seen such a monumental "grey=MD" chunk on my Omen bar or had so many DPS so far above my personal threat. 'Course, once we get to second ground phase I'm in "WoG Spam" mode.

For tanks to wear threat sets for progression:

(1) Vengeance requires significant re-work. Smaller cap, faster ramp-up.

(2) The encounter where you want the tanks to wear threat gear requires non-standard mechanics. Either a tough enrage-timer or mechanics equivalent (Vaelstraz, RoS)

[masterpoobaa]

(1) Vengeance requires significant re-work. Smaller cap, faster ramp-up.

(1b) Faster ramp up when attacks are missed, blocked, parried or dodged so a string of good luck doesn't leave us with SFA vengeance and to "reward" good gearing & play.

[RedAces]

hey,

I propose the following idea:
(1) Vengeance cap at 50% of what it's now (so basically 5 * Stamina)
(2) Vengeance stacks on every melee-swing, whether it's completly avoided, mitigated (mastery, CDs...)
(3) Vengeance stacks on every magical attack (calculating of it's unresisted, unmitigated damage)
(3) the AP increase is 10% (live: 5%) of the theoretical damage taken (-> (2) & (3))
(4) Vengeance starts at 50% (2.5 * Stamina) on pull
(5) Vengeance-Decay like it is on live.

That's just tweaking the screws blizzard admit they have (meeeh, maybe for 2&3 they need a patch), and would easily fix all the vengeance problems.
Just because you don't like vengeance and think it's retarded doesn't change the fact that this is blizzards system they want to have. Morphing it into a WHOLE OTHER System (itemlevel-threat? Just stack PvP clothes!) or completly removing it (yay tanks are the best AoE dps in the game!) brings a lot more problems and isn't gonna happen until maybe 5.0 (if ever).

Bye, RedAces.

[knaughty]

Hey,

I propose the following idea:

1. Vengeance cap at half current value: 5 * Stamina
2. Vengeance starts at 50% (2.5 * Stamina) upon entering combat
3. Vengeance goes up 10% per second of combat status, except in PvP zones (TB, Arenas, BGs)
4. Vengeance-Decay starts once you leave combat.

Basically stealing some good ideas and simplifying them even further.

[Mannstein]

Hey,

I propose the following idea:

1. Vengeance cap at half current value: 5 * Stamina
2. Vengeance starts at 50% (2.5 * Stamina) upon entering combat
3. Vengeance goes up 10% per second of combat status, except in PvP zones (TB, Arenas, BGs)
4. Vengeance-Decay starts once you leave combat.

Basically stealing some good ideas and simplifying them even further.

Your idea and Redaces would raise several issues:
/sarcasm
Threat would matter, so:
For keeping threat we would have to use threat stats, and i think Blizzard stated that they prefer us to use those to mitigate.

If after the changes i ignored threat stats, i (imagine) would lose threat, and i would get frustraded, and Blizz cannot implement a sistem that penalise a player that makes a error.

When i am gearing, i would have... to think about it... as in, "do i need threat?",or "can i trade a bit surv in exchange for threat?". We can't have that since all gearing instructions should be 2 words "stack x" or for VERY complicated classes 4 words "stack X and Y"
/end rant
P.S. BTW i like the propose idea

[RedAces]

hey,

I propose the following idea:

1. Vengeance cap at half current value: 5 * Stamina
2. Vengeance starts at 50% (2.5 * Stamina) upon entering combat
3. Vengeance goes up 10% per second of combat status, except in PvP zones (TB, Arenas, BGs)
4. Vengeance-Decay starts once you leave combat.

Basically stealing some good ideas and simplifying them even further.

Wheres the difference between a tank and a DPS then? Hence we need "only get vengeance on doing tank-jobs".

Bye, RedAces.