Mastery nerf or Deathwing's Radiance

[lythac]

I don't think they can really pull off Radiance this time around. Taking off 14% dodge and all miss chance wouldn't even stop us from block capping easily in T13 gear, and any more than that would put plate tanks at below-zero dodge rating with no incentive to get enough to pass 0%. They would have to awkwardly impose a penalty directly on mastery rating and bring us all the way back to T11 levels of mastery investment required to get capped.

You can put a variable constant for all avoidance subject to diminishing returns and the same constant for the benefits mastery applies (so is equal for all tanks).

The variable part is so it can be applied to either current tier/past tiers or a constant for each tier.

[Treck]

1) You should get stronger against bosses you have already defeated.
2) The boss would need to get stronger in either a) larger hits, b) expertise, c) unavoidable damage. The boss should be increasing in a for increasing healer throughput regardless, but without b or c to maintain a threat of tank death damage will need to become too spikey again and we are back to late wrath model.
3) Well, not nerf us buff the boss.
4) It wouldn't work quite that way because a tank undergeared for the instance would not have the same avoidance/block as a geared tank and therefore not have the option of blockcapping. And also take more damage.

1) But that will be true in eather case.
2) Give us interesting debuffs/special attacks from bosses works fine aswell.
After 2 whole raid instances gearing up, i dont feel normal tank damage should be a major thing to deal with tbh, unless its together with abilities.
3)Nerfing us or buffing the boss, i dont see a differance tbh.
4)It was a bad example, and only applied to when your going geared from raid to raid, but my point is still there.

[theckhd]

Personally, like i said i feel the DW radiance idea is a sign of bad design.

I disagree. Boss expertise and the Radiance debuffs are the same mechanic, and they're actually a good mechanic if implemented properly. It's the natural counter to higher avoidance.

They already do this for DPS classes - it's called boss hit points. Player DPS increases, and boss health increases with it. That creates an ever-increasing raid DPS target that DPS players need to reach by accumulating more gear. Boss expertise works the same way - it provides an ever-increasing survivability target that tanks need to reach by accumulating more gear.

[lythac]

My main issue with boss expertise and radiance is that it effects the diminished avoidance rather than the 1) undiminished avoidance and 2) doesn't effect our mastery.

1 making gearing for avoidance worse than it already is and 2 not sorting the issue.

[PsiVen]

The only problem I have with Radiance debuffs is that they show up suddenly in the last tier with a jarring change, particularly for gearing while you farm the previous tier and progress on the new one. That's because they have to by then, or they won't make any difference.

Avoidance DR was a step in the right direction, but Mastery would have been dull and crappy if it had such severe DR. It really does need to be redesigned, which I don't see happening until 5.0.

[masterpoobaa]

Curious... What sort of avoidance levels are dk's and bears packin in current heroic gear?

[Darielle]

Bears are between 45 and 55% dodge depending on exactly what you do for what slot. Tack on 5 to 7% miss to it.

[Treck]

They have always "had" to put it in the last tier cuz they made gear scale way to high, and in order to tune that down they have to go the Radiance approach.
Immagine 4 tiers in cata, after deathwing we would get like ilvl 450gear, shitloads of hp, blockcapped when avoiding mastery like the plague, full exp/hit, and shittons of hp.
With 3 tiers of content in one expansion, gear wont shoot you that high, and even if you do, you need to have pretty much Bis gear from DW anyway, and its not like gear matters after youve killed everything.

When they implemented the debuff in ICC, the average tank had like 25% dodge and 25% parry.
They had to do something. But this was also with the stacking icc buff in mind.
30% dmg/healing/hp, obviously tanks couldnt be left alone with that.
Without the buff, tank damage WAS very menacing, and while you would take less damage, you would be very spiky to heal (it wouldnt have changed much i guess tho since the healing mechanics were a lot different)

They already do this for DPS classes - it's called boss hit points. Player DPS increases, and boss health increases with it. That creates an ever-increasing raid DPS target that DPS players need to reach by accumulating more gear. Boss expertise works the same way - it provides an ever-increasing survivability target that tanks need to reach by accumulating more gear.

The problem with that is that even if bosses got to ignore 10-20% of my CTC, i STILL wouldnt feel its worth gearing me over any of the dps/healers.
Thus tanks allready dont really "need" to accumulate more gear.
Gear i "want" to get right now are heavy hit/exp parts, so that i can do more dps, since its much more likely that theres going to be more dpsrace's rather than heavy tank fights.

Problem is, IF "Electric Boogaloo" (as you put it) is nessesary, then why only have it at the end raid? and not in every raid but the first one, just with different numbers?
And this is why i say its "bad" design.
As blizzard make the raids without these Radiance buffs in mind, planned the ammount of raids per expansion way ahead.
But as we get close to the end raid, they suddenly notice that the gear we have acquired is simply to good for the raid they are planning to do.
Thus they have to nerf us to make up for it.
And THATS where the bad design comes in, since they didnt plan for it, but had to design it accordingly.
If they could have tuned gear "better" maybe they wouldnt have to.
If wrath would have ended after ToC, they wouldnt ever had to think about the radiance topic (or say they skipped toc and put icecrown there instead, with ICC dropping ToC hc items)
Same with TBC, if sunwell never was introduced, we wouldnt have heard of sunwell radiance.
That would all have been fine, but were getting to much content at the same level, and gear scales to high after some point.

With that in mind, IF they would design EVERY raid to have some form of avoidance "nerf", increasing with every tier, that could work fine imo.
Say in t11, all bosses had 5exp, t12 they had 10, and in t13 they had 15, call it whatever and have it in there from the start.

[Mukat]

Instead of bosses having expertise, have bosses remove dodge or parry rating from their target. That way we dont have to incur more diminishing returns. Admittedly, this is far from an elegant solution.

[theckhd]

With that in mind, IF they would design EVERY raid to have some form of avoidance "nerf", increasing with every tier, that could work fine imo.
Say in t11, all bosses had 5exp, t12 they had 10, and in t13 they had 15, call it whatever and have it in there from the start.

That's exactly what I suggested in the blog post. The boss expertise mechanic itself isn't bad, it's the sudden appearance in the last raid tier that makes it unpalatable. It should be a core mechanic, where we know to expect that every boss in Firelands will be ignoring 5% of our avoidance and that every boss in Deathwinglands will be ignoring 10%.

[Treck]

That's exactly what I suggested in the blog post. The boss expertise mechanic itself isn't bad, it's the sudden appearance in the last raid tier that makes it unpalatable. It should be a core mechanic, where we know to expect that every boss in Firelands will be ignoring 5% of our avoidance and that every boss in Deathwinglands will be ignoring 10%.

Were on the exact same page there.
It should be a sort of integrated mechanic to the game, rather than an "ops we need to nerf tanks cuz they are to good".

It would also be cool if bosses had buffs/debuffs that reduced avoidance aswell, abilities that cant miss (illidan had his nice ability) or smth along those lines.

[Passionario]

I can see why Radiance/CoTT was necessary in Sunwell and ICC, when healers essentially had infinite mana and their primary challenge was to top off the tank between GCDs. However, under the new model, I don't think that it is required.

If anything, Deathwing's Radiance should impose a penalty to mana regen instead of avoidance.

[Malthrax]

If anything, Deathwing's Radiance should impose a penalty to mana regen instead of avoidance.

It should apply an Aura to healers that neuters mana regeneration unless they stop casting for at least 5 seconds.

[Sabindeus]

If anything, Deathwing's Radiance should impose a penalty to mana regen instead of avoidance.

It should apply an Aura to healers that neuters mana regeneration unless they stop casting for at least 5 seconds.

agreed, something along those lines

[Shoju]

Curious... What sort of avoidance levels are dk's and bears packin in current heroic gear?

For Dk's, it depends. If you are a mastery based DK in full 391's, you are pushing 38-42% avoidance, and 32-33 mastery. If you are an Avoidance based DK, you are probably pushing 48-51% and 14-16 mastery.

Don't ask which one is better. I honestly don't know anymore.