Just thinking – how to make tanking more active
The problem I see with tanking is that it’s a very passive thing to do. Your tanking performance cannot be measured. TPS are nice, but they ain’t everything, so it’s pointless to measure them. Incoming damage? Hits avoided? Nah, combat math is too complex. And still, what a tank does actively is not so much related to what he’s actually supposed to do: Avoid damage.
I’m sitting here at work, outside sun is shining, it’s 25° celsius. My brain goes long ways in these moments, and it just so happened that I had that crazy idea about revamping how a tank does it’s job.
See, I’ve only really played my tank, so there wasn’t much to compare tanking to. Now I’m at 78 with my hunter and I realize that being a damage dealer is so much more measurable. I look at my DPS and the overall damage done, and see how well I perform. Every action I take, every ability I use contributes to that performance.
Every gear upgrade can be translated into DPS. It’s like heaven.
In my last post I ranted about how boring tanking became, and I now realize that this is to a certain degree due to the fact that it’s not really measurable and can’t quite be controlled. The top DPS is there, on the meters. But no one can tell if you “tanked better” or “tanked worse” than the other guy. This is due to the duality of tanking and the massive part the RNG plays. Your passive job is to stay alive, by using abilities and gear. Your active job is to generate threat. The first one is heavily RNG-dependant, as everyone who died of an unlucky streak of hits painfully knows.
And then, both jobs are heavily influenced by other people.
If your healers are on top of their game, your passive job becomes insignificant. They will keep you alive, you don’t have to worry about it. If your DPS are mindful and you’re not a complete failure on what buttons to press, then your active job also becomes increasingly meaningless.
Where we end up is current normal-mode tanking: Stand there and move out of stuff. You’ll be kept alive by the healers, and there’s really no need to worry about threat. Thus it doesn’t matter how good of a tank you are, no one will recognize. No one can recognize. All that’s left for you to do is movement, and that’s neither class- nor gear-depandant.
So how about something different?
Spellbook, Protection:
- Dodge (15 rage, 10 sec. Cooldown, off the GCD)
You dodge the next attack and get behind your enemy. He cannot parry or dodge your next attack and cannot attack you for 2 seconds. This ability generates extra threat. - Parry (5 rage, 6 sec. Cooldown, off the GCD)
You parry the next attack. This ability generates extra threat. - Block (5 rage, 2 sec. Cooldown, off the GCD)
You block the next attack, reducing the damage it deals by your Shield Block Value. Your next attack has a 15% extra chance to crit. Reduces the cooldown of Dodge by 0.5 seconds. This ability generates extra threat.
Then get rid of dodge rating. Get rid of parry rating. Get rid of block rating. Let SBV scale off strength entirely, and make it a factor 3 or 4. Make the success of all three defensive abilites work like hit rating, and let them scale off defense rating, thus making defense rating more straigthforward and the one defensive stat to cap. Crit immunity belongs deep in a tank’s talent tree. Thus there wouldn’t be that “hard edge” that is imperative right now, but much more a steady curve of improving tanking by capping out those abilities.
What would that mean?
All three abilites could come from talents. Or have a much higher base cooldown (let’s say 3 times as much), and then be brought down to “usable” by talents and glyphs.
Tanking would be a lot mor active. You’d have to generate threat by doing damage and using your regular abilites as ever, but you’ll have to work for your avoidance. It would take the RNG component out and all of a sudden tanking would become measurable and more controllable. You can decide if you want to dodge, or if you don’t have to. You can decide to dodge the big hits, parry the normal ones, and just block the weak attacks.
Would it make tanking harder? Damn sure, it would. You’d basically add three abilties to our already stuffed action bars and have us worry about offensive and defensive abilites. As a tank you would have to react fast and do the right thing at the right time. Beyond moving out of stuff.
It would change tanking completely. We could be doing a lot more damage, because we wouldn’t need to gear entirely for defensive stats. Haste could become an important tank rating for a change, and the whole 2-handed tanking would start to make at least some sense, eventually.
I know I would love to tank like that. How about you?
Nice idea. But not flawless.
Dodge… never use it, if other meelees involved, never use it on certain bosses with cone-aoe, never use it on heavy trash…
I’d love to see more active tanking abilities, but I also see that requirements for tanking would raise in a way, half of the tank out there wouldn’t meet.
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