Last week “Ask the Dev #9: Tanking” was released and the community got a chance to see what the developers of the game think about the tanking role and the class/specs that tank. There was a bit of hubbub about the time between closing the question thread and posting the answers. Blizz told us not to worry as the Dev’s needed time to get good answers for us. Hmmm…
I’m willing to concede that maybe I read the wrong answer thread. The replies were of such low quality one has to think the interns or even the janitorial staff wrote them. Well, that’s only if the janitors don’t actually play wow. Let’s take a look at a couple of answers and see what we’ve learned.
Q: Have you considered normalizing initial Rage for feral druid tanks? For example, when a warrior uses Charge, it generates 15 points of Rage, which lets them use another aggro generating ability quickly, something that Feral druids tend to be a bit short on. Why in Cataclysm was the bear bonus health pool was reduced, as well? Their survivability always depended on the amount of health since they don’t have parry or shield block. Do you have any plans to improve bear tanking in the future? At the moment, it’s considered to be the weakest tank. Have you considered giving druid tanks an additional tool to pull casters at range? It’s the only tank class that doesn’t have a talent or spell to help in those situations. – Pødêrøsø (LA), Вирко (EU-RU), Амелья (EU-RU), Condenacion (EU-ES), Whitewnd (KR)
A: Bears are getting a significant mitigation buff in 4.2 and we’re retuning their damage such that it’s a little easier to hold aggro at low gear levels, and a little harder at higher gear levels. While we definitely don’t expect the community to ever agree on anything, we’ve seen little evidence of a widespread concurrence that druids are “the weakest tank.” There are plenty of druid tanks out there, handling everything from Grim Batol to Sinestra. Tank balance overall is in a really good place. Players may focus on potential problems that could arise in the future but we also have ample time to address those problems should they occur. Gone are the days when we would just release a class into the wild and refuse to touch it again until the next expansion.
Generally the rule is one question per post. This example show us why. Blizz lumped so many things into one question they thought they could get away without answering anything by muddling the response. Sorry Blue, did you really think the players weren’t going to dissect each word and phrase?
Rage:
I was very interested in the first question. Rage normalization. This term has been tossed around a lot over the last while but I really just want my charge to not cost rage. While getting more rage, like warriors, would be nice, I’m not going to be greedy. Just make it free and I’m happy.
Health:
The health pool issue has been addressed before. Sure, it can be a shock if you’ve been out of the game a while to find your bear went from the highest to the lowest health pool (No, you shouldn’t blindly stack stam! Don’t believe the bads on the wow forums). Einstein taught us that Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. This issue has been asked and answered. Stop asking. It makes the community look dumb and gives Blizz the opportunity to re-answer the easy questions while dodging the tougher issues…
Control:
…like the lack of a ranged silence. Now, I don’t think bears “have” to have a way to easy gather up casters. I really enjoy LoS pulling, having the mob counter-spelled (yes mages, it’s in there hidden near your Remove Curse), or a hex/shackle/hibernate will do. The problem is that pug groups fail terribly (or can’t be bothered) at much strategy short of AE tank and spank. I ran a few heroic 5 mans the other days. Every pull involving CC failed. Send the bear in and swipe swipe swipe went just fine (except for that pesky caster doing his own thing while I try to drag every melee mob to him). That’s just not fun.
I hate the idea of it, but Blizz needs to give the bears something to help that situation. If it’s not smarter/more patient dps, then it needs to be abilities to deal.
This leads into the next question:
A: We’re generally happy with how well DPS are able to tank (which is to say, not very well). We like that they can take a hit or two (depending upon content) before dying, and that the penalty for that happening is a huge drain on healer mana.
So Blizz thinks it’s good that the only penalty for DPS being bad is stress on the healers (and tanks). There must be a better design. There should be a penalty to the DPS for being bad. Mana loss, DPS loss, shock to the groin, something. I went a long time not tanking for my own guild because of this. When it impacts intra-guild activities wild pugs stand little chance.
Because they can fill many roles and still provide a lot of utility, it’s not surprising that you see a lot of druids and paladins in your raid groups…
I was shocked when I read the answer to the questions about raid utility. Does Blizz really think Bears and Paladins offer the same level of raid utility? I don’t want all the tanks to be the same, but at least admit there is a disparity. I would be impressed with the person able to successfully argue that a bear and pally are equal. Maybe, just maybe, if the pally gave up all his mana, holy power, took off his shield (and most of the rest of his gear), dumped his vengeance, and spent several GCDs to use his utility they would be more aligned.
I am NOT in any way advocating that Paladins be re-introduced to the business end of the nerf bat, but it’s just silly to equate the raid benefits of the two classes.
Summary:
Sorry, I don’t really have some cute quip to wrap things up here. The tanking Q&A didn’t go so well. The DPS one is well underway as I write this so maybe we’ll get something better this time.
P.S. Over the days I’ve been too lazy to publish this post, Bashiok gave us a hint that Blizzard may be as frustrated with how “Ask the Devs” is going as we are. I’ll leave you with his statement.
I’m not going to bother getting into the specifics of what was answered or why or any fansite articles bashing the process; it’s been covered many times before.
But, at the core, I think we agree it’s not working. While we could (and do) lament over the reasons why a scheduled Q&A based on question popularity doesn’t sit well with people, the bottom line is it can’t go on as it is.
We don’t expect people will ever be completely happy with any Q&A. Regardless of how they’re conducted we’ll never get to every question, so there are always going to be complaints that we didn’t answer the right ones. But Ask the Devs is different. While there are certainly arguments that answers didn’t say the right things, or didn’t give a firm answer on how a problem would be resolved, the process just doesn’t work because of the format.
We’ve spent a lot of time discussing why it doesn’t work, and while that’s interesting to us, the bottom line is that once we’ve finished the role Q&A’s with healers, we will be ending the Ask the Dev series.
Our goal with Ask the Devs was always to increase interaction with the developers, to provide a direct conduit to their thoughts and process. We’re in the planning stages for a new Q&A process that will replace Ask the Devs, and while we’re absolutely certain people will continue to be upset we didn’t answer every question, we think it will overall be a far more successful approach.
