There's been a bit of discussion about tank balance lately, and I wanted to compile some data to hopefully further the discussion. If we can bring enough information and feedback to light, perhaps the dev team will be willing to chat with us about it. I thought back to when the level cap was 50. The tank classes each had their own flavor, and if my memory serves, were considered pretty well balanced. Warriors did the most damage, Paladins did the least, DKs were in the middle. Warriors gave up some survivability, especially against caster mobs, but there was no disparity in hate potential. DKs had a flatter aggro curve, but could lock down a mob forever. Paladins were arguably the hardest to kill with multiple invulnerabilties and self heals. Take a look at the stat distribution on the APW armor sets. This was the best gear in the game at the time, and reflected the design intent. There was no such thing as being capped on a stat. Whatever you had on your gear is what your toon benefitted from. Take note of a few things. The most obvious thing to note is Paladins had zero Melee Damage Rating on their set. None. You can also see that they had the least strength from the APW set. It's pretty clear to see the heirarchy - the tank with the highest survivability had the lowest damage. That's the way it was designed, and the way it was supposed to be. Fast forward to today. We've had a level cap increase, the addition of enhancement slots, and the addition of a large amount of gear without class restriction. Any tank wearing current PotA and overland raid gear is capped on every relevant tanking stat. The reasons Paladins are the clear alpha tank in game currently are pretty clear. Their abilities have scaled with damage modifiers they were never meant to have. However, we also have to consider the reality of current end game tanks. A tank of any class equipped with the best loot the game has to offer should not struggle to hold aggro against DPS classes with similar gear. This is true of Paladins currently, while Warriors and Dread Knights are struggling. We can't remake all the tank loot. That ship sailed years ago. Changes are needed though, and I hope development can see it.
Very good post Jackson. This has been a hot topic for quite some time and it would be nice to finally see some balance back amongst the tank classes. I have played all tank classes and believe the Pally is just to OP with the melee damage bonus, combining their virtue burns on top of that melee damage bonus is what I believe gives them the edge and dps power to be such aggro freaks. I hope the Dev's at least consider looking into this.
The issue is in large part content based; due in large part to the Paladin's virtue system. There are two major gearing issues I see with the current setup. The first one is the two handed paladin epic, since it is unlikely to be eliminated it really should be adjusted again. Dropping the two hander down to zero block would be appropriate. The second gear issue is Karax sword; it really should be warrior only. For DK’s they would benefit from either increased drop rate on ooze hammer, or putting a proc similar to Karax sword on a DK only drop. In my opinion in group content the three tank classes aren't terrible out of balance. The one and only post 50 dungeon crawl (Vi'Rak) clearly shows this. Unfortunately this dungeon is left empty due to its extremely poor loot table. I'm not counting named runs in group content as there is very little clearing; those have the same content issues as overland raid targets. Raid issues have been discussed quite a few times in other posts, the ability of the Paladin to do double damage for a full minute after engage, and then double damage for 30 seconds shortly after is what causes the hate generation gap. Then continue to do these burns throughout, and being able to refill their pool between almost every overland target is the second cause. I’m unfamiliar with the warrior or DK skills as I do not play either of those; but giving those two classes additional 30 second-1 minute burns on ~15 minute cooldown could bring them up to the same hate generation as the Paladin. Finally for raid content, fear is not working in its current state; put all three tanks on the same resist table. I mostly raid on a Paladin, with some time spent on a Ranger. The gap is real, and should be closed. I’m all for some fights having a tank of choice, but in no situation should one of them not be sufficient. In my opinion and experience from 1-50 group content the three tanks are close enough to balanced, with each one having strong and weak points. While I’d hate to see my class broken to the point where no one plays it, either bring the Paladin down, or boost the other two. .
Jakson@Telon wrote: The only foe for a DK when it comes to aggro is a paladin or another DK. Otherwise any well played DK should be able to hold aggro off a dps class as well as a Paladin does (i.e. hate off a third person and not hate off each other). I however cannot say the same for a warrior. It is a gap that's definitely there between warriors and other tanks. Most of it comes down from scalability post 50 for warriors. Cleave nerf as you mentioned is a big blow to warriors. Couple of other points: (1) Tanking in offensive stance (pointed out by Graye). Paladins the difference in block bonus between tanking in offensive and defensive stance is about 14% with a shield and 1h. Warriors and DKs however don't get any block bonus in non defensive stance. Why shouldn't the weapon shield be applied in all stances as long as you satisfy the weapon requirement criteria? (2) Keep in mind Paladins have pretty much zero AE abilities other than Shining Beacon and passive hate through healing. While Fear is a pain in the backside, we have also managed to kill sparkles with a Paladin/Warrior, Paladin/DK and DK/DK combo MT-ing sparkles (I was at a concert that night so no paladins). I am pretty much of the belief that you can kill any mob in game without a Paladin in your raid though it does make it easier to have a Paladin for certain mobs. Someday, I hope to get to get to do add duty on Sparkles to gauge how effective I can be in an true AEscenario without a warrior. But unlike Shendu waves, sparkles adds are a different beast -- hard to say without trying. (3) While I do not believe in balancing classes based upon itemization, I am in complete agreement that the Paladin 2h epic must go. It was a BAD IDEA from the start and I believe It just needs to go away so that Paladins can stop stepping on DK's big ugly feet. But honestly Karax sword is fine as it is. It is a fine tank weapon, and I believe it's honestly a bad idea to segregate hard earned drops to be way too class restrictive. Warriors already have two warrior-only swords that are rotting in my inventory. I'd much rather see balancing done based more on abilities, e.g. to increase in the re-use time for Zeal and RI. I don't use a 2h. I use 1h/shield and I just see Paladins dmg output a little different.I think 1min 40 secs of Zeal re-use is way too much given its 30 second duration. (4) APW gear pretty much sucked for Paladins and that's why it had to be reworked for us. It's like loading the druid gear with vitality just because they had a few healing abilities. Sorry boss, I wasn't too sad to see my APW gear being replaced by real tank gear.
I also believe the best direction to approach this is, first thing to figure out what's exactly lacking for the warriors to do their job. Make a discussion thread and discuss this among the warriors. I know its been done and ignored before. But hey don't give up. Try working on it again. Just figure on what you need to do your job right rather than comparing with others. I believe if the topic goes warrior specific rather than general tank balance, the results might be different -- especially given how few warriors are there at end game.
I appreciate the gentle deflection Dravid. The reason I kept it general was simple: context. Warriors have been voicing concerns continuously from the day Silius nerfed Cleave right up to now. When Silius announced the class balance pass last year, warriors were dead last on the schedule (moot of course because the pass was cut short after the first few). My hope was to reframe the discussion by keeping everything in context. Without it the debate dissolves too easily into sour grapes. The APW gear comparison was not to say that pally gear had perfectly allocated stats, merely to illustrate intent.
While I believe it is important that each tank has a balance of strength and weaknesses, I believe that the warrior can do its job - although the raid has to work a lot harder at aggro management. If the warrior was the only only tank available (apart from the fear mechanic), I believe raids would find ways to get things done. The issue for me on my warrior is that for the vast majority of encounters if I was asked to pick the "best" tank for an encounter then I would pick a paladin or DK over my warrior. So, while I believe they should stand in their own right as a tank, I believe a comparison with the other tank classes is required to gauge their desirability when it comes to selecting a tank for a good percentage of the raid mobs out there.
Not sure how many people remember the Paladin before revamp. Every Virtue Point you used took 1 hour to regenerate unless you rescued a mob when you are below 20% health. Then the revamp discussions started headed by Talisker and OldPally. It all started with people comparing stats, numbers, raid accomplishments. Ultimately just one simple out of the box idea to redo the VP system changed the Paladin class completely and made it more viable. My point being, you can look at numbers all day long and try to fit different scenarios and make comparisons. Ultimately the answer is in what you can do i.e. your abilities or what you cannot.
All that said, you've asked for warrior-specific ideas; here are mine. 1. Murderous Cleave - With the right changes, this ability alone could make warriors a competitive raid tank again. It should be a regular melee DoT with a hate component as it was before. It should benefit from strikethrough, should crit, should be modified by buffs. Also, even in it's underpowered state, it can miss and go on it's 1 minute cooldown which severely and unfairly cripples the warrior. Lowering the cooldown or adding 100% hit chance to another cooldown like Myrmidon's Gift would fix this. . My fantasy-land idea would be to make MC a frontal, able to hit multiple mobs in keeping with the warrior's AE strength. 2. Power Attack - This ability costs too much. The core issue is this - warriors need 100% uptime on PA to be anywhere near hate-competitive. Without raid buffs, a tuned bard song or the help of a psionicist, or while tanking a mana-draining mob, this isn't possible. It also requires us to give up hitpoints in our etherence slots in favor of energy regen. If it's deemed a compelling mechanic for the class, then lower the cost. 3. Grim Determination - This ability is currently just a shambles. The heal it provides in defensive stance to too small to be meaningful. I don't mind doing some stance-dancing to take advantage of the energy regen, in fact, I think that's fun. But I also need to be getting hit in order for it to work. The instances where I can be in offensive stance and also be getting hit are rare. The fix? Make Grim Determination provide it's heal and energy regen on use, and not stance dependent. (note this also provides a solution for #2) 4. Bloodrage - As players, we want to encounter problems and get to make decisions about how to solve them. With warriors it goes like this: "I'm out of endurance and my Decimate chain is up! I should hit Bloodrage! Oh wait, it's still on cooldown from 15 seconds ago when I was out of endurance. I guess I'll sit here until I regen some" That's not fun, not compelling, not interesting. Just frustrating. We want to play the game, and can't. It's difficult to pinpoint how low our hate output is because we spend so much time staring at an empty green bar. Bloodrage is a nice ability during a cooldown burn to ensure you won't run out of endurance with short term buffs expiring. However, the other 90% of the time, we're running out of endurance constantly and watching helplessly as epic DPS race to the top of the hate list. Not sure what the answer is here. Give Power Attack an endurance regen component? Lower endurance costs on abilities? Up the cost reduction of Lock and Load? Give us a bigger endurance pool in defensive stance? I could go on, but this is a start
I hate the long cooldown on Blood Rage for sure. Endurance I still believe is one of the biggest enemy for a warrior (when compared to playing a Paladin or a DK for me). In general, Warriors for me tend to rely the most heaviest on buffs compared to the other tanks. It's a lot more furstrating to function as a warrior with so much reliance on other classes buffs. Having access to self buffs to keep the endurance and energy self sufficient is key for warrior.
On the Paladin Front for tank balance, Zeal is one of our abilities that allows a Paladin to hit for double dmg on special abilities and reducing endurance cost by half. This lasts 30 seconds and has a cooldown timer of 1:24 mins when you are raidbuffed and have earring of speed. I am guessing the unbuffed time is close to 3 mins. Need to bring up the refresh timer to 5 to 6 mins or more if needed. This is pretty much vital if the 2h epic is going to exist for Paladins. Again just discussing hate generation mainly and not focusing on other aspects yet.
Wierd I don't see an EDIT button any longer. Sorry for the post spams. Sorry if I seemed like I was hijacking the thread way too much Miach and Krolk.
While the "original" design of the warrior was for a higher dps tank, the reduced defensive stance hate generation made sense. My understanding was that the warrior would be at least able to generate the same hate with a 30% bonus to defensive stance hate than the other two tanks who have a 40% bonus to hate in defensive stance. I view this as the modifier for a DK and Pally in defensive stance is 1.4 times but for the warrior its 1.3 times. In order to keep to the original high dps (reduced survivability) concept, and the extra hate being derived from extra dps - I see the warrior dps should be around 7.7% higher than the other tanks to take into account the defensive stance difference. Edited it to see if it worked Dravid. As far as I am concerned the more debates/posts here the merrier. I would love the warrior back to what I believed it to be when I first started playing it - but I also do not want other tank classes nerfed as a result of that.
some of us still remember the great warrior nerf of 3 years ago and watched friends and family leave the game over it. I , on the other hand am proud to have a pota geared, epic warrior as my primary alt. He is an excellent crafter and is always ready to do the force taunt on fengrott or x99 when called upon.
leavwiz wrote: Don't sell yourself short. We can tank the he|| out of some Shendu worms and rats. And don't forget we're the first ones called upon to go nose to nose with Sparkles' parasites. It's funny, I never saw the symbolism before. Silius' pet encounter forces warriors to deal with a bunch of poop.
i am not as optimistic as the rest of you. the same problems people have been posting about in 2008 under the warrior feedback thread are the same issues that still plague the class. 3 years and all we've gotten are bug fixes. and what better way for soe to make money than to have the 2 complete tank classes for sale. sorry, the writing is on the wall (written with turtle poop)
It is sad that the general concensus of all of the tank classes is - sucks to be you warrior. It is sad that over the years and the numerous posts that there has been no 'official' recognition of the plight of the warrior. There is no, "we understand the issue guys but it will be X months before we can work on it". No, "we understand that we will lose all our new FTP warriors: once they read the boards, or ask questions in ooc, or reach level 55 and understand they are the third choice tank class (in most occassions) - so we are working on improving the warrior". It took a long time for the few warriors left in the game to be this disillusioned - or to end up benching their warrior and play another class.
Shal wrote: Rogues got kind of fixed after so many years of neglect, so there is hope for the Warrior Shal. I would like to see some tank balance again although I don't really want to see Pallies overly nerfed, something needs to be done to correct the imbalance at the moment.
On a constructive note, I tried to think of where a warrior can be of use in game - apart from being pooped on. 1. While not able to solo tank the 2 dots in SS like the other 2 tank classes, a warrior is very useful in helping one of the healers that is soloing there. 2. They are able to hold aggro on the Blue Wyrm in the Shendu event as they only need to compete against healer hate. 3. If they get aggro on Arachnidon Sunshine, they end up continually smashing their face off the rock - but they do have the usefull benefit of being an extra body for the spider to swallow.
