[Wrathblood]

Things you should know about tanking in Cataclysm:

Heresiarch Expectations for tanks

My perspective, when raiding 25s, is that a dps standing in fire means that person dies. A healer standing in fire means that person dies and possibly the group they were healing as well. When a tank stands in fire, they wipe the raid and kill everyone. As such, tanks need to be on the ball. No one person can ever be directly responsible for the success of a raid, but as a tank you can personally be responsible for it failing with just one wrong step.

To be ready for this, tanks are expected to be on the ball and prepared. For starters, tanks should be aware of their own abilities, gearing, and rotation/priority schedule. At an absolute minimum, you should be aware of the major points from Elitist Jerks, Maintankadin, Tankspot, and wherever else. Ideally you'd also be doing your own theorycrafting, but its not required.

On top of this, a tank should think like a Raid Leader, being aware of the abilities of other tanks and ideally all specs of all classes. This seems absurd, but its valuable and you probably already know much of what you need to know. Which classes have defensive cooldowns which can be used in a pinch? Which classes can drop threat if need be, and how often? Etc.

In addition, tanks are expected to understand the fights before going in. Most bosses can be handled multiple ways, and Heresiarch may not use the standard approach for a given boss, so there's no shame in asking questions to clarify things like the specifics of a strategy or positioning. Asking what a boss's major abilities are, however, just means you haven't done your homework, and that's not acceptable.

Finally, a tank is expected to be prepared. Flasks, potions, a little food (the raid should provide it, but carrying 3-4 feast-type foods around just in case shows you're thinking ahead), gear gemmed and enchanted, etc. are not extras things that above-average tanks do. They're the minimum of what you need to do to not get benched.

As we approach Cata, expectations will obviously be more lax. People are still coming back, some have months of rust to shake off or are still getting comfortable will new classes or specs. However, when raiding starts for Cata in early January, if you want to be a tank, you now know what my expectations are.


Off-spec

If you read the fight previews Efebo posted, you'll see that a significant number of boss fights require only 2 or even 1 tank even for 25-man raids. To some degree I intend to rotate tanks to keep everyone active. However, if we typically bring 3 tanks to raids, that means 1 or even 2 of those tanks will be dpsing on a decent chunk of boss fights. This means that tanks need to be able to DPS effectively.

Just because someone is primarily a tank doesn't mean they get a free pass on doing crappy damage while dpsing. The raid's first objective is to kill these bosses, and particularly on hardmodes the enrage timers can be unforgiving. If tanks who aren't needed to tank a specific boss are a liability when dpsing, then we'd have to situationally swap them out for additional dps and I don't accept that. So, tanks are expected to have a viable off-spec talent spec and set of gear, and are expected to be competent in using it. No, you don't have to be topping the meters, but you can't be an embarrassment either.

If the healing Role-lead agrees, a healing off-spec might be acceptable instead of a dps off-spec but that'll be case by case and we'd need to work it out in advance.

Block

As some folks know, I really like block mechanics. I think its some of the most interesting math in WoW. Below is the best vid I've seen explaining the finer points for anyone interested.




Benchmarks

Cata heroics - 100k health

Cata raids - 150k health


Important notes

- Defense is no longer a stat. Tanks should be crit immune purely via talents and stance now.

- For paladins and warriors, slow 1h weapons are substantially superior to fast 1h weapons in threat generation. While slow weapons are typically dps weapons and fast weapons are tank weapons, the threat gap usually more than outweighs any gap in survivability. Remember Broken Promise? The slow tanking sword from Naxx? Among "tanking" weapons, for paladins, its the #3 weapon for threat, behind only the heroic (ilevel 284) Mithrios and heroic (ilevel 277) Last Word. Swing speed is that important.

- At the moment, it looks like all tanks will have some form of self-healing, but a lot of details are still up in the air

- Paladinss are clear top-dogs in tanking survivability because their self-healing from WoG scales with Vengeance (which its believed to not be supposed to), so its hard to tell where they will end up. For the time being, that healing makes them clear top dogs. The other 3 tanks are probably more closely balanced than tanks have been in the overall history of WoW.

- Of the non-Paladin tanks, DKs are probably tops because their self-healing and shielding from DS more than makes up for their low armor resulting in extra damage (particularly in magic heavy fights). Warriors have the best mobility and utility, and are very close behind the other two (Warriors have a bit of an issue dealing with bursty magical damage, but it doesn't look like a real problem in the first tier of raid bosses) and Druids are generally solid but not spectacular all around.

Relative stat weights

- At level 85, Mastery is pretty much the "master" stat, though some classes have caps of varying sorts. While you will generally still want to stack Stamina, there will be points where Mastery surpasses it. Things are still changing on beta, but at the moment, Mastery is (other than stamina) the best defensive stat until caps kick in which happens at (roughly):

Paladins - hit blockcapped (miss + avoidance + block = 102.4%, probably around 25ish Mastery, which is attainable with serious Min Maxing in ilevel359 (tier11 hardmode) gear

Warriors - hit blockcapped (same as paladins but will happen later, probably low 30s and in tier12 gear

DKs - Ugh. The math is extremely tricky and it depends heavily on how much magic damage is in the fight. There's a "softcap" which might kick in as low as 15 or so Mastery, but not sure if its enough to reduce the value below Parry/Dodge yet. In a heavy magic fight, you might be able to "hardcap" (push physical damage entirely off the table) around 35 Mastery (taking a wild stab).

Druids - Basically none. In theory you'd be able to push physical damage entirely off the table, but I don't think that point will be reachable during this expansion with current mechanics.
- AGIL no longer provides armor. It used to be a good tanking stat for Paladins, but now it sucks.

- HIT and EXP are now the best threat stats, by far, for pretty much everyone, though threat really only matters for the first 30 seconds or so of a fight because after that Vengeance makes tank threat mostly unassailable.


Guides

DKs - http://us.battle.net...topic/968396860
Warriors - http://us.battle.net...topic/981898783
Bears - http://us.battle.net...opic/1126995943
Paladins - http://us.battle.net...opic/1020823291

The pally and bear guides appear to be more aimed at pre-Cata. Also, I have some issues with the talent section of the pally guide, but his discussion of threat and some of the mechanics is good. The guy who wrote the DK guide really knows his stuff.

Important Theorycrafting links

Paladin Threat: http://maintankadin....&rb_v=viewtopic

Current state of Tank survival balancing: https://forums.world...026401591&sid=1

[Wrathblood]

Just for fun:

We have a winner! Modeling the effectiveness of DK mastery is now officially the most complicated thing I've ever seen in WoW.

This link goes to the clearest explanation of how it works I've seen. Yes, you'll want to have some Tylenol ready.

http://us.battle.net...56701?page=3#45

In a nutshell, with a decent amount of mastery, DKs heal+blood shield combine for significantly more than 100% of the damage they take during the 5 seconds prior to the DS. So, to minimize your overall damage taken (after netting out self-healing) you want to MAXIMIZE the damage you take during that time period which allows you the most self-healing and to create the biggest blood shields to use against the next attacks. And you want to DS slowly enough that the last blood shield gets almost entirely used up just before the next 5 second period happens. Its like an incoming damage taken roller-coaster from hell.

[Ballack]

I totally want to hear you explain that on vent in the first Cataclysm raid Wrath. DK blood shields.... lulz

[Wrathblood]

Absolutely, Ballack. The raid will start at 8 sharp with the explanation, and I think we'll be able to start pulling trash before 9:30.

[Hecatus]

Ballack, on 18 November 2010 - 05:31 PM, said:

I totally want to hear you explain that on vent in the first Cataclysm raid Wrath. DK blood shields.... lulz

Guess I'm quitting wow for Cata...

[Wrathblood]

How can you say that, Hec? Its my dream come true!

ALL 4 TANKS HAVE SHIELD MECHANICS!

Yea!

[Hecatus]

Wrathblood, on 18 November 2010 - 06:08 PM, said:

How can you say that, Hec? Its my dream come true!

ALL 4 TANKS HAVE SHIELD MECHANICS!

Yea!

3 hour discussion within a 3 hour raiding block = sad mildly bored, lootless, frustrated (0 progress) Hec

[Wrathblood]

Sigh. Fine.

I feel like I'm failing your educational development, but we'll confine the blocking discussions to the mandatory daily 3-hour tanking theorycrafting seminars.

[Sobeyet]

Theorycrafting is overrated, all you need to be a successful tank is to mash for gud TPS and know which healers to blame when you die.

[Hecatus]

I'm down for theory craft and block mechanics - just not during the raid XD

[Kimina]

I've been going back and forth with whether or not I should respond to this post, but I've gotten to the "screw it" point and just going to throw out my $0.02.


I honestly don't understand the purpose of the first half of this post. What I got out of it was "tanks need to be on the ball" and "if tanks screw up, the raid wipes". Honestly, that reads to me like "it doesn't matter as much for healers and DPS to be on the ball". Such is not true, and that's something people need to get through their heads. Everyone needs to pay attention, and Heresiarch needs to get back to the point where it can be said "you stood in the fire, now please go stand outside the instance".

Everyone should be aware of everyone's purpose and abilities, not just tanks. You don't need to know it to every last detail, but healers shouldn't be going around not knowing what the DPS is supposed to do (and why!) at a certain point in the fight. DPS shouldn't just pew pew ignoring everyone else in the raid. A successful raid team is about synergy, not just raw talent and power.

I urge you to rethink the thoughts in this post and really think where this post came from if you want to correct the real problems.

[Hecatus]

Ehh... honestly its more or less understanding what the other roles do during a fight vs what their class (abilities) can do.

To a finer extent yes we should know what their class specifically does, but seeing how people hardly know what their own class does... I think its a bit much to ask for anything beyond that - at least here. (Until the tone changes, which prob wont since that's just how we are atm.)

[Wrathblood]

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 04:31 AM, said:

I've been going back and forth with whether or not I should respond to this post, but I've gotten to the "screw it" point and just going to throw out my $0.02.


I honestly don't understand the purpose of the first half of this post. What I got out of it was "tanks need to be on the ball" and "if tanks screw up, the raid wipes". Honestly, that reads to me like "it doesn't matter as much for healers and DPS to be on the ball". Such is not true, and that's something people need to get through their heads. Everyone needs to pay attention, and Heresiarch needs to get back to the point where it can be said "you stood in the fire, now please go stand outside the instance".

Everyone should be aware of everyone's purpose and abilities, not just tanks. You don't need to know it to every last detail, but healers shouldn't be going around not knowing what the DPS is supposed to do (and why!) at a certain point in the fight. DPS shouldn't just pew pew ignoring everyone else in the raid. A successful raid team is about synergy, not just raw talent and power.

I urge you to rethink the thoughts in this post and really think where this post came from if you want to correct the real problems.

Ah, Kimi. You make me smile. I think Wrathette #1 is going to turn out exactly like you, which I'm fine with.

I had this really dry, sarcastic response all planned out in my head but that's not really the right way to go. Instead, we're going to have a quick (as best as I can manage, anyway) discussion of principles of management according to Wrath (not as exciting as shield block, but its still pretty good). When your job is to tell other people what to do, the best way to make sure they do it is to be clear upfront about what your expectations are. On top of that, you want to set the bar high enough that your people feel the need to push themselves to continue improving. Its not so much that you want them to continue getting better (though that's certainly a goal) as that you want them to have that ATTITUDE.

Its a fine balance. On the one hand, you don't want everyone continually stressed, biting their fingernails, afraid of making mistakes or getting yelled at. On the other hand, you also don't want them complacent and comfortable. You want them confident, but with just a big enough chink in their personal armor so that they don't feel TOO comfortable, that they stay hungry.

So, first off, you beat them down a little. YOU'RE LUCKY TO BE HERE, MAGGOTS! ONE WRONG STEP AND YOU NOT ONLY FAIL, YOU KILL THE WHOLE DAMN RAID. ITS ALL YOUR FAULT! That mostly serves to whittle down the folks who should really be there in the first place due to lack of confidence, being too complacent, etc. IMO, a decent number of people have a "shell" of confidence that's actually a facade over a gaping pit of insecurity and self-doubt. I think this is true of most people in most situations, actually, and that's ok. You want to crack that shell or at least make them THINK that you'll crack their shell. People who are more interested in protecting the sense of self-worth they have tied up in their facade of confidence and competence won't like this, but that's fine, because you want to weed them out anyway, along with people who simply have too much self-doubt. You want the people who are interested in ACTUALLY getting better and doing well, rather than people who already view themselves as good, hang their hat on it, and have a primary goal of defending that worldview. They view criticism as something that tears them down rather than builds them up. I have no use for people with that attitude.

Once that's done, you see where they are and start building up their confidence. Give people challenges that you expect to push their capabilities, but that they will probably succeed with. Then you give them objective, constructive criticism on their performance. Then give them a harder job to do, ideally one which builds off the lessons learned from the last one. WoW is fantastic as a teaching tool this way, btw. I periodically tell people that we should hand our nation's schools over to Blizzard for a curriculum redesign, and I'm only half-way kidding. This way people view criticism as something to be looked forward to, a way to improve so that they can meet the next challenge and beat it, rather than some mean-spirited attempt to tear down their self-worth.

That's really just an introduction, but it's enough for now. Also, to be clear, I'm not saying I'm good at actually executing all the points I made above, just that its how I see things. I didn't really intend for this to be a serious wall o' text, but hopefully its enough to give you some insight into why I wrote the intro statement the way I did. Also, bear in mind that I'm the Tank role lead, not the dps or healing role lead. They have their own role leads to look after them, and it would be inappropriate for me to give them philosophical marching orders. Plus, I'm still bitter about Rohanna kicking me out of the healer channel so I'm ok with the healers all standing in fire and dying.

[Sobeyet]

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 04:31 AM, said:

I honestly don't understand the purpose of the first half of this post. What I got out of it was "tanks need to be on the ball" and "if tanks screw up, the raid wipes". Honestly, that reads to me like "it doesn't matter as much for healers and DPS to be on the ball". Such is not true, and that's something people need to get through their heads. Everyone needs to pay attention, and Heresiarch needs to get back to the point where it can be said "you stood in the fire, now please go stand outside the instance".

I don't know where you're getting that at all. There's nothing in Wrath's post that says "healers and DPS, you guys go jerk off in the corner, what you do doesn't matter" or "since tanks are so much more important, healers and DPS don't have to be accountable for anything."

In terms of individual survival, there's no one more important to keep alive than the MT in most encounters. Losing one DPS or one healer isn't necessarily a wipe (though it can trigger a chain of events that eventually cause a wipe in tougher fights), but the MT is much tougher to replace.

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 04:31 AM, said:

Everyone should be aware of everyone's purpose and abilities, not just tanks. You don't need to know it to every last detail, but healers shouldn't be going around not knowing what the DPS is supposed to do (and why!) at a certain point in the fight. DPS shouldn't just pew pew ignoring everyone else in the raid. A successful raid team is about synergy, not just raw talent and power.

Like Hec mentioned, the bigger issue is people who don't know their own purpose and abilities, not that they don't know the purpose and abilities of the 25th person in the raid. Using synergy as an example, it's a bigger priority for the healing team to learn the roles/habits/strengths/weaknesses of the other healers (and not just blindly mash healthbars because they went down) than it is to learn what the ranged DPS are doing. Now that doesn't mean it's irrelevant for the healers to know what the ranged DPS are doing, it's just not as important as doing their own job. B a b y s t e p s.

Wrathblood, on 19 November 2010 - 11:00 AM, said:

Ah, Kimi. You make me smile. I think Wrathette #1 is going to turn out exactly like you, which I'm fine with.

I think that would be a shock to the whole Wrath family, but I won't elaborate why. Rohanna knows what I'm talking about.

[Kimina]

Sobeyet, on 19 November 2010 - 11:08 AM, said:

I don't know where you're getting that at all. There's nothing in Wrath's post that says "healers and DPS, you guys go jerk off in the corner, what you do doesn't matter" or "since tanks are so much more important, healers and DPS don't have to be accountable for anything."

Wrathblood said:

a dps standing in fire means that person dies. A healer standing in fire means that person dies and possibly the group they were healing as well. When a tank stands in fire, they wipe the raid and kill everyone. As such, tanks need to be on the ball. No one person can ever be directly responsible for the success of a raid, but as a tank you can personally be responsible for it failing with just one wrong step.

Sure, this is true, but it implies things that aren't true. That was my point.

Sobeyet, on 19 November 2010 - 11:08 AM, said:

In terms of individual survival, there's no one more important to keep alive than the MT in most encounters. Losing one DPS or one healer isn't necessarily a wipe (though it can trigger a chain of events that eventually cause a wipe in tougher fights), but the MT is much tougher to replace.

That type of mindset needs to go, really. Remember Archimonde? That's the mindset we need to be back in. Nobody dies, period.

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 04:31 AM, said:

Everyone should be aware of everyone's purpose and abilities, not just tanks. You don't need to know it to every last detail, but healers shouldn't be going around not knowing what the DPS is supposed to do (and why!) at a certain point in the fight. DPS shouldn't just pew pew ignoring everyone else in the raid. A successful raid team is about synergy, not just raw talent and power.

Sobeyet, on 19 November 2010 - 11:08 AM, said:

Like Hec mentioned, the bigger issue is people who don't know their own purpose and abilities, not that they don't know the purpose and abilities of the 25th person in the raid. Using synergy as an example, it's a bigger priority for the healing team to learn the roles/habits/strengths/weaknesses of the other healers (and not just blindly mash healthbars because they went down) than it is to learn what the ranged DPS are doing. Now that doesn't mean it's irrelevant for the healers to know what the ranged DPS are doing, it's just not as important as doing their own job. B a b y s t e p s.

I admit I haven't been raiding with Heresiarch in a very long time, but if that's really the case, then things have gone a lot further backwards than I thought. Not much more I can say about that. Unfortunately, I don't have any real way to correct it (and for obvious reasons I'm not contributing to the problem so I can't correct myself; that's not to say I'm flawless but rather that I have no effect on the raid).



I 100% agree with the "maggot" style of managing raid members. I'm simply saying that if you don't actually treat everyone equally, you're going to end up with a very disparate set of raiders that really won't want to work with each other.

[Hecatus]

We already treat everyone equally and have a good handful of disparate set of raiders.

Esp when people fail/don't show up/don't get sat and have zero repercussions and are treated equally >.>

Ex: Sindragosa ice tombs; DW MCs being killed; BQL bites; Target swaps on prof put; distance/avoiding goo on fester HM (Melee and range)

Need I go on?

Granted its a game... but meh. Its how folks look at it.

[Wrathblood]

Sobe,

Ah, you don't know my family. My parents took me to est Standard Training seminars when I was 8 and remember my brother bringing both of his girlfriends to my parents' house during his last weekend trip home? Seriously, I'm unbelievably hard to faze. Gender reassignment, recreational drug use, a history in porn, a deep passion for S&M, modest mental illness, these things barely move the meter for me. I'd agree that a serious history of violence would be shocking.

Kimi,

Its not that I'm unwilling to tell the dps and healers not to die in a fire, its just not my job. And I try to avoid stepping on toes unless there's a reason to.

[Guinthel]

Good reads this morning during break. Need more kimi-wrath-sobe (lol hec comments) more often.

[Sobeyet]

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 01:29 PM, said:

Sure, this is true, but it implies things that aren't true. That was my point.

Seems to me like it didn't really matter what Wrath said, you were going to interpret it a certain way.

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 01:29 PM, said:

That type of mindset needs to go, really. Remember Archimonde? That's the mindset we need to be back in. Nobody dies, period.

Has nothing to do with a "mindset," it's simple numbers.

If the fight requires 2 tanks, you bring... 2 tanks. You don't bring a 3rd tank, they switch to an offspec.

So if one of the 2 tanks happens to die, you're at 50% of what you planned for the fight.

If one of the 7 healers dies, you're at 85.7% of what you planned for the fight.

If one of the 16 DPS dies, you're at 93.8% of what you planned for the fight.

A lot easier to pick up the slack for one dead healer or DPS than a tank.

No one's advocating that it's okay for DPS or healers to die. Again, you've already got it in your head that the officers are nurturing a certain mindset, so you're going off on your own agenda when it has nothing to do with the point of the OP.

To put it another way:

Wrath: Blue cars are awesome!
Kimi: Why would you say that red cars suck?!

Kimina, on 19 November 2010 - 01:29 PM, said:

I admit I haven't been raiding with Heresiarch in a very long time, but if that's really the case, then things have gone a lot further backwards than I thought. Not much more I can say about that. Unfortunately, I don't have any real way to correct it (and for obvious reasons I'm not contributing to the problem so I can't correct myself; that's not to say I'm flawless but rather that I have no effect on the raid).

Lack of healer synergy has been going on for a while. Remember when I tried to coordinate Malygos drake healing and I flipped out at you in healer chat? "omgwtfbbq, I have to pay attention what other healers are healing and not have 5 aoe heals go out at the same time?! This has never been done before (except for DPS drum rotations in BC, but that shit is too hard yo)!" I even made a "sorry for raging last night" post the day after, I'm sure it's still kicking around on the forums.

[Kimina]

Sobeyet, on 19 November 2010 - 02:59 PM, said:

To put it another way:

Wrath: Blue cars are awesome!
Kimi: Why would you say that red cars suck?!

No, more accurate would be

- Blue cars are more expensive than red cars!
- Why would you say red cars are cheap?

Agreed that the latter does not necessarily follow, but it does go with context. Then again, I'm not sure what the value is to continue responding to this thread. I've made my points, and in all honesty, it doesn't affect me in the slightest anyway. I simply try to point out potential issues so they can be corrected. If they don't become a problem (or if they aren't one) then that's good, but that's not going to stop me from making such comments until I'm told not to.