[General] Revisiting Tanking Roles

With the wealth of information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King and even Patch 3.0, I started to look back at a post I did a while ago about tanking roles.

Now, before I get into some QQing (as some guildies would say), I'm going to say that a lot of the changes are good. The other tanking classes get their leg up and can stand as equals with Warriors as main tanks. Gone will be the days where you had to have a certain set-up in order to get through an encounter. Granted this means more competition amongst tanks for raid lots, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it'll lead to stronger tanks because only the best of any given tanking class will earn their lead spot, as opposed to priority being given to Warriors because they were the favored class for most encounters.

Now for a bit of QQ mixed with positives. Blizzard is homogenizing tanking classes in order to prevent the old "Warriors on top" hierarchy that prevailed through Classic and TBC. As a "new" warrior, I'm no longer going to have the guaranteed slot. As I said before, this is (in the end) good for me, as I will have to be that much better than the other guild tanks in order to earn my keep. On the flipside, Paladins are no longer the only tanks that can AoE. Blizzard was quite kind and decided to remove the target limit on Thunderclap and Swipe. I'm fairly certain that Death Knights will have some sort of AoE threat ability as well.


My main QQ is gear competition. In TBC, I only had to fight off other warriors for gear, seeing as pallies had completely different itemization. What I've seen so far with Wotlk Plate tanking gear, is that Pally gear = Warrior gear = Death Knight gear. The Tier 7 tanking sets are very telling in that the stats and defensive stats are virtually identical. Feel free to call me out on this, but I've always felt that Tier gear is supposed to be a good example of what sort of stats Blizzard wants you to be using. Looking at the Pally T7 stuff, I'm taking a wild guess that the other pally tanking gear is gonna follow similiar itemization. My tankadin friend is overjoyed (of course) that he will now have more opportunities to gear up. I find his idea that tanking gear was scarce a little strange, because TBC offered a wealth of non-raid gear that was raid quality (2.4 Badges, SWP/BT level Crafted Epics).

So, over-all, I am looking forward to 3.0 and WotlK afterwards. It's going to be very competitive for tanks, but at least now everyone will have a fair shot (assuming equal skill/gear).

-Trysti

Happy Returns (Sorta)

Well, a month ago, my WoW account got hacked, and all my gear got tossed for gold. Then it got hacked again, and I lost control of it. Seeing as I was violating ToS (It was in my friend's name, not mine), I lost a year and a half of work and decided to say "Bugger it, I'm quitting."

Well, I've come back. With my own account this time, so if anything goes south, I can call up Blizzard and tell them to stop being silly. On the flipside, this also means that I have to re-raise a few characters. So, for now, this will primarily be a Warrior blog, with perhaps a few posts here and there about other classes as I see fit.

Tah for now

- Trysti