LOLz - Threat is haaaarrddd qq (Blue Post)Follow

You guys... you so nerdy.

Lucky. It's not *bad* per se (ok... it is pretty bad) but it can be jarring if you go in hoping for Super Metroid or anything.

Only upcoming game I'm really psyched for is Deus Ex 3. Played enough of the leak to decide it was going to rock, and I'm counting the days now. Over on the SA thread for the game two developers have revealed their lurking and been answering some questions. Neat stuff, everyone's excited about what they pulled off.

My To-Play list (only including titles I consider "must plays") for coming releases:

Dues Ex 3
Mass Effect 3
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Diablo III (which, granted, isn't console)
FFXIII-Versus
Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Other than that, there's the Witcher 1/2, which are obviously already out but I don't have anything to play them on yet. And I'll definitely be trying The Old Republic MMO when it is released. Oh, and FFXIII-2 (which I wouldn't consider a must play, but I really want to). And yet I'm still not nearly as bad as maaaany other gamers. :P Sure, that over $400 worth of games. But, like, it's over the next 8 months. So, like, that's only 50 a month. That's not too much!

I keep telling myself as my account balance shrinks and shrinks.

Yeah, it didn't really surprise me that it happened. They had kind of been toying with the idea for awhile. Since at least the beginning of Lich King (anyone remember when healers could pull aggro?). I'm cautiously awaiting all of the changes. In the short term, yes, it will mean almost brainless tanking in dungeons. But many keep missing the point GC was going trying to make. The change isn't to make things "easier" because they are "too hard". They want to shift the focus of tanks to "doing DPS for threat" to "using skills to survive".

I think we'll see many of the tank skills re-evaluated and mechanics re-evaluated and modified in a way that makes you have to use them intentionally.

Playing Rift, tanks generally have a choice between using "high damage skill" or "lower damage skill that increases defense for x amount of seconds". It was actually a challenge in more serious fights of having to decide "do I help damage or do I need to help healer". It did take thought. It did take skill. Just a different kind.

At the moment, very little thought is given to survival as a tank compared to the thought gone into holding aggro (especially on multiple mobs). Yes, there are periods in a boss fight where tanks have to pop cooldowns, but the 2 minute CD means that its not a constant issue. They want to change it so that those cooldowns have a shorter duration and shorter cooldown so that we players have more control over our survivability and have to control it deliberately and intentionally.

I think that if they truly make the changes they are talking about tanking will become far more fascinating (At least for me) than it is today.

We can't compare these changes to the current mechanics. GC made it clear mechanics were going to be changed. So jumping t the conclusion that its going to be "too easy" is severely jumping the gun.

Edited, Aug 17th 2011 8:17am by ekaterinodar

Unlikely. Threat hasn't been the reason for 5-man PuGs to fail since Wrath. You wipe because people fail to interrupt, keep standing in bad stuff, or completely ignore boss mechanics.

New tanks might create more threat now, but that doesn't magically change their level 333 gear into 346+ and give them more health and avoidance.

There won't be more tanks unless heroics become more forgiving and the one-shot mechanics are being removed. You gotta be realistic about it. People are doing those to get their weekly points together. They want it done fast, so nobody wants to waste time on CC, regardless of how easy it has become now.

Tanks and healers are being pushed by DPS, and in the end take the blame when the group wipes because of it. So why bother with PuGs and reduce the queue times for those people?

Don't know. Maybe including "Always take your Ritalin" in the loading screen tips would improve the overall situation.

I like these changes, I enjoyed tanking in BC on my druid and paladin (the latter for aoe heavy heroics) and even tanked Kara using my then boyfriends warrior once. I then left it until the tail end of Wrath to try tanking again and had a very bad experience with an over geared dps in PoS, wehich made me decide that tanking for pugs wasn't worth the hassle.

I'm now levelling that tank (very slowly) through Cata dungeons, but I still get nervoue everytime I queue myself up, pathetic as it is I have to psych myself up to queuing to tank a normal dungeon in case I get landed with someone higher level/geared than me who doesn't want to put any effort into being nice to the tank. Heroics are an even bigger concern as not only would I have to contend with raid geared people nuking away but I'll also be feeling sorry for the poor healer trying to keep me alive with my relatively low stamina and avoidance.

These changes mean I should only have to worry about survivability/positioning and not so much about whether the warrior popped all cooldowns when I only got one hit off on the mobs. If this change does work out to make tanking a lot easier than it is now I will definitely be signing myself up to tank more often, which means I'll get more experience playing the tanking role and could actually turn into a half decent tank. Hopefully Blizz will add in changes so that the tanks who are currently getting along fine won't end up bored by the lack of threat building needed.

Dunno about 5-man pugs, but, TBH, our tank dont lose aggro anymore to Rhyolith adds. Not even if he tries to.

Who's a Nelf?

Das rite.

The vast majority of the fail players I've reprimanded have used 'Sorry, stoned' as the excuse. Does that work in real life as well?

I've never used I'm drunk as an excuse. I have used I'm not drunk enough though.

I do it all the time. Definitely frustrating though.