Shaking the Foundations
The Lead Developer for World of Warcraft, Ghostcrawler, has been posting quite a bit recently concerning the Block Mechanic. Block is a core part of how Paladins and Warriors tank.
A lot of the tank balance problems we are having exist because we thought block would be a better mitigation stat than it has turned out to be. I say "we" because the druids and DKs were also convinced at the time that they would be mana-sponges and everyone was quoting "The unblocked hit is the new crushing blow."
For a variety of reasons, reality didn't work out that way. For one, we underestimated how much removing crushing blows would change the landscape. In fact, you can argue that the big magic hits (the dragon breaths and plasma blasts) are really the new crushing blows, and block does nothing to them (modulo 4 piece bonuses and the like). DKs were given amazing cooldowns, high armor and high avoidance to make up for them not being able to block. Druids were given even higher armor and high health. We backed druids off from that a little in part because they were going to end up with dps stats almost no matter what gear they chose so we wanted to incorporate those a little more into tanking. We kept buffing DKs based on early (mostly heroic dungeon) reports that healers hated healing DKs because they were so squishy when their cooldowns were blown. That seems to be less of an issue now with current levels of gear and some of the other changes to the game since then.
We will almost certainly change block. I can't tell you when we'll change it, because it's a big change. We probably don't want shield-users to be at 100% up time of block if they block more per hit. We have to be careful what happens to threat since that's a big part of block, especially for warriors. Heck, maybe we fall in love with the 4 piece warrior bonus and decide to make that a core part of the ability.
We are less likely to just buff the shield-using tanks because we like the current difficulty of the hardmode fights for them and we are reluctant to have to buff those encounters to correspond for a tank buff. Though as we've said elsewhere, we might give paladins another cooldown. Just remember that one player's "slight advantage" is another's "faceroll tanking and trivializing encounters." The balance goal has always been "close enough" not "identical." (source)
Think about it this way.
Avoidance is good because it removes a lot of damage. Avoidance is bad because it is unpredictable. If you stack too much avoidance, you are likely to give your healers coronaries.
Mitigation (armor and straight damage reduction) is good because it's consistent. As you all point out, you can start to learn how much a blow will actually do to you. Mitigation is bad, from a player's perspective, because it can't save you. If you have 10 health and dodge, you might live. If you have 10 health and hope your armor will save you... well, it won't. You become the dreaded mana sponge because you are never avoiding damage completely.
Mitigation also has a risk from a design-perspective that when fights get too predictable they become too easy and unexciting. Imagine a tank with 75% damage reduction and no avoidance. You could calculate from the moment of the first attack whether you will survive the encounter. Heck, you might be able to not even heal the tank and know you'll survive depending on the specific abilities used by the boss.
Block as a mechanic is somewhere between avoidance and mitigation. Ideally it removes a fair amount of damage (vs. all damage) reasonably often (vs. rarely). If block is up 100% of the time it just becomes armor that you improve through a different stat. We have let block chances creep up frankly because the amount blocked is pretty trivial when bosses are hitting for 40% of your health pool every swing. If this still strikes you as too RNG, imagine abilities like Shield Block and Holy Shield that could guarantee 100% chance to block for a short period of time.
We don't think block is cutting it as a mechanic, but the direction we are likely to take it is probably more of a change than you are considering.We also don't think it's necessary that every tank rely on avoidance, block and mitigation in equal amounts. They can't get too far apart or someone will come to dominate for certain encounters, but we don't think the tanks need to be completely homogenized to get what we want either.If (to make up numbers) the DK and druid get hit for 20K every swing that hits, but the warrior and paladin get hit for 24K half the time and 16K half the time, then that seems like it would work. When the boss emoted that his big hit was coming, you could make sure you had your cooldown ready to guarantee a block. (source)
We were starting to see many guilds ask their warrior or paladin to step aside so the DK could tank the hard mode encounters. This was not an isolated incident for a few guilds -- this was the kind of widespread phenomenon that really makes us take notice. If it was a boss or two that the DK was the best at, we would have just kept an eye on it. Increasingly though it was every hard mode. I will be the first to admit that the community is wrong sometimes. We don't think that is the case this time. The numbers backed up their conclusions pretty well.
If we can get block to be a powerful mitigation stat again we realize that will change the landscape and we'll have to evaluate the staying power of all 4 classes again. For now, we hope this change will put the tanks in a much closer place. (Though if you are keeping note, we would still like to give paladins another reliable cooldown.)
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
(source)
Block is a core part of how Paladins and Warriors tank. The way Block works is that Block removes a fixed amount of physical damage equal to the tank’s block value when the tank Blocks.
It’s fairly obvious a change is coming to Block.
The issues with Block are that it’s a static amount of damage reduction, it only works against Physical Damage and it’s split between two stats, Block Rating (chance to block) and Block Value (how much you block). One of the main misconceptions people have about block is that you take no damage from a Blocked hit, and that isn’t true. Trash in Ulduar can hit for 15k, but if you block the hit, that hit will only land for about 13k. Healers barely notice. This is why you’ll see very little Block Value gear on my Paladin. I have the Tier 8 Shoulders in my Armory, but I use the Tier 7.5 for Bosses. My Bracers have Block Value, because those are the only epic Tanking bracers I’ve seen drop and won.
I tend to gear for Armor, Stamina, Dodge, and Parry because Block just doesn’t provide much benefit in the current Tier.
Block’s true strength is against fast, small attacks like you see when AoEing trash or some Dual Wield Bosses. Of course we haven’t seen a Dual Wield Boss in Tier 7 or 8.
The real killer in today’s tanking world is the huge magical hits against which Block does nothing.
So what will happen?
I think we can expect the ‘Block Cap’ to be unreachable, and we’ll see Holy Shield changed to be a 100% block chance like the Warriors Shield Block skill, with similar uptime (20 second duration with a 1 minute cooldown). It becomes a ‘sort of’ cooldown. This makes Paladins and Warriors even more similar than they are today. It will be especially interesting what the new Paladin cooldown is, and how it will differentiate from the Warrior cooldowns.
It’s also interesting that he mentions the Warriors 4 piece set bonus. This bonus is 20% damage reduction from magic damage while Shield Block is up. Perhaps what they are considering is having Block Value work against magic or having some set magic reduction anytime you block, I’m not sure. We may or may not see some sort of magic damage reduction added to Block.
What concerns me most is the comment he made that a Druid/DK would get hit for 20k every time while a Paladin/Warrior would get hit for 16k half the time and 24k half the time. I don’t play a healer, but I have a pretty good idea which type of tank they’d rather heal. As the only tank that could reliably Block Cap, Paladins have been touting their steady damage intake all of Wrath.
My concern is that for the scenario GC outlined doesn’t really work. Sure, it averages out to the same damage over time, but it’s when those big hits land that’s key. If the Shield Tanks are designed in such a way that you could get two back to back 24k hits (to use GC’s numbers), then they must have the Hit Point pool to survive that, or they aren’t really tanks. Talk about giving Healers coronaries? That will do it. You’ve got to give the healers enough time to get you healed up.
To really work, Paladins/Warriors must have the Hit Point pool to survive two back to back 24k hits (to use GC’s numbers),or we’ll be paper tanks. But if we have the Hit Point to take two back to back hits we might be OP compared to DKs/Druids.
Tanking balance is a finer line to walk for the developers than DPS or Healing. Tanks have to be chosen and assigned. DPS does not. A DPS class that wants to prove itself simply goes out and dominates the meters. You also have less Tank spots open in a raid than any other role. Some bosses only require a single Tank. Who that is going to be is a call Raid Leaders have to make. They are going to put the best tank on the job. The rest of the Tanks, don’t get to play their primary role on that encounter. That’s just how it is.
I’m no fan of homogenized classes, but when it comes to Tank balance, it certainly is better than the alternative.
I’ve got a ton of Block gear in the bank, maybe I’ll actually need it soon. Who knows.
We’ll wait and see what they come up with, but for the first time in Wrath, I’m just a little apprehensive about my future.
Thinktank did a fantastic post on this issue as well. Now that you've read my thoughts, go check it out. http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/05/general-future-of-block-part-1.html
A lot of the tank balance problems we are having exist because we thought block would be a better mitigation stat than it has turned out to be. I say "we" because the druids and DKs were also convinced at the time that they would be mana-sponges and everyone was quoting "The unblocked hit is the new crushing blow."
For a variety of reasons, reality didn't work out that way. For one, we underestimated how much removing crushing blows would change the landscape. In fact, you can argue that the big magic hits (the dragon breaths and plasma blasts) are really the new crushing blows, and block does nothing to them (modulo 4 piece bonuses and the like). DKs were given amazing cooldowns, high armor and high avoidance to make up for them not being able to block. Druids were given even higher armor and high health. We backed druids off from that a little in part because they were going to end up with dps stats almost no matter what gear they chose so we wanted to incorporate those a little more into tanking. We kept buffing DKs based on early (mostly heroic dungeon) reports that healers hated healing DKs because they were so squishy when their cooldowns were blown. That seems to be less of an issue now with current levels of gear and some of the other changes to the game since then.
We will almost certainly change block. I can't tell you when we'll change it, because it's a big change. We probably don't want shield-users to be at 100% up time of block if they block more per hit. We have to be careful what happens to threat since that's a big part of block, especially for warriors. Heck, maybe we fall in love with the 4 piece warrior bonus and decide to make that a core part of the ability.
We are less likely to just buff the shield-using tanks because we like the current difficulty of the hardmode fights for them and we are reluctant to have to buff those encounters to correspond for a tank buff. Though as we've said elsewhere, we might give paladins another cooldown. Just remember that one player's "slight advantage" is another's "faceroll tanking and trivializing encounters." The balance goal has always been "close enough" not "identical." (source)
Think about it this way.
Avoidance is good because it removes a lot of damage. Avoidance is bad because it is unpredictable. If you stack too much avoidance, you are likely to give your healers coronaries.
Mitigation (armor and straight damage reduction) is good because it's consistent. As you all point out, you can start to learn how much a blow will actually do to you. Mitigation is bad, from a player's perspective, because it can't save you. If you have 10 health and dodge, you might live. If you have 10 health and hope your armor will save you... well, it won't. You become the dreaded mana sponge because you are never avoiding damage completely.
Mitigation also has a risk from a design-perspective that when fights get too predictable they become too easy and unexciting. Imagine a tank with 75% damage reduction and no avoidance. You could calculate from the moment of the first attack whether you will survive the encounter. Heck, you might be able to not even heal the tank and know you'll survive depending on the specific abilities used by the boss.
Block as a mechanic is somewhere between avoidance and mitigation. Ideally it removes a fair amount of damage (vs. all damage) reasonably often (vs. rarely). If block is up 100% of the time it just becomes armor that you improve through a different stat. We have let block chances creep up frankly because the amount blocked is pretty trivial when bosses are hitting for 40% of your health pool every swing. If this still strikes you as too RNG, imagine abilities like Shield Block and Holy Shield that could guarantee 100% chance to block for a short period of time.
We don't think block is cutting it as a mechanic, but the direction we are likely to take it is probably more of a change than you are considering.We also don't think it's necessary that every tank rely on avoidance, block and mitigation in equal amounts. They can't get too far apart or someone will come to dominate for certain encounters, but we don't think the tanks need to be completely homogenized to get what we want either.If (to make up numbers) the DK and druid get hit for 20K every swing that hits, but the warrior and paladin get hit for 24K half the time and 16K half the time, then that seems like it would work. When the boss emoted that his big hit was coming, you could make sure you had your cooldown ready to guarantee a block. (source)
We were starting to see many guilds ask their warrior or paladin to step aside so the DK could tank the hard mode encounters. This was not an isolated incident for a few guilds -- this was the kind of widespread phenomenon that really makes us take notice. If it was a boss or two that the DK was the best at, we would have just kept an eye on it. Increasingly though it was every hard mode. I will be the first to admit that the community is wrong sometimes. We don't think that is the case this time. The numbers backed up their conclusions pretty well.
If we can get block to be a powerful mitigation stat again we realize that will change the landscape and we'll have to evaluate the staying power of all 4 classes again. For now, we hope this change will put the tanks in a much closer place. (Though if you are keeping note, we would still like to give paladins another reliable cooldown.)
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
(source)
Block is a core part of how Paladins and Warriors tank. The way Block works is that Block removes a fixed amount of physical damage equal to the tank’s block value when the tank Blocks.
It’s fairly obvious a change is coming to Block.
The issues with Block are that it’s a static amount of damage reduction, it only works against Physical Damage and it’s split between two stats, Block Rating (chance to block) and Block Value (how much you block). One of the main misconceptions people have about block is that you take no damage from a Blocked hit, and that isn’t true. Trash in Ulduar can hit for 15k, but if you block the hit, that hit will only land for about 13k. Healers barely notice. This is why you’ll see very little Block Value gear on my Paladin. I have the Tier 8 Shoulders in my Armory, but I use the Tier 7.5 for Bosses. My Bracers have Block Value, because those are the only epic Tanking bracers I’ve seen drop and won.
I tend to gear for Armor, Stamina, Dodge, and Parry because Block just doesn’t provide much benefit in the current Tier.
Block’s true strength is against fast, small attacks like you see when AoEing trash or some Dual Wield Bosses. Of course we haven’t seen a Dual Wield Boss in Tier 7 or 8.
The real killer in today’s tanking world is the huge magical hits against which Block does nothing.
So what will happen?
I think we can expect the ‘Block Cap’ to be unreachable, and we’ll see Holy Shield changed to be a 100% block chance like the Warriors Shield Block skill, with similar uptime (20 second duration with a 1 minute cooldown). It becomes a ‘sort of’ cooldown. This makes Paladins and Warriors even more similar than they are today. It will be especially interesting what the new Paladin cooldown is, and how it will differentiate from the Warrior cooldowns.
It’s also interesting that he mentions the Warriors 4 piece set bonus. This bonus is 20% damage reduction from magic damage while Shield Block is up. Perhaps what they are considering is having Block Value work against magic or having some set magic reduction anytime you block, I’m not sure. We may or may not see some sort of magic damage reduction added to Block.
What concerns me most is the comment he made that a Druid/DK would get hit for 20k every time while a Paladin/Warrior would get hit for 16k half the time and 24k half the time. I don’t play a healer, but I have a pretty good idea which type of tank they’d rather heal. As the only tank that could reliably Block Cap, Paladins have been touting their steady damage intake all of Wrath.
My concern is that for the scenario GC outlined doesn’t really work. Sure, it averages out to the same damage over time, but it’s when those big hits land that’s key. If the Shield Tanks are designed in such a way that you could get two back to back 24k hits (to use GC’s numbers), then they must have the Hit Point pool to survive that, or they aren’t really tanks. Talk about giving Healers coronaries? That will do it. You’ve got to give the healers enough time to get you healed up.
To really work, Paladins/Warriors must have the Hit Point pool to survive two back to back 24k hits (to use GC’s numbers),or we’ll be paper tanks. But if we have the Hit Point to take two back to back hits we might be OP compared to DKs/Druids.
Tanking balance is a finer line to walk for the developers than DPS or Healing. Tanks have to be chosen and assigned. DPS does not. A DPS class that wants to prove itself simply goes out and dominates the meters. You also have less Tank spots open in a raid than any other role. Some bosses only require a single Tank. Who that is going to be is a call Raid Leaders have to make. They are going to put the best tank on the job. The rest of the Tanks, don’t get to play their primary role on that encounter. That’s just how it is.
I’m no fan of homogenized classes, but when it comes to Tank balance, it certainly is better than the alternative.
I’ve got a ton of Block gear in the bank, maybe I’ll actually need it soon. Who knows.
We’ll wait and see what they come up with, but for the first time in Wrath, I’m just a little apprehensive about my future.
Thinktank did a fantastic post on this issue as well. Now that you've read my thoughts, go check it out. http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/05/general-future-of-block-part-1.html
Comments
I don't like the new tank changes.
Here in WotLK, my paladin tank really feels like a warrior wannabe. I've been given all of these "cool new abilities" that warriors had all along. It was rather frustrating. Yes, I love being able to shield slam & cleave now. That's awesome! However, to know that they're just hand-me-down abilities, so to speak, is aggrivating.
Like you said in your previous post, before WotLK the paladin was considered a hybrid class. As such they were powered at 40% of what non-hybrid classes can do. I agree with with this mentality. Maybe it comes from back when I was leveling my warrior tank & I was annoyed when this paladin could mitigate as well as I could AND heal himself. I don't know. The bottom line is I've always felt that hybrids, whether they're specced full prot or not, should pay a penalty for having that extra option at their fingertips. That penalty, according to the devs, was a 40% effectiveness rating.
But what happened? Tankers, being the stalwart, stubborn bunch that they are, wouldn't have it. Paladin tanks like HonorsHammer, Invisusira, & Lore destroyed the glass ceilings & proved that "anything you can do, we can do better." Paladins tanked Prince when everyone said it was impossible. Paladins tanked Archimonde when everyone said it was impossible. Paladins tanked Illidan when everyone said it was impossible. Little by little, paladins fought their way into the warrior's stronghold & set up shop.
Why was this so awesome? Because the underdog was showing off. It was a blast for me to see movies of paladins tanking on YouTube because I knew that what they were doing was incredible. These warriors were good at what they do, but to be a paladin doing the same thing in some fights required just as much or even MORE skill to pull off. Even with 40% difference, paladin tanks were doing it.
It led to the theory, and I saw it a bunch back in the day on MainTankadin, that paladin tanks cared. If you rolled a paladin tank, you had a whole class of people counting on you to uphold a reputation that had been fought so hard to get. This is how I learned to tank. I took it very seriously & read every website I could to make sure I wasn't "letting down the class."
With homoginization, that's all gone. I see videos of paladin tanks & I'm still excited, but mostly for nostalgia's sake. These tanks have now been redesigned to do everything a warrior can, just as well. So the accomplishment feeling was gone for me.
In the end, while all these new abilities are certainly welcome, I'm somewhat remorseful of what it caused. I long for the days where we had to scrap for a mile just to get an inch. I miss the days where a lazy warrior was knocked on his heels because the paladin tank just stole aggro & a raid spot. Competition was great for the role.
I really would like to see Blizzard stop with this equality push. The only people that it really effects are the one or two gimick fights (that have ALWAYS BEEN THERE! - RoS Phase II, anyone?) & the super cutting edge guilds that demand Min/Max tanks. Other than that, a guild that is in their right mind are going to take the best player no matter what. If you're loyal to your guild, you show up and give 110% & are prepared with fight strategies, that 1.51% difference in threat or mitigation, or that one extra cooldown isn't going to matter. You will tank! And THAT'S what it should be about in my opinion.
Take away the equality push. Give out the abilities as you see fit (not because another tank has it), and let the chips fall where they may. We'll pick up the pieces, like we always have, and build the monuments to whatever tank class we choose, as we always have.
Tank for life!
It might even be possible to make it such that block value reduces damage by a percentage instead of a hard number. The benefit of this would be that trash mobs would still be able to do some damage instead of having block become an avoidance stat for any enemy that couldn't deal more that 10k damage.
My Paladin feels more and more like a poor man's Warrior these days. I want the same stats, and teh same gear, and do the same job with basically the same tools. I guess that's part of the reason I've been leveling my Warrior again.
I reference you to your April Fool's Day jest. :)
You say you hate that you received "Warrior hand-me-down abilities" well... think about it in the reverse. Warriors always had those abilities, Paladins get them, and we get none of your abilities in return. There are things that make each tanking class unique, and a lot of the unique parts of being a Warrior, have been mirrored to Pallies. Druids and DKs have been made very similar in the ways they tank and use CDs, so they too have become slightly mirrored. The "bring the player not the class" mantra of Blizz has damaged the identity of each class. I know from playing a Pally and Warrior, tanking and DPSing on both, that they are still very different, but at the core... they have tried to make them the same. I hate the lack of mobility on my Pally vs. the supreme mobility of my Warrior, but really miss pulling 3 mobs instantly, silencing and dazing at range when on my Warrior. Don't get me wrong, I don't WANT Pally abilities, I'm in part agreeing with you. They need to give Pallies more unique abilities and not copy them from Warriors, leaving us Warriors with the short end of the stick and getting none of your abilities in return. Paladins have very nearly become Warriors that can't Charge/Intervene/Intercept, and Warriors are Paladins that can't multi-taunt and range-pull 3 mobs. You said Paladins are "wannabe warriors" well, the line has gotten very fuzzy between the 2 classes, and it needs to be redrawn, bolded and redefined.