Warrior Taunt Changes

[Tripamang]

I know Furor/Tigole read these boards occasionally and for me to get a reply here is probably a long shot but I honestly don't understand whats going on with this game anymore.

I came from about four years of playing a warrior in EQ.. it was a class I enjoyed but my major grief about it was always taunt. It never worked properly, it had a reuse time limiting it's ability to be used against mulitple targets and how ineffective it was in general.

Then I started my first WoW warrior.. and I was totally blown away. Here was the class I always wanted the EQ warrior to be. I was the first line of defense and as long as I was skilled at what I did I could take control of a situation. I absoutely loved how this class worked, and now it seems like I'm back where I started. I cannot take control of a situation anymore, I was given the best tools for the job and now they've been stripped away. Just two weeks before this game was set to launch everything I've known for 8 months is out the door, it just isnt' the class it was. I've adapted to warrior changes before, but this one just seemed to throw the entire class out the door.

That being said I'm just curious as to why this was changed, and why you feel this is going to be "more fun". It just seems like a major set back from what warriors were, and after listening to furor's many many rants on the way taunt worked I'm just so massively disapointed. I know Furor isn't the person in charge of the warrior class, but internally testing didn't you speak out about this? Didn't anybody?

This was the tanking class that I always wanted, and now I don't know what to think. This recent change has just turned me off the game. I just simply have lost my will to play.. this was going to be the game I always wished EQ could of been, and it's just been obliterated two weeks before retail.

Is this seriously what warriors are going to be from now on? Is there any chance this change is going to get ditched?

[valarin]

I was wonder the impression that taunt is NOT working as intended and that a fix is still in the works? what did you see that i missed?

[Tripamang]

Originally posted by valarin
I was wonder the impression that taunt is NOT working as intended and that a fix is still in the works? what did you see that i missed?

That theres still MASSIVE problems with this new system in general, taunt went from being the main form of agro control to being your last resort. In this new system you're not supposed to be using it often, therefore it shouldn't be making that big of a difference on my ability to handle agro. It's your safety net if things go wrong, the problem is stuff never goes right now.

But I guess you didn't bother to read the I dunno 100 or so posts from warriors about this?

[Vorph]

I don't see those changes staying in the way they are now. People are using Arms warriors to tank stuff in battle stance because a Prot warrior in defensive stance can't do it.

That's just not right.

[Kolle]

A shaman is actually better than a warrior now

With the changes to rockbiter and earth shock, a shaman can grab aggro and keep it miles ahead of a warrior

[Tripamang]

Heres a post from Indalamar about the changes..

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...p=1#post548249

If you're not framilar with him, he leads the guild Nurfed on the PvP server. Probably one the best tanks around and after watching him tank he made me realize how shitty a tank that just plays taunt bot really is.

He's not one to complain/bitch unless theres some really wrong..

He also makes an excellent suggestion.

[Jait]

It's actually a great change. It allows them to better understand the aggro ability of each class.

Unfortunately it's also very close to retail, so I feel your pain. But in no way shape or form do I think this was ever intended to be permanent.

[xilsharn]

Clearly the old system was broken and was just going to lead to the CH-rotation mentality, which is bad.

They just need to move away from the EQ-like aggro system (blast heals and burst DPS grabbing aggro)if they're going to do away witht he EQ-like tanking system.

ALl in all, I'm not opposed to the concept in theory, just in the execution.

[Thorbadin]

Well I haven't played wow and etc, but it seem that most post about warrior taunt I saw since the patch fail to mention the paladin status.

The question to ask really is how do the tank stack up now in term of 1) tanking and 2) taunting.

Can paladins do the jobs? Druids? I'm pretty certain that before this patch warriors were ages in front of paladins in the tanking role departement but I could be wrong.

I think that having taunt as part of the overall class arsenal is better then having a few taunt button to press now and then, as long as it's implemented correctly.

If you look at the EQ from before endurance, what I would have liked for a warrior was to use habilities like a paladin/sk would do to keep aggro or so, stuns, melee dmg, root, dot, heals, etc, without the trivial aspect of it all.

I mean this guy post on the wow forum seem cool and all, but fail to mention the other 2 tank class, so basically doesn't really adress anything imo.

Thorb

[Kolle]

the classes least able to tank are the ones best able to hold and maintain aggro =p

accept for shamans really. mail armor, shield, enhancement spec...

hell forget warriors, just start a group around a tanking shaman with a decent healer and you're gtg

[Tripamang]

Originally posted by xilsharn
Clearly the old system was broken and was just going to lead to the CH-rotation mentality, which is bad.

They just need to move away from the EQ-like aggro system (blast heals and burst DPS grabbing aggro)if they're going to do away witht he EQ-like tanking system.

ALl in all, I'm not opposed to the concept in theory, just in the execution.

How is the new system not going to lead to a main tank mentality.. we're supposed to beable to hold agro just the same as before, just with different abilities.

The whole heal rotation thing is going to be pretty much mandatory now that you can't rez in combat. The mobs are going to hit hard, and classes other than warriors are going to die if they get hit.

Bleh anyways that's off topic..

[Dyvim]

The new system is okay, but it needs serious tweaking. Here's what I posted about it on the main forums:


Okay, I've had a chance to test these changes, and while they are certainly not as bad many of the people here seem to be making them out, more work and tuning is definitely needed before release.

Here is the single biggest problem with the new aggro management system: RAGE.

I don't mind the current taunt, even though I thoroughly enjoyed the previous implementation and was not one of the idiots complaining about the supposedly "one-dimensional" nature of a tanking warrior. I like the fact that we have more options for defensive stance: I found that Sunder Armor was generating a ton of threat, and that if I spammed it a few times I would hold aggro the entire fight. I also had no problems with multiple pulls in stratholme; groups of 8-10 mobs were absolutely no problem and my priest was pretty much never getting aggro (we had no CC either). I had to pay WAY more attention than previously which makes the game more challenging -- this is a good thing.

That said, on to the problems. While I had no problem keeping aggro from the priest, I did have a HUGE amount of problems holding aggro from the two rogues in the group. It was not so much myself, the warrior, that had to drastically change my style of play to fit in to the new system, it was the ROGUES. Let's present the following scenario: a single pull. I pull a gargoyle with my gun, it comes to me and I hit it a couple of times. Next, one of the rogues stealths up and stuns it for 3 seconds. During this entire time, I'm not being hit and hence not generating any rage, even with 5 points in the extra rage talent in the fury tree and a 40 DPS fast dagger. As soon as the stun breaks, whoops, aggro is on one of the rogues. I hit taunt, getting aggro for 2-3 seconds, and get to about 8 rage or so before those pesky rogues get aggro again. I wait 4 seconds or so to get my taunt back, use it, and then it's the exact same story. I've done nothing all fight except press taunt twice and do a near trivial amount of damage -- wonderful. So, we decide to change our strategy and I tell the rogues not to use their start of fight stun. Needless to say, they aren't happy about this as that's their favourite opening move (and a quite effective one), but they comply and decide to use Garrotte instead, which is a DoT. What a bad idea this was! Having a DoT on a mob is the absolute worst nightmare of a current patch tanking warrior, and holding aggro from the rogues was an exercise in futility. So we scrap that plan, and go back to stun, however I tell them to wait a few seconds so I can generate enough rage and threat to actually hold mobs off them. This works better, and I'm sitting at around 20 rage when it's stunned. The stun breaks and it's still on me, yay, so I decide to throw a sunder armor on it. Ooops, MISS, I lose aggro to the rogues again and am back to the no rage 8 second taunt cycle where I can't do anything. Bad luck I presume, but we're making progress, so we utilize a similar strategy for each fight. When I am lucky and actually land sunder armor I can hold aggro pretty decently, and have enough rage to do subsequent sunder armors, demoralizing shouts, and heroic strikes with the -3 rage talent spec. This is fine and dandy, except there's a fundamental problem: there's no room for defensive moves in defensive stance!. The second I decide I'm comfortable with my aggro and decide to use shield block, the staple ability of a defensive warrior, I lose aggro shortly afterwards to those damn rogues, who aren't using any moves other than FEINT.

We progressed quite far in stratholme with a group of 5, and didn't end up losing until I got feared behind an inaccessible gate trap where those rats spawn and got stuck. So while it's not as bad as many of the warriors here make it out to sound, it still needs drastic tweaking before this is fun for anyone. As I said, if a rogue wants to not get aggro from a warrior they'll have to completely nerf their own playstyle and do nothing other than spam feint and hope for the best, which isn't exactly fun to say the least. In fact after our group was disbanding, the rogues were far more upset about the change than I was.

This new change sounds great on paper, but due to terrible rage generation rate in defensive stance it becomes nearly unplayable. Even if you start a fight with 40 rage, missing your sunder armor and heroic strike/slam/cleave/whatever will put you right back to no threat. Not to mention, when mobs RESIST taunt, you're s**t out of luck. Even in the best case scenario where you hold aggro all fight, you've only accomplished this task by spamming all of your offensive abilities and you're not using a single defensive ability at all. This makes shield block, and more specifically Shield Specification totally worthless.

Some possible solutions to the problems:

1) Make Sunder Armor and Heroic Strike generate an appropriate amount of rage when you hit a creature, like it used to be when Mortal Strike landed or whatnot.
2) Make taunt useful when you already have aggro. If you use it when you're already on top of the hate list, have it generate X additional threat.
3) Increase Rage generation on Defensive stance. The combo of doing less damage and taking less damage just completely screws your rage generation.
4) Incrase threat generated when you block an attack. Make this a huge number, so that when you block a creature with your shield it genuinely pisses them off.

[FuckYou]

I was able to hold agro just fine last night by using hamstring and other abilities. Spamming taunt was gay anyway.

[xilsharn]

Originally posted by FuckYou
I was able to hold agro just fine last night by using hamstring and other abilities. Spamming taunt was gay anyway.

Yeah, it was a pretty gimp aggro mechanic. Hamstring sucks though =P

[Soldaris]

I take high lvl shamans to all my instances, wtf u need a warrior for?