Comments on: Raiding and the Great Tank Problem

By: A holiday, a holiday, the first one of the year! Best of 2009. « Welcome to Spinksville!

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:07:13 +0000

[...] Raiding and the Great Tank Problem, also The Great Healer Problem [...]

By: Rurjaos

Rurjaos — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:18:48 +0000

For technical units this might be possible. Someone build some very nasty gadgets into them and here we go. Energy limits speed, size limits energy, speed limits size. But we talk about… uhm… more or less human units. Time limits all!
My poisoned mind wants some limits, even in a world full of heroes. There might be few superheroes, breaking the rules or… uhm, extending them, like the rogue, evade-tanking illidan or even the singing barb, back in D2/LoD. But even those just took, what “their parents” gave them and did something unexpected with their limited time to learn to survive.
All those thoughts are somewhat translated from RL through OOC to RP, so don’t take them too serious.

By: theerivs

theerivs — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:31:17 +0000

There’a bad side to being the main tank….

I played as a prot warrior in Vanilla and BC, and I got burnt out. That lovely gear that the guilds beloved tank gets makes you property of the guild. I tanked everything from RFC, to SSC and everything inbetween.I was at their beckon call.

I loved being up and close, and being THEE guy who made things happen, but also I felt trapped not being able to do what I want to do in my game time.

You can tell someone to stop standing in the fire so many times before you snap.

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:28:53 +0000

I suspect strongly that the numbers got skewed at the start of TBC when they decided to open up raid tanking to other classes AND add 25 man raids, and it was simply going to be too much work to sort it out (if that’s even possible within the tank/heal/dps model, which it may not be).

So at that point it was easier to run with it and let the players work something out. (Which is sometimes the best solution.)

By: Stabs

Stabs — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:10:34 +0000

Sorry Tipa I don’t really buy this.

Brawlers were meant to be tanks. The fact that they are so terrible at doing their main job they have to do dps in raids instead doesn’t change that.

The Fighter (tank) archtype has 10th, 13th, 17th, 20th, 22nd and 24th out of 24. An archtype that has 25% of the classes has 13% of the raid spots.

There’s no way you can gloss over that and imply that they’re doing ok.

In fact I suspect the numbers are skewed by availability. There are a lot of good players at end game who want to play fighters and don’t want to swap. Some of these raids will be taking a good Fighter over a bad Mage even though ideally they’d want a good Mage.

So not only are tanks only getting 13% of the raid spots but I suspect that if the raid leaders could pick people’s classes they would get even less.

It’s certainly very much true in WoW too that some great tanks can’t get guild or raid spots when as an officer you have to recruit less good players who have picked more useful classes.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:36:22 +0000

I would love to command a team. Not only would it be more tactical, but it would be a great way to keep the class system while providing flexibility. (I don’t mind classes in FFTactics, for example, since I can build a hugely variable *team*, and shuffle around classes as I see fit.) Collapsing gameplay to a single avatar changes a lot of things.

Yes… controlling a team in an MMO would be great fun. I played Atlantica Online for a while, and it worked well there. It might not translate to the quasi-realtime of WoW, but it sure was fun in AO.

By: Twineagle

Twineagle — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:34:26 +0000

I would personally like to see “boss” encounters more often have multiple bosses that require multiple types of tanks simultanously. Maybe a boss that hits slightly harder requiring a plate wearing tank, another boss that is required to be stunned/silenced for a duration, or even a magic boss that requires a caster to tank while the melee types do damage.

I have always found it interesting that the player side has to have multiple avatatars to achieve victory, while more often than not, the boss stands alone.

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:58:21 +0000

The other way that might be interesting is if we abandon the idea of just playing one avatar in raids. If instead we commanded little platoons, then that would naturally give a different range of strategies. Granted, it would be more of a massive wargame though …

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:56:53 +0000

I find that although the offspec thing is a real boon (I know I enjoy swapping to dps for the odd fight or three), it’s getting harder and harder to maintain a good offspec gear set.

ofc that was predictable, but getting weapons in particular is a nightmare for non-druids. My chances of grabbing two ulduar 2-handers for my fury offspec? Very low, especially as that stupid 10 man FL thing never ever drops for us.

So my dps as compared to a specialist dps is pretty low at the moment (although obv still better than if I didn’t respec and switch gear.)

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:52:12 +0000

I think the whole superstar thing is purely down to game design. If you make your whole raid so dependent on one player, that’s how it’s going to go.

I think getting away from that is a good thing, so I agree with you there.