Last week Ghostcrawler posted a new Dev Watercooler blog called Threat Level Midnight, that explains Blizzards new strategy for tanking and threat generation. The article is extremely long and lays out a lot of points of discussion. For those that havent had a chance to read it, you might want to visit page two of this article and do so, then come back here.
Ok, now before I really start on the technical and gameplay faults in this new strategy, can I ask that whoever is putting whatever in the Blizzard development teams water cooler please for the love of God stop!
I mean seriously, I checked the calendar three times after reading this to make sure I didnt fall asleep and wake up on April 1st. No such luck.
Threat Change: Blizzard Removes Threat from WoW
Ok, onto the two main changes. First, all tanks will now generate 500% extra threat when in their threat stance, aura, or form. This means even the lightest initial hit will cause a huge amount of threat onto a target and keep them attacking the tank for a while.
Secondly, the Vengeance ability that all tanks have will no longer ramp up slowly but stack very quickly so that tanks can cause more damage sooner into the fight causing more threat.
So in actual fact Threat is not truly gone from the game, but jumping from 300% to 500% threat and ramping up vengeance faster effectively removes it from consideration.
Previous Threat Changes in WoW
Threat and threat generation has changed many times previously in the game, and while some tweaking has been beneficial, it seems that too many times the changes are to dumb down the system.
Consider Paladins as an example, and I apologize up front if the exact details are inaccurate as it has been a long time and I am going by memory of the changes over the last 6 years.
Initially Paladins, like Warriors, had several abilities that caused additional threat simply by using them. These abilities had statements in them saying something like This ability generates high threat. Paladins had to ensure that they used those abilities as often as possible to generate as much threat as possible. One such ability was Holy Shield that worked by causing damage and additional threat to anything that attacked you and was blocked. In addition, Paladins had an aura that allowed them to generate additional threat from all Holy Damage caused.
At a later date the system was changed again and the extra threat from the Paladin aura started coming from any damage caused. At about the same time most abilities dropped from Holy to Physical damage. Also the abilities that caused extra threat all seemed to disappear.
Enter Cataclysm and further changes bringing in Vengeance and additional threat in general. This system has been working so far and tanking has returned to being about focusing targets, managing threat, and involving some level of skill for tanks and DPS players.
Why is Threat Being Removed from WoW?
In any normal situation currently in the game with players that pay attention and have appropriate gear for the content they are doing, threat is never an issue.
Notice the qualifiers there?
The problem has never really been that threat is really that hard for a tank to hold, and threat is not a tank only stat. The problem is that too many players do not consider the above qualifiers.
Paying attention requires the tank and DPS to look at threat meters and use abilities appropriately. It requires DPS to actually consider the target that they are hitting, meaning they hit the current kill target, not a random one, and not blast away with AOE all the time. It also requires the DPS and healer to consider the delay required before doing anything to give a tank time to get initial agro and threat on a target.
Appropriate gear means players actually considering their gear, and not just cheating their way into heroics with PVP gear. It means knowing what type of armor they should wear to get the 5% armor specialization bonus, and what stats are actually useful for their class.
In essence, in any given situation with players who have at least average IQ levels, threat is never an issue in its current form.
Therefore Blizzard appears to be removing threat from World of Warcraft to appease players with sub-average IQ levels that do not understand, or even try to understand some of the simplest theories and mechanics in the game. Thats the only real thing that makes any logical sense to me.
Blizzards 180 degree Direction Change on Game Difficulty
It really is funny that all of a sudden the game is being made even easier. Just a little while ago, when Cataclysm was first being launched, I firmly remember a different stance from Blizzard. In fact its still posted online and called: Wow, Dungeons are hard! In it Ghostcrawler talks about how dungeons are much harder than they were before and that it was by design. It specifically talks about tanks not being able to pull and just AOE, and how CC is important, and kill order and target control is important.
Is it just me, or does this new change seem like they just pulled a 180 degree turn around and hoped no one would notice?
If dungeons and content are supposed to be hard, and there are supposed to be multiple things to worry about, why implement a change that dumbs down a key element of the game so significantly?
This change essentially allows tanks to pull and AOE hold everything that their health, avoidance, mitigation and healer can handle. With all the extra threat DPS players can almost randomly select targets and not have to worry about pulling agro. On single target boss fights, Tanks are normally way ahead all the time anyway, so I am confused why we need it.
The Messiahs Last Words on Blizzard Threat Changes
Anyone that has read my articles over the last 6 years, knows that I have always played at least one type of tank in any game that I play. I will openly admit that I am not the best tank in the world as I play for fun and challenge and make mistakes just like everyone else. I am however, and pride myself on it, and am constantly complimented on being one, a damn good tank. No matter the game or the class or the situation I can tank it, and do it well.
Tanking is about juggling a huge number of things at one time. It is about juggling threat, cooldowns, mitigation, avoidance, positioning, and more all in the game. It is also about juggling players as well out of the game through things like leading the group, judging pace, CC requirements, and explaining boss mechanics. In essence it is a very complicated high stress job. Thats what most tanks like about it.
We do not want simple. We do not want press buttons: 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,1. We want to have to worry about a lot of things at once, juggle them all to perfection, have something go wrong, correct it, succeed, and then do it all over again.
Taking any single factor out of the equation lessens the challenge of tanking.
Now, threat isnt just a tank consideration either though. Threat is an issue for everyone in the game. Currently DPS has to consider what they hit and with how much damage how soon after a pull. In long fights they have to watch overall threat and ensure they do not pass the threat when with a tank that isnt as well geared as they are. I agree that it isnt an issue much of the time, but it does happen and is therefore one more thing that you need to watch for as DPS. This makes it a challenge to do maximum damage possible when with lower geared players and adds more to the game.
Take a few minutes and consider this train of thought
- Threat no longer being a consideration in a fight means,
- less thought required by players in a fight which means,
- less skill required by players which means,
- the game is less of a challenge to players which means,
- the game is less fun for players.
Consider the fact that threat generation has never been a huge problem for tanks. Any issue that does exist could be fixed by three simple things: DPS waiting until we actually hit a target before attacking, DPS not AOE'ing or randomly targeting but instead hitting the correct target, and Hunters and Rogues misdirecting at the beginning of a fight. None of these three things require any change to the game itself. All they require is that players actually pay attention, and have more than two neurons firing in their cranium, what a concept. Instead of expecting its player base to actually think and pay attention, Blizzard is catering to the simplest minded player and dumbing everything down.
I am convinced giving people what they say they want is not the best plan. Consider for a second these other things that people said they wanted and got, and how they worked out. Americans wanted bigger portions at restaurants and got them, now suffer as the most obese nation in the world. Americans want low taxes and have them compared to most of the other industrialized nations, yet complain that they don't have nationalized health care. Lastly, if your child didn't want to go to school because they didn't like it, would you let them not attend, would it be good for them? Sometimes people just shouldn't get what they want.
And now I leave you with this to consider as my final statement on Blizzard removing threat from World of Warcraft and the lowering of the challenge in a game:
As a small child many kids play games like Candyland or Tic-Tac-Toe, they then move on to more advanced games like Sorry, Checkers and Go-Fish, later on to even more complicated games like Life, Monopoly, Chess, and Risk. Later on in life they then move to even more complicated games like Trivial Pursuit, Settlers of Catan, Bridge, and many more.
Do players move on because the previously played game is suddenly bad? No. They move on because as they get older, smarter, wiser, the simple games become even simpler to them. The challenge in the game disappears because they no longer have to think about what they are doing because the mechanics are too simple for their now more advanced thought processes.
An MMO changes over time, that is one of the great things about an online persistent game, it is ever evolving. However, why if the natural progression of players is to look for more challenge, which generates more thought and more stimulation, would a game ever chose to go backwards? Blizzard has an opportunity to continue to evolve WoW and make it better by making it more complicated, more involving, more challenging, and therefore more fun, and yet they very consistently lately take it in entirely the other direction.
Its almost like Blizzard are trying to kill WoW off before Titan comes out so they do not have to compete with themselves.
Continue to Page 2 to read Ghostcrawler's post...
Ghostcrawler Dev Watercooler -- Threat Level Midnight
Threat revisited
One of the fun things about working on an MMO is that the game design will evolve over time, and you have the opportunity to make changes to reflect those design shifts. (And yes, we know that it can sometimes evolve too quickly).
Back in December, I wrote a blog post about our vision for how threat should work. Since then, the game and the community have continued to progress and the designers have found ourselves changing our minds about the role of threat. Enough that were planning to apply a hotfix this week to change how threat works.
Why have threat?
Threats role, just so were all on the same page, is to make fights more interesting. Tanks spend a lot of effort staying alive, but they arent under immediate threat of death one-hundred percent of the time. Plus, their staying alive is also dependent on their healers and other external cooldowns. We have always been concerned that if threat was not a big part of tanking gameplay that tanks might get bored just waiting around until it was time to use a cooldown. Likewise, if DPS and healers had no risk of being attacked themselves then the sense of danger facing a powerful creature could erode. Furthermore, every characters toolbox includes some cool survival and utility abilities and the game feels more shallow if those are exclusively used for PvP. Its fun for a mage to Frost Nova an attacker and Blink away. Its fun for a hunter to Feign Death. Yes your life would be a lot easier without threat mechanics, but our goal isnt to make fights as easy as possible. Our job is to make fights fun. Having too much to manage might not be fun, but its also not fun to be bored.
Thats been our traditional argument for threat needing to matter. Here is the case against it:
Why not have threat?
Throttling
As I said in the previous blog post, its not fun to feel throttled. Its not fun for the Feral druid to stop using special attacks in order to avoid pulling aggro. Its fun to use Feint at the right time to avoid dying, but its not fun for Feint to be part of your rotational cooldown. We want you to spend most of your effort trying to overcome the dragon or elemental, not struggling against your own tank.
Tanks are busy
Id also argue that our encounters arent really boring these days. We ask tanks to do a lot -- everything from picking up adds, to moving bosses around, to staying out of fires, to providing interrupts, in addition to the classic tank roles of staying alive and generating threat.
Threat stats arent fun
We put threat stats (hit and expertise for the most part) on tanking gear, because without those, tanks would be limited to choosing from among mastery, dodge, and parry. (In the current state of itemization, you are rarely choosing more Strength, Agility, Stamina, or armor.) Druids cant parry, and even for the plate users, there is a tight relationship between dodge and parry, and even mastery for the warrior and paladin. That gets us dangerously close to the old model of stacking a single uber stat (like Stamina or defense), which makes gearing choices too simplistic for tanks. Did something drop? Okay, put it on. (Contrast this to a DPS caster who might want more or less hit or might favor haste over crit, etc.)
We want threat stats to be interesting, but the reality is that they arent. Any decent tank will usually choose survivability stats over threat stats. Back in the day when taunts and interrupts could miss, you could argue hit was marginally useful. But in a world where hit is really just for generating threat, it isnt very exciting and tanks get understandably emo when we put too much on their gear. (DKs are somewhat of an exception in a good way -- more on that in a sec.) We do see some players try and get excited about threat stats or even proud of their ability to generate threat, but overall we feel like threat stats are a trap, and its usually the case that improving your survivability will have a better net impact on your groups progression.
We dont need a more complex UI
We have threatened for years (see what I did there?) to build in some kind of threat tracking tool into WoW. But is that really good for the game? Do we really need yet another UI element for players to look at instead of looking at the actual game world? We know many raiders in particular use third-party threat mods today, but that has really been borne out of necessity rather than a sense that watching threat is super compelling gameplay. (When we say super compelling gameplay you can mentally replace that with fun.)
Dungeon Finder
I know this bullet will be a point made by players critical of this change, but I would feel remiss in not bringing it up. We want it to be a positive experience when Dungeon Finder matches experienced players with newer players. The skill and gear of the former can help make up for that of the latter. Who better to teach you boss mechanics than players who have done the fights before? Even better, the gear of a veteran tank can make up for the less powerful gear of a beginning healer (which doesnt necessarily mean a noob -- it could be the alt of a very experienced raider).
However, this system fails and often spectacularly so when its the tank who is the undergeared player. Even if a competent healer can keep the undergeared tank alive, the fully raid-geared DPS spec is going to constantly be on the verge of pulling threat. Thats not an issue of skill. Its just numbers. Its also not a problem that is easy to overcome for either the overgeared DPS or the undergeared tank -- its just not a lot of fun for anyone.
So now what?
Given all of that, and watching how tanking has unfolded in Cataclysm, weve gotten over the concept that threat needs to be a major part of PvE gameplay. We have therefore decided to buff tank threat generation in a hotfix this week to where its generally not a major consideration. We expect the community to gradually stop using threat-tracking mods as players realize they dont need them.
Its an important distinction that the concept of aggro will still exist. If a DPS spec attacks an add the second it shows up, then the creature is going to come at her. However, if a tank gets an attack or two on a target, then the target should stick to the tank. Worrying about who has the creatures attention should generally only be a concern at the start of a fight or when additional creatures join the battle. Worrying about a warrior or DK (the classes with nearly non-existent threat dumps) creeping up on tank threat after several minutes will almost certainly not be an issue any longer. (And if it is, well have to make further adjustments.)
We like abilities like Misdirect. Its fun as a hunter to help the tank control targets. We are less enamored of Cower, which is just an ability used often to suppress threat. We like that the mage might have to use Ice Block, Frost Nova, or even Mirror Image to avoid danger. We dont like the mage having to worry about constantly creeping up on the tanks threat levels. The notion of aggro (who the target is attacking) is a keeper. The notion of threat races (who is about to pull aggro) is going to be downplayed from here on out.
Upcoming changes
Here are the specific changes youre likely to see:
Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.
In an upcoming patch: Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.
Long-term changes
You could argue that once threat is very easy to manage that a warrior tank could just go AFK. In reality, given todays boss encounters, an AFK warrior would end up standing in the wrong place, missing a tank transition, or otherwise do something or fail to do something that wipes the party or raid.
That said, we ultimately dont want tanking to be just standing there soaking boss hits and we would like to have more stats on gear that tanks care about. To solve those challenges, we want to shift more tank mitigation to require active management. Well still give all the tanks emergency cooldowns like Shield Wall and Survival Instincts. However, we want to move the shorter cooldowns like Shield Block, Holy Shield and Savage Defense so that they work more like Death Strike. Blood DKs have a lot of control over the survivability they get from Death Strike, but as part of that gameplay, they have to actually hit their target. The other three tanks will get similar active defense mechanics. This doesnt mean everyone needs to use the DK model of self-healing, but they can use the DK model of managing resources to maximize survivability.
Death Strike consumes resources to help the tank survive. We toyed at one point with the paladin Holy Shield being a Holy Power consumer and we think we could do so again. Heck we could make Word of Glory the thing youre supposed to do with Holy Power, so long as we balanced all tanks around that idea and didnt feel it infringed too much on the DK mechanic. We could make Shield Block cost rage, and change Protection warrior rage income such that they had to manage rage, the way Fury and Arms warriors now must do. If tanks generated more rage from doing damage and less from taking damage, then hitting a target becomes very important, but for mitigation, not threat management reasons. This is a bigger change than it seems though. We dont want a model where the Prot warrior ignores Shield Slam, Devastate and Revenge (since threat isnt a big deal) in order to bank all rage for Shield Block (because survival is). Imagine a rage model where you always had enough rage for your core rotational abilities (they could be cheap or even generate rage), so that you could funnel most of your rage into Shield Block when survival mattered and Heroic Strike when it did not. Redesigning Savage Defense to make it a rage sink is an even bigger change, but we think there is an opportunity there to make the rotation more interesting for druids (and all tanks really). Their rotation would help them achieve the goal that usually matters the most to tanks: living.
This is the kind of design for which were really going to need a lot of feedback once it hits. We can implement and verify empirically how much threat a tank generates, but its hard for us to replicate the experience of all of the various raiding groups and dungeon parties out there. We invite you to try out the immediate and eventually the long-term changes when they are available and let us know how they feel. Do you miss the threat game? Are you bored when tanking now? Conversely, with the changes, is tanking more fun for you? Does this new implementation of Vengeance feel better? Some systems design calls we can make just by processing numbers, and some are more squishy and involve a lot of gut checks and wishy-washy but how does it FEEL? language. Messing with this kind of thing is definitely somewhere in the middle.
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