GC Talks Monk Tanks (3/30/12)

In a recent Monk Tank feedback thread over on the official MoP beta forums, Ghostcrawler weighed in with his thoughts on some of the Monk tanking abilities. Lets take a look @ the post point by point, just for fun.

Dizzying Haze -- We increased the threat and lowered the energy. We're not crazy about making it do damage because then it risks competing with other Brewmaster abilities. We really don't want Dizzying Haze used rotationaly on single-targets. We also run into whether or not the ability should break CC if it does damage.
As a tank, my inclination is to always say "yes!" to a threat buff, but honestly with Spinning Crane available for 1 Chi, it's not a necessity. I don't see why a mitigation ability should garner additional threat any more than the current ones we have on live for other classes. A warriors Demo Shout has "some" threat component, but ever since the BWL days Blizzard has seen the down side of having a fairly spammable non-damage AoE threat move. If any old school warriors are out there, they probably remember kiting adds on Razorgore with Demo Shout and Piercing Howl. Personally I think a non-damage debuff shouldn't have extra threat. Even though Dizzying Haze my seem less effective due to its "chance" to proc effect, it balances out by providing a buff to Flame Breath.

AE tanking -- We agree that monks need a little more ability to cleave.

Yes. A melee cleave with no set up needs to be introduced around level 18 or so. While I like the DH + FB idea, I think the set-up needed (energy AND 2+ chi) is a bit demanding. Spinning Crane fills this void nicely later on, however the 1 chi cost is much to low and I look for it to get a bump to 2 or even 3 chi soon. A 2-3 target melee cleave would fill that spot in the AoE tanking rotation nicely.

Missing Jabs -- It isn't intended to lose all Energy on a miss. We will fix that.
Good. I'd hate to be the only tank to fight THAT resource battle...

• Our intent for Brewmasters is to use Guard, Purifying Brew and Shuffle as reactive and proactive abilities that you want to use to react or prevent damage spikes. We're not there yet with the cooldowns, durations and costs, which are the kinds of numbers we tune constantly after tests and playtests. Mechanically we think the pieces of the puzzle are there, but they don't fit together quite right yet

...sounds right, but then again it says nothing so it's hard to be sure! :)

• We agree that Chi generation is too slow for Brewmasters. Expel Harm is one possible Chi generator. Also keep in mind that there is currently a miss penalty on Energy and Chi that we plan on removing

EH feels like the wrong spell. It needs to work like a watered down version of Word of Glory that is buffed by Guard usage to make up for the damage component. What about having Tiger Palm do less damage as a tank but build chi?

• We also agree that the Brewmaster procs still need a bit more spice.

I maybe easy to please. I like the flavor of the tanking class and resource management. Maybe need to be swinging more kegs around, but the abilities seem to fill the role they need to fill, and still feel diverse from what my Warrior and Druid use.

• Free Tiger Palm is probably too strong.

Maybe in it's current form. Too soon to tell.

• In our current builds, Brewmasters have a big health bonus, currently higher than any other tank. We're actively iterating on tanking numbers for all specs, but we need to consider a lot of different situations (single boss, groups, healers spamming, damage over long periods, different gear levels, etc.)

So my biggest chunk of WoW time (and MMOs in general) is as a healer type class. For me there were always only 2 tank classes, Shield Tanks and Gimmick Tanks. Shild tanks are clases that use a defacto shield (Paladin, Warrior, Sith Juggernaut). Gimick tanks use something else to mitigate damage, or make up for mitigation with larger health pools or cooldowns (Druid, DK). I can say that typically the non-shield tank classes suffer more at lower gear levels from damage spike deaths if they do no have strong enough cooldown support. Blocking typically makes the damage curve smoother because there is an additional chance for partial mitigation. That being said, if they do indeed have the cooldowns necessary to compete, they typically scale up to the "easier" tanks to heal once they are geared because those same cooldowns are still there, but now they have bridged the gear gap though other stats and they are parrying and dodging enough to not have that "all or nothing" feel to their damage mitigation. Since it's not fun to swing from bad to good for Gimick tanks, and even less fun to swing from good to not-the-best for shield tanks I don't support that design. I'm hoping that Guard becomes the Monk's "block" and there are not a ton of cooldowns to help with surviveability, for any class. I don't believe in the "homogenization" idea, class distinction is defined by implementation and presentation, not design exclusivity. I hope that through good play and timed cooldowns Monks (as well as all the other tanking classes) start and end in a competitive position with each other this expansion. I know there is a fine line between "I don't have the tools I need" and "LOL BRB my bro is playing while I poop". What Blizz does with healthpools and cooldowns determines weather tanking will be fun for me in this expansion or require more work on my part, so I'm for sure watching this issue closely.

-Swaggs