What Do TANKS Think About the Tank Nerfs? | The W Podcast Clips
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Another hot topic in The W Podcast has been the tank nerfs that hit us in The War Within and how they affected the community and the Mythic+ scene. And now that we have a special guest in the face of Sha who happens to be a tank, we couldn't resist but ask for their opinion on everything that happened in World of Warcraft this season and how it feels for them to be playing in this new environment. Find out his takes in this short clip and let us know what is your opinion as well in the comments below!
Watch the full episode here:
• What Happened to All T...
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Surviving as a tanking should not be a difficult role, it should be easy, with the complexities being in routing, and pulling, and utility. The more tanks and healers we have, the healthier the M+ community is. Blizzard have gone with the opposite direction with TWW, and because of it, M+ is basically dead sooner then usual.
I agree. The dungeons get naturally harder and more difficult by the simple fact of pushing and increasing the key stone level by itself. So I think that the overall design should not be as punishing and instead be much more pug / tank / healer friendly so people get more engaged with the system and keep playing. The difficulty then will come by itself when you start pushing higher keys!
Multi-class tank since S1 BfA here adding my two cents to the conversation. I currently have three characters between 3,1-3,4k m+ rating and generally I like that the tanking is more healing and external dependent. The kind of pulls we played in Dragonflight to achieve title was absurd, and would be more fitting in a MDI setting rather than high keys imo - where the current routing and size pulls are more in tune with legion-bfa-sl.
However, unless you play a meta comp (protadin, disc, aug, enh + boomie/dk) or a full melee/spellcleave, you simply can't produce the damage to time the keys. Comparatively, our scuffed comp pulls around 7,5m dps overall in a City of Threads, while the meta comp, with the same exact pulls can sit comfortably between 10-11m.
This makes it so that in order to make up time because of insufficient dps, offmeta comps (tanks included) will have to play much bigger, riskier and chaotic simply to squeeze out few seconds here and there. This, for me, becomes the biggest issue with tanking right now. If you can play regular high-key routes, surviving is not an issue once you understand your tank and the individual pulls - but being forced to play more aggressive and bigger is the largest threat to tank survivability. If we mimic the routes used in 19-20s, with 0 deaths and perfect execution, we won't even make the timer in 17s.
In short, I like the current state of (some) tanks - but the completely out of wack class balance and the addition of augmentation evoker makes it a lot harder to enjoy the current state of m+.
Very nice observation from a different point of view compared to what most of us have as we don't play in +17s. Thank you!
Do you think that this DPS discrepancy will be better off if there is no Aug in game? Or may be if they somehow kill it with the latest announced changes?
@@thelegendbehindthecow From my PoV, augmentation was a mistake from the very beginning. Our then team, in Dragonflight S2 were #500 all classes and roles world, which was pretty respectable playing offmeta and on just a few evenings per week. The weekend augmentation was introduced (mid season), we didn't play and came back on monday having dropped 2500 ranks on world ranking (a normal weekend, we would've dropped 30-50 positions). This made our group, and a lot of our friends quit for many seasons as it ruined the competitive scene for us.
To answer your question, I think balancing is easier without the augmentation class for sure. As there are some dps that benefits a ton from PI & Aug buffs, while most other dps receives a lot less DPS from the same buffs. This means that if you require an augmentation to survive the content, you require the specific DPS that benefits most from that class. I.e. enhancement shaman, boomie, dk and mage (survival hunter can be paired quite successfully with a full meta comp + enh, but it's just a single team on non-asia ladder that plays it competitively). - So you need to make most classes benefit from aug if aug is by far the best choice in m+, or those who doesn't benefit as much will never be competitive. Which is harder than balancing one class (aug) or ->
Making it a choice between aug gives DMG and no survivability _OR_ aug gives survivability but you suffer in damage. Right now, aug makes the group tankier and doing more damage than in a regular comp, which just breaks the game completely. From what I can make out of the 11.1 notes, it doesn't look like enough is changing for augmentation to no longer be mandatory, but only time will tell. I don't see a world where Augmentation is "killed off" by Blizzard, but perhaps a future where classes like Demon Hunter gets a third specialization, such as a support spec -> which would at least open up for more comp (maybe a caster and a melee support class)?
@@Suttermuts Pretty nice analysis again, thank you :)
It's funny how we cry about certain problems at the level that we play but when you go into higher keys, it's a completely different ball game (which we know but still) and the problems there are also completely different.
That said, aug is being hated on in lower keys too. For different reasons but rightly so. And deleting it would probably feel good for everyone but obviously Blizzard is not going to do that. I like that they keep nerfing it but if put in the right hands, it's still going to be suprior until the gut it completely which would be the same as deleting it. So as you said, 11.1 might not be what we are looking for but only time will tell if things are going to get better.
Different support roles would definitely help imo as well. They will define the aug problem more concretely and then solutions will have to be found. And may be those other supports will be a bit more interesting too as I've played aug and I find it quite boring. So fingers crossed for more support! And a bit off topic but if they are doing that, shaman tank too please!
Mostly a career tank here that would only make it to the low to mid 20s and hasn't gotten title before. I personally had so much fun in dragon flight and the end of shadowlands because if you died you basically know without a shadow of a doubt that it was your own fault. In this expansion a lot of the time I don't feel like it was my fault. Starting off the season randomly getting one tap on my bear if I didn't have a 2 or 3 min cd up almost all pull because of tank busters or knowing if I don't have cds and rage before I engage the next pack I am dead so I have to count on the healer to keep me up while the dps finish off the last pull or I need to kite and get yelled at by dps felt horrible. Switched to warrior and it fault a ton better but I still felt like if I messed up cycling pretty much for any reason would lead to me bleeding out and dying if I didn't have a really strong healer.
Now it just doesn't feel rewarding because you are overly punished and even if you play great you still are not completely responsible for your own life and you will just die because someone else isn't keeping a close enough eye on you or you don't account for ever changing kill times on packs and just run out of cds. Maybe it is a skill issue on my part but it is just my feeling when I'm tanking this season.
Also big pulls and routing are so much fun and them restricting them so much this season is lame.
Career tank here too. Since Vanilla.
It's wild to me that Blizz was like "hey healers what would make your role more fun?" and they said "make tanks weaker" and Blizz went, "sounds good". And now everyone is shocked pikachu about there being less tanks.
People complaining that tanks could survive everything forget that was literally our skill expression. They took away being a good tank being rewarding. Bad tanks couldn't do it before, they still can't now. Good tanks could before, now they can't. So they made tanking measurably worse.
I've been putzing around on dps characters this entire expansion so far. Haven't even done any M+ except some 2s and I hate it as dps and tank now. Never healed so no clue how that goes.
I think you nailed it there with the "overly punished" comment. Tanks nerfs were one thing that happened but then they also designed all the bosses and trash with so many tank busters that will kill you and combining this with everything else feels extremely bad. Sure, you can always blame it on "skill issue" but that doesn't change the fact that people are quitting the role / the game and it goes against their tank nerf philosophy that tank would need just a little bit of healing now but they will not be taking so much "spikey" damage. Surely it contradicts with, for example, the double guardian pull in mists where DBM is yelling at me to pop a defensive every 8-10 seconds and I'm out of buttons to press like 30s into the pull but the mobs are still above 50% health!
I was one of them people saying "let us heal the tanks" and I surely admit that this backfired. Badly. I will say though that if you look at the nerf in a vacuum, I actually like it from both sides playing as healer and playing as a tank. However, as mentioned in all the other comments, that change didn't happen in a vacuum, so many more things changed and when you add the dungeon design, the tank busters, the affixes, it's a disaster at the end :(
"NEFRS" in the thumbnail is what brought me here...lolol I had no idea what it was. But honestly, tanks have gotten a serious shaft w/how they were slapped w/the nerfs they received after how great they were in DF. I will agree to an extent that tanks DID NEED a bit of a dialing back of how GODLY they were, healers were bored...I was so in love w/my bear for ALL of DF(and even mid Shadowlands honestly) but what they've done to tanks now - its like they've decided to punish tanks, & healers to an extent, for tanks being so great for so long.
Healers don't want to heal anything now b/c of how squishy tanks are, & how things are just so wonky.
I hope they correct this horrible unjust change.
That's the point of the "nerf", tanks need to know how to cycle their cooldowns, healers cannot heal one shots brick heads
They probably overdid this a bit. And they also added volatile dungeon design with many tank busters that actually goes against their philosophy that "tanks will take more damage but not spikey so they won't die". When you sum up all the changes that they did, it turns out as a huge mess and a disaster so naturally people are calling now to revert those changes.
In short. No. We are not enjoying them.
Let's hope Blizzard gets that memo too!
Maybe you didn't mean people pugging 13s and 14s.Out of all the runs in the season there have only been 500,000 completed (even if not timed) at that key level or above and 36,000,000 total M+ runs overall. That's the top 1.3% of runs. Meaning that 98.7% of runs aren't that high.
Keys completed from 10-11 is about 8.6 million. A drastic difference, it's nearly 25% of all runs completed.
You can also assume that only 20% of those people doing keys that high are tanks because it's 1 person in a 5 person group. The number people people pugging is another percentage of that. So you're talking about an EXTREMELY low number of tanks in the pool to being with of people who are pushing keys that high.
I know this video/topic isn't geared towards me. I don't play at a high level at all. I've literally only played a single M+ this entire season. It was a premade of guild mates and we stomped it, I got my BiS trinket and decided I was done.
Eh, you did not consider giving M+ more than one chance? :)
Other than that, I currently do pug 13s and 14s so they are puggable. I think that bar goes even higher, I just haven't gotten there yet. The keys and the players are scarce indeed, not easy to find, long queue times, you basically showed why with your numbers but puggable they are and that's how and a few other players play the game right now.
@@thelegendbehindthecow I've got a toddler so I have have limited structure gaming time. Right now it's being used to raid two hours two nights a week. Although I have considered dropping a raid night for M+ now that it's the end of the season. I really enjoyed it with my static group in BFA and SL. Sadly less free time makes it tough.
I get you, I have a toddler of my own over here :)
I will say that playing in an organized group makes a ton of difference but you probably already know that. So if you are considering to drop raid night for M+ pugging, then think carefully as it might end up being a worse experience overall :)
As a pure dps player, one of the frustrating things for me was something Sha mentioned. Which was he loved getting dps trinkets, but the flip side of that is it meant that the dps players had to compete with the tank to get them. My personal opinion is that I shouldn't have to compete with the tank to get my bis trinkets. So I liked when I saw that some of the best dps trinkets had qualifiers on them that said tank specs couldn't use them to their full potential. I'm also fine with them having made trinkets that have a "no dps" qualifier on them as well.
You have a good point there. As someone who plays all 3 shamans specs, getting trinkets has always been a nightmare and the fact that, let's say, your BIS healer trinket goes to a DPS because it's some kind of an increase for them only makes matters worse. I will also add that I had pretty bad experiences farming specific trinkets that just wouldn't drop for me in the spec that I wanted but at the same time they were not available for any of the specs of my teammates so I ended up being stuck in a dungeon for weeks on end.... may be the dinars in S2 will help to fix these problems?
@@thelegendbehindthecow I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the dinars working. I'm kind of glad that my main is a lock, but I can see the pain point of having a class that has dps/healer specs. I'm kind of dreading getting my disc priest up and running, lol.
I know I enjoyed having the bullions at the end of dragonflight. They helped me flesh out my gear on my lock with pieces that just wouldn't drop.
Yeah and dinars helped a LOT when gearing alts as well as your alts are always behind by definition. So yeah, fingers crossed that new change is for the best and may be they build even more on top of it in the future :)