Nerf AoE tanking and rescue the game

Dear Blizzard, thank you for the buff of 50% more threat from Swipe. But you went the wrong way. You changed everything in 3.0 to make AoE tanking easy. And it's made the game significantly less fun. Please fix it.

Could you please nerf Swipe threat? Warrior, Paladin, and Death Knight AoE threat too. Keep our AoE damage up, that's kinda fun, but make it so mages, warlocks, hunters, rogues, paladins, death knights, priests, druids, and warrior out-threat us when they all go all-out AoE. Shamans, too, once you fix Magma Totem. Just reduce the threat multiplier on all our tanking abilities to 1.0 so the DPS out-threats us.

Every single class has been given a powerful AoE damage attack. Every single tanking class has been given a powerful AoE tanking ability. The result is that raiding has become significantly more mindless. Every single trash pull in every single instance is reduced to "tanks rush in, everyone AoE". Focus fire isn't really important. They might as well have removed crowd control from the PvE game entirely.

Remember Shadow Labs? Those 6 pulls took a lot of careful play. Kill the imp without tanking it, crowd control two casters, then the poor bear has to control three other mobs. You couldn't Swipe: too dangerous around the CC and not enough threat. So lots of tab targeting, management of lacerates, and the DPS had to pay attention and attack the right target. Tanking and DPS required skill.

Remember Serpentshrine Cavern? Such tricky trash pulls: 4 tanks for 4 mobs, mind control the casters to DPS or tank. Or the big mess of giant murlocs where there was no way to really control the pull so people sheeped and tanks went nuts and once you'd done it a few weeks you could get through those groups without wiping. People bitched about the trash, but you felt proud once you learned how to beat it.

Remember Hyjal? Yeah, that trash was awful and boring. Paladin AoE tanks everything, DPS burned it down.

Remember Zul'aman? Beautiful trash design. Some straight up tanking on the bear trash, careful marking and a bit of CC. Some AoE tanking, particularly eagle and lynx trash, but DPS had to single target and had to be smart about it. And the tour-de-force of Dragonhawk trash, moving carefully through the troll camp taking out the godawful Flamecasters first and everyone moving fast and careful to avoid the patrols spawning behind them. CC and stuns on the fly, no time to plan, everyone had to learn to play together without discussion. So hard, particularly on the 45 minute timer, and so much fun.

What do we have now? Naxxramas, the centerpiece of raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, requires no crowd control. It requires no mob management. You just group up all the crap and AoE it down. Yeah, there's a couple of slimes you should probably kite although honestly it's not necessary. You should try to split out the whirlwinding Dark Touched Warrior to be nice to your melee DPS, although it's probably faster just to tell melee to make themselves a sandwich while the ranged AoE the groups down. Mostly the trash is just there to slow you down. Faster to pull two groups at once if your healers can keep up; AoE threat is unlimited, afterall.

It's terrible. The boss fights are still interesting, but the trash has gotten a lot stupider. And I don't see how it's going to get better. I'm sure new raids will be harder, but what will they do to bring back the thought that pre-Wrath trash required?

Comments

[Karthis]

Fuck. Yes.

[Twekki]

I think you're suggesting the wrong fix to this problem. You ask for aoe threat to be reduced but then whine about how all trash pulls are able to be pack pulled, grouped up and aoe'd down.

Wouldn't the problem then be that the trash is to weak and have too few interesting or debilitating abilities to pack tank?

If you have a 2 pull, why don't you cc one and single target dps the other? AoE doesn't provide a dps boost on 2 targets, so it's not because it's really any faster.

If you have a 3 pull, again, why don't you cc 2 of them and single dps one at a time? AoE would pretty much require the same amount of time to down a 3 pack as single targetting them.

If there's a 6 pack, and blizzard decided that because there are 6 mobs, on an average geared tank, each should do about 1/6th the dps, what's the point of crowd control?

You crowd control a healer because it sucks seeing the mobs health going up instead of down. You crowd control the ranged casters because they are hard to keep close enough to build threat. You crowd control melee because when they gang up, they beat too hard on the tank or apply horrible debuffs. You don't cc because a tank can't manage to keep up enough threat on all of the mobs at the same time.

If you nerf aoe threat, the result is still pulling a 6 pack, single targeting until one of the mobs is down, then, because the tank had a decent amount of time to make up the threat that the nerf took away, you go back to aoe-ing the other 5 down.

The solution for making trash pulls more interesting isn't reducing the aoe threat of tanks, its by making the fights more, well, interesting. Buff the damage of melee trash so most would have a belly full of bear sandwiches. Add ranged casters that randomly do miserable debuffs. Implement more Mind Controling mobs. Cast mobs as Warlocks and bring out their glass cannon imps... Add in mobs that cast stoneskin at 30% and require a high level of DPS to kill, meanwhile applying a stacking acid debuff requiring you to separate any 2 packs... Add in trash that apply stacking mortal wounds that require tanks to alternate taunting...

While I absolutely agree that the trash in Naxx is booring, I also very much disagree that nerfing aoe threat is in any way the solution.

~Twekki - Baelgun

[Cassytha]

I am not sure what the solution is, but from the DPS side, I totally agree that I am not pleased with the direction that Blizzard has taken. I am watching some fellow-DPSers mindlessly AoE'ing one or two mobs. Why? It is neither mana efficient nor tactically sound (in some cases)...especially, if they don't wait for the tanks to have aggro.

I guess that I have always loved crowd-control and having to use one's brain to "solve" the puzzle.

So, I would add...

Dear Blizzard, please, don't reward mediocre play or tactics. Encouraging excellence is a win win win!

Sincerely yours...:)

[Flyv]

Twekki, thanks for your thoughtful comment. You're right, there's two separate reasons for crowd control right now. The one I talk about is threat management; one reason you used to CC stuff, particularly in 5 mans, is because the tank can't manage aggro on all of them. There is another reason for CC, which is some mob is so dangerous you can't afford to leave it up uncontrolled while killing other trash. There's a couple of examples of that in Naxx that I allude to, Hyjal's Abominations were like that too. It's definitely possible that the harder raid instances we're promised will feature more dangerous trash that requires more thought, and I hope so. But I still miss the aggro management problem.

Cassy, interesting to hear it from the DPS' point of view. Spamming AoE is just as mindless for DPS as for tanks, although a little too mindless will get you killed (as you note). I know when I'm DPS I'm happiest with complex rotations, like the new cat DPS or an affliction warlock rotating DoTs. More like that please, Blizzard!

[Revaan]

Whatever the solution to the problem, can we make trash healing at least marginally more interesting? Once trash got mastered, healing is incredibly boring. Was pre-3.0, still is post-3.0. The only time that trash seemed interesting was if there was something so many of us had to cleanse that we spent a significant amount of time not healing and let the raid pick up some significant amount of damage.

[dfv]

As someone who tanked all the BC raid content (up to Illidan anyway), but who rerolled at WotLK time and am still only 71, I can sympathise with you guys as it must feel very hollow right now. I'm sure our raid leader is fine about the trash nerf because at least we don't have the occasional wipes on Leo trash anymore, but it's nice to be SCARED occasionally!

It's seems to be the perfect time to bring an Alt up really because people are still likely to allow you into the 5 and 10 mans even if undergeared because they're not all that hard purportedly.

[Darkbane]

I agree completely.

Haven't gotten to the raid content yet, but the instance and leveling fights are just boring for the most part.

It's a real pity, because Blizz did really well on the other aspects of Lich King--the lore makes sense and is actually interesting (ok, like everyone else, I wish I had a fast-forward button in CoT Strat), and the visuals are superb.

[Infinitum]

Its really a tug-of-war type of battle for the developers.

This is the first time they are trying to make all content accessible to almost everyone that can get a 10 or 25 man group going. AoE tanking is just one aspect of the many sacrifices needed in order to accomplish this.

The obvious downside is that players that have been playing and improving with their knowledge/experience of past instances are forced to go through these types of tasks that seem more suited for a Molten Core type instance.

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming Ulduar instance provides any sort of change to this methodology.

[Sofea]

I agree that AoE has become to prevelant. I enjoy getting to AoE down some packs of Mobs now. AoE sort of felt like a gimmik before. But Right now I agree it's just too easy. In Hyjal you AoE things down becasue honestly, you have to. It would be nigh impossible to single target everything down. But you're right 3 mobs or more and just let blizzard fly. This is especially true for a mage where things die so quickly that I might only get 1 or 2 spells off. A big channeled Ao spell, well at least I feel like I'm doing something.

I think the solution though is not to nerf threat. It's to up the damage these AoE packs do to the tank. The problem is not only that you can hold threat on 2 pulls of mobs, it's that they can't kill you. What if the mobs hit so hard that you couldn't survive 6 mobs on you. Now you have to CC, or offtank 2 or 3. (In an off tank situation you could even still AoE, but at least it would be more interesting.)

In a conversation with Beroth I stated that Wrath feels like it's still in Gamma version. It's out of Beta, but the game balance and tuning issues feel like they are still beign worked out. I only hope that there is enough new content introduced that will be tweaked appropriately in the months ahead.

[LRNs (Rhus)]

In conceptual form AoE offers accessibility & is fun. In practice, it's been a disaster.

My solution is to mix things up. Give me diversity! Give me the feel of progression.

Give me an instance where there's AoE and there's an absolute must for CC. I thing the "speed" of instances is working for me. Just tweak a third of the pulls to force creativity. Also, make everything harder by 10-20%. Increase trash health. Increase their tricks. Force us to select mobs for interrupts. My group practically ignores spells that should be interrupted and instead just pours on more AoE. Why think when you can kill stuff by spamming your AoE talents?

[Kal]

I think that AoE has its place, but as part of trash pulls/gauntlets. CoT Strat is a great example of something that should work - if the mobs were harder. Have the pace really high, hordes of annoying dork adds + a couple really hard-hitting mobs. You need AoE threat and single-target damage. Combine this with mobs that need to be controlled and you've got some interesting pulls.

So far, the most interesting pulls are things like Heroic AN's skirmishers. These are few and far between. I don't think they need to make it so that AoE threat isn't usable; I think they need to make it so that the mobs just hit too damn hard to have 4-5 up at a time.

[Circumstance]

I think the vast majority of the people posting on this have neither cleared 25naxx, or are working 'really hard' to do so. If you're at the point right now where naxx is a joke, and you can clear it in 1 night, then you understand what Blizzard is doing.

Naxx is a joke for a reason. It's to get people ready, it's to please the masses who QQ'd for years that unless they played 5 hours a day they couldn't have epics.

Ulduar is coming, and it will be harder. Don't wonder, don't question, don't worry.. it's going to be harder, and tuned for raids that need a challenge.

Stop crying about Naxx, ffs. It's starting to get annoying.

[Chris]

This for me has been an issue since 3.0

I currently play a paladin tank and have seriously gotten so sick of the "Grab everything, LOS, AOE, Loot, Next pack" cycle.

I understand that they want to make the game accessible to all sorts of people, but even in T4/ZA gear during BC you couldnt AOE entire hallways of Heroic SH

Now, When running heroic Nexus, After that first dragon is dead, i can quite comfortably round up all the mobs until i hit the first boss.... Thats just stupid imho, There needs to be a better balance between it.

CC'ing every single pull is a waste of time and adds to frustration, But at least give me SOMETHING that needs it. The only time i've seen CC used through-out all of WOTLK so far is in Arena..