Thursday, March 4, 2010

Threat-Capped DPS

Caer Morrighan pulled out some interesting points from the latest Dev Twitter Chat.

Here's a real gem:

Q. You talk a lot about changing how we heal tanks, but will aggro ever come back as a challenging part of the game?

A. Not sure. This is something we discuss a lot. I even had a meeting on it this week! On the one hand, some tanks really felt like the way to distinguish themselves was to generate maximum threat per second. On the other hand, threat is a pretty invisibile part of the game (it’s limited to the UI at best), and I know when I tank that I always feel pretty emasculated when someone actually pulls off of me. It’s challenging, but is it really fun? This is the kind of thing we’d love to get more feedback on. Please include your feedback on large banners to be shown in the background during the Olympics. Failing that, the forums would work too.

As a tank I think the raids lost something when optimal DPS stopped being about managing aggro and resources and became about twitch reactions to not standing in the fire and and banging out your priority queue properly.

I also think--though I would really want more feedback from DPSers on this--that new tank--who threat cap the T10 geared DPSers anyway--suffer more now than they would if even their T10 geared tank threat capped them.

I think--I mean no matter what a well geared DPSer (unless he is willing to solo a mob (something I encourage in HHoR as a warrior)) is going to have to throttle DPS way more with a new tank than a well geared one.

There is a negative flipside though too--raids are already potentially blocked by tanks not being survivable enough for an encounter--adding a threat cap to raidwide DPS would put huge pressures on tanks to up threat and give them first crack at gear.

Ultimately new tanks are always going to threat cap well geared DPS and I think making all DPSers in most situations aware of their threat and teaching them how to control their aggro would do more to help new tanks than not.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Agree with you 100%.

Before the benchmark of good dps'r (hunter alt for me) was aggro and resource mngt along with providing solid dps and cc when needed.

Now it seems when i dps i can go nuts and just remember to not stand in the goo. I rarely play my hunter these days and being a tank, it annoys me at the lack of coordination(for the most part) it takes to win. It seems as we are all grouped but not working as a team if you can relate?

i.e. "I'm just gonna unload from the start and if the tank can keep aggro, hes just bad or im gonna stand in the green stuff and if i don't get heals they suck."

Guthammer said...

I have to admit that as a tank I do feel that the DPSers do throw everything at the mobs from the very start and I am working against them (real fun in HHoR, let me tell you).

OTOH, most of the DPSers who do have any sort of chance of grabbing aggro off me are well enough trained not to stand in the goo.

She Who Speaks Horde might have a different impression though. :-p