The tanks of World of Warcraft are becoming weaker. They are too strong – and that should no longer be the case in The War Within.
Tanks are a bit like the all-in-one solution in many groups in World of Warcraft. They hold the threat of enemies (which is their primary role), often deal solid damage, and can heal themselves or others quite significantly.
Sometimes tanks are so powerful that they are no longer dependent on healers and can often handle bosses on their own when the rest of the group has already bitten the dust.
This strength is a thorn in Blizzard’s side, as it brings some problems for dungeon design. Therefore, tanks are now being targeted – they will be weakened in The War Within.
What is the problem with tanks? Tanks have become stronger over the past months and patches. They often take little to no damage, and even when they do, almost all tanks are capable of healing this damage on their own. As a result, tanks are no longer dependent on healers in many cases, leading to some groups not taking them along – it is simply more efficient to venture out with four DPS characters and one tank.
Therefore, Blizzard wants to slightly reduce the self-healing of tanks.
The goal is not that tanks should fall more often, but that they continuously take damage and, upon losing health points, also have to rely on the healer. Group play and the interaction of the different roles should be encouraged.
What is changing? Blizzard describes the changes in detail in the patch notes for the current beta build of The War Within in the official WoW forum.
However, the changes can be summarized as follows:
- Tanks should have less self-healing.
- Healers should need to pay more attention to tanks, but this shouldn’t consume all their attention.
- Tank gameplay shouldn’t change significantly (e.g., requiring kiting).
- The self-healing and damage reduction of most tanks is decreased.
- Talents that increase health points or armor will be somewhat weaker.
- Talents that make survivability abilities stronger or more frequently available will be weakened.
- Talents and abilities that grant shields will be weakened.
What do you think about these changes to tanks? Is it good that Blizzard is making adjustments here and ensuring that healers also have to pay attention to the tank again? Or is it rather annoying and will lead to even fewer people playing tanks? At least in raids this shouldn’t be too bad – because it nerfs itself automatically.
