WoW - Tanking & PvP Healing Changes

Tags : wow tanking & pvp healing changes, tanking change, pvp healing changes, wow news    

World of Warcraft developers announced some minor changes to Death Knight and Paladin tanking abilities, and introduced a sweeping new change to PvP healing for the new arena season:

PvP Healing chages

Update 2/4/10:

After further observations of the recent changes made to resilience and healing in PvP, we have made an additional change via an in-game fix so that the PvP healing debuff in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp now also lowers the effectiveness of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield by 10%. The majority of other strong shields or damage absorption mechanics are already affected by the healing change, so we feel this new adjustment is an appropriate step in balancing the effects of resilience versus healing. The ultimate goal is to find a better median between PvP encounters feeling too quick from burst damage, or too long from heals, shields, and absorption effects. We will continue to monitor the way these changes play out and let you know if we feel any further changes are needed. As always, feedback based on your PvP experience with these new changes is welcome.

Patch 3.3.2 is bringing about a change to the way healing functions in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and Wintergrasp. We have applied a debuff to all players in these zones which will decrease the effectiveness of all forms of healing by 10%. This includes heals from items such as Healthstones and potions, however, it will not affect defensive shields or auras. This change is being made to balance the effectiveness of healing against the recent buff we made to the damage reduction component provided by resilience. Rest assured that we will be closely monitoring the effects both the healing and resilience changes have on Battleground, Wintergrasp, and Arena PvP game play to ensure that fights last a reasonable amount of time without overtly skewing the effectiveness of any class, role, or team combination.

The changes made to resilence were creating a PvP atmosphere where some healers seemed nearly impossible to kill. Resto Druids and Holy Paladins in particular were able to attain levels of physical damage reduction akin to a PvE geared tank thanks to their naturally high armor, and high resilience. This change will essentially deflate the value of healing by an amount roughly similar to the amount of damage reduction provided by the changes to resilience.

This should make life a little bit easier for damage dealers, but it'll still be quite a task to take down a healer without someone applying a wound effect and interrupting casts effectively. Many players were expecting a change of this nature after the resilience buff was announced. The general consensus on Arena Season 7 was that there was simply too much burst in the game, and that damage and healing both needed to be toned down so that games could last longer and be more strategic. The final straw seemed to be the now infamous grand final match at MLG Orlando in January, which spurred complaints from the arena community on the issue.

Tanking Changes

We are making some adjustments to tank survivability based on what we’re seeing in Icecrown Citadel. We feel this is particularly important in preparation for upcoming Heroic attempts. This is tricky and occasionally subjective, so we might very well make more adjustments as we get even more data.

Paladin:  

• Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.

Death Knight:

• Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
• Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.

It’s important to note that we aren’t trying to single out paladins here. We like the tank balance of warriors and druids at the moment, and we have a larger sample size of warrior tanks that we can compare. Another solution would have been to buff warriors, death knights and druids and then increase boss damage accordingly. Obviously, that would have been a much larger change with greater risks and a longer delay.

Though Ardent Defender is always a possible target for changes, we like that this talent provides such a distinction between warriors and paladins. Rather than have all the tanks have the same health, armor, avoidance and cooldowns, we’d rather have four unique tanking classes rather than just superficial or artistic differences. Yes, that design is harder to balance, but we think class distinction is ultimately more interesting, which is better for the long term health of the game. The goal remains to have all four tanks be viable for any encounter, assuming sufficient gear and skill, and any differences in performance on individual encounters to be minor. “Minor” is obviously a subjective term.

Please note that the death knight change will result in a small survivability increase in PvP, which we think is appropriate. We chose it partially with that in mind.

Although a 4% reduction to stamina can't be a source of joy for Paladins, I think that many of them are secretly relieved that they got off with such a minor nerf. Paladins have been the go-to tank for raiding since the buffs to Ardent Defender in Patch 3.2. As Crygil noted in the post, that ability is one of the most, if not the most, powerful tanking ability in the game right now. I doubt that this change will have any effect on the use of Protection Paladins in raids.

Death Knights have been waiting since the end of Ulduar for some buffs to achieve parity with the other three tanks in high end PvE. Ask and ye shall recieve! We will probably have to wait and see if these changes to the Death Knight class will be enough to make them a desirable alternative, but this is certainly a good start. Balancing Death Knight tanking has always been a tricky subject, because they are the only class out of the four tank classes that tanks with a two-handed weapon, and can make full use of their tank abilities while doing damage. Given their recent fall in arena popularity, this must have seemed like a good time to implement this change that the community has been asking after for a long time.

Source: entonhammer.com

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