Tank Tuning in The War Within

With the introduction of the Dragonflight talents system and season-over-season changes, tanks in World of Warcraft have become extremely durable relative to non-tank characters. Their active defenses can mitigate high percentages of incoming damage and they have strong self-healing. Today, in the hardest content in the game, many tanks can sustain themselves without much assistance from healers. In some cases, we’ve seen it become optimal to do group content without a healer at all.

World of Warcraft is an MMO, and its multiplayer aspects are a major strength. Group content is extremely rewarding when players performing different roles come together to overcome a challenge. We want to reinforce the importance of the healer role and work towards gameplay where tanks and healers collaborate to reduce the damage the tank is taking and to restore the tank’s lost health.

Tank durability can cause some other problems as well, especially in challenging endgame content, that we want to work toward improving.

• Enemy damage has increased to challenge tanks, but if it’s increased too much, it gets spiky and puts tanks in significant danger if their defenses ever drop. This can lead to tanks getting killed rapidly, seemingly out of nowhere. We feel this is unsatisfying and would prefer tank damage to generally be evenly distributed, but still threatening over time.

• If tanks are not threatened enough, then the most challenging part of endgame content can become keeping DPS and healers alive, often against high burst damage. Making tank survival a more involving element of group gameplay could give us some freedom to ease up on the threat to other group members.

To address the above, we’re making reductions to tank durability and self-healing. This will allow us to smooth out the damage tanks and parties take while retaining the challenge of keeping them alive over time. We’ll take those changes into account in encounter tuning as well.

Tanks will take more damage overall, but shouldn’t die significantly more often.

To increase the overall damage tanks take and their reliance on healers, we’re primarily increasing the percentage of damage they take, after mitigation, from steady damage sources like physical attacks. We’re making fewer reductions to each class’s defenses against burst damage or other threats that are currently most likely to be lethal to them. Encounters will be tuned with this in mind so the character of tank damage changes, but the lethality of it doesn’t significantly increase.

Tank damage intake should be steady and not too fast.

One of our goals for these changes is to smooth out the rate tanks take damage to reduce surprise, spiky deaths. Healers should have time to respond to tank health and tanks should have time to use self-heals like Word of Glory or Celestial Brew. For some classes, we’re increasing their passive defenses to compensate for decreases to more active or reactive defensive mechanics. Tankbusters will still create challenging moments that reward tanks for planning and smart use of cooldowns.

Tanks will still have strong answers to threats or periods of danger, but less sustained self-healing.

Tanks should have autonomy over their own survival and will still have cooldowns or emergency self-heals like Renewal or Impending Victory. But the healing of continuous effects like Elune’s Favored or Indomitable are reduced, so tanks must have more of a partnership with healers to restore their missing health once it’s lost.

Healer gameplay should not be dominated by tank healing.

Healers play a critical role, and keeping tanks alive is part of what they bring to the table. However, healers contribute to the success of groups in many ways, especially in dungeons. They sustain the group, dispel harmful effects, and respond to burst damage, all while doing mechanics. Tank healing should not demand so much that it interferes with their other roles. It may take some iteration to get the balance right on this, where healers feel essential to tank survival but with their attention not overly demanded by it.

Tank gameplay should not significantly change or require actions like kiting to survive.

We’re happy that more players are enjoying playing tanks with their friends and in pick-up groups. There are a lot of demands on tanks, such as learning M+ routes, leading groups, and knowing what trash abilities are particularly dangerous. The gameplay of standing toe-to-toe with groups of enemies and the tactics you’ve learned to survive should continue to be effective.

Your Feedback Please!

We’re excited for you to get ahold of these changes and share your feedback on playing with them. Because there are so many factors to tanking, the most valuable feedback will be descriptions of your experiences playing with them. What does it feel like to play with the changes, and what’s different for you and your allies? Here are some questions to give you ideas of things you could share:

• How durable do you feel before and after the changes? What makes you feel that difference?
• In what ways did you change how you play?
• How did it change your builds?
• In what scenarios were you getting into trouble?
• For healers, how much more of your attention went to tanks compared to before?

We’d also love it if you can share what content you played and its difficulty level (M+ key level, Delve level, Heroic vs. Mythic raid, etc.), what difficulty level you and your friends normally clear, and what your experience level is with a class you tried.

Thank you!

Class Updates

In The War Within, all character Stamina has been increased by 60% as part of an overall adjustment to the pace of healing gameplay. This increases the relative value of abilities that heal a percentage of a character’s maximum health. Many of these ability changes are to counteract that relative change. For instance, the percentage health that Frenzied Regeneration restores has been reduced by about a third, but the amount of health it restores has remained the same.

Blood Death Knight

Death Strike is a powerful ability that allows Blood Death Knights to mitigate a percentage of any form of damage taken in the last 5 seconds. In a way, Death Strike works like a retroactive shield block. Instead of reducing damage up front, it “mitigates” the damage you took from a hit by healing you. If used in succession, Death Strike can affect a single hit multiple times, which would be comparable to blocking a hit, then going back in time and blocking it again, in some cases restoring yourself to higher health than where you started. In The War Within, we’re changing Death Strike to only heal the death knight for a percentage of damage taken from a given damage event once, to make it scale more like other tank mitigation mechanics.

We’re also reducing Runic Power generation somewhat and reducing some of the mitigation death knights get from high-uptime cooldowns like Enfeeble and Dancing Rune Weapon, but increasing armor from Bone Shield. Overall, death knights should take damage more smoothly, and they will remain one of the strongest tanks for encounters with high magic or periodic damage.

• Death Strike can now only heal the Death Knight for a percentage of damage taken from a given damage event once. Death Strikes that heal the minimum health amount do not count as using damage events in this way.
• A new aura, Coagulating Blood, shows the amount of recently taken damage that will be used to calculate the value of your next Death Strike. The aura description lists the value as a flat amount and the number of stacks shows it as a percentage of your current health.
• Blood Shield’s cap is now 50% of the Death Knight’s maximum health (was 100%) and the cap is no longer temporarily increased by Vampiric Blood.
  • Developers’ notes: This should not affect how much Blood Shield Death Knights are able to generate while actively tanking, but will reduce how large a barrier they are able to accumulate while off-tanking.
• Rune of the Fallen Crusader now heals for 4% of your maximum health (was 6%).
• Runic Attenuation now generates 3 Runic Power (was 5).
• Enfeeble reduces damage dealt to you by 12% (was 15%).
• Null Magic reduces magic damage taken by 8% (was 10%).
• Bone Shield increases Armor by 100% of Strength (was 80%).
• Leeching Strike now heals for 0.25% maximum health for each target hit (was 0.5%).
• Dancing Rune Weapon increases Parry chance by 35% (was 40%).
• Each active Dancing Rune Weapons generate 3 Runic Power when mirroring Heart Strike (was 5).
• Everlasting Bond increases Dancing Rune Weapon’s duration by 6 seconds (was 8 seconds).
• Blood Drinker reduces the damage the enemy deals to you by 15% (was 20%).
• Bonestorm heals you for 2% of your maximum health (was 3%), up to a maximum of 10% (was 15%). Bonestorm damage increased by 20%.

Vengeance Demon Hunter

Like Death Strike for Death Knights, Soul Fragments give Demon Hunters strong recovery against any type of damage, as well as strong self-healing. Because Demon Hunters consume Soul Fragments steadily, we’re not changing the rules for how often they can affect a damage event. We’re increasing Vengeance’s overall damage taken by weakening the damage reduction of talents like Void Reaver and Illuminated Sigils, while keeping the power of core abilities like Soul Fragments and Demon Spikes. They will continue to be one of the stronger tank classes at self-healing and surviving magic damage.

• Live By the Glaive now restores 2% of maximum health (was 4%).
• Thick Skin increases Stamina by 60% (was 65%).
• Demonic Wards reduces physical and magic damage taken by 8% (was 10%).
• Soul Cleave healing reduced by 20%.
• Frailty heals for 8% of damage done, down from 10%.
• Void Reaver reduces damage you take from targets afflicted by Frailty by 3% (was 4%)
• Illuminated Sigils grants 12% Parry chance (was 15%).
• Down in Flames reduces Fiery Brand cooldown by 12s, down from 15s.
• Metamorphosis increases maximum health by 40% (was 50%).
• Darkglare Boon now refreshes 15-30% of Fel Devastation’s cooldown (was 20-40%) and refunds 15-30 Fury (was 20-40).

Guardian Druid

With high armor and Ironfur uptime, druids should be one of the best tanks at surviving physical damage. We’re slightly increasing the damage they take from all types of damage and balancing the power of their self-healing. We’re also reducing the durations of some of their cooldowns to make timing their use more important.

• Frenzied Regeneration heals you for 20% of your maximum health (was 32%).
• Ironfur increases Armor by 112% of Agility (was 120%).
• Renewal heals for 20% of maximum health (was 30%).
• Reinvigoration reduces Frenzied Regeneration’s cooldown by 10/20% (was 20/40%).
• Earthwarden reduces damage taken by 25% (was 30%).
• Survival of the Fittest reduces cooldowns by 12/24% (was 15/30%)
• Tooth and Claw reduces damage taken by 12% (was 15%).
• After the Wildfire triggers after spending 300 Rage (was 200).
• Ursoc’s Fury grants a shield equal to 25% of Thrash and Maul damage (was 45%).
• Elune’s Favored heals you for 25% of Arcane damage dealt (was 40%).
• Rage of the Sleeper duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Rage of the Sleeper damage taken reduction reduced to 20% (was 25%).
• Rage of the Sleeper Leech decreases to 20% (was 25%).
• Pulverize duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Ursoc’s Guidance reduces the cooldown of Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc by 1 second for each 25 Rage spent (was 20).

Brewmaster Monk

Healers have more time to heal monks than other tanks because Stagger spreads out the damage that they take over time. Our goal is for monks to take a little more damage overall than other tanks to offset this effect. However, we feel their overall magic damage mitigation is a little low compared to other tanks and are improving it somewhat by buffing Stagger and its value against magic. To increase their physical damage taken overall, we’re primarily reducing the dodge granted by Elusive Brawler and some of their other talents.

• Brewmaster’s Balance increases Monks’ Armor by 50% (was 25%).
• Elusive Brawler chance to dodge reduced by 12%.
• Celestial Fortune heals you for 70% of the amount healed (was 80%).
• Amount of damage staggered increased by 8%.
• Percentage of magic damage staggered increased to 58% (was 45%).
• Dance of the Wind chance to dodge reduced to 5% (was 10%) for Brewmaster only.
• Yu’lon’s Grace grants an absorb equal to 1% of your maximum health (was 2%) every 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).
• Healing Winds restores 10% of maximum health (was 15%).
• Staggering Strikes healing reduced by 28%.
• Spirit of the Ox chance to summon a Healing Sphere reduced by 40%.
• Elixir of Determination healing reduced to 30% of recently purified damage (was 50%), or a minimum of 8% of your maximum health (was 20%).
• Celestial Brew healing reduced by 10%.
• Pretense of Instability grants 10% Dodge (was 15%).

Protection Paladin

Paladins have a balance of good defenses against both physical and magical damage. They can be in danger if they lose the defensive power of standing in Consecration or if the armor bonus from Shield of the Righteous drops, so we are not reducing any of their passive physical defenses like armor or block. Like druids, paladins have high uptime on their defensive cooldowns, so we’re pulling back some of their durations to make timing their use more important. We would like paladins to have slightly more self-healing, so we are increasing the power of Word of Glory.

• Shield of the Righteous increases your Armor by 150% of your Strength (was 170%).
• The damage reduction effect while standing in Consecrate of Mastery: Divine Bulwark is reduced by 20%.
• Sanctified Plates’ armor increase no longer applies to bonus armor from Shield of the Righteous.
• Improved Holy Shield increases your chance to block spells by 8% (was 10%).
• The Dusk buff from Of Dusk and Dawn reduces your damage taken by 4% (was 5%).
• Word of Glory healing increased by 10%.
• Sentinel’s duration reduced to 16 seconds (was 20 seconds).
• Eye of Tyr’s duration reduced to 6 seconds (was 9 seconds).
• Righteous Protector: Holy Power abilities reduces cooldowns by 1.5 seconds (was 2 seconds).

Protection Warrior

Warriors are the strongest tank against physical damage, though they can be vulnerable to magic or periodic damage. In this round of changes, we’re increasing their damage taken across the board by reducing the power of Defensive Stance. Warriors also have some strong heals that scale with their maximum health, like Indomitable and Impending Victory, so we are reducing the power of those abilities to compensate for the 60% increase to Stamina.

• Pain and Gain now heals for 2% of your max health (was 3.5%).
• Impending Victory heals you for 20% of your maximum health (was 30%).
• Defensive Stance reduces damage taken by 16% (was 20%).
• Fight Through the Flames causes Defensive Stance to reduce magic damage you take by 6% (was 5%).
• Into the Fray increases haste up to 8% (was 10%).
• Punish reduces damage enemies deal to you by 2% (was 3%).
• Enduring Alacrity increases Stamina and Armor by 8% (was 10%).
• Indomitable increases your maximum health by 6% (was 10%) and heals you for 1% of your maximum health per 20 Rage spent (was 10 rage).
• Defender’s Aegis reduces Shield Wall’s cooldown by 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Impenetrable Wall causes Shield Slam to generate an additional 4 Rage (was 3) and reduces the remaining cooldown of Shield Wall by 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
• Disrupting Shout cooldown increased to 90 seconds (was 75 seconds).

Noting that I’ve updated the first Death Knight note:

• Death Strike can now only heal the Death Knight for a percentage of damage taken from a given damage event once. Death Strikes that heal the minimum health amount do not count as using damage events in this way.