Friday, January 9, 2009

Tanking In Wrath: The Next Generation

In case you haven't heard, there's a lot of Aoe type pulls in the instances in Wrath of the Lich King Attack of the Melee. Every tanking class has been given tools to be able to Aoe tank. From a druid's Swipe to a Warrior's Thunder Clap to a Pally's Consecration, and finally to Death and Decay (and others) from a Death Knight.

And your job in Wow is to take hits. You're supposed to get all the mobs to hate you the most (assuming you're the only tank) so that they don't kill your healer or dps'ers. I just highlighted 4 spells that will do that for each tanking class.

But a pug run I went on last night became entertaining when I tanked most of the mobs.

Before we started the run, the DK (only tank class in the group) kept asking who was going to tank, even after he had already confirmed that he was going to. I wasn't even the one Aoe'ing to have mobs go all over the place. It was the healer... throwing heals. (The nerve, huh?) The tank would sometimes tank all the mobs, but more often then not, he just plain forgot.

So, equipped with Ice Barrier and Power Word: Shield (from the healer), I tanked a good portion of the mobs. It actually made the instance go faster, hence why I did it.

So, I submit to you that there should be a class review, and mages should now be able to tank. Arcane's the new Pvp Spec. Fire (with some frost and using Frostfire) is the new Pve spec. So, Frost should be the new tanking spec for mages. Get rid of spell pushback, and we "shouldn't" have an issue with aggro. Arcane Explosion could be our Aoe tanking spell. (We might need a glyph to increase threat there.) And with all our magic abilities there's got to be a way that we can create some type of armor (Ice Armor on steroids?) to make it as if we were wearing plate. Maybe Ice Armor scales with Intelect or Spellpower or something.

Heck, don't even make us stellar tanks. Make us Off-tanks that could pick up a mob in a pinch after we popped our Improved Ice Armor. And I'm sure we have the intellect to think up some spell that will make people attack us and only us.

I know, I know... I can hear it already. "Yeah, but that would make them impossible to kill in Pvp." Right... because there aren't any other high dps classes that wear plate. Sure...

So, there you have it. Straight from my creation to this blog (to your eyes)... Mages will be the next tanks. Now... who's gonna heal us? Warlocks!!!

1 comment:

Drazmor said...

That would be good for BLizz, as it would be a huge upgrade to the 'Bring the player, not the class theory'