Cataclysm has seen the obliteration of threat as a compelling gameplay mechanic. In all honesty I don't really know why they decided to do this, as threat generation was, for Vanilla through Wrath, the main "active" job that a tank was concentrating on while using the occasional cooldown and reliance on having appropriate gear to stay alive. The one theory I can come up with is that threat is basically a binary system: you either have it or you don't. A tank who's got a 1000% of the threat that the highest dps is not really tanking the boss any more effectively than the one who's got 101% (though the extra damage is nice.)
So whether that's the reason or there's just been a sort of philosophical shift (that I don't really agree with,) all tanks are getting a pretty serious redesign to focus on Active Mitigation and just let the threat come cheap and easily. This is already pretty common today, with Vengeance and a whopping 500% threat bonus to all tanking stances (I remember when Righteous Fury only increased the threat of Holy Damage, and that only by 90%,) but the future design is that tanks will spend their resources on survivability, with the threat abilities generating those resources. So let's take a look at tanks and what they're getting out of this deal:
Warriors:
Most Warrior threat abilities like Shield Slam, Revenge, and Devastate are now free, and in fact, some generate Rage rather than costing it. However, they now are expected to use abilities like the redesigned Shield Block, which costs 60 Rage, guaranteeing a block and then raising your block chance by 25% (with additional critical block chance if your block goes over 100%, just like today.) So what this presumably means is that you can toss around your threat without any real concern about being Rage-starved, but the price you pay is that you have to constantly hit Shield Block or other defensive abilities whenever you can. (This will be a theme.)
Druids:
Much like the Warrior, threat abilities like Mangle, Lacerate and Thrash are all now free. However, you'll be spending the Rage you generate on the new ability with a familiar name, Savage Defense, which reduces incoming damage by 40%. It appears that a lot of Rage mechanics, even for dps Warriors, are being re-worked to have Rage-generators and Rage-spenders, but with both Rage tanks, you typically spend it on defensive abilities.
Death Knights:
DKs actually already use a lot of Active Mitigation, with Death Strike being both their biggest threat generator and their biggest survival ability. The current talent calculator doesn't really show any huge differences that I can spot, so DKs can, at least for now, rest easy knowing that if they can handle tanking now, they'll probably be fine come Mists.
Paladins:
Mana as a resource has always been troublesome for the non-healing Paladins, and while Cataclysm introduced the idea that certain abilities (Consecration) would cost a lot of mana to discourage using them if you didn't really need them, it also shifted most of the Paladin gameplay into generating Holy Power and spending it with big finishers. I'm happy to say that Consecration is back in a big way, but only for Protection. We will now be able to once again maintain our holy pain zone, which should make holding threat on groups very easy (we can even target it, Death and Decay style, with a glyph.) Shield of the Righteous is getting reworked quite a bit, though. Essentially, the design is that we are only going to be spending our Holy Power on survival abilities. ShotR still damages the target, but not nearly as much. Instead, it now gives us a guaranteed block and then 25% additional block value, making it a clear equivalent to the Warrior's Shield Block. However, being Paladins, we also have access to Word of Glory as well as some other finishers granted by talents, so don't be surprised to find yourself making on-the-fly decisions on whether you want to reduce incoming damage, heal up after a big hit, or put a HoT on yourself to keep up your health.
Monks:
Obviously, this is the hardest for me to analyze, as I've never played a Monk. Monks also don't have the benefit of 8 (or in the case of the DK, 4) years of development, so everything's certain to change a lot, but as I understand it, you'll be maintaining threat with the universal-Monk abilities like Jab, Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, and Spinning Crane Kick, while using Drunken Haze as your Thunder Clap-like ability and Breath of Fire (some of those base abilities might get replaced, by these latter ones) and then using Guard as your primary defensive ability, with Elusive Brew, Purifying Brew, and Shuffle as cooldowns... maybe?
In all honesty, going through these abilities class by class has made me a little less concerned about the model. While I will miss being considered an awesome tank for being able to hold aggro on a ton of different targets while an Arcane Mage is blasting away, the gameplay doesn't seem so absurdly alien as to be impossible to transition my skills. Maintaining the Shield of the Righteous buff (if indeed that is what we're supposed to do) should prove a lot more fun than hitting Holy Shield only to worry I should have saved it, or not hit Holy Shield and worry I should have used it.
It's good that most threat abilities are being made free, to free up our resource bars for this new Active Mitigation stuff. However, ability costs are not the only impediment to threat. Here's what I want to see:
Bosses that Telegraph their big moves:
Theoretically, short-term cooldowns could be compelling if you had a good time to use them. Let's say a boss does "Mega Punch" every 45 seconds. That's a great time to hit the current incarnation of Holy Shield. However, most bosses only have big magic attacks, while their melee damage remains somewhat consistent (or just builds with a stacking buff, like Zon'ozz.) So unless the goal is that tanks should maintain their Guard/Shield Block/Shield of the Righteous/Savage Defense/Blood Shield throughout the fight (and that's something I'd be fine with,) trying to minimize the buff's downtime, we need to have real indications of when we should use them.
A decent way to pull for every tank class:
Avenger's Shield is great - silencing and hitting three targets, which will usually get you most of a trash mob. Charge always had the problem that on its own it did no damage, but if Protection got a cooldown reduction on Heroic Leap, it would be a great pulling ability. Heroic Throw is also pretty good for this, especially with the silence, but when dps ignores the skull you put above the target's head, you need to be able to establish that initial aggro fast. On Oterro (the DK) I usually pull with a Death and Decay, then Outbreak on the skull and a quick Pestilence, to get those diseases ticking away for some maintained threat. And of course Death Grip is amazing for pulling that one caster (assuming it's not immune.) Druids are a little awkward, as Faerie Fire gets a nice bit of threat, but doesn't really help you in the herding. If there were some kind of Charge/Swipe combined ability, that would be great (Rampage? Stampede? Is there a good "Holy Crap There's a Bear" kind of word to use for such an ability?) For Monks, the Windwalker-only Flying Serpent Kick (kind of a cross between Flame Orb and Heroic Leap) would be an awesome tank-pull ability, but for now all I can really think of is a quick Roll and then Drunken Haze (assuming DH will generate threat - currently it just debuffs the affected enemies.)
Static Vengeance:
We've talked about all the huge problems with Vengeance, but the one I find the most frustrating is that it works worse the better geared you are (which is absurd, given that it was meant to help tanks scale better with gear.) With the wonkiness of Vengenace, Tank Swaps become little crises of faith, and the one time when you really need to maximize your threat - at the pull - is the one time when you don't have any. So let's have a Vengeance that just grants a passive Stamina to Attack Power bonus. If you're worried about PvP, either make it just affect threat (actually, that'll make soloing dreadful) or make it only effective against NPCs.
Decent Solo damage:
While focusing on survival in groups makes a lot of sense for tanks, at the very least a tank is not going to be able to dual-spec until 30, and those first levels are going to largely be spent soloing (well, technically you could use Dungeon Finder over and over, but given the Cataclysm 1-60 revamp, you'd be missing out both on a lot of fun and a lot of good gear.) Let tanks get used to their abilities out in the world before inflicting their ignorance on dungeon groups. Also, even for those with dual-specs, I know I wouldn't mind being able to level through Pandaria with my shield in hand.
Fighting with a Staff!
Ok, this is just for Monks, but damn am I excited to finally have a class that you can actually see swinging a staff at enemies! Druid staves hide somewhere in their fur, and Hunters only ever used them if something had gone wrong (and soon they won't even use them at all) so I am very, very excited to whack some bad guys with a fightin' staff (or spear, though you did have a couple Strength polearms back in the day.)
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