Vengeance: In Need of a Redesign

I just read this post on Sacred Duty, which I was directed to through this post on WoW Insider. Basically, it's a take on Vengeance.

Vengeance is, I think, a very flawed mechanic - one that was conceived with noble intentions, but that, like a giant space-blob, expanded to overreach its initial purposes to become something much more destructive.

I'm not going to go into ever little detail, because I think the Sacred Duty post covers it pretty nicely. However, as a tank I've definitely noticed that Vengeance can be a frustrating mechanic.

The first reason is purely philosophical, though I think it's a position that a lot of people share with me: I miss threat. Not that I'm lacking for threat, mind you, but that it's not really an issue anymore. I literally have not a bit of hit rating on my gear, but the only people who can pull off me are other tanks or dps that attack things before I've reached them. For most of WoW's life, you geared with hit and expertise not because you couldn't find a piece that didn't have it, but because you needed it to keep up with the Shaman or Hunter who was blasting away. Nowadays, I miss so often, especially on raid bosses, that I feel incompetent, even though I know that I won't lose aggro. The bosses are balanced around us ignoring threat stats completely, so it would be a liability to reduce my mastery, dodge, or parry in order to get myself some hit or expertise.

The second thing I hate about Vengeance is that, once again, it scales backwards with our gear. DPS and Healers get more powerful as they gear up - that's no surprise. One thing I loved about tanking on a DK in Wrath was that, unlike Warriors and Druids, who would find themselves Rage-starved if they were avoiding too much of their incoming damage, or Paladins, who would go OOM because they weren't taking enough damage (and thus healing) to trigger Spiritual Attunement, DKs had the same resources available to them whether they were off-tanking or getting smashed in the face.

Vengeance has basically given every tank the same reverse-scaling that we thought we were getting rid of with the redesign of Rage and the implementation of Sanctuary and Judgements of the Wise (admittedly, part of that happened in Wrath.) Tanks are the only role that, theoretically, should keep their old crappy gear around for when they want to go back and do older content while that Rogue is slicing up Ozruk with his tier 13 and fancy Fangs of the Father.

The final thing about Vengeance that really, really annoys me is tank swaps. I hate, hate, hate going second on a tank-swap boss (which, as I've mentioned, there are far too many of this tier,) because 9 times out of 10, the other tank will keep beating on the boss after I've taunted, and when I have about 10k attack power and he has about 30k, it shouldn't come as a surprise when the boss very quickly says "Hold on, Jarsus, I was talking with this gentlemen over here." (Is it weird that I like to think of tanking as having a calm, polite conversation with the boss?)

One of the reasons for the damage-taken ramp-up is the fear that tanks would become overpowered in PvP. A few solutions have been put forward, such as Blizzard determining that Vengeance does not stack from damage caused by players. Sacred Duty had a suggestion that tank damage simply increase by 50%, scaling higher as you get more stamina, but that this damage bonus doesn't apply to other players.

Here's something very simple, and I have no idea why people have not thought of it: instead of boosting our damage, why doesn't Vengeance just boost our threat? In group PvE content, ideally the reason tanks are doing damage is for threat, but while soloing or in PvP, threat has no bearing whatsoever. Balance bosses around lower tank damage, but watch the threat scale wonderfully.

So here's my proposal: Vengeance should be a passive buff that is always on, and always at full power. It should boost your threat generated by a certain value that scales with Stamina, as well as Dodge, Parry, and Mastery (we might keep at as just stamina, but this is to discourage straight stamina-stacking.) It should be tweaked to scale fairly linearly with the advances of Crit, Haste, Mastery, and Agi/Str/Int that the DPS are picking up at the same item level. This way, PvP is unaffected, tanks don't have to worry when heading into older content, and no one is rewarded for standing in fires.