Blizzard recently posted a video series showing in a nicely-edited way (that honestly looks better than their 4.3 patch trailer) a recap of the Fangs of the Father Legendary quest chain. For those of you either living under a rock or who are looking back on this much later, the Fangs of the Father are a set of Legendary Daggers designed specifically for Rogues (after all, what other melee class uses daggers? Actually, given that the one Monk ability that is based on weapon damage, Jab, is normalized between all kinds of weapons, why the hell can they not use daggers?)
I actually find it kind of interesting that Cataclysm had both the most broadly useful legendary they've made and the least. Dragonswrath, Tarecgosa's Rest, is useful to any ranged caster dps spec, which is 9 out of the current 30. The Fangs, on the other hand, are useful to only 3 specs (they wisely gave the main-hand dagger an effect that makes Combat's two weapon-dependent strikes deal more damage to make up for the fact that, as daggers, they would be doing less damage-per-swing.)
As someone whose main and primary alt are both tanks, I've always wondered how they might do a tanking legendary. The healing one, Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, out of Ulduar, worked out fine because Blizzard has always made sure that every healing class can use one-handed maces. Even if Druids and Priests, and even the occasional Shaman, can go with Staves, one-handed maces have been designed as the go-to healing weapon.
Creating a tank weapon would be a whole lot more difficult, because tanks use very different kinds of equipment. Creating a legendary that only some tanks can use would probably cause more balance problems than any other role, because unlike dps and to a lesser extent healers, tanks aren't really contributing to a greater whole. Other than a few abilities some tanks have (Hand of Sacrifice, basically) one tank can't help share the load of another, so imbalance is especially problematic.
So how do you design a weapon that every tank could use?
There was, actually, a legendary tanking weapon in vanilla: trade chat favorite Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker. It is a (huge) one-handed sword that has a proc the helps both with threat and slowing the target's attacks. Of course, back then, the actual design intent was that only Warriors would tank. Paladins and Druids had tank specs, sure, but they were really intended as kind of novelties. In Vanilla WoW, the idea was that when you hit 60, you'd pick the "correct" spec and move on from there. Design in Vanilla was stupid.
In Mists, however, we will have gone from one tank to five. And everyone's using different gear. Warriors and Paladins use the old sword-and-board, while Druids and Monks want to use an agility staff or polearm (you might even be able to get by dual-wielding as a Monk tank, but theoretically the intent is to make them use 2-handers) and meanwhile, Death Knights are supposed to take a 2-handed dps weapon. Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights use Strength, while Druids and Monks use Agility.
So first off, let's address the Strength vs. Agility issue. You do get a pit of parry from strength and a bit of dodge from agility, true, but all tanks get the vast majority of their attack power from Vengeance these days. So as long as there's a hefty amount of stamina on our tanking legendary, I think we can dispense with both strength and agility.
Obviously, since druids cannot parry, the secondary stats would be dodge and mastery.
The next problem to address is weapon type. Paladins and Death Knights can only use axes, maces, swords, and polearms. Druids cannot use swords or axes, and Monks cannot use the two-handed versions of axes, maces, or swords. Warriors can use everything except wands, but like Paladins, they need a hand free for their shield.
Now, all of this would be pretty easy to solve if we could do it like good old Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, and give a different version to each class. As it stands, if we could reduce it down to just two weapons, one could imagine a Polearm for Druids, Monks, and DKs (remember that we've gotten rid of any Strength or Agility, so there's no reason DKs shouldn't be able to share with the leather tanks) and then make a sword, axe, or mace for the Warriors and Paladins.
But let's see if we can really squeeze this to make it fit every tank.
The weapon type would have to be a 1-handed Mace, as this is the only weapon type that every single tank can use that does not bar them from equipping a shield. Warriors and Paladins get to relax now, as they're taken care of.
Theoretically, Monks could just equip another weapon in the other hand and call it a day. Death Knights could do the same, but they would need a buff to their Death Strike, Rune Strike, and Heart Strike similar to the Sinister Strike/Revealing Strike buff on Fangs of the Father.
Druids would have it roughest, as they're the only tank that can't use a shield or dual-wield. There are no off-hand items that boost agility the way there are for casters. So I'd have to put some more text on the weapon that gives it a special boost while the bearer is in bear form. You'd have to increase the stats of the weapon itself, as well as its weapon damage.
The moral of the story here is that a tanking legendary that doesn't give a huge advantage to certain tanking classes would be a really tricky thing to make. We heard them say at Blizzcon that we might see a legendary shield some time in Mists of Pandaria. As excited as I am for that prospect, at the same time I think it's likely to cause some big problems.
Still, if they're willing to give Rogues one and make my Enhancement Shaman cry, I'd be curious to see what they can come up with.
Honestly, the thing that excites me most about Legendaries are the quest chains, which seem to have gotten especially interesting and complex in Cataclysm. As a tank I of course never went very far in the Shadowmourne chain (especially since we're pretty distinctly a 10-man guild, and back then Legendaries only came out of 25-man raids,) but I did do the first step, where you recover Arthas' old hammer from Frostmourne Cavern and fight off like a million ghouls. I really hope that I'll be able to see some of that stuff in Mists, even if my guild is unlikely to be able to complete the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment