well, deathknights sure has it too easy…

Yes, in my opinion it has become too easy. I’ve tanked all of the Burning Crusade content as a Tankadin and must admit it was alot more stressful. Leotheras, Flames of Azzinoth, even Hydross and Lurker required more skill that pretty much ALL of what I’ve seen so far in Wrath. EVERYTHING is tauntable, aggro is not even close to an issue and even AoE tanking is easy as hell.

Seriously, I’m pondering hard here, but absolutely nothing comes to mind.

With my DPS currently so high (about 1900 raidbuffed and protection specced) and my tanking stats more than sufficient for what I’m doing I notice I’m focusing on DPS some more. It seems that is currently what it’s more about. On the first three heroics I might have used a little bit of crowdcontrol, but even that is a thing of the past already.

This is still mostly about 10-Man content, 25-Mans are starting for me this week. Perhaps I’ll get to be challenged there.

I’ve got 5 toons and play the whole field: heals, tank, melee and ranged dps. From that perspective I’d just like to ask a question about the question and that is “tank is too easy compared to WHAT exactly?” because there isn’t a single aspect of this game that is “hard”. What are we comparing it to? BC Tanking which was a rather annoying mix of nerfed tank dps/threat and overzealous dps’ers, taunt-immune mobs, and huge pulls?

Seriously now, dpsing is stupid-simple so why should tanking (or gods forbid healing) be significantly harder? That’s the way it was in the past but so what? Was that good? How many tanks and healers have burned out over the last few years? How many “whack-a-mole” (healing sucks) and “herding cats” (tanking sucks) complaint threads have there been? 

Everyone without access to a “raiding guild” complained that there were no tanks and that the tanks that were around were lame—so Blizz lowered the difficulty for the lowbie content. Now in a 5-man, nobody should really be “challenged” by their role and that’s fairly even across all 5 positions. As GC said, as the 10’s, 25’s and especially with the release of the more difficult content as content patches roll out, raiding will (read: should) become harder and more challenging for everyone.

The official strategy now is that “most” players will be able to see “most” of the content without excessive effort or difficulty. As long as the traditional “endgame” content is still challenging on 25-man mode, I’m good with that. /shrug

I may be getting old but I think healing has become harder, every encounter and heroic fight seems to have massive aoe damage, so instead of whack a mole its whack 5 moles or whack 10 moles, Blink and you will miss x boss casting a random 8k attack on a party member, spend too long topping up the group and the tanks suddenly on the verge of death.

Theyve said they want to nerf aoe healing as theyve been forced to base encounters around it so a not to trivialise them but I think theyve gone too far and may discover that witha 6 second cd on CoH or wild growth etc that a lot of encounters require rebalancing to lower patry/raid damage.

Well from the point of view of a longtime player who likes casual and lite raiding guilds I find this a good change.  I have seen way too many planned and unplanned instance runs get cancelled because neither of the two guild tanks showed up.  Now were talking 150+ guilds, not 10 man guilds.  Also good tanks never seem to last very long in non raiding guilds because of their scarcity.  Why grow with a guild when one will kit you out over the weekend and put you in the lineup. 

I mostly play healing and DPS classes, but I rolled a warrior and took him to 70 so I could tank for my guild mates.  When I got to 70 I found I hated tanking Outlands because was nerve wracking and incredibly not fun.  I found myself playing the game less or spending time on other servers.  For me tanking doesn’t mix well with playing other types of characters.

Dumbing down tanking allows more people to enjoy more content.  I don’t believe it poses any danger to good tanks (of which I am not one) because high end raiding is about organization, group coordination, and precision.  If you are missing any of those things then you are not going to be succesful at high end raids.

People who enjoy extremely challenging things will always find a way to make things challenging.  Whether it 20 manning a 25 man raid, doing a 5 man with all hunters, or soloing Onyxia.

Blizzard may be making things easier, but I don’t believe we are going to be seeing pug’s and weekend players clearing Icecrown wearing quest reward greens and blues.  Well maybe when the next expansion hits. 

Why’s it such a problem with tanking being easier? Healing was super easy in beginning raids, so was DPSing. Shouldn’t everything either be really easy, really hard, or just normal? Sure, add the once in awhile fight where someone deals on their next strike twice as much damage, then on the strike after that three times damage, then back to normal, that way there’s a little uniqueness and a quick burst of healing is needed, but not much major would be required IMO…

I really don’t have a problem with slightly easier encounters.  It’s also nice to have shorter ecounters - gives the ability to get more fun in an evening.  I did a guild run of UK (1 80 healer, the rest low/mid-70s) in about 20 minutes - I think it’s fantastic.  I did UK with a PUG, and couldn’t finish in 2 hours (lame mage and low-skill healing).

Shorter and easier instance runs really don’t cause me any trouble.  Getting more people into end-game gives Blizzard lots of happy customers, and providing “hard-mode” activities for otherwise “easy” encounters allows the hard core guilds to better distinguish themselves.  It really makes sense to do things this way, since everyone should be able to enjoy all the content, but the very skilled or coordinated should be able to enjoy little perks for the extra effort.

Hopefully this will better relax the abrasion between casual and hardcore players - perhaps to blur the line a bit.  I see it as Blizzard’s attempts to keep WoW growing, keep the largest group of players playing (and paying), and still give hardcore players something to compete for.

Well, I like to actually be challenged. As a paladin this didn’t happen THAT often in Burning Crusade, but it’s actually happening even less in Wrath. Three aggro rotations is enough for about 2 minutes of DPSing.

I keep up my rotation just for some extra DPS, and when that’s not needed I spam Sacred Shield on the raid to help the Holy Paladin(s) and ease the raid healing. Or I Cleanse, put Hand of Sacrifice on the OT to ease the damage or other stuff to keep myself busy.

However, I do think it’s working. It seems the shortage of tanks is much less drastic nowadays. I agree that 5-mans and heroics had to be more accessible, but 10-mans should on some level start to get challenging somewhere along the way.