All Tanks Should be Viable in Season of Discovery Phase 4 Raiding
Season of Discovery has introduced new tanks in the form of Warlock, Shaman, and Rogue Tanks. These new specializations have proven to be very popular with the player base, and not only do players enjoy the variety, but they are also benefiting from having additional tanking options when it comes to forming groups.
However, with Phase 4 around the corner, some harder raid encounters are on the way, including multiple enemies in Molten Core gaining Fire Immunity. This in particular would cause issues for Warlock tanks, who lean on Searing Pain to build threat. Thankfully WoW Classic Senior Game Producer, Josh Greenfield, has offered players some reassurance.
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I think going into SoD we thought it sounded interesting for certain things about certain tanks to be unique or for individual tanks to have drawbacks or strengths and I think in a poitential future version of classic that is a bit more grounded in # fewerchanges vanilla we might explore that design again, but I can't really see a world where we say «you can't tank this raid at all», at least not right now in SoD. One tank may be better at certain things than others (I suspect you'll still prefer a ranged/lock tank and a 2nd tank who can block on demand for twin emps, for example), but I suspect we'll tune most of the raid content at 60 to allow for pretty much any combination of tanks, especially with the smaller raid sizes.
This is one of those things that looked good in the abstract, but our perception has changed a lot since we launched SoD. Our original vision for lock, shaman, and rogue tanks was «lets make more tanks to fill your 5 man spot if you are short» but seeing how enthused and invested some folks got about the new tanks, its a tough sell to say «eh sorry most of your buttons just won't work in here.»
It seems that the current plan is to tune the level 60 Season of Discovery raid content to allow for any combination of tanks, which is great news for all the tanks out there! This
