Beta: Size Doesn't Matter..

Well at least as it applies to Mana pools for Tankadins.

I was quite shocked at the outcry from elements of the Tankadin about this weekend's changes to Tankadin itemization. I expected the people moaning about the way we've seemingly been homogenized in with Death Knights and Warriors, but I didn't realise there were so many people who liked +Intellect on their gear.

If I may speak to that section of the Tankadin community for the moment: you're all idiots operating under false assumptions. (Nice save man, you think they noticed?)

Intellect has never really helped our longevity in fights. It's been good for unloading burst threat, but that extra mana will only delay you going out of mana on content you outgear by a few seconds at best. That's why virtually no Tankadin itemization since the T6 set was finalized has included any. It was 15-20 item points out of the budget per peice and it did little good. More to the point, it was 15-20 points per peice that Warriors could have in Stamina, avoidance, threat or mitigation stats, further increasing their slight advantage in progression boss tanking.

WotLK/3.0's solution is far more elegant. It treats a Tankadin's mana pool like the Blue Rage bar we've always joked about it. A finite resource we refresh by doing the things Tanks do: taking damage, hitting stuff and avoiding damage.

Admittedly, the taking damage part of that, Spiritual Attunement is as old as The Burning Crusade/2.0.

We now regain mana by hitting stuff either by casting Judgement of Wisdom on a target, using Seal of Wisdom as our seal of choice, or hell, doing both. Admittedly we've had a version of both JoW and SoW since classic WoW, but these versions both scale, and with Hammer of the Righteous allowing you to proc seals on three targets at once, SoW is massively more effective.

Finally, the biggest and best change is the Blessing of Sanctuary change. We now have an ability that will allow us to regain mana when we successfully avoid or block an attack. This actually scales with both our Avoidance and the number of mobs we're facing.

These abilities mean one thing: Intellect on our gear is irrelevant. And I for one couldn't be happier. I know we've all hit situations where we've found ourselves gasping for mana at some key point in a farm boss fight on Live. We've all found ways around it, from "sit n' crit" to "tanking without pants". I can categorically say that this will almost certainly not happen after 3.0*.

*Unless they really screw the pooch and revert a bunch of the current changes.