Major tank changes coming to WoW in this week’s reset

Tanks are about to get a hell of a lot more tankier in World of Warcraft.

Blizzard Entertainment is knuckling down on the tank role in Tuesday, March 30’s weekly reset, buffing some specializations and nerfing others. 

The developers are targeting Blood Death Knight, Guardian Druid, Brewmaster Monk, Protection Paladin, and Protection Warrior with buffs, increasing the specs’ flat physical damage reduction and magic damage reduction by 10 percent. 

Blizzard is also fixing a major Vengeance Demon Hunter bug that was giving the spec an unfair advantage. Players found that Vengeance seemed to be receiving up to 15 percent less magic damage than expected. The devs have investigated this, found the bug that caused it, and fixed it.

When a spec is “overperforming” in raids and dungeons, the devs “prefer to rein them in until the next patch,” according to a recent Blizzard post on the forums. This is because “mid-tier nerfs can cause entire groups” to “struggle” with “raid or dungeon content that could previously complete without issue, and this is especially true for the tank role.”

With the “magnitude” of the Vengeance Demon Hunter bug though, combined with “extensive feedback” about the strength of the spec relative to other tank classes, the devs felt they needed to “act quickly.” 

To offset the bug fix and reduce the impact to the spec, Blizzard has tuned Vengeance, increasing its physical damage reduction by 5 percent and reducing its magic damage reduction by 10 percent. The aim of all of these changes is to “improve tank durability.”

The full list of changes is expected to hit the live servers tomorrow in North America and Wednesday in Europe.