Death Statistics on Warcraft Logs
Death Statistics
If you head to the Death Statistics page on Warcraft Logs, you'll notice something abnormal -- tanks are some of the most common specs to die right now overall in the raid. While there's likely many factors that are contributing to this, this seems to be a rather large change from the norm, as Tanks in previous expansions were some of the most survivable in the raid.
Heroic Death Statistics
4 of the 6 tanks are at the bottom of the list for overall deaths, with the two other tanks middling between some of the DPS. What could be the cause?
Tank Swaps
There are some very punishing tank swaps in this tier. Both Averzian and Alleria reduce maximum HP through their Tank debuffs and each tank's survivability is affected because of this.
In addition, Paladins has the most deadly of tank swaps, where a missed taunt gets a Tank killed because of the damage amp on their Judgment cast. Failing a Tank swap on Vorasius gets the other Tank killed because of the damage amp. These would be nothing special in a regular tier, but this is the first tier without players having access to a "TAUNT NOW" addon / Weakaura and I believe that this is contributing to a large part of Tank death statistics.
Take a look at the Lightblinded Vanguard death statistics:
All 6 tanks here are over double the death statistics of DPS, likely because of this tank combo and this is likely the clearest evidence that Tanks are struggling on this mechanics, especially without a "Taunt" alert.
DPS Unlikely to Die
There are also a lot of encounters in this tier where the threat to non-tanks doesn't exist. Take the Paladins encounter, it's very difficult for non-tanks to actually die on this encounter unless something goes horrible wrong. There's almost no threat to non-tanks unless they decide to stay up a massive healing absorb for example. There's also a lot of other encounters where there's very little threat to DPS and healers -- Averzian, Vorasius, Salhadaar, Paladins and Chimaerus all don't really have much kill potential other than on tanks. Granted this is Heroic data, but this seems abnormal even for a Heroic raid, and we'll have to see where Mythic goes.
No External Tracker
For tanks, there's no external tracker this time around due to the addon changes and calling for an external has to be done through voice, which many pugs don't have the luxury of. In addition, Tanks can't even see what is available due to the addon changes and so it's hard to even call for something specific.
Class Tuning
Based on these death statistics, there appears to be some big differences in survivability from certain Tanks. Protection Paladins appear to be dying the most almost across the board, so there may be some class tuning survivability issues as well. As there was almost no tank defensive tuning in the recent notes, maybe there needed to be based on these stats as we head into Mythic and Mythic+ week.
