Always a shortage of tanks, maybe if we had more tank specs, we’d have less of a shortage. Here are my totally original and most likely never mentioned before ideas.
Mage, Time Spec: Still cloth armor, can equip shields, primary passive mitigation being “phased” which dramatically increases avoidance, active mitigation through elemental shields. Sustain via time shift that rolls back all damage taken for the last X amount of time and traps it in time and locks up a resource.
starts with 5 Anomalies. These are your primary resource.
Phasing costs 1 anomaly.
Everytime you Time shift damage it locks up 1 anomaly and you will not get it back until you’ve dealt with the time shifted damage. By releasing the time shift you take all of the shifted dmg in 1 hit.
Other abilities like special shields or auras may tie up an anomaly. They are intended to be basically ‘toggles’ so you have to manage the resources.
Shaman Earth Warder: I don’t have this one as fleshed out in my head, but think Enhancement shaman wearing a shield, earthshock for ‘taunt’, lightning shield/earthshield, etc.
Warlock Greater Summoner: Summons a superior demon with solid tanking capability. However, maintaining this summon requires the warlock be directly linked to the demon. The demon passes X% of the damage it takes onto the warlock (basically the demon IS the mitigation, the warlock is doing the actual ‘tanking’ as far as health goes) Healing works the same way, you heal the demon and X% of that health goes to the warlock.
Hunter Mounted Combat: Hunters able to tame a mountable pet. Pet moves at normal player speed while hunter is mounted on it. Hunter loses some of their DPS capability but the pet has superior tanking capabilities. Hunter is subject to AE/cleave damage, pet also takes damage. Hunter literally rides their pet into combat and it tanks (utilizes things like the big ol dinos, kodo, etc. Large tanky mountable creatures in the world.)
Those are my primary concepts. I have some weirder ones but I just dont’ think they’d work ultimately or would be totally broken mechanics wise.
I would like shaman to have a tank spec if theyre not just going to slap it together from cereal box tops like some of the specs in this game.
But thats not the reason their is a tank shortage.
You can put that blame mostly on bad DPS players…the sort who come in here daily defending their poor game behavior even when tanks and healers are TELLING them that they dont like their infantile antics that waste the time of other players. (yeah, I get it…5% of healers and tanks claim to be ok with it…but the others arent and vocalize that regularly)
This isnt about more specs. its about BAD players.
Few people want to tank when theyre having to deal with circus show players who dont play for the team or care how many wipes they cause
as a career tank, I totally get that. I’ve played end game content on every tank spec except DK and War and have been doing it since vanilla.
Theres a level of anxiety you get Q’ing up as a tank for a pug that never seems to go away. I’ve been playing more DPS lately and honestly… while it’s better, it’s not much better. I think the reason it’s so much worse when playing as a tank or a healer is because you feel responsible for the groups success and when it’s going poorly you feel like it means YOU are screwing up. As DPS I feel sort of free. As long as my numbers are good and I’m popping interrupts when needed and avoiding damage so as to not tax the healer, I dont’ really care about anyone else in the group. It’s like playing your own little game with people around you instead of being the driving force of the group.
That said… I do think ‘more’ tank options would help a little. Also, adding tank specs to classes that have never had them might spread some of that anxiety around and teach some DPS’ers who’ve never played tanks what it’s like.
I can always tell when the DPS in my group is an alt to a tank player or has at least seriously tanked at some point, they just behave better.
I’ve mained a tank for as long as I’ve been seriously playing this game.
When i was brand new to wow, i messed around with mage and rogue a bunch, but as soon as I tried tanking. I stuck with it.
The Shortage of Tanks has always been a sensitive topic to me but in my opinion the tank shortage stems from the skill gap between a truly great tank, and a mediocre one.
If you’re a tank, and you play consistently, you show promise, and you’re a nice person. You are going to get sucked into a guild faster than you can say “raid night”.
Once you’re in a guild that you like, and you play the game consistently with friends, you lose all need to tank content for random players.
This puts queued content players at a stellar disadvantage of only ever getting bad tanks, or waiting around for tanks for hours.
There already six classes that can tank.I fail to see how more classes that can tank are going to make more people play tank.
Truth of the matter is there are plenty of tanks,they don’t pug,since WHY deal with that headache of pugging,when they have a solid guild.
Im going to admit…i have TRIED to defend random groups for two years in here.
Ive TRIED to give them the benefit of the doubt and have insisted for all this time that players in LFD/LFR are just fine and guildies are wrong about them.
I think I just finally had a revelation that ive been wrong.
it IS the players…99% of them being bad DPS players…who are making me hate group content.
I probably would be better off finding a guild.
Shaman tanks have been a big hope from me for a while. Before the shadowlands update I was hoping we’d get Tinkers or Engineers that could tank in a mech suit.
Shaman’s in my opinion could tank through Armor stacking mechanics, similar to a bear druid’s iron fur. With an “earth shaman” theme
But in my crazy fantasy, the shaman would be able to dispel these stacks of armor for burst defensives. Use wind to increase your dodge chance and movement speed at the cost of your armor, use water to give yourself a bubble shield at the cost of your armor, use lightning to stun everything around you at the cost of your armor, ETC.
I think that pretty much sums it up. I can see that sort of reasoning in many of the DPS comments on this forum who, even when TOLD by tanks and healers that they dont appreciate the behavior, basically tell them to stuff it…as if DPS arent a dime a dozen and replaced within seconds of a vote kick.
I think some of the problem could be remedied if players were FORCED to run as healer and tank for at least 30 days before being allowed to run as DPS.
My wife and myself both changed our behavior in group content once we’d tanked and especially run as healer and began to understand the stress ill mannered, childish behavior from DPS causes on those two, the healer being the worst affected by it.
I almost feel like some DPS players are literally bots working for the enemy at times.
It’s pug DPS players I can’t stand. probably 75% of them are nice and respectful and just play. That other 25% is being asshats and they spoil the whole barrel because you never know which you’ll get.
heh…thats kinda ironic because all this time Ive been railing on bad DPS in LFD/LFR and yet defending pugs in general…not making the connection that its one and the same and that yes…its the players in randoms that are making me hate running as tank.
I still heal because I have more control over the jokers…ie they keep screwing around and I can just turn off their heals and let them die.
Tanks literally have no control (short of vote kicking) so its pretty obvious why they end up quitting tanking over the behavior.
Won’t help; there are more tank specs than healer specs at the moment, by this logic there should be a healer shortage.
Short answer: people prefer the least amount of responsibility and the most carry possible. This is a symptom of Blizzard making the game much more faceroll and role-neutral.
I have seen hundreds of these threads and every time I offer the same two solutions: less role-neutral content and greater rewards for tanks.
EXACTLY!
Thats the problem. You have no clue until you get into the run which you are grouped with…players from mythic who are demigods among men…or that pimply faced horned rimmed glasses geek who’s entire life revolves around showing people in a video game that he can solo a dungeon/raid…but he really cant.
And then they have the audacity to try to vote kick someone for making a wrong turn or even dumber reasons putting that ‘newb’ or ‘trash tank’ into the box…which infuriates me enough that I tell them to find another healer while theyre finding a tank replacement.
The ones I love the absolutely most are the DPS players who do that crap, pulling everything in sight, standing in every glowing pile of demon dung they can find…then having then nerve to tell the healer that he needs to learn to manage his mana better.
ummm…no…YOU need to learn how to play this game better. And take a few math classes because its all just simple numbers.
I can heal X damage per second…regardless of how much mana I have.
Exceed X and you die…duh.
