Analysis Of Why Tanks Are Underplayed

[Kalaen-black-dragonflight (Kalaen)]

There is an ebb and flow to tank/heal popularity that follows the trend of good or poor dev game balance.

• Yes, when threat was nurfed many tanks not only stopped tanking, they stopped playing. There’s no mystery there although everyone likes to candy coat that.
• WoW caters to the lowest common denominator of bad players. So as a tank, you’re racing against an m+ timer, the mobs/bosses in the dungeon, and the bad player base on your team.
• Mistakes are not easily hidden as a tank. Mistakes as dps or heals are easily hidden and/or deferred to tank.
• People want to see big numbers to convince themselves they are special, and DPS role has big numbers baked in.
• MD/tricks are rare

You can’t change human nature, but you can incentivize tanking/healing in dungeons/m+ with meaningful satchels, eg; chance at mounts, pets, flasks, pots, gold, mats

[Aritaris-quelthalas]

@Hewer-kelthuzad

Responsibility? Pressure? Why are these things even a factor? That is the crux of the issue right there. Tanking for randoms isn’t fun, hence why I will never do it again. I don’t have this problem in FFXIV, I go into the dungeon, wall to wall every single mob into a giant ball of trash, kill the bosses, and walk out with 4 commendations. It used to be this way in WoW. But since Mythic+ every dungeon has to be a specific sprint to the finish. It’s gogogogogogogogogogogo, need to pee, nope, gogogogogogogogogogogogogo! Dungeons used to be a relaxing activity. Mythic+ has turned them into complete trash. I refuse to do it in PUGs. Doubly so when tanking. It’s not fun.

Totally the same for me. In XIV my mains have been Warrior and Scholar since 2.0. I normally end up tanking in my friend group or healing, as they are both fun things to do in XIV. In Wow I have always mained druid. I used to tank going back to TBC/WotlK, and have healed going back to vanilla. I don’t do either in WoW anymore because it’s so stressful, especially tanking. If you mess up either role, you just get toxic abuse from other players with no repercussions. In XIV, toxic behavior has repercussions including suspensions or bans, so it really dampens toxic behavior (though it still happens there too).

Blizz needs to do three things for me to want to tank or main heal in WoW again: Remove timers from mythic plus, punish toxic behavior properly, redesign dungeons so they remove certain pain points like having way too much trash and missteps causing another group to be pulled. Those things were interesting in 2004, but it is a design element that doesn’t work in 2022. The devs need to find a way to encourage chill runs again in WoW.

[Viseriôn-illidan]

As someone who tanked KSM in S1 Shadowlands I can tell you no one wants to play tank because Mythic+ is a “requirement” to play this game in any non-casual fashion, but tanking mythic+ is more than a full time job with weekly continued education courses.

Also, tanks don’t want to have to whip and jump and dash around running away from the monsters the entire time. If that’s what is going to be expected, then let warlocks and mages tank, and remove diminishing returns from cc. Hell, remove tanks altogether at this point. Just let classes go in and manage their own threat. Make each person have to tank 1 target. Remove healers and give everyone self healing, so everyone is basically on their own.

The way it sits, everything comes down to the tank first. Then next comes the healer, then next comes the dps not standing in every possible mistake of death imaginable.

Tank has to know the path for 100% trash, in every dungeon, which changes based on the difficulty of the key, and the week affixes.

Nobody with an actual life wants to have to devote basically 2 of their entire game sessions every week studying and plotting routes for this weeks affixes. Only to find out something that makes the route not work, have to spend more time adjusting it, etc.

It’s a joke. It’s like being level 41 in Classic and trying to go with a group of other 41’s and solo UBRS. Nobody did that except maybe one weird guy making a youtube video.

Instead, make abilities that let you actually tank, give healers and tanks more Damage Reduction abilities. Or other mechanics like target switching, where the tank has to target the player being targeted and intervene them in order to get aggro back, taunting doesn’t work, or something.

This whole meta of just kiting is stupid. Most tanks don’t enjoy it.

Now I’m a healer. And guess what? I can tell where a run is going in the first pull.
Either the tank is a softie and hasn’t fully developed the meta, with all the items and trinkets required to actually survive the big pulls without me having to stand and hard cast flash of light until oom.

If I can actually heal the group while melee swinging and using word of glory because the tank is basically taking no damage, then we “might” succeed. But if I have to flash of light the tank even one time, it’s going to be an untimed key.

I have never quit a run as a tank or healer, I only leave if the run is unfinishable because others have left. I have finished many runs as tank/healer missing 1 dps, although rarely timed.

It’s pretty lame that the majority of what dictates the success of a run is the tanks devotion to mythic+ alone. We can still time the key if all three dps get hit by every single stupid. But the tank? He has to be flawless or else it’s all over.

[Evilmuffin-uther (Evilmuffin)]

@Jayne-malganis

Yeah, nobody wants the responsibility or pressure.

I am fine with it.

What I am not fine with, is people acting like donkeys in dungeons. I have well over 30 tanks. I’ve been tanking since Cata (well, a short stint in Wrath).

Tanks are the defacto leader of the group, generally (but not all the time). When they are, however, people need to step back, hush up and let them do their jobs - without being backseat offtanks. We are generally keeping an eye on the entire group, making sure heals has mana, calculating the upcoming pulls, keeping track of the damage output of the group to gauge what pulls can be handled easily and a whole slew of other things. At least, that’s what a seasoned tank knows to do.

It’s when nonsense by group members keeps happening, that some of us can get a wee bit irritated, aye?

Some actual scenarios I have encountered over the years:

Mage pulls everything in creation, healer gets aggro from non-los’ed ranged mobs, squishy group members die
wut happin tank? u r bed tnk.

I choose to not use a shortcut, because one or more of the group seem to be having issues following/is going afk
wut u dng tank? u r bed tnk. use shrtct. kick tnk

I am giving the healer a moment to get mana back, because they have zilch. DPS pulls two large groups. No heals, because healer has no mana. Half the group dies.
wut u dng tenk? u r bed.

Me: Yeop, sure thing. That’s totally it. Bubble hearths, while dps pull more mobs.

[Hewer-kelthuzad]

Blame the content, not the people running it.

[Ezeyin-hellscream]

@Kallixtus-wyrmrest-accord

You have to learn all the routes. You’ve gotta do the pulls, so you need to know the routes. Especially at higher key levels where every second counts and you can’t wait.

This doesn’t explain how there is a lack of tanks outside of Mythic Plus. Routes are vital in the M+ scene, but not vital with Normal and Heroics. And if people are setting expectations on tanks to be M+ qualified for a NORMAL dungeon, that leads to the toxic atmosphere people have been discussing.

Wanting to do a Normal or Heroic run to practice the route pattern and make it instinctive while not having to worry about survival is the very training pattern that someone was talking about earlier. However, that can be done in LFD readily enough.

@Zeishui-stormrage

I’m just wondering how people multi-spec in general. Like it must be hard maintaining 2 or 3 different armor sets right? on top of that, different legendaries, different soulbinds, etc. I wish spec swapping was easier in end-game honestly.

Personally, I try and focus on having a key Spec, in most cases Tank, then allow DPS and Healer drops come in as they do randomly. If there is a choice between Tank Gear, DPS, or Healer Gear, I compare it to what I have now, and then choose from there.

While it would be better to have DPS gear fully kitted out, when I have Tank as a focus, I’m not expecting to be perfect at DPS, so I don’t seek to maximize it.

@Pardonnez-kelthuzad

Twilight Devastation should make a comeback in 10.0 , every Tanks spec should be able to choose Twilight Devastation with new talent tree

What if it was more class-specific? Calls from the Order Hall concepts, like for Warriors a Valerjar from Skyhold does a wandering whirlwind, a Crawling vine whip or wanding Starfire Beam for Druids, and so on?

[Morobir-sisters-of-elune (Morobir)]

The gogogogogogogogogo attitude even ruined dpsing with random groups for me. I don’t have that many friends that play WoW anymore, so it’s rare I have a group of five friends to play with, so I just mostly do world and solo content.

I have absolutely no patience for the way tanks are treated.

[Bailbean-stormreaver]

I like tanking and pug a lot.

@Jingyi-stormrage

Mythic+ flex 10-man

I would like this though!

[Kixxenn-hakkar]

@Avelpally-frostmourne

Where was the excess of tanks in WOTLK?
Where was the excess of tanks in mists?
where was the excess of tanks in legion?
and why did it not have any staying power?

To be fair, I remember an increase of tanks and those specs at launch. For sure.
(Which isn’t a bad thing)

Now staying power… I’m not entirely sure. Still it was nice to have the abundance for a bit.

[Kwiachankane-aegwynn]

I used to tank many years ago and people were nice. I rarely had a bad experience. Now I try tanking and most are jerks. They pull everything in sight as they run faster than I can and then cry when they die because I am too slow. Sorry, not every spec has speed boosts.

But the whole thing was causing too much headaches so I just quit tanking. I’m going to fast… I’m going to slow… Blah blah blah…

Everyone wants to tell the tank how to tank but no one wants to tank. If you want to run ahead and pull stuff, switch to a tank spec or shut the hell up and do your part!

It’s not just in this game though. People are so self involved and self entitled its ridiculous. No matter what you do or where you go, people are just flaming jerks now.

[Fortuna-madoran]

I have a Pally, and I don’t tank because I’m slow, and people don’t want slow tanks. Especially not in keys, where slow is the enemy.

[Yravea-ashkandi]

@Warzug-mankrik

Another missed opportunity is Shaman tanks. With the “elements” and “aspects” starting to stir, I can totally see them slapping together an “Earth-warden” tanking spec for Shamans.

Shaman tanks is one of the most brought up tank spec, and it makes sense. I LOVE the idea of a earth warden. I’m not sure why blizzard hasn’t considered this.

[Hewer-kelthuzad]

Shaman tanking would be so boss. Covering yourself in stones, melting your enemies armor with lava attacks, covering yourself in wind to negate magic and projectiles. Shame blizzard lacks the vision to see how cool shaman tanking could be.

[Zeishui-stormrage]

For people who dual-spec or triple-spec, what addons do you use to manage different gear sets and free swap between them?

[Foxymoxie-eonar]

@Sinelius-proudmoore

• Tank abuse - too many DPS pull extra mobs then blame tank for wipe despite tank not able to handle them or expected for that situation of said extra mobs.
• No chance to learn - when I first tanked, it was neltharion’s lair in Legion. I accidentally reset final boss and got kicked without being told what I did wrong(later learned migitation negates knockback). How do you expect new tanks when you don’t help new ones learn?
• New player abuse - new players are not allowed to learn the game, everyone has a “gogogo” mentality in leveling dungeons that if your tank is slow they get kicked for not being an experienced player.

Yeah I’ve endured all of this when I tried to either try a new class, try tanking on a different class, or just in general whenever I do tank at all. I mean even when I’m not the tank it annoys me to no end seeing the dungeon be forced into a speed run and people being kicked because they can’t keep up or died. I’ve even see the form of healer abuse where they get kicked for running out of mana trying to heal the tanks BS as he pulls everything and just runs instead of taking down the group they pulled. It’s not so much the class by any means it’s the toxic folk being jerks and making life harder for the tank or healers because they can. They even kicked me once as a dps because I was the only dps to dodge a insta kill move while the other two stood still not knowing what to do because the fight was new to them. The tank and healer blamed me for the deaths of those dps… when they should of just told those two what they had to do.

[Yravea-ashkandi]

Bare minimum is adding more tank specs, whether it’s new class or add on to existing classes… idc but we need it now to fix this shortage.

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

You don’t need an addon for that. You can save gear sets in the armor panels and select sets to automatically swap based on specs.

[Debbyfrowner-thrall]

@Ezeyin-hellscream

This doesn’t explain how there is a lack of tanks outside of Mythic Plus. Routes are vital in the M+ scene

I don’t even think they’re vital in mythic+. As long as the group is good enough it doesn’t matter what the tank does so long as they keep moving. This is mostly 15’s and below, I’m sure that once you start doing higher keys it becomes more important. Did a 10 spires today and the tank didn’t do the normal route and we ended up with almost a +3.

[Ezeyin-hellscream]

@Yravea-ashkandi

Bare minimum is adding more tank specs, whether it’s new class or add on to existing classes… idc but we need it now to fix this shortage.

Wouldn’t matter because even if Shaman were given a new tank spec for 4, there wouldn’t be enough Shaman switching over to do the job to change the accessibility of tanks overall.

@Debbyfrowner-thrall

I don’t even think they’re vital in mythic+. As long as the group is good enough it doesn’t matter what the tank does so long as they keep moving. This is mostly 15’s and below, I’m sure that once you start doing higher keys it becomes more important. Did a 10 spires today and the tank didn’t do the normal route and we ended up with almost a +3.

It doesn’t have to be the same route everyone runs, but having a route in mind is vital.

Nor does that change the fact that tank availability is a problem outside of the M+ and Raid scene and has been since Vanilla.

[Terranox-stonemaul (Terranox)]

I have wanted a shaman tank spec for a few expansions.

I would do it. Part of the reason I loved enhancent was that it was a fun soloable class for chunky rares and doing stuff like rep farming. Tanks have soloing rares in the bag.

Also would be nice to get another sword and board spec or have them use 2 h weapons. Many fusing of elements for new earth focused attacks.

Eartha, lava, sand, ash, mud, volvanoes, air quakes, tsnumamis, fire tornadoes. Bunch of stuff they can use to make a shaman tank and be a force of nature. Not to mention improved earth elemental could be like Therazanes boulder giant elementals.