I’ve always thought how familiar you are with a dungeon is dependent on what role you play. For example: DPS - So long as you don’t stand in the fire, and do what everybody else is doing, then you’re okay even if you’ve never been there before. Healer - You need to generally know the mechanics be able to anticipate when the group will be hit by big damage. Tank - Not only do you need to know the mechanics, routes, how to anticipate threats, you also need to be able to successfully mitigate threats that people pull (whether by accident or design).
With all the additional dungeons being added to the roster, it’s quite an impressive list of dungeons you need to be familiar with.
Depends. Because I am pugging on all my characters mostly as a dps right now. But more tank spec options give me more options to be a tank on certain characters. And not be another dps in a queue.
I healed last season but every since getting theotar I just stopped queueing two specs because of the nature of his buff. Also some races don’t have access to some tanking specs, but do have access to shaman, giving more people fans of different races another way to tank on there favorite races. I know that’s a problem for some classes like paladins/druids. The limited races make it unappealing for some if they don’t like the race such as troll or tauren.
Kiting isn’t really a thing (other than necrotic reset) until really high keys.
Because eventually in an infinite scaling system it HAS to end in kiting unless enemy damage is so insanely low it never gets threatening no matter how higher the key and how many mobs are pulled.
Because before we didn’t have a game like this. Now we not only have games that give you a reward / dopamine hit every minute, but you can literally have it on a mobile device.
Kiting is only a thing in much much higher keys. I have to kite abit for some of the more dangeours pulls like large pulls in ardeweald part of dos but I’m doing 24s. Anything up to and including timing 20s and higher even wouldn’t require kiting or big pulls or fancy routes or anything that the forums like to complain about.
Why there’s actually a shortage: Mastering content is discouraged due to the quota and timegate systems.
Why keep replaying a dungeon or raid more than the minimum amount required, if you’re going to have no forward progress? Playing with others is by default a bad experience if you’re getting very little out of it, as it sets the tolerance for dealing with others very low.
For instance, I was tanking 30+ mythics per week while my gear pieces were below 262 ilvl. As soon as I got my 262 dungeon drops, doing mythic runs died for me. The Great Vault is a trash system and I’d rather not play than deal with it. I’d rather have a 0.01% droprate for higher ilvl items that span past keys higher than 15 than deal with the most unfulfilling time wait that isn’t an expression of effort put in. Seeing others play 10x less but have higher ilvls/tier set completely discouraged me from playing any more runs this patch. I’m not even going to go to ZM to go to the CC to even craft a tier set at this point. It’s toxic to me at this point to even think about it.
This issue is systemic btw. Part of the reason I could never get into raiding after starting WoW last year is because of this whole “lockout” system. I have zero interest in this once per week routine for dealing with others. You could put the most OP mandatory gear behind raiding and I still will not touch raiding. Literally not worth dealing with other people over a week long time delay that actively discourages replaying and mastering content.
I’ve gone back to just sitting at AH all day because Blizzard doesn’t know how to design something that actually feels rewarding rather than making some people feel like second class citizen peasants held back to window shop others. As far as I’m concerned this is an intentional dark pattern to encourage people to give up and pay for boosts.
I would say healers are the hardest to play in pugs, just because people are stupid and get hit by stuff they should have avoided. Healers have to know how to best handle every bad situation and if needed, choose who lives and who dies. They have to know when the most damage will come out and make sure they are ready for those moments. However, they don’t get the blame nearly as much as tanks, regardless if it’s warranted.
However, being a tank, it is stressful and most of the pressure is on you even if it shouldn’t be. If people don’t interrupt, it’s the tanks fault. If someone tab targets something, it’s the tanks fault. If we wipe, it’s the tanks fault. If you don’t pull quick enough, it’s the tanks fault. Even when these are not true (and they usually aren’t), it is that mindset people have. It’s natural to jump to others before looking at yourself. We all do it. That just means people don’t want to put up with it and thus don’t do it.
There’s a reason tanks and healers are not played as much. It’s not just because DPS do big numbers. Have you seen Guardian druids? They can out dps the dps now with their cd’s.
they are supposed to hold aggro - they can’t hold aggro if they trail and no they should not be buffed to do more damage - they are already too strong in damage as far as I can see.
This entire thing reads like make them like dps. If you want to be DPS just DPS.
If tank shortage is a problem just stop making them so required. Create an NPC to do dungeon tanking content when there are no available tanks.
Everyone knows it’s because Shaman don’t have a tanking spec, or Hunters and Warlocks. Now if those things changed there would be plenty of tanks!
BWahahaha
On a more serious note. I think tanks need to be less reliant on heals and keeping agro needs to be more difficult. A tank should be able to keep themselves alive period, thru use of mitigation spells and it should be engaging. Heals should be there if they screw something up. When they started making aggro easier and easier to hold, I remember people posting it was a mistake to do that.
Now people might say that would make it harder to tank. No kidding… People got bored.
My main is a healer and I have a pally off tank — I dabble with some DPS also. When I enter a dungeon on the tank, I know I’m responsible for the flow and for positioning of fights.
As a healer I know I’m responsible for keeping people alive, within reason, and damaging.
When I’m DPS…I just enter the dungeon, lol.
Healing has more pressure, I think, but tanking demands more knowledge.
There are a lot of reasons.
However it seems to me the most significant is that people don’t want the pressure/responsibility of tanking.
Tanking is a much less forgiving role than DPS or even healing. Most challenging content can be done with an underperforming dps, but not with an underperforming tank.
I haven’t played a whole ton since Legion, but I did jump into BC Classic and got up to tanking Heroic Dungeons very shortly after launch before players were getting raid gear. At those gear levels Heroic Dungeons are quite difficult. However if you have a good tank and healer and 2 good dps, the 3rd dps could be mediocre and you could still clear most dungeons. But if you had a mediocre tank and everyone else was good, you would likely be unable to clear most dungeons. This means that a bad tank will be both much more noticable than a bad dps, and will hold you back more than a bad dps.
I have tanked (dungeons and raids) through most xpacs since BC (skipped most of WoD and now BFA and SL), and I remember when I first started to tank Heroic Dungeons back in 2007 that I was nervous and intimidated. It took me a little while to get comfortable and to work up to being a raid MT for my guild.
I don’t know if there is a good a fix for this. The easy way would be to make tanking more forgiving, which would by default mean making tanking easier, which I think would be a very bad thing.
