I got all 8 of the special tanking mounts on my character in FFXIV. I don’t even play my tank in WoW if it’s not on discord in a guild group. I refuse to play with toxic negabrains who don’t listen.
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I think the message is clear then: tanking needs to be both buttery smooth and fun even in pug settings. Until that happens tank shortages in small form PvE will continue.
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There isn’t a tank shortage, there’s a tank shortage for pugs. Any tank worth their salt isn’t going to queue for some random nobodies, they probably have a guild or a group they queue up with. The ones that are the outliers probably try to run with pugs but are immediately turned off on the idea of ever running with pugs again once something goes wrong.
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It’s true. I would charge people 50 gold to tank in vanilla in my t2 gear. If I detected any hostility coming my way or people didn’t listen. I left with their money. By the end I had a dedicated pool of people who relied on me to tank their 45 minute Strat Dead runs, for the mount.
I had a tank for a while back in Warlords just because I wanted to try it out…I stopped playing it just because it was a lot of pressure and I didn’t find that to be much fun.
Ranged DPS always wanted to pull, Hunters and Warlocks would use pets that stole aggro, half the people thought I was going too fast, half the people thought I was going too slow…I was constantly getting told how to do my job and everybody else thought they could do it better than me.
So I quit doing it. It just was not fun.
EDIT: I did play a Warrior and Paladin tank in Classic and it was a much better experience, fwiw.
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This is most of the reason I stopped tanking for just about anything except world bosses, rares, and events (eg. Headless Horseman). You were basically always expected to know a certain amount about the instance (eg. layout, boss mechanics) before going inside and there were some general annoyances but it was never bad enough to put me off for more than a few days.
Since M+ hit its stride, I don’t enjoy tanking instances for the most part. I could just be unlucky but since the advent of M+ most people seem fixated on speeding through instances regardless of their difficulty or even if they’re at max level. I get that people don’t want to spend all day on an instance that can be done in 20-30 minutes and high level M+ requires that sort of hyper-efficiency but I feel like the middle ground between the two has been lost.
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It starts with the community. As long as the community continues with the toxicity towards tanks, trash talking them, kicking them from runs just because they’re learning or they’re not going GOGÓ speed or not allowing them a learning curve then we will continue to see them dwindle. Ask yourself " why don’t I role a tank character" and you’ll get your answer. A lot of responsibility and accountability that no one wants. They just assume they’ll dps and someone else will Tank. In that regards it’s just not worth the abuse to role a tank.
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Dh only have two spec and wow said a time back that they only be making to spec per class now let caster have there day no new caster class has been add sense the launch of the game
I only tank for friends. Every tank main I know only tanks for their friends and guildies. It’s a privilege and a right for the role currently. If you were so in demand would you pug (rolling the dice on having some bad attitudes or real bad eggs) or join a team with people you know?
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Because you’re all mean! Mean meanies 
!!!
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That right there is another issue. “People don’t want to spend all day blah blah ect ect ect.”
That is not a problem with the players, that is a problem with the damn game. The game is designed around efficiency. We used to spend 4 hours in BRD and no one said a god damn word about how long it was taking. Someone would leave and we would replace them. Not a problem, at all.
I don’t know what happened between 2004 and now, but people’s dopamine is completely toasted. They have the attention span of goldfish. It’s disturbing.
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You can have a caster and a tank in the same class… We literally have 3 of these No-one knows why you are opting for one over the other when both sides can literally get what they want.
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the real tanks are the friends we made along the way.
but yeah, if I don’t have at least 2-3 guldies/friends to run with I usually just shrug and go do something else.
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I do not tank much any more, but the few times I have I have noticed getting aggro can be quite frustrating. Especially if there is a large gear disparity between the dps and the tank. Buffing threat might help a lot actually. So I can worry about my mitigation and survival instead of smashing buttons to get threat back. Used to be certain abilities would say “causes high threat”. I do not notice this on tool tips anymore
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Tanking in raid is fine, but in m+, it’s another world, you have most of the responsibility for it. I made a post on how dungueon should be in m+.
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TLDR; Tanking is boring, and everyone blames you for wipes. No thanks I will stick with DPS.
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I don’t find tanking boring at all. I just don’t do it for pugs.
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I get too stressed out tanking.
You’re expect to be far more in the know than you would as dps.
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Too selfish, think about us pugs 
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Didn’t read the entire thing. I agree almost whole-heartedly. The only point I read that I disagree with is the tanks being leaders part. If you pull an add, inadvertently or purposefully, most insecure tanks will immediately complain about it. Tanks, by the nature of what they do, must be leaders. Confidently and decisively make your pulls, hold aggro (and good tanks do not have difficulty with this even with current aggro levels. If they lose aggro they just take it back bf dps gets eaten), and position mobs to where dps can kill them most efficiently. If you have ranges dps then kiting to the next pack will NOT decrease kill times. Hold them steady, move them from poop, and let dps kill them.