Analysis Of Why Tanks Are Underplayed

Community General Discussion
82

Can you point to anywhere in the two sentences I wrote that I in any way indicated I would be “deliriously happy” with LFD going away or are you just lying by writing words I did not say?

which is it? did I say it, or are you a liar?

Here, I’ll even repost my words

randomly queued dungeons for anything other than leveling have been irrelevant* for a long time.

*irrelevant as far as gearing/character progression, outside of the first week or so of a new expansion. I suppose they’re still relevant to an individual if they enjoy doing them.

So which part is me being deliriously happy or even implying that LFD is going away?

and, PS Cupcake, I haven’t done carry sales since BfA.

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83

I have generally been a lot happier playing WoW now by no longer tanking for randoms in Mythic+. This char I am posting on got keystone master and used to tank up to +16 keys by only playing with random groups back in BFA. It was one of the worst experiences of my life when playing WoW and unless things change I won’t ever go back.

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84

In a black and white mentality, no, more classes will not solve the problem.

Now, life isn’t black and white, is it?

I’ve mentioned in this thread that the biggest issue is the social pressure for the role and I still agree to that statement.

But… more classes would help. They would not be a final and enough solution, but they would help. I have given specific reasons for it (fantasy and having tanking one click away, both helping new people trying out tanking).

85

I’d play a tank again if I only had like 3 responsibilities.

DPS - 1. Do damage 2. Don’t die

Healer - 1. Keep everyone alive 2. do damage if everyone’s in no danger of dying

Tank - 1. Do damage to hold threat 2. have already existing knolwedge of the dungeon route before stepping foot into a dungeon 3. be able to adapt on the fly if the healer butt pulls or the dps side pulls. 4. be able to constantly gogogo 5. deal with impatient healers or dps pulling extra to you despite having no CDs 6. know how every single affix works on a fundamental level and adjust your pulling and mitigation accordingly 7. wrangle the rest of the party like cats to go with you 8. take abuse from ill mannered dps and healers 9. attempt to find a guild or static to run with only to be seen as a free meal ticket for their weekly vault 10. and of course, don’t die

nah I’m goood

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86

In a pug its a huge difference, as a blood dk most healers assume you are largely self sufficient which is true if you have tanking trinkets and enough vers and haste (crit and mastery matter little overall).

Haste too low and you need to worry about running out of runes or having staggered RP gains

Vers too low and your taking 15% more damage than another tank effectively reducing your hp pool from 110k to around 90k (which is huge).

Sure with a good healer who knows I am going to take more damage than average I could time a 15, but it comes at a cost, healer would have less GCDs for explosives so someone else has to do more there.

Everything comes at a cost for a group having poor stat distribution is going to set your team on the backfoot from the start of the dungeon.

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87

Speaking from the perspective of a DPS, I think it’s largely because tanking is apparently a thankless kite-festival. They can’t ACTUALLY stand and tank anything, they have to constantly run away from everything. There’s probably more to it than that, but that really doesn’t help.

88

I noticed you kinda skipped over Wrath…

Wrath was the last time I regularly tanked unless I decide to level a tank to get my son faster queues because he’s a DPS or healer…

Quick fun and easy was the way to get many people like me to tank and blow through dungeons. The badges were worth it.

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89

But what if you just want to try out tanking for the first time by helping some guildies do a +6, or a new player do a round of Mythic 0s.

That’s how most people start tanking, not by trying to time their 15s in a spec they’ve never tried. And that’s just one click away.

90

One would think…but you get geared DPS and they just steamroll the place. Meanwhile someone trying to learn to tank just runs along trying to keep up.

91

I didn’t intentionally skip over anything I just listed the playable versions right now.

There was a tank shortage in every expansion including Wrath, why do you think the bribery satchel was created?

This hasn’t been the case since like 3 months into 9.0 until extremely high keys where the very definition of infinite scaling will eventually require it.

Outside of dropping necrotic stacks or getting away from a hard hitting enraged mob.

92

Occulus…

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93

Good, the side characters need a win here and there for them to stay relevant to the story and not cause burn out of the main all the time. <3

94

The Proving Grounds let you “play around” with your chr, I would maybe agree to learn about 10-20% of how to play it.

I’m talking about: recruiting “mercenaries” like in Diablo and actually RUNNING A CURRENT DUNGEON so that you can LEARN MECHANICS WITHOUT WASTING PEOPLE’S TIME. Even if such a run gave no loot. I don’t care. I WANT TO PRACTICE MECHANICS.

I WANT to practice. I WANT to get better. I DON’T WANT to waste people’s time!!

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95

That’s great news. We should tell all of the tanks that so they can stop dragging mobs out of my AOE then!

96

Tanking requires leading the way. It requires knowing how, when, and what to pull. It requires good positioning, it requires keeping a constant eye on what your other groupmates are doing…It requires a lot of skill in terms of when and why to pop which specific cooldowns you have available to you.

Most of all, it feels less rewarding than other roles because you’re not really putting out damage or getting many “epic saves” with big heals or flashy cooldowns. You’re either getting hit or you’re not getting hit and getting hit is about the only thing you’re supposed to do on a conceptual level.

It’s a role that’s got an extremely high stress load and an extremely small payoff. Plus, healers and DPS will usually blame you when something goes wrong–especially if it isn’t your fault.

I used to tank a lot in WotLK on my DK and in Cataclysm on my Paladin, back when tanking was still kind of fun and felt interesting to me. I kind of tapered off of it after that.

Come time for WoW Classic, I realized tanks were in seriously high demand, so I thought “Hey, I can tank, I’m a paladin” so I respecced and got an instant invite to a Zul’Farrak group. I told them I had just respecced and was still getting the hang of tanking, and since I’m a paladin I would need a few seconds to get hit before the DPS could start spamming AoE.

So what happens? I walk up to a group, threw down consecrate, and right as I’m clicking Holy Shield to get some block threat–the warlock runs in on his MOUNT and then drops into the middle of the trolls and starts HELLFIRING.

He obviously pulled threat and died instantly. And then he blamed me. I explained to him that my threat isn’t really high enough to counter Hellfire spam right off the bat, and maybe it’d be better to single target and assist me to make sure I have a better chance of holding threat.

He then went off on a tirade for the entire rest of the dungeon about how I was a trash paladin and how a good paladin shouldn’t have to drink between pulls and should just have infinite mana because of blessing of wisdom…

And then he left when we hit the temple with the big groups of trolls. We finished the dungeon 4-man and I went back to Stormwind to respec and then I never tanked in Classic again.

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97

I think people for better or worse over pressure themselves about the role (and having to be in a leadership position) within a dungeon. You don’t need to do a ton of studying, just download a route a few minutes before the run and glance over it. Get a weak aura that shows how much % each mob is worth so you can adjust if you miss something. Any tank mechanics you need to know will be yelled at for you by bigwigs or DBM.

I also think people melt under criticism too easily, maybe because they’re out of their comfort zone tanking. Yeah it sucks having someone be rude about your efforts but it only gets better from there. End of the day, I can’t tell someone how to feel about it because we can’t help how we feel about things, but if someone has valid criticism take it and if they’re rude then tell yourself they’re projecting for their own bad play and move on.

Also for the love of god chain pull. If you go 10% over you will still probably end faster than stopping every other mob to check for a perfect route. It’s such a major dps fall off for so many classes to lose that uptime.

98

I mean yes content that you way outgear its not a problem, I can tank +12s fairly easily with my current gears I still take alot more damage than I should and its probably annoying for the healer but I am unlikely to die.

I personally though dont see the difference there between tanking on my main or an alt, I have a mistweaver I barely play under 3hrs a week and he heals +10s with normal raid gear (and 1 heroic piece from the 4 mythic dungeon quest).

My DK would be able to tank 10s with similar alt level gear.

99

Yes, and that’s why having more tanking classes would increase, even if not by a huge amount, the overall pool of tanks. And that’s a good thing.

100

Doesn’t make sense if this:

Is correct. Most of the content in the game can be done at any speed.

101

legion has shown that even if you give a tank class a heroc class style level boost, most of them will stop playing tank within the first 3 months. new tanks generally have a very small increase in the pool of long lasting tank players.