lol
this is what I was talking about earlier - dps and just freaking clueless about threat.
warriors are the worst in retail lately. they run in and instantly open with bladestorm in the first GCD, rip threat and die.
I’ve started calling them florriors, and… well… don’t invite them to groups anymore.
In my opinion, this is (part of) the best solution.
They’re adding another healer with Evoker. They’ve got 5 other classes (6 specs due to priests) that can go utility. 6 classes can go tank. That’s great.
Unfortunately, the pure DPS classes kind of suffer in the end. We’re stuck unable to perform different roles and I don’t know about everyone, but I think some pure DPS would like to be able to perform some sort of utility in content.
Between Hunters/Rogues/Mages/Warlocks we could add in a couple of tank specs and a couple of heal specs and see a lot of opportunity to add an influx of potential players.
We borrowed a system for just this purpose, once upon a time, but like all things they introduce… it was un-borrowed at the end of the expansion it showed up in.
I tried to level a tank once. I changed over to dps by level 40. Honestly, no one in the lowbie dungeons was willing to let me learn my class. it was GOGOGOGOGO. Not going fast enough, so I’ll just pull for you! (Yes, I did tell them I was new to tanking. No cares were given.)
You would think that the community as a whole would want tanks to learn in the lowbie dungeons so that by endgame, they actually know what they are doing. Alas, it wasn’t so for me. It was more trouble than I wanted to deal with. I’ll stick to healing, thanks. Far less stressful to me for whatever weird reason. 
To those who do tank, I salute you. You guys have to put up with a lot of crap.
Nope, having more tank specs won’t dramatically change the availability of tanks, just change how many more players who won’t learn to tank with their class.
I don’t mind tanking, in fact I usually prefer it. Most Raid encounters are actually easier as the Tank than either Healer or DPS.
But as others have said, when people don’t support you, tanking sucks, and I’ve had Healers who think they are the tanks or DPS, leaving me dead on the floor, or DPS whose taking their DPS time in bringing more mobs to the group.
[Redacted]
It’s always been a thing, it’s just fluctuated a bit over time. The main cause is due to tanks gearing up faster than everyone else, due to their high demand. Instant queues over and over, no real struggle in LFG finding m+ runs. You can spam stuff back to back to back. Meanwhile, a lot of dps have to apply to 300000 groups before getting into one. Sometimes spending hours just to find one run, only to have a crap tank and everyone bail on the run.
The only other real issue some people have with tanking is the pressure of M+ pathing. It scares a lot of the introverted narcissists(online video games are flooded with them) away because they don’t want to mess up on something that’s pretty easy to mess up on. An easy solution to that problem would be to to tunnel off dungeons more and don’t allow skips or wall hug skips. Just make it so you have to clear a set number of packs to get to a boss. But then M+ would get stale, so there’s no real win-win.
There is no way to increase tanks, even when they were overpower in MoP queue times didnt change at all. People just dont like to do it, simple as that.
I agree with you, but just wanna point out: This, and gogogo, has existed since before M+. Heck, it existed since before LFD. I rolled a protadin when I started (3.1) because finding tanks sucked, and man…I caught plenty of abuse without a timer ticking down.
Tanks are scarce, as you said, because tanking pugs is a dice roll, and 5 sides of that dice are crap. The tank should be making the pulls, hence they should be going first, nobody wants to go first, hence nobody wants to tank, boom, shortage.
the “tank shortage” didn’t get any better when monks were introduced. it didn’t get any better when DHs were introduced.
go for it! i just started tanking again after a long break and am having a lot of fun so far. i started low and have tanked as high as 18 with pugs. i have yet to be threatened or anything. it’s been a good experience.
I think there are actually a good number of tanks out there, but after dealing with enough “gogogo” mentality in pugs I think a lot of them stop pugging and just play with friends.
There was someone wanting to try tanking who queued for a normal SL dungeon and was told by the healer that they needed to go to mythic plus dungeons to learn and that normal was for speed runs.
This doesn’t help.
I personally stopped loving tanking for randoms in Wrath when they introduced LFD and we had players who would just tell “Go! Go! And start pulling while I was on the load screen.”
I think buffing tank threat is for the best. As well as FFXIV’s approach to tanking where Tank’s DPS isn’t that far behind DPS’s DPS.
I’d imagine another piece contributing to the shortage is that no one really likes to maintain multiple sets of gears/covenants. Tanks might not be as bad as healers in those terms, but it’s pretty slow trying to do the daily chores as a support class, particularly if your dps offspec uses completely different secondary stats, covenant choice, legendary (obviously), weapon type, etc… There is little incentive to dip your toe into performing either role as a dps either, it’s just more chores to get to a competitive level on an offspec
People say they want more tanks, but keep screaming about hating tanks and wanting Blizzard to crack down on tanks all the time.
Threads like this.
Make up your minds.
Oh sweet twilight devastation, how I miss thee
I dunno, the M+ discrepancy in damage and self healing between tank classes was pretty gross today
There is no tank shortage. just cause we cant find tanks while pugging doesnt mean theres a short. trying to find a guild unless you start it to be a main tank or even the off tank for raids is a chore. tanks choose not to pug because its the most toxic thing youll do in this game. Over time it will make you hate tanking.
Tanks are also unwanted in PvP. Blizzard makes you take 50% more damage just for being in tank spec.
Why?
Because DPS players cried about how much they hate tanks.
Hmm… seems to be a common thread, here…
That advice wasn’t exactly wrong though. The new tank (and the rest of the group) massively outgeared the dungeon. The new tank also had experience as DPS, so should have understood route and mechanics for the run.
Nothing in there was going to teach him anything unless he got everyone to take off some gear.
or another solution is to get rid of the tank, healer and dps idea entirely.