CC make tanking easy

Community General Discussion
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Here is the link to the CC forums asking to make tanking easier:

I have mixed feelings about this. I want players to play the role, class, and spec they enjoy the most. And for many that is tanking. But some never try tanking because of the many frustrations that comes with tanking.

However, I find the leadership aspect of tanking one of the reasons I enjoy tanking. Making the routes, making the on the fly choices, making the choice about what to pull and how to pull it. On the flip side, specifically with m+ routing can be daunting. So, I think they could ease up on that some how.

I also prefer reaction tanks like bdk or brew master over tank classes that have to juggle a buff to stay tanky unless that buff can be kept up 100% with good execution.

I think the OP is partly looking to address how long it takes to get a group when playing a dps. And I think the solution should be to increase group sizes. Going from a 5 man to 6 man dungeons would be a 33% increase in dps per tank. And it stops someone from tanking when they don’t want to.

What are your thoughts?

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Eh… maybe for pugs I’d agree. If you get a good group that knows how to utilize all their abilities, help you with interrupts and don’t cause you to blow too many CDs because they’ve accidentally face pulled a mob - dying as a tank is pretty difficult to do.

I feel like tanks are plenty resilient enough, it’s how much the other players help out with the miscellaneous mechanics that determines a lot of group success rates. Just ripping dps is nice and all, but more attentive players are invaluable.

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Is it… is it hard now?

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Linked post is wrong, imo.
It’s been hashed over a thousand times;

  • tanks are only needed for raids (2/20) and dungeons (1/5). Other roles do not want them in arena and only really want one in bgs to sit somewhere and make someone rethink attacking a node. If you aren’t tanking dungeons, you’re going to find it very hard to play the game as a tank.

  • adding tank classes will generally only make existing tanks branch out onto new alts, and not do much to the overall tank population.

  • dumb suggestions like “make it easy” are rude to the people who enjoy tanks as they are. Tanks don’t want to just press Mitigation A and Dps B all day. Synergy in stats/skills is way more engaging.

  • tanks aren’t super popular because they’re easy; they’re super popular when they’re busted. All those instances the poster linked are times when tanks were either unkillable or doing insane dps.

  • in keys 15 and below (probably even up to 20 atm) routes are eh. It’s not season 1 anymore, most players won’t care if you hit 95% trash and have to go back to the start and aoe down a few packs. Just don’t do affixes like pride with hard % requirements and huge buffs that need optimising.

In conclusion; increase the content tanks are present in (bgs, arena, whatever). Make them dummy strong and keep them all equally viable. You’ll see all the tanks you will ever need.

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Well, that does make them fun. Being a delicate little ball of health who holds aggro and is heavily reliant on a healer to keep them alive may be the most RPG thing that people think of but that’d only further harm tank numbers.

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I agree with making threat easier to manage.

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I mainly dps but I have a small amount of healers (this one, I guess, and a few discos). Honestly, I prefer tanks being responsible for their own health, and me being there to help out. If the tank can keep themselves alive, it’s less torturous for me when they make a thoughtless pull. However, I think they should have to play well to keep themselves alive against many enemies.

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S1 tanking wasn’t fun. S3 you could face tank pretty easily.

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No need to make tanking braindead. It’s not exactly rocket science as it is.

:face_vomiting: Unless it’s a flex so you don’t have to take the extra dps if you don’t want to, though that’d probably break m+.

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I don’t think it should be made easier.

However, I think they need to put less pressure on the tanks.

With DPS and heals if you make a mistake, the others make up for it and it rarely causes a wipe.

If you’re tanking, there’s only 2 tanks. A single mistake will likely wipe the group, even with battle resses, 9 times out of 10, you’ll end up getting at least one DPS killed in the process, or at worse, the other tank due to tank swap mechanics.

Less pressure needs to be added to tanks. For instance, in LFR, remove tank swap mechanics being one shot mechanics. Make them still be worth practicing to smooth out damage if you want (so instead of +5000% damage with the debuff, have it be like +5%, but for those times where a tank leaves and you’re stuck waiting for another tank - this type of change could make solo tanking possible.)

Pressure in Normal, Heroic, and Mythic is fine, that’s organized group content where communication is key.

However, extend this similarly to M+. Make certain affixes increase a tank’s threat and decrease damage taken for the increased difficulty of tanking those weeks. (Things like Quaking and Necrotic). Not to the point they can ignore the mechanics like the OP suggests, but to an extent where it’s less painful if you make a mistake. Cause I don’t tank because of how much pressure, and I’ve seen how bad a badly positioned group on quaking can quickly cause a wipe.

And necrotic is just bad. Lol.

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Maybe in mythic, definitely not normal and heroic.

Most of them aren’t 1 shots though. I regularly have OTs not taunt for most of a fight in LFR and live through it on nothing more than open world gear.

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I edited my post while you were replying and touched on this - some aren’t, but most are.

I’ve had tanks solo tank like half of Sanctum of Domination, but then you have bosses like Skolex that apply a huge damge taken debuff that makes solo tanking impossible even in mythic raid gear.

These are the bosses I’m referring to.

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Surviving as a tank is pretty easy now. Not being durable as a tank is not the biggest reason I decided not to tank anymore. Rude players are.

I like to tank and I am very good at it, but I’m not tanking for someone that’s just plain rude. Do not expect, or anyone else for that matter, to put up with a bad attitude.

Even the best make mistakes from time to time. It happens, don’t lose your cool, and not everyone that plays is playing to meet some lofty standard either.

Semper Fi! :us: :ukraine:

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i think healing is more an issue considering finding healers is more issue than tanks when pugging.

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Just going off memory, I’d say those are the exceptions, not the rule. LFR is pretty soft unless you’re gear is actually low enough for most drops to be an upgrade, which is a pretty short period with open world rewards being so strong.

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The issue with tanks in pvp is usually that they are either useless or oppressively OP. I don’t think the content was designed with tanks in mind unfortunately.

I feel like tanks should have more ways to bolster the survivability of allies and not just themselves. That would give them a more defined role in a pvp setting.

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I strongly disagree with this. What you’re asking for is to dumb down tanks to the point that theyre mindless. In fact, as a druid, Guardian is dull enough (I used to loveee playing my DH in comparison to my guardian, despite my guardian clearly being tankier), I would prefer it not to be reduced more to the point that we dont need to know how to play to survive.

In general, you should know how to optimally use abilities to optimize your survival, this is part of improving on an individual level and shows growth in your capabilities. What you are asking for would be to remove these things, removing the reward that comes from knowing your class/spec, in order for tanks to be able to focus more on tank mechanics that usually aren’t too demanding in the first place (tank swapping usually isn’t super complicated)

As a former tank main in SL and also a raid main tank in older versions of WoW (Classic, TBC, WOLTK), I would say that in a raid the responsibility is NOT just on the tanks and probably never has been.

You can be the greatest tank in the world but you can’t control whether or not the DPS step out of the flaming meteors coming to hit the ground. The same can happen to healers. So now you have a situation where the tank is alive and others are dead. How is that your fault (it’s not)? There is shared blame in a raid.

The one single thing I can say: I played in SL Season 1 as a tank main (guardian druid and demon hunter). I just returned for SL Season 4 not long ago with the goal of completing mage tower, then decided to push for KSM in mythics while I had an active sub. I intentionally refused to tank because I had visions of having to learn the optimal mythic routes for % in Season 1 with the prideful buff etc. You would request to join a group and literally have people ask ‘What is your route?’ and I just could not be bothered to learn all these new season 4 instance routes before being able to progress for KSM.

Tanks have a responsibility in mythics for making sure they have a sensible route, I can say its possible some people are like me and don’t want to have to figure out the routes (I was only running mythics for ~2 weeks), but I doubt that creates a tank shortage and I also don’t think tanks have any unnecessary blame anywhere (even with mythic routes: you run lower keys, figure out your route once, and then you can pretty much use it indefinitely-- not as big as an issue as I was making it out to be). A tank problem is likely that the ‘tank’ is usually supposed to be a pseudo leader and not everyone wants to lead, they just want to play the game. The two go hand and hand with each other so it’s sort of difficult to address, but you can easily have someone leading a raid that is NOT the tank, and everything being structured right is THEIR responsibility, not the tank.

Tank responsibility is pretty straight forward in mythics (having a route, holding agro). If the tank dies it is often because the pull was too big, or the healer wasn’t on top of healing (or didn’t expect the burst). The bigger problem is actually when DPS die. Your tank can survive, your healer can be healing, but if all the DPS are dead then you probably arent going to kill any boss efficiently. In fact, DPS dying too much or failing mechanics can commonly cause you to not time a key (Similarly, battle res goes on cooldown. If you have to keep ressing a DPS and suddenly a tank or healer dies, then what?)

Please leave tanking as it is, and review tank specs with less engaging gameplay (Guardian druid would be a great starting point)

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Not in the least. The OP’s linked post is asking for that - like, literally, go read it lol.

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Yes I’m sorry, I actually saw that CC post earlier and was sad that I couldn’t respond to it lol. I saw the WoW CC title and thought you were the original poster from that thread (so I jumped at the chance to counter it), but it was in fact a different person (though I also disagree with the points in your response as well, maybe why I thought it was the same person)

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Naw, I don’t feel like they should make tanking braindead. I just feel they need to remove some of the burden on tanks to encourage others to tank.

I would tank if it was less pressure on me, for instance.

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