If you really want to heal that’s fine, just know that shaman heals aren’t all that great until they are high level and if you want to find groups quickly it seems to be easier to find a healer than a tank. This is coming from a bear druid that sometimes heals. Though Regardless of what you choose to do, i highly recommend getting two sets of gear so you can change roles easily as your needs change.
You kinda answered the reason yourself.
Warriors are a pain to level.
touche lol
Tanking sucks at low levels, that’s why.
You’re always rage starved, can never hold threat on more than one target, and you have to deal with dps who @$$ pull or don’t wait for you to get threat.
Tanking low level isn’t bad in a vacuum but there are many dps that cause issues by not being patient.
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Haha, these are the exact three servers I’ve been on, so far.
I wonder if the WAY people look for a tank in general chat has something to do with it.
I say this, because of something that happened yesterday.
People in general barrens chat were looking for a tank for WC for quite a while, when I was questing. When I was in the mood to go to WC, I started my own group with 3 random dps from the barrens.
Then we just needed a tank.
Instead of typing the normal “LF tank WC,” I typed an actual sentence with RP flair. It was something like, “Greetings! Tank needed for traveling through the Wailing Caverns!” Or something like that.
I immediately got a whisper from a tank who went with us and ended up being the best druid tank I’ve seen so far.
Right after the first whisper from that tank, I also got a whisper from the other group, saying there didn’t seem to be any tanks available this morning, so it’s probably not worth it to look for one right now.
Why did that tank decide to join my group instead of theirs? Maybe she/he had just logged on at the right time. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that I had typed out a full sentence gave the signal of, perhaps, a more mature group? Better players?
It ended up being a great pug group. And maybe I should stop there before it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn, haha
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You say this like it was better before retail became retail. You are describing a genesis problem, one that has existed since day one dude.
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Wrong, just go fury for improved shout range, crit, and enrage. Then do what you want.
Such a simple problem. What you do is /who and then type paladin, warrior, or druid, or shaman and whisper every level appropriate paladin, warrior,druid or shaman if he wants to tank. If ever I want to dps i can usually get a full group within 3 or 5 minutes tops.
Players are chasing them off. No one wants them when they show up with a 2hander. All the streamers tank this way. It’s great, you kill stuff so fast. It’s a shame only warriors are tanks tell wolk and cata.
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i make my own groups and i am far from being the social butterfly
yesterday was on /lfg and saw tank who was looking to do same dungeon i needed
i whispered him (druid tank, i am also a druid tank so i figured we were already 1/2 way home) and asked if he wanted to join up and we would get some stragglers to join
i posted in /lfg again that we had 2 druid tanks and were looking for more
2 seconds later we have our priest
then we decided “wow that was easy; who do we want for dps”
i suggested we needed a mage for sheep and intellect buff
and also a shaman for the tremor totem
(we were running wc and i knew it was easy but it can be a slog and if group doesnt mesh can be a disaster- also knew there could be caster druids pewpewing from distance and using their sleep and a beast enemy that uses a terror)
so a sheeper and tremor totem were what we wanted
so i asked for it in /4 and /1 “LF a mage who can sheep also LF a shaman who can use tremor totem for wc”
we got our mage quickly and shaman soon after
group was fine; maybe a little conservative but no one ever dropped below 75% health and only tank or shaman took damage
our tank was a level 19 (i was a 24 but let him tank and i was the “utility infielder”)
i would de poison, top off with rejuvs, mark targets, pull more if we needed a little speed
if mage or priest stopped to drink i could be more aggressive and keep advancing taking over primary tanking or cat dps while other druid went to heals or whatever
it was a luxury and it seemed like everyone in group was all grateful for everyone else
mage was great at sheeping the straggler druid caster
our druids could hibernate beasts
and our shaman (who was new to class) got better at using and positioning totems and using lowest ranked earthshock as interrupt
the point is to make the first effort to get groups
dont be the tank who joins a lfg
be the tank that organizes the group- one, you wont get kicked; two- it just feels better when the tank is organizing rather than being filler for a bunch of muppets who have been spamming barrens chat for a tank; and 3- you can get whatever you want in group comp especially if you ask for it
——
there are tons of competent and good players out there on their own just looking for players to help organize and get the ball rolling
we just need to take the first step
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As a tank, I’m never able to get a group, because no one ever needs a tank.
They just need DPS and Healers.
Sucks.
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Shaman can tank. My Shaman is level 55 and I’ve tanked every level appropriate dungeon while leveling so far.
Problem is “x person saying y tank is not viable so why bother”
Dps also are stressful with pulling aggro asap and need to let tanks have a few sec lol.
The idea of “cleave group meta” might not sit well for some tanks.
Lots of people are lvling and enjoying low lvl stuff as others specs?
Then people roll things that arent fun and get stressed or bored.
Meh, lots of reasons lol.
So, I got tired of waiting for a tank last night.
I took a group with 2 mages, a rogue, and a priest and went through sm cath.
No wipes. No probelms. Finished the run in a short time.
It’s nice to have the trinity, but its possible to accomplish things without it.
I would run it again with the same group. (Thanks to the guild Mutiny for that, btw)
That being said, if you treat other players with respect and make an effort to make your groups work, you will probably be on someones friend list of “would group with again”.
Be nice to your tanks. Otherwise the availability will be very low; its not fun to get treated poorly when you are trying to have fun.
ive seen lots of warriors, very few who want to tank, even fewer who know how to do so (even with a group using the 3 sunder rule before dps). I have seen some go in as tanks who were dual wielding the entire time, complaining about losing aggro, but talking trash about how great their dps was.
I remember some of this was the case in vanilla, but not to this extreme I have seen. though to be fair, I have also seen a LOT of dps not give time for the tank to get aggro which I find equally frustrating.
I plan to tank once I get to about level 18 on my Dwarf Paladin. I’ll see how the dungeon community on my server is. If they’re jerks, I’ll simply go to Retribution (Talents are a mix of Ret/Prot to try to get extra damage and parrying, armor etc anyways)
I don’t have issues with threat on main targets anymore, I can keep 4-5 mobs on me 80% of the time, My problem now is non elite adds, I don’t -have- to keep everything on me, SURELY Dps can deal with an add or two attack them.
I have to switch stances from the stuff I’m attacking to intercept, back to prot, taunt, switch targets, Heroic strike + sunder, then back to the elites because god forbid they stop dpsing the elites and kill adds…A lot of dps will even ignore adds hitting the healer as long as they blow up the elite >.>.
I love tanking!
However some of my current pet peeves in dungeons are;
- priests who love to shield me. Stop that! I need to get hit for rage gen.
- hunter/warlock pets still set to taunt/growl. Why do I want to compete for aggro on a secondary mob? I’ve got it on me, generating rage…and you send in your pet with growl to steal that mob? Why? I want the rage! War AOE threat gen isn’t great in vanilla. I have a few tricks but not many.
- DPS that out levels me and can hit hard enough to steal aggro. Your job as a dps is to learn how to mitigate your damage. Not really important while leveling, sure…but you will need to learn how to do this for 60 end game content. Your aggro/threat is your meta game play on mobs. And if you can’t do that at lower levels, you are gonna be “one of those” at higher levels. If you out level the tank, don’t make his life miserable…work with his rage generation…that’s your main job, ffs. Your skill level is to estimate the threat gen of your current tank and stay UNDER IT. If you pull aggro…you’ve failed your meta.
- Hit the target I’m hitting! Again…your dps. Don’t be lazy, figure out how to get this information and get better at tagging the main tanks mobs even if the main tank isn’t marking it. It’s your job to have that information at the ready. Going HAM on a mob I’m not even hitting, forcing me to chase it down and taunt is only going to make the tanks experience frustrating as hell and your healer won’t appreciate it either.
Make life easier for tanks, and more tanks will play the role.
You could also mention the costs of respec’ing to do things like kill mobs.