Just posting this as a perspective incase Blizzard do actually care about how the casual tanker feels about M+ this season and why some of us haven’t tanked as much this season.
I Picked up M+ and Tanking at the END of BFA, got KSM the first season I played, did it again in Shadowlands, didn’t play dragon-flight as the aesthetics didn’t appeal to me, played M+ again this season, got KSM in a week and then dropped tanking so I feel like I can give an informed decision on this.
In BFA and Shadowlands, tanking felt difficult but rewarding and eventually, you could out-gear THROUGH M+, to push keys even if you weren’t the best player ever.
This season is the first season that I got KSM and felt like what’s the point in doing this anymore? I barely get gear for finishing a key on time, in addition to this, mythic level gear is only dropped at M+ 10 which is like the equivalent of M 20+ in past seasons.
Why? What does this do for anyone except for the top percent of players who baby-rage because if a person puts in enough time without the equivalent skill (Which is usually a reflection of the time you can put into constantly tanking BTW). If I am pushing +7s to a point that I feel comfortable about them, but my gear isn’t upgrading, I’m not playing. This season has a horribly slow gearing system in addition to harsher tanking mechanics.
Ppl will say that tanks were OP in the past and 1 man armies??? Ordinary players were not kicking out healers for multi tank runs, maybe those pushing extremely high keys with the most optimal builds were, but the laymen who come home and play for maybe a few hours weren’t.
Blizzard nerfing rewards for M+ in addition to making them more difficult in addition to not allowing tanks to have self-agency is a ridiculous trio that anyone with more then room temp IQ would have understood would deter tanks from playing.
Tanks DO have the hardest role in dungeons especially. You need to know route, you need to know mechanics, you need to make adjustments on the fly for that one hunter who thinks he knows your tanking better then you and pulls additional mobs, you need to adjust when a player misplays a mechanic and their’s more pressure on you and the healer. Why are you punishing that player for already doing the hardest role by making it more difficult and less rewarding.
I don’t know one person who has seen someone in mythic gear and been in absolute awe of them. They’re usually like “Man he has high ilvl, probably gonna be more damage or tankier.”
You’ve made a rare role rarer by making everything about it exponentially less enjoyable. Am I the best tank? NO. Their are thousands of tanks who could push higher keys at the same ilvl as me and have no problems. I, however, also have responsibilities outside of WOW such as a job and family issues to deal with and when blizzard makes it that a tank has even more responsiblities to try to push keys because they wanna stop us from raising our ilvl and caps us to heroic gear for the majority of keys, tanks will go for something they really want, maybe KSM, and then quit because the time invested does not feel good for minimal gains.
from a M+ tank perspective, give mythic gear at +8 to +10, make tank-busters and damage multipliers lower, give tanks more agency or better yet revert the tank changes. WTF is everything seemingly catered to the top percentage of players? +12 keys can’t be depleted like WTF??? How does that help the average joe who is running maybe +8s and has it depleted because a DPS raged after he pulled for the tank and they wiped? Like focus on the majority of the player base who still want to get top gear for doing harder content. People pushed +20s for fun and io.score, not because the gear was there? Now they want everyone who isn’t able to put that much time and effort into M+ to be handicapped and have a harder time because +20s felt that they should get the best gear whilst +15s were trying push keys.
TLDR - Better gear drops for lower keys, less tank busters, less tank dmg intake, more self-agency.