I’ve lead raid guilds as MT for fifteen years and I’ve seen some major red flags - here’s three that I want you to be aware of if you’re serious about raiding:
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The Main Tank is not a Warrior.
Listen, I love hybrids, but in 1.12 your raid’s Main Tank during progression needs to be a Warrior. This is due to abundant gear availability, superior mitigation, and high ability scaling from gear.
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The Main Tank is not being geared properly.
Threat (TPS) is a major mechanic in 1.12, so Main Tanks must have three items prioritized to them: Obviously, the first one is Thunderfury. If your guild is not planning to give their Warrior Main Tank the first Thunderfury, there is something wrong with the leadership. The other two items are Accuria Ring and Drake Fang Talisman - this allows the Main Tank to attain 4/9 hit-cap while still maintaining high Defense stat and 8/8 Tier bonuses. Here’s something all raids need to understand: when a single DPS gets one of these contentious items, their damage increases but when a Main Tank gets these items, TPS surges, and allows every DPS to do more damage.
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The Main Tank is not the Guild Leader, Raid Leader, or a trusted/real-life friend of the guild leadership.
When Main Tanks (and some Off Tanks) have no personal connection or investment in the guild they tank for, they will bail. And when they leave you, they take all that shiny tank gear with them, and either join a more competitive guild than yours or start their own. Also, if by some chance you are the Main Tank and are not included in leadership/gear decisions of your guild - be aware that the gear you need to succeed as a Main Tank may be going to the guild leader’s friends instead of you. I’ve seen tanks cucked like this several times over the years - it can be a guild breaker.
3 Likes
If your main tank is a warlock… well, this is fine.
If your main tank is a fire mage, this is a red flag. 
8 Likes
One more red flag:
If your main tank has any special accented characters in their name, that’s a red flag.
14 Likes
Does the MT ask for all payments to be via western union?
Yup
Does the MT ask for a private channel?
Yup 
Is the MT me?
2 Likes
I agree with #1 about a Warrior.
As for #2 and #3, every guild has to figure out loot in their own way. There is no one perfect way to do it. It helps to be the top guild on your server and faction, but not every guild can be that.
By the way, the GM being the MT or the GM and the MT being real-life friends is no proof against the MT leaving. The MT and the GM might both leave the guild. The guild might break in half. The MT might have real life issues and just quit the game no matter how hard-core he or she has been playing.
In my view you do not want to put all your eggs in one basket. But you definitely want to put most of your eggs in one basket, especially if you’re the top guild.
sounds like a warrior afraid he may loose his spot.
6 Likes
I want to raise a caveat here. As a Resto Druid Raid leader in Vanilla, the MT I had did not have any connection to me and we weren’t in a guild together (it was a Raid Alliance of guilds), and not once did he bail on me. The MT was also the tank lead, but didn’t want to do the management of other classes he didn’t know well. He was our tactical leader, and had a lot of input into the leadership discussions and battle plans, but left the raid leading, calling events etc, to me.
Just saying, it might happen, but an MT bailing is not guaranteed. Especially if the friends he does play the game with are also in the group. Keeping an MT does mean including them in all the big decisions, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they need to be in charge.
It’s just often true, because the same thing that attracted them to Main Tank, makes them want leadership too.
1 Like
If your main tank uses a cobb of corn as his tanking weapon… he just might be a redneck.
oh wait thats not what we are doing.
1 Like
Not sure why but the odd time I post on here it always changes my icon to some low level alt instead of the char I had set it to that I was playing as my main last time I played.