Maybe a bad take, but kinda feels like investing development time and resources into ANOTHER DPS spec with a flashy Void DH, was motivated purely by profits and pre-orde/re-sub potential. While it sure does look cool, there is a fundamental problem with the game.
Lack of tanks and healers. Maybe the healer shortage is not as bad, since I play one, I wouldn’t know I can get into almost any group back to back whenever I want, but tanking 100% is abysmal. I couldn’t imagine having to sit at my desk playing wow for 6 hours to get 2 dungeons in, or wait an hour for a tank to join my key.
While I don’t have any experience with the queuing mini-game as DPS, my friends are constantly voicing frustrations with the lack of tanks inthe game and often they end up logging off before they even get to do a single run.
So my question is, Blizzard, while I appreciate the flashy DH spec and agree it looks cool, how does this in anyway help the current community outside of guaranteeing more profits. I personally woulda much rather seen all that development time and energy going into developing a new flashy really cool tank class/spec, with new dynamic gameplay and systems, that would lure in more people to try it.
While I don’t speak for the entire community, I can speak for all my friends and say, WE DO NOT NEED MORE DPS atm. We need tanks and healers that are more interesting. I even tried rolling a DPS alt and end up logging back to my healer after spending 30 mins afk waiting for a tank. Its ridiculous.
You missed the part where I said “flashy” and really “cool”. Tanking overall looks boring, and Ive heard time and time again especially from raid tanks this is the case. Maybe if the new tank spec was as FLASHY and exciting, with a new dynamic gameplay loop/rotation, it would attract more people.
But hey, yall can continue to sit in queue for an hour with ur new flashy DH lol, doesn’t affect me.
As someone who basically only plays tank, I would love a new tank in the game buuuut I don’t actually think a shiny new tank for people to play would solve the problem. It would definitely boost tank players up for a while, but once the shiny wears off they’d go back to what they normally do with maybe a few extra people sticking around.
I mean they made a questline about void dh spec being a thing so there is lore to back it up. DH has only had 2 specs ever since Legion. Evoker had 2 then got a 3rd. Seems like they just wanted to make all classes have 3, aside from druids who have 4. Maybe they’ll add a 4th spec for all classes at some point.
Either way, more tank specs won’t necessarily mean more tank players. Most people like dpsing since you just do dmg, don’t have to pick the route, keep aggro, or heal people’s mistakes or just rot dmg.
Tanking is fun, if… big IF… you are with a group of friends or guild mates.
Pugging is almost always a slog and a nightmare, like herding cats. That is why there is a tank shortage. Isn’t the flash or the game. It’s the people tanks have to put up with.
The problem is that new tank specs doesn’t equal new tanks. It generally just means the same tanks spread out across more classes as the last few classes before Evoker demonstrate pretty plainly. The same applies to healers to some extent.
If they want to solve the tanking shortage, they need to make tanks not require hours worth of homework that other roles don’t have to do before they can even start playing.
Do you really believe people don’t want to play tanks because their spells aren’t flashy? Of all the reasons people have given for not wanting to tank, you think THIS is going to solve the tank shortage?
Maybe I am wrong cause my memory of legion is meh, but I could have sworn back in legion when the DH launched there was not only a huge player base that jumped in and rolled a havo one, but tanks as well rose (even if it was temporary) as the DH was revolutionary and really fun given its time.
More healer and tank choices wont change the actual reason why theres a shortage of them. The community is responsible for helping those feel welcomed into trying those roles.
The only reason I disagree here (maybe I am the minority) but I quit after legion (played rogue my entire wow life up to legion, and then DH for legion) I was never a caster and def never ever considered healing.
I came back for War Within, didn’t want to waste time waiting for groups as DPS again with my limited time, so I rolled the “flashy new evoker healer” which was new to me and looked really fun and challenging. I got to 2500 my first season in S1 with it and fell in love with healing overall and stuck with it.
Point is the flashy nature of evokers (compared to what I was used to from prior to legion) drew me in and now I have no interested in playing anything other then healer again.
So I feel like this can happen with tanking as well, and lets be honest, every new tank (even if its a small number) improves everyones experience.
I promise you if it wasnt for evoker (which was new to me since I didnt play since legion, I wouldn’t be a healer main atm) so it worked for me.
In leveling dungeons, sure. But there was still 100% a tank shortage in Legion. I assume the reason being people who rolled a DH either staying Havoc or dropping the class entirely to go back to raiding on their main once the novelty wore off.
Then explain why we still have a “healer shortage” years after Preservation came out. You’re an exception, not an expectation. Furthermore, you are trying to apply this example your healer swap to tanks, two roles that perform very differently.
Tanking is fundamentally more demanding and stressful than the other roles which is why people don’t want to do it. I feel you’re being very dense for not acknowledging that and chalking it up to “the spells aren’t flashy enough”. Flashy spells aren’t going to take away from the responsibility of tanking that people don’t want to take on. It’s not going to make people less anxious about pull counts and routes. It would cause a temporary spike in interest and then fizzle out as the novelty of a new spec wears off, bringing us right back to the same tank shortage that was never acknowledged properly in the first place.
No amount of new healer/tank specs will EVER fix the problem. There are a litany of problems that are neither helped or hindered by a new DPS spec.
Only requiring 2 tanks in raids, no matter how many DPS.-
This has distorted the number of people playing tanks since the game solidified on that ratio. If someone is DPS in raids, they’re going to be gearing for DPS, and won’t magically become a tank in 5 man, usually. If you want to tank, you might try to raid, only to find out that all of the tank slots are filled, and just go DPS.
The other, and most drastic problem, is the absolute disparity in player responsibility in regards to dps vs heals vs tank. Tank in particular is expected to do everything that a DPS is expected to do, but also control the pace of the run, know routes for every season’s dungeon, manage cooldowns to avoid dying, and a single failure means a wipe.
Contrast with DPS that can often mess up multiple times, even die, and the run will probably continue fine.
Blizzard needs to either address the above problems, or revert the tank nerfs and make them so over the top main character powerful that people play them solely for that. Tank shortage was not as bad in dragonflight, because you felt powerful as a tank, but the DPS shrieked until the nerf came, and now they shriek because it takes longer to get a tank for their key.