S1 M+ Tank Perspective

Community General Discussion
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There has been a number of complaints that I have read on the forums and just wanted to give my view on them.

The most common issue that hear and read is that DPS are having a hard time getting into groups. I believe that class balance will always be a key part of this issues, but knowing how difficult balance can be, there are some other things we can do. Out of all the ideas I’ve heard it seems increasing the ratio of tanks and healers to dps makes the most sense to me.

Making tanking more accessible
One issue with tanking currently is survivability and sustain. I hear healers out there saying things like “Thank you for using your defensives.” Last season I don’t remember hearing this as often as tanks didn’t need as much (if any) healer attention. While I generally enjoy the changes to sustain this season with tanking, it can be annoying looking at your log and not seeing a single heal on you before falling over. This was a bigger issue early on with returning healers that were unaware of the changes and didn’t realize a tank may actually need a heal now. That being said, I think reverting some of the sustain nerfs could help healers keep more tanks alive and, in theory, could increase tank players.

Making healing more accessible
The above tank change can already help with this issue a bit, but one complaint I often hear is that(all classes really) healers have button bloat. Now hear me out… im not saying we should go back to the days of just spamming chain heals, but a lot of healing has moved away from the cast this to heal target to press this cooldown to take less damage or press that to not die. I have actually had healers, paladins, tell the group they ran out healing buttons to press. I am not a healer so I am not going to spend too much time on this but I think there are ways to make healing more accessible in keys.

Making tanking more fun
Okay, I like tanking right… I’m a tank? But… I also like doing damage. When I’m pushing 12s I find it more fun then doing 10s with friends or filling out the vault. In lower keys I have more fun just going dps and watching numbers go burrrr. In a decent key I average around 900k dps while the dps are doubling that with 1.8-2.2m. Now im not saying I should be doing those numbers but being less than half their dps just feels bad and makes me want to dps lower keys. However, if the damage was more comparable, like maybe tanks averaging 75% of a dps’ overall damage, I think I would tank more low keys instead of dpsing them. I don’t know if any other tanks feel this way… but if so I feel like this could help increase the number of tanks in the player pool.

Making Healing more fun
Again not a healer… but I hear them complain about kicks A LOT this season. Maybe giving all healers a shaman level kick? This wouldn’t disrupt PVP at all right? I guess a more reasonable ask would be to undo the stop changes to casting.

Hot take incoming

Make tanking/healing more rewarding
We already give bonuses to tanks and healers in queueable content like Heroics, LFR, and PVP, and the crazy part is that it actually helps. I find myself seeing the call to arms from time to time and queueing up for the bonus. If we could find a way to do the same thing for healers and tanks in keys, it may help there as well. Maybe… tanks and healers have an increased chance of a 3rd piece of loot… or maybe they get a chunk of gold at the end of every key. Just something to make it lucrative for the tank and healer.

I understand we already have tank/healer privileges, but the goal here is to increase the number of tanks and healers to increase the groups looking for DPS, that hopefully increases the chance of them getting into a group. Because, as a tank, when I post my key and see 50+ acceptable dps instantly queue up, I don’t hate 47 of you… you just don’t fit in a 5 man group.

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I think increasing effective health and the time until death would be better than increasing sustain.

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M+ is horrible this season, it’s definitely the worst I’ve ever played. If you’re a healer who doesn’t have curse dispell in G.B. you’re already at a disadvantage because of that annoying healing absorption debuff. If no DPS has curse dispell I prefer not to do this dungeon. I think all healers should have dispell for all types of debuffs.

The tanks are also very bad, most of them are very fragile and die easily. I rarely see tough tanks that barely need my healing. It seems to be the most difficult role to perform, in addition to having to know the best dungeon routes and %. Tanks could have extra loot at the end of the dungeon, I think that would be fair.

The mechanics are extremely punishing, if someone doesn’t interrupt a certain cast it could be a wipe. If you use up a CD at the wrong time, it’s a wipe too.

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The only real issue I, as a tank, see with mythic+ is how grossly tight the timers are necessitating 2-4 pack pulls in some of the dungeons combined with how bonkers painful that is.

Not all of us are warriors getting to be mitigation masters or can play the hit and run game like half the tanks can when needed.

As always, the real culprit is fortified (and tyrannical). Instead of just giving us affixes that introduce extra challenges…they just pile stats on absurd pile of stats with an extra heaping of stats if/when you get to +12 and beyond. In fact, at +12, you even lose an affix and it’s JUST more stats…stats stats stats stats stats stats.

Get rid of the effing 2 affixes and leave the individual key scaling the way it is otherwise. Add a movement affix and a mechanics affix in place of where fort and tyr are. Movement affixes are things like entangled while mechanic affixes are things like bursting…at least those affixes make us actually do things instead of MOAR STATS!!!

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The only time I see tight timers is when there are a lot of deaths. But I also think that tanks doing a bit more damage would help with some of the timer issues. Feels bad when 1 cast goes off and 1/2 dps die and they have a long run back, mean while you are just hoping you don’t run out of cool downs before the mobs die.

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I wholeheartedly agree with all your suggestions. They missed with the tank changes and it felt better to play before.

Tanking felt powerful and with a good group I felt empowered to go for big pulls. Particularly in Uldaman, some of the LoS pulls of 3-4 felt super great to get away with as a Blood DK.

I’ve let go and have been DPS’ing mostly the last couple of weeks and only tanked lower keys. I’ve been driven off tanking by how squishy and miserable it feels.

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Tanking last season was a bit better for sure.

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Nothing you mention speaks of accessibility. There’s plenty of levels to grab a tank/heaer and learn and multiple low risk places to practice said role. Accessibility isn’t the issue you’re thinking of

Different roles do different things
Different people are attracted to different things
There’s no way to make XYZ appeal to EVERYONE
Making tanks unkillable DPS isn’t the way to go. If I want to do big numbers, I’ll play a DPS

This is just asking for things to be nerfed because you cant show undisputable favoritism (ignore current metas that shift every season).

Like I get what you’re getting at. But the biggest issue is: Tanking and Healing hold the most responsibility in a group. So when things go sideways, most of the blame falls on those two roles. People don’t like that. Healing and tanking taking a little more foresight and planning than DPS as well. Having to know routes / plan and rotate CDs / know big damage spikes and how to mitigate it, etc etc. DPS is just a sit back and fire away kind of thing. Path of least resistance kind of thing. It’s easier being a follower than a leader is more or less what it boils down to.

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The idea was to make it a bit easier or give them more control to ease them into the role or allow more players to run it as an off spec with less of a challenge. To me that makes it more accessible.

I have had a few conversations on the topic and a few friends had similar thoughts to yours. I only replied with “then nothing we can do about it?” That cant be the answer and anything would help at this point.

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Delves
Normal Dungeon
Heroic Dungeons
Mythic 0
M+ 2-3
LFR
Normal Raids

Like I said, there’s lots of low risk difficulties for them to practice and hone their skills.

I think it’s more about the person and their personality than it is about the game itself. Like I said:

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Interesting…I can’t put my finger on it, but something is definitely off. I’m only running maybe 4 keys a week when last season it was around 10. The barrier of entry is just too steep. I guess I’m getting more IRL work done so thanks Blizzard?

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What you are attempting to do is equate accessibility to equality of outcome. M+ is accessible to all players. There’s no systemic gatekeeping from the content, but it doesn’t mean everyone will walk out of it with the same experience or outcome. It’s a skill based content that scales. For some, their skill may keep them at a +2 while others can go beyond +12.

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I think the point is that a lot of player generally agree that tanking was better when they were more tanky and did more damage. This belief has lead some players to stop playing the role leaving a shortage of tanks. The same goes for healing.

At some point blizzard has to say what can we do about it. They cannot change the player, they can change the game. Everyone may not agree with it, but I think some changes would increase the number of tank players again.

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When people say “accessible” these days, I feel they really meant “make it easier”.

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As a blood dk, I felt the tank changes immediately. BDK and BRM got the worst of it. Self sustain is non existent and that is how BDK was built. The nerfs just made tanking overall feel bad. It hurts the worst when you walk into a pick and just instantly die and ask why didn’t I just roll a dps and run 4 dps 1 healer? I never get mad at healers, healing has to be single handed the worst role hands down bar none. Nerfed and changed every single expansion, and given arguably an unfair amount of responsibility in the group via mechanics. Tanking and healing is just absolutely a slog, the only reason I am still tanking is because I love the role and the perks it gives aka insta queues and invites. For newer players learning tank/healer it is just borderline impossible, groups bully out the new ones, and add to the fact tanking and healer is already super stressful. They need to revert the tank and healer changes, or else this problem is going to continue to get worse overtime.

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the tuning for tanks and heals is just off.

the simple answer is to just buff them all by 10%, or something, across the board.

restore AOE interrupts in some fashion. maybe make the mobs delay their casting by1 second or something rather than an instant restart on the cast. give us some time to get our direct kicks back.

and with dispels and interrupts so absolutely necessary, all healers need to be able to address the content in the game. the weekly affix that needs dispelling is the sort of thing that works, in my opinion. one of the reasons I picked guardian. i can dispel myself.

and I do think timers are tight. in DF, i 2 chested most everything I ran. I feel like I am barely eeking out timers most of the time. assuming the group itself doesn’t just fall apart.

in the end, if the game is going to be more punishing, we need more tools.

I am sure I could explore a bit more for kiting (typhoon and vortex), but I shouldn’t feel like I’m on the edge of death with a 2-pack pull.

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That is somewhat true, easier could be used. When you replace stairs with a ramp you make it easier for some. Really just make it make sense, make it fun, and make it worth it.

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Tanks are still tanky. Blizzard did a targeted nerf to self-sustain to limit how long they can solo an encounter without a healer. The reason why it “felt” harder was because of the relative ilvl gap this season.

We usually have a 26 ilvl gap between season to season, but this time we started wit ha 34 ilvl gap with no tier, no embellishments, no bis trinkets, and no bis enchants.

The difficulty was mostly a perception issue because they couldn’t understand why it felt the way it did.

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I do feel the mythic plus system needs an overhaul. Theres no need to CC anymore it’s just Zerg Zerg. One or two bad pulls or mishaps everyone just leaves. As for tanks, it’s not as strong as before, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they are in a horrible state. Just last night I tanked the last boss in Ara-Kara on a +4 helping a buddy. The whole group died with the boss at 65% except for me. It took forever but I solo’d the boss and we finished the key. Right after that key, once again I find myself in another group in a +5 and had to solo’ the second boss in Mist @38% ish on. Knowing the class/dungeon mechanics and getting it all synced correctly takes time, but makes things feel not as bad.

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As a tank I can tell another tank player or dps that used to tank to “Get Good.” But blizzard can’t sit there and say we have no one tanking, looks like its a skill problem, tell everyone to get good. They actually have to do something about it.

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