Disagree with tanks being rewarded anything extra.
The incentive to tank is ease of finding groups, not having to wait, getting to set the pace and not having to deal with the (very likely) possibility of frustrating and slow pug tanks.
As long as there is timed content where pathing is so important (and I like timed content), the hardest role to find is always going to be the tank.
What the geniuses at blizzard should AVOID doing though, is making tanks lifes more annoying. E.g target caps. These are already incredibly frustrating for tanks. Not being able to reliably hold aggro on the whole pull is just terrible.
And there is no way that groups are going to start not pulling more than 5 mobs, even in lowbie keys. So it’s just another annoyance for the tank to deal with, that their abilities are hitting random mobs, along with the dps players having no control over which few mobs they’re cleaving. Then you add bolstering, where nobody has the ability to cleave everything evenly and it’s just a joke.
I normally play a class that can both dps and tank. I have no desire to deal with this system though, so won’t be tanking in shadowlands. Know of several others in my circle that’ve said the same, about halving how many tanks we have around.
Edit - not to mention there will also be less tanks due to people being covenant locked. Good job blizz.
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You understand that giving tanks guarantee loot would mean they gear up even faster, making it so there are less tank on queues.
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The game disincentivizes off speccing another role. If it’s easy to switch, people will switch. If it’s harder, they won’t. It’s not up to ~some~ players to make big sacrifices for the good of the game.
Perhaps the devs think that this will “encourage” people to join guilds, when, as I showed above, most people who belong to guilds still have to pug all their own content.
you realize more people will q up as a tank if it has compelling rewards, making it so there are more tanks in the q’s
you also realize that tanks can choose their dps/heal specs for loot and finally making an activity worthwhile for them will keep tanks in there for a very long time
The activity is already worthwhile, for people that enjoy tanking. Is silly to keep asking for more bribes so players play the game in a way they dont enjoy.
perfect way to keep q times long and no more tanks joining
agree that players shouldn’t feel forced into stuff they find boring but this isn’t going to be solved by doing nothing - truth be told a lot of players find it somewhat fun but not worth their time because it provides minimal to zero progression in aggregate
people only have so much time to go around
Gear is not the solution. Soon as you’re playing at a decent level - nobody is there for gear. They’re there for fun and to push score, etc.
You can gear up in a single day if you’re any good, especially as a tank. I’ve boosted chars and got it to ilvl 460 within 24hrs multiple times (about 120 ilvl in pre-patch lvls).
To make the point even clearer, the “gearing phase” probably accounts for about 1% of the playtime of the sorts of tanks you’d actually want to play with.
All your suggestions will do is incentivize more of the sort of tanks nobody wants to play with. Clueless people doing it for more rewards. And, to pre-emptively answer your question - yes, i’d rather wait and not start, rather than play with a clueless tank.
Blizz need to focus on reducing friction to tank. Make re-speccing (including covenants) easy. Make it so they can hit everything in a pull. Look at what the barriers are, and remove them or as much friction as possible. Same as with any energy system.
But guilds can be just like pugging. If you aren’t in the clique you won’t get to join good groups unless you have the good key yourself.
This is fine for content like heroic dungeons. People who can choose to tank heroic dungeons can later choose to move up to harder content. People who are forced to choose between roles at the beginning of the expansion won’t.
There’s more to the game than the part you restrict yourself to. If you dropped in as a new player with no knowledge you sure as heck wouldn’t be ilvl 460 in 24 hours.
Their perk is that they dont have q times so their chance at loot per hour is inherently higher. What else is needed?
So there’s no issue with finding pug tanks. Or if there is, it’s not your problem.
Here’s one: stop nerfing tanks. Tanks that get nerfed are less likely to tank for other players.
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For heroics, if waiting 0 minutes isn’t enough incentive over waiting for 20 minutes - too bad.
That’s already double the loot per hour, if not more. People fail to realize that there’s already loot rewards build into the system for more desired roles. More time playing (more desired role) versus more time waiting (less desired role).
If people have a problem with waiting, they should tank. If they’re scared of being flamed (will happen) or not capable enough, too bad. Higher pressure roles are, by definition, ones that less people can fill or want to fill. In WoW, this can’t be completely fixed without making all content trivial and changing the core dynamics of the holy trinity (tank, heal, dps).
All blizzard should focus on is anything that is driving people away from it, like patch or expansion systems. Those that never did it successfully in the first place because they’re worried or precious, are irrelevant. Nobody gets anywhere in anything in life without trying things, persevering and overcoming.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I don’t really mind tanking for pugs 
And if you happen to get grouped with a hostile/toxic pug? You can just leave/drop group and be in another group in like 30 seconds - it’s a nice perk of having access to a tank spec.
Fortunately, I’ve found most pug players to range from neutral-to-nice in terms of demeanor. Most people just want to get the dungeon done and get their weekly chest, so I don’t feel too much “pressure” usually.
The most “stress” comes from certain affix/dungeon combinations imo, most of the actual dungeon routes are fairly straight-forward/linear even without an MDT route. Speaking of MDT, min-maxers/1%ers have already mapped out these dungeons hundreds of times, you can literally just copy-paste a Dratnos route and be good 2 go with your pugs.
Tanks would be more common if Blizzard designed encounters around the presence of more.
As you yourself pointed out you go from requiring 2 out of 20 people being tanks to 1 in 5 as you transition from raid to dungeon, which means at least 2 of those tanks are forced to also optimise for an additional role if participating in raids.
That simple disadvantage makes it a less favourable role, on top of that you have the responsibility that one mistake can cost the entire group that encounter and the blame that can come from that means less people are willing to main the role.
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Tanks are supposed to be the gods that mortals pray too. Buffing all Tanks would be a good start.
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"Not waiting is good incentive. '. That fits into the offer and demand, meaning there are not enough tanks out there.
“All needs to k ow the mechanics of the bosses” yes but tanks more , if one dies and can’t red… Is wipe, if a few dps die we can still kill the boss, might take longer.
As a dps do you like to wait 10 or 20 min in a city waiting/begging to a tank appear , hope he is good and hope your party will do good enough for him to stay and not rage quit? Me as a dps would like to be able to have a party and be able to start. A doungeoun in at least 5 min. Considering that I am paying a monthly fee, and that I don’t have all the time to wait for one(work, family etc…)
As a tank having to deal with people don’t knowing that fights, explaining them babysit that they don’t overgrown the tank because they don’t know how to start the fight or some start pulling before the tank, others don’t get the concept LOS.
As a healer I also would like some companion in this adventure and find a quick team to go have fun and get some loot, maybe healers should be included in this compensation, but I feel there might be more healers than tanks (blizz should have stadistics on this)
here is my perspective as a newly raid/mythic plus tank:
raiding: there are only two spots. im only doing it because our off tank is having a baby. there are others in the guild that could do it but they chose me. the others that can tank are designated to dps whether they like it or not. if these other guildmates arent going to tank in raid, then they will spend their time perfecting and gearing their dps specs instead. this puts a decline in dungeon pug tanks.
mythic plus: overall my experience has been good. no toxicity towards me. the reason is because i spent all of 8.2 and 8.3 as a dps so i know what to do (for the most part. it can be hard to remember every minor detail about every dungeon and the changes that are needed per week because of affixes). plus, ive been banking offspec gear this whole time so ive had a fully geared bear for a while. ill see the random complaints about the healer sucking or someones dps being too low, etc. the point is, there is a fear of being berated for being a bad tank. new tanks are in for a terrible time. ive seen it as a dps. looots of people have terrible attitudes in this game.
when i first think about pugging mythic plus, my first thought is ill have to deal with: butt pulls, someone pulls another pack because of their abilities (hunter barrage) or a demon hunter eyebeaming another pack, dps pulling for me instead of just asking me to pull more, dps dying to stupid stuff, dps not interrupting, and so on. id rather not have to run around like a chicken without a head picking up random packs and blowing my cd’s. some of those spells hurt and can easily be interrupted. ill even stop for a healer because they have zero mana and the healer will give me attitude for stopping. so i’ll scroll through the group finder and pick out the dungeons that are easier than others.
after saying all of this, IF there was an additional incentive for me to tank pugs, I would most definitely do more of it more often IF the rewards were based on time devoted. for example, run 5 mythic plus at 10 or higher and you get X as a reward. Someone above mentioned guaranteed loot. heck yea im going to tank every single key i can get into and set my loot spec to whatever i want to gear. this would also allow me to gear up all tank specs quicker and run mythic 15’s anytime i want to run them.
so, for me, a better incentive would most definitely get me to tank more pugs than i do currently.
Lol. Blizzard just gave players an incentive to subscribe for 6 months and half the community lost their minds but you want more incentives for one spec/role… that won’t end well.
clearly thats not a high enough incentive