Look, I can sympathize with the fact that many would-be Tanks are just going full DPS mode and it makes them squishier to keep alive… but I also know that the content doesn’t hit hard and will go smoother/faster if you just avoid panic healing and keep the pace moving forward… even if that means every 6-7 pulls you have to drink.
The alternative is that you have a much much slower Tank who isn’t holding aggro and you’re going OOM every pull keeping Rogues and Hunters alive.
But this blanket emo ban on so-called “dps” Tanks? Good luck never getting a Tank again.
Sounds like a you problem to be honest. Ive 2h tanked many dungeons with little to no downtime on warrior and shaman.
When i was levelling healer, my pally friend went full ret with 2h mace and we cleared all content, he even 2h all of BFD at 25 cap. None of the content is remotely hard to merit otherwise, including for speedfarming.
So im only lvl 22 and really interested in warrior tanking. Yes i tanked OG with tab sunder and sap sheep traps etc most pulls. I actually prefer slow going. However…things have changed and thats a fact. People wanna zoom now. So much so many classes have to spec in a way they dont wanna play.
Tanks fall here. If i go full prot talents and swoard board…ill basically be tanky one on one but slow the group down. Every other warrior and really…the meta…show that tanking now is mostly done in full dps gear. They will say for threat reasons but the truth is for zooomy reasons. I agree with your take but sadly the population is mostly being driven into this meta.
I dont know the solution cause slow going will definitely make more people mad. I feel im in the minority enjoying that. So now I can lvl as arms cause i dont wanna deal with the drama of tanking in the “wrong” or unapproved spec.
A Tank’s primary job, above all other things, is to control the run. That means keeping control even when you have room temp IQ DPS wearing the best of the best gear. That means keeping control when the Healer goes AFK or protest-drinks two rooms back because you’re “going too fast”. You keep control.
Priority two is staying alive. In 5mans the Tank has a lot at their disposal to do this beyond just hoping the Healer wakes up. See primary job above.
So the easiest way to accomplish all of the above is to hit mobs first, hit them really hard, and make them die faster than they can make you die. A distant fourth is having CC, kiting, speed, utility, etc that helps keep you alive or safe. Nothing in the dungeons, from Ragefire to Razorfen hits hard enough to really stress anyone out, even if a Mage is getting smacked. Yeah, it’d be nice if the Druid could just spam Wrath between refreshing Wild Growth and calling it a day on thinking… but that’s lazy lazy and slow.
I feel this brother. Like i dont mind picking up the pace a little bit, but dungeon tanking has been so off putting to me. The whole reason i chose warrior for SoD was wanting to try tank, and the runes made it look like 1h+shield would be good.
Every group ive joined im expected to go go go with my 2h, and since i havent played this game in so long i barely remember the dungeon layouts and i was having trouble holding threat on the 2 dungeons ive ran. I want to tank bro, but it just feels rough to me
I had an absolutely bat crazy Hunter pull like 10 extra mobs per pull in RFD today, and I was like screw it. There’s no chance I’m picking up threat when you pull 2 extra packs and immediately start doing whatever the melee Hunter cleave move is on all of them, so I just swapped to DW and slapped some mobs. You do that and we have no tank.
Dude did it twice and when we almost died he said “okay I won’t do that”. Self aware enough to stop at least, but some of these dudes just don’t understand Classic.
If the healer is wasting their mana to keep the tank above 80% health like it’s 2007 again, yes. If the healer realizes that people aren’t playing the game like they did in 2007, and understands people now opt to kill everything as fast as possible, with the two jobs of the tank now consisting of “hold aggro while DPSing” and “HP > 0,” they only have to heal enough to make sure the tank doesn’t die. Unless your tank is RPing as Leeroy Jenkins, you shouldn’t be anywhere near drained of mana that fast.
Not sure if you’re a bad healer or if you’re just running with complete idiots, but the shield isn’t doing a massive amount. Depending on the shield and the rest of the armor on the character, it’s about a 7-12% physical damage decrease. Hell, the only reason I’m running sword & board with Consecration right now is because with Sheath of Light, I can put out more TPS and DPS when the number of targets exceeds 4(the cap for Divine Storm) while the DPS that can AoE are more free to blow everything up on the really big pulls.
Hold on, lemme check your server.
…Mmk, we’re not on the same server. Don’t have to worry about running with you as a healer, regardless of what setup I’m running.
This is the case, to an extent; if you’re going so slow that the DPS and/or healer drop from the group because you’re taking too long, you have to reform your group. If you find this to be a recurring theme, you may want to go back to the drawing board on how much of it is about you and how much of it is about the five people in your group as a whole.
Just got out of a series of Cathedral runs with no actual tank in the group. Only a single death (me) out of every clear due to a particularly awkward pull, and the healer only had to stop for mana once in each run
OP, at first I was willing to believe you just had a particularly bad tank, but after all your responses I’m inclined to believe you’re the bad healer. Maybe take some time to learn your kit and how to manage your party’s health so that you aren’t burning excess mana
Seriously man, you mean spending 7 seconds auto-attacking one target and assuming you don’t miss, parry or dodge, your have enough rage to sink into one crappy AoE attack? Hold my threat, dawg.
A big issue here is under leveled tanks and groups in general.
I’ve gone into SM Armory with a 33-34 and they get absolutely slapped. “Oh hey, Library was easy. Let’s do Armory.” The mobs in there are 37-38 and Herod is 40. I know Herod is easy as heck but he can still delete low level tanks if they take a hit and then get hit by WW. All of the mobs are hitting hard, never miss, crit, etc. DPS is missing more often and there are resists. The only one that isn’t gimped is the healer and they are putting in all the work. RIP mana bar even on a simple 1 pack pull and there is no saving it.
Now, SM Armory with a group of 36-38? Very easy. Multi-packs are manageable. Healer mana is maintained, etc.
There is a lot of emphasis on moving up the ranks too quickly when killing lower level monsters quicker is much more efficient exp. I wish more people would see that.
People have been legitimately 2H tanking in this game for over a decade. Any decent warrior leveling guide will recommend leveling and tanking with the best 2H weapon you can find.
In the early days of vanilla, sword and board were considered meta. That is such an antiquated concept that even top tier guilds (without runes) run fury tanks with 2 1H weapons bc dmg = threat and damage intake isn’t significant enough to require a shield.
You and everyone else is wrong…as i daid when i jave to spend my entire 2.8k mana pool on the dps tank just to keep them alive with my 180+ heal and drink every pull which ofc before i even sit they are running off to the next 3 or 4 pack pull they are the problem meanwhile the sword and board tank thats going a little slower makes it so i dont need to drink but every 6 or 7 groups
It’s more of a mixed bag but all guides agree that you should be tanking in defensive stance and switching to sword+board on ‘spicy’ pulls.
If you’re pulling a couple of mobs, you’re fine. But the second you start to pull 8~ mobs at once, you 100% should have a shield on otherwise you’ll get obliterated even faster.
I too stop reading when I feel only my opinion matters and am scared of seeing a different point of view.
For the record, since you stopped reading, I’ve main’d multiple prot warriors for 10+ years and all the points I made in that post are still relevant, even as a warrior. Obvious exception being the paladin spec paragraph. The three remaining paragraphs (that you failed to read because your ego is too big) are relevant for all tanks, not just paladins.
They also aren’t understanding that there are ‘dps tanks’ with full DPS gear sitting in zerker stance getting lit up because they want to ‘pump’.
I believe, as in all things, there are good players and bad players. Good players are capable of so much more than a bad player.
I’m sure 2h/dps tanking is completely viable when done correctly. It’s just most of these players are DPS players wanting to find a group faster and/or reading all these ‘guides’ Womp mentioned and seeing “2 hand tank go brrrr” and jumping in and getting obliterated because they don’t understand the basic tanking fundamentals. Hell, a lot of these tanks don’t even understand what LoS is (for pulling or receiving heals).
Now, what I don’t know is if Wompdonke is one of those players or one of the good ones. I’m inclined to believe they’re one of the good ones and just failing to realize just how BAD a lot of these ‘dps tanks’ truly are. People at the ‘top of their field’ love to defend an opinion that more broadly is incorrect.
The only time I really throw on a shield is when we’re pulling a pack of 44+ elites or a boss. Other than that, I’m using 2h. That said, I am prot/holy with consecrate, improved devo, improved armor, improved RF, so my spec is basically all for survivability.
As others have mentioned, tanking is really not fun when people ignore markers and AOE before the mobs even make it to the tank. You do, however, have a point about people claiming they are tanks but don’t have talents or runes geared toward that. But dungeon tanking at lvl 40 isn’t that deep.
