A lot of people play classes that can tank but choose not to. They’re told time and time again that they would get invited to dungeons instantly and have a easier time gearing.
The reason that people don’t tank is because of the amount of toxic players and elitists that plague this game. You know the exact type. They blame the tank for any small minor inconvenience. Blame the tank for not holding threat on 6 mobs that are being blown up without waiting for said tank to get a threat lead.
Blame the tank for any wipe or not pulling enough packs. Blaming the tank for dying to a mob when they pull threat. Blaming the tank for not playing to their standards.
Can you Blame people for not wanting to have their day ruined by aholes?
I know personally I don’t have the patience or desire to subject myself to leading an entire dungeon of toxic players through a dungeon. And I know not every player is toxic. But a ton of them are. I believe these are the major contributing factors to why basically nobody likes tanking even though the invites would be plentiful.
People don’t want to tank becuase most people are not leaders. They just want to follow. And being a tank in an mmo usually means you are the de facto leader. Good leaders make good tanks.
This holds a lot of turth, i used to tank full time in TBC & WOTLK back in the old days, alot of times it fell upon me to do all the leg work like marking mobs, calling out CDs, explaining fights to newbies, etc. etc.
It’s not that it gets old, even tanks themselves want a break from this burned once in a while, so when i came back to classic now i tank and heal.
Which healing brings its own set of problems also but at least you can deal with most of those.
Tank shortages exist naturally. Less people tank because there are less available raid/dungeon/pvp(zero) spots.
Tanks get groups faster -> Get what they need -> stop running dungeons.
You’re probably not wrong about people wanting to avoid tanking due to toxicity but regardless we’d have a shortage, it’s just the nature of how mmo’s are set up.
I’m going to say the majority of players aren’t toxic. However, I’ll say that the ones who are toxic tend to also be people who play a lot. So you have a higher chance to be grouped with them at any given time.
There’s probably some truth to this. As the tank, you’re the leader. Most people don’t want the pressure cause they’re playing this game to relax. Plus, as a tank or a healer, you’re the only person doing your job. If I have to get up from my computer for a minute as a dps, nobody will care. You can’t do that as tank or heals.
You’re right but there is one thing you also did not include in that; raid comps also factor into this problem. The way they set up raids to only need X number of tanks is also a point of contention because most players now days tend to raid and because of that there will only ever be so many tanks on.
And naturally as you pointed out tanking pugs is a thankless job most of the time because people want to worship before the meta of how they think the game should be played for what amounts to under ideal situations maybe 5 or 10 min off a clear times. One screw up under those ideal conditions = wipe, where as any other comp can still clear the content with little effort.