The massive tank problem in shadowlands

Community General Discussion
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Lets chat about tanks for a second. As a disclaimer, I am talking about the higher levels of Mythic plus. I understand raiding is a different environment and I understand that as people get more geared, things are going to change a bit.

4 of the top 5 Mythic keys are by demon hunters. 16 out of the top 20 keys are still demon hunters. Out of the top 100, over 70% of them are demon hunters. there is 1 warrior in the top 50. There is a couple druids, monks and a few paladins. There is not a single blood DK.

90% of tanking is kiting in this expansion, especially in necrotic week. I am ok with having to kite sometimes as a tank, I actually find that fine as a mechanic when needed. But that shouldn’t be the only mechanic. It literally is just run in, blow defensives, kite. There is no “flow” to tanking, or smoothing damage at intuitive times. It is just mitigate as much as possible off the bat, then run when you have nothing left. This is unhealthy game design.

Now, I don’t want demon hunters to be nerfed, because they actually exemplify what a healthy tank should be. They actually mitigate damage, self heal appropriately, control mobs with sigils and have a flow system to how they handle most packs. Other tanks need buffs to be at the same level, so that they can be semi-competitive. It is ok to have a tank that outshines other tanks, but the desparity is way too great.

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As a vengeance tank it’s not all sunshine and rainbows but I agree they definitely need to adjust some stuff

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Ey mon. Mebe dey should go on a diet…

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I’m hoping gear will reduce the need for constant kiting at least a bit. It’s definitely stupid when a pack hurts so much the best thing you can do every time is run away.

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No one heard of CC I guess.

When zero skill conquers the game.

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Why are you exposing the VDH plan to take over the tanking world ??? why ???
#VDH4Lyfe

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Kiting while DPS nuke > Using hard CC and turning 1 pull into 2 while on a timer. Short term stuns don’t last long enough to finish pulls. Not to mention the mobs that hurt tend to not be CCable.

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And to be fair since their inception into the game their kit has been built around 5 mans. Not raids .

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I’m not in high keys. We’re super casual over the holiday and are hanging out in the 6’s and 7’s. Even from down here, I can see the problems that have led to the disparity up there.

If the tank isn’t a Bear or a DH, it is absolute hell keeping them up, and that isn’t because I suck or because they suck. It’s because they’ve done something to mess up half of the tanking specs.

We don’t have a single prot warrior in SL. Not one. They were told all through alpha and beta that prot warrior was damaged beyond repair and practically non-viable, so they rolled something else.

One is a monk, and the BM Monk is like a wet paper bag. Once he’s out of cooldowns, he just folds. Healing him through damage bursts is painful. He dies in dungeons. A lot. My tanks don’t generally die, so this sucks both for me and for the tank. At first, we were confused. Was I doing something wrong? Was he doing something wrong? Was there some fundamental piece of monk tanking that he just wasn’t grasping? No. No, monks are just broken.

This guy played a prot warrior last expansion and a prot pally farther back. He’s an excellent tank who’s frankly slumming it to play at this level with us. It’s not him; it’s the spec. Brewmaster is so weak as a tank spec this expansion that it probably shouldn’t be one.

Our other tank is a blood DK. This is slightly better, but only just. DK’s have always been spiky tanks, but this is beyond anything it’s ever been before. I don’t know enough about how DKs work (only class I never leveled and played well enough to understand).

Even the prot pallies, though far better in the spike department than DKs and far better at mitigation than Brewmasters, are tougher to deal with. They do a crap ton of damage while tanking, but they’re not nearly as good at taking damage as they used to be.

Listen, maybe this is how they wanted it. Maybe Blizzard wanted tanks to be squishier or more difficult to keep up in general this expansion. That would be fine if it were in any way equal across the board. But it’s not.

Healing a DH or a Bear is a dream. All the others are nerve-wrecking and unpredictable damage intake.

What it’s like at higher levels of play, I couldn’t say. In the heroic raid and the low keys, however, the trend is already apparent. You don’t have to wait until you’re in the 15’s and above to notice it.

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Except the have a ton of mobs that cant be kited and the reason DH’s are doing well is because of their mobility which is different from kiting
I run the 50% slow on consecrate talent to try and kite on necrotic week but it doesnt help because every pack has mobs that aren’t phased by it and all it takes is ONE hit and all my effort is for naught

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Do you always post irrelevant comments that are only intended to troll? Read my post, read your post and tell me how they correlate in the slightest aside from being about a broad category about one of the 3 roles.

I am talking about shadowlands and the current state and how it needs be fixed and why does. This has nothing to do with the history of tanks through the previous expansions. Trying to prod at me by asking where I was back then has no relevance either and is just a way to try and puff up your deflated ego.

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I personally would find it pretty amusing if Blizzard:

Sent a system message “We have identified the massive tank problem”
Further message “Beginning culling now”
All Tauren tanks drop dead in the middle of what theyre doing
System message - “Massive Tank problem resolved”

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A lot of people, every expansion, discuss tanks and the state of different tanking specs.

People spent all of BfA lamenting Bear tanking being so awful. People spent all of season one of BfA lamenting how any tank other than a Blood DK was so bad that no one would take them.

OP and lots of other people “were there.” I don’t understand the point of your post.

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Kiting, zerging and skipping packs. Yep I won’t be playing any group content this expansion. Maybe one of these days they will learn how to design a game.

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This one is partly on players. Every Prot Paladin I see following guides is taking the pure DPS legendary. The Avenger’s Shield legendary is so much better, and if you opt for the First Avenger’s talent over the Judgment talent, it can get some crazy absorbs going on AoE pulls (at the cost of mitigation in single target, but that’s less of an issue most of the time).

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Well its easy to nerf one class than to buff every thing else. So…

*insert nerf DH meme

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you spelled buff wrong.

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It really sounds like Blizzard needs to bring back some of the old mechanics.

The mechanic I always hated the most was having mobs run away at low life, but that would force players to pull smaller packs. Since any mob that got away was likely to bring back a few more packs of trash, having even just one mob escape usually meant a wipe. Now, snares and roots help with that, but once the mobs have enough health, they will still start pulling adds in unless you focus them down. And all your vaunted AoE isn’t going to help when ten mobs are all running in different directions. That also has the effect of making every mob feel dangerous without having to give them huge attacks. And I’m sure I’d still hate it if Blizzard brought that mechanic back, but it does keep you engaged with each mob.

Mobs could also use CC again. A VDH isn’t going to be able to kite nearly as well once snared or rooted. A mob that deliberately interrupts or sheeps your healer or fire mage is going to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting party.

The downside is, that produces a very different type of gameplay that’s much slower paced than the action-oriented style that’s popular with a lot of players at the moment. Some players would adapt, some would quit and others would join, but I wouldn’t claim to know what the size of those groups is.

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I assume it has to do with the fact demonhunters are really mobile and can kite better then the other tanks tho I don’t do M+ so I could be wrong

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Unfortunately the timer actively discourages players from using CC intelligently.

I WISH we could go back to a time where it was common to CC in a dungeon. I feel bad for tanks/heals during m+ runs. Thats gotta be stressful.

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