We can only do so much when no paladin/shaman is up for the task and rarely anyone plays druid. What’s supposed to be a 33% job role is instead dumped almost entirely on warriors. Tell more paladins/shamans to tank, and there would be far more available for the job. Yes, they can do it, if they bothered to spec for it. They just don’t want to.
1 Like
Well over a year of people telling druids they cant tank whenever someone asked about tanking with a druid in classic, might be part of the problem, when they are able to main tank most bosses just fine, without issue. There are only a few specific bosses they cant tank, yet still to this day, people will say “druids cant tank”
I’ve tanked a lot with pugs so far and I mean yeah occasionally you run into dumb DPSers that make tanking a nightmare but those horror stories are not nearly as common as some players are making it to be, at least in my experience.
The part that is pretty common is DPSers not giving you much time to build threat on AOE packs, but this again it’s not usually as bad as people are saying, you still get some time (maybe like 3s) to build some threat which if you manage your rage properly so you are not starting your pulls at zero should be good enough to hold aggro most times and if not just ask them to give you a little more time.
MT needing 440 Defence in raids? Nah man. 340 is good enough for MC and BWL.
This is the problem. I don’t doubt that you could tank as arms, fury, holy, resto, combat, frost, etc. in leveling dungeons with a coordinated group. It just runs against all my tanking instincts to gimp the rest of the group so I can tank in a dps spec.
1 Like
The solution is simple. roll a tank
I have an idea.
How about, instead of complaining that there are no tanks and telling people to roll a tank you instead do one of these things:
- Roll a tank and do it yourself or
- Tell DPS to stop acting like it’s Retail and making life difficult for tanks in the first place.
Tanks exist. You have Retail tanks (they don’t last long post-50), new tanks (who are usually mentored by a veteran tank) and veteran tanks (who won’t tank PuGs because it’s less painful to smear broken glass and salt into an open wound than tank for a PuG).
Tanks exist, they just don’t want to tank for YOU.
2 Likes
most dont want to because some douchecanoe with a stream following said paladins and druids cant tank and butt sucking psyopants buy into that crap…
so tankadins tend to avoid pugs.
Thankfully my buddy likes to tank. Although some PUGs really test his patience. The people who also “try” to tank but never have are terrible at threat generation and I frequently pull aggro when the tank wastes their rage on DPS attacks instead of threat generators. FF seems to be a big problem in PUGs as well. Some groups I never see any FF and a single mob being deleted, sometimes the tank has 4 guys on him and the other players all have their own target. Therefore they pull threat more often causing me to have to heal them and increase downtime from wasted mana.
In a proper group with FF and my buddy tanking we can usually go through the whole dungeon and I maybe drink once if a mob runs and pulls another group. Otherwise I never OOM with a good tank.
If you can hold threat (with a reasonably well-behaved group) then you can tank in a spec. Tanking in a DPS spec means faster kills and, though this may seem counter-intuitive, makes healers happier because unless things go really really badly healing a well-geared tank is as fun as watching paint dry.
Worry about being a Prot tank if you need to MT raids. Other than that, you are fully capable of tanking dungeons and even offtanking raids with proper gear and class knowledge.
It does not seem counter-intuitive at all. It’s just that all my healers have said they prefer prot-spec and faster kills are meaningless in these dungeons (all kills are fast).
1 Like
If the rest of your group is struggling with you in Arms during the leveling dungeons, then no amount of spec changing is going to help them.
1 Like
Not really a lack of tanks, just a lack of tanks doing the same stuff you’re doing. The rub being they have the choice.
Tanks are always rare, but If they are having the experience I am having as a healer with PUG’s, then it’s no wonder they are even harder to come by.
Sorry OP… i just dont want to tank pugs with bads.
1 Like
Tanking for PUGS can just be a miserable experience. From DPS pulling when you are waiting on healer mana or cooldowns, to healers like the OP here:
As a tank, there is just very little incentive to help out PUGS.
1 Like
There are few tanks compared to retail because this is how tanking originally was, you didn’t have instant threat given to you simply for farting in the direction of the mobs. Tanks also do little damage which is how it should be, there should be a trade off for having more survivability.
If tanking was ez mode like it is on retail then there would be far far more people playing as one without a doubt.
1 Like
Tanks? Who needs tanks. “LFM SM Cath aoe spam mages/warlocks” Best groups were 3 mages, warlock and a heal.
And for new tanks it can be a very negative and off putting experience. Even if they know the above, because most dps don’t know or care. In vanilla many eager tanks just give up when they discover that most PUG groups just don’t care.
You can 3 person a lot of dungeon content at level if your willing to play the mechanics game. Its all about how folks want to play. Some like the aoe/cleave, some like the traditional trinity setup or some variation thereof.
Also, things will get better. Once folks start rolling alts, tank demand will get higher and more people will try it. Ok, maybe saying it will get better is a bit optimistic. But we can hope!
Lets not underestimate druids - they can tank certain bosses in naxx in tier 2/2.5 better than prot warriors can