This is the end, the end my friend

Community General Discussion
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There are no tanks, not even a shortage of tanks, not even a choice of this tank or that tank, there are just no tanks for pugland. And the shortage is so bad there are almost no tanks for premades, guilds, communities.

Today I seen a post over on Reddit, someone was PM’d asking if they can tank, just some random player sitting in Silvermoon getting a random PM asking if they can tank, to which they replied “I have only tanked once”.

Way back in BFA I seen the writing on the wall, and others did to, that did nothing but delay the inevitable, I swapped from healing to tanking. And I say it delayed the inevitable because nothing has changed in regard to tanking, the last new tank spec we got was Legion, we almost had one in DF, but that aside literally nothing since Legion has changed.

Dungeons are the same, the routes, the micromanagement, watching everyone’s health, CD’s, lust timing and also the reason why I stopped tanking, being in melee for the last 8 years with the only 3 tanks that can also heal, one only that has a ranged spec, I’m tired of being in melee all day for overworld content, for dungeons, for raids, for PVP, it’s too much doing that for 8 years without change.

Players are getting desperate. I just had a run where we sat in a 4 man premade group for half an hour for a 13 BV, the group leader is 3230 IO and 317 iLVL with an S1 score of 3723, so when players check the leader they will see it’s not a carry, every player in the group is either geared and has an IO score, or has a main IO score up at 2600 or higher, so that’s not the problem.

Decided to change it to a 10VA, got a tank in a few minutes and it was not great. Tank went left at the start, aka the route we done before it became M+, was overpulling and dying, couldn’t hold aggro because they parsed a zero with IP having a 35% uptime. They have seen the signs and decided free slot in dungeons and raids

Same thing last week, pugged one tank (and some DPS) who almost wiped us in raid, on normal, at the first boss. And did wipe us multiple times on the second boss, after we told them multiple times how to tank. So they whined and left and I went back to my tank to end up downing 5 bosses.

Sure we need to give people a chance to learn, but at the same time when you give tanks explicit instructions like “Go right” or “Don’t pull too much” and “Taunt swap at… and stand on the world marker” and they do the exact opposite time and time again. I don’t know, how much leeway do we give people? No one here is asking for an MDI level tank, but a simple “Go right” and they go left, or “Stand on the world marker” and they run off to the wrong side of the boss arena.

These tanks I am seeing lately are those types of players, the DPS who refuse to interrupt type of players, the ones who have tried healing but are that bad that they can’t keep a group alive enough to even finish dungeons and raids, so they are now trying tanking since they are not getting groups as DPS or healers.

Blizzard needs to give seasoned tanks what we want, and it’s not an indestructible boss level tank who can solo content. I want a shaman tank, or a ranged BM hunter tank, maybe a priest tank, I want to be given dungeons that have melee friendly routes and this season, this is not one of them. I swapped to ranged heals partly for that reason, can you imagine trying to heal ToS as an MW? No thanks.

Maybe give tanks rewards for being tanks, up until this season I have never really had an issue with tanks in my guild, but we now have 5-6? maybe more players who are still here, but have all decided tanking will be our last resort, we want to level other classes first, classes that don’t even have tank specs, because playing the same 6 tanks for over 10 years, more than 10 years of the same thing, we just need a change and Blizzard can help give us that change to make tanking better.

More tanks specs will help bring some back, different dungeon and tank philosophies will also help, but something should change to help us all.

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We complained 12.0 content was too easy, now we got Oprah’d with poison for everyone!

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left route is easier for pugs.

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Adding more tank specs isn’t really going to change the fact that in the first few weeks of a season, people will prioritize getting gear over pushing IO.

If the cutoff was today, 0.1% would be roughly 3400 and 1% would be just over 3200.

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More specs won’t necessarily mean more tanks. Some people might gel with a new one, but a lot of tanks have played multiple tank classes over the years.

There has always been a tank shortage. Tanks used to be able to charge money to tank ubrs/strat/scholo/etc back in vanilla.

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I didn’t read the post well, but can tell you I agree on what you are saying. More tanks aren’t the issue, making it more fun and letting them feel like tanks is. I keep hearing turn your hunter into a tank, no no no. lol We don’t want to tank, we have tanks. Having them drag us by the nose not knowing what they are doing is the issue.

Bring back damage, slow them down. Watch it change if they actually have a dang job.

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Beautiful friend … the end…

Tributes to the Lizard King aside…

This would change nothing.

Tank have to shoulder an inordinate amount of responsibility in their role. It’s just a fact that the number of people that find that “fun” is exceedingly small.

If you really want to be depressed, realize that it’s worse than that: you have to find "the number of people that find responsibility fun… AND … are good at it.

WHOOOAAAA that’s a small number of people.

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I’m not sure I want tanks to have a big damage profile. That’s not their job.

But if you (thinking out loud) created some new metric that DID have a “big number go bigger” aspect that tanks could brag about, along the same lines as damage, then yes, I think that would bring a psychologically satisfying element that a non-traditional tank would gravitate toward.

That said, you still have to address the responsibility issue. This is a GAME. Most people (esp WoW’s demo) are coming home from work and just want to RELAX. The tanking role is the ABSOLUTE, COMPLETE OPPOSITE of that description. lol

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Well I’ll tell you a story. I started a tank and people treat me like trash. This community is it’s own undoing. Not tanking in WoW ever again.

I’ll stick to DPS and Healing.

You play a Pally anyways, why don’t you Tank? A because you play the most easy and bestest Blizzard protected spec, a ret!

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We stopped getting new tank specs because they never once in the entire life of this game fixed the tank shortage.

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The “ideal” tank tuning is where they don’t need anyone. And once that happens, they just go solo stuff.

We already have tanks wanting god mode because dying is just unacceptable. And we can’t have threat either, cause any time they lose it, they cry.

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That’s not even the reason.

In classic you needed multiple tank in a raid for handling different things.

For the longest even raiding as a tank has been a nightmare because most guilds only 2 nowadays lmao.

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I don’t know, should they be just running through whole dungeon not feeling a thing either? I’m speaking of more of a normal balance. It’s only fun for tank if he’s going ahead and not feeling a thing, and not so much for healer struggling or dps dying because they can’t keep up. My point being tank should take damage, that’s their purpose.

Not to run to end, dragging and not keeping aggro because they are so bored to care because nothing hurts them, but it is the group.

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We have posts like this one: Questions for bad players in M+ - #142 by Svensson-3036181

Role not held up to metrics, and people think it’s so “difficult.”

Tanks should cease to exist instead of getting more main character syndrome.

The game mandates a tank because if stuff hits other people, they are pretty much dead.

Mandatory inclusion. You can’t play around it to a reasonable degree either.

They play their largely solo game, so you can push buttons to play.

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I’ll check it out, appreciate it.

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The problem with tanking, it’s too easy.

The problem with healing, it’s also too easy, (but healers don’t want to play the game.)

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It was that way it was worse for most group they would just zug and all casters in the trash would cast on everyone else as soon captain forehead tank was outranging or out of line of sight.

The real issue is just how most DPS jump the ship at been mean and calling you the R word. Most healer are also incompetent. There’s some pretty good one but the ratio is you pretty in favor of “trash can” tier healing players.

Which is something I didn’t think was possible because I’ve healing for years. So it compells to me personally. When I hear a priest saying “slow down” I’m like mate use your feathers or something then the leap of fate me back and it’s so frustrating. That ability should never exist I was always against it.

But the biggest issue after last season attempting to find out about tank life is really how people expect 100% accuracy you run a key. Any wrong pack and you can be sure you’re getting flammed and belittled.

It’s the least pleasant experience. Most key can be completed even with a few mistakes but noooo people prefer whining and leaving and whisper you insults and to uninstall.

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This just isn’t real.

Routing people largely do not care if it’s not drastically off.

And people memorizing a theoretical route in key ranges where most play also doesn’t exist.

150% count? yea, people will complain.

10% over? business as usual.

5% under? we backtrack.

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It :100: is. Stop saying false words.

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When they removed “holding threat” as a real part of the job, I would 100% agree THAT PART of the role became “too easy.”

But there’s more to tanking than that.