Every day I see groups trying to form, always LF tank, and usually it’s a warrior asking to boot. Long story short, if you DPS warriors want to get into dungeons, put on a shield and tank.
TL/DR: Tanking requires specs, gear, and experience, not everyone can tank.
The problem is… Tanking pretty much means you’re the leader of the party, and I don’t know how many new players we may have in the server, but I think that’s at least part of the problem of not having enough tanks. Now, if you’ve already spent talent points and obtained gear for a DPS warrior, its a little more complicated than just “put on a shield and tank” unless you’re an experienced player who knows workarounds to keep aggro in dungeon battles.
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Want to know why there’s no tanks? It’s simple.
Let me list the expectations of a tank.
1)Know the dungeon thoroughly, including mechanics, extra bosses, quest req’s, and of course how to navigate through it efficiently.
2)Deal with players who are conditioned by retail, so the hunter and mage are pulling mobs, the healer is DPS’ing, and everyone expects the Tank to hold aggro while they bombs away on everything in sight with zero concern for threat or aggro’ing other mobs.
3)In Classic, mana is not unlimited, so your healer just went OOM DPS’ing and is no longer healing you.
4)The Mage is AOE’ing the mob of elites so he can top the DPS meter, making CC impossible and thus you as the tank have 3-5 elites rushing the Mage, who thinks that’s your problem because you “Can’t hold aggro.”
5)In Classic, AOE’ing in a dungeon means AOE’ing neighbouring mobs, even ones behind a wall, who then come running around said wall, bringing other mobs with them, to the surprise and shock of the AOE’ing Mage.
6)Now the Tank has to deal with 10+ Mobs, and of course its his fault for “Not holding aggro” when the group wipes.
This BS goes on and on, until the whiney retail minded players complain about the “Slow run” that didn’t meet their expectations, which was for a 10 minute loot tree pinyata.
Not once did the Mage Sheep anything, nor the Rogue Sap anything, or the Hunter trap anything. They all were too busy trying to top the DPS meters, cause they’re Retail players who are now playing Vanilla.
So, when the player base improves its skills and DPS’ers realize that in Classic, they have responsibilities beyond one button mashing for DPS meters, the Tanks will start to emerge.
Oh, and notice how even in Retail anyone could click the “Leader” button and lead the group? Yeah, the Tank was never intended to be the automatic leader. Whoever knows the dungeon best should be the leader and step up.
Also, Blizz gave us markers for a reason, the same reason they gave every DPS class some sort of CC ability, which practically none of the DPS uses.
Learn to play your character, ask yourself why we have markers, and why the Tank is expected to shoulder all these responsibilities, while DPS does little more than one button mash, and if you do this, you will begin to understand why there are so few tanks.
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TL; DR indeed. Translation: I am afraid to step out of my comfort zone.
Actually, I do tank, just not for PuG’s, and of course you didn’t read it. For the same reason you don’t know why there are so few tanks. You have the attention span of a housefly with the intellect to match.
I was responding to the poster prior to you, but insult noted. I also tank on my warrior, though it’s not my only character.
While they can help out a lot. you don’t need tank gear or protection spec to tank 5 mans, especially the leveling dungeons.
Prot and tank gear(especially with high defense) is more important in raids where you want to reduce the boss’s chance to crit you to 0% while having 100% avoidance with shield block up to avoid crushing blows.
Honestly I kinda laugh when I see the same warrior “looking for tank and good to go” for hours. If you’re waiting a long time to fill a group because you can’t find a tank, might as well give it a shot while letting the group know whether you are experienced or not.
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Nailed it Kilug. A warrior can hold aggro regardless of spec or gear. There really is no reason for a DPS warrior to spam in LFG for an hour looking for a tank.
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The problem is even worse Horde side, because we’re so outnumbered by you alliance guys. I’ve ran two instances to end in 2 days because finding a tank is that hard. Also depends on the time of day you ask too.
But at the same time others are right in saying that you can’t just tell DPS warriors to tank for you. Suggesting that leads to undergeared, underspecced tanks who may not really understand how to perform the role, and it just makes everyone else angry.
Edit: noticing a lot of people talk about how warriors can hold aggro and tank regardless of spec: below a certain point, absolutely. But for high level instances, it’s questionable at best.