Why did Blizzard never pursue a deeper raid role of tanks than waiting your turn to taunt the boss? It seems like in earlier expansions they tried a few fights where both tanks had active, but separate roles. In current times, it seems like there really only needs to be 1 tank except that every boss has a simple ability that necessitates another tank to stand in for a period of time.
Is it just impossible to make raid tank roles more engaging than doing the same taunt swap every encounter? Did the playerbase want this?
There is more to tanking, but the only reason we have 2 instead of 1 in raids 90% of the time is a generic taunt swap. Thats what OP is calling attention to.
Mythic raids tend to have tanks do a little more than stand still and taunt swap.
But only slightly, mostly just positioning in the right spot for other mechanics or running away from the group. Then again, the entire game is standing in the right spots and pushing buttons.
Is this bait, or has the OP not done a raid in 15 years? Tanks are constantly having to move bosses around, pick up adds, shield wall at correct times, and participate in raid mechanics themselves.
It’s one of the easier raid roles, but they do quite a bit more than just taunt swaps.
Interesting take, curious as to what makes you feel that way? I have seen both Max and Naowh say raid tanking is boring… now we don’t always have to take streamers opinions but if two people pushing high content think it is boring what makes it exciting to you?
max is a bad example and naowh is just insane im pretty sure anything short of mdi is boring for him. mythic tanking has alot of positioning and fight mechanics that are actually dangerous.
I thought this was mostly about off tanking, while there are some council fights or add fights generally the off tank doesn’t have much to do while they are not actively tanking.
I may be wrong as I haven’t raided lately so I only watch, so I am sure there are 1-2 fights per raid that require more.
Yeah I think 1-2 fights per raid have a little gimmick to them but mostly only 1 tank at a time is working. If you look at something like Gruul that required a warlock tank, or mage tank, or rogue tank I think that was too much so that is probably why Blizz moved away
Projectile meat shielding is something blizzard never/rarely does. Like its either stack and absorb damage or avoid it, never: the person standing closest has to physically protect the people behind them.
This is where I think the whole pvp:pve balance ruins the potential for pve development. Like if mages had half as much hp as warriors you’d see more stuff revolving around defensive play, not saying defensives don’t matter, but there’s only so much you can do regarding active mitigation vs. raw passive ehp skew.
Tanking is just a support role, its sort of just the way the game has progressed where defensively tanks are the only thing meant to absorb a blow, so they’re stuck focusing on supporting the group in the only way the group(healers) can’t support itself.
Everyone has to move in mythic raids. This isn’t specific to tanking. You (and the raid) are going to move to where it’s best to survive and fight the boss.
Adds - typically a very small part of fights. For me, there aren’t enough encounters that have scenarios that feel like add wrangling.
Shield wall - typically used around the ability forcing the taunt swap. It’s scripted. There’s no decision in here. Sure you can say the whole raid is scripted, but there is little as guaranteed as a taunt-tankbuster/shield wall situation and what the appropriate reaction is. It’s been the same for the majority of the past 20 years.
Yep and I think it is fine, imagine 2 tanks moving mobs and themselves constantly during a fight that would be a lot on the dps and healers as well. Certainly ok for a fight here and there but it shouldn’t be standard if you ask me.
I think different classes tanking or having tank segments of fights would be a good addition to raids. I don’t know if I would prefer if every encounter, or even every tier, had it. But it would be nice to have some variety.
Anything that gets outside of the stale paradigm of 2 people doing the same job (and each of them effectively useless half the time) is worth exploring.
You might want to look into Mythic then. Fights like Mythic Silken Court and Queen have both tanks being rather active and Mythic Broodtwister isn’t uncommon to be bringing in a third tank just for wrangling the big spiders. On Queen, for example, tanks definitely aren’t doing the same job (that is, until they are on separate platforms doing the same thing at the same time for different groups).