I hate tanking for pugs. I really do and I love tanking, I’ve mained BDK for years but I really only like doing it for guildies and friends.
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TLDR Make a separate mode for old heads, with it’s own progression methods, that prefer traditional group roles.
The game doesn’t always evolve in healthy directions. Generalizations ahead. Tanks becoming bulky DPS requires the game to become balanced around that. The enjoyment of playing a DPS, healer, or tank was being successful at that role. Playing different classes is fun because of that class identity. Raids are for those with more time to commit, dungeons are for people who prefer smaller groups, and now delves are for solo adventures. M+ is for those that prefer more of an ARPG than what WoW originally played like.
Self-sustain was an identifying trait of specific classes, and those specific classes were balanced for the content. All tanks being self sustaining all the time leads to them being god like which leads to healers becoming hybrids instead of healers with the group expecting them to babysit the group mistakes, their own mistakes, and DPSing as much as possible.
To me, the group should be leaning on the healer for portions of survival. Everyone should be dodging mechanics with defensive cooldowns being used appropriately. Tanks should be focused on keeping everything on them. DPS should be doing damage.
Blizzard nerfed Tanks
Being a Tank offers little reward and a lot of work
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Hot dayum.
Tanking basically boils down to “play a much easier DPS. Have slightly more responsibility by knowing route”.
And honestly, knowing the route is completely optional. My routes are entirely vibe-based and I rarely get complaints.
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Really? I play blood DK and Brewmaster in both solo play and with my wife or some friends. I’m not nuking things in two swings, but I can sure kill a huge group rather quickly.
There’s a difference between being sensitive and not tolerating behavior/setting personal boundaries.
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Honestly tanking is boring. Healing is a lot more fun because I get to keep the team topped off and do as much DPS as I can in between. Keeps the fingers and brains busy LOL
DPS is even more interesting than tanking.
Its a rough combination of being the most mindlessly easy role, extremely tedious, and yet its a hard check on wipes.
People who really want to push themselves usually go dps because of how low the skill ceiling on tanking is.
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We did a couple runs early yesterday that were just absolutely a blast. Haven’t had that much fun since we ran Black Rock depths a few years ago and everyone was just so relaxed and we literally took a break at halftime and did a total clear. All five players stuck around no one complained it was generally just a good MMO time… The kind of MMO time you here’s so much about in here but relatively few people actually are interested in even though they keep screaming that this is an MMO LOL
We did full clear and everyone enjoyed it so much we stuck around and ran a second dungeon together.
No one’s crying at the tank or the healer DPS is not causing chaos everybody work together and we got the runs done relatively quickly with no deaths.
When one player would get into trouble everyone would chip in and help get him out of it.
You know it’s all that MMO gameplay that we hear so much about on this forum and yet I bet not even 2% of the people here actually even would engage in that way without screaming and tossing a fit that it wasn’t going fast enough LOL
Because of the implication.
I play tanks, just not in groups.
I’m sorry but someone needed to say it LOL
I’m glad it was you and not me 
I’m a casual and back in WotLK I LOVED tanking. I’d hang out in chat waiting to see, “Looking for a tank,” and join them. Then as LFG, booting, and watching YouTube videos got more popular, people’s patience went down and the toxicity went up. It became a chore to tank or worse. If you didn’t know the fights the vitriol was unreal. It became no fun to tank and then no fun to group in general. Bottom line: People don’t tank because they don’t want to deal with the toxicity in something was supposed to be fun. It’s also why solo play is on the rise.
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There’s a fine line, but some people’s personal boundaries are wet toilet paper thin.
Yep. I haven’t watched a single video or read a single guide for any dungeon. The vast majority of dungeons you can easily pick up a few percent at the end, and if you end up low on percent you just add another pack next time. If you’re on too much you can drop one. Not a big deal.
As a tank you also, in addition to being essentially an easy DPS, get to ignore a bunch of mechanics that everyone else has to do. You also can mess up mechanics that would kill others. Conversely there is very little you have to do that the rest of the group doesn’t. On my warrior I also have an ungodly amount of interrupt potential, which ties into my next point, being that your agency is far and away the greatest in the group even while it’s the hardest for you to fail. The role is just incredibly privileged in almost every single way, inside and outside of dungeons.
When people talk about the role being stressful I can only assume it’s stress they’re putting on themselves one way or another. In a GB8 earlier one of the DDs put a question mark in chat when I intentionally reset Forongus so I could clear another couple packs, but so what? He can’t do anything about it; I didn’t even acknowledge it and we proceeded to take the boss down very smoothly. If someone pulls another pack I just pick it up, and usually they’ve done so because they have a plan of some kind to deal with it. Not always, but usually, which reflects the relatively rare times that I pull on my own DDs. If a DPS knows they have the CDs to bring the heat and disrupt the danger then by all means. If we die, well that’s not my fault. No different than them messing up any other mechanic.
From my perspective healing is the hardest role and sets the ceiling at a 10, then DD is the next at like a 8. Then tanking is all the way down at a 3. That meme where one guy is having fun to Natasha Bedingfield and the other webcam video is of a guy sweating and pressing keys frantically to silence: I feel like the first one when I’m on my tank like every single time, whether we time the dungeon or not. Absolute peak class fantasy being an earthen prot warrior with the thane hero tree. I feel like Thor and when I press Shield Wall the new sound effect makes me feel like Iron Man suiting up. I miss the old Shield Slam sound tho.
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They just made tanking harder with some pretty awful changes in tww
tanks are always the first to get blame in keys when things go wrong (healers as well, to be fair. but i feel like its tanks more often)
The most responsibility for a role, when you die odds are everyone else will too. etc
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It is more difficult then DPS because you have to know count. The most difficult role is healer, bar none.
Yes and no because healers take a lot of blame as well. Especially if someone dies and it’s clearly not your fault.
for some, if a tank pulls a lot thinking knowing they can handle it all, but don’t know how much you can handle and they die. Then they blame you.
For some, If the dps starts standing in crap and dies or just not following mechanics in general and dies, then they immediate shift the blame on you.
and that can also cause healers to give up the role. because they’re tired of taking blame for other peoples mistakes.
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I do 8s and 9s and brother let me tell ya, 20% of DPS know a kill prio or the correct interrupts.
You may say its mandatory but the majority dont know that. Where as a tank route is expected or the group fails with 100% odds, vs. the tank and healer just carrying idiots with some odds of failure
The community is toxic towards Tanks. Then if Tanks want to also do PvP there is toxicity there too and they are told to reroll and don’t belong. So we just end up with less Tanks.
Think the role could use some love and support in ALL content. Then obviously get some of the bad actors out of the community.
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