I used to tank till Wrath when folk started a rather annoying trend for me. That trend being they forget their manners and the DPS keeps running off ahead of group grabbing everyone and running back to me…and by everyone I mean the next six or so dozen people every time. While they’re doing this the healer refused to heal me or throw me any kind of support they instead may as well of pulled up a chair and pulled out a book and forgot I ever existed. So as a tank I’m sitting there trying to not pop all my defensive cooldowns and maybe keep myself alive while keeping aggro… I die…entire party laughs at me, insults me, and blames me for the wipe because I waited for the healer who wasn’t going to help me to recover their mana bar unaware they’d been healing only the DPS the entire dungeon. Yeah…yeah nah… that trend continues to this day so rather than deal with it I’m solely DPS these days. I’ve tried healing too but every time I do the tank runs off in a random direction and dies and blames me when even the DPS are wondering where the tank ran off to…I’ve been kicked for not healing a tank who hadn’t even zoned into the dungeon yet before he died so I guess I’m unlucky as I keep finding trolls
This community is just plain abusive to each other, especially new tanks. Don’t blame them at all for not wanting to go through that.
One day I would love to pick up my prot warrior again, but it is not this day.
In the army they pair veterans with recruits in order to make the recruits stronger. It’s allowed to be toxic there because research and science has shown its very effective. When people complain about it here I always chuckle.
The tank is often expected to be also the leader of the group instead of just fulfilling a role.
We’re not in the military here. No one asked for this.
Oh you def signed up for WoW. Just let your sub lapse if you didn’t sign up. 
If people want to treat me like I’m in the military then I expect to be paid like I’m in the military.
So cheap smokes and ultra processed food. I can swing that
I don’t tank because it’s too much responsibility for a nub such as I. 
nah that’s the main reason mate
Alright I’ll say the quiet part out loud. There’s fewer real men hence fewer heroes in society. If you’re having trouble finding a tank, you’ve picked the wrong people to idolize.
Add in heroic+ no timer, scaling difficulty with rewards getting better the higher you climb that I can just tick “tank” and join some randoms, then I’d tank more often.
Not a fan of timers, but I don’t mind beating my head against difficult content.
Blood elf…
I love a challenge, such as bringing some brass back to my blood homies. It gets you noticed. Just like being a real man.
Man, screw the damage. While it’s nice to contribute to the overall damage in M+, it’s not the tank’s defining characteristic. It’s really not that big of a deal to take 4 minutes to kill a rare instead of 2, or to take 15 mins to clear a delve instead of 10. People don’t tank because:
A) It’s just generally not popular, in any game of any genre that has the role, people wanna get the kills, top the charts, not play a different game where mechanically it’s way easier but requires a different time of awareness. Besides, tanks, especially in MMOs are often unofficially charged with leading, and most people are followers.
B) The barrier to entry is pretty significant, especially here in WoW, a game where the hyperoptimization culture is part of even casual play. I bet many new players got demotivated to learn the role after being kicked for not knowing the route of a 10+ year old dungeon. Meanwhile in the end game, learning routes, setting up addons to track your party’s CDs to know when to pull big or when to pull small, having weakauras to know when tank busters are coming so you don’t get GCD locked on your defensive, it’s not an easy role to pick and go, especially when your mistakes will most likely wipe the group, unlike DPS, or even healer in some cases.
C) And I think most importantly, it’s pretty damned hard to get a role as a tank in a guild. Usually you have to settle for back up tank, or M+ off-spec tanking. Good luck being a raid tank if your guild isn’t forming a new core.
Compared to Healer and especially DPS, there is a massive barrier of entry to tanking, which most people just don’t feel like bothering with, some of it is natural, some it was created by Blizzard and/or the community, but damage in trivial content is hardly a contributing factor.
But anyways, if you wanna impress your DPS with big damage, play Prot Pal, we suck at a lot of things, but doing a big pull then going AW → Eye of Tyr → Empyrean Hammer → Divine Toll will skyrocket your damage.
lol that’s not it
People cry about there being no tanks or healers, then when someone tries to learn to play tank or healer people flame them the second they make their first mistake. Then they go back to crying because there are no tanks or healers. They could learn to play a tank or healer but they won’t because they know how people treat them.
No that is the reason. And the reason for many people.
But nice to the tanks and you’ll get more of em.