2s and 3s I can understand since it can drag matches out forever.
Last evening I got some passive aggressive to more directly aggressive critiques that tanks shouldn’t PvP. They went as far as losing the instance intentionally at the very end in order to spite me. 
Why are people so interested in what roles and specs other people are playing.
lets say you are losing your bg, some idiots will start flaming in chat and try to blame others for all the bad things that happened during the bg
so blaming the guy playing a tank spec is easier than looking at your own possible mistakes like fighting on the road and not doing objectives
All of this is reportable, so next time you see it, report it! No one has the right to give you crap about the way you choose to play the game. It is a violation of the TOS.
Disclaimer. I am biased. I don’t think tanks belong in almost all pvp, they actively make the game less enjoyable by being present. But I will attempt to be as objective as possible.
I don’t think this is what anyone is interested in necessarily. It has more to do with how imbalanced tanks are. If they were equally valuable, it wouldn’t be an issue. Beyond slowing the game down significantly and making it boring.
If you’re playing a flag map and one team has a prot paladin and the other has a veng dh, there is an obvious discrepancy in the value of each tank. The prot paladin team is at a HUGE disadvantage and now has to work 10x harder even for a chance to be competitive. While the dh team is going to coast through the entire game and practically win in the starting room before the game has even began.
Outside of flag maps, a lot of the bgs revolve around killing the other team in order to secure an objective. Tanks are useless in that case, they just walk around being disruptive which has some value, but you’re missing a significant amount of damage with a tank (not talking aoe pad damage). Then we get into spots where tanks are just clogging up a node or something and the game taking forever to finish. Yes, you can cc cap too, but what does a tank bring to the table that the dps spec wouldn’t?
As if this very discrepancy doesn’t exist with healers? Like if my team has two Holy Pallies and theirs has two Mistweavers?
Except that tanks can often be hard to kill, and by your definition preventing said objective from being secured.
What does this mean? I have contributed to many wins not by capping per se, but preventing a recap of a node the enemy team formerly controlled. Meanwhile my team is off securing other bases. Bonus points if I keep a healer and 2 dps occupied while I do this.
Not as much durability as a healer, but more than your standard dps, and we can play objectives without being beholden to healing the team.
I’ve some how got a blood DK on gilneas 3x at around 2.4 mmr. Each time they refused to sit, one wanted to be in teamfight. The other 2 went and afk fought the dude at LH.
Needles to say the whole team spammed them to sit, and we lost all 3 games when they didn’t.
Also having a tank on a FC map is just -1 player in an 8 player match. Generally you just want a healer to grab it, as the healer will usually have to escort anyways.
TLDR: tanks are only useful in base sitting maps and everyone I’ve come across refuses to sit.
For sure a problem elsewhere. But at least you get 2 chances with healers, you’ll likely have at least a lizard or mw. And if you don’t, I have seen disc and rsham be passable.
Yeah, that is the problem. They stall the node forever and drag the game out. There is value to that, I personally don’t think it is a fun way to play the game. It gives me flashbacks of 45 min AB rbgs where you basically had the wait the whole game out on 2 nodes. Awful.
What I said above. The node turns into a nothing node. You just sit bodies there and they do nothing but spin each other until the game is over. Yes, there is value to it. But it is a painfully boring way to play the game. It would be better if tanks had a use beyond existing.
I mean, I can do that now as a ret. I’m not sure where the other hybrids stand currently, but I can last a surprisingly long time at a node and help keep teammates alive with off heals. What happens on like a mines map and you’re on offcarts? You and one other go to take a cart the enemy controls, also 2 players. How do you win that node? You only have one person doing damage and they could just single them out. Even if you live, you can’t kill anything to take it over.
Edit: I’m probably thinking of this too much in the past sense of rbgs. Maybe it is slightly less detrimental in blitz, but I think most of the points still stand.
I play 4 tanks generally in PvP, but I will only speak to Prot War and Blood in regards to your comment, as Guardian and especially Prot Pal have become very ineffective this expansion.
Blood, plain and simple, locks down healers on this map. A cart gets to its destination? You, that enemy healer, and any dps who wants to try and save them, doesn’t leave. It’s a lame, but very effective, playstyle. They’ve become grip bots on most maps except for when they are fending off/locking down a node, and it’s why I don’t play mine any longer.
As for Prot War I typically don’t play the off carts, but I can if needed. While my overall damage isn’t insanely high, I have high uptime and can burst fairly well between Shield Charge into Demolish into Sudden Death Execute(s), with standard Executes starting at 35%. If I have them up I’ll throw a double Ravager into the mix. So far it has all worked out.
This is my biggest complaint with blood. The effective playstyle is like Blizzard approved griefing. Even if you play around it, it actively makes the game less fun for everyone but the bdk.
Honestly, I haven’t seen a single prot warrior in BGB yet. But I have been unfortunate enough to play with all of the other tanks, except for BM. Maybe prot warrior is the exception. I just can’t see a reason to have a prot warrior on your team when you could have a fury instead. Which that goes for all of the tanks, why would I ever not want the dps counterpart?
This is the over sensative younger gen that can deal with anything because they where raised with perticipation awards for everything and pats on the back for 10th place.
People will flame if the tank doesnt do its job correctly, IE spin the flag somewhere successfully etc. Because if you cant do it successfully it means the team is down 1 dps because they have a tank that doesnt do its job nor do any damage.
I played a tank back when i hit 2.2 in rbgs way back when.
Also its bg blitz people flame hard because its the nature of a 8v8 competitive mode that requires team work and you have no mic and you get put with people that shouldnt be at that rating. Also people get annoyed and just rage so it might not be related just anger.
You are flat out wrong here. People consistently sweat tanks for merely existing, even before the gates open.
Less damage, but we live longer, are more mobile (Dragon Charge) , and aoe 30% dmg debuff like every 20 sec .
62 year old Veteran here. Just trying to have fun without having to give in to griefers.
I love to Tank, I can’t help it. No one has the right to tell me otherwise. My natural inclination is to run into the fight, staring directly into the face of death. As a Lock, I’m guessing that your inclination is to stand at the edge of a fight and run/jump away when death is near. And that’s your right!
Also, Learn to spell. Please.
IDk its quite nice having a prot pally\bear druid for flag maps. Havent had that experience in chat at least when we get tanks
I can assure you that it does happen. Especially as Prot Pally.
I don’t want to change, but am looking at the reality that Prot Paladin is currently the worst Tank spec for PvP. Probably switching to Prot Warrior for now, and Praying to the Light (Blizz Devs ) that they give Prot Paladins something that will make us viable again…
I regret to inform you that Guardians are a shadow of their former selves with the hit to Frenzied Regen, Ursoc’s Fury, and the complete removal of the one main tree talent that used damage to buff the healing of Regrowth.
Prot Pallies are in the worst shape of all the tanks. Their defensives are absolute garbage outside of their Bubbles, which even those are very counterable. Their healing, even though getting buffed in the next major patch, is still beyond inadequate, and they completely flop in a stun; especially when holding a flag because their bubbles become unusable.
You may very well be a great asset to the team on a tanking spec. Living long enough to excell at spinning objectives and passing out lots of CC and having a mortal strike is great. Being relatively safe while you cap via CC is great. The 8vs8 format of Solo BG offers tanks lots of 1v1 potential so you might do less damage, but still can kill a dps a lot of the time. When Brewmasters were killing me and taking nodes that didn’t offer me terrain for my knockbacks/
Stun combo to cap I took notice. They have tons of CC and I found out their mobility enabled them to CC me and get back to the flag and cap if I was just a little too close. They still had enough CC left over for my pet.
If you tried to help your group as a Prot Paladin I would imagine you would get some angry whispers, just because it is designed and tuned very poorly for pvp right now at no fault of Protection Paladin enjoyers. When Protection Paladin was tuned and designed very well for pvp players complained about that too in BFA.
Cant make everyone happy so don’t worry too much about angry players opinions.
Tanks are the foundation of PvP and WoW is the only game where players have a weird take against Tanks. It’s why WoW PvP will never be considered a serious PvP game. PvP needs to be built around Tanks and the Class roles.
Yup. You nailed it. Also players want their tanks to perform very well, but are upset if the enemy tank, or healer is very effective. Folks ask for nerfs to this or that spec and forget about all the times those specs performed well as teammates, and how many times those specs will be teammates in the future. If there is an imbalance between specs in a roll, hopefully Blizzard will adequately make needed changes. If any particular spec is fantastic, everyone is able to play it. Rerolling isnt a bannable offence.
Tank hate is easily explainable, and is blizzards fault. They have not historically made a real effort to balance tanks into the ranked arena meta, and even in RBGs they just kind of fall where they do, and 1 tank tends to be by far the best.
The results of this are that tanks tend to have 2 modes. Complete garbage, or broken and ruining the game (especially in arena).
Tanks historically rely on pve buffs / base class design to float around the meta. When they do enter the arena meta, its almost always because they are completely broken - doing excessive damage while remaining invincible, leading to a comical meme nerf such as ‘takes 600% more damage’ to simply remove the problem from the table. I dont blame arena players for hating them and wanting them to be disabled. Blizz needs to either balance them or disable them. The half baked approach is bad for everybody.