Lack of tanks

[Xanthippe]

Why does there seem to be a lack of tanks in Outlands?

Seems to be easier to find healers than tanks.  Why?

[Arrrgh]

It's far more fun to zerg around with a big two hander mortal striking in PvP.

[Salamok]

because tanking in TBC sucks.  Oh wait make that tanking as a warrior in TBC sucks.

[AcidCat]

Eh I hate tanking in general. Too much responsibility.

[Salamok]

Eh I hate tanking in general. Too much responsibility.

I loved it until TBC. 

[Lt.Dan]

I found the same problem but figured it was just because I'm playing Australian evenings.  Heck sometimes we couldn't get a group going because we couldn't get DPS. :P

[jpark]

As a tank that just left WoW... (Granite on the Eldre Thalas server)

This game is about the endgame.  But it is very difficult for a warrior to get a raid spot on a 25 man raid or - worse yet - the 10 man Kara.  Folks will not play their tanks if they feel they do not have a chance at raiding.  Also, tanks are very gear dependent - so once you reach 70 - that is just the beginning of your journey to putting together a gear set for raiding - can be daunting (if a gear check is going to be performed on any player - it is the tank - so tanks learn to be very proactive on this point once exposed to raiding - if they get that far).

Tanks have no problems finding 5 mans - like healers.  Unlike healers, tanks do not stack well - and you need very tanks for the raid content (unlike e.g. MC and BWL of old could at certain locations use up to 5 tanks).

You might think with smaller raids - we would simply have more of them.  But the rate limiting factor here are good raid leaders - and folks willing to put the admin time in to making sure these things run.  People with that time and patience are few in number - so with the smaller raid sizes, the scarcity of such admin/raid leaders has not lead to an increase in the number of raids despite the raid sizes being smaller.   Fewer raids - fewer tanking opportunities.

I see guys rolling tanks to address the problem you note.  But they don't understand the tanking world that waits for them at 70.

[Modern Angel]

And now you see why the Death Knight is going to have tanking abilities. It's always a bitch finding tanks in any MMO; I think it just gets worse as you level and hit endgame since tanking burns people out more than anything else.

[jpark]

And now you see why the Death Knight is going to have tanking abilities. It's always a bitch finding tanks in any MMO; I think it just gets worse as you level and hit endgame since tanking burns people out more than anything else.

The solution here  - along the lines you note - is the EQ one - giving the hybrid classes greater tanking abilities to make up the short fall.  In the end, dedicated tanks will be overkill for most things - and dedicated tanks are already overkill for 5 mans.  For this reason - if I return to WoW at some point - I will drop my warrior and play a hybrid tank class (paladin, druid etc.).

[Paelos]

Blizzard did something really stupid with tanking and threat. They gave the dps HUGE bumps in damage from 60-70. They didn't give warriors huge bumps in threat generation to counter that aspect at all. Now, you have to work overtime on everything (including trash) just to stay ahead of your dps. Constantly. It never stops. You can't just relax as a tank and play anymore. In the old days, Threatmeters didn't become necessary until BWL Vael transitions because you could toss 3 sunders up on a mob and everyone else could go to town and never catch up. Now, if you don't have one, you're fucked. I watch that threatmeter more than I watch the mobs just because you're constantly afraid of some crit-happy person catching you in the long haul.

[Oban]

Blizzard did something really stupid with tanking and threat. They gave the dps HUGE bumps in damage from 60-70. They didn't give warriors huge bumps in threat generation to counter that aspect at all. Now, you have to work overtime on everything (including trash) just to stay ahead of your dps. Constantly. It never stops. You can't just relax as a tank and play anymore. In the old days, Threatmeters didn't become necessary until BWL Vael transitions because you could toss 3 sunders up on a mob and everyone else could go to town and never catch up. Now, if you don't have one, you're fucked. I watch that threatmeter more than I watch the mobs just because you're constantly afraid of some crit-happy person catching you in the long haul.

As a Druid tank, I agree with the statement above, but just wanted to say that I hate dps shamans.

[Phunked]

That's bullshit. No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking. If that's what makes them leave then odds are they were a shitty tank in the first place.

To be honest, you saw that a lot preTBC. Tanking was really easy, and you could use people who were damned terrible at it with only a marginal loss of progression pre Naxx.

Really though, tanking as any of the classes (I use a warrior mostly, but have both a druid and pally as well) is straightforward. You have x threat generation per second. If DPS does more than a certain amount of DPS they pull agro. If not, they don't. You know how much you can pump out (and this doesn't really scale at all for warriors and pallies and only somewhat for druids) and no amount of skill can increase it beyond this threshold.

It isn't really rocket science. However the major burn out for me (as an Illidan guild main tank) has been the fact that aside from PvE tanking (something I had the capacity for when I was 12), and arena PvP (something I would have found boring, even when I was 12) the game has NOTHING. Farming raid content for 2 nights and then leveling an alt to do the same? No thanks. For most people, getting 25 people who don't suck is why their raiding progression is slow. In order to compensate for this, Blizzard made it so that if you DO have 25 people that don't suck, the game is easy as hell. And there really isn't very much of it. Not to mention that having 3 arena 5v5 teams with a 2000+ rating in one guild means that when we do go PvP we're only pretty much fighting each other.


LOTS OF VARIETY THERE.

[Merusk]

Most of the warriors I know simply aren't interested in Tanking. They never were pre-BC either, but 40 main raids requiring 4-5 tanks meant they tanked or they didn't get to raid most of the time.  As soon as they got to respec for BC they did and didn't want to go back.  We've got 4 tanks out of a former 9 warrior mains.  Three others rerolled as Shaman, two of whom want to be DPS rather than healers.

Tanking is like Healing.  It's a pretty fucking thankless job unless someone sits back and takes notice, or you're flashy (like Paladins.)  My pally gets "ooh cool" and "wow nice job" for 1/3 of the work I ever did TRYING (and failing) as a warrior tank pre-bc. All I can figure is because they see me tossing-down concecrates and picking up 4-7 mobs with ease instead of actually watching the mob switching, taunting, sundering, slamming and other shit a warrior has to do.

High responsibility, difficult play, little thanks?  Seems like the same reason for the lack of priests pre-bc. However, Pallies and Druids are able to pick-up the slack easily enough for 5-mans.. provided folks actually give them a chance. 

[jpark]

Pallies and Druids are able to pick-up the slack easily enough for 5-mans.. provided folks actually give them a chance. 

Druid tanks I found to be extremely effective - almost too much so.  Anyway, I was MT for Kara - but a druid off tank was my number one choice for partner (it is pretty hard for a protection tank to maintain 2nd threat on Moroes if he is not MT).  Druids make a better off tank than warriors I find - and in most cases the game has to offer - are really better tanks overall - until you get to the high end - which I did not reach in this expansion.

Tanking in general requires the tank - even pre-BC - to be on top of the latest strategies used by their guild for the boss in question.  Pre- BC I was a casual tank for MC/ BWL - and because I did not play often enough - I was always playing catch up with any subtle changes to the strategy.  As a healer, while a demanding role in its own right - is not quite as sensitive to small strategy changes so you can get by as a "casual" - but the warrior role is much less forgiving in that regard.

[Fordel]

You don't see many tanks because a tank specced class that isn't tanking is one of the saddest things around. It's the one big reason why feral druids are so popular these days.


Being a prot specced warrior or pally but not being the actual tank? Your pretty much dead weight. Your also pretty damn boring to play at that point.

[Paelos]

That's bullshit. No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking.

You're an idiot, not even counting the other uber-hardcore bullshit you posted. That's exactly what normal people did. People that didn't have fun anymore with the job because it's a constant demand said fuck it, and they respecced or made an alt. Here's a hint, normal gamers aren't blowing through the content. You may have as an "Illidan Tank" but realize where the numbers on that are. Wowjutsu is a good place to look.

4% of guilds who raid anything have killed a boss in Black Temple.
1% of guilds who raid anything have killed Illidan.

In short, I could care less about your opinion on the ease of things in the game.

[caladein]

Tanking in general requires the tank - even pre-BC - to be on top of the latest strategies used by their guild for the boss in question.  Pre- BC I was a casual tank for MC/ BWL - and because I did not play often enough - I was always playing catch up with any subtle changes to the strategy.  As a healer, while a demanding role in its own right - is not quite as sensitive to small strategy changes so you can get by as a "casual" - but the warrior role is much less forgiving in that regard.

I think that difference has more to do with a) the amount of tanks vs. healers in a given raid, and b) the fact that tanking is proactive (You must do X or wipe.) while healing is reactive (You must react to X in Y time or wipe.).

At the end of the day though, tanking is the most proactive of the trinity and thus the easiest in my eyes. A tank that does his job in regards to movement, threat generation, and other miscellaneous reaction issues (stance dancing) is doing all he can. Resto Druids a lot of the time talk about getting lost in the flow of rolling Lifebloom stacks and that was honestly the same experience I had as a Warrior. Outside of dealing with boss abilities (and raid leader crap in my case) I just got into the drone of watching T. Clap and Shout timers and going through my cooldowns every 5-6s.

As a DPSer, on top of boss abilities, you have to watch threat and possibly swap between ability cycles but you are still predominately proactive. Healers are all some combination of whack-a-mole, spamming, and pre-casting so that's about as reactive as you'll get these days. (Pre-BC and infinite mana for the most part, there was a lot more weight on reactive behavior versus sustainable HPS.)

[Ironwood]

That's bullshit. No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking.

You're an idiot, not even counting the other uber-hardcore bullshit you posted. That's exactly what normal people did. People that didn't have fun anymore with the job because it's a constant demand said fuck it, and they respecced or made an alt. Here's a hint, normal gamers aren't blowing through the content. You may have as an "Illidan Tank" but realize where the numbers on that are. Wowjutsu is a good place to look.

4% of guilds who raid anything have killed a boss in Black Temple.
1% of guilds who raid anything have killed Illidan.

In short, I could care less about your opinion on the ease of things in the game.

I don't normally side with the Monkey, but he's right on the money here and in his original post.  I'm a tank who enjoys tanking and always has.  Prot for Life and whatnot.  I'll tank anything.

But threat doesn't scale and hasn't done for a godly long while.  Warrior tanks get fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked and it's been a mountain of hard fucking for a while.  Pallies and druids are simply far better these days at generating and holding aggro simply due to the range of multi-threat options that they have.  Warriors, in comparison, are uber fucked, especially when you have to take stances into account.  I've always been a little bemused that a green geared pally can do better than me (when I'm not trying) when I'm geared like THIS. (Hmmm, Armory Europe is fucked at the mo.  I'm the only Silnakh in Europe.  Find me your own damn selves.)

I've put in a LOT of effort in getting the right gear and I actually physically dare anyone to say that I simply don't have the skills :  I really think Blizzard needs to take a look at Threat vs Damage again and have a wee think about how to make the game a little less work for the people playing it.  You know, those people who are not in the top 1% of total retardery.


...

No offence.

[Ironwood]

No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking. If that's what makes them leave then odds are they were a shitty tank in the first place.

Just for info, this is where you lost your audience.  Right here.  In your first opening Salvo.  Because you're so wrong it hurts me inside.

[Tannhauser]

I admire anyone who plays a tank in WoW.  I quit grouping with my Priest because healing in instances was much more work than play. 
Now my Minstrel in LOTR is a lot of fun in group play and I can heal without suffering from stress.

So Blizzard is happy only 1% of their guild playerbase has seen Illidan?  I dunno, WoW's instances just don't do it for me.  I guess I am teh weaksauce but they always seem to be too much trouble for the rewards you get.

[Merusk]

Being a prot specced warrior or pally but not being the actual tank? Your pretty much dead weight. Your also pretty damn boring to play at that point.

In a group, I'll agree with you about the prot pally being dead weight if they're not tanking. Solo?  The only folks who think that are the ones who haven't tried it.   The problem 90% of people have is they try to take on mobs one or two at a time, just like every other class.  As a prot pally, if you're not taking on 3-4 even-level mobs at a time you're being so mana-inefficient that, yes, it'll take you forever to do anything.  It's also a LOT less boring that way.

[Ironwood]

Reading.  It's a place in England.*

Playing a Solo Prot Warrior IS boring.  I've done it for years and I'm afraid it's true.  That's why God invented the WoW-Playing-Wife.



*This bit is a note for myself, rather than anyone else.  I wonder if that's what confused Merusk..

[Merusk]

Who said anything about warriors? Not me, I haven't played one in 10 months.

[Ironwood]

Um, Fordel did.  The guy you quoted.  You weighed in on the Pally, disagreeing, I weighed in on the Warrior, agreeing.

See how that works ?

[JWIV]

Reading.  It's a place in England.

Playing a Solo Prot Warrior IS boring.  I've done it for years and I'm afraid it's true.  That's why God invented the WoW-Playing-Wife.

There's a danger here which is when you quit WoW out of disgust for the clusterfuck that is the prot warrior spec and your wife the warlock was still merrily running around going pew pew pew and doesn't quite understand why you hate the game so very much.

[Ironwood]

Indeed.  Surely, however, that merely proves you made the wrong choice in a wife and you should dump the cheating bitch and start fucking your secretary ?

I mean, a wife that won't reroll for you isn't a keeper.

[Merusk]

Um, Fordel did.  The guy you quoted.  You weighed in on the Pally, disagreeing, I weighed in on the Warrior, agreeing.

See how that works ?

It's much more understandable now that you've edited to clarify what you were disagreeing with.    The way you originally responded it seemed like you thought I was talking about warriors in my post.

Like I said, I haven't done the warrior thing in 10 months, so I couldn't speak to them.  Just plain logic that it'd suck, because there's no way you can take on multiple mobs - what you're designed to do - and live, what with only potions to rely on.

Speaking of warlock wives... why to so many women play warlocks, anyway?  I think I know more (true) female warlocks than any other class, including hunters.

[Ironwood]

Just to be Super-Dooper Clear :  My Wife is a Holy Priest.  We 'solo' together because between us we make 1 normal person.

Sigh.

[JWIV]

Um, Fordel did.  The guy you quoted.  You weighed in on the Pally, disagreeing, I weighed in on the Warrior, agreeing.

See how that works ?

It's much more understandable now that you've edited to clarify what you were disagreeing with.    The way you originally responded it seemed like you thought I was talking about warriors in my post.

Like I said, I haven't done the warrior thing in 10 months, so I couldn't speak to them.  Just plain logic that it'd suck, because there's no way you can take on multiple mobs - what you're designed to do - and live, what with only potions to rely on.

Speaking of warlock wives... why to so many women play warlocks, anyway?  I think I know more (true) female warlocks than any other class, including hunters.

It's all about the Succubus. 

[ShenMolo]

Why does there seem to be a lack of tanks in Outlands?

Seems to be easier to find healers than tanks.  Why?

There are no shortage of warriors from 1-69, but there is a general shortage of tanks.

There aren't enough new tanks replacing quitting tanks. I use the term tank instead of warrior because there there are plenty of warriors.

Tanks and healers are the two classes whose rolls change dramatically once they reach 60+. From 1-60 or even 1-70 a warrior is usually specced for dps. When a player decides to respec for tanking, they realize soloing isn't as easy or maybe as fun as it used to be.

If they have never tanked before, and are running pugs, they can easily get discouraged at the difficulty of learning how to tank, not to mention being blamed for everything that goes wrong (for which they often are at fault, being unskilled and undergeared).

Being a decent tank requires researching the best gear & spec, reading forums/guides for ideas and help. Being a decent dps class in most cases requires hitting the same few buttons that you have been hitting for the previous 70 levels. You literally need to re-learn the game to tank well. The lack of grouping opportunities from 1-60 for instance runs exacerbates the problem.

Consequently a large portion of new warriors who level up to 70 end up PvPing, or just re-rolling/quitting, rather than speccing Prot and tanking.

[Salamok]

That's bullshit. No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking. If that's what makes them leave then odds are they were a shitty tank in the first place.

I stopped reading after this retarded statement.  In fact tons of warriors I know rerolled shortly after hitting 70, many of them successful pre TBC raid tanks. 

I levelled to 70 ran around and did all the quests for decent tanking gear, got my 490def, 12k health and shotload of AC.  Because most of it wasn't purple it pretty much raped all my other stats (mainly AP) leaving my threat gen and rage gen  in the shitter.  Meanwhile all the DPS classes upped their DPS by huge amounts and adopted your additude.  I can deal with tanking being "hard" it was the hard+totally unrewarding part that was the problem.  I was able to be a great preTBC 5man tank with the best nonpurple gear I could find, post TBC I struggled to be a mediocre 5man tank with a few purples + the best nonpurple gear I could find. 

Raid tanks didn't get the shaft quite as bad as our single target threat was still decent but 5man tanks got the shaft in a big way.

[Phunked]

I still stand by my previous comment.

If you truly believe that tanking is mechanically more difficult than it was pre TBC, you must have missed the fact that absolutely ZERO core tanking abilities have been added to the game for warriors (1 if you count devestate) ZERO for palladins (again, one if you allow for avenger's shield) and... ONE for druids (mangle).

In terms of mechanics, you are doing exactly the same thing you were doing pre TBC. Use bloodrage, shield slam, revenge, sunder,sunder, repeat (not an ideal rotation, but simple for the sake of example). The fact of the matter is that at the end game pre TBC (and even earlier for some guilds) if you were not using every GCD for agro, your dps would be capped by threat, you wouldn't meet the enrage timer and you'd wipe. You could repeat this ad nauseum with  50% stronger DPS, 50% more healing and 2000% more health on the tank but because you were capped by threat, the increase in DPS would just mean that they'd cap out earlier.

Exactly the same thing is happening in TBC. You have a fixed amount of threat which you can produce per second. DPS can not exceed this by more than a specific margin. If they do, they die.

Again, I repeat this, in terms of the mechanics of the game, NOTHING has changed.

In response to Paelos, who seems to think that Blizzard is out to get him by giving DPS the capacity to pull agro easier and that anyone who disagrees is an idiot, I point out that DPS could ALWAYS pull agro from any tank, myself and other included.  I don't understand where you're coming from with the notion that tanking was somehow more fun pre TBC. Seriously, it is exactly the same. You sit in front of a boss, keep shield block up every 5 seconds, and use shield slam, revenge, devastate and heroic strike whenever they're up. For 15 minutes. Pre TBC, this would be all you would do for a lage number of fights, while DPS and healers and whatever would go play with some gimmick. In the post TBC world, you get to play with that gimmick also. If anything, this is more fun and engaging.

The rate at which I or others clear content is irrelevant. The reason you're complaining about it is that you can not get your DPS to hold back on threat, lose agro and then either subconsciously blame yourself for the wipe, receive said blame from other group members or think that Blizzard is out to screw you. Fact of the matter is, tank threat scales slower than DPS because Blizzard balances around ideal raid situations where everyone has all possible -threat buffs. If they didn't, it would trivialize raid encounters. The problem isn't that your threat is too low, but rather that the DPS in your groups do not usually have Salvation, grace of the Air, a PvE -threat talent, and you do not have all the other raid buffs like kings, windfury, etc that increase your threat generation. Typical PuG or entry level raiding DPS doesn't care about these things and goes all out whenever. Paladins or druids have the exact same issues, except for the fact that their scaling is different. This is how the warrior class works.

Stupid people who can't not blow shit up for 5 seconds make the game not fun for others in crucial group roles.

With an amazing conclusion like that, how could you NOT hate me? At some point you might want to refute more of my argument than stating the mere fact that I represent 1% of the player base. You don't refute other arguments by pointing out that the people who make them belong to a marginal fraction of the population.

The notion that the bleeding edge guilds somehow play a different game is false. We play the same game. Same mechanics. Same everything. We just play it more.

If you do not believe that tanking should be an interactive and engaging role, then what exactly do you want it to be? Sunder twice and go grab a cup of coffee?

To apply the same analogy when you play TF2, do you want to be able to shoot your gun twice and watch as everyone around you magically falls dead?

At Ironwood: there is nothing wrong with either your skills or the game mechanics. Paladins and druids are better at AoE tanking. This is great. Warriors have better threat and mitigation issues for single targets as well as some tips and tricks for hard situations. I haven't really found a single point in the game where (playing my warrior) I said that I can not tank this. I can not tank Shattered halls over 3 AoEing mages like I can on my paladin. I accept this. I realize that different classes exist for a reason.

I do not believe that the tanks you want in your instances are quitting because tanking is too difficult. Just like healers aren't quitting because mob burst damage has scaled to the point where heroic trash will one shot a non-plate class. Tanks and healers are no longer doing PUGs because these are unnecessarily stressful and inefficient. They are either just doing guild runs, raiding, or not playing the game because those jobs required near perfect attendance and dedication, which is substantially more pressure than DPS roles.

Seriously, you've stopped tanking because it is too difficult? What about it is more difficult than previously? Please do elaborate. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing.

I still hold by the statement that while tanking is perhaps more stressful than before, it is not mechanically more difficult.

In response to Salamok.

I've already mentioned that threat scales less than damage because damage agro can be reduced by some large multiplier because of Blessing of Salvation AND tranquil air totem. This is the major difference from pre TBC. Pre TBC, tank threat was balanced around DPS only having (ideally) one  of BoS or TA totem. Now, it has to be balanced around DPS having (ideally again) both. This is huge, since it allows about 35% more damage done for the same threat. What does this mean? It means that the DPS in your 5 mans needs to hold back more. This is what makes it "hard". I'm going to say this again: you're not frustrated because your character's abilities are poorly balanced, but because you're playing with idiots. Play with smart people and you have a lot more fun.

The fact that there are more idiots in PUGs now is a different issue.

EDIT: When I make a generalized statement about tanks or healers doing something or other, I mean that the majority of the people that play the class do/do not act based on those motives. I'm sure that of the 9 million people, at some point some healer's mage got one shot by some trash mob in heroic Blood Furnace or where ever.Perhaps that healer decided at that point that "this game is dumb, fuck it". I don't think that this is responsible for the majority of healers who leave. Now if you added the fact that after dying that same mage was a dickface and started whining about not being healed fast enough or some such, and this kept going on for five months during which time the healer was slowly worn down by the pressures of being held accountable all the time for everyone, then yes, I do admit that this is a contributing cause of burn out. It is typically easily avoided by grouping with mages that are less retarded.

[Phunked]

That's bullshit. No one is going to quit because they have to work hard at tanking. If that's what makes them leave then odds are they were a shitty tank in the first place.

I stopped reading after this retarded statement. 

Also, that doesn't provide much validity to any counter argument you may want to make. Admitting you have no idea what I said after the first two sentences does not give strength to any additional commentary you provide.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it (and it would appear that many do not) at least pretend that you read the thing 

[Ironwood]

Are you even considering Healing Aggro ?  Because it seems to me you're not.

[Salamok]

Being a decent tank requires researching the best gear & spec, reading forums/guides for ideas and help. Being a decent dps class in most cases requires hitting the same few buttons that you have been hitting for the previous 70 levels. You literally need to re-learn the game to tank well. The lack of grouping opportunities from 1-60 for instance runs exacerbates the problem.

The problem is that is the way I have always played my warrior and without extreme group cooperation he can't tank worth shit.  In a 5man the Paly and the Druid don't take near as much group hand holding so in short warriors are seen as teh suck.  This simply makes the game no fun for a warrior who wants to tank.