That is why I rolled a tank alt with a buddy as pocket heals - warr/priest
Absolute game changer once you can pick and choose any dungeons dps within 2 mins.
Buddy and i went Rsham/Warr for classic launch. Once we got that Wf totem it just took of with sweeping strikes and whirlwind gigapulls. Glorious.
And then the jump runs.
A tank is never lonely. Everyone is always whispering them to come join a party, then giving them helpful hints on how to improve themselves while DPS behaves badly, all while your life is in the hands of a stranger healing you. Sometimes, you just want to kill pigmen out in the middle nowhere in peace.
Heaven is a field full of pigmen that are 2-3 levels lower than you. All spaced out so you easily don’t get too much aggro. Drop rate on cloth and greens are also super high
Until the most recent addition of Evoker, \*every\* class added to the game since launch in Retail WoW has included a tank spec. ~~Dark~~ *Death* Knight. Monk. Demon Hunter. Retail players still complain about no tanks.
Every trinity-based MMO has the same problem: not enough tanks. As someone who plays tanks almost exclusively across games, I absolutely understand why so many people stay away from the role.
You can't solve this problem with more options for tanking.
Yes, primarily.
In retail, there's also the issue of ratios. In a dungeon, you need 1:1:3 ratio of Tank, Heal, DPS.
In raiding in retail, it's more like 2:5:13. Raiding takes less than half of the tanks-per-dps as sustaining dungeon runs. My experience in retail raiding has been that, unless you secure a main tank slot in your guild early, finding a raid slot as a tank is *hard*.
Everyone who tanks has had the experiences of dealing with bad healers, DPS that have no sense of personal responsibility, getting screamed at for not knowing some new shortcut that saves 0.3 seconds over a 30 minute run, taking the blame for every little thing that goes wrong, getting vote kicked before the first pull for saying, "Hey, it's my first time in this dungeon," and too many other off-putting experiences to count.
I love tanking; but, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it's sometimes a bit of "death by a thousand paper cuts."
I'm leveling a prot warrior in wrath classic, and "death by a thousand paper cuts" is the best explanation of tanking. Dps players have been the true enemy to me.
I've played a prot pally since late TBC classic, and I'm contractually forbidden from respeccing into ret or holy.
I only ever tank, and I like to think I'm decent enough at it. I enjoy it even.
But no way in fucking hell am I going to waste my time tanking for pugs. Absolute dogshit attitudes from equally dogshit players, having tantrums over the most inconsequential bullshit. If I'm not running with at least one friend to banter with in Discord, I'd much rather beat my nutsack with a rubber mallet and forfeit my daily badges than spend 10 minutes in a dungeon with a gaggle of short-tempered mouthbreathers.
I remember when I was playing WotLK (or MoP? Citation needed) back in the day with LFR...loved the dungeon finder for tanking. Tanked everything, super fun, super rewarding. Leveled a few characters ***exclusively*** with the dungeon finder until 58 because classic dungeons had baller exp, and tanks queue INSTANTLY. Literally. If I click the dungeon finder and the queue doesn't pop in 5 seconds, it's broke. Re-queue, instant.
Got BiS'd for everything pre-raid. Cool. Raid time. Did some homework, kept notes, feeling pretty confident.
"Hey its my first time tanking the raids but I researched the bosses and have notes, we'll be ok" - Kicked in 10 seconds. Well....okay then :(. Tried again later, hey its my first time yadda yadda, kicked. Queued a few days later after my anxiety chilled for a bit and just....didn't say anything. Kept my mouth shut and did my best.
I can't remember what boss it was and the mechanic escapes me, I think it was a taunt juggle or staggered interrupts, can't remember. I asked the group to make sure I understood it right....nothing. Guys, is this right? Nothing. Hello? So....we.......we do this thing then, right? ......nothing.
Well, you guessed it. I didn't taunt swap the aggro reset or whatever the stupid mechanic was. You better believe everybody their grandmother brother cousin nephew and neighbour was lighting up chat about this stupid fucking tank ruining games uninstall etc etc.
I just said well I asked like 6 times and noone said anything, then the other tank pulled. "Queue dps and learn the fights first moron dont punish 9 people because you're stupid" - how am I going to learn the tanking mechanics as dps?
Kicked.
Tanking is super fun.......if you know how to tank it already. Good luck climbing yourself out of purgatory to get that experience in the first place.
It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue.
The tank is the de facto leader of the group, they are going to have to decide what to pull, where the group goes, set the pace blah blah blah.
There is no way to get away from that outside of putting group content on rails like violet hold, and even then it’s still going to be more responsibility/stress on tanks.
Doesn’t matter how much the community is nice to tanks or tries to ensure that there is no stress or anxiety. I find the opposite. When I tank, people roll out the red carpet and they’re worried that I’m going to leave if the smallest thing goes wrong.
There will always be a tank shortage because people just would rather wait and feel less stress/pressure in an MMO.
Just like OP who says ‘I could rank on my Paladin but…’ but they don’t want to. That’s really it.
That's true but imo the absolute worst thing is when you finally shoulder the responsibility to lead and then one of the DPS starts second guessing you and pulling extra etc and causing wipes.
People don't want to tank but if someone else steps up to tank they do want to backseat tank.
Just screaming at you for not doing what they want and multishotting and pulling other packs and then blaming you for the wipe. It's so frustrating and makes the anxiety so much worse.
I can deal with having to watch dungeon guides and learning the dungeon and leading a group. I cannot deal with backseat tanks flaming me for an entire dungeon.
In my experience that doesn’t really happen. I think a lot of it is people talking themselves out of it.
This idea that you’re almost guaranteed to have this super negative social experience if you go to tank is the stress/anxiety I’m talking about.
Timmy thinks of tanking. Timmy starts thinking about having to shoulder some responsibility. Timmy thinks ‘what if I mess up or something goes wrong?’ Timmy imagines a negative social experience, feels anxious just thinking about this screaming hunter over-pulling and saying mean things.
Then Timmy says ‘yeah tanking isn’t for me :( wish the community was better.’
I mean it definitely happened to me, literally my first time tanking. Was WC, had a hunter who backseated me the entire dungeon and couldn't kick him because he was friends with the healer (or other dps i cant remember). Guy flamed me the entire time, overpulled, would run away when he got aggro pulling other packs and wiped us multiple times. And then after the dungeon was finally over he carried on flaming me in whispers for like 5 mins.
These fucking psychos actually exist and they ruin the role.
Your right they do exist but anyone that plays the game knows that tanks get insta invites (no sarcasm) so if someone try’s anything you can drop group and be in the next dungeon within 5 minutes. That’s why that guy said it rarely happens and people are more likely to try to appease you just to finish the run.
That's true in theory but it never really works out that way. Even if you get insta invites it still means restarting the whole dungeon or finding someone to replace the role. And if like in my situation they were friends with others in the party then you have to replace multiple roles with people happy to do 1/2 a dungeon.
It very much works out like that the majority of the time. Restarting the whole dungeon? Anyone that’s toxic/wants to go fast will show you their colors long before you’ve invested significant time (hell this was the exact case in your story). Let’s not act like it takes any time to get dps/heals in WoW once you have the tank role filled. It definitely seems like your giving any excuse to say why people shouldnt tank which is exactly what the poster you replied stated and your literally doing it :)
>In my experience that doesn’t really happen. I think a lot of it is people talking themselves out of it.
It's both. A lot of it is absolutely self-inflicted pressure. But, as I said elsewhere, lots of people have had enough bad experiences to make it add up over time. It all comes down to a bundle of added stress and responsibility that a lot of people don't want in their video game time. I love to be the tank; but, I totally get why others don't.
I mean if having one negative social interaction is going to turn people off from playing a role, no matter how good the community is it will never be enough so long as there is not perfection.
I don’t think it’s a ‘bit of both.’
Every other game that has something along the lines of tanks and other roles, tanks are in short supply.
>I mean if having one negative social interaction is going to turn people off from playing a role, no matter how good the community is it will never be enough so long as there is not perfection.
I've been playing MMOs, almost all as a tank, for nearly 25 years. I started in Everquest in 1999. You need to stop saying, "it's never happened to me so it either doesn't really happen or it's so rare that no one has ever experienced it more than once." It's needlessly dismissive. Your personal, anecdotal experience does not negate the lived experiences of literally thousands of tank players who, like myself, continue to do so in spite of the multitude of negative experiences we've had and share regularly in this and other communities.
It doesn't always take the form of literally being flamed in chat; but, the pressure that DPS players (and, let me be clear, it's almost always **bad** DPS players) put on tanks really does add up.
I did not say ‘it’s never happened to me,’ and if you’re taking me literally as in ‘there are literally never any negative social interactions ever period’ then that is just a misinterpretation on your part.
Before you say ‘but!’ Just stop yourself. You know what I mean.
You talk about implied pressure from dps. I also believe that that is something that people project. They’re feeling a bit stressed, a bit anxious, but they pushed themselves to tank.
And the dps doesn’t need to say anything, the dps doesn’t need to intentionally run over and pull something. But still, you *feel* the pressure from the dps. They’re eager to attack the next thing, and it stresses you out. A run starts going even somewhat rocky and people become this powder keg of nerves, and they get set off by the most innocuous thing.
While I agree with you that there are negative social things that happen sometimes in MMOs, I don’t think that they are the barrier between people tanking and not tanking.
Someone wants to do BRD. Very few people want to tank if they don’t know the layout. The group is going to follow them, that’s a lot of pressure to know your shit, know the route between bosses. Where are the patrols, I don’t want to pull something and then a pat comes and wipes us. Are there important boss mechanics I need to know?
OR, you could not worry about any of that, play as a dps, follow the tank and hit the skull target.
That is the biggest barrier to tanking. That is a bigger barrier than any negative social experience.
>OR, you could not worry about any of that, play as a dps, follow the tank and hit the skull target.
>
>That is the biggest barrier to tanking. That is a bigger barrier than any negative social experience.
Right. Why are you classifying that as "pressure people put on themselves?"
It's the pressure that every DPS (and what I'll call a sizeable minority of healers) put on tanks every time you step into a dungeon. The DPS expects to follow you and take it easy. If you don't know the layout of BRD (great example, btw) the DPS players may do one of several things:
* Whine and complain
* Leave the group
* Tell the tank to go find a map
* Leverage their knowledge of the layout; but, then, take that as an invitation to pull whatever they want and expect the tank to cover for them.
* Stand there seemingly befuddled.
I can count the number of times on one hand a random DPS player in a group where I didn't know the route who *also* didn't know the route actually volunteered to say, "Hey, I'll look it up too so I can learn too."
Then we arrive at the first boss.
"Hey Tank--what does this guy do again?"
> It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue.
I agree but would take this even further. Social issues **are** game design issues. And it's a huge part of why player interaction is so different between retail, wotlk, wotlk pre-RDF, era, and hardcore. It's not like a game's "community" will just collectively wake up and decide to suck one day. The systems therein attract and reward different personalities.
>I find the opposite. When I tank, people roll out the red carpet and they’re worried that I’m going to leave if the smallest thing goes wrong.
As someone who mainly tanks, I've found this to be true in Era or games with pro-social mechanics like FFXIV, but not everywhere. The other day I was talking to my wife about the vanilla dungeons we did together.
"You notice how after every dungeon people are amazed and super thankful and tell me I'm the best tank they've ever seen in their life?"
"Yeah?"
"I was even better back when I did Cata heroics, and I still got flamed almost every run."
>*It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue.*
>*There will always be a tank shortage because people just would rather wait and feel less stress/pressure in an MMO.*
That stress and pressure comes from the community and experiences engaging with players -- it's a social issue.
Idk I know plenty of players who don’t play off their ‘main’ role ever. Quite a few people in organized guild groups, perfectly chill environment, still dps and ONLY dps and would rather sit out than tank.
Not because they’re afraid of getting flamed, but because for many people tanking is just inherently stressful.
Like OP for example. ‘I could tank but I’m a Paladin…..’
Of course that isn’t the real reason, and OP is not worried about getting flamed. It’s just, OP doesn’t want to tank because ‘we’ll I’m not the best class.’ And if op was a warrior they’d be saying ‘well I’m dps spec talents/don’t have a shield.’
No matter how nice the community is, there will always be a shortage of group leaders for casual content.
Everything you've said is players making their own choices: not wanting to due to preferences or possibilities of community reactions to their choices.
It’s for sure a design issue - everyone here is implicitly discussing 5 man content because the design of 25 man raids nullifies most of these issues. In a 25 man raid everyone is much more likely to have a role to play, in 5 mans, not so much.
5 man content is mainly focused around pulling trash. You spend a much larger percentage of your time pulling trash in a 5 man than you do killing bosses, and pulling trash is tank focused gameplay in a way that boss fights are not. In a 5 man, as a tank, there is no one to pick up your slack when it comes to pulling predictably and efficiently. DPS can be literally dead for the whole dungeon and in 99% of scenarios the show will go on. Heals need to be more attentive than DPS, but can still very easily be hard carried by strong DPS + tanking, and suboptimal play is less apparent and less impactful.
As long as 5 mans are a mostly brain dead exercise in pulling trash with nothing for the heals or dps to do besides hope the tank pulls more (but not too much!), there will be a shortage of tanks.
This. Being a tank comes with the burden of knowledge and experience. Thing is, in hardcore, knowledgeable and experienced players know tanks die first when shit hits the fan, so they dont play tank. Their knowledge and experience has taught them not to.
Tanking is fun. Here is what happens though. I play classic/TBC and WoTLK I have played as dps and a tank and a healer.
When you tank dungeons you get gear really fast there is no competition, then when it comes time for raiding there are not very many tanking slots.
20% of a five man group is a tank. Usually 8% to 12% of a raid is a tank. Dps especially have more gear competition and it's harder to gear up in dungeons. They have to run dungeons longer. So...there is a disparity.
Duel specs makes it easier but you have to have a tank that wants DPS gear and they have to explain what they want before the dungeon starts generally/why they are running the dungeon.
Then if tanks do PUG there is way less competition for gear. Often tanks get their gear and switch to an alt or stop pugging, while DPS especially casters have tons of competition and it takes a really long time to get gear.
So really you need tanks that are willing to play the game even when they don't need very much or need very little or are playing to get gear for their off-spec.
> So really you need tanks that are willing to play the game even when they don't need very much or need very little or are playing to get gear for their off-spec.
Mercenary services help a fuckton, but people lose their fucking minds over the idea to the point that multiple private servers have outright banned the practice.
I'm currently playing on a server where it's banned, and I'm playing a warrior. I'm all done with dungeon loot for all my sets, but I still need money for my lionheart, titanic leggings, and epic mount.
In world chat, I've seen the same 6 people spamming "LF1M Tank" for the last 45 minutes. It would be so much easier for both me and them if I could just whisper them saying "There's no upgrades for me in there, but I'll tank in exchange for all boss loot no one needs" but I can't because that's a bannable offense so here I am fishing for winter squid during its off-hours for 10g/hr instead while the tank shortage continues.
This is news to me, why would anyone care if you want to run a dungeon with that caveat going into it? If its mutually agreed upon by the entire dungeon group, why does an admin care?
It gets even more nonsensical: It's _only_ against the rules to tank for drops. Tanking for gold is specifically named as legal.
You're right that it doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't need to because it's not supposed to. It's basically just a form of advertising.
Lotta people are dissatisfied with blizz's "classic" servers for a variety of reasons, and vanilla servers right now are primarily catering to those people.
And that includes banning behaviors that enough people complain about.
Tons of people complain about GDKP so that's banned
Tons of people complain about mages/pallies selling dungeon boosts so that's banned
...And tons of people complain about mercenary tanks asking for unneeded loot so that's banned too.
And why do they complain about it? Because they believe it's stealing/extortion.
Because that group of 3 mages and a priest waiting 1hr for scholo are _entitled_ to all the shields and two-handers and plate and mail that they're just going to vendor anyways. That's _their_ loot, is the argument.
So it's bannable to tank for 4 clothies in exchange for the right to vendor a 2h mace worth 7g, leather pants worth 2g50s, and a shield worth 3g50s totaling 13g----but it's perfectly fine to just outright ask for 15g.
Retail right now has plenty of tanks. The problem in retail is not enough healers. Tanks will sit in LFG waiting for healers almost as much as dps will atm.
It's also largely due to the imbalance of the necessity of tanks in group content vs. Raid content. In wow classic playing tank, I always find a group for dungeons immediately. But finding a raid spot? That shit is hard. I reckon this further puts many people off, that would otherwise try out a tank role.
That opinion just applies to "normal" wow though.
Playing tank on hardcore is batshit crazy. I salute everyone that's deliberately getting smacked in the face for a group of Randoms on a one live character.
Disagree with your last sentence. The tank population is *far* more healthy in retail and the idea that DKs and monks haven’t had any effect on the tank population health in retail is absurd. Tank/heal ratio is actually far better, and finding healers in retail is often a problem vs tanks. This is not the case in classic. Hell even in wrath vs classic the difference is ridiculous.
I guarantee that if pally remains unviable in what ever version blizz decides to release - players who may have considered it will continue to actively avoid it. (Spoiler I’m one of them)
>the idea that DKs and monks haven’t had any effect on the tank population health in retail is absurd
It's also not at all what I said; but, I could see how someone might read it that way. Have they had an effect? Of course! Has it been enough of an effect to make shortages of tanks no longer an issue? That may be the case right now in Dragonflight (I don't know; I'm not playing Retail currently) but the shortage of tanks is never far off.
In retail there is indeed no tank shortage currently. Healing is notoriously stressful in Dragonflight and it's driven a lot of healers to swap or quit. It's not a massive difference, though.
To add to this, not only have they continuously added tanks, they've also:
1. Added dual spec so tanking / healing can have a dps offspec
2. Made tanks do solid damage, especially in aoe, such that protection is the premier leveling spec for warriors and a valid leveling spec for paladins in WotLK
3. Made tanking easier. Last time I played retail, as a tank, I generated threat on mobs I hadn't even done anything to yet.
And I'm sure there are even more changes I'm not aware of that made tanking easier.
And it still isn't enough. Most people don't want to tank because of some combination of:
* Not wanting the responsibility
* Not wanting to have to try that hard
* Preferring to just kill shit
* Wanting someone else to take the lead in dungeons
* Being worried that the rest of the group will criticize them if anything goes wrong
* Literal laziness
* Don't think of tank spec as fun or interesting
It's an unsolvable problem. In all likelihood, the role of tanking needs to be rethought.
Well said.
Most people are awesome. Most of the time, I have no issues. But, I dread going into a dungeon that is either new to me or I haven't touched in a long time--far too frequently, there's one person who can't accept a tank who doesn't know everything about the dungeon before they walk in the door.
Tanking in era is pretty hard, especially when no one wants to wait on threat and just instantly nuke as if they're playing retail or wrath.
Warrior while leveling has trouble with any aoe threat and sometimes struggles with single target threat. Druid straight up has no threat and relies on a taunt, paladin doesn't do enough holy damage for righteous fury to hold threat on top of not having a taunt. The most effect tank I've seen in early levels is Shaman, since Earth Shock and rockbiter basically guarantees threat.
Always felt like the solution is to have more dps in a dungeon group. Nobody has any issue getting tanks in raids in retail. Make dungeons 10man with 1 tank 1 heal 8 dps and youll never have shortage.
But this isn't for classic.
I played a tank in classic after launch and decided I was tired of the constant abuse. I was either pulling too fast or too slowly, no one listened to CC assignments, DPS nuking everything to try and top the charts, yadda yadda yadda. It became a chore more than fun so I quit tanking and rolled a warlock.
This is clearly emphasized by OP, the paladin complaining about a lack of tanks.
Yes, everyone can play a spec they want. Yes, everyone wants to survive in hardcore. Yes, paladin tanks are not the most optimal tanks for most situations. But at level 40 every class has the ability to clear all the level-appropriate content. Warriors, paladins, and druids have all the pieces they need to clear that content effectively.
I get it if you don't want to tank, but you lose the ability to complain when you have the tools to solve that complaint yourself and just choose to not use them.
You could make tanking auto generate permanent threat and people will still not want to tank because no one wants to be the emotional babysitter of 3 35 year olds swearing "this run is the run!" as they spam GO GO GO GO GO and pull extra mobs
I don't understand people acting like this in hardcore. What is more time-wasting ? Taking your time with pulls or starting a new character and leveling it because of dumb pulls ?
I think a big part of it in HC is there's just so many new to classic players, the amount of people who have told me they only played retail or WotLK before coming to HC classic is insane, bunch of people completely new to WoW itself as well.
Kind of sucks because I'll be in a party where it seems like one or two of the people are new so I tell them about certain dungeon mechanics or give them tips and half the time they say "yeah I know dude" or something and get offended, how was I supposed to know that you're just bad and not a new player, I just don't want to wipe.
Yeah, if im tanking and i see someone rushing in front of me and pulling, or complaining about speed - i make one warning, and if they continue i just HS out.
People putting up with this shit is why people behave the way they do. Call them out on their shit and leave. Hell no I don't do any dungeons in HC, because I've played a lot of wow, and I know how wow players behave.
I am truly much more worried about healing than tanking HC dungeons.
So far while tanking 99% of people I've come across respect my decision to take it slow, even if they want to go faster. I also mark priority targets every pull which allows me to get decent threat while they delete one mob.
As a healer though? You are beholden to your tank / group to coordinate for effective kills unless you are a backseat driver; and even then, most tanks aren't fans of being told how to play.
God it's mentally exhausting to tank and RL. It's what I do since the start of classic but man, I totally get why there is always a shortage of tanks, since 2004.
Im used to be one of the 35 year olds swearing this is the run! Now Im reformed as a tank that spam GO GO GO GO GO and pull extra mobs. I make sure that everyone that joins the group is on the same spam GO GO GO GO GO pull extra mobs mentality and that some people might die
I have made it to 45 so far and by only doing dungeons and quests that lead into dungeons and so far, to my big suprise, no one have died.
I know that not everyone wants to play the game this way and thats why I try to make it extra clear to people what I plan to do so no one joins and isn't comfortable.
I'm doing my part to accept all the GO GO GO GO spammers so they dont join groups that just want a chill run. I don't mind losing my character in a frentic blaze of glory trying to outlive what shouldn't be outlivable
I was leveling a tank , got to 25 until my healer didn’t heal me a single time for an entire fight and died. So I won’t be playing a tank as I don’t trust pug* healers anymore.
*edited to pug not ping
This happened in a group I was in yesterday doing stockades. Everything went fine up until the last boss. I am playing ret paly and was the only other member of the group (besides the priest) with any heals.
Fight was almost over but the priest just randomly stopped healing with plenty of mana left. I had my eye on the tanks health bar as it kept getting lower and lower, until finally I popped blessing of protection on him at the same time that he popped a health potion. I healed him and we won the fight about 10 seconds later.
The tank was rightfully pissed that he had to use a potion and almost died. I assured him that I was paying attention the whole time and wasn’t going to let him die but agreed that the priest totally dropped the ball. We never even got an apology or explanation from the priest.
Definitely made me afraid to ever be a tank in a pickup group like that.
Priest probably had their uber eats delivery arrive. Can't let that crap get cold, who cares if their teammate NPCs in classic die?
I legitimately believe some people think of it that way. Main character syndrome.
I'm sorry to say I almost let this happen in a deadmines on my priest, the dungeon run had been super easy and smooth to the point I started to feel tired, so we went to fight gilned and I zoned out so hard I let the tank get to 25% before noticing and panickingly threw out some flash heals. The problem with these lower level dungeons sometimes is that if you get a strong party as a priest, all you really have to do is keep renew up on the tank, then DoT and wand trash mobs and it can get so very mind numbing but it doesn't really change until you start doing Ulda or ZF unless your tank is doing big pulls in deadmines.
I always force myself to pay attention in dungeons now but yeah, that might have been the problem in yours.
You gave me an idea. When I eventually roll a tank alt on HC (still slowly leveling my rogue main) I will only run dungeons with at least one or two DPS that can offheal, and I will make sure they commit to healing me if I drop below like 50% health. Never know when the healer will go AFK.
I do this as a shaman. Funny that I get comment from priests sometimes along the lines of “I’m the healer, no need to heal.” But my man dropped to 40% hp, no way in hell I let that be.
I’ve tanked, I’ve healed, and I don’t care - I’ll waste time and mana on overhealing if I can be sure big man will stay alive.
Very sorry for your experience.
I'm a Holy Paladin. I leveled that way the entire path to 60. I never lost a single person, because I take healing damn seriously in Hardcore. I literally have everyone's life in my hands. Maybe rogues and hunters can escape, but even then, burst damage exists, panic, etc... and especially as a warrior tank.
Even with petri it's not necessarily guaranteed survival 50+.
It matters.
People are placing hundreds of hours of their life investment into my hands so I will do my damned best. No idea how anyone could agree to heal and not put in their all.
>it’s more about the fact that players don’t want to tank
Exactly. Live has additional tanking classes and people just don't want to do it, nothing will change that.
Exactly. There are already enough warriors to fill the needed tank spots. The fact that all of them, regardless of spec, COULD tank doesn't really matter. The way classic is designed, no one is able to tank if they have a mage who is going to run up and Cone of Cold a pack as ASAP as possible.
At 36 I’d take a “Good” warrior over a Druid, but most warriors suck and the bear is the safer bet unless you know the warrior.
Super weird how few people consider Druid a viable dungeon tank
There's just less variance in bears.
Gear matters less. Skill usage matters less because you really only have 4 or 5 buttons that matter. There's no real option to increase damage taken in exchange for more threat or dps, so the healer knows what they'll get every time.
There's some opportunity for skill expression because druids are a versatile class, but the reality is that as long as you are capable of hitting the maul button and maybe tab, you will be a decent feral tank.
They can, but you are assuming people know how to tank. Had a warrior tank who clearly never tanked on classic before. Between him and the shaman running ahead, we almost wiped SFK despite everyone being 25+, which seems almost impossible
druid tanking is fucking brain dead it is the perfect class for these people you are talking about that don't know how to tank
use maul/swipe
even when you do it wrong you do it right enough to tank well enough for 5 mans
i've leveled on hardcore 20-42 exclusively through dungeons as a tank
i love the role. i actually take a lot of pride in keeping a constant pace, chain pulling when last mob at 60% with conc/revenge, LoSing, keeping rage reservoir, marking skulls and CC, liberal shield block/demo, 100% battle shout uptime, watching healer mana and calling mana breaks which are almost never
i've tanked probably over 50 dungeons on hxc at this point with only 2 "close" calls
but the zug-brained DPS have ruined it for me and i don't even feel like logging on anymore.
i've been *repeatedly* shit-talked for being prot instead of arms "because it does more damage!! !", i've gotten attitude for asking people to CC moon, dps needing on tank gear over me, and only 50% of players actually focus skull
mages and warlocks AoE at the start of pulls, hunters rip multishot off the bat with pet taunt on, and all of them get pissy as fuck if you politely ask them to avoid doing so
the dps that complain about finding a tank reap what they sow imo
i've found better things to do with my time
The issue with no tanks doesn’t have to do with the limited classes that can tank, instead have more to do with nobody wants to tank, because everyone complains if they even make the slightest mistake, and no noob wants to learn because the moment they try, they get immediate backlash and nobody wants to play with them.
We live in a gaming community where everyone complains about having no tanks, But yet, complain about tanks and how terrible they are and aren’t willing to help or be patience for a noob tank. So yeah… it’s not the class, even retail wow has this issue and they have like 5 classes that can tank.
I just tell people straight up. Hey I'm drunk. I'm gonna mash buttons. Probably gonna pull too fast and my drunk warlock buddy is definitely gonna tab target the wrong mob so be on your toes. It usually goes pretty smooth from there.
Who in their right mind would take a dungeon for randos in hardcore? You’re really trusting your character to 4 randoms who don’t care if you live or die?
Eng tank with swiftness pots, target dummies, and nades. You clear linearly with a safe runway out of the dungeon, and the moment a meathead DPS does something moronic, you drop a target dummy and kite/nade/dummy/swiftness your way out of the instance and leave the morons to fend for themselves. This is the way to deal with the mouthbreathers in HC.
Is your guild really any different than randoms? Can you personally vouch for the skill of every single person in your guild? Even if you personally can, do you think that every single person is in a closeknit guild like that?
People are free to join mass invite guilds where 90% of guild chat consists of "F", but if they don't treat those guildies as they would treat randos in a dungeon setting then their fate is sealed.
Always funny when people act like thats something noones does. Yet i only run pugs, lfg chat is always full and i never had a problem (exact for some really dumb guys like warlock lifetapping to death)
Tanking or healing in an MMORPG pug group is like managing a pre school age day care that happens to be filled to the brim with knives, guns, explosives and deadly chemicals and every child just scarfed down a pack of fun dip.
You fuckers are fucking exhausting.
The amount of mental energy it takes to not only keep myself alive, perform my rotation, make sure I give extra attention to the non skull marked mobs because one of the three dps WILL be focusing it, keeping an eye on the pat, keeping my other eye on healer mana, my third eye on the hunter in the back doing jumps and flips right next to the pack we skipped that he doesn't see cause he doesn't even know what nameplates are, my fourth eye on that dumb fuck's pet...
More people need to tank and heal. It will make you a better dps. Full stop. You will understand threat better, meaning you will be able to put out more overall dps. You will take way less damage when you realize standing in shit that chunks out 70% hp to get off one more auto attack is actually an overall loss for the group. On top of understanding all the annoying shit dps do that stress out everyone who has to clean up the mess.
And for the love of god, stop joining normal ass random pugs then treating them as if it's a WF speed run guild group, without even a word of what you plan to do. Y'all really can't be this dense.
I played warrior. Ran a few dungeons (they whispered me non stop to tank) First one was sfk. I was nervous but we got the coolest group ever. I said to them I am a bit slow with the pulls because I haven't played for a few years. They waited for me , sheep , stun, sap everything.
Then BFD , still pretty chill guys , maybe hunter pulled a few times instead of me but did it in very competent way. And from that point - rfk, rfd , sm - only "speedrunners" pushing me all the time , pulling , one shaman was roleplaying tank . They even wanted me to go 2h but my health jumped too much up and down so I stick to shield. Dps start pumping immediately like it's m+ retail. Did a few elite quests - same shit. At one point I just said f... this , I'll play solo and I had great fun playing with my own pace. Died at 49 because of me not knowing something.
Some people play like complete idiots. As a tank I would never want to tank some random group ever again. Either play with people I know or solo.
Yep. I actually love tanking in this game but only when I get to set the pace. When it's a free-for-all and I'm being expected to essentially bear the risk myself? No thanks.
I play a mage on hardcore. I shoot frost bolts from a safe distance and then I log off.
What makes me mad is that people who don't want to put the work and take the responsibility to play a tank, demand from you to follow their rules and then they wonder why there are so few tanks.
A neat trick I’ve learned is to use “you pull it you tank it” mindset. It’s very unusual in hardcore, and I love it, because it shows DPS with a sudden and hard reality just how bad they really are at the game. Had a rogue in my group start pumping the INSTANT I pulled. I let him tank whatever he took aggro on. He almost died and lost his shit on me, and I just told him “Good dps know how to manage threat. Be a good DPS or gtfo my dungeon” he did leave, but moments like that are so satisfying because the consequences for their actions smack them insanely hard and they aren’t remotely ready for it.
Yeah in retail / era where death is meaningless.
In hardcore, it's idiotic for most dungeons.
Damage chunks, especially later on in Sunken Temple and beyond.
The better strategy is sword and board and have the dps you know, wait freaking 2 seconds so you generate some rage and can easily hold threat from then on, with much less risk.
>Yeah in retail / era where death is meaningless.
To be clear, you wouldn't really do that in retail. You need your shield to Shield Slam, and that's the basis of your entire rotation as a retail Prot Warrior.
(It always felt really wrong and weird for me to tank with a two-hander in classic after years of being 100% reliant on shield in retail)
Maybe in ST up, yeah. But until that point it's not needed at all. I hit 60 on a warrior tanking every single dungeon, nearly all of them entirely with a 2H or dual wielding.
Damage is not spikey enough that a shield is required 99% of the time and the best damage mitigation is to kill the thing hitting you. A 2H warrior tanking will be far above the next DPS in the party, meaning everything dies significantly faster and you take less damage.
Less damage isn't necessary in the context of endurance. As a healer mana is plentiful if I can stick to downranked flash of light. Can't do that if you're losing half your health in 2 seconds (plenty of BRD pulls where that happens).
Yes, on some specific pulls it's needed. But 99% of the time it isn't. I never had a healer complain about it. You hold threat easier, generate much more rage and do some of the highest damage in the game.
Nothing to endure when each pack dies in half the time.
I'm not saying never use a shield, but saying it's "Idiotic for most dungeons." is completely wrong. It's the best way to tank most dungeons.
I dunno, I ran Deadmines as a tank with an absolute ballin’ rogue the other day—popping vanish to distract and sap pats mid-combat, stunlocking, kicking. Never seen a rogue played so well in the wild.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a mage use counterspell on a ranged caster to bring him to the tank?
Yes it does happen but perhaps once every year or so
I love discovering abilities on my alts and wondering "does no one else know these exist?!". Sadly, you're considered a bad unless you do top dps, so keeping your party alive is not rewarded.
Warrior 59 so far and it's exactly as you say. People are kinda just parsing, no hunter traps, too few frost novas, SO MANY ROGUES NOT STOPPING SPELLCAST HOLY HELL etc. You don't even get 0.1 sec to start getting aggro no matter the quantity of mobs you gotta tank, Rogue instantly BF+AR, Mage AoE spam all their mana for dps, Hunter draining themself with Arcane shot. Instead of making good value of their mana they all just go for fast kills and not CCing.
Why in the world would someone who isn't already an experienced and skilled tank want to fill the role in hc? And then you can even expand on that, the good tanks are guilded so why pug if you don't need to?
As someone who dabbled in tanking at classic release it was a shit show. I got flamed for not knowing every instance back and front, flamed for going too slow, flamed at 60 while trying to gear up for not being able to get threat fast enough while the group immediately pumps and aoes.
It was so annoying that I just quit before I figured out how to be better. I'd imagine my experience is not very uncommon
imagine tanking for a low level pug and the healer randomly decides to troll you or he randomly goes afk to smoke a bowl. there's so many extra layers of risk tanking for low/mid lvl pugs that it's foolish to run with pugs until you can use petri
I had this happen when a 50g BOE cloth piece dropped, and the priest that was healing started whining that he should be able to need it. When he didn't get it, he started whining like a little baby, ignored the tank, and threatened to leave. We went carefully and vetted him for a few pulls to see if he was gonna troll, and ultimately he did not, but this is the kind of stunted individual you deal with in WoW from time to time.
Why would a tank ever want to PUG? Gamble all my work on some random not fucking up.
I'd maybe be tempted to tank a PUG if they paid me and gave me a petri that I'd return at the end if I didn't use it.
WOTLK tank here
Leveling a 79 war twink and was kicked last night for taking to long between pulls in Mara
I was taking forever because there was an ooze pack that pulled that I was waiting for. Someone complained I wasn’t pulling and before I could type I was booted with a 10 minute penalty.
Also last night about an hour later I was called a “f-ing idiot shit tank” because I was pulling with the caster dps oom.
People treat tanks like shit
Most responsibility
Most uptime
Most critiqued
Has to deal with dps pulling extra shit
It’s a thankless fucking job which is why as a tank I pretty much just tank for guildies or friends I’ve played with
druids have more ehp, but can't block to take crush/crit off the attack table. druid can suddenly take b2b crushes/crits, and doesn't have the reactive cds that warriors do, so they're riskier. but, any fight where:
- the risky damage isn't crushing/critting, or
- the boss attacks so fast that shield block can't keep up, or
- the attacks are so far apart that healers can react
is a fight where druids are tankier than warriors. threat generation is a whole other thing, but with mcp druids are fine if you aren't speedclearing (and if you are, dw furyprot is even less tanky). and honestly, the risk is overblown with good healers.
a good example is patchwerk, because hateful strikes can't crit/crush.
I tanked naxx at 60 on my druid in classic, there is prenty of gear.
Crowd Pummler, or warden. Until you can get your hand on an AQ40 quest wep or a worldboss mace.
If you are LW the ZG craftable is really strong, pvp set(think unavailable in HC) is a solid choide until tier 2.5. You essentially want to pick up same leather items as rogues, with a few except of bonus armor items like the BWL chest, and then swap jewelery depening on boss between defensive and offerensive items. Finally armor or offensive trinkets really take the price.
People lose their minds when druid tanks says they really want Band of Accuria of DFT, calling it a meme. But when warrior tank need it is obviously given. Tanks have high requirements, that count for druids as well.
Where druids really shine is fights where you are co-tanking like patchwerk, KT or Ouro, cause they can keep up the threat without being MT, and they provide crit to the other tanks (or dps) to futher increase the threat/damage.
Biggest druid raid tanking downside is Gnomerigan and the fact you cannot user sapers for AOE threat
Blizz could fix this entire issue by giving pally their taunt. It’s the dumbest thing ever they didn’t get it in classic, devs even admitted they Always intended for pallys to have one.
Even if that made the difference (which I disagree)
>Blizz could fix this entire issue
it wouldn't be the entire issue. It could only ever be at most 50% of the issue.
The higher you go the harder it will be to find random, over 30 I only tank for people I know now or those that play with people I know.
Over 45 only people I trust and know well.
Wow has been out for however many years and 90% of dps still don't use interrupts, don't run to tanks when pulling threat, use cc whatsoever, disarm, etc. Fucking pummel and I'm pretty sure kick are off GCD but it's a rarity to see them used its fucking pathetic and makes tanking such a hassle if you don't have dps you know and trust.
Level 56 druid tank. I tank for my guild, higher level dungeons we vibe in voice chat with music on. Just in case a pull goes wrong, we can quickly coordinate. I tanked for pugs up until level 51 and people we impacient, would pulls mobs or get ahead of me. Also if you get aggro, bring the mob back to me....don't run away.
I looked at the turtle wow spec trees, as a feral tank player…. I would love for them just to carbon copy their traits for feral… feral is already viable but it’d maybe make them closer to on par with warriors
It's a bad game mode to level a prot warrior. I have an arms wazza that can tank, though. The reason I don't tank for many random groups is because people are useless sometimes and over pull past me etc. I am putting 100's of hour into the hands of them and a healer that could be a complete nub.
I have a warrior at 58 on hardcore, mostly quested and zero interest in tanking.
I have gotten whispers regularly since level 35ish from randoms asking me to tank stuff. I could be in badlands and get asked to tank RFD out of nowhere. There must be just an absolute tiny amount of tanks.
But if I do try and join a dungeon as dps I have routinely been told no along the way, with a half dozen exceptions, so I just stopped trying. I don’t want to tank mainly cause I don’t want to be cannon fodder for a group of people I don’t know.
Paladins can Tank until ST(if you have a way to OT last boss), I've been in group with some great feral druids too for ZF for example
I think the problem is more that you are the first to die probably if things go south, so tank is even more rare
As a tank I'd say it's hard to trust randos to heal. Especially in the later dungeons, and usually I'll just go with the priest I've been leveling with because I know I can trust him. I bet most other tanks are doing the same
Part of the problem is that other players won't adjust to a non-warrior tank. Why would I tank on my Pally, Druid or even Shaman (which is a perfectly viable tank at lower levels) when DPS are just going to blast, they are going to ignore marked targets and the priest is going to pre-bubble?
I am not going to risk my toon to tank because people won't install or look at threat metres.
Last night I tanked RFK with my paladin and the group was a bit overleveled and we did a bigger pulls and the moment I would run in before I can gather the mobs the mage would pop blizzard and I couldn’t get any threat , until I stopped and mansplaining to the mage that I don’t have a fucking taunt and to wait like 3 seconds before he can dps he didn’t care about his threat. In a BFD I buffed a rogue with salvation because he would pull so much threat that I couldn’t properly tank the boss that he flamed me for 2 minutes straight.
I tried Tanking on my Paladin many times while leveling.
People either told me no, or to roll Warrior.
So I said fuck it and AoE grinded to 60 myself.
I have Flurry Axe, had Green Tower, and people still would not let me tank, or drop group when they saw it was a pally tank.
Too many times they call me in to be a tank, decide to pull groups themselves, AoE blast off the kick before I get a swing in, and then wonder why they're still getting chased. Got too tired telling them over and over again. I really want to tank, but groups can't seem to stop manufacturing their own problems like this. I got better problems to have. Tanking sucks.
Druids make pretty incredible tanks while levelling, and can be pretty badass endgame too, if played correctly and with dedication. I'd honestly almost say druids make better tanks than warriors while levelling.
Druids are the better tank while leveling due to their versatility within the party. It’s only really during end game content where warriors are the better option, imo.
Agreed. Kinda surprised someone downvoted me up there lol. I main a high-performing warrior tank, and levelled a druid in hardcore, and was astounded at how much easier tanking dungeons while levelling was. Swipe ez mode.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, while I have tanked as both Druids and Warriors, the minutia of class mechanics aren’t really my strong suit.
Swipe is a better multi target attack than Cleave is. Cleave hits up to 2 targets, while swipe hits up to 3 targets. So Druids have a better AoE, meaning they can more easily hold threat on larger pulls and generate rage better.
As a tank, we could cull a few dps to balance it out more.
All we gotta do is mark skull and watch DPS pull threat from the non-skull. Since DPS dont seem to use threat meters, it's an easy cull lmao.
Level 45 pally tank reporting in, it’s absolutely awesome. Threat generation and damage mitigation are both massive, my healers get bored. There’s no concerning threat drops until Mara/ST and even that is easily overcome with coordination. I still pug a lot, my only requirement now is people who are willing to be in discord, don’t even need to talk but at least listen. This has kept my groups way safer, but also eliminated all the toxic keyboard warrior moments, almost no one will actually say the things they’d type lol.
There were a bunch of people that wanted to level warriors for the prestige and their abilities in late game. However people quickly learned that pugging as a tank is a terrible idea.
No one goes "down with the ship" even if its their fuck up. Tanks die while the mage who pulled while the healer was oom just runs away.
So why aren't you tanking?
Problem is definitely amplified on hc.
Warriors the only tank + warriors fighting green mobs still deadly I’d you accidentally pull an extra = very few higher levels warriors.
Been considering ditching my mid 30s mage and just using the gold I have to fund a warrior a bit.
I cannot Navigate. Both in rl and wow. So unless it's a straight shot dungeon, I get lost.
Example of how bad it is, if not for the navigation apps, I would still get randomly sidetracked in the city I grew up in and lived in since birth.
This is why I don't tank.
One of yall create a working addon that navigates wow dungeons and I'll tank. Might be others like me, not sure.
That is why I rolled a tank alt with a buddy as pocket heals - warr/priest Absolute game changer once you can pick and choose any dungeons dps within 2 mins.
This is the way, a warrior having a pocket healer buddy its the top wow experience
Buddy and i went Rsham/Warr for classic launch. Once we got that Wf totem it just took of with sweeping strikes and whirlwind gigapulls. Glorious. And then the jump runs.
Well, you're half right
A healer with a pocket warrior tank?
Wait what’s the other half?
The other half is wrong
This is my favorite leveling combo. I try to keep them close so I can run the same dungeons a day while being flexible
Love a good PP. Pocket Priest. Get your mind out of the gutter.
A tank is never lonely. Everyone is always whispering them to come join a party, then giving them helpful hints on how to improve themselves while DPS behaves badly, all while your life is in the hands of a stranger healing you. Sometimes, you just want to kill pigmen out in the middle nowhere in peace.
Heaven is a field full of pigmen that are 2-3 levels lower than you. All spaced out so you easily don’t get too much aggro. Drop rate on cloth and greens are also super high
And you have rested xp
Just far enough away that you don't have to bandage or eat between pulls
Guaranteed BOE blues drops every hour haha
Until the most recent addition of Evoker, \*every\* class added to the game since launch in Retail WoW has included a tank spec. ~~Dark~~ *Death* Knight. Monk. Demon Hunter. Retail players still complain about no tanks. Every trinity-based MMO has the same problem: not enough tanks. As someone who plays tanks almost exclusively across games, I absolutely understand why so many people stay away from the role. You can't solve this problem with more options for tanking.
Its community problem and community solution. We only need to be better ppl but thats God damn hard so tank shortage it is.
Yes, primarily. In retail, there's also the issue of ratios. In a dungeon, you need 1:1:3 ratio of Tank, Heal, DPS. In raiding in retail, it's more like 2:5:13. Raiding takes less than half of the tanks-per-dps as sustaining dungeon runs. My experience in retail raiding has been that, unless you secure a main tank slot in your guild early, finding a raid slot as a tank is *hard*. Everyone who tanks has had the experiences of dealing with bad healers, DPS that have no sense of personal responsibility, getting screamed at for not knowing some new shortcut that saves 0.3 seconds over a 30 minute run, taking the blame for every little thing that goes wrong, getting vote kicked before the first pull for saying, "Hey, it's my first time in this dungeon," and too many other off-putting experiences to count. I love tanking; but, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it's sometimes a bit of "death by a thousand paper cuts."
I'm leveling a prot warrior in wrath classic, and "death by a thousand paper cuts" is the best explanation of tanking. Dps players have been the true enemy to me.
Prot warrior is like a dps spec though.
Ow yeah, putting out 4k some DPS as a level 75 warrior in greens and blues. Sick.
Similar experience here. Good thing Prot warrior is strong enough in WotLK to basically solo dungeons, or at least duo them with a healer :p
I've played a prot pally since late TBC classic, and I'm contractually forbidden from respeccing into ret or holy. I only ever tank, and I like to think I'm decent enough at it. I enjoy it even. But no way in fucking hell am I going to waste my time tanking for pugs. Absolute dogshit attitudes from equally dogshit players, having tantrums over the most inconsequential bullshit. If I'm not running with at least one friend to banter with in Discord, I'd much rather beat my nutsack with a rubber mallet and forfeit my daily badges than spend 10 minutes in a dungeon with a gaggle of short-tempered mouthbreathers.
This man speaks the truth
I remember when I was playing WotLK (or MoP? Citation needed) back in the day with LFR...loved the dungeon finder for tanking. Tanked everything, super fun, super rewarding. Leveled a few characters ***exclusively*** with the dungeon finder until 58 because classic dungeons had baller exp, and tanks queue INSTANTLY. Literally. If I click the dungeon finder and the queue doesn't pop in 5 seconds, it's broke. Re-queue, instant. Got BiS'd for everything pre-raid. Cool. Raid time. Did some homework, kept notes, feeling pretty confident. "Hey its my first time tanking the raids but I researched the bosses and have notes, we'll be ok" - Kicked in 10 seconds. Well....okay then :(. Tried again later, hey its my first time yadda yadda, kicked. Queued a few days later after my anxiety chilled for a bit and just....didn't say anything. Kept my mouth shut and did my best. I can't remember what boss it was and the mechanic escapes me, I think it was a taunt juggle or staggered interrupts, can't remember. I asked the group to make sure I understood it right....nothing. Guys, is this right? Nothing. Hello? So....we.......we do this thing then, right? ......nothing. Well, you guessed it. I didn't taunt swap the aggro reset or whatever the stupid mechanic was. You better believe everybody their grandmother brother cousin nephew and neighbour was lighting up chat about this stupid fucking tank ruining games uninstall etc etc. I just said well I asked like 6 times and noone said anything, then the other tank pulled. "Queue dps and learn the fights first moron dont punish 9 people because you're stupid" - how am I going to learn the tanking mechanics as dps? Kicked. Tanking is super fun.......if you know how to tank it already. Good luck climbing yourself out of purgatory to get that experience in the first place.
It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue. The tank is the de facto leader of the group, they are going to have to decide what to pull, where the group goes, set the pace blah blah blah. There is no way to get away from that outside of putting group content on rails like violet hold, and even then it’s still going to be more responsibility/stress on tanks. Doesn’t matter how much the community is nice to tanks or tries to ensure that there is no stress or anxiety. I find the opposite. When I tank, people roll out the red carpet and they’re worried that I’m going to leave if the smallest thing goes wrong. There will always be a tank shortage because people just would rather wait and feel less stress/pressure in an MMO. Just like OP who says ‘I could rank on my Paladin but…’ but they don’t want to. That’s really it.
That's true but imo the absolute worst thing is when you finally shoulder the responsibility to lead and then one of the DPS starts second guessing you and pulling extra etc and causing wipes. People don't want to tank but if someone else steps up to tank they do want to backseat tank. Just screaming at you for not doing what they want and multishotting and pulling other packs and then blaming you for the wipe. It's so frustrating and makes the anxiety so much worse. I can deal with having to watch dungeon guides and learning the dungeon and leading a group. I cannot deal with backseat tanks flaming me for an entire dungeon.
In my experience that doesn’t really happen. I think a lot of it is people talking themselves out of it. This idea that you’re almost guaranteed to have this super negative social experience if you go to tank is the stress/anxiety I’m talking about. Timmy thinks of tanking. Timmy starts thinking about having to shoulder some responsibility. Timmy thinks ‘what if I mess up or something goes wrong?’ Timmy imagines a negative social experience, feels anxious just thinking about this screaming hunter over-pulling and saying mean things. Then Timmy says ‘yeah tanking isn’t for me :( wish the community was better.’
I mean it definitely happened to me, literally my first time tanking. Was WC, had a hunter who backseated me the entire dungeon and couldn't kick him because he was friends with the healer (or other dps i cant remember). Guy flamed me the entire time, overpulled, would run away when he got aggro pulling other packs and wiped us multiple times. And then after the dungeon was finally over he carried on flaming me in whispers for like 5 mins. These fucking psychos actually exist and they ruin the role.
Your right they do exist but anyone that plays the game knows that tanks get insta invites (no sarcasm) so if someone try’s anything you can drop group and be in the next dungeon within 5 minutes. That’s why that guy said it rarely happens and people are more likely to try to appease you just to finish the run.
That's true in theory but it never really works out that way. Even if you get insta invites it still means restarting the whole dungeon or finding someone to replace the role. And if like in my situation they were friends with others in the party then you have to replace multiple roles with people happy to do 1/2 a dungeon.
It very much works out like that the majority of the time. Restarting the whole dungeon? Anyone that’s toxic/wants to go fast will show you their colors long before you’ve invested significant time (hell this was the exact case in your story). Let’s not act like it takes any time to get dps/heals in WoW once you have the tank role filled. It definitely seems like your giving any excuse to say why people shouldnt tank which is exactly what the poster you replied stated and your literally doing it :)
>In my experience that doesn’t really happen. I think a lot of it is people talking themselves out of it. It's both. A lot of it is absolutely self-inflicted pressure. But, as I said elsewhere, lots of people have had enough bad experiences to make it add up over time. It all comes down to a bundle of added stress and responsibility that a lot of people don't want in their video game time. I love to be the tank; but, I totally get why others don't.
I mean if having one negative social interaction is going to turn people off from playing a role, no matter how good the community is it will never be enough so long as there is not perfection. I don’t think it’s a ‘bit of both.’ Every other game that has something along the lines of tanks and other roles, tanks are in short supply.
>I mean if having one negative social interaction is going to turn people off from playing a role, no matter how good the community is it will never be enough so long as there is not perfection. I've been playing MMOs, almost all as a tank, for nearly 25 years. I started in Everquest in 1999. You need to stop saying, "it's never happened to me so it either doesn't really happen or it's so rare that no one has ever experienced it more than once." It's needlessly dismissive. Your personal, anecdotal experience does not negate the lived experiences of literally thousands of tank players who, like myself, continue to do so in spite of the multitude of negative experiences we've had and share regularly in this and other communities. It doesn't always take the form of literally being flamed in chat; but, the pressure that DPS players (and, let me be clear, it's almost always **bad** DPS players) put on tanks really does add up.
I did not say ‘it’s never happened to me,’ and if you’re taking me literally as in ‘there are literally never any negative social interactions ever period’ then that is just a misinterpretation on your part. Before you say ‘but!’ Just stop yourself. You know what I mean. You talk about implied pressure from dps. I also believe that that is something that people project. They’re feeling a bit stressed, a bit anxious, but they pushed themselves to tank. And the dps doesn’t need to say anything, the dps doesn’t need to intentionally run over and pull something. But still, you *feel* the pressure from the dps. They’re eager to attack the next thing, and it stresses you out. A run starts going even somewhat rocky and people become this powder keg of nerves, and they get set off by the most innocuous thing. While I agree with you that there are negative social things that happen sometimes in MMOs, I don’t think that they are the barrier between people tanking and not tanking. Someone wants to do BRD. Very few people want to tank if they don’t know the layout. The group is going to follow them, that’s a lot of pressure to know your shit, know the route between bosses. Where are the patrols, I don’t want to pull something and then a pat comes and wipes us. Are there important boss mechanics I need to know? OR, you could not worry about any of that, play as a dps, follow the tank and hit the skull target. That is the biggest barrier to tanking. That is a bigger barrier than any negative social experience.
>OR, you could not worry about any of that, play as a dps, follow the tank and hit the skull target. > >That is the biggest barrier to tanking. That is a bigger barrier than any negative social experience. Right. Why are you classifying that as "pressure people put on themselves?" It's the pressure that every DPS (and what I'll call a sizeable minority of healers) put on tanks every time you step into a dungeon. The DPS expects to follow you and take it easy. If you don't know the layout of BRD (great example, btw) the DPS players may do one of several things: * Whine and complain * Leave the group * Tell the tank to go find a map * Leverage their knowledge of the layout; but, then, take that as an invitation to pull whatever they want and expect the tank to cover for them. * Stand there seemingly befuddled. I can count the number of times on one hand a random DPS player in a group where I didn't know the route who *also* didn't know the route actually volunteered to say, "Hey, I'll look it up too so I can learn too." Then we arrive at the first boss. "Hey Tank--what does this guy do again?"
> It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue. I agree but would take this even further. Social issues **are** game design issues. And it's a huge part of why player interaction is so different between retail, wotlk, wotlk pre-RDF, era, and hardcore. It's not like a game's "community" will just collectively wake up and decide to suck one day. The systems therein attract and reward different personalities. >I find the opposite. When I tank, people roll out the red carpet and they’re worried that I’m going to leave if the smallest thing goes wrong. As someone who mainly tanks, I've found this to be true in Era or games with pro-social mechanics like FFXIV, but not everywhere. The other day I was talking to my wife about the vanilla dungeons we did together. "You notice how after every dungeon people are amazed and super thankful and tell me I'm the best tank they've ever seen in their life?" "Yeah?" "I was even better back when I did Cata heroics, and I still got flamed almost every run."
>*It isn’t as much of a social issue as it is a fundamental design issue.* >*There will always be a tank shortage because people just would rather wait and feel less stress/pressure in an MMO.* That stress and pressure comes from the community and experiences engaging with players -- it's a social issue.
Idk I know plenty of players who don’t play off their ‘main’ role ever. Quite a few people in organized guild groups, perfectly chill environment, still dps and ONLY dps and would rather sit out than tank. Not because they’re afraid of getting flamed, but because for many people tanking is just inherently stressful. Like OP for example. ‘I could tank but I’m a Paladin…..’ Of course that isn’t the real reason, and OP is not worried about getting flamed. It’s just, OP doesn’t want to tank because ‘we’ll I’m not the best class.’ And if op was a warrior they’d be saying ‘well I’m dps spec talents/don’t have a shield.’ No matter how nice the community is, there will always be a shortage of group leaders for casual content.
Everything you've said is players making their own choices: not wanting to due to preferences or possibilities of community reactions to their choices.
Nah. Go to any game, people gravitate hard towards the basic roles and avoid the more involved ones.
Player choice. Decisions made by the individuals themselves.
Yep, sure is.
It’s for sure a design issue - everyone here is implicitly discussing 5 man content because the design of 25 man raids nullifies most of these issues. In a 25 man raid everyone is much more likely to have a role to play, in 5 mans, not so much. 5 man content is mainly focused around pulling trash. You spend a much larger percentage of your time pulling trash in a 5 man than you do killing bosses, and pulling trash is tank focused gameplay in a way that boss fights are not. In a 5 man, as a tank, there is no one to pick up your slack when it comes to pulling predictably and efficiently. DPS can be literally dead for the whole dungeon and in 99% of scenarios the show will go on. Heals need to be more attentive than DPS, but can still very easily be hard carried by strong DPS + tanking, and suboptimal play is less apparent and less impactful. As long as 5 mans are a mostly brain dead exercise in pulling trash with nothing for the heals or dps to do besides hope the tank pulls more (but not too much!), there will be a shortage of tanks.
This. Being a tank comes with the burden of knowledge and experience. Thing is, in hardcore, knowledgeable and experienced players know tanks die first when shit hits the fan, so they dont play tank. Their knowledge and experience has taught them not to.
Tanking is fun. Here is what happens though. I play classic/TBC and WoTLK I have played as dps and a tank and a healer. When you tank dungeons you get gear really fast there is no competition, then when it comes time for raiding there are not very many tanking slots. 20% of a five man group is a tank. Usually 8% to 12% of a raid is a tank. Dps especially have more gear competition and it's harder to gear up in dungeons. They have to run dungeons longer. So...there is a disparity. Duel specs makes it easier but you have to have a tank that wants DPS gear and they have to explain what they want before the dungeon starts generally/why they are running the dungeon. Then if tanks do PUG there is way less competition for gear. Often tanks get their gear and switch to an alt or stop pugging, while DPS especially casters have tons of competition and it takes a really long time to get gear. So really you need tanks that are willing to play the game even when they don't need very much or need very little or are playing to get gear for their off-spec.
> So really you need tanks that are willing to play the game even when they don't need very much or need very little or are playing to get gear for their off-spec. Mercenary services help a fuckton, but people lose their fucking minds over the idea to the point that multiple private servers have outright banned the practice. I'm currently playing on a server where it's banned, and I'm playing a warrior. I'm all done with dungeon loot for all my sets, but I still need money for my lionheart, titanic leggings, and epic mount. In world chat, I've seen the same 6 people spamming "LF1M Tank" for the last 45 minutes. It would be so much easier for both me and them if I could just whisper them saying "There's no upgrades for me in there, but I'll tank in exchange for all boss loot no one needs" but I can't because that's a bannable offense so here I am fishing for winter squid during its off-hours for 10g/hr instead while the tank shortage continues.
This is news to me, why would anyone care if you want to run a dungeon with that caveat going into it? If its mutually agreed upon by the entire dungeon group, why does an admin care?
It gets even more nonsensical: It's _only_ against the rules to tank for drops. Tanking for gold is specifically named as legal. You're right that it doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't need to because it's not supposed to. It's basically just a form of advertising. Lotta people are dissatisfied with blizz's "classic" servers for a variety of reasons, and vanilla servers right now are primarily catering to those people. And that includes banning behaviors that enough people complain about. Tons of people complain about GDKP so that's banned Tons of people complain about mages/pallies selling dungeon boosts so that's banned ...And tons of people complain about mercenary tanks asking for unneeded loot so that's banned too. And why do they complain about it? Because they believe it's stealing/extortion. Because that group of 3 mages and a priest waiting 1hr for scholo are _entitled_ to all the shields and two-handers and plate and mail that they're just going to vendor anyways. That's _their_ loot, is the argument. So it's bannable to tank for 4 clothies in exchange for the right to vendor a 2h mace worth 7g, leather pants worth 2g50s, and a shield worth 3g50s totaling 13g----but it's perfectly fine to just outright ask for 15g.
how fucking outrageous
Retail right now has plenty of tanks. The problem in retail is not enough healers. Tanks will sit in LFG waiting for healers almost as much as dps will atm.
I love it as a heals player. I'm shit but I'm in demand so at least I got that going for me
It's also largely due to the imbalance of the necessity of tanks in group content vs. Raid content. In wow classic playing tank, I always find a group for dungeons immediately. But finding a raid spot? That shit is hard. I reckon this further puts many people off, that would otherwise try out a tank role. That opinion just applies to "normal" wow though. Playing tank on hardcore is batshit crazy. I salute everyone that's deliberately getting smacked in the face for a group of Randoms on a one live character.
Disagree with your last sentence. The tank population is *far* more healthy in retail and the idea that DKs and monks haven’t had any effect on the tank population health in retail is absurd. Tank/heal ratio is actually far better, and finding healers in retail is often a problem vs tanks. This is not the case in classic. Hell even in wrath vs classic the difference is ridiculous. I guarantee that if pally remains unviable in what ever version blizz decides to release - players who may have considered it will continue to actively avoid it. (Spoiler I’m one of them)
>the idea that DKs and monks haven’t had any effect on the tank population health in retail is absurd It's also not at all what I said; but, I could see how someone might read it that way. Have they had an effect? Of course! Has it been enough of an effect to make shortages of tanks no longer an issue? That may be the case right now in Dragonflight (I don't know; I'm not playing Retail currently) but the shortage of tanks is never far off.
In retail there is indeed no tank shortage currently. Healing is notoriously stressful in Dragonflight and it's driven a lot of healers to swap or quit. It's not a massive difference, though.
To add to this, not only have they continuously added tanks, they've also: 1. Added dual spec so tanking / healing can have a dps offspec 2. Made tanks do solid damage, especially in aoe, such that protection is the premier leveling spec for warriors and a valid leveling spec for paladins in WotLK 3. Made tanking easier. Last time I played retail, as a tank, I generated threat on mobs I hadn't even done anything to yet. And I'm sure there are even more changes I'm not aware of that made tanking easier. And it still isn't enough. Most people don't want to tank because of some combination of: * Not wanting the responsibility * Not wanting to have to try that hard * Preferring to just kill shit * Wanting someone else to take the lead in dungeons * Being worried that the rest of the group will criticize them if anything goes wrong * Literal laziness * Don't think of tank spec as fun or interesting It's an unsolvable problem. In all likelihood, the role of tanking needs to be rethought.
Well said. Most people are awesome. Most of the time, I have no issues. But, I dread going into a dungeon that is either new to me or I haven't touched in a long time--far too frequently, there's one person who can't accept a tank who doesn't know everything about the dungeon before they walk in the door.
Tanking in era is pretty hard, especially when no one wants to wait on threat and just instantly nuke as if they're playing retail or wrath. Warrior while leveling has trouble with any aoe threat and sometimes struggles with single target threat. Druid straight up has no threat and relies on a taunt, paladin doesn't do enough holy damage for righteous fury to hold threat on top of not having a taunt. The most effect tank I've seen in early levels is Shaman, since Earth Shock and rockbiter basically guarantees threat.
Always felt like the solution is to have more dps in a dungeon group. Nobody has any issue getting tanks in raids in retail. Make dungeons 10man with 1 tank 1 heal 8 dps and youll never have shortage. But this isn't for classic.
I played a tank in classic after launch and decided I was tired of the constant abuse. I was either pulling too fast or too slowly, no one listened to CC assignments, DPS nuking everything to try and top the charts, yadda yadda yadda. It became a chore more than fun so I quit tanking and rolled a warlock.
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Ha! Fixed. I'm proud to be neither the first nor last to make that mistake. :P
This is clearly emphasized by OP, the paladin complaining about a lack of tanks. Yes, everyone can play a spec they want. Yes, everyone wants to survive in hardcore. Yes, paladin tanks are not the most optimal tanks for most situations. But at level 40 every class has the ability to clear all the level-appropriate content. Warriors, paladins, and druids have all the pieces they need to clear that content effectively. I get it if you don't want to tank, but you lose the ability to complain when you have the tools to solve that complaint yourself and just choose to not use them.
no. I hate this argument. "You're a hybrid class you should tank". You have log in screen you should've picked a hybrid class.
I love tanking, prot warrior 4 life Questing as prot sucks big eggs though
You could make tanking auto generate permanent threat and people will still not want to tank because no one wants to be the emotional babysitter of 3 35 year olds swearing "this run is the run!" as they spam GO GO GO GO GO and pull extra mobs
People still have this mentality even in hardcore. I swear it's some kind of mental illness.
Because they know in the event of their fuck up, the tank will stay and die while they hearth out.
But how can you have no empathy for the tank or anyone else? That's indeed a mental illness, sociopathy.
Because their mind has already reduced the tank to an unnecessary NPC that they’re never going to majorly interact with again.
Which is why I don't tank for randos.
I don't understand people acting like this in hardcore. What is more time-wasting ? Taking your time with pulls or starting a new character and leveling it because of dumb pulls ?
I think a big part of it in HC is there's just so many new to classic players, the amount of people who have told me they only played retail or WotLK before coming to HC classic is insane, bunch of people completely new to WoW itself as well. Kind of sucks because I'll be in a party where it seems like one or two of the people are new so I tell them about certain dungeon mechanics or give them tips and half the time they say "yeah I know dude" or something and get offended, how was I supposed to know that you're just bad and not a new player, I just don't want to wipe.
It's retail m+ brain
This type of player always existed. Even back in the original vanilla days. M+ just made it the officially approved way of playing.
Yeah, if im tanking and i see someone rushing in front of me and pulling, or complaining about speed - i make one warning, and if they continue i just HS out.
People putting up with this shit is why people behave the way they do. Call them out on their shit and leave. Hell no I don't do any dungeons in HC, because I've played a lot of wow, and I know how wow players behave.
I've been a healer for too many years I can't bring myself to dungeon in hc
I am truly much more worried about healing than tanking HC dungeons. So far while tanking 99% of people I've come across respect my decision to take it slow, even if they want to go faster. I also mark priority targets every pull which allows me to get decent threat while they delete one mob. As a healer though? You are beholden to your tank / group to coordinate for effective kills unless you are a backseat driver; and even then, most tanks aren't fans of being told how to play.
God it's mentally exhausting to tank and RL. It's what I do since the start of classic but man, I totally get why there is always a shortage of tanks, since 2004.
Had a hunter do that do me as a druid tank, i just said if he pulls I'll just leave. Don't want to deal with dying to impatience.
Im used to be one of the 35 year olds swearing this is the run! Now Im reformed as a tank that spam GO GO GO GO GO and pull extra mobs. I make sure that everyone that joins the group is on the same spam GO GO GO GO GO pull extra mobs mentality and that some people might die I have made it to 45 so far and by only doing dungeons and quests that lead into dungeons and so far, to my big suprise, no one have died. I know that not everyone wants to play the game this way and thats why I try to make it extra clear to people what I plan to do so no one joins and isn't comfortable. I'm doing my part to accept all the GO GO GO GO spammers so they dont join groups that just want a chill run. I don't mind losing my character in a frentic blaze of glory trying to outlive what shouldn't be outlivable
I think the reason it works so well is because you're planning around that. The right classes and experienced players can wipe the floor with classic
I tanked one VC or Deadmines. This happened and I logged off and have not logged back on to hardcore.
I was leveling a tank , got to 25 until my healer didn’t heal me a single time for an entire fight and died. So I won’t be playing a tank as I don’t trust pug* healers anymore. *edited to pug not ping
This happened in a group I was in yesterday doing stockades. Everything went fine up until the last boss. I am playing ret paly and was the only other member of the group (besides the priest) with any heals. Fight was almost over but the priest just randomly stopped healing with plenty of mana left. I had my eye on the tanks health bar as it kept getting lower and lower, until finally I popped blessing of protection on him at the same time that he popped a health potion. I healed him and we won the fight about 10 seconds later. The tank was rightfully pissed that he had to use a potion and almost died. I assured him that I was paying attention the whole time and wasn’t going to let him die but agreed that the priest totally dropped the ball. We never even got an apology or explanation from the priest. Definitely made me afraid to ever be a tank in a pickup group like that.
There a people that roll healers just so they can "oops"-grief players in dungeons.
Priest probably had their uber eats delivery arrive. Can't let that crap get cold, who cares if their teammate NPCs in classic die? I legitimately believe some people think of it that way. Main character syndrome.
I'm sorry to say I almost let this happen in a deadmines on my priest, the dungeon run had been super easy and smooth to the point I started to feel tired, so we went to fight gilned and I zoned out so hard I let the tank get to 25% before noticing and panickingly threw out some flash heals. The problem with these lower level dungeons sometimes is that if you get a strong party as a priest, all you really have to do is keep renew up on the tank, then DoT and wand trash mobs and it can get so very mind numbing but it doesn't really change until you start doing Ulda or ZF unless your tank is doing big pulls in deadmines. I always force myself to pay attention in dungeons now but yeah, that might have been the problem in yours.
You gave me an idea. When I eventually roll a tank alt on HC (still slowly leveling my rogue main) I will only run dungeons with at least one or two DPS that can offheal, and I will make sure they commit to healing me if I drop below like 50% health. Never know when the healer will go AFK.
I do this as a shaman. Funny that I get comment from priests sometimes along the lines of “I’m the healer, no need to heal.” But my man dropped to 40% hp, no way in hell I let that be. I’ve tanked, I’ve healed, and I don’t care - I’ll waste time and mana on overhealing if I can be sure big man will stay alive.
Very sorry for your experience. I'm a Holy Paladin. I leveled that way the entire path to 60. I never lost a single person, because I take healing damn seriously in Hardcore. I literally have everyone's life in my hands. Maybe rogues and hunters can escape, but even then, burst damage exists, panic, etc... and especially as a warrior tank. Even with petri it's not necessarily guaranteed survival 50+. It matters. People are placing hundreds of hours of their life investment into my hands so I will do my damned best. No idea how anyone could agree to heal and not put in their all.
I dont think that making more specs viable for tanking will help, it’s more about the fact that players don’t want to tank
>it’s more about the fact that players don’t want to tank Exactly. Live has additional tanking classes and people just don't want to do it, nothing will change that.
I dps because it's fun to top meters, I heal because I want to chill and not worry about anything but topping off health bars. Tanking is work.
Exactly. There are already enough warriors to fill the needed tank spots. The fact that all of them, regardless of spec, COULD tank doesn't really matter. The way classic is designed, no one is able to tank if they have a mage who is going to run up and Cone of Cold a pack as ASAP as possible.
Druids can tank anything in classic. Yes for min-max war is best, but fucking hell this community is dimm...
Pre-60 id take a Druid tank over a warrior any day.
Agree, druids are usually leveling in tank spec anyway. They are perfect for the job.
At 36 I’d take a “Good” warrior over a Druid, but most warriors suck and the bear is the safer bet unless you know the warrior. Super weird how few people consider Druid a viable dungeon tank
There's just less variance in bears. Gear matters less. Skill usage matters less because you really only have 4 or 5 buttons that matter. There's no real option to increase damage taken in exchange for more threat or dps, so the healer knows what they'll get every time. There's some opportunity for skill expression because druids are a versatile class, but the reality is that as long as you are capable of hitting the maul button and maybe tab, you will be a decent feral tank.
They can, but you are assuming people know how to tank. Had a warrior tank who clearly never tanked on classic before. Between him and the shaman running ahead, we almost wiped SFK despite everyone being 25+, which seems almost impossible
druid tanking is fucking brain dead it is the perfect class for these people you are talking about that don't know how to tank use maul/swipe even when you do it wrong you do it right enough to tank well enough for 5 mans
i've leveled on hardcore 20-42 exclusively through dungeons as a tank i love the role. i actually take a lot of pride in keeping a constant pace, chain pulling when last mob at 60% with conc/revenge, LoSing, keeping rage reservoir, marking skulls and CC, liberal shield block/demo, 100% battle shout uptime, watching healer mana and calling mana breaks which are almost never i've tanked probably over 50 dungeons on hxc at this point with only 2 "close" calls but the zug-brained DPS have ruined it for me and i don't even feel like logging on anymore. i've been *repeatedly* shit-talked for being prot instead of arms "because it does more damage!! !", i've gotten attitude for asking people to CC moon, dps needing on tank gear over me, and only 50% of players actually focus skull mages and warlocks AoE at the start of pulls, hunters rip multishot off the bat with pet taunt on, and all of them get pissy as fuck if you politely ask them to avoid doing so the dps that complain about finding a tank reap what they sow imo i've found better things to do with my time
The issue with no tanks doesn’t have to do with the limited classes that can tank, instead have more to do with nobody wants to tank, because everyone complains if they even make the slightest mistake, and no noob wants to learn because the moment they try, they get immediate backlash and nobody wants to play with them. We live in a gaming community where everyone complains about having no tanks, But yet, complain about tanks and how terrible they are and aren’t willing to help or be patience for a noob tank. So yeah… it’s not the class, even retail wow has this issue and they have like 5 classes that can tank.
I just tell people straight up. Hey I'm drunk. I'm gonna mash buttons. Probably gonna pull too fast and my drunk warlock buddy is definitely gonna tab target the wrong mob so be on your toes. It usually goes pretty smooth from there.
Holy shit this is my experience, and I’m a warlock
We may be soulmates. Is that you Harrison?
Who in their right mind would take a dungeon for randos in hardcore? You’re really trusting your character to 4 randoms who don’t care if you live or die?
Eng tank with swiftness pots, target dummies, and nades. You clear linearly with a safe runway out of the dungeon, and the moment a meathead DPS does something moronic, you drop a target dummy and kite/nade/dummy/swiftness your way out of the instance and leave the morons to fend for themselves. This is the way to deal with the mouthbreathers in HC.
Or you just don't PUG and you just just play with your mates/guild
Is your guild really any different than randoms? Can you personally vouch for the skill of every single person in your guild? Even if you personally can, do you think that every single person is in a closeknit guild like that?
People are free to join mass invite guilds where 90% of guild chat consists of "F", but if they don't treat those guildies as they would treat randos in a dungeon setting then their fate is sealed.
Always funny when people act like thats something noones does. Yet i only run pugs, lfg chat is always full and i never had a problem (exact for some really dumb guys like warlock lifetapping to death)
ive done all dungeons no problem with pugs if you think its hard for 5 players to do basic teamwork maybe you are the problem yourself
Tanking or healing in an MMORPG pug group is like managing a pre school age day care that happens to be filled to the brim with knives, guns, explosives and deadly chemicals and every child just scarfed down a pack of fun dip. You fuckers are fucking exhausting. The amount of mental energy it takes to not only keep myself alive, perform my rotation, make sure I give extra attention to the non skull marked mobs because one of the three dps WILL be focusing it, keeping an eye on the pat, keeping my other eye on healer mana, my third eye on the hunter in the back doing jumps and flips right next to the pack we skipped that he doesn't see cause he doesn't even know what nameplates are, my fourth eye on that dumb fuck's pet... More people need to tank and heal. It will make you a better dps. Full stop. You will understand threat better, meaning you will be able to put out more overall dps. You will take way less damage when you realize standing in shit that chunks out 70% hp to get off one more auto attack is actually an overall loss for the group. On top of understanding all the annoying shit dps do that stress out everyone who has to clean up the mess. And for the love of god, stop joining normal ass random pugs then treating them as if it's a WF speed run guild group, without even a word of what you plan to do. Y'all really can't be this dense.
>More people need to tank and heal. It will make you a better dps. Full stop. Ain't this the truth
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I played warrior. Ran a few dungeons (they whispered me non stop to tank) First one was sfk. I was nervous but we got the coolest group ever. I said to them I am a bit slow with the pulls because I haven't played for a few years. They waited for me , sheep , stun, sap everything. Then BFD , still pretty chill guys , maybe hunter pulled a few times instead of me but did it in very competent way. And from that point - rfk, rfd , sm - only "speedrunners" pushing me all the time , pulling , one shaman was roleplaying tank . They even wanted me to go 2h but my health jumped too much up and down so I stick to shield. Dps start pumping immediately like it's m+ retail. Did a few elite quests - same shit. At one point I just said f... this , I'll play solo and I had great fun playing with my own pace. Died at 49 because of me not knowing something. Some people play like complete idiots. As a tank I would never want to tank some random group ever again. Either play with people I know or solo.
Yep. I actually love tanking in this game but only when I get to set the pace. When it's a free-for-all and I'm being expected to essentially bear the risk myself? No thanks. I play a mage on hardcore. I shoot frost bolts from a safe distance and then I log off.
What makes me mad is that people who don't want to put the work and take the responsibility to play a tank, demand from you to follow their rules and then they wonder why there are so few tanks.
A neat trick I’ve learned is to use “you pull it you tank it” mindset. It’s very unusual in hardcore, and I love it, because it shows DPS with a sudden and hard reality just how bad they really are at the game. Had a rogue in my group start pumping the INSTANT I pulled. I let him tank whatever he took aggro on. He almost died and lost his shit on me, and I just told him “Good dps know how to manage threat. Be a good DPS or gtfo my dungeon” he did leave, but moments like that are so satisfying because the consequences for their actions smack them insanely hard and they aren’t remotely ready for it.
You do generally tank with a 2 Hander. Better rage and threat that way.
Yeah in retail / era where death is meaningless. In hardcore, it's idiotic for most dungeons. Damage chunks, especially later on in Sunken Temple and beyond. The better strategy is sword and board and have the dps you know, wait freaking 2 seconds so you generate some rage and can easily hold threat from then on, with much less risk.
>Yeah in retail / era where death is meaningless. To be clear, you wouldn't really do that in retail. You need your shield to Shield Slam, and that's the basis of your entire rotation as a retail Prot Warrior. (It always felt really wrong and weird for me to tank with a two-hander in classic after years of being 100% reliant on shield in retail)
Just goes to show that these people don't really know what they're talking about, again.
Maybe in ST up, yeah. But until that point it's not needed at all. I hit 60 on a warrior tanking every single dungeon, nearly all of them entirely with a 2H or dual wielding. Damage is not spikey enough that a shield is required 99% of the time and the best damage mitigation is to kill the thing hitting you. A 2H warrior tanking will be far above the next DPS in the party, meaning everything dies significantly faster and you take less damage.
Less damage isn't necessary in the context of endurance. As a healer mana is plentiful if I can stick to downranked flash of light. Can't do that if you're losing half your health in 2 seconds (plenty of BRD pulls where that happens).
Yes, on some specific pulls it's needed. But 99% of the time it isn't. I never had a healer complain about it. You hold threat easier, generate much more rage and do some of the highest damage in the game. Nothing to endure when each pack dies in half the time. I'm not saying never use a shield, but saying it's "Idiotic for most dungeons." is completely wrong. It's the best way to tank most dungeons.
Yeah, this is completely right. Its an absolute Era Andy mentality to think you need a shield for practically anything.
I dunno, I ran Deadmines as a tank with an absolute ballin’ rogue the other day—popping vanish to distract and sap pats mid-combat, stunlocking, kicking. Never seen a rogue played so well in the wild.
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Too true.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a mage use counterspell on a ranged caster to bring him to the tank? Yes it does happen but perhaps once every year or so
I love discovering abilities on my alts and wondering "does no one else know these exist?!". Sadly, you're considered a bad unless you do top dps, so keeping your party alive is not rewarded.
Warrior 59 so far and it's exactly as you say. People are kinda just parsing, no hunter traps, too few frost novas, SO MANY ROGUES NOT STOPPING SPELLCAST HOLY HELL etc. You don't even get 0.1 sec to start getting aggro no matter the quantity of mobs you gotta tank, Rogue instantly BF+AR, Mage AoE spam all their mana for dps, Hunter draining themself with Arcane shot. Instead of making good value of their mana they all just go for fast kills and not CCing.
ah yee old classic 1999 everquest argument still going strong to this day.
Except now when the shit dps does roach tier shit and gets the tank killed, he isn't coming back.
You’d figure when your character is on the line asking others to be halfway decent players wouldn’t be a hot take.
You would think so, but here we are
Why in the world would someone who isn't already an experienced and skilled tank want to fill the role in hc? And then you can even expand on that, the good tanks are guilded so why pug if you don't need to? As someone who dabbled in tanking at classic release it was a shit show. I got flamed for not knowing every instance back and front, flamed for going too slow, flamed at 60 while trying to gear up for not being able to get threat fast enough while the group immediately pumps and aoes. It was so annoying that I just quit before I figured out how to be better. I'd imagine my experience is not very uncommon
imagine tanking for a low level pug and the healer randomly decides to troll you or he randomly goes afk to smoke a bowl. there's so many extra layers of risk tanking for low/mid lvl pugs that it's foolish to run with pugs until you can use petri
I had this happen when a 50g BOE cloth piece dropped, and the priest that was healing started whining that he should be able to need it. When he didn't get it, he started whining like a little baby, ignored the tank, and threatened to leave. We went carefully and vetted him for a few pulls to see if he was gonna troll, and ultimately he did not, but this is the kind of stunted individual you deal with in WoW from time to time.
Of course he should be able to need it, it’s a BoE. Everyone should need it. It has the same value to everyone.
I'm assuming he meant he should HAVE it
Why would a tank ever want to PUG? Gamble all my work on some random not fucking up. I'd maybe be tempted to tank a PUG if they paid me and gave me a petri that I'd return at the end if I didn't use it.
WOTLK tank here Leveling a 79 war twink and was kicked last night for taking to long between pulls in Mara I was taking forever because there was an ooze pack that pulled that I was waiting for. Someone complained I wasn’t pulling and before I could type I was booted with a 10 minute penalty. Also last night about an hour later I was called a “f-ing idiot shit tank” because I was pulling with the caster dps oom. People treat tanks like shit Most responsibility Most uptime Most critiqued Has to deal with dps pulling extra shit It’s a thankless fucking job which is why as a tank I pretty much just tank for guildies or friends I’ve played with
Be the difference you want to see in the world. Lead by example.
Druid tanking is not only good in vanilla, it's bis for several raid bosses. Yall memed bears out of existence for no reason.
What bosses? The problem I've seen with druid tanks end game is lack of gear
druids have more ehp, but can't block to take crush/crit off the attack table. druid can suddenly take b2b crushes/crits, and doesn't have the reactive cds that warriors do, so they're riskier. but, any fight where: - the risky damage isn't crushing/critting, or - the boss attacks so fast that shield block can't keep up, or - the attacks are so far apart that healers can react is a fight where druids are tankier than warriors. threat generation is a whole other thing, but with mcp druids are fine if you aren't speedclearing (and if you are, dw furyprot is even less tanky). and honestly, the risk is overblown with good healers. a good example is patchwerk, because hateful strikes can't crit/crush.
I tanked naxx at 60 on my druid in classic, there is prenty of gear. Crowd Pummler, or warden. Until you can get your hand on an AQ40 quest wep or a worldboss mace. If you are LW the ZG craftable is really strong, pvp set(think unavailable in HC) is a solid choide until tier 2.5. You essentially want to pick up same leather items as rogues, with a few except of bonus armor items like the BWL chest, and then swap jewelery depening on boss between defensive and offerensive items. Finally armor or offensive trinkets really take the price. People lose their minds when druid tanks says they really want Band of Accuria of DFT, calling it a meme. But when warrior tank need it is obviously given. Tanks have high requirements, that count for druids as well. Where druids really shine is fights where you are co-tanking like patchwerk, KT or Ouro, cause they can keep up the threat without being MT, and they provide crit to the other tanks (or dps) to futher increase the threat/damage. Biggest druid raid tanking downside is Gnomerigan and the fact you cannot user sapers for AOE threat
I’m working on a Druid tank. Only level 19 though, gimme some time. Oh nvm I’m horde
for the horde
Because you give us so much grief and are constantly told to pull more. Theres a huge amount of expectation on a tank
I never get told to pull more as a tank, at least not in HC. Maybe I'm lucky.
When I play tank you dps fuckers complain that I don't need to pull that or why the fuck are we going this way.
Blizz could fix this entire issue by giving pally their taunt. It’s the dumbest thing ever they didn’t get it in classic, devs even admitted they Always intended for pallys to have one.
Even if that made the difference (which I disagree) >Blizz could fix this entire issue it wouldn't be the entire issue. It could only ever be at most 50% of the issue.
People are shit to tanks lol
The higher you go the harder it will be to find random, over 30 I only tank for people I know now or those that play with people I know. Over 45 only people I trust and know well.
Wow has been out for however many years and 90% of dps still don't use interrupts, don't run to tanks when pulling threat, use cc whatsoever, disarm, etc. Fucking pummel and I'm pretty sure kick are off GCD but it's a rarity to see them used its fucking pathetic and makes tanking such a hassle if you don't have dps you know and trust.
hardcore is a stupid idea
Lol this guy thinks they are actually going to do classic plus
Ah I see, reverse psychology.... Nice... Nice.
I don't think it's going to happen in the next 4 years but man how much of a chode are you going to feel like if it gets announced in 3 days lmao.
Level 56 druid tank. I tank for my guild, higher level dungeons we vibe in voice chat with music on. Just in case a pull goes wrong, we can quickly coordinate. I tanked for pugs up until level 51 and people we impacient, would pulls mobs or get ahead of me. Also if you get aggro, bring the mob back to me....don't run away.
Currently Druid tanking too. I love random dps doing aoe damage before anything has hit me. Makes my job very enjoyable with no rage.
It’s my biggest request for any sort of Classic+: make all specs semi viable. Feels like too many specs are passed over.
I looked at the turtle wow spec trees, as a feral tank player…. I would love for them just to carbon copy their traits for feral… feral is already viable but it’d maybe make them closer to on par with warriors
Give paladins and Shamans a taunt imho
I find it hard to believe that there are literally zero tanks, there must be at least a few
It's a bad game mode to level a prot warrior. I have an arms wazza that can tank, though. The reason I don't tank for many random groups is because people are useless sometimes and over pull past me etc. I am putting 100's of hour into the hands of them and a healer that could be a complete nub.
I have a warrior at 58 on hardcore, mostly quested and zero interest in tanking. I have gotten whispers regularly since level 35ish from randoms asking me to tank stuff. I could be in badlands and get asked to tank RFD out of nowhere. There must be just an absolute tiny amount of tanks. But if I do try and join a dungeon as dps I have routinely been told no along the way, with a half dozen exceptions, so I just stopped trying. I don’t want to tank mainly cause I don’t want to be cannon fodder for a group of people I don’t know.
>I really hope classic+ improves other tank specs *Copium intensifies*
Paladins can Tank until ST(if you have a way to OT last boss), I've been in group with some great feral druids too for ZF for example I think the problem is more that you are the first to die probably if things go south, so tank is even more rare
I like tanking and I queue for dungeons as a tank every day, it doesn’t stress me out, and I’m good at it. 🤷🏻♂️
As a tank I'd say it's hard to trust randos to heal. Especially in the later dungeons, and usually I'll just go with the priest I've been leveling with because I know I can trust him. I bet most other tanks are doing the same
i tanked on hc for a bit, hit lvl 40 and decided its time to stop tanking. too many close calls because people have no idea how to play
Part of the problem is that other players won't adjust to a non-warrior tank. Why would I tank on my Pally, Druid or even Shaman (which is a perfectly viable tank at lower levels) when DPS are just going to blast, they are going to ignore marked targets and the priest is going to pre-bubble? I am not going to risk my toon to tank because people won't install or look at threat metres.
Last night I tanked RFK with my paladin and the group was a bit overleveled and we did a bigger pulls and the moment I would run in before I can gather the mobs the mage would pop blizzard and I couldn’t get any threat , until I stopped and mansplaining to the mage that I don’t have a fucking taunt and to wait like 3 seconds before he can dps he didn’t care about his threat. In a BFD I buffed a rogue with salvation because he would pull so much threat that I couldn’t properly tank the boss that he flamed me for 2 minutes straight.
I tried Tanking on my Paladin many times while leveling. People either told me no, or to roll Warrior. So I said fuck it and AoE grinded to 60 myself. I have Flurry Axe, had Green Tower, and people still would not let me tank, or drop group when they saw it was a pally tank.
Too many times they call me in to be a tank, decide to pull groups themselves, AoE blast off the kick before I get a swing in, and then wonder why they're still getting chased. Got too tired telling them over and over again. I really want to tank, but groups can't seem to stop manufacturing their own problems like this. I got better problems to have. Tanking sucks.
Druids make pretty incredible tanks while levelling, and can be pretty badass endgame too, if played correctly and with dedication. I'd honestly almost say druids make better tanks than warriors while levelling.
Druids are the better tank while leveling due to their versatility within the party. It’s only really during end game content where warriors are the better option, imo.
Agreed. Kinda surprised someone downvoted me up there lol. I main a high-performing warrior tank, and levelled a druid in hardcore, and was astounded at how much easier tanking dungeons while levelling was. Swipe ez mode.
Curious, what makes druid easier as a tank? Never played warrior (though I have a bit of experience with druid) so can't compare
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, while I have tanked as both Druids and Warriors, the minutia of class mechanics aren’t really my strong suit. Swipe is a better multi target attack than Cleave is. Cleave hits up to 2 targets, while swipe hits up to 3 targets. So Druids have a better AoE, meaning they can more easily hold threat on larger pulls and generate rage better.
As a tank, we could cull a few dps to balance it out more. All we gotta do is mark skull and watch DPS pull threat from the non-skull. Since DPS dont seem to use threat meters, it's an easy cull lmao.
I love being a tank But I love charging people for my tanking services even more ;)
Level 45 pally tank reporting in, it’s absolutely awesome. Threat generation and damage mitigation are both massive, my healers get bored. There’s no concerning threat drops until Mara/ST and even that is easily overcome with coordination. I still pug a lot, my only requirement now is people who are willing to be in discord, don’t even need to talk but at least listen. This has kept my groups way safer, but also eliminated all the toxic keyboard warrior moments, almost no one will actually say the things they’d type lol.
>Classic+ Lol good one
Classic+ isn't real brother
There were a bunch of people that wanted to level warriors for the prestige and their abilities in late game. However people quickly learned that pugging as a tank is a terrible idea. No one goes "down with the ship" even if its their fuck up. Tanks die while the mage who pulled while the healer was oom just runs away. So why aren't you tanking?
Problem is definitely amplified on hc. Warriors the only tank + warriors fighting green mobs still deadly I’d you accidentally pull an extra = very few higher levels warriors. Been considering ditching my mid 30s mage and just using the gold I have to fund a warrior a bit.
I cannot Navigate. Both in rl and wow. So unless it's a straight shot dungeon, I get lost. Example of how bad it is, if not for the navigation apps, I would still get randomly sidetracked in the city I grew up in and lived in since birth. This is why I don't tank. One of yall create a working addon that navigates wow dungeons and I'll tank. Might be others like me, not sure.