Lack of Available Tanking in WoW

[Ophi]

As a person who has leveled all ten classes to 80, tanked with all possible tank classes and healed with all possible healing classes, and had a feral tank as a main...

Tanking is just so much more work than healing or DPS.

So much more is on your shoulders.

The blame is automatically directed to you.

You're expected to know every single thing about an instance before even stepping foot into it.

You're expected to be the leader.

You're expected to make many decisions, even in PuGs, that you may not know the answer to yourself.

You're expected to be constantly aware of every little thing that's going on at all times. One minor slip is much, much more noticeable if it's the tank's mistake.

And I leveled tanking, too, and dealing with newbies as a tank and team leader is just infuriating at times.

Besides, leveling DPS is faster solo.

And easier.

And people are lazy and want easy roles.

 

[ultrachicken]

When I reached level 80 as a pally, I was excited to do some of the cool instances that were 80

exclusive. Then I learned that I didn't have good enough gear, so I ran some slightly lower-level

instances to get some. However, people kept rolling "need" on the gear I was working for, if

anyone died it was my fault, and I was always the first one kicked if something went wrong.

If people weren't such asses to the tanks, then maybe there would be more of them.

 

[darkknight9]

I takes a certain type to want to tank, and there's two types, one just likes to be useful, and enjoys tanking for that reason, you'll find they probably have an aly holy priest or the like too, and then there's the tanks who want to be the hero and centre of attention.

I stopped playing a year ago but my fav char was a tauren warrior who finally got titan grip and whom I could off tank with. I could even tank if my bud the healer priest dude was with. Worked best with a pally that liked to be the center of attention, and I would make sure noone had an easy time getting to the casters behind him. FUN!

I did hate being laughed at for not doing the "sword and board" thing though. Leave me and my huge freaking hammers alone.

 

[Flying-Emu]

I forgot to mention that tanks are either the nicest people in the game or elitist pricks. I'm personally the latter, but it's a defense mechanism; I played WoW when Warriors were the WORST tanks in the game, and people sneered at me for daring to tank with such a gimped class. I suppose I have a little class-patriotism; can't stand paladin tanks who complain about it being hard to tank, when it's still way easier for them to tank compared to warriors pre-Thunderclap buff.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

As someone who has played in all three roles, I much rather play a DPS over a healer or a tank. Its a lot less stressful. I don't have to make sure that I'm doing enough damage to keep the target on me, nor do I have to worry about making sure nobody dies, DPS is also a lot more fun to play in my opinion.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I takes a certain type to want to tank, and there's two types, one just likes to be useful, and enjoys tanking for that reason, you'll find they probably have an aly holy priest or the like too, and then there's the tanks who want to be the hero and centre of attention.

I stopped playing a year ago but my fav char was a tauren warrior who finally got titan grip and whom I could off tank with. I could even tank if my bud the healer priest dude was with. Worked best with a pally that liked to be the center of attention, and I would make sure noone had an easy time getting to the casters behind him. FUN!

I did hate being laughed at for not doing the "sword and board" thing though. Leave me and my huge freaking hammers alone.

This attitude is all over WOW.

My opinion is, and I wish it was more widespread, if the party is killing the enemy and not dying, whatever everyone is doing is WORKING. The tank doesn't need to respec, the DPS doesn't need better epics, and the healers gems and glyphs are not WRONG... they're just different to your opinion of what's best.

So long as you eventually get to the end and kill the final boss, for Thrall's sake, just let people enjoy playing the game their way.

Sure I'd be sceptical about your dual wielding, no shield tank, but if you tell me you can tank, I'll give you a go, and I'll go easy on the DPS to start to see how things go.

Annoyed me to hell, when I kept getting told the only way I was allowed to play my mage was to spec arcane.

 

[Yureina]

I personally don't understand it. But... I was one of those strange people who actually enjoyed healing and tanking stuff. I hated doing DPS because it all seemed really boring and repetitive to me. I had much more fun healing or tanking stuff. In other words... I don't have these sorts of problems because I usually am the person doing one of these two vital group roles. I loved both very much. :3

 

[Jenkins]

Ok, so I play WoW religiously off and on, and I'm just wondering why you can never find a reliable tank for instances? And this is at any level, not just 70 heroics and whatnot. You have 3 different tanking classes, 2 of which can easily switch from healing to tanking, but most people don't want to go feral druid, or protection pally. I'm just wondering what shuns people from wanting to take a class that becomes the focus of an instance battle.

i leveled up as a tankadin but tanking burns me out so much I cant play anymore, its really draining.

 

[Jandau]

It's the hardest role in the game. It requires the largest amount of situational awareness since the Tank always has to be on his toes. Fights tend to move unpredictably and it's the Tank's job to make them predictable, to make sure all the enemies are exactly where they need to be and attacking only the Tank. One might argue that Healing is hard as well, but as a person who played and raided with a Resto Shaman, as well as two Tanks (Pally and Warrior), Healing is a walk in the park once you set up your controls properly. You just follow the health bars and enjoy the scenery.

Also, the tank is not only fighting the enemies, but also his allies. This mostly reffers to DPS not following kill orders, attacking the wrong mob, AoEing before the Tank can build enough threat on all the mobs, rushing through before the Tank and the Healer can recover, pulling and then expecting the Tank to save their arse, etc. This also ties into the next point...

... which is that it's always the Tank's fault. If the DPS goes crazy, nukes too much or on the wrong mob, draws aggro and then dies in two hits, who will the party blame? The Tank, of course. Each and every Tank has heard the "Hold aggro FFS!" line too many times, even when it was not his fault. You might say Healers get yelled at as well, but most of the time Healers are blamed if the Tank dies. If anyone else dies, people blame the Tank.

Also, nobody appreciates a good Tank. If something goes wrong, blame the Tank. If nothing goes wrong, then praise everyone EXCEPT the Tank, that's how most people think. If they die, it was because they had a "fail tank", if they win then it must have been because of their "imba DPS".

Basically, Tanks have the hardest and most stressful job, get blamed for everyone else's screwups and rarely get praise for their good work. The only upside is that if you can stick with it you can usually get groups for instances simply by whistling. I've even had bidding wars started over my Tank...

As for the argument that Tanks are harder to level up, that's bullshit, at least in WoW. Feral Druids are a Tank AND a DPS spec, Deathknights as well. Prot Warriors do less damage than Arms or Fury, but have much higher survivability which reduces downtime and lets them take on harder encounters. Prot Paladins are a bit slow on the grind, but they just can't die. It all evens out.

 

[Choppaduel]

people just like to see those big yellow numbers fly across the screen

 

[sneakypenguin]

Its hard to gear for a tank. I would love to tank with my dk, but after TBC instances and the early WotLK ones I was just under geared. Its especially hard with a DK because you had to put defense on everything just to get 540def or whatever it was, not sure if 4.0 changed that though.

Up to 60 you don't even need a tank anymore though, DPS is through the roof and you can 2-3 man pretty much anything if you have heals/selfheals.

 

[Broderick]

Its hard to gear for a tank. I would love to tank with my dk, but after TBC instances and the early WotLK ones I was just under geared. Its especially hard with a DK because you had to put defense on everything just to get 540def or whatever it was, not sure if 4.0 changed that though.

Defence as a stat has been removed from the game, and you can now get "capped" through talants.

Oh btw...this thread is old...like 2 years old, things are quite a bit different now in WoW, so some of the points that people made are quite out of date.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Its hard to gear for a tank. I would love to tank with my dk, but after TBC instances and the early WotLK ones I was just under geared. Its especially hard with a DK because you had to put defense on everything just to get 540def or whatever it was, not sure if 4.0 changed that though.

Defence as a stat has been removed from the game, and you can now get "capped" through talants.

Oh btw...this thread is old...like 2 years old, things are quite a bit different now in WoW, so some of the points that people made are quite out of date.

O wow crazy thread necro lol.

 

[PurpleSky]

One man's experience is treated like it's a general truth, makes sense to me....

 

[Foxtrotk72]

I tried tanking but shit at holding aggro on my dk so i just went DPS I'm a shit tank and most dk tanks i saw before the big patch getting ready for Cat they were blood tanking which i can understand but everyone nows they swapped the talents around i have more xp for dps than tanking

 

[Infernostrider]

while i still played i was a prot warrior who did every 80 heroic every day...and pugged all raids every week...
and i bloody loved it! no idea why tanking isnt that popular. i've rarely had any problems with incompetent healers, either..it's just as much the tanks lack of skill that makes them die, but in their arrogance they refuse to see that and blame it on undergeared pugs

 

[ffs-dontcare]

Am I seriously the only one who noticed this thread is well over two years old?

I find that the lack of tanks is part of a horrific cycle. What happens is something like this:

- Tanks are tired of being given crap for circumstances outside their control.
- Tanks re-roll en masse to DPS and heals, though the latter are still far rarer than the former depending on your battle-group.
- Not enough tanks to go around. Instance queues become longer and longer.
- DPS silently rejoice every time they get into a group.
- The few remaining tanks left gain a false sense of superiority and entitlement. To them, they are the absolute, unrivaled leader of the group no matter the circumstances and what they say goes. If not, they throw a tantrum and threaten to leave or kick someone if they don't get their way.

And the cycle continues.

Personally, I dislike tanking. I tried it a few times. It wasn't fun. I did my job adequately the first time, mind you. And the people were very patient and understanding when I told them that I hadn't tanked before. Of course, this was shortly before the dungeon queue thingy was implemented, back when people still had to ask around for other players to join their groups. I was happy to help them out, and we got through to the end magnificently. But I just don't see comradeship like this anymore because of the "I want to do this quickly in 10 minutes or less and get rewards for it, I don't care if you're new HURRY UP NNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1" attitude currently plaguing the game.

I takes a certain type to want to tank, and there's two types, one just likes to be useful, and enjoys tanking for that reason, you'll find they probably have an aly holy priest or the like too, and then there's the tanks who want to be the hero and centre of attention.

I stopped playing a year ago but my fav char was a tauren warrior who finally got titan grip and whom I could off tank with. I could even tank if my bud the healer priest dude was with. Worked best with a pally that liked to be the center of attention, and I would make sure noone had an easy time getting to the casters behind him. FUN!

I did hate being laughed at for not doing the "sword and board" thing though. Leave me and my huge freaking hammers alone.

This attitude is all over WOW.

My opinion is, and I wish it was more widespread, if the party is killing the enemy and not dying, whatever everyone is doing is WORKING. The tank doesn't need to respec, the DPS doesn't need better epics, and the healers gems and glyphs are not WRONG... they're just different to your opinion of what's best.

So long as you eventually get to the end and kill the final boss, for Thrall's sake, just let people enjoy playing the game their way.

Sure I'd be sceptical about your dual wielding, no shield tank, but if you tell me you can tank, I'll give you a go, and I'll go easy on the DPS to start to see how things go.

Annoyed me to hell, when I kept getting told the only way I was allowed to play my mage was to spec arcane.

You know what? I've agreed with this throughout the entire time I've played WoW. I always maintain that talents were put in the game for the sake of customization as well as specialization, and yet I've been called out on having a hybrid PvE-PvP spec while leveling up on a PvP realm. Why the hell does it even happen? How is it their business? People who piss and moan about things like one-tree specs and pedantic crap like that are even worse than those max-level guys who corpse camp you in Hillsbrad for two hours straight.

For kicks and giggles, and just because I want to, I'm sticking to whatever specs I wish (for the sake of my own customization) because thus far, nothing I've done has held anyone else (including myself) back.

Truth be told, I'm reminded of this:

 

[pumasuit]

I know a lot of folks who like to WoW by themselves and grind through quests as a one-person wrecking crew. The Prot Warrior doesn't allow for that kind of ability, so I do agree that it takes a certain kind of person who CHOOSES to rely on others to help complete a quest. A Prot Warrior knows that they are only as good as the people that surround them. The true tank holds aggro and takes the abuse. The whipping boy of any party. "You there - Apathi...whatever your name is. Go hold aggro."
We walk a higher path, my good fellows.

 

[MrJoyless]

The second the Devs at WoW started to make Paladins good at DPS, Tanking, AND Healing. I stopped playing WoW about 8 months after BC from lack of 10 man instances and their continued reliance of large raids (yes it think getting 25 people to not be retards for 3 hours is silly). Recently one of my employees was explaining to me that a geared out Pally could main tank in the BIG raids, ICC etc, because they were able to out threat (because it was mostly based on spell power) a warriors threat (because it was mostly based on static abilities that couldnt keep up with the gear curve at the top tiers)

Back when i played WoW before BC and even after BC warriors were the #1 tank, yes other classes like pallies and druids could out tank them in SOME situations, just like warriors could out DPS rogues in SOME situations, but once a game goes all crazy and lets hybrid classes EXCEED another classes primary raiding function the game begins to go south and thats when you see cracks start to form in gameplay. How do you balance this and that with all the overlap, everything just starts tasting vanilla, and guess what, vanilla sucks.