45 min LFR queue as DPS. Yes, it's about tanks...

[Scinder]

<snip>

You had me going. For awhile there I thought you actually grasped some of the reasons why tanks choose to not do LFR. That is until you made this post. You really have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to being a tank. Either that or your view of the tanking role is clearly misguided.

Is this you? If so, I see a serious lack of raiding experience.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ating/advanced

[Louis CK]

This is not true. Imagine working your job, getting paid the wage you do. Now you see the company hiring others. The new hires do nothing and they are getting paid the same as you. It's about fairness in terms of work done to compensation. It could also be called distributive justice. It evokes emotion, not because a person wishes to be lazy. You see the same thing in terms of welfare, and any other "handouts." Some people do want to be lazy, others want fairness.

First, your scenario has nothing to do with tanks. They have no more to do than anyone else (and many times they have less to do). It's not "okay" for anyone to go AFK when they should be there fighting, it has nothing to do with whether you're a tank or not.

Also, as far as your scenario goes, I've been the one hiring since I was 19, because I'm the guy who takes pride in his work and doesn't sit around making excuses for myself. If there's a problem, I fix it, if I fuck up, I find out how to avoid it in the future. A mindset that many tanks in this thread seem to lack.

I work hard in my real life, and I work just as hard in my gaming when I play. It's a personality thing. It's called pride.

- - - Updated - - -

You had me going. For awhile there I thought you actually grasped some of the reasons why tanks choose to not do LFR. That is until you made this post. You really have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to being a tank. Either that or your view of the tanking role is clearly misguided.

Is this you? If so, I see a serious lack of raiding experience.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ating/advanced

That's probably me, yes. I sold my Paladin/Druid in Cata after my guild stopped raiding, and began this account after DS released. You're right, on that character I have a lack of raiding this expansion due to the fact that for much of this year I spent time relocating from PA to FL and back, beginning a new job, being laid off, losing my apartment and all my belongings, living in my car for 2 months, working two jobs for 80 hours a week in order to get back on my feet, and now finally able to play full time again.

I resubbed about two weeks ago and I'm gearing up to find a raiding guild again. Lacking gear ATM and MoP raiding experience when I've been away for most of the expansion doesn't really mean a lot to me. I will find a guild again and be back in HM raiding by next expansion.

Anything else you'd like to know?

[the]

It's not "okay" for anyone to go AFK when they should be there fighting, it has nothing to do with whether you're a tank or not.

DPS do go afk. A tanks sees this. The tank is upset that the DPS member is not doing their fair share. It creates an emotional response.

It's not "okay" for anyone to go AFK when they should be there fighting, it has nothing to do with whether you're a tank or not.

This is the emotional response. But what happens? The person is AFK. They get the same chance at loot that the tank does. It's not fair. You clearly understand fairness in saying that it's not okay to AFK. But tanks see this all the time. Nobody calls out the DPS for being bad. DPS dying to avoidable mechanics is actually expected in LFR. A tank dying to avoidable mechanics will get called out. If the DPS is called out by the tank, often the response will be "who cares if the boss is dead?" A tank dying to avoidable mechanics will get booted because the boss will not be dead.

[Odina]

I used to love tanking on my warrior, until they swapped over to the active mitigation model. I had my rage to manage, I still had to watch my health in case of a spike in damage, I still had to try and pull good damage, and I felt like a tank.

The active mitigation model just isn't fun to me. I don't feel like a warrior, balancing my defenses with my attacks. I feel like everything I do gets converted to defense. I might as well dual wield shields because it'd help me block better. I can only DPS when my procs tell me to, and I need to spend every point of rage in defensive cooldowns.
It made it less fun to play my warrior. I'm not balancing anything, I'm waiting for procs so I can do damage while waiting for myself to take damage so I can defend against it, all the while waiting for something interesting to happen so I can do something other than stand around. I don't feel like a tank anymore; I feel like a sentient brick wall.

Then you need to revisit the prot war and come join in the fun Not sure where you got that you can only dps when procs tell you but wars can dps and keep incoming dmg down just fine with active mitigation. I find this way more fun than "OK CTC capped toss up s.block as mcuh as possible and bleed rage intto a HS that hits like a wet noodle". I mean there is no way in the CTC days it was pretty much meat shield sit and get hit and do rotation ehile now you can do things like : http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i...?s=1466&e=1815 . 5.4 prot war = you get to have fun doing great dps and mitigating...it's the best of the tank and dps world <3 it!

I really don't know how you feel that tanks can just sit around doing nothing untill they get hit... so much to do...so many spells to be cast...I wish I had more off the GCD spells to be able to ahve more time to use them :P If buffs cast arent looking something like http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i...tab-auras-cast then you are only playing part of the tank role...and I only concider myself a decent tank with a lot to learn. If anything I would think that the fact there is so much to do is a deternet to people starting to tank rather than not enough to do!

[Louis CK]

"Pride. It is the most insidious of Sha. It is good, until it is bad, and then it is more dangerous than all the others combined." -Emperor Shaohao

Pride can be viewed in a lot of ways. Some people are prideful of themselves with no reason to be; They feel they are better than others without needing to do anything to prove it. They are the ones who choose to AFK through LFR. Why bother trying when you're already SO MUCH BETTER than all these scrubs in LFR? Let them carry you for once.
Other people use their pride to fuel their ambitions, such as yourself. That is a good thing. But not everyone views it as you do, and that is where LFR failures tend to happen.

It's funny that this correlates so well with online experiences. Online hatred, violence, doubt, etc. affect those who aren't as used to dealing with them in their lives. But Pride affects us all in some way, shape, or form. And when one person's pride gets in the way, it affects everyone around.

My pride stems from the work I do. I work hard and care very much about being good at what I do.

That doesn't mean I go around putting others down or talking myself up, that's just ignorant.

And concerning this thread, as I've said many times, I respect good tanks who take pride in what they do and take responsibility for their actions, and most of those tanks don't step foot in LFR.

What frustrates me, once again, are those who can't take their way out of a wet paper bag but expect everyone to treat them like gods.

Big difference, and one I think some are missing when responding to me.

[Deleted]

Problem is that wow community has created an extra role for tanks in LFR wich is being a "leader" aswell.

People doing LFR on most part don't want to be a "leader" of 20+ people who are normaly babies and "LOL-go-go-go" and normaly have no clue what they are doing because they know that LFR is "free purples" and it's way too easy so you don't even need to try to do anything well.

My favorite class/spec in the entire game is protection warrior but i never touch it for any non-guild group content, simply because i have no patience whatsoever to be a "leader" of moronic people. It doesn't realy matter if i'm a good/excelent/average/bad tank, it's just that i have no inclination to put up with that. Since as a tank i normaly have a spot in most content i want, i can choose what to do and avoid LFR like the plague.

As long as wow comunity and encounter mechanics make the tank in the spotlight as the leader and babysitter of the group and LFR is as easy as it is atm, there is no way you'll see a good amount of tanks doing it, no matter how interessesting their classes are.

[Clrg]

I have a druid tank and the reason i dont tank in lfr is because tanks are an easy target to blame, there is only 2 tanks vs 17 dps, you can easily target two player when they make a mistake, but if a bunch of dps are dying for not moving of the fire people just deal with it because they are lazy to remove these people, Also the tanks and healer are the roles that require most attention and pressure in lfr, while a dps can just sit and do 30-40k dps, die from stuff in the ground and receive loot for it. If one of the tank goes afk is a wipe unless you are geared enough to solo tank the fight.

[jason1975]

Well then let's put it like this:

What is the role of a tank in LFR?

Make boss attack you

Move out of bad stuff

Pick up other bad things that might come out, which is rare in LFR

Taunt occasionally, and if you're feeling frisky, pop a survival CD


What is the role of a healer in LFR?

Keep health pools from reaching 0.

Move out of bad stuff.

Make up for people who aren't moving out of bad stuff.

Take bad things off of people.

Handle the various mechanics such as stacking, spreading, freeing others from bad things, target switching, etc etc


What is the role of a DPS in LFR?

Damage the boss

Stay out of bad stuff

If you're good, make up for where the tank lacks in threat generation by throttling your DPS

Handle the various mechanics such as stacking, spreading, freeing others from bad things, target switching, etc etc



Tanks don't do any more work than anyone else in the raid. And it could be argued that they can get by with less than others in the raid.

Do I expect you to be at your keyboard the whole time? Yep, just like I expect that of everyone. Using the "I have to be there the whole time while others can AFK" is just a stupid argument. It's basically saying, "I wish I could AFK"

At this point it's not even clear what you're attempting to argue. It seems you're more interested in "demonstrating" that tanks don't have more responsibility than a DPS or Healer. On the face of it alone, I think most people who actually play the game will reject that argument. And of course there is the fact that if you were correct, there wouldn't be a tank shortage in the first place (or perhaps you're trying to argue there is no tank shortage? . . . Again you're all over the place).

Overly reducing the LFR experience and leaving out all the important parts (as your post does above) just makes it much worse. I don't find you credible in any respect whatsoever.

[fears]

Knightpt pretty much hit the nail on the head. Even as dps I always have to set things up so the group doesn't fail if I decide to go. Basically it's Galk and Nazgrim but those fights are long and frustrating to wipe to so it's bite the bullet and spoon feed people or waste your own time. Think of lei-shin when transition phase markers mattered and before they gutted the whole mechanic.

Coupled with the fact people want it to be easy and many have the "go-go-go" mentaility is the problem most of the raid doesn't speak english. Majority of all my lfrs are loaded with Brazilians. Now it's not a race/culture bashing thing I just don't speak portuguese, nor will I learn to play a video game. In the past I'd google translate what was said by the other tanks but I don't feel I should have to jump through those hoops.

People who wish to roll the dice and do lfr with 24 strangers will have that option, but flex came along and the ability to get better gear in a smaller setting is a way better alternative.

[Deleted]

I used to love tanking on my warrior, until they swapped over to the active mitigation model. I had my rage to manage, I still had to watch my health in case of a spike in damage, I still had to try and pull good damage, and I felt like a tank.

The active mitigation model just isn't fun to me. I don't feel like a warrior, balancing my defenses with my attacks. I feel like everything I do gets converted to defense. I might as well dual wield shields because it'd help me block better. I can only DPS when my procs tell me to, and I need to spend every point of rage in defensive cooldowns. Hell, I hit max rage in dungeons and raids more than I ever did when I gained rage from getting attacked, and that's sad! But if I dare hit that heroic strike at the wrong time, I won't have my defenses to keep me alive!

It made it less fun to play my warrior. I'm not balancing anything, I'm waiting for procs so I can do damage while waiting for myself to take damage so I can defend against it, all the while waiting for something interesting to happen so I can do something other than stand around. I don't feel like a tank anymore; I feel like a sentient brick wall.

This. Bubble tanking is not fun for me, either. Evasion tanking, with "OHSHIT!" buttons which can be used very rarely I liked. Also even ignoring the fact that there are very toxic people in almost every LFR, you just cannot go inot LFR with crap gear as a tank. You can start LFR in blues, even as heal, as I did with my priest. With dps it is even more easy. I went into LFR with my hunterd in blues, first week I spend on 6-8 place for damage. Now, I am in my second week, can raid the Orgrimar raid and stay around 2-4 place for damage. Try that with a tank. You either die, because someone is ignoring every mechanic and people scream at you because they have more HP then you do in your tank gear. Or you lose aggro, because someone came into LFR in his HC-mode gear to have fun and nukes all out.
Also, everyone expects everyone else to know everything about the instance and they get pissed, if someone asks a question or does something 10 other people do, but it is the wrong thing to do. At least that is how it feels like.

PS. My LFR groups tend to wait for heals, not tanks. Even when I go as heal, we still have to wait for other heals.

[La]

I think it's just the simple fact that it takes a certain type of person to play a tank, for a lot of different reasons. Tanking is boring and unfun to a lot of TANKS, but as 'simple' as tanking might seem in a raid environment to most people, once you get into heroic raiding use of personal CDs and communication between healers for CDs etc is something that will show you who is a good tank.

I'll tell you why I don't tank, it's because it's impossible to find a guild as a tank. If you're looking long term, or 'I don't want to be in LFR forever', tanking is the last option to pick to get a start in the raid world.

But if we're talking LFR, tanking is no different than dpsing/healing. Not sure what the problem is.

[Odina]

Problem is that wow community has created an extra role for tanks in LFR wich is being a "leader" aswell..

It's nto an LFR thing this was in the game since before it was a game :P! Tanks traditionally set the pace explained strats etc. i remeber doing dungeons for the first time in vanilla and you just listened to how the tank wanted to do it.... it mattered not if you knew uber amazing way to do XYZ if the tank liked ZYX instead you did ZYX or went with another group next time.

In LFR as I have said before it makes sense ...if a tank fucks up chances are your gonna wipe as such they should know the basic fight mechanics to tank it with minimal stress and as such should be the ones leading as chances are much higher 1 of the 2 tanks knows whats going on compared to the rest becuase they shoudl know what and how they will be tanking it.

[Zxzas]

The active mitigation is what killed it for some tanks I knew. Granted it is more "play smart, stay alive", but I think some tanks miss the passiveness, and only needing to use their "oh shiite buttons."

[Louis CK]

At this point it's not even clear what you're attempting to argue. It seems you're more interested in "demonstrating" that tanks don't have more responsibility than a DPS or Healer. On the face of it alone, I think most people who actually play the game will reject that argument. And of course there is the fact that if you were correct, there wouldn't be a tank shortage in the first place (or perhaps you're trying to argue there is no tank shortage? . . . Again you're all over the place).

Overly reducing the LFR experience and leaving out all the important parts (as your post does above) just makes it much worse. I don't find you credible in any respect whatsoever.

I feel with new people coming in halfway through a thread, maybe I should sum up the points I've been making, since I don't believe they're being followed in context:

-Lower skilled players refuse to get into tanking because of the assumed responsibility involved. Although tanking in LFR takes little more responsibility than any other role, these players are afraid of it

-Higher skilled players generally avoid tanking because they find it boring

-Bad tanks in LFR who complain about "abuse" usually encounter this because of things they do wrong, and that's an abuse that every role in LFR experiences. It doesn't make it okay, but LFR is a terrible environment do reverting, not just tanks.

-Good tanks are not generally found in LFR because they have no reason to go (they're usually geared just fine from their own guild)

-Bad tanks generally roll a tank because they feel that it will entitle them to something no matter how poorly they play, and they get upset when others don't agree with this entitlement

-Good tanks roll a tank because they enjoy the role and responsibility involved, a responsibility seldom found in LFR.

To sum it up: Good tanks roll tank for the right reasons and do well outside of LFR. Bad tanks roll tank for the wrong reasons and put themselves through hell because they're not good enough for real raiding. Instead, they complain.

These are general statements, so there will be specific examples where this differs.

The overall point I'm trying to get at is this: if you complain and point fingers at everyone but yourself just because you're a tank, you won't get very far in the game.

[XtremeC0der]

If I'm new to tanking then why would I step into LFR when as a dps I've seen so many tanks bashed on when things go bad even if it's note their fault? If I'm geared and experienced then why would I want to carry a bunch of rude, undeserving dps who have nothing better to do then whine about their 45 minute queue time while doing subpar dps?

Sums up my feelings exactly. All I do in WoW, and have done for almost as long as I've been playing, is tank. I've tanked early heroic progression as well as realm-firsts, and I've raided seriously on all tank classes to date (including Monk). I still run into situation in LFR where someone (usually a DPS, simply because there are more of them...) does something, err, "without forethought", and wipes the raid. The result is always the same: some DPS (almost always the guy that did something stupid to begin with) starts blaming tanks for the wipe, be it positioning, not calling things out for everyone else in realtime, or any number of reasons. And this is directed to a tank that is as experienced (and geared if I'm on one of my primary toons for weekly VP cap) as I am, and can shrug it off or gently rebut with the sequence of events that actually led to us wiping.

Also, just earlier today, I queued on my main (ilvl 560 prot pally) for daily heroic to finish valor cap. So, zone in, I run ahead and start killing trash like I and so many other tanks always have. 2 out of 3 dps follow, then the third dps catches up and along we go. Then, out of nowhere, the healer starts raging in party chat "what's up your ***!!? not even a readycheck or anything to see if everyone is ready before you just go and run in?"... and he went on for a while. I ultimately just said "you're the only one that's complaining, so i don't see a problem with it. if i actually needed heals in here i would have waited and made sure you were ready. but i don't, so the dps and i started clearing trash while we waited for you."

I'm sure that newer tanks with less experience tanking get it even worse... not the kind of environment I'd want to pay money to put myself in. So, any tanks that know their role have their guilds and reg/flex raid groups and don't need to run LFR unless they're gearing up another tank (generally), and those that don't know how to tank and want to learn, or are new to it and still lack complete confidence in their ability to tank, are forced to make the decision between trying and getting this sort of treatment, or simply not doing it at all.

[Murderdoll]

Well then let's put it like this:

What is the role of a tank in LFR?

SNIP

What a ridiculously simplistic view of it.

Its like comparing a dog and a cat and coming to the conclusion that they both hair fur and four legs, therefore they are the same.

[YeahNo]

The active mitigation is what killed it for some tanks I knew. Granted it is more "play smart, stay alive", but I think some tanks miss the passiveness, and only needing to use their "oh shiite buttons."

I think this is a good complaint, because I do know some guildies that prefer their defenses to be passive and less complex. I think it'd be neat to have some major glyph options to convert active mitigation abilities into weak passives for those who are basically just running LFR and LFD. Make them suboptimal in 99% of cases, but good for folks who don't want to micromanage their defensive abilities.

[Louis CK]

What a ridiculously simplistic view of it.

Its like comparing a dog and a cat and coming to the conclusion that they both hair fur and four legs, therefore they are the same.

It's LFR. That is an accurate view of it. If we were discussing normal or HM tanking, then yeah, that would be an absurd summation of tanking. But LFR is absurdly simple for every role.

[Kagonos]

There are a number of reasons why a) tanks avoid LFR and b) people avoid playing tanks.

I would suggest that the biggest reason that tanking in LFR is avoided is because tanks are in the spotlight. Period. There are two tanks and that means that you would be one of two. Those two people, above all others, are expected to know what the fight entails, and what each particular boss is supposed to do and they dictate the rate at which trash is pulled in between bosses. On top of that, they are fully expected to know exactly WHICH trash mobs need to be pulled and which do not, and woe be to the tank who pulls even one more mob than the absolute minimum necessary to get to the next boss. If a DPS or healer accidentally pulls trash that the group insisted on skipping, it's on the tank to recognize this and immediately get aggro and pull that person's ass out of the fire. Or it's on the healer(s) to prevent that person from dying.

If a tank dies in a fight, everyone knows it and if there are no battle rezzes (or those who can b-rez simply don't or won't) then often that fight can become a wipe. If a healer dies, you still have five more to pull the weight. If a DPS dies, you still have sixteen more to pull the weight. The margin for error is simply MUCH smaller for those who enter LFR in the tanking role. 1/2 or 1/6 or 1/17, it's pretty obvious who has the least margin for error. No one ever sees a DPS dies and calls them out for wiping the raid. Some DPS die on purpose just so they don't actually have to try during the encounter and most times, you can't even get the raid to kick these assholes. How many of us have encountered that healer who is just happily DPSing (and rarely even well!) while people left and right are dying and causing a wipe due to a lack of healers? Still, the tanks will be yelled at because they are moving the boss too much, or they didn't taunt in time, or they didn't grab the add or you name it.

The bottom line is, these things are often not an issue in a dedicated raid environment (even including flex now) because the people who chose the role of tank know what they are in for and might even be the most learned on each encounter; they kinda have to. People who are just starting to tank, or who have dual specced to tank for the faster queue times (and maybe even the reward satchels...) generally aren't as good at tanking in the first place, and probably only know the encounters from a DPS perspective, which is sit back, let the tank explain the encounter, let the tank pull, let the tank ready check, let the tank etc, etc, etc. The above issues are even more exaggerated when a new LFR wing is introduced because people don't yet know what to expect. Now that flex exists, and it seems that a good amount of people are gravitating toward, you are probably seeing dedicated tanks finding better rewards and better groups than LFR can offer.

I don't think that there's a whole lot that Blizzard can do to alleviate this problem. They can't incentivize true tanks to do more LFR to reduce queue times (any more than they already do with the satchels) and they can't create more or better tanks for LFR since that requires the players themselves to do. So where does that leave the LFR community? Well, it leaves them with self-inflicted long queues and worse and worse players left to run LFR. I'm sure that there are the very people I have described reading this now who are getting their hackles up and feeling defensive because they do the very things I am describing as a problem and yet complain because "whaaaaa queues are too long; why no one want tank?" Like the asshole healers who queue as healer either for the shorter queue time or the satchel or both. Or the dipshit DPS who dies on every boss then walks away to get food, a drink, take a piss, jerkoff, or whatever it is that they are doing that isn't helping the group... The problem is NOT the tanks. The problem is the disgusting community that makes no one want to deal with all the shit that the tanks have to deal with in LFR. I don't even know that there IS a solution. Offer better rewards? You'll just find more non tanks attempting to tank so they can get those rewards and increase the number of tanks who DON'T know what they are doing. The same would happen if you created a tank spec for non-traditional tanking classes. There would be an initial learning curve and no one in LFR has the patience to be the test lab for a DPS class testing out the new tank role!

[the]

I feel with new people coming in halfway through a thread, maybe I should sum up the points I've been making, since I don't believe they're being followed in context:

<snip>

The overall point I'm trying to get at is this: if you complain and point fingers at everyone but yourself just because you're a tank, you won't get very far in the game.

Hi Compstance, thank you for summing up your ideas for the late comers. You've seemed pretty dedicated to the thread and vocal in it. You've given reasons why there are a lack of tanks in LFR. What changes to the game do you think would convince people to tank in LFR? A change in the community will not happen without a change to the game.