Who remembers...

[Pua]

... When it was like this?



That is all.

[Sesshou]

Not sure I get your point... Based on the song, it sounds like the answer to your question is now. The tanks I run with do all of the stuff he said in that song... And since the key point in there is holding aggro, has there ever been a time in WoW where that has been easier to do?

[Johnkie]

Not sure I get your point... Based on the song, it sounds like the answer to your question is now. The tanks I run with do all of the stuff he said in that song... And since the key point in there is holding aggro, has there ever been a time in WoW where that has been easier to do?

Ye its kinda sad how very very very boring tanking has become. I remember out TPS'ing everyone on my warr! even though i had terrible ilvl compared to them... God it was a delight!... Now its just enough with auto-attacks basically.

[Sesshou]

Ye its kinda sad how very very very boring tanking has become. I remember out TPS'ing everyone on my warr! even though i had terrible ilvl compared to them... God it was a delight!... Now its just enough with auto-attacks basically.

Yeah... I liked threat based tanking a lot more. I mean threat isn't gone, but I liked it better (and also like how it works in other games) when maintaining threat was the second most important thing a tank did (first being not being dead) instead of it being handed to you and being a dps machine. I also liked it from a dps perspective in that it gave you something else to consider when hitting your next button aside from which button does more damage, but now you just unload your standard dps rotation and not care. The only real issue I saw was that for the longest time there was no built in way to see how close you were to pulling aggro and you needed an addon.

[Pua]

Ye its kinda sad how very very very boring tanking has become. I remember out TPS'ing everyone on my warr! even though i had terrible ilvl compared to them... God it was a delight!... Now its just enough with auto-attacks basically.

This is the point.

The days where tanking was a specific job in and of itself, with different priorities and a different attitude, are gone. Now, the top guilds don't even recruit them; they just give their deepsers a new set of gear and slot them in.

And considering tanks are probably now scarcer than ever, it might be time for Blizzard to simply rethink what they believe a tank should be and do.

[Deja Thoris]

Now, the top guilds don't even recruit them; they just give their deepsers a new set of gear and slot them in.

Proof or gtfo.

Tanking is more fun and engaging than it has been in ages. It's moved away from managing threat to managing survival / dps / raid cooldowns. It's a change for the better imo.

If people don't roll tanks its because the community don't make it easy on people learning the role.

[Pua]

Proof or gtfo.

Get a grip of yourself.

Mike Preach spoke about it on YouTube, while other players such as Killars, Sco and Riggnaros have spoke about the same issue throughout this expansion. Actually, I think this goes back to mid-Cataclysm when Ensidia replaced Kungen with a former deepser.

Tanking is more fun and engaging than it has been in ages.

That would explain why their numbers have nosedived since WotLK, I suppose.

If people don't roll tanks its because the community don't make it easy on people learning the role.

Maybe.

Or maybe it's the fact that it's simply the same as playing a DPS class, minus the singular responsibility that everyone places on you. Maybe it's because active mitigation is extremely punishing on new players, so they give up on it rather than putting up with abuse. Maybe it's because every raid boss now sees little more than a taunt swap as its attempt at "working together".

[Vindicer]

I will mention that I am a Wrath Baby, so I can't speak to tanking in Van/BC; however I do feel that tanking was more fun and engaging prior to the introduction of Vengeance, and the subsequent buffs to threat generation.

I do recall reading, and I apologise for not having the source, a dev comment towards the end of Wrath that stated something similar to:

"We don't want the performance ceiling of a DPS player to be the tank's ability to hold agro." or something to that effect.

In layman's terms, they didn't want a less experienced or skilled tank to hamper the extent to which dps players could fulfil their role. A problem that was exacerbated in late ICC when relative gear levels were at their highest point. Then came the introduction of Vengeance, a mechanic with good intentions but (in my opinion) is ultimately flawed. The aim was to give Tank's a scaling factor to their threat generation that was separate to their level of gear. Vengeance was designed in such a way that as an expansion progressed and bosses hit harder, and DPS players did more damage/threat, that tanks would have more attack power (read: threat) to counter this increase in damage role gear.

This says to me that the devs were unhappy with the way 'holding agro' scaled throughout an expansion. Specifically where holding threat was 'easy' at the start when everyone is in blues with small stats and then 'hard' at the end of an expansion when the levels of threat stats on gear are at their most unequal point.

The problem being, that when Blizzard added another mechanic, instead of building off something that already existed, they added a whole host of new ways for tanking to be abused, min/maxed and gamed all for a solution that was or is (in my opinion) only partially successful.

I do miss that sense of accomplishment knowing that you were a capable enough tank to hold threat off even the strongest DPS, but you have to consider the entire playerbase. I'm sure many of the players who were around in ICC times will remember jumping into random dungeons or pugs and being met with a tank who wasn't as capable as they could be, or was undergeared. The result was usually the dps (sometimes even the healers) tanking mobs. I can only speak from personal experience when I say that running on alts, finding tanks like this was a relatively common occurrence.

Now look at LFR today (because it's a common pug), while you may run into a tank who doesn't taunt, or use cooldowns, or know their class, outside of the first few seconds of combat it's relatively rare to have a tank lose threat to a DPS player, and tanking for a guild group or a group of effective players is a joke, in terms of threat.

So in effect, Blizzard succeeded at their goals of removing the tank ceiling for DPS players, but the question we're all asking is, what was the cost? Many appear to feel that tanking prior to the 'changes' was more enjoyable, and I count myself among them. By the same token, how many people have since decided to try tanking, knowing that threat isn't as big of an issue as it once was? Is the current lack of tanks because of general tanking mechanics, class mechanics, the 'responsibility' mindset, community perception or some other factor?

Referring to tanking mechanics in general, it was too easy to 'fail' before the changes were introduced, and now it is my opinion that it is too easy to 'succeed'. That said, it is in Blizzard's (and the game's) best interests to cater to the majority, and they have a heck of a lot more data and information on all of this stuff than we do.

Thoughts and ramblings.
-Vin-

[celinamuna]

Good tanks never lose threat, but it was fairly easy.
Now there's more to do than just "sunder till 5" and more metrics to compare tanks on.
Tanking in MoP has been best experience tank wise since, ever.

[Deleted]

I think Blizzard did the right thing when they made tanks more responsible for their own survivability. As a healer, it makes the game more interesting for me as well. No longer do we have to assign people the boring job of being a "tank healer" simply because the tank might get 3-shot and they need constant spammage.

As for threat, meh. I played a tank in BC and WotLK and threat was never an issue. Once Hunters got misdirect in BC, the pull RNG went away and thus DPS could just unload from the start rather than have to wait for 2 sunders. The only fights where it did matter was multi add fights such as M'uru and Valithria, but this was more a case of DPS following your target and assignments properly.

[Deleted]

It certainly isn't a problem to keep aggro any longer...

But they did give us a few new things in raids to do, albeit this change is not to my liking.

[iamthedevil]

It certainly isn't a problem to keep aggro any longer...

But they did give us a few new things in raids to do, albeit this change is not to my liking.

I wish this were true. Yet somehow, tanks still lose aggro and get the top dps killed. It's sad.

[Deleted]

I wish this were true. Yet somehow, tanks still lose aggro and get the top dps killed. It's sad.

How on earth is that possible?

[Radio]

I enjoy tanking more today than I did back under the pre-vengeance model.

1. Maximising TPS back then is basically the same fundamentally as maximising DPS now, except it shows up on recount.
2. Tanks also now have much more responsibility over their short term survivability (through AM) then they ever had before, which is more punishing for new players I guess but is also a great avenue for self-improvement/learning/minmaxing as a learning/experienced player. This as a whole means that tanks casn rely less on their healers as they did in the past, which gives tanks more of a feeling of independance.
3. Blizzard also seems to give tanks more involvement in raid mechanics as a whole these days vs the past, more fights on average these days tend to have the tank involving themselves in roles outside of simply tanking mobs.
4. The gearing method of DPS vs. Survivability still exists for most (not all) of the tank classes, Crit vs. Mastery as a monk as an example.
5. Your performance as a whole (especially in 10 man) plays a much larger part in affecting your raids success.
6. Snap/Add aggro is still important on some fights.

[Hotsforyou]

Not sure I get your point... Based on the song, it sounds like the answer to your question is now. The tanks I run with do all of the stuff he said in that song... And since the key point in there is holding aggro, has there ever been a time in WoW where that has been easier to do?

Ya, as someone who has been tanking since Classic wow, i really hate the changes that they made in Firelands where no one had to worry about threat anymore. I liked the whole "wait for sunders" before attacking thing.

- - - Updated - - -

How on earth is that possible?

On heroic Primordius our mage hit a 30 million combustion crit, its like the tanks were never even there. He was instantly killed by the boss.

[Zarandra]

Ya, as someone who has been tanking since Classic wow, i really hate the changes that they made in Firelands where no one had to worry about threat anymore. I liked the whole "wait for sunders" before attacking thing.

- - - Updated - - -



On heroic Primordius our mage hit a 30 million combustion crit, its like the tanks were never even there. He was instantly killed by the boss.

How.. in the world.

[Deleted]

Get a grip of yourself.

Mike Preach spoke about it on YouTube, while other players such as Killars, Sco and Riggnaros have spoke about the same issue throughout this expansion. Actually, I think this goes back to mid-Cataclysm when Ensidia replaced Kungen with a former deepser.

When you need to find one extra tank, it is easier to have one of the players you know is reliable reroll to tank and invite an new dpser. That way you know that player fit into your team, know he can be vocal, knows to play etc rather than risking getting in a tank that does not know what to do. Bringing in a dps and realising he is not a good fit hurts your raid team less than a tank, especially in a 25 man.

That said, people still recruit tanks. I was approached and "poached" by my current guild since their tank quit. They had players capable of rerolling tank but they instead decided to search for a tank and asked me. So saying that guilds dont search for tanks anymore is quite an understatement. It is often just easier finding a capable dps than a capable tank and having one of your members reroll tank. Often works out smoother but not always.

[trystero]

I'll say that any skilled tank I know, myself included, loves the current AM model. AM has resulted from the natural evolution of a game where the average talent level of its players gradually increases. It's unfeasible to expect tanking to remain unchanged, just as you cannot expect boss encounters to remain simple.

And considering tanks are probably now scarcer than ever, it might be time for Blizzard to simply rethink what they believe a tank should be and do.

Where's your evidence for this claim? Random people on YouTube don't make for credible sources, and, yes, even a respected player like Sco is a random person unless he somehow has access to the relevant statistics.

You should Google "tank shortage wow" sometime, and you'll find posts on various websites bemoaning the scarcity of tanks, some of which date back to 2007. If the current model which you deride so much were truly responsible, then why has this "problem" persisted since the dawn of Azeroth?

- - - Updated - - -

Now, the top guilds don't even recruit them; they just give their deepsers a new set of gear and slot them in.

The reasons why are pretty intuitive as FF explained above. Suppose you're recruiting for what's literally a top 10 guild in the world. Do you want to bring some unproven player into your fold, especially as a tank? These are guilds that make considerable demands on their players, asking them to raid what most people consider to be insane hours during progression, asking them to remain aware, focused, and relatively calm throughout those hours, and to continue performing at a high level.

For this raid environment, you can choose a "main DPS" in your raid who's raced with you to World Firsts before, and you already know he tanks superbly because he's cleared all the current heroic content on his alt. Or you can choose some app.