The tanking dilemma - role and design of tanks in Legion

[kaid]

It doesn't matter how fun or boring tanking is. There's nothing Blizzard can do to make more people tank.

I went into WoD looking to main Blood DK tank. The amount of venomous crap that was thrown my way was too much BS to deal with. New tanks aren't given the patience to become a good tank.

I was a warrior tank for most of wow's life span but in general unless I am with my premade group I don't tank in pugs/lfr much. Dps'ing you can half pay attention and still not fail but as a tank you need to be paying full attention the entire time and then even if you are pulling fast and going good some antsy hunter is going to run ahead of the group and "help" you pull faster without seemingly realizing if he is not there shooting things mobs are dying slower so the pull rate is not the limiting factor.

Basically your only feed back from your group is either neutral at best or very negative at worst. If you do your job people just ignore you and congrat the dps'ers for rocking those charts. If DPS die due to stupidity or being antsy and pulling 3 rooms of mobs onto you then everybody rags on the tank about why they are baddies and they need to not tank any more. Seriously just try tanking pugs on lfg for a week and tell me how much you enjoy tanking.

Combined that with tanks almost have to over gear anything they are doing. If you are going to LFR as a tank you better already have all the gear you would possibly need from that entire raid because if you don't the constant nagging about why your gear sucks will never stop. Same pretty much goes for dungeons. People get so used to massively overgeared tanks where if you are actually there for the gear you are going to be taking more damage and people will freak out.

Now add to the fact that a group needs 1 tank and a raid needs 2 tanks. For healers a normal group needs 1 and a raid needs 5 typically so the slots for healers scales pretty well and dps'ers even more so but you only ever need a couple tanks. Due to that those two guys are fully expected to be max geared so the amount of slots for up and coming raid tanks is highly limited. It is why I have tended to do healer off specs with DPS main specs its easier for me to get into normal/heroic raids with those specs than tank spec. So tanks are the least fun of the options with the most responsibility in the group and at end game has the least amount of openings for raiding.

[Akka]

To summarise, you thought it was not trival hold threat, which I agree, at the start for a new tank. But once you learnt, it was trival. Learning to do it properly only took a month or two at the most. Once you learnt how to do it, it was just follow the rotation and get hit. Now answer my question, how is that more engaging than the current method?

I disagree with the notion it ever became trivial. Sure, with experience and gear and good players it might have become "easy", just like doing good DPS becomes a second nature and pretty easy when playing a DPS class. But it always required to involve yourself in what you were doing (just like trying to top the DPS meters as a DPS requires you to be well awake and engages you, even if you are very experienced).

[Huggykaze]

Agreed, I was a simple Paladin in Vanilla... during BC though, I was MTing raids as a Paladin tank! It was the most fun era for tanking imo.... threat was still a thing and tanks got a better arsenal of spells and abilities... then it became a joke via wrath heroics.... =\

I was really asking why we got away from threat being a thing into "active mitigation" into what we will have now...

Try tanking with Enh shaman which outgears you ;P And not lose a threat to his initial burst ;P

To be serious tho', the moment threat became irrelevant, a lot of fun died. Not only for tanks, I actually enjoyed keeping my threat in check as a DPS, it increased the skill cap by A LOT. You could DPS slowly and never outthreat the tank, but also lose a lot of DPS, you could DPS like crazy and die in a minute.

[rda]

I wonder when you will stop talking about threat and start talking about something that can actually work.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I personally do not like the direction Blizzard is going with tanking in general with legion.

Imo a great tank should be able to perform the best he can every time. We don't need RNG to keep it "fresh". If something isn't proccing it isnt a difference between a couple of dps. It could mean a tank dying (talking about high damage fights here). Tanks NEED control over their toolkit.

Also:

Making tanks more accessible, filling up queues and bringing more people into tanking will inevitably affect the gaming experience of long term tank players by taking away control, overall impact and purpose. Yes, purpose. Bringing a boss to a position it will stay on for most of the fight, grab some adds every minute and spend the rest of the fight reducing healer´s mana costs is neither engaging nor rewarding.

Making Tanks easier wont bring many tanks into the queues. I have no idea why Blizzard doesnt get that. Its the responsibility, the spotlight on you at all times people fear. Doesnt matter if you have to press 1 or 100 buttons. This wont change.
All the while bore the people who actually enjoy tanking to death.

[nox597]

I think one thing that the game really lacks right now (due to threat) is the idea of an intelligent enemy. A boss who recognizes that he can't kill the heavily defensive guy in front of him, because the guy in robes near the back is casting healing spells.

Something I would like to see is the ability for a character to become a literal block in front of the boss. The boss begins a casting animation in a line towards the healer, and the tank has to stand in front of it, and use an active defensive ability (shield block, whatnot) that literally deflects/blocks/absorbs the boss's spell. The boss starts walking towards the caster throwing fireballs, and the tank has to literally interpose themselves between the boss and the caster, blocking it from moving closer. The boss starts a cleaving animation towards the melee flanking it, and the tank uses his weapon to parry the blow, knocking the attack into the ground. Make the game a little less about soaking hits and coordinating damage reduction cooldowns, and more about the tank controlling the boss's movements and abilities, and saving the raid.

[Nihilan]

I think one thing that the game really lacks right now (due to threat) is the idea of an intelligent enemy. A boss who recognizes that he can't kill the heavily defensive guy in front of him, because the guy in robes near the back is casting healing spells.

Something I would like to see is the ability for a character to become a literal block in front of the boss. The boss begins a casting animation in a line towards the healer, and the tank has to stand in front of it, and use an active defensive ability (shield block, whatnot) that literally deflects/blocks/absorbs the boss's spell. The boss starts walking towards the caster throwing fireballs, and the tank has to literally interpose themselves between the boss and the caster, blocking it from moving closer. The boss starts a cleaving animation towards the melee flanking it, and the tank uses his weapon to parry the blow, knocking the attack into the ground. Make the game a little less about soaking hits and coordinating damage reduction cooldowns, and more about the tank controlling the boss's movements and abilities, and saving the raid.

While this does seem very cool, the issue will arise that given the absurd scale of some bosses and the god-awful camera occlusion mechanics in WoW, that it will be very difficult to actually see what the boss is doing sometimes. Like Kiljaeden in Sunwell for example. Hes so huge you are basically tanking his codpiece. His upper body can be offscreen. And with all the spell effects and shit flying around, it can be very tricky to stay on top of mechanics. That is what makes mods like DBM so crucial in a raid environment.

[Soikona]

I disagree with the notion it ever became trivial. Sure, with experience and gear and good players it might have become "easy", just like doing good DPS becomes a second nature and pretty easy when playing a DPS class. But it always required to involve yourself in what you were doing (just like trying to top the DPS meters as a DPS requires you to be well awake and engages you, even if you are very experienced).

You can't disagree with a fact though. Once you learnt how to do it, it was next to impossible to fuck up. You also just danced around my question. I will ask it again, How is it more engaging?

[Akka]

You can't disagree with a fact though. Once you learnt how to do it, it was next to impossible to fuck up.

Except that's your claim, not a fact.

You also just danced around my question. I will ask it again, How is it more engaging?

Dunno. How having to maximize your DPS more engaging than AFK auto-attacking ?
Because that's pretty much the same question you're asking.

[OrcinusDrake]

Why do you think that threat-gameplay is more engaging or preferable over dps gameplay?
No offense, here, just hoping to get some more argumentation rolling.

I don't want threat back and I see from a DPS standpoint it's unfun (for many/most). But for tanks it's a fun system. It promotes interaction between the DPS and the tank at every level where otherwise the DPS simply don't seem to care what the tank is doing unless he dies or moves badly. It also made tanking feel unique and suited the role thematically, whereas damage from a tank is innately constrained so you don't bring all tanks to content, and is diluted by the 14 or so DPS players.

Something I would like to see is the ability for a character to become a literal block in front of the boss. The boss begins a casting animation in a line towards the healer, and the tank has to stand in front of it, and use an active defensive ability (shield block, whatnot) that literally deflects/blocks/absorbs the boss's spell. The boss starts walking towards the caster throwing fireballs, and the tank has to literally interpose themselves between the boss and the caster, blocking it from moving closer. The boss starts a cleaving animation towards the melee flanking it, and the tank uses his weapon to parry the blow, knocking the attack into the ground. Make the game a little less about soaking hits and coordinating damage reduction cooldowns, and more about the tank controlling the boss's movements and abilities, and saving the raid.

Blade Lord Ta'yak? Warlord Parjesh? Occasionally blackhand? Oregorger for that matter?

[ShiyoKozuki]

No, dear, misdirects and tricks and everything else. All I mentioned is just an inevitable consequence of the design. Nobody does anything wrong, the tank enjoys his threat management, nobody else is having fun.

Inbis feint soul shatter etc..

- - - Updated - - -

FF14 at HW release at the best tanking of any MMO I've played, and for 2 reasons:

1) Active mitigation. If you didn't pop your CDs when the boss used a tank buster, you generally died. No outhealing it.

2) You had to choose between using GCD's and resources on threat OR damage. Tank damage mattered, bosses had extremely strict enrage timers. Tanks had to squeeze out as much DPS as possible while also keeping threat.

WOW tanks need to have these things in Legion or no one is going to want to play tank, really.

[rda]

2) You had to choose between using GCD's and resources on threat OR damage. Tank damage mattered, bosses had extremely strict enrage timers. Tanks had to squeeze out as much DPS as possible while also keeping threat.

This, by the way, could work. Ie, threat exists, tank can easily get on top of it, but that costs GCDs and resources which could have been spent on damage. Threat is a solely tank's game, if someone draws aggro, it's strictly tank's fault (because what, you want 17 DPS to slow down so you can do your damage?), everyone is happy.

Damn, that's brilliant. No, really.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Damn, that's brilliant. No, really.

Yeah FF14 HW release tanking was amazing.

[Nevcairiel]

Relying on tank damage to beat enrage timers works for the first and second kill, afterwards your entire group gathered enough gear and tanking falls back to the old pattern of just doing threat.

I mean, I did Brutallus in Sunwell when it was new, that boss practically fits this description of tight enrage timers and tank damage mattering.
But having this for every single boss seems not like the generic solution, it would be nice if this "threat and damage matters" had a bit more longevity. Not every fight should be a gear/dps check, otherwise it requires other abilities to be toned down a bit.

[Soikona]

Except that's your claim, not a fact.

Dunno. How having to maximize your DPS more engaging than AFK auto-attacking ?
Because that's pretty much the same question you're asking.

Would you stop splitting the responses and use the whole thing as a direct quote because it is all related. Again, you didn't answer the question. I will expand it more for you since you failed to understand the question.

As a tank during vanilla and tbc, all you did was follow a rotation to maximise threat and taunt at times, you were a DPS with a shield. How is that more engaging than tanks now?

[yeryerdude]

In Wod and MoP its basically 2 different tanking metas, the one where you do content you don't overgear and where death is a certainty if you miss a cooldown or fuck up, and the one where you overgear shit and you focus on maxing your dps even when you are doing progression.

Not many tanks do the content when they truly undergear it.

[Ratyrel]

I much preferred the design in MoP where tanks had special jobs in the encounters (switching mobs, extra action buttons etc); I enjoyed that, but it's been turned down a bit. Imperator in Highmaul had some elements of this though, as did Socrethar and Iskar, Iron Reaver and Mannoroth. Imo base tank gameplay is pretty solid, and the encounters providing the spice is the best way to do this.

I think tanks maximising their dps is dumb gameplay that runs counter to role fantasy. I'm not saying it may not be engaging for some people, but it's not why I love tanking.

[Akka]

Would you stop splitting the responses and use the whole thing as a direct quote because it is all related.

I split because I answer a specific in the quote. When yous say bullshit like "it was trivial and you could not possibly fuck up", then I call it bullshit, and it's completely unrelated to the question "how threat did make it more interesting ?". That you claim is the same doesn't make it the same.

Again, you didn't answer the question. I will expand it more for you since you failed to understand the question.

As a tank during vanilla and tbc, all you did was follow a rotation to maximise threat and taunt at times, you were a DPS with a shield. How is that more engaging than tanks now?

It's more engaging because of serveral things :
1) Threat is thematical to tanking. Having a core of your activity of a role being thematical to your role is a good thing. Absence of threat make it a simple DPS check.
2) In a multi-target environement, it's not at all a DPS rotation, it's about keeping everyone on you without having a stray going to kill a healer. It's more about situational awareness and crowd management.
3) Having to take threat into account can change your priority about what abilities to use. You don't have to blindly do DPS, you can check and balance between DPS and threat.
4) Same as above between threat and survivability.

Basically, threat open up another core mechanism which is thematic to the role and which need to be taken into account while you're playing, juggling between surviving, keeping the baddies on you and doing damage. That's what made a tank different than a DPS trying to maximize their output, and what made them different than today's tanks which is about playing a DPS and just throwing a mitigation CD when the boss uses a special ability.

[rda]

Relying on tank damage to beat enrage timers works for the first and second kill, afterwards your entire group gathered enough gear and tanking falls back to the old pattern of just doing threat.

It works even if tank's damage isn't strictly required to down a boss, in that a tank can try to maximize it - damage is useful - and that's fun and interesting.

Yes, it's not as thrilling as when the boss will enrage if the tank doesn't participate in damage enough, but it's the same with all roles - on farm kills, DPS can slack and the boss will still drop, healers can slack and still nobody will die, etc. Trying hard and competing even if it is not a make-or-break matter is good enough for other roles, so perhaps it is good enough for tanks as well.

[nathrizarri]

I find the joy in the game when I do the "plus", not necessity. Tank/Heal in WoW is so binary that there is not much room for a plus, few existing ones are underrated as F.

Tanking/healing is an outdated PVE concept dude. WoW's combat system is outdated. There is a reason why modern mmo's taking the "dodge" combat. Holy trinity will work well on PVP where there are many random reaction moments but with timed boss abilities? Hell no.

Hi all,

since Alpha is running for quite some time now and tank design seems to be more or less set (not individual spec toolkits, but general place in PvE gameplay), I would like to start some discussion about high-level tanking philosophies in Legion.

I strongly request you to read this post with an open mind and with the will to think about tanking and its place in Legion.
I absolutely accept that my point of view is heavily biased by my personal situation, but who´s is not? I also do not claim to have the master knowledge of all tanking topics or be the voice of the whole tanking community.

I just love tanking.

I will accept any different point of view or opinion, in fact I ask for them to get the opportunity to peek at the bigger picture through other tanks´eyes.


About me

I am a protection warrior for over 10 years now. Having raided on the highest difficulty regularly (fresh 13/13m) and played most other tank classes at multiple occasions over my WoW career, I think I have a good understanding of tanking, even if I am not a bleeding edge progression raider. I have witnessed the evolution of tanking from early vanilla to Legion Alpha (although I unfortunately do not have Alpha access myself) and see it as my primary role and goal in this game.


General tanking responsibilities

A tank is one of the pillars of a raid group. It serves as a "service provider" for the whole group, bringing stability, control and general directions onto the battlefield. The tasks a tank is fulfilling during an encounter are manifold, but I will sum up the ones, I see as the most important:

• Maintaining threat, so that he is the one being attacked (or swap it with his co-tank, if encounter requires it)
• Position all enemies that attack him in a way that the rest of the group can fight them to greatest effect (stacking, splitting, moving around)
• Reduce the incoming damage to a manageable amount, by using active mitigation and cooldowns to reduce spikes as well as limit overall damage taken
• Contribute to raid dps, interrupts, CC
• Deal with encounter-specific mechanics

I think every single tank out there will see another point in that list as the single most critical one, but more importantly, every single tank out there will find different aspects of this role more fun and some would say that balancing between them (like survival <-> dps) is the greatest fun of all.
All of these tasks are important and failing at one of them (expect dps output) usually initiates desaster. Improving in any one of these points makes a tank better and increases the chance of a raid to successfully complete an encounter.
With this role design, we can now try to shed some light on the:


Skillcap of a tank

Since it is inherent in the variation of a tanks list of tasks and their criticality to the outcomes of an encounter that the role of a tank is a bit more difficult to perform to the same effect compared to other roles (and I want to underline that I do NOT underestimate the importance or complexity of dps or healer roles), I will dare saying that the skillcap of a tank is a bit higher than it is for other roles.

Since tanks usually come in pairs and they only have limited impact to the performance of their partner (although a good partnership between tanks is priceless and of substantial worth for both, the playing experience of each tank as well as the smoothness of an encounters flow), each tank on its own could be perceived as a:


Single point of failure

Yes, a tank can be viewed as a single point of failure. In most encounters, the tank has to react to abilities or circumstances, that affect only him and only he is able to prevent a disastrous outcome, not matter what other players do.

For sure, there are countless occasions where players of other roles will wipe a raid if they do not handle a boss mechanic properly. But a big part of their jobs is also covered by other players. Burning down a critical add is usually work of many dps together, not just one. Pushing a boss to the next phase before a certain mechanic happens again is also a feat the raid has to achieve together. Healing up dying raid members is usually (not always) covered by several healers. Of course for ALL roles there are examples and encounters where you have all of that critical wipe potential burdened onto one player of other roles. But a tank deals with this in most encounters.

A tank´s tasks can sometimes be assisted by other players, like external CDs, hunter pulls or similar. But more than not, a tank will be the only player in the raid that can prevent wipe due to a certain mechanic.
This, combined with the skillcap described above lead to a situation we all know. If a tank is terrible, a group suffers tremendously and a good tank will make the life of a group so much easier. This makes entry into tanking much more barring than into other roles and groups will often be more picky with tank selection than other roles. This might also drive some people away from the tank role and leave a tank shortage for certain forms of group content. Dungeon queues come to mind.
So what does Blizzard do? Of course the answer is:


Reducing the impact of a tanks gameplay performance

Blizzard is having a hard time dealing with tanks in general. Over the last expansions they tried to reduce the skillcap of tanks on various ends.

• Massive threat multipliers to reduce threat gameplay impact
• Reducing effectiveness of AM to be able to reduce boss damage to allow tanks survive even when not playing for optimized survival
• Reducing the availability of cooldowns to be able to reduce boss spikes without leaving tanks immortal
• Reduce overall tank mitigation tools to remove survival from tanks and shift it to healers (this distributes a task from a single point of failure over several players)

This makes GCD to GCD decisions of a tank less and less meaningful and combined with a dps contribution half of a dps of similar gear and skill, a tanks major tasks are reduced to:

• Hit enemies at least occasionally to maintain threat
• Position all enemies that attack him in a way that the rest of the group can fight them to greatest effect (stacking, splitting, moving around)
• Reduce incoming damage taken to avoid the largest of all bursts and conserve healer mana
• Contribute to raid dps (as well as possible, but impact is low), interrupts, CC
• Deal with encounter-specific mechanics (which are rarely more than taunt-swaps)

Many others have said this before, but I will include that statement for completeness´ sake:
Tanks will lack things to do that are meaningful. Most of their tasks will only be performed with limited effectiveness, as allowing them to have more impact would raise the skillcap.
Unfortunately for veteran tanks, this leads to a heavily impacted:


Fun!

I already talked a bit about fun for tanks above, but I will focus a bit more on that specifically.
Most tanks I know became tanks for one of two reasons:

1. They were forced to, either by others of by circumstances, simply because a tank was direly needed
2. The love the tanking role with all aspects of its control, impact, responsibility and rewarding gameplay

While the first group will probably not enjoy tanking at all, until they belong to the secound group eventually, for the second group rewarding gameplay is a keyword for tanking experience, as you will learn a lot while tanking, get better every single pull and feel a direct improvement of the overall encounter flow when mastering a problem.
Situations that I find rewarding and satisfactory as a tank include:

• Seeing my dps-players are able to push out some additional dps, because I positioned mobs very effectively or reduced the amount of movement required by them
• Getting a big hit and seeing my HP bar move little, because I planned properly
• Being able to motivate the lowest dps to push on or be (b)eaten by the tank
• Managing my resource, defensive, offensive and utility cooldowns to find the perfect balance of all for a given encounter
• Feel that *I* am the one that brings order to the chaos of the battlefield, as I collect adds and direct the whole raids movement through a minefield
• Know that healers need to heal up the raid after an accident and prepare to allow them to let me go for some seconds
• Survive through the last 15 seconds of a boss with half the raid dead and fishing for a kill that already seemed impossible to get

Being able to get that fun out of the tank roles requires that role to be a bit more difficult to play.


Dealing with the problem

I think at this point we have seen that there are two major aspects of tanking colliding every single time tanking is being touched:

Accessibility <-> Fun

Making tanks more accessible, filling up queues and bringing more people into tanking will inevitably affect the gaming experience of long term tank players by taking away control, overall impact and purpose. Yes, purpose. Bringing a boss to a position it will stay on for most of the fight, grab some adds every minute and spend the rest of the fight reducing healer´s mana costs is neither engaging nor rewarding.

Making tanks more fun and their role more meaningful (or at least leave it alone and not reduce their impact) will make the tanking role less accessible and leave some groups with tanks that will struggle a bit, until they find the way into proper tanking or force some players out of the tanking role.

Both aspects cannot be ignored. Unfortunately there is little room for compromise.

A possible solution could be, to let tanks keep their toolbox, mitigation strengths, cooldowns and output potential and simply make a much stricter scaling based on content. Let an normal boss be well tankable by a tank that only knows the mere basics of tanking, a heroic boss require proper understanding of the tank class and a mythic boss challenge a tank to make use of his whole set of resources. That will lead to good tanks being immortal in lower tier content and needing very little heal in heroic.

But where is the harm? A tank that good will surely not stay long in normal and will not endanger any balance. But a mythic tank wants to feel that he is contributing.
I do not see myself being a simple mana conserver in a raid. I want to have the feeling that I can make the difference.

I also see no harm in tanks being much more independent of healers. Healers have 18 people to heal in a raid but tanks. So is it necessary to make tanks rely on healers to give healers more gameplay? I do not think so. Survival of a tank should be mostly the responsibility of a tank, strongly assisted by healers. A tank should surely not be able to kill a boss alone, if all healers are gone. But let him have the tools to bridge the time until he needs proper healer for longer periods.

But then again, what can be done in mythic+ dungeons? Here we have small-group content that requires more tanks per player than a mythic raid does. So the demand of tanks is much higher than in raids. If tanking requires a higher skillcap, mythic+ dungeon groups will suddenly be tank-starved.

There will probably not be a one-size-fits-all solution. And I do not say that it is easy. But it is worth exploring!


Final words

I hope you are all still with me and more interested in having a nice and insightful conversation than in nit-picking and flaming me for individual sections of my post. I am a tank with very specific preferences and I might find other parts of this dilemma more important than others might.

I recently saw and spoke a lot of long year tanks that actively considered to drop out of the tanking role. Of course some of the won´t do and some of them never will, but then again those were people never even thinking about doing something else. So this is a shift in perception of the overall tanking design, stronger than ever before.

I am asking myself, if it is worth to lose some veteran tanks that loved their role for years in order to allow other people step into tanking that were overwhelmed by the responsibilities earlier.

I personally think that tanking improved over the last expansions, the only issue I ever had was tank classes being unequally suitable for certain encounters. As a warrior I dread the return of rage through damage taken and even as one of the tanks that already relied on healers the most, I think that increasing this reliance is not required.

So I happily invite you to leave your thoughts and comments here and have a civilized conversation about the role I love for so many years now.