Originally Posted by
Marrilaife
You do realize most guilds have an officer or a raid leader in the "main tank" role who will not switch over but rather make the other person switch over or bench them and recruit the class they want?
Theoretically in a perfect world yes, I could of course co-tank with a druid. There are several kills with a druid + another tank and a few kills with 2 bears + another tank (3 tank strat). Plenty of kills with just 2 bears as well of course.
In practice atm even guilds down the 1,5k world rank are recruiting only druids for tank spots. Despite them not having mythic KJ anywhere close in sights, but they're already planning ahead (or just following fotm like a sheep, your pick).
Already got dicked over by one guild on mythic Gul'dan because they didn't like me playing a non fotm tank so they replaced me with a monk because "stagger is foolproof", finished tier with another guild and coming to TOS I've already faced an ultimatum I will be offered a trial spot as a tank only if I don't play a paladin but reroll. Unfortunately my druid is set up for resto (legendaries and so on) plus I found bear boring as hell so I never prepped it because I thought these kind of things only happen in world top guilds (being forced to switch class or maintaining raid ready alts for splits and class stacking) and I never aspired to play in world top guilds anyway.
Reality is surprising though, as I said, either they will have to nerf mythic KJ to the point of unrecognizeability in 1-2 months or we'll see extremely diminished number of kills in comparison to Gul'dan (which I think was killed by around 1,5k-1,7k guilds by the time TOS launched and achievement was removed). I'm slowly starting to see less-fotm comps (fewer rogues, non-fotm dps like ele shamans, dhs, ret palas, monks, fewer immunity classes overall) but I'm yet to see a kill with 0 bears.
Tbh it's been uphill struggle in general to find a guild as a tank because most guilds only want one from within their inner circle to be a tank, and if they recruit an outsider, there are always hoops you need to jump through. Since HFC I had this problem "lf tank, no paladin, monk / dk preferred", just the preferred class changed to warrior, then druid / monk, now druid again, but for some reason, it's never paladin, even though I played it since wotlk. I tried at some point to play a hunter and it's astounding how much easier it is to be recruited as a range dps. Sadly I didn't really enjoy the experience of being a dps main.
But for KJ it's a legit problem tanks are not equal and it's not just guild's fotm mentality it's literally the encounter design at fault. And worst part is there is no mount, no tier, nothing really to incentivize to rekill it, I can live with being benched for a druid if the encounter calls for it but something tells me nobody's gonna bother to kill it another time after struggling for weeks and months to get that achiev. Even the hardcore guilds took a week break after killing KJ, many guilds progressing on KJ will be extending to not rekill Avatar as well because they hate this boss, and I'm pretty sure no one wants to waste extra wipes so the benched person with 0 xp can get the achiev when you can slot instead a person with weeks of xp for smoother rekill when it finally comes to it.
I can't really blame guilds for wanting the best setup and following fotm, but I feel quite bitter towards Blizzard for the tank balance this expansion despite them claiming how class balance is better than ever. Hey, you're a paladin not a monk / bear / warrior, you bench on Guarm (at least that got nerfed later to break the 1-tank strat), hey, you're a paladin not a monk / bear, you bench on Star Augur, now again, hey, you're not a bear, you bench on KJ.
If someone asked what tank to play, I always believed they should play the one they like the most and are most comfortable with, if someone asked what's most important in the tank recruitment, I always thought reliability and consistency are most important, not the class they pick. And Legion is slowly killing my faith in that.
And what bothers me with KJ is not explicitly that "it's a hard boss", last boss of the tier should be hard, it's that "it's hard in general and on top of it it's much more harder if you don't bring the correct classes" so nobody is really willing to risk a sub-optimal comp on a boss that takes hundreds of pulls (or in extreme cases like Exorsus first kill over 1,5k pulls) even with good comp to down.
Imagine if they nerfed the damage you take from armageddon dot ticks / stacks but made immunity not clear them only temporarily suppress the damage (akin to harjatan bleed, you can bop it preventing damage for few seconds, but not cancel stacks). Imagine they added extra second or two from swirls spawning to armageddons landing so the stampeding roars wouldn't be so crucial to let everyone reach their position in time. And few other changes that lower the disparity between fotm comp and non-fotm comp.
There was a person I quoted earlier that said "we don't have bears, we're screwed", these kind of guilds need the help the most, they have the skill and the willingness to wipe until they kill it, but they have "wrong" classes. It's fine if a class brings some cool perk to a fight, it's not fine when the fight is not doable or 10 times worse without that perk. It's different when you need 1 mage or warlock for Gul'dan among 14 dps, it's not fine when you need 4 rogues or 7 immunity classes or only 1 tank class out of 6.
Atm my guild is still progressing on Avatar but there are already people voicing the willingness to step down and quit the game, so I'm really worried will we have the roster to finish the tier because you aren't doing the last few mythic bosses with rookies.