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

[MerinPally]

Like tell me whats difference between a decent tank and a good tank? Because a bad one is automatically doing everything wrong, a decent one is just maximizing dps, whats a good one? how do you raise the skill cap past moving the boss into the puddle on jinrokh or bringing He Softfoot closer for cleave?

Again, i've tanked full heroic progress, i've did the farm, i've got the gear, i've done it. Theres no shame to admitting that tanking in general is just far easier than dpsing or healing, and it'd be a crime to say otherwise.

The good tank will not stand in shit, take average amounts of damage, and do average damage. The great tank will not stand in shit, do excellent damage and rival if not surpass the dps (as of this expansion), will do a fuckton of healing, will move bosses in a very particular way (one that any decent melee dps will notice is a bonus rather than the erratic circles the majority of tanks go for) and can provide utility for the raid above almost anyone else.

I'm not admitting that tanking is easier than healing or dpsing because I completely disagree, and I've done both roles from TBC until end of Cata. "It'd be a crime to say otherwise" is completely your opinion and one I totally disagree with. Dps and healers have a way to compare themselves through World of Logs - tanks do not have that luxury.

To notice a good tank is something you see rather than read about or study, and you sure as hell know when you've found one. The obvious differences may well not be as large as it is for a healer or a dps but that is certainly not to say that the ability difference between those dps doing 5k and 500k, and the tanks doing 80k and 90k, is not the same distance.

[Rabidwhale]

If you can get rid of all the moron dps, more tanks would enjoy tanking. It doesn't matter how many tanking classes you add, the reason people don't do it is because 80% of the dps has downs.

[sourmonkey]

I seem to find queue times are better on Tuesday than Sunday , so does the Quaility of the group.

You can get some shitty groups that do 50k dps / 25k hps and blame the tank for hitting the enrage .
But then again there are a truckload of tank swaps so a missed taunt could wipe the raid .

When the pressure of success is too much people tend to go a less stressful route and thus creating the tank population issue .
To fix it ? There is no linear solution they have added classes , they have buffed protection specs there is nothing left .
They even tried a get a reward chest for doing random queues . My advice would be to go early In the week and hope for Quaility group
It's a shot in the dark but they do exist .

[Ehrenpanzer]

There's enough tanks. I just think there's fewer players willing to sit through LFR on their tank because:

1) your performance is more visible
2) you require more knowledge of the encounter
3) your mistakes are punished harder
4) players are more likely to blame you for the wipe

than the DPS.

I'm not kidding. I've seen the most bullshit reasons ever to blame the tank for things. Best example was 2 dps blaming the tank for getting knocked off the Galakras tower because "you're not supposed to face the mob our way, retard tank". And sure, ofcourse there are bad tanks and they need to l2p and all that. But more often than not there are also 5 dps in that raid that are worse and can just get carried anonymously. And why not? As long as the boss dies.

My solution is to nerf LFR further and make stuff that is dependant on tank skill almost completely harmless. If they're not happy with their queues, let them have the free epic mode. Flex has arrived anyway.

you forgot:
5) Tanks have, en masse, decided that carrying people with no skill, brains, or ability to push more then 50k dps, while being yelled at by said retards, at endgame content simply is not worth the hassle of a 25% chance of getting an item per boss, which they may or may not need. When they can round up a couple friends at anytime, knock out flex modes at a barely higher difficulty level for better quality loot. Enjoy your 45min que times, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Sincerely,
The Tanks Guild

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

"I don't agree with you so i'll call you slow a troll and slow"

Tanking was easy in vanilla, semi hard in tbc, easy in wotlk, cata and mop. The hardest place to tank in probably was TBC heroics, early cata heroics and challenge modes. Thats were you had to be concious as a tank.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway since everyone around here wants to play the game of "tanks are the thankless angels that descend from heaven once in a while to bless our raids" game then i'm out. I have no problem admitting dpsing is a joke when it is but unfortunately min maxing will always trump the basics of the game that being a skilled tank requires.

From now probably until the end of time, the difficulty curve will go as Healer > DPS >>> Tank. I've played all three and sit in the middle as a DPS right now, no problem admitting healing is harder, some people have a hard time admitting it though. Whatever.

Tanking right now is harder than what it was in Wrath when you just had to spam your AoE threat generator, but also much easier than early Cata when you actually risked dying.

The main thing right now is to know when to pop survivability moves, a lot like how tanks used to have to know when to pop their taunt.

It's why Active tanking has done nothing to make Fun tanking.

[Museigen]

"I don't agree with you so I'll call you slow a troll and slow" - Says disagreeing with him is a crime in previous post, fails to understand why people don't get his god given wisdom.

[MerinPally]

If you can get rid of all the moron dps, more tanks would enjoy tanking. It doesn't matter how many tanking classes you add, the reason people don't do it is because 80% of the dps has downs.

As someone who played all 4 tanks in WOTLK, 3 in Cata and 3 in MOP I can honestly say that bad dps players (those who die or those who do awful numbers) do not annoy tanks in the slightest - it's those who see a wipe due to whatever reason (in LFR usually people standing in stuff and dying therefore not enough players to kill a boss before enrage or not enough healing so tanks die) and then those dps blame the tanks for the dps/healers standing in the fire on the floor for 60seconds without moving once. Then, everyone suddenly says "YEAH IT MUST BE THE TANKS FAULT" and you get hounded.

Had one guy yesterday screaming and crying about how "pala tank wearing haste gear LOL and he dont have socket bonuses hes AWFUL" despite the fact that it was due to the other tank in the raid not following the tactics, that caused my death. If it wasn't for the fact I was taking less damage than the other tank and out dpsing the vocal idiot, then I probably would have been kicked. The tank is an easy scapegoat to pick on and they often pay the price for it. Sure, most tanks are bad, but the good ones get put off so easily. I have never once been kicked from LFR or LFD since it came out and I've almost exclusively tanked it, but I've been put off it due to others experiences.

[eem5]

Yea I wont tank lfr until i completely outgear it and content is semi old. Ive seen the abuse tanks take. Hell no do i want to deal with that!

yep, this. I have tanked raids (inc 25 man ones) on and off since druids had a gimmick tank fight in ZG, I gear my chars well, and I won't go into a raid as a tank until I am on the top end of the gear drops. However, I stopped queuing as a tank in LFR 'cause of the abuse, it's just not worth it.

The only times I tank in LFR is when we are waiting in the queue for a tank, or two. If I am tanking as a fill in, people don't feel the need to hurl abuse at me. Weird, but it works.

[Therealmagoo]

I just find it odd how ppl shy away from tanking, i cant think of one tank class that takes more than an I.Q of 70 to learn to play effectively, they are all easy as piss in my experience, some are easier than others tho but they are all still just too easy, its easier to tank now than it was to tank on my warrior in WOTLK and that's saying something because all i used to have to do was tell ppl not to hit mobs for a couple seconds so i could thunderclap and that all there was to it mob glued to me for the rest of the fight.

[Mormolyce]

1. Allow warlocks to tank. They've given us a glyph, we are half-way there.
2. Allow shamans to tank. They've given us shield and Rockbiter, we are half-way there.
3. Allow hunters to tank. Probably a bit harder due to indirect pet control, but would be awesome.

The only way to "solve the problem" is generate more interest for people to tank. That can be achieved through letting us explore one of our old dusty classes in a new capacity.

How many DKs, pallys, wars and druids were there in your 25m LFR queue? At least 2 right? Giving other classes a tank spec might get them to try it out for a week but once the novelty wears off, we'll be back to square one.

The real question is, why is the proportion of players rolling tank in LFR soooooo much less than 2/25. I mean given the time taken the actual rate must be like 1% of all players.

[Normie]

I just find it odd how ppl shy away from tanking, i cant think of one tank class that takes more than an I.Q of 70 to learn to play effectively, they are all easy as piss in my experience, some are easier than others tho but they are all still just too easy, its easier to tank now than it was to tank on my warrior in WOTLK and thats saying something because all i used to have to do was tell ppl not to hit mobs for a couple seconds so i could thunderclap and that all there was too it mob glued to me for the rest of the fight.

This, and your attitude, and general illiteracy, does not make me want to tank. It probably makes many other people not want to tank too.

[Nich]

I've tanked on everything that can tank.

I'd play my warlock more if I could actually queue as a tank, and it had better threat gen/a few more def cds to cover the role properly. Purely because of the novelty value.

I don't tank lfrs in general because tanking has always been such a massive gear grind - it's why i stopped tanking for my guild.

[Qalex]

you forgot:
5) Tanks have, en masse, decided that carrying people with no skill, brains, or ability to push more then 50k dps, while being yelled at by said retards, at endgame content simply is not worth the hassle of a 25% chance of getting an item per boss, which they may or may not need. When they can round up a couple friends at anytime, knock out flex modes at a barely higher difficulty level for better quality loot. Enjoy your 45min que times, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Sincerely,
The Tanks Guild

This is it, exactly. When I join an LFR and see half of the DPS below 80k DPS; or 2-3 people running into mechanics at the start of the fight so they can go AFK; or 1-2 of the "healers" are DPS spec and only queued as healer to not wait in queue, I lose the desire to tank in LFR. I can just join OQueue and get all of the Flex modes done in the time it would take to complete one wing of LFR. Better chance at loot, less chance of bads/AFKs.

Tanks aren't the problem. It is lazy DPS who want epics for doing nothing.

[Mormolyce]

"I had some bad experiences in LFR as a tank and now I refuse to tank so screw you all!"

Yeah no shit, everyone has had bad experiences in LFR. I've played DPS, tank and heal and you get shit sometimes regardless. The only thing that's special about tanking is that if you AFK, people notice.

[Pariah]

Tanking used to be challenging, as challenging as healing is right now, possibly harder, but right now in the game as it is, tanking could be done by the simplest of minds.

Every time I hear that tanking is a mindless and easy job, I think of what it would be like raiding with an incompetent tank. Have you played with tanks that don't prepare, don't understand positioning, don't understand class mechanics? Good tanks enable good DPS to do more. Good tanks allow good healers to focus on others. Good tanks contribute heavy to DPS checks. And now with active mitigation it's not the same boring rotation while still doing all these things.

Tanking has become more challenging than it used to be, not less. The only difficulty of the past was hoping for heroic strike crits to beat the other tank on the threat meter to pass him. The content had to be so less threatening because of how threat mechanics used to work.

You speak some truth in your post but ya missed the boat on this one.

[Mormolyce]

This is it, exactly. When I join an LFR and see half of the DPS below 80k DPS; or 2-3 people running into mechanics at the start of the fight so they can go AFK; or 1-2 of the "healers" are DPS spec and only queued as healer to not wait in queue, I lose the desire to tank in LFR.

Hey bra.

My main is DPS and I see all those things too.

- - - Updated - - -

Tanking used to be challenging

False.

Seriously? Until MoP we didn't even have active mitigation. You spammed your high threat ability until you locked aggro and then what? You could just about afk. Your dodge/parry/block/def rating did all the work for you.

[DeadmanWalking]

All right my friends, I'm sure some of you will say that everything is fine, roll a tank, or make some other highly useful remark, but I came here to share my thoughts on what I believe should be Blizzard's priority #1 problem to solve. And no, it's not adding more vanity pets or mounts to the game.

I've spent 45 mins in LFR queue last night as DPS. Then I got in, just to see a demoralized raid with 1 tank and a bunch of peeps jumping around on their mounts, one of whom was sharing a heart-breaking story about how he had to save 75k to buy an engineering rocket, and how he bought it in the end. Touching, truly.

I've played this game for many years and I'm a big fan of Blizzard-drug, generally.

I have 5 tanks and a bunch of other chars I like to casually play; I'm not a hardcore raider, in case it matters. I like LFR, when it's playable. I don't listen to idiots too much and zone out, doing my job, which I do very well.

Understand that solving tanks problem is easier said than done (please save your breath trying to explain it to me, I'm with you on this one), but I still believe that Blizzard needs to:

1. Allow warlocks to tank. They've given us a glyph, we are half-way there.
2. Allow shamans to tank. They've given us shield and Rockbiter, we are half-way there.
3. Allow hunters to tank. Probably a bit harder due to indirect pet control, but would be awesome.

The only way to "solve the problem" is generate more interest for people to tank. That can be achieved through letting us explore one of our old dusty classes in a new capacity.

I also believe the above would be easier to do for Blizz than invent a completely new class, and smarter in terms of player-base retention than ignoring the problem fully.

Discuss if you want, I'm going to grab a coffee.

You want short queues? Make a friend with a healer or tank. Queue up together. Socialize on a vent. Laugh at the stupid tanks, rage at the afks. Make a friggen friend, jump through the queue lines faster and stop bitching that LFR ruined socializing and the community. The community did not die because of a button you push to get in line, it died because now you are not required to make friends so you refuse to.

[ben-]

I like to tank, I just dont like tanking LFR, Im put on a stage for 24 others to abuse if I make a mistake.(especially the ones who are hardly trying, they seem to be the most vocal and most immune to removal)

[Chingylol]

So we want to make class changes and change game mechanics just so people can do LFR faster? Lol, c'mon now..

[thedingleberry]

Making more tank classes/specs will do nothing to encourage people to queue lfr as a tank or take over as tank in an ongoing fail lfr. The problem is people don't want to perform the tanking role AT ALL in lfr. 99% of the people want to just join in as a dps, put on hulu on the 2nd monitor and burn through it. The only solution that would make more people want to tank lfr would be to completely disable the vote kick system (to keep new tanks from being kicked by elitists running just to see get off on the meter), disable all chat (to prevent the filth that most lfr mouth-breathers with no common sense spew), and give lfr tanks only one ability they need to taunt on, and pop up in huge letters on the screen exactly when they need to do it. That is the only time you will ever see more tanks in the lfr queue.