Does the WoW population have more Tanks now than it did years ago?

[l33t]

Teh problem is that tank has too much responsibility involved in his role. Tank has to lead people, tank has to organise pulls, tank has too much personal responsibility in, well, everything.
Me personal loved tanking in BC, kinda loved tanking in WoTLK, never tanked in Cata... and kinda hated tanking in MoP. When I started playing, threat management and cooldown usage were two general skills that differentiated a good tank from a bad one. Also, tanks had to collect two gear sets, avoidance one and mitigation one, because avoidance really mattered in some fights. Nowadays every random Jonh and his dog can easily manage threat, and tanks wear common damage dealer's gear. Without threat management, for me a tank's gameplay is nonexistant, and having a possibility to top meters both in damage dealt and healing done only makes it worth, because not only you have to receive tons of damage to boost your Veng, which is absurd due to main idea of a tank is avoiding a damage, but you also make your fellow raiders look bad (lol his damage is worse that a tank's one, lol).
back to a question: yes, I believe, there is way less tanks nowadays. Though I think it is not because of changes to a tanking system, its just people don't want to take responsibility of a tank for a bunch of randoms. Easy respeccing and dps gear also take their toll here.

[loki504]

In old days warriors were only tank class. Now we have 5

and that means what? still doesn't tell us how many used a tanking spec(the only acceptabel role for warriors)
and how many where needed to tank. because alot of warriors/paladins/druids/monks/dks are dkps/healing spec. so just saying there more classes doesn't mean there more tanks.

[Tehterokkar]

I don't know about you but I have been the main tank for 9 years now and I can, with certainty, say that I haven't been as fucking bored with tanking in the game EVER as I have in MoP (perhaps in vanilla because bear tanking was pretty hideous back then).

The whole "active mitigation" is a joke - all I do is press a button every 6 seconds when there's a chance for a bigger hit or just when I'm bored or have excess rage to go around (which is always since my rage is at max almost all the time, it's absurd). And no, I don't do Heroic Raiding so I can't comment on how it's like there but on anything lower it's just an incredibly boring affair to be a (guardian) tank.

Edit:
As for number of tanks - there are more tanks but as a side effect so many of them are incredibly bad that rely 100% on healers keeping them up (this in pugs/lfr/flex)

Well yeah.... Of course tanking is boring if you only did level of raiding where literally it doesn't matter what you do.

Also Guardian Druids are just an ability spam fest, I agree they need to change Guardian, but as for other tanks, the gameplay is actually engaging. Guardian is still a meatshield, same as it was in Wrath and Cata, you soak damage rather than avoid it for most abilities(since most if not all boss special abilities can't be dodged/parried).

[Deleted]

Of course tanking is boring if you only did level of raiding where literally it doesn't matter what you do.

That's a really poor cop out. "Only in heroic raiding does anything matter.. everything else is just.."

[FuxieDK]

Do. Not. Comprehend.

Making you actually pay attention to stuff like DPS/Healers makes Tanking suddenly not fun? Tanking is the best it's ever been in WoW. I've played each tank class since Wrath and MoP by far is the best experience. Not only because of Vengeance but because what you do as a Tank actually matters(lol hi WotLK mana sponges). Cata was a step in the right direction but MoP nailed it perfectly.

NO NO NO NO!!!

The tank's job is to keep aggro, NOTHING else. If a huge damage spike (LK Soul Reaper, Madness Impale etc) is incomming, I'll pop a major cooldown to survive.. However, the rest is a healer's job..

When Blizzard increased tanks from +30% threat to +150% threat, it became too easy to tank.. Later, they increased it from +150% to a silly +500%, meaning you could hold aggro with auto-attacks, after the first 15 seconds.
Hell, I once DC'ed mid-fight.. The game keeps you in-game for 60 seconds, before you go offline.. For those 60 seconds, my guildies told me, I held aggro on the boss, right up to the point where my toon disappeared.

And when Blizzard smash the game like that, they think they can solve the problems they create, by forcing tanks to smash more buttons??????

No, tanks need to have the threat reduced A LOT and dps needs to think when or how they attack.. The Tanks also need to have their damage nerfed, so they once more are considered 0,5x dps, and you kick any dps who are sub-tank..

[zorkuus]

I think vanilla and TBC had the most tanks, mainly because of larger raids.

Well you'd be wrong. The number of raids going on/guilds capable of raiding was much less than today. Not to mention guilds had to often borrow or "steal" tanks from other guilds.

[Dasani]

Some of the fights this expansion were kind of interesting tank-wise.

However SOO is pure shit as far as tanking goes. Blizzard developers were so butt hurt about people being able to solo tank so many encounters in TOT when it was current, they wanted to make DAMN SURE people couldn't solo tank siege so their grand solution in all of their complete lack of creativity was to put a boring ass tank swap mechanic on every single fucking boss in the raid.

Every fucking fight in the whole bloody raid has the exact same kind of shit mechanic to FORCE you to have two tanks except for Protectors. That is literally the only one.
Immerseus? His nuke hits harder each cast.
Norushen? His attack htis harder each cast.
Sha? Don't swap, you get MCed in seconds.
Galakras? Can't tank shit on the ground and in the towers at the same time, also unless you're a dk and uses the AMS exploit you have to tank swap stacks on galakras himself.
Iron Jug? Nuke hits harder each cast.
Dark shaman? Attack hits harder each cast.
Nazgrim? Generates more rage each cast, solo tank = non stop ravager spam.
Malkorok? Hits harder every attack.
Spoils? Two sides which have to be done at the same time.
Thok? Abilitiy debuffs ramp up after each cast.
Blackfuse? Abilitiy hits harder after each cast.
Paragons? Debuffs from certain bosses ramp up damage from others, forcing different tanks.
Garrosh? Ability hits harder each cast.

It is pure, complete, utter, total bullshit. I absolutely DESPISE siege for this reason alone. Nearly every fight is just a simple stacking debuff that eventually becomes unmanageable. At least Spoils and Protectors have a justifiable excuse for needing 2 tanks because you actually have different jobs to do, but I fucking hate the fact blizzard was so damn lazy and so butthurt at the notion of single tanking being a thing that they had to put this shit into the game to force 2 tanks at all times.

Now it is true, you can solo tank several fights in siege. Immerseus is easy to solo tank if you have enough DPS (which aint hard these days), you can solo tank protectors if you are decently geared, you can solo tank norushen if your raid's DPS is high enough and you don't mess with orbs at all. Next fight you can get away with solo tanking is all the way up at spoils, and to solo tank spoils you have to use a really silly method of doing the fight which is honestly not worth fooling with at all. You can solo tank thok without too much problem. It is possible to solo tank blackfuse if your healers are good and have external CDs to help you survive the high stacks. It's possible to solo tank paragons if you don't mind all the extra damage, and of course solo tanking garrosh has been the best way to do that fight IMO for a long time.

But that doesn't change the fact most of those are only doable once you outgear the content, is downright impossible on heroic to solo most of them that you can solo on normal, and just the offensiveness of the forced stacking debuffs to make you have to have two tanks.

I don't mind needing two tanks because they have to do different jobs or be in different places at the same time like spoils. I don't mind needing two tanks for something like heroic paragons because the bosses inflict SO much damage that you just could not reliably survive tanking them all (fuck you 20 stacks of buff locust!), that stuff doesn't bother me. The unoriginal, uncreative bullshit that is stacking debuffs that you just taunt off of each other once in a while to reset is just downright offensive to me as well as the complete lack of fights in siege that are straight up designed or even rewarding to solo tank.

I find solo tanking to be a much more enjoyable experience. I love doing it, even when you aren't supposed to. I still find it amusing when I help my friends do Flex 4's and such and solo tank the entire wing and literally every person in there, even people with well over 560+ itemlevel all believe it's impossible to solo tank blackfuse and paragons. If this trend of stacking debuffs on every single fight continues, i'm probably just going to lose interest in this game to the point that I stop playing it. It's one of the reasons I enjoy challenge modes, since it's just the one tank, the one healer, and our great chemistry working together.

I have had more fun selling challenge mode carries this past year than any of the raid content blizzard has managed to shit out. My guild still clears heroic SOO every week and sells carries for the title/feat/mount but i've been thinking about taking a break from it because i'm just so tired of the instance. All the fights are so bland and unoriginal. Nothing but adds adds adds and stacking debuffs on tanks. At least TOT had a little diversity, and MSV had IMO the most interesting fights to actually tank. I liked managing energy levels on boss one, stealing powers from boss 2, solo tanking and guiding the raid away from the soldiers marching (whatever that move was called, i forget), pulling the adds out on elegon at just the right moment to maximize DPS on it but also ensure it didn't explode with extra power all over the raid, and also dancing around the final boss and doing so properly granting you a big nuke ability you can use on the boss to help kill it faster. Those fights were actually FUN. They actually gave tanks shit to DO.

SOO is nothing but adds and the same copy and paste boring ass debuffs.

[CataclismicSunrise]

I want to say that there are more tanks.. Tanking is so easy now and ... I forgot what I was going to type. Oh yeah, I think the ease of gearing and dual spec has also contributed to this. But at the same time I think maybe some of the older tanks make less of an appearance. I know I've stopped tanking for randoms for a few reasons. I really enjoyed the age of careful pulls and slow and steady wins the race. Something that disappeared entirely in MoP for me. I hate being rushed. Even as DPS.

[Deleted]

It has definately declined, especially after 5.4

[Goretex]

I quit tanking on one of my alts in cata. Too much crap to deal with, if you're in a dungeon you're either going too fast or too slow. You have dps pull before you and they get aggro and die then blame you, some cry baby dps saying go go go go. Or a healer that doesn't know how to heal or runs out of mana. Was fun up until cata, and even in cata I had soem good times tanking. I just got burnt out and got sick of dealing with stupid people, made it unenjoyable after 3 expansions. So yeah I don't tank anymore.

[Hellkung]

NO NO NO NO!!!

The tank's job is to keep aggro, NOTHING else. If a huge damage spike (LK Soul Reaper, Madness Impale etc) is incomming, I'll pop a major cooldown to survive.. However, the rest is a healer's job..

When Blizzard increased tanks from +30% threat to +150% threat, it became too easy to tank.. Later, they increased it from +150% to a silly +500%, meaning you could hold aggro with auto-attacks, after the first 15 seconds.
Hell, I once DC'ed mid-fight.. The game keeps you in-game for 60 seconds, before you go offline.. For those 60 seconds, my guildies told me, I held aggro on the boss, right up to the point where my toon disappeared.

And when Blizzard smash the game like that, they think they can solve the problems they create, by forcing tanks to smash more buttons??????

No, tanks need to have the threat reduced A LOT and dps needs to think when or how they attack.. The Tanks also need to have their damage nerfed, so they once more are considered 0,5x dps, and you kick any dps who are sub-tank..

This is the most selfish style of tanking I know and it is this kind of tank or players who I prefer not tanking with, no offence to you personally.

The days of threat management were stupid, "Oh gee wait for 3 sunders please" is the most boring and game-breaking thing for a DPS. Players who are there purely because of their potential to do damage. In a way the higher the DPS, the easier the fight gets. You can ignore some mechanics, phases, fights last shorter and there is less to heal, people take less damage. This is looking at it in the most basic way.

I tanked in Wrath as a warrior, this was heroic progression and have done the same this tier at least on 3 seperate classes, as a DK and a monk for HC again and have cleared normals as a paladin.

There's some clear cut problems, some classes scale too well with Vengeance. Blizz has already noted on tanks needing way too little external healing nowadays, I agree with that too.

But the flipside is that especially with how AM works right now we are incredibly self-sufficient so the difference between a good tank and a bad one is pretty noticable.

Back then there was threat, and stuff like CTC caps, apart from that you had to use major CD's for telegraphed hits or boss abilities. That was it.

Now you have to constantly generate resources and think about where you want to spend them.

This style of tanking has breeded another type of player which is giving current tanks a bad name. The kind who think Vengeance is an excuse for taking more damage so that you do more damage. The ones who only care about DPS. The same players who think Atonement healing is healing. It's not.

I think some people think the sole job of a tank is to hold aggro and survive the encounter, it's not.

It's to lead by example, organize or to say it in the best way, it's to make lives of their healers and their DPS, easier.

If this means being able to survive on your own for a good thirty seconds or to just smooth your damage intake or to turn the boss a certain way so the melee have an easier time, that's what you should do.

[Deleted]

If we had queueable content in TBC, would the queues have popped faster or slower?

*Shudder* can you imagine Heroic Shattered Halls with an LFD group? Just the thought is Horrifying! :-) At least, if you assume the same kinds of players in today's LFD groups, 90% of them probably wouldn't have made it past the first trash pull.

If we had queuable raids during WOTLK, would the queues have popped faster or slower?

I believe the problem wouldn't have been so much about the queues but the number of players who would have ragequit about wiping on Thaddius or started drama about bonespikes on Marrowgar (Which in turn causes longer queues and more frustration with half-finished groups). I believe that is still the main issue now - but during WotLK those players had special places on ignore lists and server reputations which prevented them from being invited to PuGs.

Today, after all the many Tanking changes to Threat and rotations, do queues pop faster or slower?
Overall, are there more Tanks now?

I don't think those questions are really meaningful or answerable because you're comparing two completely different games. WoW back in TBC was almost a different genre to the game which exists now in MoP. There are too many differences to even begin to construct a complete answer.

Surely the increased 'accessibility' to tanking has helped somewhat in lowering the entry requirements to tanking, but tanks were always a minority - remember that Blizzard increased accessibility of everything to everybody - so previously there were millions of players who didn't even play at maximum level, and those players probably didn't play tanks except in low-level dungeons where you didn't need to be defense capped, and the only thing you needed to know was how to hold aggro on 4-5 mobs.

The overall game changes "could" mean that there are more tanks in the game, but for every tank, there are probably hundreds more dps players who previously weren't interested in max-level content, and who wouldn't have ever been able to cope with raid mechanics.

[*]Threat, one of the most intimidating things to a new Tank, has been more-or-less trivialized. This should making Tanking easier to succeed at, so more people should be willing to do it and keep doing it after trying it.

I would say that's probably the one thing which the majority of WoW players actually would have coped with better than anything else. Group dynamics were such a core part of gameplay from the moment players entered their first dungeon in RFC/Deadmines, so "the holy trinity" and the concept of controlling aggro and using CC became second nature to many players by the time they hit Uldaman and Zul'Farrak.

The majority of players I met by the time I reached L40-L50 on all of my characters had a pretty good understanding of threat and the need for group co-operation, because the overall 'culture' within WoW was very cooperative. Even some of the worst tanks I ever healed at least understood that it was their job to keep aggro, and most of them only had 3 buttons to press anyway. Not to say that I didn't join wipefests in Gnomeregan, Uldaman, Zul'Farrak, etc; but the role of a tank holding aggro was simple enough that I believe the majority of players understood, and things like breaking CC or pulling ahead of the tank were generally considered "taboo" that even very inexperienced players would quickly understand the need for situational awareness by the time they reached L30+.

Gear requirements for Tanking have melted significantly, with much more ability to share DPS and Tank sets (at least to an adequate, if not optimal, performance level), so again this should make more people willing to Tank, at least as an off-spec or to get queue pops.
Rotations have been revamped in MoP to be more engaging/rewarding/fun (hypothetically), so again, this should draw more people to Tanking.
Blizzard long ago started outright bribing Tanks to queue for matchmade content.

All of these things sound good on paper, but I think they've actually been counter-productive overall.

- Gear requirements being reduced - great for accessibility, but tanking is harder to learn than DPS - one of the disadvantages of making tanking more accessible is that it allows players to bypass the learning curve, and immediately inflict themselves upon other players in LFR/LFD

- Rotations have been made more complex and more fun for experienced players. Great! but how does a new player learn? during Classic/TBC a tank could learn their basic 3-button skill and keeping aggro on a group of mobs just by levelling through dungeons, but as the game gets more complex I suspect it has the effect of "switching off" inexperienced players with a steeper learning curve and a complete lack of learning content in the levels from 1-90. Overall I think this might be one of the main reasons that there are fewer tanks who are actually able to cope with LFR despite the trivialised mechanics.

- Bribing tanks to do content - I fundamentally disagree with the concept of bribing players to do anything because I think it's destructive and goes against everything the game is supposed to be about (i.e. having fun!). I think Blizzard have shot themselves in the foot by doing this - I see it as of the biggest mistakes of the random matchmaking system. As a basic game design principle, players should be rewarded for doing the things they enjoy, and not feel coerced into an activity simply because the reward is useful or valuable to them.

I think LFR and LFD suffer from a severe affliction of "mechanar syndrome" - named after the TBC condition of players 'grinding' Heroic Mechanar for a daily dose of Badges - not for the enjoyment but just for the efficient reward. That condition has not only snowballed out of control to the point where many players don't run content for enjoyment any more, but it has redefined the entire gameplay experience for casual players who are fast-tracked up to maximum level and ushered onto the "gear treadmill".

I have no doubt that many players do indeed enjoy running LFR, and I totally support Blizzard letting players see the content and finish quests/storylines/etc, but I heavily question what percentage of the millions of players who are queueing for LFR every week would prefer other options for getting loot and progressing their characters.

On the other side of the argument is this line of thinking:

Even if there's more Tanks overall, there may be fewer in the queue than ever, because the changes to Threat accidentally had the side-effect of changing non-Tank behavior to become so toxic and uncooperative that Tanks had fled the queue in mass exodus.

Well, I personally loved the threat game, and I'm disappointed that they've moved away from it, but I do understand that there's a general divide in the community for/against threat, and that it caused problems in raiding - however overall I think the threat model was actually pretty good for casual players - furthermore I think threat was the 'cornerstone' upon which everything in the game used to be built on. If anything, I think 'removal of threat' would be the single change which redefined everything about WoW gameplay; and effectively turned WoW from being a casual-focused co-operative MMORPG, into a raiding-focused MMORPG.

Threat, Gear, and Rotations are nice, but the fundamental scary things about Tanking — Leading, Tactical responsibility, Organization of pulls, Positioning, "going first", more responsibility for wipes if you mess up or are new, etc. have not changed, therefore, Tanking populations probably haven't changed much either.

More generally, I think added complexity of having loads of extra buttons and mechanics is a major turn-off. The general expectation that players will have read Icy-veins and understand boss mechanics is asking too much for the types of players who have gotten used to just smashing 3 buttons and watching mobs fall down at their feet.

Not only have Blizzard totally failed to provide the majority of those players with a proper learning curve, but I think they've failed in really understanding what those players actually enjoyed in the first place. During TBC you could reasonably expect players going from L1-L70 to learn how to hold aggro and use their basic 5-6 buttons - WOW was actually a really simple game with a fair amount of depth and a lot of player-inter dependence (Meaning that "weak" players could usually be carried by the stronger players).

MoP has turned all of that on its head by ramping up the complexity and putting individual players under the spotlight by demanding the average player shows a lot more individual skill, and making it bleedingly obvious when a weak player fails to live up to their role. While it's clear that some players don't want to 'carry' others, I think it's too much to expect a casual L90 player to be interested in learning how to use 20+ abilities and unique tanking mechanics for every fight while basking under the spotlight of 24 other players. It's no real surprise that players who might otherwise enjoy tanking prefer to join as DPS.

It's not a clear-cut case of saying that TBC was a better game, but I firmly believe that it was more casual-friendly before raiding became the central focus, just because raiding implies the kind of complexity and learning curve which the average WoW player has always struggled with. I often wonder what percentage of LFR players genuinely enjoy it, because everything about LFR feels like a hardcore game desperately trying to appeal to an audience who have always preferred 'simple' gameplay.

And, more importantly, does anyone know if there's been actual numbers or rough commentary about the topic from Blizzard, or at least player-made studies?

No idea, these are my opinions only. I'm no longer a casual player nor a tank, but a healer in a 12/14 Heroic raiding guild. And I really dislike the overall emphasis on raiding in this game, and the fact that so much casual gameplay seems to have been annihilated by Cata and MoP. Although in a recent interview, Ion Hazzikostas pretty much ruled out Threat ever making a comeback - presumably because they want to try building on top of Active Mitigation for WoD, But then again, Blizzard aren't immune to changing their minds on such topics between expansions. It looks like tanking isn't going to change much over the next couple of years.

[Wilian]

The days of threat management were stupid, "Oh gee wait for 3 sunders please" is the most boring and game-breaking thing for a DPS. Players who are there purely because of their potential to do damage. In a way the higher the DPS, the easier the fight gets. You can ignore some mechanics, phases, fights last shorter and there is less to heal, people take less damage. This is looking at it in the most basic way.

You're just plain wrong. Threat was one of the more interesting mechanics of vanilla/TBC and was something a good DPS knew how to tip toe around while maximising his or her DPS. It was a team effort and good one at that, not as plain typical thing but also as a mechanic where bosses would periodically drop threat certain % and players having to react to it.

Managing threat also made tanking a lot more fun and interactive experience where you had to pay attention to all mobs instead of the modern wham wham and get everything glued to you ad infinitum.

The mechanic is stellar, playerbase quite not so.

[Hellkung]

You're just plain wrong. Threat was one of the more interesting mechanics of vanilla/TBC and was something a good DPS knew how to tip toe around while maximising his or her DPS. It was a team effort and good one at that, not as plain typical thing but also as a mechanic where bosses would periodically drop threat certain % and players having to react to it.

Managing threat also made tanking a lot more fun and interactive experience where you had to pay attention to all mobs instead of the modern wham wham and get everything glued to you ad infinitum.

The mechanic is stellar, playerbase quite not so.

I respectfully disagree.

I'll agree that it was a team effort and good one at that, but at its base it was just incredibly counter-intuitive and an impossible job if there was a big gear difference or when stats started inflating near the end of an expansion.

Dying on the pull as a DPS warrior was never fun and I refuse to believe that just in Wrath, every tank I played with from Naxx all the way to ICC was a bad one.

[velde046]

I think vanilla and TBC had the most tanks, mainly because of larger raids. Oh the good old days with 40 man raids!

Dedicated tanks perhaps yes.... but when tanking became easier a lot of people created tank alts.... so if you include those, then Vanilla and TBC probably had the least on average....

[Cannibalus]

From what i've seen in random matchmaking (LFR and OQueue Flex) groups, most tanks are superbad as they don't heal themselves or keep active mitigation up. Basicly i think they queued as tank in order to spend less time in the queue and they plan on "seeing what to do when they are there".

I love to go as tank and do stuff like 170k HPS and 250k DPS as Guardian tank :P and i think MoP is the best expansion for tanks. I'm a fkin beast atm and i've tanked since BC.

[Mekkle]

I feel as if there are a bit more.

[tankbug]

In vanilla we had a couple of dedicated tanks in the raids. As a dps warrior, I also brought tank gear because I needed to off-tank at times, like when a boss had a few heavy hitting mobs. I didn't need prot spec. I think it was all about having a sword'n board and the basic prot skills. So I would say there would be more tanks today.
Funny thing is that less sign up as tank in LFR even if they are able and have the gear in my experience. Often if we lose one of the tanks, and have to wait for a new one, a dps/healer volunteers to respec. Maybe people fear fucking it up and getting abused by the rest of the group, perhaps. Usually, you have to know the fights very well and if you screw up, the raid dies. And if everything goes perfect, the best thing that can happen is that no one says anything negative.

[Deleted]

Tank population have declined rapidly since TBC..
MoP ruined the fun in tanking, with the annoying active mitigation...

No way josé, tanking is the most fun it's ever been //Warrior tank since vanilla, the community are mostly wankers towards tanks who aren't extremely good though, which results in less tanks wanting to actually learn to tank.

[Bodom]

Well I always used to play tanks when 5 mans mattered because tanking 5 mans is more fun than tanking raids (imo). Now that 5 mans don't matter I just don't specc tank anymore because I might as well just tank them as dps. I have more healers than I've ever had before though because it's easy to find groups and healing is fun (especially dps healing as disc priest and monk).