The tanking dilemma - role and design of tanks in Legion

[Deleted]

well, not defending the venom, but if I am PUGGING IN a tank I expect him to already have the knowledge required to complete the tasks that I am bringing him in to do. Not teach him each fight. If we are talking about a GUILD tank, then he should have learned these fights along side of me and be as knowledgeable if not more each step of the way.

so the only way a "new tank" is receiving venom is if they step into a group unprepared to complete the tasks required of them. either by being obviously under geared, not knowing their class completely and using their ability to best advantage, or not knowing the fights ahead of time.

And that is one big fucking thing that DDs don't need to care about.
I always go into new encounters as a DD first so you can see the boss before he punches you. If you fuck up then noone gives a shit. But if the same thing happens to you while you play a tank you are at fault for everything, even that the rogue isn't as high in damage as they would like to be.

^ Yes. Telling 19 other people to stand around waiting while you google a fight vid is not going to earn you much in the way of goodwill. Especially in LFR.

In LFR you simply download DBM and wing it. All the instructions I have ever read where in the dungeon journal and I did fine. Once I even read those while tanking trash on the way to that boss I was learning.

[judgementofantonidas]

The real question is, do we actually need more tanks?



That's where I see the issue. Have you ever tried finding a top 100 mythic guild as a tank? If I wanted to move up to top 50, chances of getting a tanking spot become few and far between. Tanking spots are traditionally the most stable and are usually the least recruited. Healer spots get dropped on farm content. The only thing that is consistently in high demand is good DPS (ranged specifically).

no top 50 spot is stable. they eat their young like lawyers. you just need to be significantly and consistently better than the guy you are trying to replace.

[Delimit]

The one is overabundant the other is in high demand.
If you can't see this there is no point in explaining it to you.
Although I agree that threat isn't fun for me as tank aswell as a DD.

Don't fool yourself, tanks are in much shorter supply than DDs in 5er.
Healer are what you will be looking for in raids.
DDs are always a dime a dozen.

Except that it is reversed in a raiding environment. A 95th percentile DPS basically has his pick. 95th percentile tank? Not so much. Healers aren't what you're looking for in raids, they're currently the first thing you start to cut on farm. I don't know what world you live in, but good ranged DPS is always the shortage in competent raid groups.

5 mans don't require some kind of amazing tank, many people respec to tank dungeons and nothing else. Same with healing. I guess if 5 man heroic dungeons is your "end game", you might see a problem there, just don't expect anyone else to care.

[Heladys]

I don't know for you, but for me the fun of being a tank died in WotLK when threat became irrelevant and 90 % of what made tanking special disappeared and I felt just like some regular DPSer.

I dunno, I had a co-tank who couldn't maintain threat off dps let alone off me as his co-tank. I was shocked.

[judgementofantonidas]

This wasn't fun for DPS. Maybe someone somewhere didn't mind, but that's it. At least that's what Blizzard thought and I agree with them here completely. You can make a poll, if you want, DPS don't like threat, they merely tolerate it. Stopping your damage because some undergeared tank can't keep up is the antithesis of fun.

yes yes. dps just want to pew pew pew instead of using the tools that were absolutely provided in their toolbox or another raid member's toolbox to keep their threat below the tank, without having to autoswing or stop damage altogether.

now we are left in a world where neither the tank nor the dps threat matters.

[Akka]

By the way, suppose they add threat and make it "a game for everyone" by giving everyone Misdirection so that everyone is responsible for their threat. But then it wouldn't exist for you as a tank, so nothing has changed, we just made DPS jump through extra hurdles and tank's game didn't get better.

So, no, threat can only exist if it's solely tank's game and no one else's. Unfortunately, there's no way to make it such, and when it's partly tank's game and partly DPS's game, it isn't fun for DPS. /shrug

I spent a whole paragraph describing in details lots of ways threat can be fun for everyone. From this, you just grab one and strawman the point to death.
I guess gratz, we really need more strawmen on the Internet ?

[judgementofantonidas]

DPS do play with others, they damage things and things die. But threat isn't fun for them.

If you say DPS should take this bullet for the team, fine, but then I am not sure why we are having this thread, tanks gameplay gets boring, so what, they should take one for the team, end of story.

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PS: And no, it wasn't interesting for DPS in the least. I repeat, stopping damage because the tank can't hold up isn't fun at all. Again, make a poll if you don't believe me. Doing damage is fun. Doing great damage by lining up cooldowns in the right moments is fun. Avoiding boss mechanics is fun. Kiting things is fun. Obeying threat isn't fun. Simple.

if you had to STOP damage you were bad or the tank was bad. period.

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I disagree. Tanks are fine as they are, the last thing we need is more self-righteous players narcing up like they're gods gift to gaming for picking one of the three vital roles. Something we'd see if tanks are given so much as an inch to feel smug and superior about

Nothing can change the fact that we are the superior race. So why not fix the real problem?

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We are looking for solution to different problems.
You want tanking to be fun (for you).
I just want to be able to form groups.

My question is do you want quality groups with quality players or are you just looking for more throughput because you get slow ques? Seems you just want to feed your ques.

[Deleted]

Current tank gameplay is fine with me, but they have to work on the god awful hitboxes on bosses, i move 2 meters to the right and the boss moves right through me on the other side....

No Tank gameplay isn't fine at the moment. You have three different roles, Tank, Heal and DD. While all three of them have the play certain boss mechanics every role had their own "thing". DDs were supposed to do damage, healer were supposed to heal and tank had to look at the threat meter. Besides that, yes tanks had kind of self heal and nowadays even healers appear in the dmg meter, but thats not their "Main Thing". After getting rid of the Threat for Tanks they don't have their own "thing". Blizzard tried to compensate it. You have the vengeance approach with tanks dominating the damage meter in mists. Is that a good solution? You have the whole Resolve tanking in WoD which leads into, "oh in this a holy or tank pala second in the healing meter?". Or even worse, calling externals is your new Tank "thing". While i am not necessarily saying that blizzard should return to threat for tanks, there is definitive work to do to improve tank gameplay and make it more different to: you're doing basically your rotation as a dd and calling sometimes for externals.

[Deleted]

Except that it is reversed in a raiding environment. A 95th percentile DPS basically has his pick. 95th percentile tank? Not so much. Healers aren't what you're looking for in raids, they're currently the first thing you start to cut on farm. I don't know what world you live in, but good ranged DPS is always the shortage in competent raid groups.

5 mans don't require some kind of amazing tank, many people respec to tank dungeons and nothing else. Same with healing. I guess if 5 man heroic dungeons is your "end game", you might see a problem there, just don't expect anyone else to care.

Alright, what problem are we actually trying to solve here?
I am all about fixing long queues for 5er and a lot of DDs think the tanks are elitist for wanting to lead and not having DDs pull everything.
PS:I dont know what "95th percentile" means.

My question is do you want quality groups with quality players or are you just looking for more throughput because you get slow ques? Seems you just want to feed your ques.

We are looking for solution to different problems.
You want tanking to be fun (for you).
I just want to be able to form groups.

This explicitly concerns 5er dungeons since you have plenty of tanks for raiding.

[Evolved]

I spent a whole paragraph describing in details lots of ways threat can be fun for everyone. From this, you just grab one and strawman the point to death.
I guess gratz, we really need more strawmen on the Internet ?

Except that threat is never objectively "fun" for many of us. At best it was irrelevant, at worst it was an annoyance. Trying to increase your damage, trying to increase your survivability, those are what are supposed to make things interesting. Hitting taunt and smashing your buttons while eyeballing a threat meter isn't interesting or "fun" for the majority.

I am all about fixing long queues for 5er and a lot of DDs think the tanks are elitist for wanting to lead and not having DDs pull everything.

That makes the assumption that they need to be fixed.

[Deleted]

Alright, what problem are we actually trying to solve here?

From my understanding its a discussion about the general state of Tanking. Is Tank gameplay fun? Should Tanking be more accessible, etc.

PS:I dont know what "95th percentile" means.

Belonging to the 95th Percentile means that you below to the 5% of the best.
Like for warcraftlogs, if you have a 95 percentile ranking means, that 5% were better then you; 99th percentile means that 1% of the player were better, etc.

This explicitly concerns 5er dungeons since you have plenty of tanks for raiding.

That might be a problem as well.
Too few Tanks for the LFD or Dungeon content.
Too many for the organized raiding content.

[judgementofantonidas]

Tanks are in the position of being able to effectively dictate whom they play with. They are rarely, if ever, lacking for willing party members if they decide to put together their own private runs. If they dont want to play with bads, or put up with the lazy or the incompetent then they do not have to do so. If this to you makes them the bad guy for wanting to be in an efficient run, i suggest you step up your game.

Nobody owes you anything here. And no tank is obligated to carry you just because you expect it of them.

very well put.

[Deleted]

That makes the assumption that they need to be fixed.

Way to take this out of context, you even deleted my name from it.

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From my understanding its a discussion about the general state of Tanking. Is Tank gameplay fun? Should Tanking be more accessible, etc.

Belonging to the 95th Percentile means that you below to the 5% of the best.
Like for warcraftlogs, if you have a 95 percentile ranking means, that 5% were better then you; 99th percentile means that 1% of the player were better, etc.

That might be a problem as well.
Too few Tanks for the LFD or Dungeon content.
Too many for the organized raiding content.

1.Then I am wrogn here.
2. Thanks for clearing that up.
3. Did noone read the little math I made about that?!

"math"

[judgementofantonidas]

And that is one big fucking thing that DDs don't need to care about.
I always go into new encounters as a DD first so you can see the boss before he punches you. If you fuck up then noone gives a shit. But if the same thing happens to you while you play a tank you are at fault for everything, even that the rogue isn't as high in damage as they would like to be.


In LFR you simply download DBM and wing it. All the instructions I have ever read where in the dungeon journal and I did fine. Once I even read those while tanking trash on the way to that boss I was learning.

a competent tank is going to read guides, practice in alpha/beta/ptr and then guinepig a pug group or two. then when raid day with the guild comes they know the fight.

[Evolved]

Way to take this out of context, you even deleted my name from it.

It's called copy pasting quotes, rather than quoting directly. I didn't delete anything, lol.

[Deleted]

a competent tank is going to read guides, practice in alpha/beta/ptr and then guinepig a pug group or two. then when raid day with the guild comes they know the fight.

So tanking involves 20 hours preperation for every fight and DDs can just wing it.

Seems legit.

You forget that should a tank act like that they usually end up with a lot of "idiot" DDs because
"everyone else is stupid".
In your world the tank is not allowed a single mistake, should be able to clear all the content even before it's released. They are supposed to babysit everyone else.

[judgementofantonidas]

Alright, what problem are we actually trying to solve here?
I am all about fixing long queues for 5er and a lot of DDs think the tanks are elitist for wanting to lead and not having DDs pull everything.
PS:I dont know what "95th percentile" means.




This explicitly concerns 5er dungeons since you have plenty of tanks for raiding.

5 mans are irelevant. most of them inevitably end up tankable by plate melee. so if you have tanks in LFG who are not "up to snuff" they are either melee that got tired of the que, or extremely bad at tanking. good news everyone will be able to instantly re spec to tank in legion if they want to and their class holds that ability. just think how wonderful it will be to have a prot paladin, a frost dk, a mistweaver monk, a boomkin, and a ret paladin all que for your five man, and all decide the tank sucks. now you have five tanks running around willy nilly. all the tanks you could ever want. problem solved.

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So tanking involves 20 hours preperation for every fight and DDs can just wing it.

Seems legit.

You forget that should a tank act like that they usually end up with a lot of "idiot" DDs because
"everyone else is stupid".
In your world the tank is not allowed a single mistake, should be able to clear all the content even before it's released. They are supposed to babysit everyone else.

that is the reality. dps players "in general" just want to pew pew. hence cc gone, threat gone, etc. however there are still those outliers who can dps and be smart. again, it depends on the tank. if you are gonna show up day one and take it to the face expect to be treated like an idiot. if you do a VERY SMALL amount of research you will be fine and maybe become respected.

[Deleted]

5 mans are irelevant. most of them inevitably end up tankable by plate melee. so if you have tanks in LFG who are not "up to snuff" they are either melee that got tired of the que, or extremely bad at tanking. good news everyone will be able to instantly re spec to tank in legion if they want to and their class holds that ability. just think how wonderful it will be to have a prot paladin, a frost dk, a mistweaver monk, a boomkin, and a ret paladin all que for your five man, and all decide the tank sucks. now you have five tanks running around willy nilly. all the tanks you could ever want. problem solved.

That's so uncalled for.

Also it makes you look like an elitist jerk.
Thanks for clearing that up so I don't have to spend any more time on talking to you.

[Onikaroshi]

So tanking involves 20 hours preperation for every fight and DDs can just wing it.

Seems legit.

You forget that should a tank act like that they usually end up with a lot of "idiot" DDs because
"everyone else is stupid".
In your world the tank is not allowed a single mistake, should be able to clear all the content even before it's released. They are supposed to babysit everyone else.

Yea, in the real world its more like "Tank, DPS and Healers watch 2 min video, read DJ, listen to Raid Leader tell them how they want it done, do it" everyone should know the fight, not just the tank

[judgementofantonidas]

So tanking involves 20 hours preperation for every fight and DDs can just wing it.

Seems legit.

You forget that should a tank act like that they usually end up with a lot of "idiot" DDs because
"everyone else is stupid".
In your world the tank is not allowed a single mistake, should be able to clear all the content even before it's released. They are supposed to babysit everyone else.

oh. and on a side note, I had a mage ask "what is this time warp for, when should I use it" to which I simply shook my head and said please remove that from your bar. this was less than a month ago.