Is a Ranged tank possible in WoW?

[Mandar]

Yes, and it should be druid. We need another spec!

[Deleted]

The author of the "summon a remote tank and control it" does not main a tank and is possibly one of the folks who elicit such juicy curses from my GF when she queues up for stuff alone.

[Deleted]

ranged tanks only work on bosses that do not melee attack and do not have overly stringent positioning requirements.

pet tanking/statue/object tanking similarly only works when positioning isn't too important (gl dropping the statue behind the boss or change direction boss faces), and sounds like a nightmare in add fights or dungeons.


simple question: how would a ranged tank do the elrethe renferal fight, as either the boss tank or the spider tank?

[caervek]

Sure, "back in the day" many bosses needed a lock or mage to tank them.

[Blazefrost]

Only way I see ranged tanking working is if there was a pet or totem or something eating the damage for you further away from you. As it stands, too many mechanics rely on a tank being in melee range (pretty much any "stationary" boss) to not wipe groups, and if a tank is able to eat the same damage from 30 to 40 yards as they would melee (to make it balanced against "instakill" or other high-damage aoe their projection thingy eating damage happens to take), there's really no difference. For all the effort of coding and designing that only to wind up being just as effective as melee, you might as well make mages able to fortify themselves and tank via a Chronomancy 4th spec.

[Teriz]

Wildstar's Engineer class makes a fine case for ranged tanking.

[Deleted]

Why reinvent what has already been invented? Healer that healed sacrificed mage tanks on Gruul and Illidari Council says hi.

It worked well for some bosses. We simply need more bosses like that.

[Krieleros]

Wildstar's Engineer class makes a fine case for ranged tanking.

With its bots, it's basically a pet class. I've seen people go botless in dungeons and it didn't work out so well. It was really good on stationary targets and was beastly when it came to threat generation. On mobility fights, they definitely lagged behind warrior and stalker. Bots could also be extremely finicky and would sometimes bug out. I feel that Blizzard could make a ranged class work as a tank, but we just got a new tank. You only have 2 raids spots for tanks as is, 3 if you want to cheese certain mechanics. Adding yet another tank exacerbates the problem of too many tank specs and too few raid spots for them.

[Teri]

It could only work if there is some spell/pet/decoy whatever keeping the distance between the tank and the boss, as pretty much 99% of all bosses have been melee attack based.

Unless they design encounters like TBC again, which needed warlock & mage "tanking" in the past (high king maulgar/kael'thas pull/illidari council/illidan/eredar twins) which pretty much all but Illidan demon phase were multi-boss encounters.

[Teriz]

With its bots, it's basically a pet class. I've seen people go botless in dungeons and it didn't work out so well. It was really good on stationary targets and was beastly when it came to threat generation. On mobility fights, they definitely lagged behind warrior and stalker. Bots could also be extremely finicky and would sometimes bug out. I feel that Blizzard could make a ranged class work as a tank, but we just got a new tank. You only have 2 raids spots for tanks as is, 3 if you want to cheese certain mechanics. Adding yet another tank exacerbates the problem of too many tank specs and too few raid spots for them.

Good point. We do have a glut of tank classes at the moment. I have a feeling the next class (if there is one) won't have a tank spec. It'll probably be DPS/DPS/Heal, DPS/Heal/Heal, or maybe even DPS/DPS/Heal/Heal.

However if there is a new tank class, I'd be amazed if it was yet another melee tank.

[Logwyn]

There have been instances where a ranged class tanked in the past.

Mage ogre in Grull's lair. The DH in SSC was normally tanked by a warlock in one of the phases. Granted that some of these were for a bosses mechanics.

I still don't see why a pet class BM hunter and/or Demo Lock couldn't be a "ranged" tank using the pet to hold the boss. I know its been done for "fun" before in some instances.

I think one of the issue with WOW is that its too pigeonholed holed into tank/dps/heals. When you make the character if it doesn't say "tank" at all then it can't.

[Vagabond]

Powertech tends to disagree with you.

And Vanguard too

I am BM I tanked Midnight lul

[heef]

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between "is this possible?" and "do we actually need this?"

[Teri]

I still don't see why a pet class BM hunter and/or Demo Lock couldn't be a "ranged" tank using the pet to hold the boss. I know its been done for "fun" before in some instances.

There have been instances of voidwalkers tanking specific boss phases for short periods, thus they had to make real boss mobs immune to pet taunt/growl things, it's still noticeable on some "Danger" world quest mobs ( the ones that aren't available outside of the quest being up are immune to pets I believe.)

[Amerissis]

And Vanguard too

I am BM I tanked Midnight lul

Lul? Are you Dutch?

OT: Nah. Tanking with a pet is horrible (been there, done that) and only doable on content you outlevel or outgear (or the healer does). Positioning is a bitch and having to move out of stuff yourself ánd get your pet to move the boss to the correct location/orientation is quite daunting.

In the end, everything would be the same (pet or shield or whatever at the boss, transferring the tank's threat, health, etc) except the tank is getting nuts trying to dodge ranged mechanics while keeping up that pet or shield.

Give me a physical ranged dps/healer instead, please

[Chaelexi]

THe problem with reinventing the tanking role witha a ranged tank is it would either fall into one of 3 possibilities:

1) Overpowered or a sitting duck, the ability to pickup and move the tank item at will would make AOE movement skills trivial, to balance that if they put a cooldown or a cast time on the movement of the tank summon they would be the least desirable tank as they would get hit by everything. Think of Xavius where the tank has to move out for dispell, would the debuff go on the Tank pet or the player, if the player it would be OP as fuck due to him being able to always stand in Guam, if on the tank pet he would need to have constant movement at his finger tips. This would be ever more noticeable in timed content like mythic pluses.

2)They would feel the need to design fights around there advantages, therefore killing the bring the player not the class(yes it is still kind of dead)

3) Lastly Current WoW UI would make the ranged tank(if in the tanking summon variety) feel clunky at best because pet UI and movements are lack luster at best. Also would this tank pet have the same issues with being hit from behind if not he would be the ultimate add tank, if so the movement and ability to pick up ad and not get smacked from behind would be terrible.

In the end wow is not the right game or format for a ranged pet tank class.

[pmkaboo]

everything is possible. obviously in current wow ranged tank would be completely pointless, but that doesnt mean the idea is bad, it just means it needs to be expanded. all the issues previous posters mentioned are easily resolved by:

- tanking mechanics that cannot be handled from melee, to give purpose to range tanks
- tanking mechanics that cannot be handled from range, to not make melee tanks obsolete
- encounters designed for more than 2 tanks, to make room for all the new tank specs
- perhaps even spec swapping in combat, but that might be topic of its own

[Faenskap]

That's still pretty much a melee tank (the VW/FG) being a melee tank.

As to the OP - yes it could be done - but it would need two ranged tanks at a minimum in a given run, and that would be a bit incompatible with the raid/dungeon structure currently in place.

I used to (with two other mages) mage tank HF dungeons via threat bouncing, it was very challenging - but doable for the most part. This was without any dedicated tanking abilities as well.

HF? HF?! Hellfire, as in the TBC dungeons?

Maybe a ranged tank is possible, I wouldn't mind more specs to the classes. Will it happen though? I have a feeling that it won't

[Demeia]

I thought a beastmaster hunter pet tank would be more interesting but I think the problems this kind of approach would create are just not worth the solution time.

[Nayami]

TFW your off-tank is some barrier object