I agree there always will be whiners and that they are annoying, but it's exceptionally rare i get blamed as tank for anything. Might be because i talk a lot, and fast, telling people how it works.
I will admit i'm one of those saying who pulled, since i dislike that a lot. If i don't pull, there's a reason for that. People should figure that out, and if they can't respect it they can queue up for 45 minutes wait time again, while they consider if it was worth it.
Once in a blue moon i've been blamed and have had to tell what went wrong instead, and they shut up. Never been remotely close to be kicked, except from once.
had a big group of players in lfr, and they had their own tank in that group. A tank that wasn't queued as tank, mind you. But he insisted to tank, so i told them to kick me or him, since the guy was an idiot and just spam taunted, from me and the other tank.
Got kicked and could sign up right away ^^
Everyone has so much to say
They talk talk talk their lives away
I'm sure boredom and hostility are not the only reason people won't tank. I think the devs need to reevaluate tanking and try to figure out why it's not fun for most people. If it was, there'd be a lot more tanks. Same goes for healers, only to a lesser degree. I think there's been too much focus on "interesting mechanics" and "responsibility" that fun was tossed out like the proverbial baby and bathwater.
This.
Tanking is tough. Many times it's rather unforgiving. If one dps messes up on a fight, big whoop, no one cares. If one tank messes up the whole thing goes to hell pretty fast. And it's not just the job that's tough, but also the way other plays both rely on you to do your job right, and rag on you for "failing" as they perceive it.
Something I read along time ago when I first started playing:
Tanking is a job
Healing is an art
DPS is a science.
imo part of the reason that not many people tank is that it really does feel like a job. People don't generally come home from work, just to work some more. But this isn't the only reason. There are many and varied reasons. Some people don't like melee, some don't like the classes, some like to have big damage numbers or big healing numbers. The list goes on.
Personally I'd love to tank on my warlock. I remember the fun I had tanking Blood Princes on my lock in ICC. But it's not likely to happen unfortunately.
Anyway, things need to change at both ends imo to bring more tanks in, and more healers too. Blizz needs to be able to find a way (a way that is still fair to dps players) to make those roles more desirable, while not taking away from those who enjoy these roles as they are now, and the community need to be less harsh on those who fail (and there are many reasons for this too (new, lazy, tired, drunk etc etc)) and with that change in community attitude and treatment I think more people will feel less like they are being bullied by others when they make a mistake and will keep tanking (or healing) and try to get better.
I do think Proving Grounds might help a bit with tanks and healers practicing their skills, but it doesn't really fill that role they were talking about with teaching players their role. There does need to be something like this for players. Maybe a solo scenario where the game itself pops up and alert in the middle of your screen saying "The boss is doing something bad, try using x skill to counter that."
The answer is simple: Responsibility.
People don't want that. Nothing to change. It's fair enough that most people don't want to do that, but don't try to dump that down, just because most of you prefer to sit laidback in lfr.
A boss like sha of pride in lfr makes me want to gouge my eyes out. No debuff? The other tank just get to look stupid while i sleep through it.
Everyone has so much to say
They talk talk talk their lives away
I see all these posts talking about tank harassment, and at first I thought maybe I have been lucky, but I have done LFR pretty much this entire expansion and I have never been harassed on my tank, this is of course not including harassment from another tank who decided to hero tank everything and then I let him die and tanked everything myself.
I play a Blood DK so maybe I've never experienced this, plus it's LFR, there is maybe 1 or 2 mechanics per fight to be aware of, so if I'm in with another tank who tells me he's never done it before I will just whisper him what I need him to do. I'm not there to hold his hand and explain the fight to him ability by ability, I am just going to tell him what he needs to to do to make the fight successful.
For example, it's happened on Horridon a lot, a new tank has no clue wtf to do, and will whisper me, and all I tell him is: "I'll pick him up first so I can deal with Gurubashi adds, when he crashes the door, run to the next door and taunt him, wait for him to come to you, and tank him there. When Jalak comes down whichever is tanking the boss picks him up, then whoever wasn't tanking Horridon will pick up Horridon. If you're not on Horridon just kill adds."
Seems like a lot maybe, but I type fast, and during the time I have whispered him I had already done a ready check, so at this point as long as all the healers have clicked Ready, I start a 10 second pull timer, and then I pull the boss.
I always pull too much trash, sometimes I die, or the other tank dies, it's so funny when it's a Brewmaster tank and I pull a ton of trash and then they pull it all off me with their annoyingly overpowered AoE threat, and then they die and I continue tanking everything like normal.
People look to the tanks for direction usually, some people could care less and that's fine, it's LFR. But even on new content a couple wipes will get people to start listening to direction, far better to get a couple stacks of determination than trying to explain a fight to people who cba to listen because they think "lol lfr Shamans/Nazgrim/etc"
Not to mention after many fights (depends on group but I've seen it often enough):
<Troll> Xyz, Abc, Pqr are bottom dps, kick them!
Bam! there go 3 healers..
Or.. a large portion of the "healers" are actually dps and there's only 1 or 2 actual healers healing. After the inevitable wipe and finger pointing it ends up as "lol u mad?" then they drop and insta-queue as heal again for the next group.
I don't understand why anybody queues to heal (or tank) for LFR. Especially when there's Flex and oQueue.
Last edited by darkhelmet; 2013-10-14 at 01:40 AM.
I didnt mind tanking Msv, HoF, ToEs, ToT but siege just isn't worth the time investment. You can tank your heart out and it wont matter because half the raid shouldnt be there skill-wise. I know the gear island is there to take everyone to 496 and 535 in some cases, but its not a gear thing as much as a skill thing. Getting the gear is all well and good, but then what? Now I'm not insulting anyone in particular but it just seems like the enivitable phasing out of lfr by most people.
Flex is infinitely better as you can play with as little as 8 people (thought it scales for 10m) and do it at your leisure. It's easier to get 10 people together from trade then it is to kill a boss in lfr.
I love this game, but lfr is a crapshoot.. now more then ever. I'll wait on my alts for a few months till it's nerfed to the floor and thats about it.
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I have 4 tanks and have yet to tank in an LFR. To many idiots that have no idea how to dissect what went wrong. To many idiots that refuse to blame themselves or take responsibility when they do something stupid. Just to many idiots in general. I do lfr every single week on my main character (mage) while doing all wings of flex each week. I take my druid "tank" as dps into lfr. When a tank quits I switch specs to help out until another one shows up.
The problem with lack of tanks has nothing to do with blizzard and nothing Blizzard does will fix it. The problem is the community if blizzard hadn't of let them become a bunch of self-entitled jerkoffs people would still be tanking in the ques. I refuse to deal with stupid dps/healers who stand in stuff and blame the tank when they die. LFR is literally the easiest thing in the game to deal with. Its the people that make it not worth doing. Not the lack of glory or the lack of rewards. You could put in itemlvl 600 gear and I still wouldn't tank an LFR.
Personally thing that warlock and hunter tanks are a terrible idea, but i can see shaman/rogue tanks sort of working out.
Why would you want to tank? its just a boring version of dps. You have less jobs too. You just sit there and take damage (in LFR) at least in guilds you have the option to raid lead so you can be a bit more active and involved like that, but if you aren't then yeah you're basically just a training dummy that taunts every few stacks. And more often than not if you don't tank it perfectly, its a DPS loss. So not only are you playing the easiest and most boring role, but you're at the knife edge of every dps in the raid trying to maximize their output.
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. For this reason almost all tanks are raid leaders.
Its not a problem you can fix by just forcing a tanking role onto a few dps classes, they will still be your typical spam 2-3 buttons and close your eyes until you're told to taunt class.
Don't hate on me for telling it how it is either, i tanked full heroic runs in cataclysm and i've heard its gotten even easier since then.
Each role is essentially all three of those. It's just in the hands of the player on how serious they want to take it. Maybe serious isn't the best term to use though.
I've played all three roles, I don't really like healing, but I don't find it hard at all, until you get into a 25 man raid with less than competent healers and have to work your ass off to cover the spread. Still, I'm not as experienced with healing to make badass recoveries in clutch moments, and those are the players who make it an art. But there are also DPS and Tanks who can do amazing things in clutch moments, and that to me is the art of it, but it also comes from the player, not the class.
Any role can start to feel like a job, and at that point you're not having fun with it, and that's probably something you should address, why keep playing something that isn't fun to you?
As a Blood DK, I'm always analyzing my stats. I don't take stat weights or gearing ideas from other people when it comes to my Blood DK, I look at what other people are doing, I weigh it against what I'm doing, but ultimately, I know this spec of this class better than I do any other in the game because of the sheer amount of time I've spent playing it. I've learned things, good and bad, and it all affects how I decide to gear my Blood DK. Blood DK's over the course of their existence as tanks haven't always had it easy, we've never been the most OP tank in the game, save for maybe the first bit of MoP before Prot Paladins found out that Haste was their best tanking stat and after 4.2 when the gear really allowed for them to shine with all that Haste. But to know a class enough to be able to not only counter it's pitfalls, but simply outperform other tanks on average. (Disclaimer: "other tanks on average" means other average tanks, not high end tanks who go to great lengths to maximize performance.) That to me, is the science part of it, and it's not just limited to tanks, it's a player thing.
I know this was off-topic, but I hate that statement.![]()
If rogues could tank, I'd definitely do it. Part of the problem in my experience is people simply aren't playing WoW as much anymore and don't spend much time with alts. I valor cap every week and whatever else but MoP is admittedly pretty boring for me outside of normal / heroic raiding and I really don't care past playing my main (DPS). Pure classes are kind of silly at this point in the game anyway.
Hard to believe you, when you say 2-3 buttons.
Exaggerating one thing makes people just belive you exaggerated the other too. Not saying tanking is overly hard, just that it's a useless rant you came with. In the end they still can't afk in lfr at any time, and hence they don't want to tank, which turns us back to the subject off this thread. How to get dps to get shorter queues, and not how much you got carried in cataclysm with 2buttoning as tank
Edit:
And when was tanking challenging compared to now?
I didn't try before wotlk, which was plain faceroll. Then in cataclysm, which was fun. And now it's okay. You can die if you close your eyes and not overgear the content. Most bosses require you to move or you die very fast. Dunno about the stuff about being told when to taunt. Do your co-tank scream at you to tell you to taunt? <.<
Last edited by Terridon; 2013-10-14 at 02:00 AM.
Everyone has so much to say
They talk talk talk their lives away
So glad they added flex so I never have to LFR again on my tank. I dont even personally know any tank or healer in the game who even bothers with lfr anymore. Maybe they should just nerf LFR more and let whoever wants to do the job do it, dont even have to give other classes a tank spec.
It's a tank competence issue. I did SoO LFR yesterday and holy fuck was that the most painful experience ever. I solo tanked Immerseus without much trouble, which surprised some people but I was aware of how bad some have been so I guess they're easily impressed. Was when I got to Dark Shamans my jaw dropped.
First, we had a tank who admitted he didn't know what he was doing. I told him what to do, he promptly ignored everything I did, wiped, said "we should do it this way" and repeated what I said, followed it for half the fight then ignored it. Then we had a tank who pulled out of bear form and died on the pull, and seemed to have a problem running in a circle despite loads of signs and screams of "go there". Finally we had a DK tank who actually listened to what I said - mostly. There were blips where they ran the wrong way despite shouts of no, and multiple times where they taunted the wrong mob, but they at least did the tactics most of the time.
Whatever the hell is going on, it appears everyone thinks tanks can sit there mashing a rotation doing nothing else right now. That's a hell of a problem. I would say the dps don't help the issue though, and do attack good tanks in a fairly unwarranted manner. When I went on my alt I saw a great tank get bullied because the other tank fucked up, caused him to leave or vote kicked I can't remember which. Was a crying shame.
You bring up some decent points, but allow me to answer your question and address some of those points.
Far and away I will admit to you, that if Death Knights could not tank, and Blood was not the interesting spec that I find it to be, I would not be a tank in this game.
I tank because I love playing a Blood Death Knight, to me nothing else is as fun or engaging to me. It allows me to enjoy one of the badass aspects of being a tank, you are basically leading the charge against a powerful enemy, you're the one everyone looks to to keep them from getting slaughtered. Of course, that's kind of a roleplay thing I guess, especially this day and age in WoW where the immersion isn't really there anymore.
I have always enjoyed the idea of active mitigation ever since they gave me Blood Shield. I like to lead groups into battle against enemies and emerge victorious, as a tank, I feel like that's what I'm doing.
As far as it being 2-3 buttons and closing my eyes until it's time to taunt, I've never experienced that. Even when I'm not the current tank due to a debuff or whatever, there's always adds to deal with, that's also why I play a Blood Elf, I essentially have three interrupts to throw out when needed. I always actively do what I can to find more ways to help the raid out than just standing there waiting to taunt back. With tank DPS being a thing now, maximizing my DPS is always a fun thing to do as well. Not to mention that being a Death Knight tank, I have a ton of short cooldowns to play around with while I'm tanking, so it's never just 2-3 buttons and take a nap.
Why would anyone thank a tank? all they do is hit a button every few seconds and taunt on a few stacks? I'll give you a run down of all SoO normal mechanics and what a tank does on them
Immerseus: taunt on stack
Protectors: tank boss out of raid or in raid depending on health of it, 180 on gouge.
Norushen: taunt on stack, taunt add / kill add in room, eat orbs
Sha: taunt on stack, stand on a prison if needed
Galakras: (not on tower) Tank adds, swap stacks on boss
Iron Juggy: swap on stacks, do bombs if you feel like it
Shaman: swap on stacks, dont put geyser in raid
Nazgrim: swap on stacks
Malk: swap on stacks
Spoils: dont stand in crimson stuff that heals adds
Thok: swap on stacks (open a door)
Siegecrafter: swap on stacks, kill an add
Paragons: dont die
Garrosh: swap on stacks and aoe adds
Now in LFR, half of those jobs can be ignored. Mostly the stacks part. Why should i be thanking you, of all people, the guy with the job a monkey could do? I've tanked LFRs were i've hit 20 devastates on Suen and went afk for the rest of the fight. Got up from my PC and went to do other things. When i got back i was standing in fire getting healed with a rejuvination and the boss was still hitting me. In fury gear mind you. Now in Siege theres even less mechanics, because you dont even have to move the bosses like on jin or horridon. Or pick up adds. All of your jobs are done the second you hit your first avengers shield, shield slam, death strike, maul or keg smash. You've won at tanking LFR / Normal mode.
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In LFR you can be damn sure you can never use a single shield barrier or shield block and still live. I know so because i do it every time i tank LFR. I spam heroic strike to kill it faster. In fury gear. Taking more damage than normal. Devastate, shield slam and revenge, thats all the buttons you need unless you want to give yourself the extra effort of heroic striking too.
I truly hope they never make warlocks able to tank (efficiently, i'm fine with the gimmick we have now, and have had in the past).
Why ? because every class that can tank, or heal for that matter is often "forced" to do just that.
I don't know how they can make tanking something more people want to do. Tanks already have a ton of benefits, but it clearly is the least liked role. Not surprising, as it isn't as needed as the others with only needing 1-2 tanks here and there. While you always need a bunch of DPS and plenty of healers.
I for one, dislike tanking because it is too stressful and to un-rewarding to be the one that everyone else is expecting to lead. Being always told to rush, or slow down - nothing is ever right no matter what you do. And of course you will always be getting hate from others no matter if you do well or poorly.