Tanking has gotten really boring.

[Christan]

Strongly disagree. BC bear tank was high health and dodge. Sure, it punishes bad tanks, but you have to be REALLY FUCKING BAD for it to even begin to matter outside of heroic raids.

bc bears could be armor capped as well, as well as high hp and dodge, even hits that get through did much less damage (this is thanks to the time when green #'s on armor, and any bonus armor on trinkets / rings, stacked with bear form)

[Zxzas]

I remember the days of tab target tanking. Oh how I miss that so much. Threat gen is too easy now.

[Willias]

The role of a tank has never been particularly more or less difficult than that of a DPS or healer, what has happened is that the role is far less binary. Failure used to be very obvious -- either you weren't being attacked by mobs or you were dead, which in both cases meant you weren't functioning as a tank. Failure now means while you still have aggro, you're either a mana sponge, that your DPS is terrible, or that you're not adhering to important fight mechanics. The first two can be compensated for by your healers or DPS players, and the latter is no different than anyone else in the raid... except that as a tank, you're typically in a very visible role and any mechanic screw-up is more likely to be noticed by others (particularly if you get yourself killed).

Ultimately, this shift towards more "fluid" responsibility was inevitable. Playing as a DPS or healer in a group with an incompetent tank was a truly insufferable experience, and one that wasn't really compatible with making WoW's content pug-accessible. While I will miss feeling like a rock star by tanking heroic Shattered Halls with zero CC on my Prot warrior, being almost entirely self-sufficient as a Blood DK nowadays is pretty close.

Mana sponge-yness already existed prior to the shift towards active mitigation. If you geared wrong, meaning focused too much on HP or too much on avoidance, you ended up a mana sponge (either your damage taken was higher than normal or too unpredictable). Now it's been shifted towards ability use, and we also have picked up some of the DPS characters' jobs in that our damage is now notable.

The thing I don't like about this shift however is that: 1) It pushes Blizzard to place harder limits on tank ability resources. 2) It pushes Blizzard to put harder DPS requirements on fights because tanks are expected to put out a certain amount of damage as well. At least in Cata, 1 made death knight tanks really annoying to play due to long rune cooldowns, and 2 pushed raid groups to figure out where they could drop healers or tanks to pick up additional DPS, making dual spec and DPS gear a required thing to have on tanks.

[Brodeo]

The difference now is that a good tank is the one who maximizes his survivability. Using your active mitigation properly, using your cds properly.

The problem is that a good tank now isn´t as noticeable because what we do are all little things that increase survivability. Back in the old days, a good tank was much more noticeable onscreen. If you are running a dungeon, or a non-progression raid now.. it is hard to tell that a great tank is taking 20% less damage then a bad tank would..

Honestly, i like it better now. It was never that hard to keep aoe threat ( except maybe for warriors in vanilla).

The problem though was for the devs.. One of the reasons bears got a 360 aoe is because what happened in late BC... where nobody wanted to do dungeons with anyone but pallies because of consecrate. The devs either had to give everyone 360 aoes, or else not have encounters with big trash waves or streaming adds because those encounters ( especially during progression) would require a pally tank. If you were around during BC, you know how hard it was to get a group to do heroic dungeons if you weren´t a pally tank.

Pally tanks only became viable around the time hyjal came out. Prior to that, every main tank was warrior, off tank was druid or warrior. I played a prot pally, no one wanted one until hyjal, then they were all up my dick. Pallies couldnt even survive the abyssals in Arcatraz in full T5

[melodramocracy]

Seeing a lot of complaints, and no suggestions on how to fix the perceived problem.

Here's a thought: Lets suppose that out of 100% of the tanks out there, 25% of them are very good at what they do. The next 50% are average, and 25% underperform. Given how much responsibility is actually on a tank in any encounter, it's safe to say that if it were made more challenging to do, it would have a very negative impact on overall success rates.

I mean, lets make the act of blocking or dodging an actual button instead of a passive % based on your stats. Give it a sub-1 second cooldown, and the tank needs to visually watch for swings coming his way. So you have to nail all your blocks, AND continue putting out threat. Tanking is now more involving, but you've also just at least doubled the amounts of wipes folks experience across the board, simply based on the spread of talent in the tank class.

This is healthy for the game?

[Orcbert]

...

Active mitigation doesnt really fill that void. If you spend your class resources on your AM abilities, cool, you saved some healer mana, maybe a wipe in the long run. ...

That hurt my healer heart a little bit. I don't think I want you as a tank.

[Brodeo]

That hurt my healer heart a little bit. I don't think I want you as a tank.

I didnt say AM was bad, i said it was boring in its current form. I could macro SD to all my buttons and perform well enough to get by in all but progression heroics.

- - - Updated - - -

Seeing a lot of complaints, and no suggestions on how to fix the perceived problem.

Here's a thought: Lets suppose that out of 100% of the tanks out there, 25% of them are very good at what they do. The next 50% are average, and 25% underperform. Given how much responsibility is actually on a tank in any encounter, it's safe to say that if it were made more challenging to do, it would have a very negative impact on overall success rates.

I mean, lets make the act of blocking or dodging an actual button instead of a passive % based on your stats. Give it a sub-1 second cooldown, and the tank needs to visually watch for swings coming his way. So you have to nail all your blocks, AND continue putting out threat. Tanking is now more involving, but you've also just at least doubled the amounts of wipes folks experience across the board, simply based on the spread of talent in the tank class.

This is healthy for the game?

Doesnt matter, not the point of this thread. Criticism doesnt need every person who isnt happy with something to create their own solution. The signal to noise in that mess would be utter shit.

The solution is not my problem. Ignoring issues that dont come with a proposed solution is silly.

[Treeba]

I've personally only ever had fun tanking in heroic 5 mans. Tanking in raids has always been fairly boring and AM hasn't really changed anything. You're just pushing the same button at a slightly different time for half these specs. BMs and DKs are somewhat interesting, but not enough to make raid tanking any more interesting that it used to be.

Only a few bosses ever hit hard enough to be threatening to a tank anymore. If you're not counting those few bosses tanking really just comes down to using your cooldowns for those specific mechanics and knowing when to tank swap. It's dull and usually pretty uneventful.

[Wrathonia]

I miss when tanking was more about keeping threat, positioning, pulling and keeping mobs under control. I don't like active mitigation. It feels like I am doing the healers job for them. A lot of healers are already bored senseless by how little damage most tanks take. Get rid of all our crazy CDs and give healers something to do again and make threat a part of our job again.

[melodramocracy]

The solution is not my problem.

So we're complaining just to complain? Got it.

[Treeba]

I miss when tanking was more about keeping threat, positioning, pulling and keeping mobs under control. I don't like active mitigation. It feels like I am doing the healers job for them. A lot of healers are already bored senseless by how little damage most tanks take. Get rid of all our crazy CDs and give healers something to do again and make threat a part of our job again.

Really AM was just trading threat generation for AM. You have more impact on your survival this way, but few bosses are really threatening to tanks so it rarely matters. All the other aspects of tanking are virtually unchanged since WotLK.

The other issue you mention is also partially because of ability creep. People just have so many cooldowns for any particular situation it's silly. It's really getting out of hand. Bosses need so many mechanics to eat through them that you're starting to need to take a college class to cover some of the boss fights. It's just not tanks either. Every dps or healer now has it's own assortment of personal and raid cooldowns. In an organized group you rarely take damage from a big raid mechanic without 1-2 cooldowns to cover it.

[Willias]

So we're complaining just to complain? Got it.

Identification of a problem doesn't have to come with an immediate solution. This tends to be the case when the problem is complex and has many things that factor into it.

[Brodeo]

So we're complaining just to complain? Got it.

Selective quoting is effective.

[Strafir]

Tanking is harder than ever you actually have stuff to do besides pop cds when shit gets bad, this system rewards good tanks and it punishes bad tanks.

Playing a pally tank with constant GCD cap is amazing, being a bear and having stupidly high health and dodge is fun too plus the crit.

Actually, it is harder than ever to actually distinguish a good tank from a bad tank nowadays because stats barely matter and the abilities you use barely matter either because of vengeance.

OPs post is another fine example of players never being satisfied. Tanking was made into the ridiculous droolfest it is today so even the worst of players could keep monsters on them, sucking the depth out of the game. It makes little to no difference if you and me think tanking shouldn't revolve around the idea of healing and maximizing damage done because it will not address the problem which is a lack of tanks.

[Confucius]

tanking in itself is fine. what is the problem is the boring "taunt-on-debuff-rest-of-the-time-try-not-to-fall-asleep" mechanic that is on basically every raid boss

[eodusaf]

Are people complaining that tanking 5 mans is to boring, and that dps arent punished for pulling aggro? Raiding I understand, and agree, however we're to far along in this xpac to complain that dps should die when pulling aggro in a 5 man

[Deleted]

Actually, it is harder than ever to actually distinguish a good tank from a bad tank nowadays because stats barely matter and the abilities you use barely matter either because of vengeance.

This is wrong actually, right now it actually matters how much damage you do, as previously tank DPS was so low, that it barely mattered anyway. Right now there can be easily 60k+ DPS difference between a "ok" and a great tank. And survivability wise the differences are even higher. If you are doing a bad rotation, then you won't have the resources for AM, thus you will take more damage. It does matter if you have 40% or 60% uptime on Shield of the Righteous for ex. Previously you only had to use your CDs sometimes.

[Strafir]

This is wrong actually, right now it actually matters how much damage you do, as previously tank DPS was so low, that it barely mattered anyway. Right now there can be easily 60k+ DPS difference between a "ok" and a great tank. And survivability wise the differences are even higher. If you are doing a bad rotation, then you won't have the resources for AM, thus you will take more damage. It does matter if you have 40% or 60% uptime on Shield of the Righteous for ex. Previously you only had to use your CDs sometimes.

The whole point was that tanking shouldn't revolve around the idea of ME ME ME, meaning how much damage and healing you can dish out, but instead how much damage can you suppress and how well you position what you're taking to optimize it for damage dealers. What you are classifying as a "big difference" is actually very minimal and each of them have have a downside that evens out the odds even more.

It really isn't a big deal if you stack stamina, mastery, crit or haste. It might not be optimal but still far from being required.

[bufferunderrun]

the problem? Mastery and Vengance

The fix? Remove them and then:

-mitigation: put back in game defence and crushing blow, rework dodge & parry and enfatise the role of stamina.
-threat: give tanks offensive cds for the sake of boosting threat generation
-Bosses design: bring back taunt immunity for raid boss, remove that "taunt at x stack" idiocy and bring back dropping aggro ability for boss, the off tank should generate the threat needed to be second on aggro list like it was back in the day.

[Deleted]

The whole point was that tanking shouldn't revolve around the idea of ME ME ME, meaning how much damage and healing you can dish out, but instead how much damage can you suppress and how well you position what you're taking to optimize it for damage dealers. What you are classifying as a "big difference" is actually very minimal and each of them have have a downside that evens out the odds even more.

It really isn't a big deal if you stack stamina, mastery, crit or haste. It might not be optimal but still far from being required.

What makes you think that it all revolves around the tank? And how can a tank that does a good rotation, thus have a better mitigation, be bad for a raid?