Why do you NOT tank?

[zoomgpally]

Missing an option : Can't be arsed with Asshat Players.

This.

Following is the worst I've seen:
DPS warrior heroic leaps to boss while half the group(including both tanks) is outside room, omfg tank y u pull!?
Healers leave in the middle of combat so tanks die and other people get aggro, lol bad tank cant hold aggro!
Hunter misdirects all trash between juggernaut and shamans to tank and feigns while the raid is down to 1 tank 2 healers and 11 dps, omg retard tank thinks he can tank so much.

[pvrwizard]

Anyway, if you have a main character who has got a tank specc, yet you do not tank i want to know why, and while we are at it, perhaps we could discuss why there are so few people who go in LFR/dungs as tanks.

I think tanking itself would be fun.. but the reason i don't you don't have as an option. I've seen how tanks who are trying to learn are treated. I play to have fun and what a new tank goes through at the hands of this community would destroy any semblance of fun for me.

[zoomgpally]

I do tank. It's actually way easier than DPS because I don't have to fuss about the meters. I pretty much got one/two job(s):

Are the mobs attacking me? If so, congrats you're tanking!

<Insert boss strat here>

Sure there's a few things I do have to worry about like stats and stuff but DPS have to worry about that too and between the LFG bonus loot and instant ques... well, what's not to love? People say a lot about the dicks in LFR/LFG but if I ever had a major problem with someone that they made the run unbearable I could just have a vote to kick and people would much rather replace a DPS than lose a tank and if they don't kick him then I can just leave and go to another group two minutes later.

Yeah, it's good to be a tank. Especially when you're buddy-buddy with a healer.

If you are tanking and don't try to beat the top dps, you are doing it wrong!

Also, I tried the vote to kick tactic on a new account(both wow and battlenet), first time I tried to kick a random it told me that player can't be kicked for FOUR hours

[GFree]

It gives me anxiety.

[Deleted]

This.

Following is the worst I've seen:
DPS warrior heroic leaps to boss while half the group(including both tanks) is outside room, omfg tank y u pull!?
Healers leave in the middle of combat so tanks die and other people get aggro, lol bad tank cant hold aggro!
Hunter misdirects all trash between juggernaut and shamans to tank and feigns while the raid is down to 1 tank 2 healers and 11 dps, omg retard tank thinks he can tank so much.

On the rare occassions I do tank, I have a golden rule: I only tank what I pull. If someone else wants to pull, that's fine; I have no problem with them doing a bit of tanking. Never rescue an idiot, they only suck you into the quicksand with them.

[Hyve]

I love Tanking, always been a Tank or Healer. DPS is just so boring.

[Karragon]

Active mitigation.

I do not find this an engaging style of play. I tanked right from Vanilla, through almost every raid ever made up until MoP, then I switched to DPS. For me the tank's responsibilities are Threat and Positioning, your health pool is the concern of your healers. The fact that threat is now irrelevant and I am responsible for my own mitigation (if I wanted that I'd go play GW2 with its dodge mechanic) I just find really boring, so no more tanking for me.

[Deleted]

Active mitigation.

I do not find this an engaging style of play. I tanked right from Vanilla, through almost every raid ever made up until MoP, then I switched to DPS. For me the tank's responsibilities are Threat and Positioning, your health pool is the concern of your healers. .

No it isn't and never was. A Tank has three priorities: threat, positioning and survival. Tanks have always had survival tools, even before active mitigation, and it was their responsibility to use them. No tank ever tried blaming the healers twice when I was in a healing team, they didn't know what hit them when they tried it the first time.

[Karragon]

No it isn't and never was. A Tank has three priorities: threat, positioning and survival. Tanks have always had survival tools, even before active mitigation, and it was their responsibility to use them. No tank ever tried blaming the healers twice when I was in a healing team, they didn't know what hit them when they tried it the first time.

Tbh, before Cata, if you had to use a defensive cd either you or your healers had fucked up. You seem to be forgetting the rules of raiding:
If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
If the dps dies, it's their own damn fault.

[Deleted]

Fun is the main issue. I have tanked in the past, I would say that dungeon tanking is pretty easy, with normal raids being intermediate and heroic raids being hard. I fell somewhere in between normal and heroic when I tanked.

I started tanking raids half way through t11 as our off tank left and I felt like a change. I love tier 11 there was some really fun fights especially from a tanking standpoint. When tier 12 (Firelands) came we breezed through normal with only Alsrazor being difficult due to my tank dps. Heroic was a lot harder off tanking Shannox on heroic probably my greatest achievement as a tank.

Part of the problems I had were due to being an off tank half the fights and dps the other half. Neither of my gearsets were up to scratch having to share dip between the two. It was more stressful not having the DPS in most fights because of poor gear. When I quit, vowed not to tank again unless the gear situation was bettered.

[Gihelle]

I used to tank, then the toxic as hell community that is WoW made me not want to do it anymore. People are always looking for scapegoats when they wipe because it's just too easy to admit you're the one to blame.

[Acelius]

Although I find tanking fun, it is too easy and linear for me. I miss having to actually generate threat.

[Leblue]

Active mitigation.

I do not find this an engaging style of play. I tanked right from Vanilla, through almost every raid ever made up until MoP, then I switched to DPS. For me the tank's responsibilities are Threat and Positioning, your health pool is the concern of your healers. The fact that threat is now irrelevant and I am responsible for my own mitigation (if I wanted that I'd go play GW2 with its dodge mechanic) I just find really boring, so no more tanking for me.

I find it really interesting that you say that because I don't find maintaining threat incredibly engaging. I find it rather boring compared to having a very large impact on how much damage I take. I also play FFXIV: ARR and threat is a major thing there as well but I don't actually find it really engaging. I mean, its not bad when everyone's roughly equally geared, but its either

A) Boring because nobody is going to pull off of you
B) Frustrating because someone outgears you (even just having a significantly better weapon) so its frantic to try to keep ahead of them in a bad way. Not "oh this is an interesting challenge" way, but more of a "GCD please end faster so that this guy's face doesn't get kicked in because I literally can't do enough threat to outpace this guy".

Honestly just the role of being the tank and squaring off with the boss and some of the dancing around dodging abilities is what keeps me tanking in XIV:ARR but back to WoW. I'm always very confused when people say that they liked threat because of how fricken generic it was, and how potentially inhibiting it could be to others' gameplay. Right now it matters for the first 5 ~ 10 seconds of something appearing and being picked up, and that's enough to not completely hamstring dps who may be actually good at their role and keep the tank on their toes at the same time. Having the ability to fully impact your survival and the allowance for subtle nuances that a solid tank can take advantage of to distinguish themselves makes it even better.

[Müdür]

I spend most of time as a tank, its a powerful role. Questing / soloing is fun. Also as a geared dk I enjoy hc farming. I like tanking role the most.

BUT

LFR is P.I.T.A for tanking. I don't like it and avoid it as much as I can. Being 14th dps or 6th healer doesnt make much difference in LFR but being a tank does too much. Plus I dont always find myself in the mood of socializing and tanking constantly requires communication. It takes much more effort as you always need to act as a raid leader.

[Deleted]

Tbh, before Cata, if you had to use a defensive cd either you or your healers had fucked up. You seem to be forgetting the rules of raiding:
If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
If the dps dies, it's their own damn fault.

Not really, they had a penchant for standing in fire or letting mobs hit them from behind to generate the enormous amounts of rage they seemed to think they needed for spamming sunder. As I say, the first time a tank ever said 'didn't get any heals for like 12 seconds' they would be hit in the face with a log showing constant and fairly large heals on them for said duration. It was too easy for tanks to blame healers when they died or dps when they were out-aggroed simply because sometimes it would be the fault of others. Especially in pre-TBC, warriors often had a large opinion of themselves when they had the easiest job in the raid (until Naxx at least).

[Deleted]

Tanking is serious stuff. Too much responsibility, too easy to mess something and wipe the raid.

Taunting at x stacks isn´t that hard tbh

[MerinPally]

Taunting at x stacks isn´t that hard tbh

Shame that once you beat LFR tanking stops being that, especially in heroic modes. It lines up well with raid leading as well as you have to have an overarching view of everything. Once you get to farm mode it becomes very easy but when a small crisis happens during progression, you'll notice the difference between a good and a bad tank several times over - it's staggering.

[deadman1]

I tanked throughout Wrath. I wasn't very hard, but it was always stressful to me.

I still do from time to time, but not in difficult content like I did in wrath.

[Shejt]

I got 2 warriors, both as tanks, an DK as tank plus an paladin as tank. And currently im leveling a monk as dps, but with tank offspec, but when he hits 90 it will be a tank as main aswell.

Thing is I really like tanking, Ive done healing dpsing, both on ranged and melee etc but it never gives the same satisfaction as tank. But the current community just thinks of tanks as useless shits, in lfr ive been called more names then i thought was humanly possible. Wich in turn just makes me leave and do flex/normal with my guild. In return this causes longer queues for the LFR groups. But yea, most groups bring it on themselves and thats why i stopped tanking for non guildies.

[zealo]

I do tank in MMO's, just not in random group content because of how toxic the dps community is towards them, even when its not your fault.