Will Tanks be in "short supply"?

[Dreyen]

Literally git gud. Learn to hamstring kite, you will kill mobs at same speed but take 1/3rd of the damage you normally take.

Edit: not to mention, Warriors are 1 of the fastest classes to level 10, and they get Hamstring at 8 IIRC.

Hamstring kite while killing mobs faster than other classes? How exactly? Kite until bloodthirst is up?

[Pieterman]

Yes absolutely. Most people play warrior, yet very very few of them tank. On certain undocumented servers there so few that everyone knew them. And the ones that do tank are usually really bad at it.

[villiansv]

Afaik, 1 main tank which is full geared and full prot, and then 1 other which can be a bit less defensive, a lot of private server guilds use a bear as OT due to them being flexible with being able to do some healing as well as DPS with a single talent build.

Another reason why a bear makes a good OT choice is that they have an easier time keeping up with threat when not being hit by the boss than warriors do.

[Rapti]

I think it will be much better than it used to be back in the days, but I dont expect a ton as a lot will be simply bad and you will be blacklisting them yourself for the sake of waiting longer for group but in the end (total time) finishing quicker.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If actual classic is anything to go by then most people that tank will only do so begrudgingly while everyone, at least the warriors, dream about being mortal strike spamming mouth-breathing retards and will jump at every chance to get out of tanking. Terrible itemization priority alone kills most of the joy of being a raid tank and playing dungeons with strangers is just painfull. No one wants to do that unless you desperately need something from that dungeon. It's also not like you can just switch your talents every 5 minutes if you actually want to do something solo, well I guess unless you have your creditcared hot-wired to some chinese bots.

I'm not sure how well paladins were back then, since horde obviously never had them and I can't remember a single experience with a druid tank tbh.. I'm sure there were some but I just can't remmeber it for some reason.

[Nobleshield]

I think it will be just like it has been for years: Tanks are in high demand for group content due to not many people wanting to tank (read: Not wanting the responsibilities of herding cats and get all the blame for not knowing every single patrol/the fastest path/where everything is), while in low demand for raiding guilds due to those positions usually being filled by the GM and/or their friends/relatives/SO.

Besides, being a main tank in the old days was even more thankless than it is in retail now. You have almost everything riding on you. Even as someone who previously enjoyed tanking (I lost interest when retail moved to this "active mitigation" garbage) I don't think I would want the responsibilities of being *the* main tank. Perhaps one of the Fury/Prot hybrid tanks that are tanks but not main tanks.

I certainly plan to make lots of friends quickly as I will be a Warrior and my wife will be a Shaman so we can get groups pretty much on demand. However I have no desire to take abuse from people because I haven't memorized all the patrols in a dungeon or because I forgot how to navigate Wailing Caverns or Maraudon. Having a tank + healer combo means that while I'll be as nice a tank as you'd ever likely find in a group (something I pride myself on), I won't take crap from people because I haven't played Vanilla before and haven't done the old dungeons since the end of Wrath.

[glowzone]

Most people are dps horny. Even if they have the gear to tank, most of them won't.
The amount of groups I'm invited to with like 3 dps that could easily tank it is absurd. I don't know how they expect me to respond. I'm suppose to pick up their slack and then roll against them for loot? Yeah no t(h)anks.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Warriors may end up excluded from dungeon tanking, if people can make Pally dungeon tanking work decently, with the knowledge we have now.

Maybe for Alliance...not really an option on the Horde side...

[msdos]

It's not hard to gear up two tanks, it's just that one most likely will always be better geared than the other and maybe even drastically, which is okay, because once the MT is done, he's done, there is no titan forging or a better thing waiting around the corner in M+ or a world quest or in the very next tier even.

Farming classic raids is a different beast altogether because you actually keep doing it. Farming in retail has been dead since Legion. One expansion will have crazy ass legendaries that can drop off a boss (i'm talking about the trinket) and then the next expansion completely kills farming raids lol.

[Tehterokkar]

Hamstring kite while killing mobs faster than other classes? How exactly? Kite until bloodthirst is up?

I never said anything about faster kill speed. Leveling is an equation of Travel Time, Downtime spent drinking/bandaging and Fighting.

Because you are kiting mobs and exchanging melee hits 1-to-1 with mobs, you will take far less damage, which then needs far less time to recover after each fight. This speeds up Warrior leveling by a massive amount.

[Roxyfoxy]

Anyone rolling a warrior thinking they are going to be dps and never tank, won't see anything harder than MC, several bosses in MC require 5-6 tanks, those who refuses to tank, will be weeded out before they reach anything harder.

A dps warrior who won't tank, is pretty much the most useless player in your raid, yes he can provide decent dps, but why bring someone who can do decent dps, when you can bring someone doing decent dps AND help out tanking when needed, as a dps warrior, you are probably the most expendable player in a raid, since there are 10 other dps warriors standing in line to join a raid guild.

Protip: If you dont want to tank, dont roll a warrior, cause you will be expected to tank. In addition, you will have massive issues getting into dungeon groups, cause warrior tanks dont wanna invite a dps warrior to their group, tanking dungeons, is the fastest way to gear up your dps gear, you can form your own group almost instantly, and cherry pick your group so noone will compete against the items you want.

[Lochton]

Hi all,

Keep seeing that tanks will be the fulcrum of guilds, groups etc & that if you are willing to tank you will be able to get into groups much faster.

Whilst I appreciate this may have been the case in Vanilla in 2005, was it still the case on recent servers which shall not be named?

I plan to play a warrior & would like to tank, ideally the main tank in a decent guild, but wondered how competitive it will actually be? Surely, more people will want to tank this time around & were the private servers lacking in tanks, even on their inflated populations?

Willing tanks, most likely. Unwanted but you got to have them kind of tanks, plenty.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

won 't there be more tanks in Classsic since the game has been around for almost 14 years now and most players understand all aspects of the game as 1st hand knowledge?

[collax]

Tanks are often in short supply for 5man tanking, but that's not the case for raiding.

For 40 players, if all of them want to do 5man you need 8 tanks. But in raid you need at most 4 tanks for the 40 (except 4horseman where you need 8 (it can be done with less but harder) but these will be handled by fury/druid offtanking).

As for maintanking, most of the time the maintank will be from the main core group of officier that created the guild.

[endersblade]

I believe at the start, there will be a ton of people rolling paladins and bears hoping to tank, maybe even warriors, until they realize that the only viable tanks in Vanilla were wars, and even then, tanking in vanilla is nowhere near as easy as it is now. So the pool of tanks will dwindle rapidly.

[AeneasBK]

Good ones, probably

[Tech614]

I believe at the start, there will be a ton of people rolling paladins and bears hoping to tank, maybe even warriors, until they realize that the only viable tanks in Vanilla were wars, and even then, tanking in vanilla is nowhere near as easy as it is now. So the pool of tanks will dwindle rapidly.

Tanking in vanilla is easier then it is now, by far so. Super fucking hard to do a flow chart of Shield Slam>Revenge>Sunder>Rage Dump. You call that hard? The reason the tank population will dwindle in classic as it did in vanilla is it's boring and thankless, not because it's hard.

[crusadernero]

Yes ofc, as it always has been. It will mean even more to be a tank in classic.

But now, in classic, the power will be more at the tanks hands. If you are a good tank and a friendly player, you will get /w and invites for dungeons & raids the second you log in.

These days you just queue up for most stuff and dont care if the tank does good or not, its the same anyway. Threat is a no brainer etc.

I mained a Warrior in classic & BC. Being tank back then was a pain in many ways(slower leveling, questing etc), but I got alot of friends and easy access to dungeon runs.

Dps is a dime a dozen. GOOD tanks? Rare breed. When you meet one, treat him good!

[Sorcereria]

Tanking in vanilla is easier then it is now, by far so. Super fucking hard to do a flow chart of Shield Slam>Revenge>Sunder>Rage Dump

You forgot about stance dancing to overpower. You could only overpower in battle stance. Stance dance would only allow to keep 10 rage, you didnt want to waste it either when dancing.
In general threat ceiling was much closer to the DPS than it was in any other expansion, it was never a problem past vanila. You also have miss on taunts, untauntable bosses and/or bosses that have threat dumps - example wing buffet, broodlord knockback. Tanking in vanila was much less forgiving than any other expansion and required much more resources than in next expansions.

Was it difficult? No, but you could easily recognize the better tank as there was a TINY bit of skillcap involved in tanking compared to later expansion braindead skill bashing and nobody would even notice.

[AeneasBK]

You forgot about stance dancing to overpower. You could only overpower in battle stance. Stance dance would only allow to keep 10 rage, you didnt want to waste it either when dancing.
In general threat ceiling was much closer to the DPS than it was in any other expansion, it was never a problem past vanila. You also have miss on taunts, untauntable bosses and/or bosses that have threat dumps - example wing buffet, broodlord knockback. Tanking in vanila was much less forgiving than any other expansion and required much more resources than in next expansions.

Was it difficult? No, but you could easily recognize the better tank as there was a TINY bit of skillcap involved in tanking compared to later expansion braindead skill bashing and nobody would even notice.

Don't forget to use thunderclap for AoE threat /s