Thread: More Tanks

  1. #1

    More Tanks

    Why is the number of tanks always capped at 2?

    More and more i'm struggling to find raid PuGs because they all seem to be full on tanks.

    Would adding an extra tank slot make sense? 3 tanks required for a raid?

    Tanks are the only role that you (in the vast majority of cases) can't be flexible regarding quantity.

    I would say that our role is the least engaging. Many fights boil down to taunt swapping. It's not fun when the central mechanics of a boss don't apply to tanks. If they add a 3rd tank maybe fights could have more things for tanks to do.

    Thoughts?

  2. #2
    It would make sense for me. AS a tank its super easy to find M+ grps, but very hard for raids

  3. #3
    I mean it's happening less and less but the occasional three tank strat pops up occasionally.

    I guess it's just tanks kinda have a different scaling with content than other classes (you can survive being hit by the boss or you can't), I mean like you said taunt swaps essentially have to be gimmicked in on any flight without adds to justify having more than one tank.
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  4. #4
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    I'm sorry but it is very obvious you never played vanilla and saw where up to 6 tanks were needed just for one boss fight. Having to gear up multiple tanks (main tank, regular off tank, and "extra" back up tanks for certain fights) is not easy for a guild. Most of your tank specs have different stat requirements for their gear from their dps or even healing specs so simply changing specs and slapping on a 1 hander and shield (for warrior & paladin) & "appropriate" tanking trinkets isn't always a viable option. Demon hunter is basically the only class that has the same desired stats for their dps spec and tank spec. DK is vers & haste for blood while unholy is mastery and haste and frost is mastery and crit and requires using a 2h instead of DW which is their ideal weapon choice. Prot warrior is haste/vers, arms is haste to 20% then crit/mastery, and fury is haste/mastery. Do you see the point in how difficult it would be to have more than 2 tanks in a group for a raid?

    Quote Originally Posted by kansor View Post
    Because of the way LFR works, there's going to be a set number of tanks. But you could have an entire raid based around 3 tanking. Alternately, you could do that for specific wings of the raid. So the LFR queue for wing 2 might be 3 tanks, but 2 for all the rest.
    And doing what you just described changes normal, heroic, and mythic raiding completely to need 3 tanks for their core group of raiders.

  5. #5
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kansor View Post
    If you did just one wing, the implication is that one person has to off-tank, encouraging one of your current raiders to step up.

    If you do an entire raid themed on 3 tanks, yes you're saying people have to change their roster for that tier, but roster tends to change between tiers anyway. Also if you announce it in advance you give people plenty of time so that if it's a family and friends group one of them can learn to tank.

    The tank role is stagnant and making it more variable like healer comp is one way you could address that.
    You do realize that even if it were for just ONE boss fight it would still require you having a stand-by tank that is geared enough and properly in order to be able to tank right? This is even more pronounced if you raid heroic or mythic where the gear checks are much higher than normal or LFR.

  6. #6
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kansor View Post
    Right, that's why doing it for just one boss doesn't work. It would have to be present for much of the tier.
    which would change entire guild's rosters for an entire tier and cause many problems for raiders. This would never happen. We no longer play vanilla where more than 2 tanks are needed for something. Even with mage tanks from BC that can't be done in the current setting of WoW because of raid finder. How would Blizzard determine which mage would have to tank something or which caster would be that "other" tank that isn't your standard tank defined by role choices? Mages can't queue as a tank nor can anything that doesn't have a defined tank spec for the class.

  7. #7
    That is YOU problem.
    If you try to find a ready to go group it will mostly be full as people tend to fill in the groups where the tanks are already present. You can always join a group where there are only a few people, most of the time those have no tanks or healers so you will have to wait but then there is absolutely no issues as a tank to join a pugs
    It's kind of like trying to be the last one to get into a car and then saying that front passenger seat is already taken..

  8. #8
    In theory, if raid scaling was smarter this could happen (so not mythic raiding).


    Atm, if i understand correctly, every +1 in a raid adds hp of a boss, thus needing more dps.

    If it was smarter:
    Every +1 dps = more hp.
    Every +1 healer = more damage (Careful scaling, or specific abilities increased, so as not to make the fight harder, just 'need' another healer)
    Every +1 tank = more tank swaps, faster buildup of debuffs, etc.

    Obviously, harder to scale, but makes it so that the raid scales to everyone, not just adding dps.

  9. #9
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    The problem with this is that you then need 3 tanks to make something go. In a serious guild, eh. But for PUGs, LFR etc it's a 50% increase in the required tanks and tanks are already in relatively short supply.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Ragnarohk View Post
    Why is the number of tanks always capped at 2?

    More and more i'm struggling to find raid PuGs because they all seem to be full on tanks.

    Would adding an extra tank slot make sense? 3 tanks required for a raid?

    Tanks are the only role that you (in the vast majority of cases) can't be flexible regarding quantity.

    I would say that our role is the least engaging. Many fights boil down to taunt swapping. It's not fun when the central mechanics of a boss don't apply to tanks. If they add a 3rd tank maybe fights could have more things for tanks to do.

    Thoughts?
    As a tank, I don't hate this idea. However, obscure 3tank fights aside, whatever the bare minimum number of tanks is, thats what everyone will run with, because you know, mOrE dPs!!!!one!. To be fair that does make sense, and i can maybe see a place for that kind of flexibility in normal, but the way even heroic is tuned, let alone mythic, means that if you can get away with 2 tanks, thats what everyone will run.

    Ultimately this will simply mean fights tuned for 2/3 tanks will just be much harder on the tanks, as very few if any groups will take that third tank.

    I have had a blast running 2 tanks in 5mans though - big dps on trash, strong mob control, cooldowns for days - its pretty amusing. Again, this is only low level stuff.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Squigglyo View Post
    In theory, if raid scaling was smarter this could happen (so not mythic raiding).


    Atm, if i understand correctly, every +1 in a raid adds hp of a boss, thus needing more dps.

    If it was smarter:
    Every +1 dps = more hp.
    Every +1 healer = more damage (Careful scaling, or specific abilities increased, so as not to make the fight harder, just 'need' another healer)
    Every +1 tank = more tank swaps, faster buildup of debuffs, etc.

    Obviously, harder to scale, but makes it so that the raid scales to everyone, not just adding dps.
    Yeah, the difficulty with such a system is that players will find ways to game the system - druids would be a concern here - specced dps but with everything geared and specced towards as much healing as possible, druids specced as feral going bear etc etc. You allude to this so im not correcting you, more agreeing that it would be extremely difficult to actually manage it.

  11. #11
    Blizzard kind of boxed themselves in here.

    Because dungeons have a tank:dps ratio of 1:4 while for raids it can go up to 1:14 (with mythic raiding being a fixed 1:9) there is a natural imbalance baked right into the game from the start. Anyone who's played a tank can relate: it's incredibly easy to find a dungeon group, but it can be VERY difficult to find a raiding guild (because any guild without 2 tanks is probably not raiding). And the correlative of that is, of course, that there's a natural shortage of tanks for dungeons, which is why every M+ group gets 20 dps applications instantly.

    That M+ dps surplus has serious deleterious effects, because that's a big part of what causes people's perception of "meta prejudice", i.e. people feeling like their spec isn't "meta" and that's why people don't invite them to M+ groups as readily. In reality, it's not a negative selection against "off-meta" specs as much as it is a positive selection FOR "meta" specs because they CAN. If there's 20 applicants within 5 seconds, why NOT take the most meta, most geared people available? That doesn't mean you HATE that 195 Enhance Shaman and wouldn't take them to your dungeon, it just means why WOULD you take them when you can instead pick one of the 5 Hunters with 200-205 ilvl that also applied.

    IMO there is a desperate need for more tank specs - specs, I say, not classes. Diversify! It would be easy to retool things and distribute spec identities in ways that would facilitate tanking more. Would there be collateral damage? Sure. Some of the fringe specs would be changed. That's inevitable anyway, change happens all the time (see Survival Hunter made into melee). At least this way there's a positive side effect as well.

    Will that SOLVE the tanking problem? Of course not. There's no magical solution. But it'd be a small step in the right direction, I feel.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    which would change entire guild's rosters for an entire tier and cause many problems for raiders. This would never happen. We no longer play vanilla where more than 2 tanks are needed for something. Even with mage tanks from BC that can't be done in the current setting of WoW because of raid finder. How would Blizzard determine which mage would have to tank something or which caster would be that "other" tank that isn't your standard tank defined by role choices? Mages can't queue as a tank nor can anything that doesn't have a defined tank spec for the class.
    You know there was a boss that had a ranged tank in BfA right? I didn't do crucible LFR, they might have just removed it, but they absolutely put it in the game.
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  13. #13
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Squigglyo View Post
    Atm, if i understand correctly, every +1 in a raid adds hp of a boss, thus needing more dps.
    You don't understand it because that's now how it works. There is more HP for thresholds and certain thresholds add more boss mechanics (ie more orbs, more adds, more whatever the mechanic is). 10 vs 11 vs 14 vs 15 etc etc etc.

    If it was smarter:
    Every +1 dps = more hp.
    Every +1 healer = more damage (Careful scaling, or specific abilities increased, so as not to make the fight harder, just 'need' another healer)
    Every +1 tank = more tank swaps, faster buildup of debuffs, etc.

    Obviously, harder to scale, but makes it so that the raid scales to everyone, not just adding dps.[/QUOTE]

    Quote Originally Posted by AwkwardSquirtle View Post
    You know there was a boss that had a ranged tank in BfA right? I didn't do crucible LFR, they might have just removed it, but they absolutely put it in the game.
    Even in LFR Zaxasj cast aphotic blast but it was not an issue of needing to have a "caster tank" as literally any person in the raid who was attacking at range could "tank" it since the spell increased threat by 150%. Technically a healer could bed this "caster tank" if they could generate enough threat to hold it after they got hit by the blast. Needing a caster tank would be like the like the High King Maulgar fight in Gruul's Lair where a mage would need to spellsteal the spell shield that Krosh Firehand put up that reduced magical damage taken by 75%. Yes the shield could be dispelled or purged but then you'd have him casting full damage fireballs at raid members instead of having a mage take 1/4 of the damage instead.

  14. #14
    because that is how the game is designed
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    Even in LFR Zaxasj cast aphotic blast but it was not an issue of needing to have a "caster tank" as literally any person in the raid who was attacking at range could "tank" it since the spell increased threat by 150%. Technically a healer could bed this "caster tank" if they could generate enough threat to hold it after they got hit by the blast. Needing a caster tank would be like the like the High King Maulgar fight in Gruul's Lair where a mage would need to spellsteal the spell shield that Krosh Firehand put up that reduced magical damage taken by 75%. Yes the shield could be dispelled or purged but then you'd have him casting full damage fireballs at raid members instead of having a mage take 1/4 of the damage instead.
    Ok but it was a caster tank boss. The fact that it's mechanically different from the BC one is irrelevant. It existed. They put it in the game. It's not impossible.
    Quote Originally Posted by Stormbreed View Post
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shandalar View Post
    Shadow deserves nothing, the same as Fire Mages.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by MrHorner View Post
    It would make sense for me. AS a tank its super easy to find M+ grps, but very hard for raids
    Yep, this is the only reason I hesitate to main a tank. M+ is such a breeze to find groups, but finding a raidspot as a tank is probably the hardest.

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    Quote Originally Posted by quite an expert in wow View Post
    because that is how the game is designed
    That's expert insight indeed. That's kind of like responding to "why is weed illegal" with "because it's against the law".

    Designing raids around having three tanks would also make tanks' jobs less mindless in raids, which is a good thing - they're literally the easiest role to master in raids by a long shot (hardest to learn, easiest to master).
    Last edited by Segus1992; 2020-12-22 at 12:43 PM.

  17. #17
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AwkwardSquirtle View Post
    Ok but it was a caster tank boss. The fact that it's mechanically different from the BC one is irrelevant. It existed. They put it in the game. It's not impossible.
    It required no additional tweaking of your group what so ever. Having a third (or more) regular tank added to a raid like the OP suggested would completely change the dynamic and make up of a raid group and force guilds to gear up additional tanks in order just to do a raid. THAT was the discussion of this post not a caster tank on a random boss in a raid.

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