Could tank mechanics in raids be better if we moved from 2-tanking to 1-tanking?

[Temp name]

It was way, way too powerful. Some of the fights were literally just tanks in the top 10. As a guy who enjoys tanking, I wouldn't mind things to make tanks do slightly more damage but it seems as if Vengeance is turning the dial way too far in the wrong direction.

Could just reduce the damage benefit by 20-30% or whatever, don't need to remove it completely

[Wuusah]

Could just reduce the damage benefit by 20-30% or whatever, don't need to remove it completely

the problem with vengeance was that it scaled. The more damage you took, the more damage you dealt. It's the kind of overpowered ability an anime protagonist has in those MMO animes.

[Razion]

But that's the same with everyone else. There have been many mechanics in the last 5 years that word the raid when one player failed.

The difference is that compared to say a common dps role, unless it's a patchwerk there's more agency for failure among dps to die randomly if everyone is doing their job - it has to be this way or raids would get nowhere. Tanking by its nature is a deadly profession, if you die the raid wipes quickly, and if it didn't the role becomes pointless - yet, with too much extra responsibility, group wipes from one role start to be more common than other roles with the same responsibilities due to the nature of the role. Healers, like dps, have some ground to die before things spiral out of control. But tank by necessity to keep it relevant and necessary is the only role to need simpler responsibility not only to make the stressful role less taxing, but also to spread more of the wipe agency to more of the group so it always doesn't feel like the tank's fault everyone is wiping.

[Xires]

There's a fundamental problem in tank design. If tanks are really different, then for any tough fight one tank becomes required. If tanks are all similar, then encounters can become boring.

If I could go back to Cata I would have designed magic and physical tanks. Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Paladins would have been magic and Warriors, Brewmasters, and Bears would have been physical. The magic tanks would share the same exact abilities but just have different animations for them, as would the physical ones. (Or to get to the same end result, you could just have made Warriors and either Paladins or Death Knights be the ONLY classes that could tank.)

Raid encounters would then be designed for one magic and one physical tank and therefore fights could be MUCH more complicated because it'd be 100% clear what tank abilities were going to be available. And maybe the special action button could get more use to help keep things from getting too boring.

I would have also liked to have things go in the direction that tanks were the ONLY classes that could move and control mobs. I raided in Legion a lot and Aggramar with his summoned fire adds is really the direction I think tanking should have gone. The problem is that removing CC and slows from DPS has enormous implications for PvP so that's not a practical solution.

Finally not all tanks are equally easy. Really really good death knights can do ridiculous things with blood shield, but I nearly fall asleep tanking on my paladin. I also found that Demon Hunters don't have that many abilities to press, but I think at high levels the way they kite things gets really tough.

And like Raisei and Razion said, if you're going to change the number of tanks from two...you might as well go to zero.

DK's are magic tanks. They have the best anti-magic defense.

[Hellobolis]

youre more likely to see interesting tank mechanics if you go to 3 or 4 tanks rather than 1.

but honestly, the fundamental problem is the way wows combat system works, there is only so much to work with.

[ONCHEhap]

Yeah it's not like killing 10 man raiding and introducing 20 man mythic and 10-30 man flex already hurt tanks enough.
Went from needing 1/5th of your group as tanks to either 1/10th or 1/5th to 1/15th.
That'd change it from 1/20th and 1/10th to 1/30th.

getting into an established guild as a tank is hard enough as is as pretty much every serious guild has two dedicated tanks and often one or more people ready to step in

[Sevyvia]

Raids need more tank spots, not less. It's already very hard to find a tank spot in a guild worth your time, reducing tank slots further would make it downright nightmarish.

Blizzard could also, at the very least, reintroduce things that used to matter to tanks that have been taken out. Threat, defense cap, and so on.

[Ferozan]

What is this, the overwatch philosophy?

They need to create more interesting mechanics for tanks to deal with, but it appears they don't know how to do it.In a game with 36 specs, where 6 are tanks, they shouldn't remove 1 tank spot just because the mechanics are boring.

[Malania]

Idk, maybe try some rotating duties. Build up debuffs which don't drop unless you take damage from alternative sources. Add's etc. Not perfect obviously as it becomes a sort of soft enrage for tanks but it's something for them to worry about as well.

Just toss an option than taunt swapping.

[Blightrose]

Raids need more tank spots, not less. It's already very hard to find a tank spot in a guild worth your time, reducing tank slots further would make it downright nightmarish.

Blizzard could also, at the very least, reintroduce things that used to matter to tanks that have been taken out. Threat, defense cap, and so on.

100% agree, this is also why finding tanks for pugs such an absolute nightmare, if most guilds only need 2/20-25 people to be tanks, that will be the percentage of people playing tanks overall.

[Gorsameth]

Nathria is easily the worst raid I've ever tanked. There's what, 2-3 bosses where you do something different than just "taunt on X" ? And even they also have "taunt on x" mechanics

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Vengeance was a good mechanic. Topping dps and healing meters as a tank was fantastic, felt like you were getting rewarded for playing tank

The problem with Vengeance was that is was a complete contradiction to a Tanks job.

Part of a tank's job is minimizing damage. Vengeance rewarded a tank for playing 'bad' and taking as much damage as possible to turn that into doing more damage.
You had tanks actively running into mechanics they should be avoiding (but were not immediately lethal) just to do more deeps.

That's very bad design.

[epigramx]

I take anythin over "taunt at 2" at this point.

lol "taunt at 2". Last time I played this game I didn't even have to speak at all. I was for the very first time in that raid boss and I heard a noise from dbm and a "taunt" on screen and I taunted and it was enough.
It wasn't even an easy boss: it was that dog that had an easy way to insta-kill the tank if you mixed the taunts: the addons made it cheese.

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Yeah it's not like killing 10 man raiding and introducing 20 man mythic and 10-30 man flex already hurt tanks enough.
Went from needing 1/5th of your group as tanks to either 1/10th or 1/5th to 1/15th.
That'd change it from 1/20th and 1/10th to 1/30th.

getting into an established guild as a tank is hard enough as is as pretty much every serious guild has two dedicated tanks and often one or more people ready to step in

It's also because wow has now so many oldfegs. When I first played the game back in tbc/cata/etc eras tanks were considered this serious mature thing that most people don't touch that easily.
Now that the game is filled with 40 year olds and 30 year olds (males especially): tanking is so easily picked up and it's considered their responsibility.
Last time I played this game and with a guild we were literally 4 dedicated tanks in a literally start-up guild: it was actually a motive to quit.

[Temp name]

The problem with Vengeance was that is was a complete contradiction to a Tanks job.

Part of a tank's job is minimizing damage. Vengeance rewarded a tank for playing 'bad' and taking as much damage as possible to turn that into doing more damage.
You had tanks actively running into mechanics they should be avoiding (but were not immediately lethal) just to do more deeps.

That's very bad design.

Your primary job as a tank is to not die
As long as you don't die, you should maximize dps.

Vengeance allowed you to play riskier for more rewards. The problem with vengeance was that bad tanks forgot about their primary job

[justandulas]

I'm part of a learning community on discord and we often discuss about the boring role of a tank in a raid. Sure, in M+ tanks have plenty of work like keeping up the pace and so on, but in raid, tanks usually have two mechanics:

- taunt at the correct time
- bring the boss to a specific spot

Nearly every interesting mechanic is left for healer or mostly for dps. IF there is a "interesting mechanic" it's normally in a phase the tank is suppose to have no task (like dancing @ council).

So is the paradigma of "We need bosses to be two-tanked" the main problem for the devs that prevents them from making interesting tank mechanics? I remember the "Wil of the Emperor" fight - tanks were not forced to taunt them but to learn the dance to get a special button for high damage.

it's the opposite, it would be more interesting with 3-4 tanks rather than 1. 2 is the absolute bare minimum otherwise, it becomes SO EASY that it's trivial. The difference between a boss difficulty in LFR and mythic would be non existent other than some damage without multiple tanks, swap mechanics, etc.

in what way would making a boss 1 tank make it easier? it's just further streamlining and dumbing the product down further.

MORE tanks, not less

[Gorsameth]

Your primary job as a tank is to not die
As long as you don't die, you should maximize dps.

Vengeance allowed you to play riskier for more rewards.

And players so good tanks eat tons of damage intentionally, so they do the same and then they die because they and their healers are not as good > everyone complains.

[Segus1992]

What is this, the overwatch philosophy?

They need to create more interesting mechanics for tanks to deal with, but it appears they don't know how to do it.In a game with 36 specs, where 6 are tanks, they shouldn't remove 1 tank spot just because the mechanics are boring.

Blizzard very very often takes inspiration from their other games if something was successful. Expect to see the same tank/healer changes Overwatch is getting in WoW if it works out well.

Personally I think it'd be better if the tank designation was removed entirely, and all melees got the ability to taunt - increase the damage output of tank specializations to be within 90% of proper DPS, and make them take 85% of the damage or so. That way you always have tanks in almost any given group, proper tanks are still technically superior but not a must, and you can design encounters much more freely.

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Your primary job as a tank is to not die
As long as you don't die, you should maximize dps.

Vengeance allowed you to play riskier for more rewards. The problem with vengeance was that bad tanks forgot about their primary job

Vengeance would've worked better if it ONLY rewarded damage reduction, rather than damage taken. That way the two jobs a tank has would be combined rather than go against each other.

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it's the opposite, it would be more interesting with 3-4 tanks rather than 1. 2 is the absolute bare minimum otherwise, it becomes SO EASY that it's trivial. The difference between a boss difficulty in LFR and mythic would be non existent other than some damage without multiple tanks, swap mechanics, etc.

in what way would making a boss 1 tank make it easier? it's just further streamlining and dumbing the product down further.

MORE tanks, not less

Problem with this is that raids today scale outside of Mythic, and the points at which you're supposed to add another tank would become arbitrary and we'd once again have stupid raid sizes that are objectively superior. The alternative of always requiring 3-4 tanks would create huge problems for small groups (unless, as suggested above, all melees become "tanks").

[Nnyco]

lol "taunt at 2". Last time I played this game I didn't even have to speak at all. I was for the very first time in that raid boss and I heard a noise from dbm and a "taunt" on screen and I taunted and it was enough.
It wasn't even an easy boss: it was that dog that had an easy way to insta-kill the tank if you mixed the taunts: the addons made it cheese.

Ye even the 1-2-1 taunt like gruul/shad'har are just fancier taunt at X. We need more interesting fights for tanks or make tanking more interesting in general like vengeance tanking in mop... or preferable both.

[Accendor]

The difference is that compared to say a common dps role, unless it's a patchwerk there's more agency for failure among dps to die randomly if everyone is doing their job - it has to be this way or raids would get nowhere. Tanking by its nature is a deadly profession, if you die the raid wipes quickly, and if it didn't the role becomes pointless - yet, with too much extra responsibility, group wipes from one role start to be more common than other roles with the same responsibilities due to the nature of the role. Healers, like dps, have some ground to die before things spiral out of control. But tank by necessity to keep it relevant and necessary is the only role to need simpler responsibility not only to make the stressful role less taxing, but also to spread more of the wipe agency to more of the group so it always doesn't feel like the tank's fault everyone is wiping.

I get what you mean, but at least one mythic that's simply not true. There are often cases where a simple mechanic fail either results in an instant wipe (e.g missed soak) or makes the fight so hard that it is virtually impossible to finish the fight anymore (e.g. fail to CC the adds on huntsman)

[Azerate]

The biggest problem I see with this is having less incentive for people to be tanks. Raids already have disproportionately more dps/heal players required than tanks, let's not lower it even more

[thesmall001]

There's a fundamental problem in tank design. If tanks are really different, then for any tough fight one tank becomes required. If tanks are all similar, then encounters can become boring.

If I could go back to Cata I would have designed magic and physical tanks. Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Paladins would have been magic and Warriors, Brewmasters, and Bears would have been physical. The magic tanks would share the same exact abilities but just have different animations for them, as would the physical ones. (Or to get to the same end result, you could just have made Warriors and either Paladins or Death Knights be the ONLY classes that could tank.)

Raid encounters would then be designed for one magic and one physical tank and therefore fights could be MUCH more complicated because it'd be 100% clear what tank abilities were going to be available. And maybe the special action button could get more use to help keep things from getting too boring.

I would have also liked to have things go in the direction that tanks were the ONLY classes that could move and control mobs. I raided in Legion a lot and Aggramar with his summoned fire adds is really the direction I think tanking should have gone. The problem is that removing CC and slows from DPS has enormous implications for PvP so that's not a practical solution.

Finally not all tanks are equally easy. Really really good death knights can do ridiculous things with blood shield, but I nearly fall asleep tanking on my paladin. I also found that Demon Hunters don't have that many abilities to press, but I think at high levels the way they kite things gets really tough.

And like Raisei and Razion said, if you're going to change the number of tanks from two...you might as well go to zero.

This one, the Elder, they know the wisdom. They speak the true true. Tanking has been due for a work over since MoP. Arguably we never made a clean break from the DPS-inherited Threat meta. There was never enough commitment to the power of Active Mitigation, as it was deemed that Tank gameplay needed to suffer to benefit the varied texture of Healer gameplay. So we ended up with an ever-homogenous Tank meta that just sits stagnant amidst the same encounter design they've largely had to deal with since Cata, or even, Wrath.