How Bad is the Tank shortage on your Realm?

[arkanon]

I havnt found it any better or any worse than any other time in wow. Wrath seemed the easiest, however i mostly played tanks, and to be fair, until TBCC, i usually am the tank - in SL i lvld warrior, monk, dk, druid, and pally - in that order, and for this reason.

As for solutions to the "problem", there isnt one - The community has shown over the 17 odd years the game has been out that they consider the tank to be the "leader" of the group, the pace setter, and the one doing marks / making decisions. This can be different if someone else offers or makes it clear they want to be in "charge", but by default, it is considered by most to be part of the tanks job. This, coupled with the nature of tanking, adds a lot of responsibility and pressure to the role, when compared to dps in particular. Personally, I find farming dungeons on a tank to be very fun, once you equal or outgear the content, especially with friends. But when doing challenging content, either due to inexperience of other players, lack of skill, or the typical friday night drunk / stoned players, it can be a very unenjoyable job to take on.

As we all know, if there is a wipe, the actual chain of blame goes as follows:

Hunter
Warlock
Hunter
Rogue
Hunter
Boomkin
Hunter
Rogue
Hunter
Warrior
Hunter
Shaman

But likely, it is actually:

Tank
Healer
Dps

Truth is a lot of wipes actually are the tanks fault in leveling dungeons in particular, and especially early on in an expansion when they have just spent months as a fully geared tank steamrolling content, only to find themselves challenged by a lvl 67 dungeon. Remember, this is coming from a tank, and I can usually boil MOST wipes down to "I should not have pulled that extra pack - can i blame the hunter? shit.....no hunter......warlock? yeah, blame the lock" - "jesus lock, careful with the multi dotting mate!"

[Skillslam]

I'll tank your shit groups full of meta monkey warlocks on Ashkandi np np

[Heathy]

tanking kara as a warrior with a pala, just felt like a 5th wheel, there were some packs of trash where it helped to have a second tank, but you can single tank the entirety of kara with a pala, think i'm going to be going arms or changing mains, just feels boring to play a warrior now. what with palas taking all the meta tanking glory, warlocks spamming seed of corruption in dungeons on the pull. its not surprising that no one wants to tank. since i got to 70 i've just want to go dps more and more and more and not have to deal with trying to hold aggro. the only reason I am a tank is because we have like no other warrior tanks (and t3 is still pretty decent at 70 for a tank its not hard to reach 490 def), in naxx we had 12 or more warriors, 4 of us were fury/prot, since tbc launched me and one other dps warrior is all that is left. and i've basically had enough of tanking at this point. it doesn't feel fun or interesting to me anymore. I managed to clear to the chess event in the first reset and we cleared everything but netherspite and nightbane yesterday, haven't done a single heroic, don't feel any desire to try to tank them.

in karazhan I tanked moroes, some trash, I took hateful bolt from the curator, I tanked illhoof, tanked the backhand lunge from romeo, but for the most part it was just boring, molten core had more going on for a tank. bascially just standing there auto attacking mobs for 3 hrs. I can see the meta shifting to 1/2/7. with that one being a pala tank. definitely with more gear. for 5 mans you could just have 5 warlocks spamming seed and you wouldn't even need a tank. my take on this is that the player base has meta'd the enjoyment out of tanking entirely, it wasn't exactly riveting to begin with but now its just loathsome.

[Soikona]

By far, the hardest role in classic is a tank and it isn't even up to debate. Disagreeing with that is simply ignorance of the subject.

And yes, tanking in classic-tbc is hard because of the threat. Paladins struggle with holding threat on raid bosses, and warriors struggle on AOE pulls because then they turn into juggling artists rather than focusing on any set rotation.

If it was easy, everyone would do it but there's a shortage on the classic realms (not the retail) side for a reason, because it IS harder. Harder even than retail.

Mythic raiding has harder fights to coordinate no doubt about it, but when is the last time your tank lost aggro in a mythic or heroic raid? Ever since WOTLK, it's nearly impossible for a tank with even half a brain to lose aggro. There is no dps player in the entire world of warcraft capable of pulling off my tank in retail, it is statistically impossible.

Now, for classic? I'm probably the best threat generating warrior tank i know, i outperformed my counterpart when he had thunderfury and i did not, but threat is still very real. Even if your rotation is perfection, a good dps player SHOULD be able to overcome that threat such as a mage in classic, or a good sbolt spam lock in TBC BT. The tank simply does not have the tools to counter when a dps player is dropping 10k nukes on a boss.

And notice i didn't even mention the community yet, which can treat tanks like rock star's when they are at the top but are monstrously unforgiving of new tank players.

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dual spec isn't the issue here, classic had way more tanks for example. The issue is that warriors become gimp as dps in TBC so all the warrior mains rerolled or quit, and those remaining, are likely prot like myself.

out of the dozens of warriors we had in classic... i legit think im the last one standing as all of them went lock/paladin to a man.

dual spec wouldn't help this at all because fury/arms will still be half a dps spec compared to classic, or to dps classes in TBC

edit: i guess it would give paladin's more flexibility in the tank department tho, so i stand corrected.

You said it yourself, doing your rotation correctly etc is not the problem with tanking but other players. So tanking is not hard, it’s the other players not controlling themselves. That’s a DPS issue

[justandulas]

You said it yourself, doing your rotation correctly etc is not the problem with tanking but other players. So tanking is not hard, it’s the other players not controlling themselves. That’s a DPS issue

Bro, you can’t expect the dps players to use their brains and wait 3 seconds. If they had functioning brains they wouldn’t be dps

Jk

I didn’t say the bosses were harder or that the rotation was hard, but the juggling act can indeed be tricky without the tools

[Clawsout]

tanking kara as a warrior with a pala, just felt like a 5th wheel, there were some packs of trash where it helped to have a second tank, but you can single tank the entirety of kara with a pala, think i'm going to be going arms or changing mains, just feels boring to play a warrior now. what with palas taking all the meta tanking glory, warlocks spamming seed of corruption in dungeons on the pull. its not surprising that no one wants to tank. since i got to 70 i've just want to go dps more and more and more and not have to deal with trying to hold aggro. the only reason I am a tank is because we have like no other warrior tanks (and t3 is still pretty decent at 70 for a tank its not hard to reach 490 def), in naxx we had 12 or more warriors, 4 of us were fury/prot, since tbc launched me and one other dps warrior is all that is left. and i've basically had enough of tanking at this point. it doesn't feel fun or interesting to me anymore. I managed to clear to the chess event in the first reset and we cleared everything but netherspite and nightbane yesterday, haven't done a single heroic, don't feel any desire to try to tank them.

in karazhan I tanked moroes, some trash, I took hateful bolt from the curator, I tanked illhoof, tanked the backhand lunge from romeo, but for the most part it was just boring, molten core had more going on for a tank. bascially just standing there auto attacking mobs for 3 hrs. I can see the meta shifting to 1/2/7. with that one being a pala tank. definitely with more gear. for 5 mans you could just have 5 warlocks spamming seed and you wouldn't even need a tank. my take on this is that the player base has meta'd the enjoyment out of tanking entirely, it wasn't exactly riveting to begin with but now its just loathsome.

I wouldnt base your experience as a warrior tank from kara. Warriors still shine the fuck outta pallys in 25mans til late game its not that pallys cant do the content its more that warriors do it better like you got way more cds ect and i play a pally so this isnt bias

[Heathy]

on single targets it didn't seem difficult to rip aggro from the pala simply by spamming devastate it just felt, not really worth it or needed to do so. just confuses the healers, there was some benefit from sharing the load on some pulls, mainly the 5 mans have been extremely frustrating to tank with everyone nuking on the pull, the amount of times i've pulled, the mobs have got to me, then switched targets is uncountable. its like ppl don't know how warriors work at all. a huge amount of ppl. we have to get hit or we are just auto attacking. a lot of the time it doesn't go this way, with a bad group you'll just be chasing after mobs the whole time. doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of gear in the game with expertise on it either. in fact the only piece of gear i've seen so far that has expertise is the aged core leather gloves I still have as part of my dps gear.

[Clawsout]

on single targets it didn't seem difficult to rip aggro from the pala simply by spamming devastate it just felt, not really worth it or needed to do so. just confuses the healers, there was some benefit from sharing the load on some pulls, mainly the 5 mans have been extremely frustrating to tank with everyone nuking on the pull, the amount of times i've pulled, the mobs have got to me, then switched targets is uncountable. its like ppl don't know how warriors work at all. a huge amount of ppl. we have to get hit or we are just auto attacking. a lot of the time it doesn't go this way, with a bad group you'll just be chasing after mobs the whole time. doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of gear in the game with expertise on it either. in fact the only piece of gear i've seen so far that has expertise is the aged core leather gloves I still have as part of my dps gear.

I feel what your saying altho your generally brought for the bosses not the trash i can see it being boring but warriors are still very good tanks

[Nebulose]

I wouldnt base your experience as a warrior tank from kara. Warriors still shine the fuck outta pallys in 25mans til late game its not that pallys cant do the content its more that warriors do it better like you got way more cds ect and i play a pally so this isnt bias

Warriors have shield wall that is specifically for extending enrage/berserk timers. Warriors get crush immune easier. Once paladins get crush immune and dps gets pumping warriors will be obsolete. I expect all warriors to be some form of debuff machines bringing imp demo shout, piercing howl, thunderclap, blood frenzy, and mortal strike by T6.

[D Luniz]

Is 103.5% avoidance a thing again in classic?

[Nosnogard]

Is 103.5% avoidance a thing again in classic?

102.4 % combined dodge, block, parry and miss

On topic:
yeah, the tank shortage is kinda a deal on my server. I play a prot pala myself and I only need to write "Tank LFG X" and I almost always get an invite. It's either that or a healer that's missing. If you have a tank/healer combo then you can almost always just find the rest of the DPS within a short time frame.

I find it annoying that I can't play anything other than my tank sometimes, because we always need one, but at the same time it's nice to be useful to the guild

[erifwodahs]

In retail, anyone can tank because threat is a non factor

Lol, have you missed the threads about tank shortage on retail?
Threath is actually a factor, just not a main one - if you don't know about that, try to run a dungeon with decent dps. We actually have actual mechanics for tanks now and while raiding as boring as alway, M+ is whole different level of tanking

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Aggro is absolutely only a classic-tbc issue.

Oh, so you don't play retail or your dps are 50% Andys. We have actively to manage our CDs to protect our fire mage/boomie on big ass pulls where uncapped AoE is a thing. You do your pulls 4 mobs at the time - sure, it's a non issue. Do something what is more interesting - you have to think about it.

And also saying that there is no tank shortage in retail. Oh boy, you really don't play or you are tanking and if that is a case -major facepalm.