How is Dragonflight solving shortage of tanks and healers problem?

[Soon-TM]

It's never a community problem, in the sense of the community being responsible. The community cannot be responsible for anything. If you think it is, it's just Blizzard not understanding how the community would react and improperly designing the game because of that.

It is the game designers' responsibility to take into account how their players will react to the game design, not the players' responsibility to make the game design work.

This. As long as the game design team keeps delegating something like 90% of the overall responsibility in dungeons to the tank, pugs will keep struggling to find one. The "community" may be toxic, but it falls to the game designers to account for it beforehand.

[Cynical Asshole]

Nothing they can do short of making tanks and healers do as much DPS and be viable for PvP can solve the "shortage". And even if they did make tanks and healers into gods it still wouldn't fix the shortage because you can't force people into a role they don't want to play. Sure everyone wants to lead and tell people what to do and what to pull but they don't want to do it themselves because they don't want the "responsibility" that comes with it.

Making tanks able to have fun in PVP would be very big first step. Even I personally don't focus on playing a tank because I can't kill people in PVP with it, so then I don't give a shit.

I WOULD put up with the responsibility of playing a tank if I was rewarded for it with being able to do great in my solo casual PVP, but I'm not, tanks are strictly for PVE.

[Varaben]

Nothing they can do short of making tanks and healers do as much DPS and be viable for PvP can solve the "shortage". And even if they did make tanks and healers into gods it still wouldn't fix the shortage because you can't force people into a role they don't want to play. Sure everyone wants to lead and tell people what to do and what to pull but they don't want to do it themselves because they don't want the "responsibility" that comes with it.

I feel like the talent system should be able to address this from a pvp perspective. Just give tanks some kind of damage boost at the cost of tankiness or self heals. Right now prot Paladin does decent damage and heals but when we lose our covenant abilities it’s going to be a totally different situation.

But I agree if tanks could do more meaningful damage (maybe some can but prot Paladin at least feels like limited damage, albeit it is nice that it’s all ranged damage), more people would play. I’d rather pick a “main” spec in addition to class to let me focus and improve more since I have limited time to play. Swapping specs to pvp isn’t ideal.

[Speedlance]

Tanking is more complex and require much more knowledge to perform well then both healers and dps. This causes incredibly high expectations in m+ especially and this turns away a massive portion of the playerbase.
And since there is limited slots for tanks in guilds, where 99% already have an established tank team, there is little to no reason to be a tank and its much easier to be dps and to a certain extent, healer.
The solution can be significant rewards to play said role, like unique mounts, unique gear etc, a title for doing 1000 dungeons, stuff like that.

[Thirtyrock]

I love tanking. It requires vastly more effort and attention than dpsing.

I can waltz into a raid, 1/2 pay attention, and do fine as a DPS. But as a tank I have to be on. I have to be fully present and not distracted. I have to know the fights well. I can't just "DBM will tell me" through the evening and expect to do OK, especially in late Heroic or any Mythic progression.

This is true for Healers as well. DPS is just less punishing. That's it. I love that about tanking. It's why I want to tank. But it's why a lot of people don't want to tank.

[Ohforfsake]

So many delusional people here, who go like "be nice to your tanks, this will solve the problem, don't be toxic yadda-yadda". Guys, you can not fix the "community", what percentage of player base would even read this thread, would change how they play even if they do? 0.001%? Yes blizzard can fix this, and only they can actually do that. There is one way to fix tanks shortage permanently. Make uneven groups, 6-7man or even more possible, with 1 tank 1 healer and the rest dps. Maybe make it dynamic depending on queue pool, and adjust the mobs health accordingly - the tech is already there on every damn world boss in the game. Or just leave tanking role for raids only and remove it from dungeons entirely, so no high-threat mods or taunts work on dungeon bosses anymore, re-balance damage and fights design with this change in mind.

[Cynical Asshole]

Tanking is more complex and require much more knowledge to perform well then both healers and dps.

Arguably. I think healing is harder than tanking. Tanking becomes easy once you're past a very short learning curve where you get familiar with the routes and mechanics.
Healing never gets easier. Also healing in WoW is not even possible without addons like Vuhdo. Something that can't be said about tanking.

[Nymrohd]

I love tanking. It requires vastly more effort and attention than dpsing.

I can waltz into a raid, 1/2 pay attention, and do fine as a DPS. But as a tank I have to be on. I have to be fully present and not distracted. I have to know the fights well. I can't just "DBM will tell me" through the evening and expect to do OK, especially in late Heroic or any Mythic progression.

This is true for Healers as well. DPS is just less punishing. That's it. I love that about tanking. It's why I want to tank. But it's why a lot of people don't want to tank.

Sorry but dps cannot afford to do the above in Mythic progression either and increasingly they cannot even afford to do so in Heroic Raids. As someone who has tanked every boss since SWP my opinion is that tanking at the high end of raiding is definitely the easiest role. It is very unforgiving in that any mistake can wipe the raid but the complexity of mechanics that tanks deal with and the optimization available compared to dps in Mythic raiding is much lower. Plus in raids you don't have to lead by default; if you are raid leader that is an entirely different job.
In dungeons at all difficulties the tank has to deal with far more mechanics than the dps and healer AND has to lead. I consider raiding very relaxing compared to doing 20s

[huth]

Sorry but dps cannot afford to do the above in Mythic progression either and increasingly they cannot even afford to do so in Heroic Raids. As someone who has tanked every boss since SWP my opinion is that tanking at the high end of raiding is definitely the easiest role. It is very unforgiving in that any mistake can wipe the raid but the complexity of mechanics that tanks deal with and the optimization available compared to dps in Mythic raiding is much lower. Plus in raids you don't have to lead by default; if you are raid leader that is an entirely different job.
In dungeons at all difficulties the tank has to deal with far more mechanics than the dps and healer AND has to lead. I consider raiding very relaxing compared to doing 20s

I'd even say tank is a bad choice for lead in raids because they tend to have a rather limited field of view, spending most of their time looking at foot-equivalents.

[lllll]

Healing never gets easier.

It gets infinitely easier as you're going upwards in keys as far as m+ goes. You simply can't take the avoidable damage people take in lower keys because that avoidable damage will outright murder you, so you can safely ignore people that stand in stuff because they're already dead if they do and there's nothing you can do about it.

A few select encounters get harder but overall it gets easier as you progress upwards. Tanks get better at mitigating damage, people get better at stopping casts and people get better at avoiding avoidable damage because it's not healable.

It's harder to heal +15s than the +25-26s I'm doing.

Also healing in WoW is not even possible without addons like Vuhdo. Something that can't be said about tanking.

I don't use vuhdo and I've done +26 as a healer.

[bullseyed]

Routes are not interesting for 99.999% of players. Routing is solved immediately by a couple of dozen people who then instruct everyone else what to do. There is very, very, very little value in systems that are solved by a handful of people and then everyone else just has to copy them.

"has to", suuuuure.

[Soriz]

"has to", suuuuure.

Kinda true, I got abused today as a new tank for not taking a perfect route through a regular mythic and mocked in a pug.

[Arai]

Make routing a group problem and not a tank problem thus implement tools to make routes visible ingame. Tanking is fun except for the routing garbage.

Kill the Healer dps meta. Its garbage and not fun. DPS rotation of healers is simple, dull and boring. Often times with low impact if its <5% of the dungeon im fine with it, everything above is obnoxious. Nature's Vigil is a good first step that should replace the normal dps rotation of healers.

[NineSpine]

"has to", suuuuure.

If you think that what the average player does is logs in, puts a pug together, and then says "Alright everyone, lets figure out the routing ourselves! no guides!" I don't really know what to tell you, because that's just so fundamentally disconnected from reality that we can't have a conversation.

[lllll]

Make routing a group problem and not a tank problem thus implement tools to make routes visible ingame. Tanking is fun except for the routing garbage.

Kill the Healer dps meta. Its garbage and not fun. DPS rotation of healers is simple, dull and boring. Often times with low impact if its <5% of the dungeon im fine with it, everything above is obnoxious. Nature's Vigil is a good first step that should replace the normal dps rotation of healers.

Healers DPSing is a result of downtime where there's no healing needed. The option is to either DPS in that downtime where no healing is needed or straight up AFKing.

[CostinR]

I think it has to do with the lack of respect a lot healers and tanks get in many many groups while also being held to a much higher standard of skill then the DPS. People don't care anywhere as much if a DPS is playing poorly, but they will care a great deal for tank and healer issues. Granted when a tank screws up it tends to have a far more drastic impact in both raids and 5 man dungeons but the sheer level of toxicity is extremely off-putting even for a veteran player, let alone a new player and doing M+ routes is a LOT more stressful as a tank then a DPS, I've done both: Being a DPS was very chill, being a tank ( my main ) felt like a ride in hell.

As long as that continues to be the case you will have a shortage of tanks. To have more tanks you need more casual players to be able to take up the role and be given the chance to learn it, not be treated as if they are dogshit every step of the way.

Another aspect and a significant one at that is that raiding is capped at 2 tanks for essentially every boss, when before in older expansions we'd have 3-4 tanks for certain boss encounters, so guilds ran 1-2 Main Tanks and 1-2 DPS that had good tanking gear for situations where it was needed. I think that lack of flexibility had certainly made the problem worse since you're getting a far smaller pool of people that can get tanking experience: You either tank full time or you don't.

[facefist]

I love tanking. It requires vastly more effort and attention than dpsing.

I can waltz into a raid, 1/2 pay attention, and do fine as a DPS. But as a tank I have to be on. I have to be fully present and not distracted. I have to know the fights well. I can't just "DBM will tell me" through the evening and expect to do OK, especially in late Heroic or any Mythic progression.

This is true for Healers as well. DPS is just less punishing. That's it. I love that about tanking. It's why I want to tank. But it's why a lot of people don't want to tank.

In my experience tanking doesn't differ that much from dps gameplay on mythic raiding. In top end raiding both are equally difficult and you have to be very cautious due to instawipe mechanics. If you arrive at bosses after nerfs and with overgear then it's a bit different I guess, but in top100 mythic progression you can never waltz into a boss no matter your role.

The real difference is In m+, where tank carries 90 % of the responsibility. Tank shortage isn't a problem in raiding either so it's mostly m+ problem anyway.

[Thirtyrock]

In my experience tanking doesn't differ that much from dps gameplay on mythic raiding. In top end raiding both are equally difficult and you have to be very cautious due to instawipe mechanics. If you arrive at bosses after nerfs and with overgear then it's a bit different I guess, but in top100 mythic progression you can never waltz into a boss no matter your role.

The real difference is In m+, where tank carries 90 % of the responsibility. Tank shortage isn't a problem in raiding either so it's mostly m+ problem anyway.

This was actually my expectation. Mythic raiding is quite different in level of difficulty and in performance requirements. I think at the most difficult levels of the game, the same effort is expected of all players. I don't think that is the case at lower levels or, as you said, in M+

[Austilias]

Tanking/healing are inherently high pressure roles (Eg. In M+, etc).

Most of the time the group can survive the loss of one (or even 2+) DPS in the course of a fight. Not so with the tank/healer. So to begin with you have more pressure.

Then, especially in the case of tanks, you have another burden of expectation - leading the group. Quite literally. Learning the best dungeon routes, calling the shots, etc. More homework, more pressure.

Then you have the class design itself, which has gotten exponentially more complex over the years in terms of most classes - tank classes included. More buttons. Hell, sometimes more hotbars. I used to be able to play my Shaman with 99% of the buttons I ever used on 1 hotbar. In Shadowlands I had nearly 3 full hotbars of buttons that were mostly actively used.

So if you want more people to play tanks/healers, something fundamentally has to give. It either has to be more rewarding, or less demanding/punishing.

I would say the latter has to give - reduce the class complexity/skill ceiling of tanks and healers, but make up for it in other ways (Eg. Visually).

[sponge5307]

I think it has to do with the lack of respect a lot healers and tanks get in many many groups while also being held to a much higher standard of skill then the DPS. People don't care anywhere as much if a DPS is playing poorly, but they will care a great deal for tank and healer issues. Granted when a tank screws up it tends to have a far more drastic impact in both raids and 5 man dungeons but the sheer level of toxicity is extremely off-putting even for a veteran player, let alone a new player and doing M+ routes is a LOT more stressful as a tank then a DPS, I've done both: Being a DPS was very chill, being a tank ( my main ) felt like a ride in hell.

As long as that continues to be the case you will have a shortage of tanks. To have more tanks you need more casual players to be able to take up the role and be given the chance to learn it, not be treated as if they are dogshit every step of the way.

Another aspect and a significant one at that is that raiding is capped at 2 tanks for essentially every boss, when before in older expansions we'd have 3-4 tanks for certain boss encounters, so guilds ran 1-2 Main Tanks and 1-2 DPS that had good tanking gear for situations where it was needed. I think that lack of flexibility had certainly made the problem worse since you're getting a far smaller pool of people that can get tanking experience: You either tank full time or you don't.

I love tanking in FFXIV dungeons is so easy and chill even with ulimate raids. We wipe fine no biggie. In WoW good luck. Also the reason why the community is so toxic is coz they expect tanks to know it all by 2nd week of the new dungeons, raid come out. They expect the tanks to know everything about the dungeons in 2 weeks. If not you are going to get flame. Add to the salt blizzard do not ban or even temp ban for this toxic behaviour so no one that's new wants to try tanking.

Blizzard can be more active handing out warnings and temp bans for people being toxic in group. That would be a good start. You stop people from being toxic to new tanks then maybe there will be more people willing to tank. As of now you can flame peosple even tell people to kill themselves and nothing will happens. Try that in FFXIV and you are going to get at least temp ban or not ban outright.

Just a few nights ago I was on my mage alt gearing up in LFR and we had this tank who told everyone in chat is he new to the tank and haven't tank this before. No biggie but then after two wipes on Kel'Thuzad one of the ret pally was flaming the tank calling him a noob and how he should just give up tanking and jump off a bridge. I snap back at the pally telling him that he also have a tanking spec and since he thinks he is so good why don't you tank the boss then? Also the tank clearly stated is he new to the game and haven't tank this raid yet. I then told the pally if he doesn't like it he can always leave the raid and reqeue again. Shut him right up.

Is not even a tank issue is melee not going down including the pally so I also call him out on that.