2nd Tank for Dragon Soul Raid - how to deal with this situation?

[Deleted]

As far as I know, 4 out of 8 Bosses in Dragon Soul require 2 tanks while the other 4 can be done with only one tank.
What do you think about this model? It essentially banishes a guilds 2nd Tank to the bench for half of the content since no tank except druids can actually be a tank for his main spec and simultaneously be able to keep up with 'full' DPS in his 2nd spec.
I speak for a 10-man guild that is struggling with this situation at the moment - nobody wants half a raidspot. nobody wants to be limited to half the bosses. Since we don't have a feral druid we are pretty much screwed come 4.3.
What would you do in our situation?
Just continue with 2 tanks and carry one through half the bosses because he oviously can't do competitive DPS?
Continue with 2 tanks and bench one for 4 encounters?
or just recruit a feral druid as the new 2nd tank?

[At the moment we run with warrior (main tank, raid leader) and paladin (2nd tank). since the warrior has the best gear and does all the raid leading, he is required as main tank.]

[Deleted]

All tanks have a DPS offspec, Ferals have cat, paladins have ret, warrior have arms/fury and DK has unholy/frost. I see no reason why they can't just change to offspec and have the chance to roll on tank stuff if it drops (what we do at majordomo and baleroc). No-one needs "half" a raid spot, just a tank willing to use his offspec a little more.

[jsz]

Some tanks have dps offspecs
Some tanks have healing offspecs
Let them switch off main tanking on a weekly basis

[Deleted]

The problem is that no tank has enough off-spec gear to actually do competitive dps. the main-spec fury warrior gets the dps plate gear and 2hand weapons and str trinkets. the tank gets the left-overs. plus the tank lacks tier set items (tier tokens go to main specs first), so no set bonus for him. in the first weeks of a new raid, the DPS will get tons of dps gear from valor points and raid drops while the tank mainly gets tanking gear. after all it's his main spec. after 2 or 3 weeks, he will be at least 10 item levels behind the DPS players. at this point he will do much less damage. this means that no competent raid leader will bring him as dps to 1-tank-fights because that would mean benching a DPS player that dioes significantly more damage for a dps offspec player that does less damage.
the lack of gear disqualifies any tank but a feral druid from being brought to progression fights as DPS. that is the problem.

[Anakso]

I'm curious as to why you don't have an OS dps tank, my guild uses a druid tank and a pally tank as their tanks, and I'm the OS dpser tank as a pally tank.

I tank beth, Alys, Shannox, Rag and dps for Domo, baleroc and Rhyo, only one boss off what it's going to be like in dragon soul.

We have 2x plate dps in our 10man raid group and even through that I've managed to get a half decent ret set, most of my ret set pieces come from outside of FL though, VP, molten front, couple of bot pieces and obviously also some FL items, etc, but still pull competitive numbers, so it's really not hard for one of your other tanks to get a dps set.

[Deleted]

We had a roll system of MS > OS. Our warrior dps mainly got his stuff quick. If our warrior didn't need, it went to the other tank (a ret paladin) and hes gained quiet a nice set of ret armour over the course of firelands, he generally goes ret for domo and he does competitive dps. In my mind, this should happen in most 10 man guilds, 25 mans might be a little harder since theres more people fighting over gear but shouldn't be a problem in 10 mans.

I myself roll holy pvp spec so i didn't need on any of the plate dps drops, probably why i'll be the main tank for most of DS too.

While you didnt say Heroic or Normal raiding, im going to assume you mean normal, get a tank to run through the new 5 man dungeons in 4.3 and get a full 378 dps set, if you speed run them in a guild group shouldnt take too long, depending on speed and luck.

[Deleted]

Depends on your difficulty, most fights require two tanks on heroic (some may vary with your strategy). If you're running mostly normal modes it can be awkward, especially if you're already running plate dps heavy. But there won't be "competetive dps" needed to beat the bosses even without a fancy 25% nerf if played properly

[Deleted]

We actually have 3 tanks and have had that since the release of Cata. The reason for this, no melee dps had a tank OS and forcing them to pick up tanking gear and tank on some occasions would also be a big dps loss. We didn't wanna be in a situation, where 1 tank couldn't make a raid and then be left with 1 tank and nobody to go OS tank.

Anyways, one of our tanks is going to re-roll to a Priest healer, leaving us with 2 tanks with decent dps OS. Problem now is that we have an extra dps already, like we have an extra healer. So we always rotate, which has worked fine so far. But for a lot of those 1 tank fights, it's kinda hard to argue that we bench a core dps for a tanks OS. On top of that the RNG involved with loot, makes it rather hard to gear even for main spec. I foresee some tough choices ahead of us and I can't understand, why there's so many 1 tank fights tbh.

I guess we'll just have to deal with it as the time comes but it's not an ideal situation imo.

[Nobleshield]

I'm wondering the same thing... I'm the one who gets asked to swap to DPS even though I run with a Feral druid (Bear/Cat) who can (to my understanding) use the same gear in both specs (not 100% optimal for Feral Cat but still doable as opposed to, say, me trying to run Fury in Prot gear).

Also the gear issue is there too. I've gotten very few Fury upgrades as either they haven't dropped, gone to the Fury Warrior or the Frost DK before me. I have I think maybe 5 pieces of Fury gear, still using 353 shoulders because I haven't gotten a second token, still using 359 weapons because Sulfuras has never dropped, Zoids has never dropped, and the Shannox axe has dropped only once and gone to the Fury Warrior. Alys helm went to the DK I believe, never seen Beth boots.

[Affectionate]

The problem is that no tank has enough off-spec gear to actually do competitive dps.

really? Ive got a full FL dps set aside from helm, 4.3 introduces a crap ton of easy to aquire 378 gear, as well as moving t12 to jp purchases.


a tank without a respectable offset of previous tiers gear is just a lazy player

[lakhesis]

The system is fundamentally stuffed really.

I flat out refuse to DPS on my tank character, so at present I've ended up the single tank because bringing my alt(s) in is a step too far (purely due to the fact they're alts rather than alt specs, my primary alt outgears a large portion of the primary raid - it has the alt raid's legendary).

This has meant that our second and third tank have ended up in the DPS role. We've basically dropped the third tank nowadays cos there isn't really any use for them & they've just ended up needing to accept they're DPS - our primary tanks have 95%+ attendance tho, so milage may vary there. For the second tank we've had a preference for druids but mostly ended up with warriors. Due to timing issues of where tanks have come from & when tanks have left, the non-druid second tanks have generally had pretty solid dps sets (often because they were in the 3rd tank spot picking up dps gear as primary).

Really it just ends up that you need to prioritise giving DPS gear to one of the tanks. And rather than ending up with two tanks with a quarter of a DPS set, you are much, much better off appointing one person the full-time-tank and another person to get all the dps gear you can manage to snaffle away from the melee. And hopefully you get a surfeit of plate-melee gear + the dps-tank likes valor capping. Hopefully the person who ends up as dps-tank actually enjoys dpsing a bit, but you don't really get a choice so it doesn't matter how they feel. Hence why I say the system/design is fundamentally stuffed.

And people wonder why there are tank shortages in dungeons... how would you like to play a role with no raiding future & (mostly) suboptimal soloing/pvping abilities?

[Kazlofski]

I actually don't care at all :P Offtanking because I can't really find a raiding spot as DPS so I joined as a tank which is my offspec actually while my MS is Fury so I am more than happy to switch to DPS as much as possible.

[Deleted]

the thing is that we are 7/7hc and aiming for heroic dragon soul asap. a 'decent' dps set just doesnt really do it. we have plenty of DPS players who are geared and skilled enough to deal massive amounts of damage. most of out DPS have near best-in-slot gear while the tanks dps gear is around ilvl 380. compared to the 389 DPS gear this is definitely NOT competitive. in heroic dragon soul progression you will want to have the best setup you can get, and bringing a crappy-geared dps over a top-geared DPS wont help in downing bosses fast. plus, in the first weeks of 4.3 the DPS will get massive amounts of new DPS gear while the tanks obviously wont. they will get tanking gear. thus the gap in damage output is getting even bigger.

[Deleted]

really? Ive got a full FL dps set aside from helm, 4.3 introduces a crap ton of easy to aquire 378 gear, as well as moving t12 to jp purchases.


a tank without a respectable offset of previous tiers gear is just a lazy player

True but even with full 378 gear, you're not going to be competitive against the core dps who're rolling around in full 391's. I'm rolling against a Rogue and a Hunter, so many pieces I still haven't been able to get due to that (for dps set that is). So no, I'm still not competitive with the core dps and probably never will be, unless RNG decides to heavily favor me (one can only dream).....

[Deleted]

we arent talking about 378 gear. our DPS are in near best-in-slot gear. getting the crappy 378 justice gear in 4.3 wont take me to ilvl 390...
my dps gear is ~377 at the moment. i can't compete against our 388 fury warrior with that level of gear. nor can i compete against our equally geared hunter, shadow, rogue, moonkin, warlock (with legendary) or mage.

[Kcaz64]

We have a pally and warrior for tanks. We have no plate DPS mainspecs, so all the plate dps gear goes to our warrior and he gets really geared. This isn't going to be an issue for us.

[Pakaso]

if our 2nd tank went to dps for a 1 tank fight we would still let him roll on tank gear then hed switch back to tank spec and tank rag its not that difficult to deal with

[Noshimo]

My guild is a 10 man guild and what I've done is build my own off-spec as well as I can for the rare occassions in which I'll go arms (Normally I'm prot). My 2nd tank is a DK and his off-spec is Frost. He does much better DPS than I do in his off-spec, he's very competitive and can keep up with the rest of our group pretty damn well. So normally, I have him go DPS on fights that can be 1 tanked.

Now, my DPS set is coming along alot better and I am probably about able to be competitive against my DPS'ers, but in 4.3 there's gonna be even more badge gear to buy to help fill the holes in people's off-specs so that we aren't worrying about the plate DPS'ers fighting for loot. As it is in my guild, we have a DK DPS all the time, and sometimes we have a Ret when his schedule allows it. But now we really are just dividing the plate loot between myself and my DK Tank once our DK DPS already has it, and that's what we'll continue to do in 4.3

Plus, all 5 tier token pieces will be dropping in Dragonsoul, so I'd imagine it'll be quicker and easier to build up your off-spec tier set.

[Deleted]

we arent talking about 378 gear. our DPS are in near best-in-slot gear. getting the crappy 378 justice gear in 4.3 wont even be an upgrade.

It doesnt need to be BIS to do competitive DPS. Having BIS would be Optimal DPS, if your asking one of your tanks to go OS and DPS, you can't expect this.

[blablabla]

I presume you are currently in a situation where you at least full clear norm FL each week, if this is true why not state the last 2-3 weeks of raid all plate dps gear goes to pally instead of the warrior tanks offset, and dont bring any alts into a run or such that would take plate dps gear. Even if you have been running with 2 plate dps in your group since release there should have been a point where a 3rd item of which both dps have, dropped which the tanks could pick up. Having your 2nd tank in for norm kills will give him a chance for tank loot and also give him practice seeing the fights if you need to 2 tank on heroic.