Is tanking in raids as boring as it seems?

[Zoldor]

To me it is a lot like playing a dps who is reliant on CDs. Overall it is pretty much a rotation + a Taunt + CDs for certain abilities.

Like playing dps and waiting to use CDs when you have the best window to get all the attacks in you need in the CD to boost damage. Progression is all about knowing the fight and learning to ignore mechanics that don't have anything to do with you.

I always try and boost my DPS as well, but after progression I go hard on DPS. Mostly to help contribute still besides just making sure the boss doesn't walk over and cleave someone in half. It can even be kind of fun to try and go hard on DPS. I like to set little DPS goals, like hit a Million dps on this fight or something like that. Mini games with myself. Sometimes a tank and I will dps race on fights where it can actually be done (ie one tank isn't off running around for extended time while the other is on the boss mostly or one gets all the cleave)

The biggest issue is on fights like Vari, where you can accidentally zone out tunneling basically and miss a taunt cause you're getting bored. Like a dps where there is nothing for you to move out of because of the fight design. So you tunnel out by accident and that one thing that happens every now and again you totally space on cause your thinking about something else and running on muscle memory. So it is unforgiving when you have a tunnel moment and fuck up.

I also attempt to lead DPS to their death when we are doing farm content. Like on Kingo I'll Spell Reflect (for safety) and walk through the Beam and sure enough sometimes a sleepy dps will follow me like a fool and get melted. No one cares it is farm and we are going to down him anyways. Shit like that. Depends on your guild if you can add flavor this way. We have a lot of priests that pull people around that kind of stuff. Adds some fun to the boredom that farm can become.

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As a tank, literally your ONLY job is survivability and sometimes positioning .

As a healer your job is survivability, positioning of yourself AND keeping the raid topped off

As a dos your job is survivability, positioning of yourself AND maximizing damage output

Tanking is literally the easiest role. That's why it's to easy to raid lead from a tank PoV.

Eh I think raid lead from a DPS perspective is the easiest since you can see the field a bit better and all your movement is on a timer anyways for all roles. Tank normally your field of vision gets impeded pretty badly.

[hulkgor]

Bit OT but why would it be the opposite for damage dealers? As one myself I'm in the same boat as tanks and healers described here, you need to try and squeeze maximum dps while dealing with mechanics during progression to increase your chances of success, when things are on farm I pretty much go on auto-pilot out of sheer boredom because it's way too easy and the bosses are gonna die regardless.

My opinion in regards to damage dealers, and shared by my guild mates is that, whilst on progress, it's very frustrating to have 'awesome attempts' be negated by random mistakes, or wipes, whereas in farm, you can now start to compete in a more serious fashion, for better parses or against your guild mates. Damage Dealers usually have less gripes against farm since there's always that incentive, improve the previous parse, top the charts, get on the all star list for your realm on the logs, bragging rights, speed kills, bla bla. A tank (well, some do tbh) and healers don't really have that mindset or concern.

[DoctorDoomkin]

The thing about tanking is that when you are learning the boss, it becomes interesting. You try to figure out the pattern the boss does to you so you can survive it by timing your damage reduction cooldowns right so that your healers can manage the damage you take. If there is movement involved, then there is that aspect you, and your raid, need to learn so that the boss doesn't get into a position that will kill you.

I would say that, in my experience, the fun is in the learning. When you get it down, it just goes down from there...unless you are a bear and you see if you can soak as much as the debuff the boss gives you as much as you can to see if your healer is paying attention.

I think it is more on the low skill, high risk situation. The tank job isn't hard. If you know your moves and what they do, and what the boss' moves are and what they do, you're set.

[Twen]

My opinion in regards to damage dealers, and shared by my guild mates is that, whilst on progress, it's very frustrating to have 'awesome attempts' be negated by random mistakes, or wipes, whereas in farm, you can now start to compete in a more serious fashion, for better parses or against your guild mates. Damage Dealers usually have less gripes against farm since there's always that incentive, improve the previous parse, top the charts, get on the all star list for your realm on the logs, bragging rights, speed kills, bla bla. A tank (well, some do tbh) and healers don't really have that mindset or concern.

Ah, I see. While it's certainly nice to top the meters within the guild and I do strive for it, I don't give a damn about public parsing and such. I just get dreadfully bored on farm very fast and wish to move up asap. I want the encounter itself to be challenging, not some numbers on a web page. More power to those who get entertainment value out of it, though, they are probably having more fun on the long run while I keep hating on gear farm.

[oplawlz]

For some reason today, I was pondering about what our guilds tanks actually do. Most of the fights they just pass the boss back and fourth and run out a little bit. Debuff here, big hit there, soak this and that. Wheres the cool mechanics they should be doing? Also no wonder no one likes to play tanks.

What mechanics can you think of that would increase the fun and popularity of a tank? or is it already hard enough?


(The only bosses I see real thought processes used on is Aggramar and maybe Portal Keeper ish)

A good tank in the current game is handling those mechanics while also doing as much dps and taking as little damage as possible. It's a bit trickier than it looks.

As to why more people don't tank, consider this: there are only two tank spots in a raid, and unlike dps or healers that number of spots does not change for raid size. I really enjoy raid tanking, but have gone entire expansions only raiding as dps because there simply wasn't a spot for it and the tanks we had really weren't any good at other roles.

[Rangerbob]

Short answer: no

[plagueshard801]

Not to be a dick, but tanks had no tools to stay alive from classic to Cataclysm (other than one "shield wall" type of ability on long cooldown), your staying alive was 95 % healers and 5 % you.
Active mitigation (tanking from MoP onwards) is actually the tool that lets you improve your survivability.

You seem to be totally forgetting the OP toolkit DKs had during Wrath.

[exochaft]

Eh I think raid lead from a DPS perspective is the easiest since you can see the field a bit better and all your movement is on a timer anyways for all roles. Tank normally your field of vision gets impeded pretty badly.

Yeah, my issue was the same, unless positioning had something to do with the crotch of the boss. What tanks can usually do is call out timers and such, but most people don't need that with any level of boss mod. Most important calls are usually when ground based stuff occurs or field of play decisions have to be made based upon visual queues that a boss mod can't know, which tanks generally don't have. As a ranged DPS (when I go boomy), it's super easy to call stuff out and make informed decisions.

[Deleted]

Actually the healers have it the best. During progression they got argueably the most strategic and skill required role. They cant just follow a macro, rotation or specific strat, they need to heal different targets, taking different damage timings etc.

When stuff gets easier they dont have to be afraid of a single mistake wiping the raid on farm (tanks), or always need to perform 100% (more dps, faster kill). They can just hang back, take it chill, and pump out the needed play for progression.

Playing as a DPS was exhausting for me, since i needed to do 100% in whatever i did, its cool to be able to play at 70% sometimes and still get rewards, and 100% for the big rewards.

[ice man]

I gave up tanking long ago. It's always the tanks that get the abuse. Im not saying tanks are never at fault but people should start looking at themselves sometime.

[Gottalot]

Tanking, as healing, is awesome during progression and throughout the learning steps. It turns into absolute boredom when things get on absolute farm status, whereas it's the opposite in damage dealers.

This sums it up. Tanking M + is more fun and challenging.

[taek]

It was more fun & challenging when threat & Omen were a thing.

If the tank didn't deal maximum threat, he would hold back the entire raid's DPS and DPSers had to throttle down (barring those with threat wipes like hunters). It was a common topic to debate back & forth the right balance of survivability vs threat generation (tank DPS basically).

And I remember when healers could pull threat. Not sure if that's even possible anymore.

[WrongCracker]

My guild leader (and main tank) claims to watch Netflix during Mythic Varimathras, since the two main tanks purposely need to not move in that fight. The third tank does have stuff to do though.

From what I've seen, the only fights in Antorus where the tanks have a lot of things to do are Kin'garoth and Aggramar. I haven't seen Argus though.

Portal keeper?

[Khallid]

Portal keeper?

We do it with 3 tanks which simplifies the tank debuff a lot. The tank that goes up into the portals doesn't need to taunt the boss at any point, and the two tanks below can keep their stacks low all the time. Our third tank is also a Blood Dk to help grip imps :P

[Arawrabearialis]

Believe it or not, not everyone wants to feel like they're playing an action/fighting game when they raid. Some of us enjoy having a reliable rotation and consistent encounters that can be learned and executed virtually the same from one week to the next. I main a tank because I don't enjoy having to spend the entire tank monitoring procs and timers. I worry about keeping my active mitigation up, using my cd's when needed, staying out of crap, and positioning the boss, and while occasionally there are fights that are mind numbingly boring as a tank (Varimantrhas for example), for the most part I am happy as is.

People aren't not playing tanks because our job is boring. People don't play tanks because they don't want the responsibility and bs that comes with tanking.

[Marrilaife]

We do it with 3 tanks which simplifies the tank debuff a lot. The tank that goes up into the portals doesn't need to taunt the boss at any point, and the two tanks below can keep their stacks low all the time. Our third tank is also a Blood Dk to help grip imps :P

Kinda reminds me of desolate host in Tomb, when everyone said 3-tanking is easier while in my guild after discussions who should 3rd tank and how do we proceed we settled at "fuck it just kill everything" and never used a 3rd tank. There used to be some other boss people 3-tanked earlier on even though it wasn't mandatory, I forgot which. Xavius?

I'm not talking about bosses that could be 2 tanked but it was an absolute horror to do so (hello pre nerf mythic KJ).

[cparle87]

People don't like playing tanks because one fuck-up of a tank is disastrous, and the DPS are quick to harass tanks for whatever reason, not because it's "boring" - tanks love tanking and the reactional gameplay, instead of DPS' "target this, press keys, tab to add, press keys, tunnelvision the damage meter".

Nah, all positions in a raid are cool, but you need to like it's playstyle to feel worthy.

Very much this. Dps is rather straightforward. You have your rotation or your priority, and your procs. Tanking is more dynamic.

[Deleted]

You could not be more wrong about that question, the most exciting role in a raid is the tank. it your life on the line, your mastery of the fight, the reason people dont want to play tank is, 1 fuck up, and you will have 17 idiots yelling at you "how YOU fucked it up" Was it Their fault they keept running into avoidable damge, activated mines that dealt raid wide damage NOO, a DPS main have never made a mistake. that is why people dont want to play tanks, but in raids, and when you play one, it is the most exciting thing you can play.

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As a tank, literally your ONLY job is survivability and sometimes positioning .

As a healer your job is survivability, positioning of yourself AND keeping the raid topped off

As a dos your job is survivability, positioning of yourself AND maximizing damage output

Tanking is literally the easiest role. That's why it's to easy to raid lead from a tank PoV.

hahahahaha. hahahahahaha. Really As a DPS you have to survivability, positioning and do your job? man that is unfair ha? first of all DPS dont have to think about survivability, at most positiiong. And you can't compare the survivability, positioning of a tank to that of a dps. as a tank you position is the most importen 1 fuck up, and you wipe the raid, you are the one who lead the giant ass boss, The dps just have to fill around you.. you not only have to posistion yourself, but that of the entire raid, you need to think about wh ere is everyone and where can they stand.

and survivability, it is not just "survivability" as a tank, it is When do you use your CD,w hen do you pre use defensive abilitys when do you use your abilitys.

that being said, the hardest job is that of a healer, as they have to take care of the slack of others, all the DPS players who assume they are gods gift to other people for their divine high numbers. That is the real thankless jobs, you have to mind your position as much as a tank, and have to keep in mind X amount of people, and then cost / risk for slow vs fast healing spells

[Deleted]

How can be tanking boring? Its the same as dps spec - you try to maximize your dmg input, but you also try to survive and take a minimum ammount of dmg.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

This is my personal take in doing it as an offspec in my group,

Tanking like healing is pretty fun in learning side of progression because you work with the other tank to discover where you will place the boss, when to taunt, how to properly use CDs and space things out throughout the encounter. How and where adds spawn and where to place them. Over all an exciting time. Just like the healers are learning the damage patterns and what abilities require a plan, where the group will be and how range works, and how to work with other healers in spacing out CDs and such.

But... this only lasts so long. Eventually it becomes a very robotic, go here, use this, do this, and repeat. But unlike healers tanks really don't have to face a lot of the mechanics. So healers still get to run out with the bomb, dodge the fire a lot more often, and in general get a little spice once in a while of the unknown. Tanks just pretty much have that robotic grind. It gets worse because as you do it you sit there and can do it so well that you can almost do it on auto and then watch the same people make the same mistakes over and over again in real time. It can get frustrating.

So tanks and healers?

First 10 or so pulls on a boss are interesting. You are learning, seeing new things, and getting to the point of understanding.
Next 10-20 pulls will show you something, maybe, that expands that knowledge and you are still on your toes because its still pretty new.
After that its pretty much on full auto. Timers and just basic feel tells you when things are coming so you just end up watching others.