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

[StillMcfuu]

To echo the sentiment some have here; It's the second tank that allows tanks to even have interesting mechanics. Otherwise every fight would be a tank and spank for them, and that sounds awful.

[Aresk]

I personally prefer fights where there is time without tanking (with some exceptions), assuming a second tank is really needed. Admittedly, I only do heroic raiding, but going through the current tier (this is from a druid who gains benefit from form-swapping):

• Shriekwing - solo-tanked at this point in the expansion
• Huntmaster - except at the end, each tank has something to do. Fairly boring for Huntmaster tank on P2 onward.
• Devourer - great design for off-tanking. Can heal, soak miasma, pop orbs, or DPS when not currently on the boss
• Darkvein - least favorite tanking fight, since the dot damage is too punishing for shifting, but the off-tank can still soak vials
• Artificer - seeds can be done by off-tank. Like devourer, nice for off-tanking phases.
• Sun King - I literally don't tank unless the shade is up; I'm busy pumping heals otherwise.
• Council - I feel like tanks get to participate in all the same mechanics except for the one kiting of pools. Good repositioning on abilities and tank swapping on multiple targets adds entertainment to this
• Sludgefist - if ever there's a time to become a mind reader, this is it. Tank stacking well while leaving voice open for ranged/melee communication can be a fun challenge. Apparently stampeding roar makes melee die, though, so that's utility sadness. Solo-tanking this when the other tank goes down is a particularly fun challenge.
• Generals - plenty going on in this fight for tanks to deal with. Keeping Kaal positioned for melee DPS while also dodging the glaive paths can be a challenge, particularly if she moves to put her hitbox inside you.
• Denathrius - Not sure what mechanics tanks don't take part in here. Positioning in P3 is very rewarding (or punishing). Mitigating stack damage is a fun challenge in P2 when the other tank refuses to taunt Remornia.

[garicasha]

This might not seem intuitive but honestly the thing locking down tanks may actually be the design that DPS need to be pumping as hard as they can all the time.

Currently the way people measure their contribution is by looking at damage done. Imagine if there was an in-game ranking system for each pull where interrupts, kites, CC's applied, etc. and everyone used THAT to measure their contribution.

Now all of a sudden the strategy for everything doesn't have to be "kill it as fast as you can." This would open up new ideas such as fights with TONS of adds, different buffs, different debuffs, special action buttons, etc. But the current paradigm is that using GCDs on CCs isn't how you get purple parses. If that were to change, and the paradigm became that everyone's UTILITY was how people were judged, then different designs would be possible. For example, imagine a boss that took damage the longer he was kited by a tank. If the only way for DPS to get purple parses on WCL became casting their snares on cooldown it would change encounter design immensely.

So in some ways tanks not begin able to do special things is a consequence of fights being designed around DPS being able to do maximum DPS all the time.

[Relapses]

This might not seem intuitive but honestly the thing locking down tanks may actually be the design that DPS need to be pumping as hard as they can all the time.

Currently the way people measure their contribution is by looking at damage done. Imagine if there was an in-game ranking system for each pull where interrupts, kites, CC's applied, etc. and everyone used THAT to measure their contribution.

Now all of a sudden the strategy for everything doesn't have to be "kill it as fast as you can." This would open up new ideas such as fights with TONS of adds, different buffs, different debuffs, special action buttons, etc. But the current paradigm is that using GCDs on CCs isn't how you get purple parses. If that were to change, and the paradigm became that everyone's UTILITY was how people were judged, then different designs would be possible. For example, imagine a boss that took damage the longer he was kited by a tank. If the only way for DPS to get purple parses on WCL became casting their snares on cooldown it would change encounter design immensely.

So in some ways tanks not begin able to do special things is a consequence of fights being designed around DPS being able to do maximum DPS all the time.

Hi, you just described execution ranking on WarcraftLogs. This feature has been a part of WCL since MoP.

Btw, pretty much nobody uses it.

[Temp name]

Hi, you just described execution ranking on WarcraftLogs. This feature has been a part of WCL since MoP.

Btw, pretty much nobody uses it.

That's not true. People use it as a joke

[XDurionX]

Complains about tanking being boring.

Suggests to make it even more boring.

[erifwodahs]

If the only way for DPS to get purple parses on WCL became casting their snares on cooldown it would change encounter design immensely.

That fight would be regarded as absolute dogshit of a fight and I, as a tank, agree with that.
They could make taking as a dps and set up actual proper DPS rotations and just add a mechanic that if you have more tanks in group than required, boss enrages or something. I love to push my limits as a tank, but it's nowhere near as fun as a tank as it is with DPS and in current situation, by trying to push your limits you are either loading the burden on the healer or just flat out kill your group because in m+ tanks can survive some really awesome pulls, but random targeted spells just kill your party so you can't break your limits on how badass you can pull.

[Atrea]

I'd be okay with the occasional fight requiring 1 tank, but not all of them.

I'd also be okay with the occasional fight requiring 3 tanks.

[Makabreska]

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.

Or they were lethal, but cloak cheat death prevented that. Like my GM Guardian intentionally taking iron star to the face on Garrosh.

[Ryzeth]

Yeah reduce it down to 1 tank, and make it even harder for tanks to get into guilds. Personally I'd like to see it increase to 3 tanks at 15+ raid size (mythic and flex raid, basically), then get back to the drawing board with making more interesting tank mechanics to go along with it.

[Beefhammer]

Doubtful. This would also remove every kind of mechanic that requires the Tank Swap, no vulnerabilities, stacks, debuffs. There really isn't much left in terms of mechanics that you could afflict a Tank with without ruining the fight for everyone.

For example, take the Xy'mox. Tanks need to swap and then run away or explode in the group. Any kind of mechanic like this can't be used because the boss will ALWAYS be on the one and only Tank. Basically any positional mechanic is difficult, because the boss is gonna be there or he constantly has to be dragged around the room. If you ever tanked Council of Blood with Stan then you know how important it sometimes is for Tank to plant their legs and not move too much, else dps gert rushed over and die.

Or take Council fights. They can no longer exist, unless you specifically make a dps or healer "tank" one of the bosses.

On top of this, many people actually want to tank and this change would halve the avaiable raid spots.

All of those can exist still. Look at ither party based video game RPGs or even PnP games. No tank was needed. It benefited you to have party members with heavy armor or hig avoidance stats, but you really didn't need tanks. Some MMOs currently do this as well.

Player perception just needs to change on the idea of roles. However for WoW to implement this it would eed a serious class system redesign.

[Coldkil]

If anything, i would like to see three tanks required. The whole two-tanks thing is most of the time "taunt at the right time to clear stacks/vulnerability".

I want to see more special stuff for them - like unkillable adds that need to be tanked, specific soaks, and generally more interactions between tanks and mechanics. There's way too much weight shifted towards beating enrage timers (though CN doesn't look like that if we exclude Minerva and Sludge) and to me there should me more tank partecipation required.

It's not like exchanging a dps for a tank will change things much in the raid composition.

[GreenJesus]

Raids don't have a tank shortage. Hell, you already struggle to find a guild as a tank.

A lot of people who tank in m+ dps in raids

I think what he meant is that if there's only 1 tank per 20 people in raid, then dungeons will have an even smaller pool of half the tanks that are queuing to gear up for raiding. Usually people main a certain spec depending on what they raid with.

It also makes guild mythic+ groups awkward since 1 tank to 19 other people makes it hard to create groups.

[dagonar]

This might not seem intuitive but honestly the thing locking down tanks may actually be the design that DPS need to be pumping as hard as they can all the time.

Currently the way people measure their contribution is by looking at damage done. Imagine if there was an in-game ranking system for each pull where interrupts, kites, CC's applied, etc. and everyone used THAT to measure their contribution.

Now all of a sudden the strategy for everything doesn't have to be "kill it as fast as you can." This would open up new ideas such as fights with TONS of adds, different buffs, different debuffs, special action buttons, etc. But the current paradigm is that using GCDs on CCs isn't how you get purple parses. If that were to change, and the paradigm became that everyone's UTILITY was how people were judged, then different designs would be possible. For example, imagine a boss that took damage the longer he was kited by a tank. If the only way for DPS to get purple parses on WCL became casting their snares on cooldown it would change encounter design immensely.

So in some ways tanks not begin able to do special things is a consequence of fights being designed around DPS being able to do maximum DPS all the time.

I would agree with this. I was thinking of how to change the current 3 role paradigm by making all melee and ranged classes tank\soak encouter specific damage spikes, but then was stumped on how to manage the general incoming damage. There would always be some class (due to the point of having different classes) that would have slightly better damage mitigation at the cost of slightly less damage output, and these would become the defacto 'tanks', even if encounters were designed to minimise single target incoming damage and rely on melee to soak close range and ranaged to soak ranged and magical damage.

However, as you said, reformatting the purpose of DPS, and using interrupts, kites, CC etc. as metrics for performance would unlock this approach. Essentially, rather than a three role paradigm that rates players on their ability to dole out damage, change the model and rate players on their ability to fight, emcompassing all elements that a fight contains for each player (damage, mitigation, control) rather than just one element per role (dps = damage, tank = mitigation, healer = control)

Tanking in raids is getting very tedious for any tank that has played 3-4 expansions, and mythic+ shows that when all players are responsible for all elements of the fight, the overall experience is more satisfing and enjoyable.

[Ohvul]

Should be more mechanics with tank breaks that require high sustained survivability participation. I want to see tanks as literal meat shields blocking arcing unimmunable projectiles from the raid while they focus on their own thing. It really wouldn't be that crazy to imagine a fight like 2nd last boss of NW where your off tanks job is to block "hooks" from targeted raid members / grouped ones.

[callipygoustp]

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

No, absolutely not. That would only remove the potential for complexity.

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.

Regardless of a boss needing 1, 2, or even 3 tanks is no excuse for the developers being unable to make a fight interesting for tanks. I'm not saying this an actual issue, more so responding to the comment directly above.

[Argorwal]

Should be more mechanics with tank breaks that require high sustained survivability participation. I want to see tanks as literal meat shields blocking arcing unimmunable projectiles from the raid while they focus on their own thing. It really wouldn't be that crazy to imagine a fight like 2nd last boss of NW where your off tanks job is to block "hooks" from targeted raid members / grouped ones.

This would be a cool off tank mechanic if not overused.

Blocking/protecting your raid from a dangerous projectile.

[Baleful]

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.

Set a hardcap that scales (based on your agi, str, health or whatever you want that scales between tiers) like they do with auto-shields like blood shield (capped at max 100% of your max HP). Problem solved.

Anyway they are taking more and more away from tanks every xpac. They took vengeance after pandaria, they took resolve after WoD, they took almost any form of magic dmg reduction after Legion and insane aggro multipliers; and finally they made tanks paper after BFA to such an extent that they had to buff them mid patch. Guess they will take away active mitigations or CDs after SL and get rid of taunt after patch 10.x, just to delete every tank spec from the game after patch 11.x. Can't be hopeful for tanks anymore.

[Tsarez]

Tbh I would actually increase the number of tanks needed and include further mechanics for them.

1 tank to 19 other players just screams imbalance. 2 to 18 is already as bad as it gets.

Give tanks also more DMG to make them a more sought after choice. Give pure DDs the ability to bypass certain tank aspects in order to compensate for PVP and other world gameplay scenarios.

If blizzard would pay me I'm sure I could build a team that could come up with ideas on how to solve the tank problematic, other than just increasing mob DMG to the point you don't even tank anymore, instead just kite.

[beelgers]

ToT was almost entirely a 1-tank tier for me (could BoP/bubble most stacks). One of the few downsides to the raid.

It ended at the end of Wrath, but I actually miss the MT/OT paradigm. I actually enjoyed being the OT more. Gear more for damage, run around picking up adds, etc. Off heal a bit. MT was more boring - stand there and be a meat shield. That's what we'd end up with if only 1 tank. I'd like to get back to more off-tank type roles though.

My favorite was being the "lower" tank when 3 tanking heroic shaman in SOO. Just running around kiting, but it was fun and different.