Community Opinions on Tanking

[Lyth]

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Every role has its share of responsibilities in raid content. If your dps players can't make the fight checks, you lose. If your healers mistime their abilities, you lose. You can't make tanking "safe".

There's a paradoxical difficulty curve to tanking. Gear is a big barrier to entry for new tanks. When you're learning to tank in dungeons, you're not only at a disadvantage in terms of experience, but you're going to have more difficulty holding enmity and staying alive, simply because you're playing at a lower gear level. This tends to discourage and intimidate newer players, so they avoid the role.

Once you cross that initial threshold, though, the difficulty drops off very rapidly. In raid content, everything becomes incredibly scripted. Boss positioning and movement is on auto-pilot, and your tank has very little actual influence over it. There's not even the worry of accidentally cleaving the group while dodging mechanics, because the bosses all work on animation locks during ability casts.

On a defensive level, there are a surplus of cooldowns. Holmgang is broken to the point of absurdity. You can just ignore 2-3 tankbusters in any given fight with Holmgang alone. That's not even factoring in your other tank's invincibility move. You can just alternate. Holmgang, Hallowed, Holmgang, all of one tank's defensive abilities, Holmgang, all of the other tank's defensive abilities, Holmgang, Hallowed, Holmgang, etc.

Shielding is completely out of control. Most MMOs have the sense to keep flat damage shields on a tight leash. This game hands them out like candy. They don't decay over time. They don't have diminishing returns. You just stack them and ignore damage. And then you wonder why healers are healing with just oGCDs.

Damage is the last bastion for tanks to contribute, but the devs are obsessed with removing that despite an intense amount of backlash and protest from the tank community. We have nothing left.

So here's the problem. The people attracted to tanking are generally looking for a way to impact their team and make a difference. But you're turning away players at the gate because they're too intimidated, and you're also turning away experienced players because they can't make a meaningful impact. Right now, raid tanking is by far the lowest skill and lowest impact role in the team.

So who are we attracting to tanking?