How to get people to tank!

[Shurrikhan]

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Can I ask what you have in mind to make mitigation seem more interesting or impactful? More active mitigation? Choice mitigation (maybe some shared resources so you have to be more picky about what you use, but also each can be a bit more powerful as a result)? Should it still be just as front-loaded as now, where as long as you have all your CDs ready you can take on an army, and when you don't you take on an army of mice? Or should it be pulled back a bit? Should diving into the fray have more advantages than just more mitigation output and the few sustain tools like Bloodbath Overpowers or Blood Price? Should offensive, defensive, and utility ever feed from any sort of common resource so that you'd have to pick between those too?

I feel like there's some good points that come out of the system we have now, even if far from seemingly perfect. Front-loaded mitigation toolkits give us a fairly large capacity range or periodic variance around which to pace our runs, which brings out the feeling of the tank as a dungeon leader, the pace-maker, and necessitating variance in that pace. The simple CDs (no charge, just refresh, with any time left unused after recharge going to waste) gives near-obligatory interactions in healer-tank trade-offs for focused output. Their length makes it timeable against very certain attacks in a given fight. Their cooldowns incentivize strategies for non-forced tank swaps, pre-popping CDs to catch the next applicable even if the first's duration would partly go to waste, etc. There's quite a few good things to be said about it, on the whole. Which or, moreover, what could be better? Which are worth throwing out for that something better?

There's also the balance of mitigation (both anti-burst and anti-sustain) and damage-dealing (both burst and sustain). I'd ideally like both to feel impactful, but I don't want to see the simultaneous capabilities of tanks so overwhelm those of DPS that it'd just make sense to go mostly tanks? An extra or two in an 8-man—I'd like to see use for such variance, if merely optional, just as with healers. But just as much as I don't want tanks to feel unimpactful in their mitigation or like wet noodles in their damage-dealing, I don't want to see non-tanks as a burden.

[Khalithar]

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(Side note: I always enjoy reading your posts, just wanted to mention that.)

I was thinking about your thoughts on making mitigation more impactful and doing something about active mitigation and I thought on some other games I've played and how to accomplish that. I don't think WoW's current incarnation of active mitigation is the way to go, what did come to mind for me however were some older abilities in WoW that have since been redesigned and lost any resemblance to their old incarnation. One example is the WoW Paladin's ability Holy Shield, originally it was a buff you had to maintain which drastically increased your block chance for a certain number of blocks or for a certain period of time, whichever happened first, at which point when it ended or ran out, you could usually recast it right away (it had a duration 10 seconds and a cooldown of 8 seconds) and it's overall MP cost was negligible. Now, I'm not suggesting the same incarnation of that ability, but I think adding something in the vein of that on a short cooldown with noticeable enough effect on all tanks could make it more interesting.

What you said stood out to me, particularly this:

Should it still be just as front-loaded as now, where as long as you have all your CDs ready you can take on an army, and when you don't you take on an army of mice?

Because as much as I love this aspect:

Front-loaded mitigation toolkits give us a fairly large capacity range or periodic variance around which to pace our runs, which brings out the feeling of the tank as a dungeon leader, the pace-maker, and necessitating variance in that pace.

And I absolutely 100% agree with you on this, I've lately been thinking that perhaps the difference between when cooldowns are up and when they're not might be a little too much. Note, I'm just saying "might," I'm not completely convinced on it quite yet because I enjoy the front loaded mitigation personally, but when you do use them and you have nothing left it's not a very nice feeling either. Hence why I've started thinking that maybe adding some sort of extra active defenses of some kind might not be a bad idea with their use tied to being in tank stance. But since I like to give more concrete examples...

Paladin- While in Shield Oath, Rage of Halone gives a buff called Halone's Bulwark, decreasing all damage taken by 5-10% for X seconds.

Dark Knight- While in Grit, Dark Arts + Souleater creates a Blood Barrier, absorbing damage equal to the amount of HP healed.

Warrior- While in Defiance, rework Inner Beast so it will only cost 1-2 Wrath but reduce the mitigation some or maybe leave it as is? I'm not sure.

Those are my initial ideas, now obviously I don't know if they would work or be overpowered in the current incarnation of the game, but that's meant to give you more of an idea of what I mean by adding an extra mitigation tool we can use in between longer cooldowns.

[Hasrat]

From a new-ish, non-tank player, I would say the best way to encourage more tanks is to start early. In low-level dungeons, I had a bit of frustration with losing aggro occasionally, maybe usually only one or two. Or struggling to pick up and add, especially any that are a bit far away, either move the whole pack to try to get it, not ideal, or hope your party can at least think to bring it closer, because trying to pick up from range is (or seemed to me) difficult. The more it happened, the more useless I felt as a tank. Which, idk, could as much be on me and poor tanking skills to begin with.

Admittedly, I could just be lazy. Or just not a good fit for the role. But my impression was the learning curve was a bit steep. I've heard some suggest that things get easier later on, once you pick up tank stance, among other tools for holding things together.

My suggestion for encouraging more tanks is to first ask new players about their impressions. Players that start with a tank and stick with it, players that switch to a tank and enjoy it more, players that outright avoid tanking, and players that tried to tank but gave up. There's always going to be a wide variety of opinions, sure, but it would give a much better idea of how to tweak the role to keep interest. It's a bit unbalanced to go off of an end-game player's opinion when the end-game meta is mostly just "MOAR DPS." A new class isn't going to fix anything if it's the role itself that scares players away.

[Rinari]

Or struggling to pick up and add

At low level, you don't have many abilities to work with. The ranged pull attack doesn't generate much enmity and you can't really afford to spam it. Later you can provoke+ranged, but at low levels, your only tool is a hammer, so everything is a nail. So you drag that pack around and hammer the nails with the 1/2 combo. DPS splits, you gotta split the combo. Use your AoE as much as you can afford. For marauder, you can cross-class flash pretty quickly, which helps when you're moving fast through a dungeon and TP is running low from all the overpowers.

You make a good point. Starting early is the way to go, and SE has made a good attempt. Hall of the Novice was a pleasant surprise! They actually teach some very basic steps to tanking. I guess to do better, they'd have to make tank roles stand out to new players, particularly at character creation. Glamorize the 'protector' and give it that heroic rock star feeling. It would certainly help if tanks started with some of their better tanking abilities up front. Grant provoke early (and not through cross-class) and the tank stance.

[bswpayton]

From a new-ish, non-tank player, I would say the best way to encourage more tanks is to start early. In low-level dungeons, I had a bit of frustration

I think one of se biggest mistakes was given pali its tank stance at 40 or perhaps just not giving tanks their tank stance at 15 , those early levels can really make players not want to tank in the future

[Llus]

I think one of se biggest mistakes was given pali its tank stance at 40 or perhaps just not giving tanks their tank stance at 15 , those early levels can really make players not want to tank in the future

I disagree. Not having your tank stance forces you to learn how to use your aggro generation skills. Yes, it sucks being a minimally geared tank w/o tank stance fighting for aggro against top geared DPS, but by the time you get your tank stance and can generate aggro easier; you know how and when to use those skills and start learning when you can go into DPS stance and still maintain aggro.

[bswpayton]

I disagree. Not having your tank stance forces you to learn how to use your aggro generation skills. Yes, it sucks being a minimally geared tank w/o tank

i agree but we are talking about people here even if others tell them it gets better, Ive seen to many times and I myself have stolen argo time after time on tanks in low level stuff and if you dont have thick skin this can easily make you want to quit all together. I think having the stance your first dungeon will show you exactly what your roll is because in low level dungeons a whm or scholar can basicly and will take over tanking the whole dungeon. Its much more to tanking than dungeons I think starting the easy part as early as possible would be good because its a whole different learning curve in trails which is alot harder than any dungeon runs.

[Rinari]

It's still possible to hold enmity against anything short of a Leeroy with the early skillset, even against ilvl sync capped players with a mediocre geared tank. You just have to be careful on where to land the enmity combo, which requires watching and predicting DPS. Managing resources for the AoE enmity move is important. Overdo it, and you'll have to spend some time recovering, during which impatient DPS could turn Leeroy.

I can see the merit of forcing new tanks to focus on that, but they could still be given a bit of breathing room. There is a middle ground though! A weakened tank stance could be given early, and then later brought to full strength with traits.

[bswpayton]

It's still possible to hold enmity against anything short of a Leeroy with the early skillset, even against ilvl sync capped players with a mediocre .

and even as it is now pali can go like four whole dungeons witout a tank stance which is just crazy to me , sword oath does nothing for enmity while drk and warrior get theres starting at hakku on up, alot of peoples first choice is pali and the fact that many people switch for this very reason makes no sense to me. They could do a much better job and I just figure given them all at level 15 would really help,, cause dungeons are pretty straight forward , to really learn to tank is in trails or raids but if you make it complicated early fewer people end up doing stuff later on in the game.

[MistakeNot]

I disagree. Not having your tank stance forces you to learn how to use your aggro generation skills. Yes, it sucks being a minimally geared tank w/o tank stance fighting for aggro against top geared DPS, but by the time you get your tank stance and can generate aggro easier; you know how and when to use those skills and start learning when you can go into DPS stance and still maintain aggro.

By the the time they would have gotten their tank stance lots of people have already given up trying to tank and started to play some other role instead.
Starting out difficult and then making it easier is generally not a good way of making people learn.