Tanks have always been the most sought-after and least played role. It's easy to understand why. Tank gear makes it a chore to level outside of dungeons. Inside dungeons, you're expected to be the leader by default, telling everyone what to do. You're also expected to know all the paths through instances and all the skips a day after the content releases. And lately you're also expected to just rush ahead and aggro half a dungeon at once. It's a miserable way to play. Meanwhile the dps get to compete over topping the damage meters, and the healer gets to chill and press 1 from time to time.

But while previously this mainly just led to waiting for tanks a lot, these days with the proliferation of gold selling and GDKP, it's become a nightmare. Tanks demand HRs of loot, want to be paid to go into dungeons, and in generally make you want to come over and hit them over the head with a kopy of Das Kapital. Now, the ideal solution for that would be to ban GDKP in C+ and relentlessly ban all bots and gold buyers. But that's never going to happen, because at the end of the day a guy who runs 30 bots is 30 subs for blizzard. And they can even occasionally half heartedly ban some of those to get even more subs.

Outside of these measures that can actually help, blizzard tried different things over the years to create more tanks. The original DK version made tanking easier and not as miserable to play in the open world. The occasional Gladiator stance appearance makes shield Warriors actually fun to play. And SoD introduced a bunch of new tanking specs.

For Classic+ I'll be shocked if they don't try to do at least something. A Shaman tank I feel has to be a lock. That spec needed to be in the game from the start, and SoD showed just how fun Shaman tanking was. I was less sold on Rogue and Warlock tanks, but they're in the maybe pile.

What else could blizzard do to help with the eternal tank shortage for C+?

It seems like the two best solutions they've found over the years are A) to add more tank specs and B) to simplify tanking to make it less intimidating. So hopefully they do some combination of those two things. There are tank players who love tanking because of its complexity, but if they add more tanking specs, some can be simpler while others can keep that high skill cap.

I feel like even making tanking simpler mechanically (remember how older expansion have AoE taunts with 10 minute cds), doesn't help with the whole part about the tank needing to know the skips and strats. And I'm not sure what to do with that. Designing dungeons as a straight line without any skips doesn't seem like a good idea.

Not being interested in reading a manual before queuing for a dungeon is the biggest thing stopping me from ever playing a tank.

Yesssss, Shaman tank please! There's so much potential there for not just a few extra abilities but a fully fleshed out and viable spec.

I agree with the others that having more options that are easier and less daunting to play will increase the tank population though. It is kinda the scariest role.

I think part of it is also the community needs to be a bit more forgiving of tank players that are still learning. While that's a tough ask for a community at large, I think one of the biggest strengths of Classic is how social it is! Change needs to start somewhere, ya know?

Good point. Especially after you've waited for everyone to gather by a dungeon from all over the world without a quick and easy teleport (provided there are no Warlocks present), people might be less inclined to abandon the group over suboptimal pathing.

Even back when I was learning the game oh so long ago, it took me a long time to start raiding because I was intimidated by the thought of trying to keep up with more experienced players - and that was as a healer. There's a real barrier to entry there, especially for tanks. I think it's worst in Classic where the game is so solved and everyone assumes that you've done it all before. When the content is new to everyone, people tend to be a little more patient because we're all on more equal footing.

So just by virtue of being something new, I think Classic+ will be more forgiving. SoD was kind of that way, as I recall, along with people being excited about the new tank specs.

I've played the game on and off since the start, pretty much. To this day I wouldn't be able to find my way through WC. Something BRD? Forget about it. And knowing how to navigate there is the bare minimum a tank is expected to do.

It's a tough problem to solve tbh. On the one hand it's understandable to be frustrated if a lynchpin role like your tank is new and learning as it could legitimately lead to a bricked group or at least a much heavier time investment than you may originally intend.

On the other hand, it's just a game at the end of the day and one that's old and rather chill. Nevermind that all tanks need to start somewhere and you can't get upset at a tank shortage when anyone trying to break into the role is being beaten down by the community.

I think there needs to be better ways for groups to communicate what type of experience they're going for when forming, and likely some better guardrails for new tanks so that the pressure on them isn't so overwhelming they burn out or quit.

ArthasMyBoy wrote: ↑

2 weeks ago

I think there needs to be better ways for groups to communicate what type of experience they're going for when forming

Right. There is that button in LFG I don't think anyone uses where you can designate yourself as someone who knows the dungeon well or something. That could be expanded into a toggle of something like - chill run/aoe farm/fast zooming, etc.

For those who saw more of the blizzcon reveals - anything good to report here? We getting more tank specs in Forever?

Well, I'll do it myself. It appears that Shaman has some threat-related talents but not enough to be a proper full tank. Unless they have a bunch of baseline skills we don't know about, no full Enh Tank on release.