Actually it is kind of weird that tanks are the pullers these days. Back in the days of old everquest -- even my shaman was a preferred puller to the warrior. I guess there is less initial crowd control these days and it is more important to get the aggro onto the warrior as rapidly as possible. Thing is though monsters werent as deadly in a lot of ways back in everquest. While there were essentially raid monsters -- there werent monsters specifically made as group monsters. Hence they werent expected to 2 shot a healer who got aggro. It is just so strange that people look back at the old games and say everything was harder back then. It really wasnt -- just people were less able to min-max everything to death.
Also these days it seems that you MUST have gear 2 steps above the dungeon in question to tank it. IE a healer can be 2 steps below, and the dps maybe a step below. That said a lot of times the tank has a hard time gearing in places they can hunt because for them to effectively tank the area they need the gear from it already. This was NOT the case in the old days. Oddly enough gear was more important in the old days for say a priest who needed to eek out bigger heals or a shaman who needed to land thier spells as opposed to them being resisted than the warrior. A *WIDE* range of armor class/hit point warriors were able to serve as a tank in the EQ1 days. Now it is all gearscore. The healer made the group and especially the backup healer who was able to keep the party alive when things went south etc. than the tank. Healers actually have quite less room to shine these days than in the old days.
I guess that might be why I played healers/utility healers back in the day most often and tanks more from the middle onward. I try to play the class that has the most effect on a battle. The lynchpin. And that is not the dps.
There are a few fundamental reasons why tanking loses favor.
1) Most gear dependent job there is. - I'm looking forward to TERA changing a durable tank from being a set of nice gear to a tank that knows when to dodge moves etc.
But seriously, expect to hear how badly your gear sucks (that's why I'm running the instance?) - Also, if there's endgame/raiding content, you only ever really need 1 maybe 2 tanks. Guess who the MT is, the guy with the better gear/class combo.
2) Leveling/Offensive Specs -
This is a double problem because games that don't offer an offensive spec suffer from slow and undesirable leveling. The ones that do offer an offensive spec, that tends to be where they stay and you end up with a lot of hated dps tanks.
3) Scrambling chasing around mobs while people act a fool being oblivious to aggro etc. - *This is personally what does it for me*
I absolutely hate stressing myself up trying to round up mobs because billy dumbass wants to be crazy.
4) You die the most. This one is a little more subconcious I think.
As a tank you are the first one in and the last one out. People generally hate dying.
I'm rolling tank in my next mmo for a lot of reasons mentioned here in this thread. I just hope the game gets it right on the mechanics side of things, the rest I can deal with or learn to deal with it
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Tanking for the most part even in someone like me that really enjoys being able to soak up damage is also one of the worst places to be in when in a random group or with ppl that thing you should know everything and already be geared. Some games its not so bad, Wow for me was the worst. Seemed like more ppl in Wow think your there to tank for them instead of your there to gear up. Its kinda crazy that some dont seem to know that your running the instance for that but ive seen alot that really dont seem to get that. Leadership role is also not that great when your running something for the first time or only done it once or so. Leadership seems to be assigned to the tank since hes the one picking the fights and controlling the aggro. Your also usually the first to be blamed if somethign goes bad, not the healer that wasnt healing you or the dps that pulled extra aggro.
Mostly if im playing a tank role its with friends so i dont have those problems and have someone that will explain and tell me how stuff works instead of some jonnie know all that says something like your the tank and you dont know how this fight works??.
I love playing a tank myself, but there are a few mentioned points in this thread I have to agree with.
Tanks are almost always the most gear dependent class. It is true, it seems most people won't care to group with you in a particular nstance/dungeon/task/whatever unless you are already overgeared for that instance/dungeon/task/whatever (both raid and group). This leads to a serious Chicken-or-the-Egg situation: how are you supposed to get the gear if your "undergeared" to run the events you need to get the gear. I'm certain developers intend to tune these events so they are "challenging" at a particular gear level, but if you take a random group and ask them to pick between an "appropriately" geared tank, and an overgeared tank, all other things equal they will take the overgeared tank because it means a much higher likelihood of success (or a faster run).
Tanking is a high responsibility job that tends to do best with a leadership-oriented personality. I don't know if this is necessarily a detractor or not, many people gravitate towards these types of positions.
While personally I dislike the gear-chasing mentality that tanking has been since the early days, I think "most" people are probably turned off by tanking because of it's role as the point-class. The tank is in front, the tank is usually setting the pace, the tank is usually marking the pulls, the tank is usually the one more or less leading the party. I've seen lots of great leaders who do not play tanks, but I haven't seen many tanks who weren't good leaders. Most people just prefer to go along for the ride, and then point fingers if something goes wrong.
Slow leveling. ,in pvp rangers and mages will kill even before u touch them Worst in group play u get stuck in a mob and the healers back out dpsclass hides and u r stuck noescape fortanks
PvP is the main reason, as a tank class there is no subtlety or range. You have to go toe to toe to be in the thick of the action and most people prefer less direct PvP, hence the reason most roll ranged or stealth classes.
A few folks have touched on this, so I'll reinforce some and possibly introduce others.
First, gear dependency and passivity. Tanking's most active job is holding aggro, not dodging and blocking. Stats tend to do the latter. While there may be a move that helps with mitigation, it's usually a short term buff, so it's more about stats and timing than the ability to simply, you know, not get hit. DPS and healing tends to be more active since your job a bit more skill dependent. Yes, tanks require you to know how to place a mob, drag it, keep aggro, etc (all additional reasons people may not play a tank), but your main job is to take damage for others, and the main way this is accomplished is through gear.
Next is that, like healers, tanks aren't great for soloing most of the time. You rarely kill things quickly. People like to see big numbers, and as a tank, that's usually going to be your HP. I frequently play tanks, but I get little joy out of having a shit ton of health. I get complements on it, but meh. I prefer hearing "Why won't you die!?" than "Nice HP!" Simply put, tanks rarely have the "wow" factor most people are looking for.
Overall skill check. The tank needs to know the encounter pretty well. They need to know how to move, when to move, where to move, all while keeping everyone else from taking damage. You're mommy/daddy. Usually you can give DPS bare-minimum info and they can do a good job, i.e. "Stand here, interrupt this spell, go all out at 50%." For tanks, maybe you get a "tank and spank" situation, which is pretty dull. DPS and heals might like it, but most of the time, for a tank, we can roll our face across the keyboard and get through the encounter. However, a lot of the time, we need to know that the DPS will be interrupting move X, and that if we don't see the cast bar disappear at about 75%, it's now our turn to deal with it. We have to move the boss to X location, usually while DPS is working against us for aggro and healers may be overhealing and potentially also gaining aggro, making positioning harder. We have to use cooldowns at a good pace for both the encounter and, at times, for the healer, so that they don't run out of mana. The overall pace and success is usually on our shoulders. Few people want that kind of responsibility, especially when it's so public and critical. Fewer still want to deal with the fact that you're learning the ropes, often times with veterans who are going to be super critical of all your mistakes throughout the learning process.
And this is where the next issue kicks in: the tanking glass ceiling. Most games have normal groups consisting of 5 players, 1 of which is a tank. Raiding, however, may involve 10-50 players, and meaning 2-10 groups of players. You would think that raids then need 2-10 tanks, but more often than not, raids need 2-3 tanks, even in 40 man encounters. What this means is that, after several levels or hours learning the ropes, becoming the front line leader needed to gear up and get ready for end game content, most of us will be cut simply because there's no room for us. Sure, maybe we can be the main tank for an alt run, but it means that, while someone can be main healer throughout their gaming life time, the tank will often have an alt to play because once they reach end game, there's a very real chance that they may be out of a job, unless they rank highly in the guild (and most established guilds have long term tanks who come in, clear content, then retire, which is maybe the first step towards the slump which is, saddly, when the benched tanks get called in).
And finally, there's pvp. I love being a pvp tank. Even if there's no npcs. I know how to spec, so that I have above average survivability, but I'm annoying enough with my actions and deal enough damage so that I can't be ignored. I know who to aim for to make the whole party target me, and my team mates can see that I live long enough and cause enough of a disturbance to get back up. It's awesome. The problem is, more so than most classes, tanking skills don't translate well into pvp. High threat moves usually aren't very useful without the high threat component, and taunts are only recently being made somewhat effective in pvp. Without some creativity, most tanks are, at best, flag carriers in objective pvp, and at worst, ineffective dps. Off the top of my head, in both WoW and Rift, people only talk about healing and dps pvp gear. It's an issue that, say, CC classes also suffer, and since we're such a gear reliant class, it's important.
So, what are we left with? A class that's primary job is passive, needs to know the ins and outs of most of encounters to essentially baby sit the group, has to learn its job as the center spotlight of a group, and in the end, we may not have much of a use in raiding and pvp unless we're exceptionally skilled and have some good connections.
How can it be fixed? Think about heavy armor classes in an FPS game: your job is to physically step in front of the people you're protecting when need be, but people in general should be doing what they can to avoid getting hit. Make the tank capable of heavy hitting, dangerous enough that it can't be ignored, but the damage portion of the game is something everyone's susceptible to.
It's not an MMO, but I think Monster Hunter Tri did this best for pve tanking. Everyone was essentially a tank part of the time, since aggro was, in some ways, random (though some armor sets made you more likely to be attacted than others). When you had aggro, you needed to know how to move to minimize damage to both yourself and your group. It made everyone responsible for learning the game and avoiding damage, but good players could get in the way of some projectiles for other players, push others out of the way, etc. The Old Republic sounds like it'll be handling the pvp tanking part despite (what sounds like) another case of passive damage avoidance, but it's better than nothing. I've looked into TERA a bit, and it sounds like a nice enough system that may address both pve and pvp, but I keep comparing it to Monster Hunter and find that I'm deeply troubled by the hard set classes. That is, if you have too many of one class, you can't simply change your play style and be useful. We'll see how it goes.
I do definitely agree that there needs to be more of a reason for having more tanks on raids.
5 person group requiring 1 tank, and a 20 person group having 2 tanks is NOT a good thing.
Maybe for raids you need a situation where you bring 4 tanks and they function as ONE ENTITY. In essence they work together and share a pool of hit points essentially and only tanks can use that ability. Something like "We die as ONE We LIVE as ONE" All of their taunts taunt towards their collective and all damage taken comes from the pool.
Then you would have a reason to bring the same ratio of tanks to the raid. It also would make it so you didnt have to make individual tanks have such high hit point numbers and mitigation simply to survive raid encounters.
I agree with the stuff above. Too many expect you to excell when they themselves suck - and you are in the spotlight so get the blame for fools and plain old bad luck. Poor DPS so slow to level. (Why does some leatherclad numpty with a dagger do far far far more damge than a tank with a dirty great big battleaxe? ). It is a job creation scheme for epeen waving DPS at no risk wallys.
I would also add the problem of numbers.
Big raid 2 dozen+ and what do they want 2 tanks max. 1 MT one off tank. If raids took a more balanced force - say 4 tanks then aggro would not be a problem (Well ok appart from the DPS muppet who pulls the room and steals aggro). But when you have just one or two tanks then aggro beomes and issue becasue if you loose it with taunts on cooldown someone dies. With a bunch of tanks you get better coverage with others able to taunt back lost aggro or cover any adds etc.
With a healer its yeah great lets have lots. But for tanks its 'nah sorry we have our two tanks so thats all we need'.
(edit - lol someome posted the exact same issue whislt I was writting this).
When games were tough and XP loss/corpse runs took their toll the DPS were wary of death as it could come so easyily. tanks mitigated this and were welcomed for doing so. Now with nothing more than a ho hum run back in 2 mins, death is nothing more than a minor nusiance, so DPS can go full out and not need to learn contol and constraint as they have no fear of death. Who needs a pathetic DPS tank in the group leeching their XP from them when 2 mins can recoup any repair costs after a death?
ITS EASY: Your TEAMMATES....I quit tanking because of the crap you have to put up with. You have to knoe 100% of everything in a dungeon/raid or you are deemed an idiot. Usually it is the dps telling you this when their role is not as hard as yours. I once had a party bitch me out for not knowing the boss fight...but it was actually them that didnt know it...I don't tank anymore. I'm fine to wait in line another 10 minutes so I don't get bitched at. And I will never bitch at the tank or healer.
Why is it unpopular? Well all you do is to aggro and soak up damage so that other people can make the kill. Never found it stimulating as healers/CC or rewarding as DD. You are basically a meat shield...
Not to mention being next to worthless in PvP. In WAR it was a bit more interesting as you could guard your team mates and dmg debuff your opponents, if they ignore you, but still not all that interesting as it was still the healer who made people survive and you was a mere distraction.
Maybe for raids you need a situation where you bring 4 tanks and they function as ONE ENTITY. In essence they work together and share a pool of hit points essentially and only tanks can use that ability. Something like "We die as ONE We LIVE as ONE" All of their taunts taunt towards their collective and all damage taken comes from the pool.
Then you would have a reason to bring the same ratio of tanks to the raid. It also would make it so you didnt have to make individual tanks have such high hit point numbers and mitigation simply to survive raid encounters.
This is actually a really interesting idea. I'd wonder how fun it would be to have four guys sharing that one pivotal role, but if they could make the mechanic engaging for all four of the guys I think it would be a great alternative to the One MT issue.
I know this has been said before, but tanking shortages are caused by the community. We live in an age of instant gratification, and if your learning experience becomes an obstacle in someone's immediate access to gear/rewards, you can bet you're going to hear about it.
This isn't just a tanking issue, though. I believe this type of behaviour is spread out across the entirety of the gaming community. Let me share an example:
I had just picked up Left 4 Dead 2 to play with my buddy, and I decided to log on and check out the gameplay in the Monster Vs Player mode (whatever it's called). Well of course I didn't know A from Z in player or monster abilities, and I didn't know the strategies, and how could I playing for the first time? My teammates were not appreciative of my newbness (which I had warned them of when I joined), and really let me have it over the voice chat.
Okay, one bad experience, not a big deal. Quit that game, and try a new one. Once again, this time for lack of map knowledge, I got into hot water with my teammates and was subsequently booted from the game. How fun... I exited the game and haven't played since.
Now maybe it was just coincidence that I happened upon some very intolerant players, but that's the same issue with tanking. You get into one bad group while you're learning and it's all over. It's marred the fun you expected that you would be having, and turned that experience into something very negative. I think if we're looking for the cause of lack of tanks, we need to look at our communities and what instant gratification, entitlement, and anonymity have done to them.
ITS EASY: Your TEAMMATES....I quit tanking because of the crap you have to put up with. You have to knoe 100% of everything in a dungeon/raid or you are deemed an idiot. Usually it is the dps telling you this when their role is not as hard as yours. I once had a party bitch me out for not knowing the boss fight...but it was actually them that didnt know it...I don't tank anymore. I'm fine to wait in line another 10 minutes so I don't get bitched at. And I will never bitch at the tank or healer.
This is a huge part of it.
On top of that it's a ridiculous type of class.
It seems "tanks" do very little damage but are so tough and powerful that they take a lot of damage? Seems to me that most of the touch and powerful people I've known could also kick my ass up and down the square.
Because of this, leveling them can be a huge pain in the ass.
on top of that "one" is needed. Sometimes "two" if there is an off tank required.
So tryijg to join a party that already has a tank will get you the "we already have a tank". Which means that you have to start a party which might also get you the expectation that you know everything about where you are going.
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Tanking has become a thankless job. I enjoyed tanking in the early days. People appreciated the effort put forth.
Now more and more people blame every mistake on the tank. It has become the tanks role to know what mobs to CC, each and every boss fight including the dps roles and limitations. You have to know the entire instance. You are expected to lead the raid/group as well. As a tank I like leading the fight, but not the raid. It is tough to find someone else that was willing to take responsibility for the entire effort and let me be responsible for the fight.
As has been said here numerous times;
1) thankless
2) responsibility
3) leadership
4) knowledge
5) limited dps
6) no PVP role
As a result there are not enough people willing to take on the role of a tank which becomes a job with no reward.
A large part of the tanking problem is a natural result of aging MMOs. Simply tacking extra tiers of equipment onto existing content tends to favour healing and dps roles, despite what most the people in this thread have said tanking is probably the least gear dependant role out there. Situational awareness and knowledge of game mechanics take up the vast majority of your skill as a tank, equipment simply makes your job easier. Without more efficient tools and methods to generate aggro it is only a matter of time before holding hate off a DPS or healer becomes next to impossible. In the extreme this turns players away from tactics involving dedicated tanks for 90% of a games content. This in turn leaves them woefully unprepared for endgame activities.
Beyond that, low level content becomes horribly unbalanced in comparison to endgame as the average player accumulates wealth to pour into their alts further upsetting the balance that once held a party together. New players find it difficult or impossible to keep pace giving the impression they are utterly useless.
Combined with many of the other issues listed in the thread you end up with fewer people playing a tanking role as the game gets older. People new to MMOs are generally put off by the futility of their efforts and re-roll a simpler role. Experienced players jumping into an older game roll less intensive jobs to accumulate the experience and money required to perform their preferred role properly.
Essentially the issue lies with developers failing to realise that simply adding more HP/Defence/threat to tanking equipment will give the same results as improving DPS/healing equipment. Nine times out of ten this isn't the case.
Tanking has become a thankless job. I enjoyed tanking in the early days. People appreciated the effort put forth.
Now more and more people blame every mistake on the tank. It has become the tanks role to know what mobs to CC, each and every boss fight including the dps roles and limitations. You have to know the entire instance. You are expected to lead the raid/group as well. As a tank I like leading the fight, but not the raid. It is tough to find someone else that was willing to take responsibility for the entire effort and let me be responsible for the fight.
As has been said here numerous times;
1) thankless
2) responsibility
3) leadership
4) knowledge
5) limited dps
6) no PVP role
As a result there are not enough people willing to take on the role of a tank which becomes a job with no reward.
Pretty much got it right.
DPS never get appreciated, never. It's either you meet X requirement (which is expected), or you're out. Since the DPS is expected to do X, it's never appreciated when one does it all the time and is Johnny on the spot.
Healers are appreciated. Bad ones get blacklisted, least by me. I don't blacklist based on gear, I blacklist based on how the person plays. If you're doing you're healing job right but just coming up short, it's generally a gear problem. If it's not, I'll try to educate the healer to help out. If it's just people dying or nearly dying left or right......
Tanks are appreciated just like healers but it is expressed less towards tanks than healers. I got in to the tanking role during DAOC days (2001-2003) and continued it in WoW, especially in TBC. From my experience, a good tank is one that holds the boss's attention and helps to make sure no one dies. A great tank is one that does all that plus turns conal casters away from the group, moves the boss around (or trash) to avoid ground AE "dot" spells (think death n decay), and over 90% of the time does let any of the trash (and boss) stay on other group members. Also, a great tank is one that asks about the dungeon: trash, room events, boss fights, etc. Some see this as a weakness. I see this as "teach me so you, and the rest of us don't die."
There are fewer tanks than any other class at the high end that get to come to raids. Therefore, it is the most competative.
It is hard to get established, hard to stay on top, and you can not take a break and pick back up as easy becuase someone is always going to take your place.
I play tanks and healers. DPS just gets to boring for me.
Healers need to be very reactive. They need to react to what the nobs do.
Tanks need to dictate the fight and control. It is less reactive and more about enforcing the strat of the fight.
I think tanking is more taxing in long fights/raids because you have to be on your game. A healer can at times rest on trash and always blame the tank if someone dies, as long as it is not the tank.
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I try to play all classes equally however I seem to always come back to tanking. If you can build a decent rep on your server as a good tank people line up to party with you. If you don't then you get stuck with noobs.
My experience is that tanking is just a lot of unwanted pressure. I enjoyed the bit of tanking I did in CoH, but over there the tank was not responsible for the survival of the team. Now I actually play a healer most of the time, which is quite a bit of pressure and I get my share of unfair blame if things go wrong. But a tank, far more than a healer, has to know what's going on with everything in the raid. Your players, especially your healer, as well as the mobs you're fighting and the troublesome abilities they might be about to launch on your team, any adds, all these things the tank must be aware of at all times. So in WoW when I finally got my tank to level cap after years of healing, I jumped into the fray and found that I was reasonably good at it. But I didn't enjoy it. I felt way to responsible for my team and way too much pressure to do everything perfectly.
I have a great admiration for tanks which may be enhanced by the fact that I'm usually the healer. The poster above me, if he really is the guy everyone wants to play with, is definitely someone I would want to play with as well and my hat's off to him.
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speaking as a former raid tank in wow its pretty much what the other people have said in this thread: its almost always a thankless, blame magnet job. whenever i did a pug or helped a friend in an heroic i was always the blame when we wiped, never the dps fault, sometimes it was the healers (another thankless and unpopular job) fault but the tank always gets some of the blame. even when i was with a guildies the first reaction to a wipe was to ask me what happened or what went wrong there, at least they were nice about it.
Why is Tanking role so unpopular? In most MMORPG that has trinity roles, the tank playerbase is always the hardest to find. Seems most people don't like playing Tank role. I constantly see developers try to stimulate their tank population with different kind of bribes.But never do developers try to address the root of the issue. Matter of fact, what is the root problem on why Tank role is so unpopular? Healing may not be as unpopular as tank role is, but its also a role that many people avoid. Interesting enough, the common factors of healing and tanking are the fact that they are both forms of support roles. One is a physical support role and the other is a reactive support role (most of the time is ranged). tanking and healing have a interdependence together. But of the two, why is tanking at the bottom of the chart? What is that root issue?
When I played a tank and healer, what soured my enjoyment of a party were other players.
I found that to truly enjoy the tank/healer I had to have several thick layers of skin. Also I had to be a fortress, mentally. At times it was easy for others to get to me. So I had to be resilient on top of that -.-
I found the experiences to be taxing and exhausting when others were out to just crawl under my skin.
So whenever I party with a friendly tank or healer I make sure to appreciate the experience and I try to be protective of them when possible.
Agreed. I like tanks, healers, dps, it's all the same to me, BUT, the people in parties are what ruin my desires to tank or heal. People are just nasty and impatient if they aren't running at a pace they deem necessary, plus the roles can be stressful and who wants stress after a long day of work related stress? I just want to melt faces. MMOs need to make tank and heal roles less stressful and more melt face able.
I agree here, I've mainly played a healer but I also tried out tanking and it was fun as hell but as one mentioned above you are expected to lead the group most of the time and if you are new many people are impatient and start to act on that.
Like you mentioned, after long day at work you really don't want to come home to a game to relax and end up getting dealing with people that are nasty, which I see a lot in pugs, and not towards me but towards other players. (I'm not talking about guild or friends grouping up, all of my experiences with those have been pretty good.)
Someone also mentioned others just sitting back, that's one thing I liked about checking out a dps class, it felt like you could enjoy it more easily without worrying about doing something wrong and getting all these nasty attacks like a healer or tank might get.
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Actually it is kind of weird that tanks are the pullers these days. Back in the days of old everquest -- even my shaman was a preferred puller to the warrior. I guess there is less initial crowd control these days and it is more important to get the aggro onto the warrior as rapidly as possible. Thing is though monsters werent as deadly in a lot of ways back in everquest. While there were essentially raid monsters -- there werent monsters specifically made as group monsters. Hence they werent expected to 2 shot a healer who got aggro. It is just so strange that people look back at the old games and say everything was harder back then. It really wasnt -- just people were less able to min-max everything to death.
Also these days it seems that you MUST have gear 2 steps above the dungeon in question to tank it. IE a healer can be 2 steps below, and the dps maybe a step below. That said a lot of times the tank has a hard time gearing in places they can hunt because for them to effectively tank the area they need the gear from it already. This was NOT the case in the old days. Oddly enough gear was more important in the old days for say a priest who needed to eek out bigger heals or a shaman who needed to land thier spells as opposed to them being resisted than the warrior. A *WIDE* range of armor class/hit point warriors were able to serve as a tank in the EQ1 days. Now it is all gearscore. The healer made the group and especially the backup healer who was able to keep the party alive when things went south etc. than the tank. Healers actually have quite less room to shine these days than in the old days.
I guess that might be why I played healers/utility healers back in the day most often and tanks more from the middle onward. I try to play the class that has the most effect on a battle. The lynchpin. And that is not the dps.
I used to love tanking.
There are a few fundamental reasons why tanking loses favor.
1) Most gear dependent job there is. - I'm looking forward to TERA changing a durable tank from being a set of nice gear to a tank that knows when to dodge moves etc.
But seriously, expect to hear how badly your gear sucks (that's why I'm running the instance?) - Also, if there's endgame/raiding content, you only ever really need 1 maybe 2 tanks. Guess who the MT is, the guy with the better gear/class combo.
2) Leveling/Offensive Specs -
This is a double problem because games that don't offer an offensive spec suffer from slow and undesirable leveling. The ones that do offer an offensive spec, that tends to be where they stay and you end up with a lot of hated dps tanks.
3) Scrambling chasing around mobs while people act a fool being oblivious to aggro etc. - *This is personally what does it for me*
I absolutely hate stressing myself up trying to round up mobs because billy dumbass wants to be crazy.
4) You die the most. This one is a little more subconcious I think.
As a tank you are the first one in and the last one out. People generally hate dying.
+1 to this thread.
I'm rolling tank in my next mmo for a lot of reasons mentioned here in this thread. I just hope the game gets it right on the mechanics side of things, the rest I can deal with or learn to deal with it
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Tanking for the most part even in someone like me that really enjoys being able to soak up damage is also one of the worst places to be in when in a random group or with ppl that thing you should know everything and already be geared. Some games its not so bad, Wow for me was the worst. Seemed like more ppl in Wow think your there to tank for them instead of your there to gear up. Its kinda crazy that some dont seem to know that your running the instance for that but ive seen alot that really dont seem to get that. Leadership role is also not that great when your running something for the first time or only done it once or so. Leadership seems to be assigned to the tank since hes the one picking the fights and controlling the aggro. Your also usually the first to be blamed if somethign goes bad, not the healer that wasnt healing you or the dps that pulled extra aggro.
Mostly if im playing a tank role its with friends so i dont have those problems and have someone that will explain and tell me how stuff works instead of some jonnie know all that says something like your the tank and you dont know how this fight works??.
I love playing a tank myself, but there are a few mentioned points in this thread I have to agree with.
Tanks are almost always the most gear dependent class. It is true, it seems most people won't care to group with you in a particular nstance/dungeon/task/whatever unless you are already overgeared for that instance/dungeon/task/whatever (both raid and group). This leads to a serious Chicken-or-the-Egg situation: how are you supposed to get the gear if your "undergeared" to run the events you need to get the gear. I'm certain developers intend to tune these events so they are "challenging" at a particular gear level, but if you take a random group and ask them to pick between an "appropriately" geared tank, and an overgeared tank, all other things equal they will take the overgeared tank because it means a much higher likelihood of success (or a faster run).
Tanking is a high responsibility job that tends to do best with a leadership-oriented personality. I don't know if this is necessarily a detractor or not, many people gravitate towards these types of positions.
While personally I dislike the gear-chasing mentality that tanking has been since the early days, I think "most" people are probably turned off by tanking because of it's role as the point-class. The tank is in front, the tank is usually setting the pace, the tank is usually marking the pulls, the tank is usually the one more or less leading the party. I've seen lots of great leaders who do not play tanks, but I haven't seen many tanks who weren't good leaders. Most people just prefer to go along for the ride, and then point fingers if something goes wrong.
And you usually need solo+ group gear, 1er is dps other is defense for tanking.
Slow leveling. ,in pvp rangers and mages will kill even before u touch them
Worst in group play u get stuck in a mob and the healers back out dpsclass hides and u r stuck noescape fortanks
PvP is the main reason, as a tank class there is no subtlety or range. You have to go toe to toe to be in the thick of the action and most people prefer less direct PvP, hence the reason most roll ranged or stealth classes.
A few folks have touched on this, so I'll reinforce some and possibly introduce others.
First, gear dependency and passivity. Tanking's most active job is holding aggro, not dodging and blocking. Stats tend to do the latter. While there may be a move that helps with mitigation, it's usually a short term buff, so it's more about stats and timing than the ability to simply, you know, not get hit. DPS and healing tends to be more active since your job a bit more skill dependent. Yes, tanks require you to know how to place a mob, drag it, keep aggro, etc (all additional reasons people may not play a tank), but your main job is to take damage for others, and the main way this is accomplished is through gear.
Next is that, like healers, tanks aren't great for soloing most of the time. You rarely kill things quickly. People like to see big numbers, and as a tank, that's usually going to be your HP. I frequently play tanks, but I get little joy out of having a shit ton of health. I get complements on it, but meh. I prefer hearing "Why won't you die!?" than "Nice HP!" Simply put, tanks rarely have the "wow" factor most people are looking for.
Overall skill check. The tank needs to know the encounter pretty well. They need to know how to move, when to move, where to move, all while keeping everyone else from taking damage. You're mommy/daddy. Usually you can give DPS bare-minimum info and they can do a good job, i.e. "Stand here, interrupt this spell, go all out at 50%." For tanks, maybe you get a "tank and spank" situation, which is pretty dull. DPS and heals might like it, but most of the time, for a tank, we can roll our face across the keyboard and get through the encounter. However, a lot of the time, we need to know that the DPS will be interrupting move X, and that if we don't see the cast bar disappear at about 75%, it's now our turn to deal with it. We have to move the boss to X location, usually while DPS is working against us for aggro and healers may be overhealing and potentially also gaining aggro, making positioning harder. We have to use cooldowns at a good pace for both the encounter and, at times, for the healer, so that they don't run out of mana. The overall pace and success is usually on our shoulders. Few people want that kind of responsibility, especially when it's so public and critical. Fewer still want to deal with the fact that you're learning the ropes, often times with veterans who are going to be super critical of all your mistakes throughout the learning process.
And this is where the next issue kicks in: the tanking glass ceiling. Most games have normal groups consisting of 5 players, 1 of which is a tank. Raiding, however, may involve 10-50 players, and meaning 2-10 groups of players. You would think that raids then need 2-10 tanks, but more often than not, raids need 2-3 tanks, even in 40 man encounters. What this means is that, after several levels or hours learning the ropes, becoming the front line leader needed to gear up and get ready for end game content, most of us will be cut simply because there's no room for us. Sure, maybe we can be the main tank for an alt run, but it means that, while someone can be main healer throughout their gaming life time, the tank will often have an alt to play because once they reach end game, there's a very real chance that they may be out of a job, unless they rank highly in the guild (and most established guilds have long term tanks who come in, clear content, then retire, which is maybe the first step towards the slump which is, saddly, when the benched tanks get called in).
And finally, there's pvp. I love being a pvp tank. Even if there's no npcs. I know how to spec, so that I have above average survivability, but I'm annoying enough with my actions and deal enough damage so that I can't be ignored. I know who to aim for to make the whole party target me, and my team mates can see that I live long enough and cause enough of a disturbance to get back up. It's awesome. The problem is, more so than most classes, tanking skills don't translate well into pvp. High threat moves usually aren't very useful without the high threat component, and taunts are only recently being made somewhat effective in pvp. Without some creativity, most tanks are, at best, flag carriers in objective pvp, and at worst, ineffective dps. Off the top of my head, in both WoW and Rift, people only talk about healing and dps pvp gear. It's an issue that, say, CC classes also suffer, and since we're such a gear reliant class, it's important.
So, what are we left with? A class that's primary job is passive, needs to know the ins and outs of most of encounters to essentially baby sit the group, has to learn its job as the center spotlight of a group, and in the end, we may not have much of a use in raiding and pvp unless we're exceptionally skilled and have some good connections.
How can it be fixed? Think about heavy armor classes in an FPS game: your job is to physically step in front of the people you're protecting when need be, but people in general should be doing what they can to avoid getting hit. Make the tank capable of heavy hitting, dangerous enough that it can't be ignored, but the damage portion of the game is something everyone's susceptible to.
It's not an MMO, but I think Monster Hunter Tri did this best for pve tanking. Everyone was essentially a tank part of the time, since aggro was, in some ways, random (though some armor sets made you more likely to be attacted than others). When you had aggro, you needed to know how to move to minimize damage to both yourself and your group. It made everyone responsible for learning the game and avoiding damage, but good players could get in the way of some projectiles for other players, push others out of the way, etc. The Old Republic sounds like it'll be handling the pvp tanking part despite (what sounds like) another case of passive damage avoidance, but it's better than nothing. I've looked into TERA a bit, and it sounds like a nice enough system that may address both pve and pvp, but I keep comparing it to Monster Hunter and find that I'm deeply troubled by the hard set classes. That is, if you have too many of one class, you can't simply change your play style and be useful. We'll see how it goes.
I do definitely agree that there needs to be more of a reason for having more tanks on raids.
5 person group requiring 1 tank, and a 20 person group having 2 tanks is NOT a good thing.
Maybe for raids you need a situation where you bring 4 tanks and they function as ONE ENTITY. In essence they work together and share a pool of hit points essentially and only tanks can use that ability. Something like "We die as ONE We LIVE as ONE" All of their taunts taunt towards their collective and all damage taken comes from the pool.
Then you would have a reason to bring the same ratio of tanks to the raid. It also would make it so you didnt have to make individual tanks have such high hit point numbers and mitigation simply to survive raid encounters.
I agree with the stuff above. Too many expect you to excell when they themselves suck - and you are in the spotlight so get the blame for fools and plain old bad luck. Poor DPS so slow to level. (Why does some leatherclad numpty with a dagger do far far far more damge than a tank with a dirty great big battleaxe? ). It is a job creation scheme for epeen waving DPS at no risk wallys.
I would also add the problem of numbers.
Big raid 2 dozen+ and what do they want 2 tanks max. 1 MT one off tank. If raids took a more balanced force - say 4 tanks then aggro would not be a problem (Well ok appart from the DPS muppet who pulls the room and steals aggro). But when you have just one or two tanks then aggro beomes and issue becasue if you loose it with taunts on cooldown someone dies. With a bunch of tanks you get better coverage with others able to taunt back lost aggro or cover any adds etc.
With a healer its yeah great lets have lots. But for tanks its 'nah sorry we have our two tanks so thats all we need'.
(edit - lol someome posted the exact same issue whislt I was writting this).
When games were tough and XP loss/corpse runs took their toll the DPS were wary of death as it could come so easyily. tanks mitigated this and were welcomed for doing so. Now with nothing more than a ho hum run back in 2 mins, death is nothing more than a minor nusiance, so DPS can go full out and not need to learn contol and constraint as they have no fear of death. Who needs a pathetic DPS tank in the group leeching their XP from them when 2 mins can recoup any repair costs after a death?
Cheers
Stuntie.
there's only one root of the problem: people dont like being pidgeon-holed into a role. out with the trinity.
ITS EASY: Your TEAMMATES....I quit tanking because of the crap you have to put up with. You have to knoe 100% of everything in a dungeon/raid or you are deemed an idiot. Usually it is the dps telling you this when their role is not as hard as yours. I once had a party bitch me out for not knowing the boss fight...but it was actually them that didnt know it...I don't tank anymore. I'm fine to wait in line another 10 minutes so I don't get bitched at. And I will never bitch at the tank or healer.
Why is it unpopular? Well all you do is to aggro and soak up damage so that other people can make the kill. Never found it stimulating as healers/CC or rewarding as DD. You are basically a meat shield...
Not to mention being next to worthless in PvP. In WAR it was a bit more interesting as you could guard your team mates and dmg debuff your opponents, if they ignore you, but still not all that interesting as it was still the healer who made people survive and you was a mere distraction.
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It has more responsibility and higher consequences of failure.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
This is actually a really interesting idea. I'd wonder how fun it would be to have four guys sharing that one pivotal role, but if they could make the mechanic engaging for all four of the guys I think it would be a great alternative to the One MT issue.
I know this has been said before, but tanking shortages are caused by the community. We live in an age of instant gratification, and if your learning experience becomes an obstacle in someone's immediate access to gear/rewards, you can bet you're going to hear about it.
This isn't just a tanking issue, though. I believe this type of behaviour is spread out across the entirety of the gaming community. Let me share an example:
I had just picked up Left 4 Dead 2 to play with my buddy, and I decided to log on and check out the gameplay in the Monster Vs Player mode (whatever it's called). Well of course I didn't know A from Z in player or monster abilities, and I didn't know the strategies, and how could I playing for the first time? My teammates were not appreciative of my newbness (which I had warned them of when I joined), and really let me have it over the voice chat.
Okay, one bad experience, not a big deal. Quit that game, and try a new one. Once again, this time for lack of map knowledge, I got into hot water with my teammates and was subsequently booted from the game. How fun... I exited the game and haven't played since.
Now maybe it was just coincidence that I happened upon some very intolerant players, but that's the same issue with tanking. You get into one bad group while you're learning and it's all over. It's marred the fun you expected that you would be having, and turned that experience into something very negative. I think if we're looking for the cause of lack of tanks, we need to look at our communities and what instant gratification, entitlement, and anonymity have done to them.
This is a huge part of it.
On top of that it's a ridiculous type of class.
It seems "tanks" do very little damage but are so tough and powerful that they take a lot of damage? Seems to me that most of the touch and powerful people I've known could also kick my ass up and down the square.
Because of this, leveling them can be a huge pain in the ass.
on top of that "one" is needed. Sometimes "two" if there is an off tank required.
So tryijg to join a party that already has a tank will get you the "we already have a tank". Which means that you have to start a party which might also get you the expectation that you know everything about where you are going.
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Tanking has become a thankless job. I enjoyed tanking in the early days. People appreciated the effort put forth.
Now more and more people blame every mistake on the tank. It has become the tanks role to know what mobs to CC, each and every boss fight including the dps roles and limitations. You have to know the entire instance. You are expected to lead the raid/group as well. As a tank I like leading the fight, but not the raid. It is tough to find someone else that was willing to take responsibility for the entire effort and let me be responsible for the fight.
As has been said here numerous times;
1) thankless
2) responsibility
3) leadership
4) knowledge
5) limited dps
6) no PVP role
As a result there are not enough people willing to take on the role of a tank which becomes a job with no reward.
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Tried Aoc, Aion, EQII, RoM, Vindictus, Darkfail, DDO, GW, PotBS
A large part of the tanking problem is a natural result of aging MMOs. Simply tacking extra tiers of equipment onto existing content tends to favour healing and dps roles, despite what most the people in this thread have said tanking is probably the least gear dependant role out there. Situational awareness and knowledge of game mechanics take up the vast majority of your skill as a tank, equipment simply makes your job easier. Without more efficient tools and methods to generate aggro it is only a matter of time before holding hate off a DPS or healer becomes next to impossible. In the extreme this turns players away from tactics involving dedicated tanks for 90% of a games content. This in turn leaves them woefully unprepared for endgame activities.
Beyond that, low level content becomes horribly unbalanced in comparison to endgame as the average player accumulates wealth to pour into their alts further upsetting the balance that once held a party together. New players find it difficult or impossible to keep pace giving the impression they are utterly useless.
Combined with many of the other issues listed in the thread you end up with fewer people playing a tanking role as the game gets older. People new to MMOs are generally put off by the futility of their efforts and re-roll a simpler role. Experienced players jumping into an older game roll less intensive jobs to accumulate the experience and money required to perform their preferred role properly.
Essentially the issue lies with developers failing to realise that simply adding more HP/Defence/threat to tanking equipment will give the same results as improving DPS/healing equipment. Nine times out of ten this isn't the case.
Pretty much got it right.
DPS never get appreciated, never. It's either you meet X requirement (which is expected), or you're out. Since the DPS is expected to do X, it's never appreciated when one does it all the time and is Johnny on the spot.
Healers are appreciated. Bad ones get blacklisted, least by me. I don't blacklist based on gear, I blacklist based on how the person plays. If you're doing you're healing job right but just coming up short, it's generally a gear problem. If it's not, I'll try to educate the healer to help out. If it's just people dying or nearly dying left or right......
Tanks are appreciated just like healers but it is expressed less towards tanks than healers. I got in to the tanking role during DAOC days (2001-2003) and continued it in WoW, especially in TBC. From my experience, a good tank is one that holds the boss's attention and helps to make sure no one dies. A great tank is one that does all that plus turns conal casters away from the group, moves the boss around (or trash) to avoid ground AE "dot" spells (think death n decay), and over 90% of the time does let any of the trash (and boss) stay on other group members. Also, a great tank is one that asks about the dungeon: trash, room events, boss fights, etc. Some see this as a weakness. I see this as "teach me so you, and the rest of us don't die."
Did not read the entire thread.
There are fewer tanks than any other class at the high end that get to come to raids. Therefore, it is the most competative.
It is hard to get established, hard to stay on top, and you can not take a break and pick back up as easy becuase someone is always going to take your place.
I play tanks and healers. DPS just gets to boring for me.
Healers need to be very reactive. They need to react to what the nobs do.
Tanks need to dictate the fight and control. It is less reactive and more about enforcing the strat of the fight.
I think tanking is more taxing in long fights/raids because you have to be on your game. A healer can at times rest on trash and always blame the tank if someone dies, as long as it is not the tank.
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I try to play all classes equally however I seem to always come back to tanking. If you can build a decent rep on your server as a good tank people line up to party with you. If you don't then you get stuck with noobs.
Tankers for ever.
My experience is that tanking is just a lot of unwanted pressure. I enjoyed the bit of tanking I did in CoH, but over there the tank was not responsible for the survival of the team. Now I actually play a healer most of the time, which is quite a bit of pressure and I get my share of unfair blame if things go wrong. But a tank, far more than a healer, has to know what's going on with everything in the raid. Your players, especially your healer, as well as the mobs you're fighting and the troublesome abilities they might be about to launch on your team, any adds, all these things the tank must be aware of at all times. So in WoW when I finally got my tank to level cap after years of healing, I jumped into the fray and found that I was reasonably good at it. But I didn't enjoy it. I felt way to responsible for my team and way too much pressure to do everything perfectly.
I have a great admiration for tanks which may be enhanced by the fact that I'm usually the healer. The poster above me, if he really is the guy everyone wants to play with, is definitely someone I would want to play with as well and my hat's off to him.
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speaking as a former raid tank in wow its pretty much what the other people have said in this thread: its almost always a thankless, blame magnet job. whenever i did a pug or helped a friend in an heroic i was always the blame when we wiped, never the dps fault, sometimes it was the healers (another thankless and unpopular job) fault but the tank always gets some of the blame. even when i was with a guildies the first reaction to a wipe was to ask me what happened or what went wrong there, at least they were nice about it.
I agree here, I've mainly played a healer but I also tried out tanking and it was fun as hell but as one mentioned above you are expected to lead the group most of the time and if you are new many people are impatient and start to act on that.
Like you mentioned, after long day at work you really don't want to come home to a game to relax and end up getting dealing with people that are nasty, which I see a lot in pugs, and not towards me but towards other players. (I'm not talking about guild or friends grouping up, all of my experiences with those have been pretty good.)
Someone also mentioned others just sitting back, that's one thing I liked about checking out a dps class, it felt like you could enjoy it more easily without worrying about doing something wrong and getting all these nasty attacks like a healer or tank might get.