Tank Talk: should the main tank position still exist?
by Allison Robert 
Sep 13th 2008 at 8:00PM
One of the accepted facts of raiding life used to be that the main tank was the guild's gearing priority. As Adam Holisky's observed, "Everything that happens in the raid eventually makes it back to the tank." Healers undergeared? You're screwed. DPS incompetent or just badly grouped? Buh-bye. Random number generator wreaking all manner of havoc on healer crits and boss parries? Thar be the graveyard. A truly cynical mind would opine that the tank should be as well-geared as possible if only because it makes it easier for the raid to forget that person existed as anything other than a rapidly-advancing line on the Omen screen that: a). always stayed above their own, and b). never died. There are enough random variables while the raid's learning a new boss that the tank needs to be eliminated as one, and in vanilla WoW that was certainly the goal. Raid and offtank damage on most encounters hadn't scaled to the point where you could make a compelling argument in favor of gear equilibrium across your tanking roster. What was the point of something like that when 95% of the damage in a fight was going to be absorbed by a single person?
That changed.
For the purpose of this discussion, we might as well attempt to define what a main tank actually is (you may, of course, disagree with these definitions, but I think they're a pretty accurate summary of the WoW community's perception of tanking roles):MAIN TANK: A player with excellent raid attendance playing a tanking class specced for that purpose, competitively geared for progression content, and who can realistically expect to tank nearly all boss encounters and/or the more difficult portions thereof.
Sound good? It certainly covers just about everyone who actually had to spec Protection pre-BC. How about this:
OFFTANK: A player with average-to-excellent raid attendance playing a tanking class with tanking gear adequate to support performance in that role. Depending on class, being specced into tanking may or may not be required (e.g. Paladin and Druid offtanks who are not specced Protection or Feral respectively are significantly less useful as tanks than DPS Warriors), but he/she can realistically expect to tank trash and, if necessary, some boss encounters requiring add tanks.
The second is where things start to get difficult in the post-BC world, because the line separating Main Tank and Offtank got increasingly blurry. It didn't get this way because multiple tanks stopped being important; it got that way because Blizzard's raid/encounter design demanded more people specced and geared to do a Main Tank job, even as the developers downsized raids from 40 to 25 players. If you didn't come as Protection or Feral and you didn't have gear within shouting distance of the Main Tank's, you had no real business offtanking Gruul, or rotating taunts on Al'ar, or juggling threat on Gurtogg.
The old paradigm of the DPS Warrior as offtank was the first casualty of both the shrunken raid and rapidly-scaling boss and raid damage. You can still take a DPS Warrior with great tanking gear along on a 25-man raid for trash (ours certainly did), but you'd have to be insane to expect them to do any real tanking on a boss encounter. It would be a pretty bad use of the raid's resources to "lose" a DPS while staring down a boss with an enrage timer, but even if your healers could keep the player up, the Warrior didn't have a prayer of holding aggro. Remember Bob and Larry, our cute little angels of mitigation and threat production? Bob might have been grumpy but OK about something like that, but Larry's over in the corner drinking himself into a coma.
So Warriors remained the premier raid boss tanks, but their share of the raiding pie shrank badly, mostly in the form of losing their previous role as both default MT and default OT. If you didn't need them to tank on any given fight, they could respec and...uh...compete for DPS slots that the raid didn't have any problems filling anyway (a situation that was in no way helped by Fury's awful itemization in early BC raids). Paladins became virtually required for the AoE tanking situations that popped up like daisies between Karazhan and Sunwell and had superior threat on demon or undead bosses, but they had to be Protection to guarantee both effectiveness and survivability. Ever tried tanking Hyjal trash as Holy? Yeah, I didn't think so. And Druids...well, Druids did everything else, but they had to be Feral. I've tanked raid content once before as a non-Feral Druid. Note operative use of the qualifier "once." And whatever nonsense you might have heard elsewhere, Druids had to have a full raid-tanking set chock-a-block with defense on whatever slot they could manage in order to keep themselves from being annihilated by crits. What other "melee DPS" do you see rocking Slikk's Cloak of Placation?
So, in BC raiding, you still need a Main Tank. Shocker, I know.
But you also need another Main Tank.
And...another Main Tank.
With a look at Wowwiki and Bosskillers, I feel obliged to note that on some fights you'll need four.
One-tank fights:
Maiden of Virtue
Opera (Big Bad Wolf)
Curator
Nightbane
Illhoof (mostly)
Prince Malchezzar
Leotheras the Blind*
Rage Winterchill
Kaz'rogal
Archimonde
Naj'entus
Teron Gorefiend
Two-tank fights:
Attumen
Moroes
Opera (Wizard of Oz/Romulo and Julianne)
Netherspite
Gruul the Dragonkiller
Morogrim Tidewalker
Lady Vashj
Supremus
Brutallus
Felmyst
Eredar Twins
Three or more tank fights:
High King Maulgar
Magtheridon
Hydross the Unstable
The Lurker Below
Fathom Lord Karathress
Void Reaver
Al'ar
High Astromancer Solarian (sort of)
Kael'thas
Anetheron**
Azgalor**
Shade of Akama
Gurtogg Bloodboil
Reliquary of Souls***
Mother Shahraz (take a good book if you're one of the soak tanks)
Illidari Council
Illidan Stormrage
Kalecgos
M'uru
Kil'jaeden
*Leo is technically a two-tank fight, but pffffftt......like Warlocks count.
**You can technically get away with two tanks on Anetheron and Azgalor, but Murphy's Law guarantees that: a). on Anetheron your DPS won't kill the infernals fast enough for a single add-tank to be free every time another one spawns, and b). on Azgalor your sole add-tank will be the first person to get Doom once the raid's exhausted its battle-rezzes and soulstones. You'll have at least three tanks in Hyjal anyway, so you might as well use them.
**Yes, Reliquary is bizarre, and you might conceivably manage it with only one very well-geared Protection Warrior, but that also means depending on the guy who spews constructs all over the raid to take his turn tanking on phase one. He doesn't want to do that. Your raid leader doesn't want to do that. And you don't want to do that either.
Notice something odd about these lists? The farther you go in raid content, the more likely it is that any given fight will 100%, non-negotiably require at least two tanks with a roughly equivalent level of gear in order to maximize the raid's chances of success. Given the array of such fights presently in BC, I would argue that current raid mechanics actively discourage guilds from gearing a single tank at everyone else's expense, i.e. in essence following the "main tank" model. Two badly-equipped tanks competing with a well-equipped tank for threat on Void Reaver is usually a fracas, and it's not going to get any better from there. You don't need a Main Tank And Some Useful Lackeys; what you need is a tanking team prepared to look out for each other, pass gear when needed, and always keep an eye on what upcoming fights will demand from the corps. The Main Tank job hasn't precisely disappeared; it's just that the number of people with its responsibilities has multiplied as the raid's dependence on a single person has decreased.
I'd additionally argue that the disappearance (or at least crippling) of the classic "Main Tank" element from raiding guilds today is a net benefit. In the event that your usual tank can't make it or quits, you're not tasked with shoving an underprepared offtank into the raid; provided that people have taken the team approach seriously, you simply rotate in another tank who's already familiar with the job and has the gear to do it. It shouldn't have to be a nightmare. And, while most tanks won't want to admit it, this also acts as a check against tanks' power and ego; someone else can do your job. At the end of the day, everyone in the raid is (and has to be) replaceable, tanks are no different, and I dislike seeing people act as if they're not.
Will this change in Wrath? I doubt Blizzard would introduce a new tanking class, or strengthen the existing tanking specs in the game, without an eye toward ensuring that raid success is not dependent on a single person, so I'm betting not. Look out for your tanking brothers and sisters, people, and keep an eye on those upstart Death Knights.
The Main Tank is dead! Long live the Main Tanks!
Filed under: Druid, Death Knight, Bosses, The Burning Crusade, Features, Analysis / Opinion, Warrior, Paladin, Tank Talk, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ginka Sep 13th 2008 8:13PM
I come from an even more radical standpoint: I think that PVE encounters should be scaled so that you can conquer them with a wide variety of classes. You should be able to tackle content with the team you show up with.
Perhaps at the highest levels of raiding the tank/dps/heal model could be maintained, out of respect for the legacy of raiding. But why shouldn't PVE dungeons be scaled so that if you've only got three people, you can do it with three people? Teamwork is enjoyable. Shared challenges and triumphs are fun. Sparklies at the end of some hard work are always nice. Waiting for a tank or a healer is tiresome.
The legacy of Everquest and similar MMOs can only take us so far. We need new ways to explore PVE teamwork without the role constraints that do nothing but eat up our time.
Jeebz Sep 13th 2008 8:22PM
What's going to seperate WoW from Diablo1/2/3, if you don't need a tank? It just becomes a hack n slash, which just degrades the game from the MMO standard that has been set.
Marc Sep 13th 2008 8:40PM
As a person whose first MMO is WoW, a person with limited experience with traditional MMO game design, I agree with Ginka. It would be nice to see dungeons scale in difficulty with the number of people present and the classes available. This would be more difficult to design and build, but it would be an overall more enjoyable game experience, one encouraging experimentation.
Similar to what ginka stated, I'd say that dungeons should have a /minimum/ difficulty level, such that it may require 3 people to down all bosses, but the difficulty would still scale if more people were involved. Completing a dungeon without a group would defeat the purpose of the online aspect of an MMO, so yeah, a minimum-number group as a requirement would need to be implemented.
Of course, again, this is my first MMO, and I also don't raid much. But it's generally for a reason Ginka commented on: waiting is tiresome. And boring. I'd rather be killing something. ^_^
Twothing Sep 13th 2008 8:45PM
Dont wont a tank. OK...
Dont wont a healer. Ok...
Dont wont to be in a party. OK...
Wont the same gear as evaryone bashing thir heads up aganst a brick wall. No thank you.
Go farm and have fun. ^_~
arcady0 Sep 13th 2008 8:52PM
This is the Guild Wars method - no tanks. Only DPS and healers.
Or City of heroes - only tanks and DPS, no healers.
I never reached endgame in City of Heroes, but in Guild Wars I found the lack of tanks created a major social problem. Everyone shows up as DPS, spends an hour or two finding a healer, and then plays in a very uncooperative manner. And over time, to answer this, the developers have essentially built in a form of multi-box raiding by letting you fill out a team with computer controlled characters. That in turn has led to a growth of DPS only 'raids' - with 1-2 computer controlled healers.
And the result, a solo game online.
I'm going to argue the opposite direction - I think the need for a variety of roles needs to be more and more reinforced, to encourage a social dynamic.
Sure, it sucks when you need to depend on other people playing well and they don't, but it is vastly more satisfying when they do play well and its a team effort (and for those who don't find that satisfying, there are offline games that can much better fill their needs).
Marc Sep 13th 2008 9:19PM
@4, Twothing:
I love farming, actually. It gives me a chance to try out experimental builds simply by killing random mobs. So yeah, I do a ton of that. ^_^
@5, arcady0:
The social dynamic comment is a good point. Perhaps there should be an easier, faster method for finding people who want to run a particular instance. I know the /lfg menu was implemented some time ago, but at least on my server, no one uses it, so spamming general chat is still the only way to find a PUG. If more people used it (or perhaps if more people actually needed to run instances--I'm usually one lagging behind my guild's progression), it would be quite a boon.
The issue of waiting may be attributable to something I find a major flaw in the general design of MMOs, the large time investment it takes to complete tasks. That may be a different argument altogether, though.
There seems to be content for all types of players, however, especially with the recent changes towards casual play, so this type of issue is certainly on the back burner.
VSUReaper Sep 13th 2008 11:25PM
Ginka, you refer to tackling PVE content with only 3 people, and we already do that. Its called a 70 running some friends through lower lvl content.
Now if you meant that there should be a situation where you can do a dungeon that is "progressive" content, but not require a raid, we have 5-mans and heroics.
Raiding is raiding, and is defined by taking 6-40 people into a situation where you will need to work together to down something that normally can not be done individually. What you are asking to do is dumb the game down so much (more than it already is!) and make it something that can be done while we are half asleep.
One another note, I agree with the author. When I first started Wow (in BC), everyone still had the mindset of the MT was a warrior, he came first before all others, and if you were an OT, get used to running instances for BOJ's and farming mats for crafted stuff. It wasnt until the senior tank in my guild sat down with us all and asked if we could start to share the loot, so that if there was something that was equally good for more than one tank, then the one that needed it the most got it by default. Since then, we have 3 warriors, 3 druids, and 5 paladins that are all equally (more or less) geared. Any one of us can step in and MT an encounter if we needed to.
Shinken Sep 30th 2008 10:24PM
the old everquest healer/ dps /tank model is out of necessity. The server side A.I/scripts are simple enough to maintain their high populations and stability.Until there are much more powerful servers and internet reaches it's second iteration ( internet mark 2 ) it will remain this way.
ginka Oct 1st 2008 5:20AM
@VSUReaper:
I think your response is typical and misses the point. I'm not saying, "Dumb the game down," I'm saying, "Scale the game so you can be challenged regardless of the size and makeup of your group. I don't need an encyclopaedic definition of raiding, as I've done it enough myself.
Blizzard has heard of the call of players like myself and done two things to make finding groups easier:
1) They've made tanking more accessible. More classes can tank well with a wider variety of builds.
2) They've allowed healers to kill things in their spare time. Speccing heals no longer means you're gimped when soloing.
While the Tank/DPS/Heals model works for raiding and high end raiding guilds, some of us just want to get through Hellfire Ramparts. We don't want run-throughs. We do want challenging content that doesn't have such strict role requirements.
And with all due respect, to accuse me of wanting WoW to be something you can half-asleep, that's rich coming from a raider ;).
thedrawrf Sep 13th 2008 9:38PM
THAT was one hell of a good post. I'd call it easily the definitive "this is how it is" post about tanking, and I wouldn't say that lightly. I especially appreciated: "And, while most tanks won't want to admit it, this also acts as a check against tanks' power and ego; someone else can do your job." Just as you said, tanks hate to admit this. I have been an off-tank, a main-tank, and a almost-not-in-a-guild-at-all tank. And I've been a jerk. A few times I've weilded [Power of the Complaining in /O Tank] to get stuff. I've forced other tanks out of the guild.
Recently, my computer has died, and being a penniless college student, I've been rumaging through dumpsters and praying fervently for one to appear. In my abscence, the 2 tanks who were my off-tanks have had to take over. And they've done ok too. Not that I'm not anxious to return, but it's really been an odd experience to realize that, I might be a good tank, but I'm not the best tank out there :)
Thanks for this post, I'm genuinely impressed
Kiukiu Sep 13th 2008 10:37PM
It's not limited to tanks, I assure you. Overgeared healers in a progressive guild, overpowered DPS characters...the list goes on. Everyone has an ego and needs to be reminded that if you screw around and act up, you will be replaced.
That said, awesome article about the broad scope of tanking. I still support the whole MT position in a guild and in a raid of all levels as someone has to be in charge, directing the raid and telling people where to go and what to do. I know this isn't as vital in farming endgame content, but for earlier stages with progression guilds it is wholy vital. It makes or breaks your raid.
Simply having someone doing this (and, to my experience, it has invariably been a tank) makes the raid go smoother and easier and as someone who is going to be learning to tank on a DK in the expansion (as hated as most tanks now view them), there's only so much to learn from guides. Stepping into the job as an OT lets me watch and try applying this to something greater than a regular instance or heroic. It also lets me learn from a more experienced and better tank as to what I should be doing, how to do it and I am glad to be an OT until I eventually have the gear and skill to MT if my guild expanded (or carry on in my existing position to make things easier for progression).
I think it's not so much a matter of ego (in an ideal world), they are just two different jobs. In the case I stated personally, it's where one tank is better at it than me and I'm learning from him. That's a better thing for everyone in that raid. For other tanks, I'm sure it's just a time to sit back and saddle your ego for a minute the way us DPS do when we can't see our little names flashing at the top of the charts on certain bosses. If you do your job, whatever it is, you have made that raid a success.
Matthew Rossi Sep 13th 2008 11:52PM
Nominally, I'm my guild's MT. Effectively, we have four people I'd call 'Main Tanks' in that all four of us can and do tank in almost every single raid we do: a prot paladin, a feral druid, myself and another feral druid who also DPS's a fair amount. Our two DPS warriors are experienced tanks who can and do respec when needed as well.
Basically, I'm agreeing with you that there's no way to have one tank anymore, but that in essence Main Tank is a title that tells people who to go to when seeking to discuss tanking issues. At least it is for us.
dan Sep 14th 2008 5:14AM
Everything I've read thus far about 25man raiding in tbc points to 2 tank/7 healer/rest dps scenario. I worry that the number of multi tank fights is going to dwindle in the future. Tanking is by and large a necessity during leveling but the number of spots for it in the raiding environment always dwindles comparatively.
Nick S Sep 14th 2008 11:06AM
Yeah, I'd say the definition of MT has changed to a model more like what you're describing - our guild has 4 or 5 geared tanks, but when we're up against something hard everyone knows who we want up front, and I think he's the "MT."
Chris Sep 13th 2008 8:56PM
What qualifies as "good tanking gear"? One of my alts is a lvl 42 hybrid warrior (leaning heavily towards Prot). I'm curious as to what kind of gear I should be getting.
arcady0 Sep 13th 2008 9:01PM
Too complicated of a question to answer in a short post here. Get yourself to tankspot and read the guides there.
VSUReaper Sep 13th 2008 11:28PM
At your level, as long as it is plate with stam on it, then you are g2g. You honestly shouldnt worry about it at your point in the game. Just hit 70 as fast as you can.
mochabear Sep 13th 2008 10:16PM
arcady0 has eliminated the need for any other comments on this topic. qft arcady.
meaddrinker Sep 13th 2008 10:57PM
in my guild we had some people arguing that the MTs should have priority over tier pieces than anyone else, and I had to openly disagree with them. In 40 man raids it did make sense, but it 25 man raids a healer or a dpser getting the latest Tier piece has just as much effect on boss attempts as the tank getting it. Plus its rather discouraging to your other guildies to be told that tanks get first pick on gear.
The flip side of this is tanks getting dps gear (tsunami talisman,etc). That's caused complaints too.
Kahlim Sep 13th 2008 11:12PM
And having been the Druid off-tank, and occasional main tank. I'm also one of the relieved ones that I'm replaceable. I'm not also trapped in content. I can choose to help gear up an off-tank as the main. Or be the DPS on another toon entirely.
But definitely the key-stone trio of the group makeup is something I would actually probably miss. Despite the frustration it sometimes causes.
I agree with the comments of Arcady0, seen sucky groups, and seen awesome groups, and when it works out, with total strangers, that's actually really cool.