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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTank opportunities in the late endgame
by Mike Schramm 
Dec 7th 2009 at 3:00PM
In essence, they're saying there's a glass ceiling for tanks. Once you reach a certain point, it's hard to find even the opportunity to be a solid tank.
Unfortunately, I don't really see an easy solution here -- if you aren't in a position where you can tank, the best thing to do is to get in one. Either make buddies with a main tank who wants to switch out every once in a while, or start up your own guild and do the raidleading yourself. I haven't been a serious raid healer for a while, either, but I'd assume it's basically the same on that side -- at the highest levels, things probably get pretty cutthroat. And as long as there are limited spots for many more interested people, no amount of game balance will be able to change that. All you can do is perform as best you can and hope that when the opportunity comes along, you're there to take it.
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Instances, Raiding, Bosses, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Royal Dec 7th 2009 5:58PM
I always had issues with the labels OT and MT.
First, some fights Blizz sets up don't have well defined MT and OT roles like Razorscale. Both tanks need to get adds and swap on the boss.
Second during a raid, I switch tanking depending what the tank is good at. For example as a DK with inpterupts, I get Jax and the warrior/paly with stuns can control the adds.
Third, it really implies a ranked position between the two as if MTing should be reserved for the better tank. In some fights, I want the more geared or more experienced tank on the adds. There are plenty of fights were the "OT" position is a lot harder than the "MT" position.
Knob Dec 7th 2009 3:12PM
So what this article is saying is that "bring the player, not the class" was a bad design choice by Blizzard because it leaves out the bad players out in the cold? I'm sorry if that's not what you were getting at, but that's the undercurrent I felt when I read it.
Nizari Dec 7th 2009 3:17PM
No, because there are a slew of factors in play here other than player skill: Server population, number of raiding guilds, the simple fact that you need fewer tanks than healers and DPS. Not to mention, in WoW as in real life, it's often not what you know, but who you know. You can be a really great tank, and still not be able to tank at the high-end because all the raiding guilds already have tanks, or because the other applicant knows a guild member IRL.
bonemachine Dec 7th 2009 3:14PM
Theres a few simple rules to follow to find a regular tank slot.
1. Be reliable. - This means making pretty much every raid, and the ones you cant, notify the leadership well in advance. If you ARE the leadership, make alternate arrangements well in advance.
2. Know your class. Use every tool you have. If you arent, you arent tanking up to the best of your abilities, and someone else who IS can and will get the slot over you.
3. Be knowledgeable. Read up on the fights. Understand WHY you need to do something so when the unexpected happens, you know what to do. Essentially, situational awareness. The tank that knows is usually the one left standing, and the one that gets to tank another day.
4. Be geared. This is not just your raid/guilds responsibility. Havent bothered with your ToC 25 crafted gear cause its 'expensive'? Someone else has, and will take your slot. Haven't regemmed once you passed the def/expertise/hit cap? Why not? Its your responsibility to make sure your tank sets are in good shape. This means EH, avoidance (espeically the trinks,) resist set (just frost so far) and glyphs/dual spec set are gtg.
5. Be willing to change. When new gear comes out, or a new patch changes functionality, or your regular raid group switches around a bit, you have to be willing to roll with the punches, regear, regem, change your rotations and macros, etc. Keep up with the times, or someone who does will take your slot.
6. Be willing to lead. You're the tank. You set the pace. When its not clear who is leading, or if the leadership is weak or unknowledgeable, YOU will be looked at by the raid or party as the defacto leader. If you don't EVER want to lead, don't tank. This is not to say you have to be the raid leader, but understand that you are the object of scrutiny frequently, and will be looked at for explanations, input, and some kind of leadership at some point, and those that step to that challenge are more likely to get a regular gig.
Tanking at the endgame level hasn't ever really been the best role for those who arent committed fully to the role and all it implies. If you cant follow through with the above consistantly, be content with the occasional OT or MT role, and keep that DPS dual spec handy.
Brouck Dec 7th 2009 3:14PM
I'm currently gearing up a tank specifically for 3.3 and the new LFG model. Honestly no reason to have a Ret/Holy Pally when you have other alts to DPS on.
jmsalsa Dec 7th 2009 3:16PM
what i've learned over my past year and a half of tanking is that it's WAY more enjoyable in raids with great group of people. so i'm guessing most tanks that grab those prime spots in end game hold on to them for dear life.
the tank "shortage" shows up in all the reg/heroic dungeon runs where people pay less attention to game mechanics and how to work as a team and turn tanking into a job.
i'll wipe all night with a good raid group that's putting in their best effort over some stupid pug group that's just inconsiderate/incompetent/impatient .... the list goes on.
sd_fuller Dec 7th 2009 6:20PM
From what I have seen being a raider since vinalla Wow, you don't go from not being in a raid to being a MT unless you start a guild. The way to become a MT is start as an OT and then have a MT get burned out or gradually rotate. In general, you have to be able to preform well as an OT before anyone will give you a shot as MT - especially for top tier raiding guilds.
If you want to tank 5's or even 10's as PUGs sure, beyond that the proof needs to be in the tanking.
thinkasumtinb3tr Dec 7th 2009 3:17PM
It does apply to healing as well, just to a lesser extent. In my guild we run 25m ToGC with 6-7 healers. Since it is progression raiding we don't bring lots of a certain class (i.e. 3 Paladins). However there are 3 top tier Holy Paladins in the guild (myself included) so there is some competition for those spots. Luckly for me one of the Paladins has a well geared Arcane Mage who he will sub in so that the other too of us can heal it. Sometimes it can get pretty cut throat.
Brewa Dec 7th 2009 3:19PM
Not the same scenario as you, but there was something I noticed. It seemed groups were always looking for tanks in guild. So I took my second spec, wiped resto and went bear and started working on gearing myself up. And things were fine at first, then suddenly, there were an abundance of tanks in the guild. I've maybe tanked once or twice in the past three weeks. I luckily enjoy kitty DPS more, but the sudden shift seemed amazing to me.
Brewa
Hagen Dec 7th 2009 5:36PM
I came back to the game after a break when my 2nd daughter was born and I pumped my warrior up pretty well. He went from all blues/greens and 1 purple (he had done a few runs of Kara as OT) to only 2 blues left in just 4 weeks. Lots of Kara and did ZA every reset those last 3 weeks. My guild all knew I was having a great time w/him and planning to hit 80 on him and tank for us.
I also really wanted to check out the DK but not do a full re-roll, so I got to L70 on my DK 5 days after launch, then hopped on my Warrior and started rolling thru zones. Now I'm in a guild full of altoholics. Very few of us stick very well to any one toon. Heck, I recently hit 80 on my 5th. I did a little bit on each of several characters, made sure I got the initial trip to Northrend, updated their tradeskills and got those lower 5 FPs so they could easily travel when I decided I did want to play them.
All of a sudden, all of these eople in the guild that 2 weeks ago I couldn't have PAID to tank are talking about how awesome tanking is and how they're going to tank now. By the time I was at L73 (which was only about a week and a half into the xpac) we were already showing ourselves to be short on healers so, more than a bit annoyed, I switched and leveled my Priest.
Leveled him up as Disc, went really fast and started healing Naxx runs. Of course, by then we were having people fighting for healing spots and were somehow really light on ranged dps, so I went back to my original shadow spec. Once duals kicked in I went shadow / disc dual and I've been very happy....even if lately the Ulduar runs almost always need me to heal instead of lovely shadow damage *sigh*
Sejarki Dec 7th 2009 3:22PM
As a tank I've been fighting with this issue for awhile, and my solution was to just start running my own group. It's worked out, and it guarantees me the spot. The issue though is I then have a LOT of friends suddenly come out of the woodworks to grab the last spot, in ToC 25 we're running 3 tanks on all fights "just in case" because so many people want in that spot when we KNOW we can do the entire instance with 2 (We did it with 2 when one week the 3rd tank didn't show, the healers preferred it). And on top of that we have "main spec" tanks running as DPS hoping to scavenge the rare tank piece that gets to off spec rolls, granted I think most of them have been satisfied picking up more badges and such as well, but there's always pressure to get them spots too.
Moving into ICC it's a bit stressful not knowing how many tanks we'll need, and a large issue being most of the tanks don't have a DPS off spec. Granted I think if it was a full guild run we'd be more flexible with changing specs, but as a PuG the rule of thumb is you roll on the gear for the spec you're coming as so the current tanks are less hesitant.
TLDR; Too many tanks, not enough willing to lead raids.
Matt Dec 7th 2009 4:41PM
You touch on something here that kind of bugs me about dual-specced tanks. Dear Pallies, Why are all of you Prot/Holy? It sucks that even though I have worked my way up the ranks to become Mr. MT Warrior, I have to go arms in fights like the Twins 25 to let two little Blood Elves tank.
DEY TOOK R JURBS! :P
Rotties67 Dec 7th 2009 3:23PM
Its actually kind of funny, the guild I am in, we have more tanks and heals then we do DPS as mains (as in literally out of 20 level 80s, 12ish are either tank or heals as main spec). No, not real numbers but just to give you an idea. We have to either PuG a DPS slot, or people have to go offspec. The way we fixed this was to setup a rotation. The leaderships thought on this was "we aren't paying your subscription fee, so we aren't going to tell you how to spec." With that being said, you aren't going to be able to tank every week because player A, B, C, and D wants to do it as well.
So people got dualspec, and we are moving on. What does this mean? It means we are going to be a casual raiding guild as far as progression goes. We will have an "A" team of healers and tanks, but more importantly we all will have fun, and everyone will get to play a spec that they enjoy. So, we will not have a glass ceiling as far as roles go, but we may hit it for progression. It is a trade off we were willing to make as a guild though.
Traven Dec 7th 2009 3:27PM
Don't forget that while the tank to total member ratio isn't great for the prospect of getting into raids, but it's excellent when you finally do you get in because you compete with far fewer people than does a dpser or healer for loot. It's helped me take my Paladin from fresh 80 to very well geared in short order.
gari.rogers Dec 7th 2009 3:32PM
Gratz on 80 Schramm!
I'm kinda in the same boat, but don't really think I'd be tanking raids (I love tanking 5 mans though)
I'd say if you're gonna roll tank then you'll want to go Ret on your 2nd spec. It's a lot easier than being one of the two roles that have this problem. It's also easier to gear up when you go into a place and people know you're Off Spec has aspirations of tanking.
Hopefully It'll be a lot easier to get gear and emblems in 3.3 with the nuew dungeon system.
Siaperas Dec 7th 2009 3:31PM
The glass ceiling is one of the reasons why I recommend tanks dual spec and learn to gear and play both specs effectively. I main tank for a guild that often has to pug a few extra dps to run 25 man raids, and I cringe a little when a tanking class wants to come with us and they do not have a second spec. Typically, because most of the tanking classes that want to pug raid with us just are not as geared or practiced. That means that we either have to skip the pug over in favor of somebody else, or when we use him, one of the typical tanks has to offspec the fight. Even if the pug in question has the required gear level, people tend to be more comfortable having tanks that they often use main tanking and using tanks with the best gear.
True everybody has to start raid tanking somewhere; raid gear alone could mean that you just inherited the gear after your main tanks didn't need it. That said, I still believe that part of good tanking is knowing what you can do when you're not needed tank and how to play that role as well. Not only can you benefit the group by being more flexible, but you show to them that you are a worthwhile raider by putting in the extra effort, possibly opening up more opportunities to do that job you would prefer to do in the future.
Hal Dec 7th 2009 5:56PM
Dual-specs just create a different sort of problem, unfortunately. I've had many, many times where my raid nights start out like this:
"Hal, you're tanking. Wait, we don't have enough healers. Hal, you're healing. We'll get the warrior/DK/druid to switch to tank, and then we'll just grab another DPS."
Then later:
"Okay, tank gear dropped! Roll! . . . Hey, Hal, you can't roll on this, you're healing."
If your only concern is getting invited to the raid, then dual-specs solve that problem. If your goal is to get the experience and gear you need to bring you into the next tier of content, well, dual-specs can sometimes work against you.
Siaperas Dec 8th 2009 3:24PM
Fortunately, when we run raids, we allow main spec to still role on main spec gear. So if your main spec is tank, but you need to dps for the fight you get to roll on tanking gear as your main spec. You'd only get to roll for dps gear if nobody needed it main spec.
We do it this way to allow for greater flexibility between fights. If we have to pug people, we typically do ask what their main spec is, and we check to see if they are geared accordingly for that spec. Luckily the tanks in our guild are pretty generous, and if we notice that an upcoming main spec tank is lacking on gear, we generally happy to help him get the gear he may need. We can't always be there, and it's good to have the back up players atleast geared for when they need to step up.
As for experience, that's still a problem whenever you raid with the top teir of content. Tanks for lower tiers and heroics are always needed, but that top teir is definately hard to get into. Dual-spec would let you see the fight, but it's still not tanking it.
Epinnoia Dec 7th 2009 3:32PM
This has everything to do with the fact that Blizz saw fit to give everyone a 'free' tankable class -- the DK. There is nothing equivalent for healers, for example. And while DKs CAN DPS, my experience shows that the VAST majority of the DKs opt to be tanks.
So this grief for tanks is understandable, and will likely continue for quite awhile.
Sejarki Dec 7th 2009 3:51PM
This may be only on my server, but we actually have VERY few DK tanks, especially at the higher levels on my server. Of the two top guilds one of them doesn't even have a single DK tank, the other just has one. They seem to definitely be less popular than Warriors and Paladins right now as tanks by far, but it's hard to really find out one way or another. I suspect though that they're fairly easy to find when doing heroics, but much fewer are actually around even doing normal 25 man content.