There’s an interesting hot topic on the Blizzard forums discussing how people are experiencing a general tank shortage in LFG/LFR. The real question is whether or not this is a current phenomenon or if this has been going on for some time.
For myself, I have noticed that it’s been harder and harder to find tanks for LFR, most notably Throne of Thunder. Get into a Lei Shen group, for instance, or maybe even part 3 and tanks end up dropping left and right, leaving the group to potentially wait for up to 15+ minutes (or until a DPS reveals that they have a full tanking set and know these fights).
But is the tank shortage just something recent? I recall reading on another forum posting how someone attempted to assign blame to the new loot system change where people can select the role for loot. Seeing that it’s far easier to play a DPS and obtain loot in LFR rather than having 24 other strangers yell at you, this scenario can be rationalized as a possible reason.
Yet I think that people have short term memories and only look at the present when it comes to things like this. The thing is that I feel there’s always been a tank shortage. It’s simply a role that a lot of people probably don’t want to fill at least when it comes to group situations. Even back during Wrath of the Lich King, I remember how there was a shortage back then. One forum post even alluded to how the problem has existed since the start of the game itself.
Quite a few people on the forums pointed out that the problem at large is the toxic community, which does not support the treatment of tanks. Pretty much tanking and healing are very unappreciated roles but end up being two of the most critical because of how they play the ultimate lead and support aspects in groups. The result is that there tends to be a general resentment between DPS and those roles. The thing is that if a DPS screws up there isn’t as much verbal backlash.
Of course, there still are problems with tanks that lead to constant kicking. It’s not uncommon to see a completely decked out PVP geared tank showing up. While I don’t know how Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks are affected in this situation, plate wearing tanks certainly end up facing numerous problems. Usually, if you see a plate wearing tank go down frequently, it’s quite possible that they’re PVP geared. PVP DPS don’t face as big of an issue since they may have weapons to compensate or might even reforge their gear appropriately to meet the minimum hit/expertise caps (which usually are the main contributors to PVP geared players’ low DPS).
Then you have tanks who who might either not know a fight (which ends up being an issue of taunting at the right moment) or doing stupid things like facing Megaera’s head at the raid, not blowing survival cooldowns, etc. In some cases, there’s a chance that the tank intentionally is trying to wipe a raid, for which the group has every right to kick the guy. In other cases, it’s mostly a matter of communication. I tend to get an ill feeling in my stomach whenever a tank admits that they never handled a boss or raid before. At the same time, I feel somewhat sympathetic.
When it comes to solutions, people stated that offering incentives like in Cataclysm would be a way to attract tanks (and healers) in LFG/LFR situations. But we might end up going back to the situation where someone who isn’t prepared for the role might show up just to claim their bag, similar to how a DPS would queue up for a tank/healer role just to get gear and/or enter the group faster.
Another solution people proposed is to code up some enforcement policy either to make it so that the tank is immune to personal taunts (meaning the LFG/LFR community at large) or mechanics in the game to avoid failure. I really think this isn’t a good solution either. I feel that you can’t easily code game mechanics to improve the etiquette of people, who probably are jackoffs IRL. If they even remotely tried anything like this, then I would prefer them to expand the type of roles for each class rather than making the situation so black and white. For instance, I remember hearing a rumor prior to Cataclysm about how there would be a 4th role in a crowd control class. Also, you had situations like Warlocks and Hunters using their pets as mini tanks such as the Council fight in ICC. So those offer more interesting possibilities since the ideas here would be to expand the DPS role rather than putting too much responsibility on tanks and healers.
The other option (which is something I’ve been thinking about) is to remove all roles from the game and make encounters more reaction based rather than role based. I’ve been an opponent of the way MMORPGs have created the notion of roles in groups. I feel that it really makes no sense and creates far more problems than it attempts to solve. For instance, I really hate the fact that non-tank spec’d plate wearers can get one shot really easily in encounters. It essentially renders the notion of plate armor as useless. Usually, the reason to wear plate armor for a class over say chain mail or lighter armors is so that you can absorb damage. On the other hand, wearing lighter armors, while making you more vulnerable to physical attacks, would enable you to react and move faster. Just simple RPG concepts like these have absolutely no meaning in a game like World of Warcraft.
With regards to damage soaking, I believe that any class should have some ability to mitigate damage and act in the role as a tank. I mean, that’s why each class has some aspects of survivability to them. Unfortunately, a lot of the game, especially in group situations, ends up ignoring this aspect. I remember reading one of the old World of Warcraft guides and how it talked in detail about how each class can play into a large number of roles that went beyond the first three. I mentioned the Crowd Control role earlier, but the guide also pointed to things like off tanking with enhancement shamans, warlocks using Voidwalkers and Beast Master Hunters with tenacity pets. Or AoE specific roles like Warlocks, Hunters and Mages being best suited. Then there were even those classes who had the very specific talent of saving groups from wipes (meaning avoiding the horrendous corpse walk) like Shamans with their reincarnation ability, warlocks with soulstones, etc.
You see, the real issue to me isn’t a tank shortage. It’s the Blizzard problem of funneling. In this case, it’s that group situations are far too black and white and oversimplified to allow their so-called limited resources to play test only a very small number of uninteresting scenarios. Cataclysm essentially killed the notion of the hybrid class with the destruction of the talent tree and this expansion is slowly further eroding a lot of the remnants of the hybrid class. The result is that everyone just focuses on numbers or keeping the group alive. Since in LFG/LFR people only care about staying alive, then the problem ends up being blamed on those that fail to do this aspect of their jobs.
I think a lot of these problems ended up being exacerbated when people talked about bringing the player and not the class. Really what you’re doing is bringing the role and barely the player along with a bunch of stupid effects on the ground that you get to play Super Mario Brothers. But these elements aren’t really fun; they’re just tedious rather than highlighting how each class can really shine in certain situations.