Tanking is Fun

Today's post is in response, actually not a response, but on the same topic, as gavlon's post found here and the grumpy's post found here.

gavlon states two very important things.  One, tanking sucks.  and two, to fix this, make all tanking like blood Dk tanking. Grumpy talks about how tanking in raids vs dungeons is like night and day.  i agree with grumpy on his opinion.  i disagree with gavlon.

Now here's my little input on tanking, why i like/dislike it, and what i could do to make it more fun.  Actually, if you read the comments from gavl's post, everyone is pretty spot on in their assessment of tanking in Wow.  it's something not many people would want to do, especially for Pug groups (which is why i keep asking my gf to see if anyone in our guild wants to join us).  Read the comments. they're very true of why wait times are so long for the dps and tanks are so hard to come by, in random pugs.

Let me explain why my gf is asking my guild if anyone wants to join in our run.  We're level 82 and 84, or about there but are on two different realms.  i blame the character limits for this. since i am only able to have 10 characters on one realm, making a new character to level with her requires that i make a new character on a new realm and level through instances.  you can see just how boring that can be, going through the same dungeons over and over again until, thankfully, we outlevel them, only to be greeted with 20 more runs of another dungeon.  So after maybe 82 levels if this, you can see why i soooo would rather party with people i know instead of a bunch of puggers who sometimes decides to act up or try to run the show (and why is it always a mage???).

My gf is lucky.  she has a bf tank who knows all the dungeons, pretty much inside and out, knows who to CC, who does the worst damage, how pulls should be coordinated, etc.  i know all this because i've tanked all of these instances many times before. going into gnomeregan, blackrock depths and blackrock spire i get comments like, "thank god, someone who knows where to go!"  my gf knows she's lucky and she makes me skewered eels for my hunter to show her appreciation.  ^_^

Now on to the bad. I dont like tanking.  i dont like tanking because i have to be responsible.  i have to know the fights, kill order, cc order, react to environmental changes, bad dps, etc.  i dont suffer from bad healing becuase, well, i have a pocket healer that does an awesome job.  but i really dont want to take on, what seems almost like a job, to play a game where the point of the game is to relax, or at least problem-solve to get my mind off of the real life issues such as work.  In-game, i dont want to be responsible for hearding cattle.  it feels almost like that sometimes, even if it's just one dps who runs around and acts a fool, it's still a pain to deal with.  i play this game to have fun, not to baby sit.  This is the main issue of tanking and many tanks have gone to great lengths to simply tank for their guildies, thereby bypassing a lot of the stupid that goes on in random pugs.  What is it about LFD that makes it soooo bad? it's because no one has any accountability that they can cause some amount of grief to their teammates and get away with it. i am not saying it doesnt happen before LFD, but LFD made pugs a ceaspool of stupid, rude and arrogant idiots that i hope never to have in my guild, no matter how leet their dps may be. 

The good thing about tanking is that, when i do get a good group (and lately i have), things go smoothly and i only have to deal with the in-game mechanics.  sometimes i get the occassional lazy dps who doesnt know how to target my own target, or the drone-like dps who doesnt see that they're breaking CC left and right. but those are okay to deal with (i sometimes let the aggro king tank the mob).  what i've developed is somewhat of a limit as to my responsibilities.  i am not responsible for a mob if it get's pulled off of me deliberately.  and not targeting my own target is deliberate. being too lazy to check the unit frames to see who i am tanking is deliberately being lazy.  so i let them tank it and not think too much about it. if others decide to pull for me, i can simply let them tank it.  and everyone goes at my pace.  sounds about right.  even the gogogogo baddies get ignored.  if they're doing low dps, i dont care. 

this attitude works out just fine in the end since most groups consist of at least one guy carrying everyone, especially when all of the dungeons are nerfed to death and people are buffed to kingdom come.  i was in violet hold, level 75 instance when i noticed this.  pretty much everyone except for rogues were doing 3k dps.  1k on bosses, but settling on 2-3k dps for most of the pulls.  now to put all of this into perspective, the dps requirement to do Naxx when Naxx was current content as 1.6k dps.  that's the low end and doing 2.0k dps was considered good. Ulduar saw it jump to 3k while ICC saw the minimum (not what people were doing, but the minimum to even be considered) was about 5k dps.  in one expansion, the dps requirement went from 1.6k to 5k.  that's ridiculous.  overinflation i tell you.

we were all doing awesome damage and so it covers for the fact that maybe there's one or two baddies in the group.  it's fine. even in vortex pinnicle, black rock caverns and throne of the tides, things went smoothly.  it seemed that the boss' health has been dropped to about half of what it was when cata came out. im sad at this.  also, many of the abilities arent as bad (except for Commander Ulthok's Dark Fissure, boy does that hurt) so level through them is cake, especially for a tank that knows the pulls.  Now, Ulthok did kill me twice with dark fissure, only because there's also a slowing effect somewhere and i ended up not able to run out of it fast enough.  he dropped a nice cape for me when he finally did die.  overall, tanking has dumbed down a little due to the easy mechanics of the fights now.  this doesnt change the fact that i may get some terrible players, or mages who try to lead the group, but at least there is some concession for tanks when they do pug. 

Tangent: i dont feel bad about needing on dps gear anymore, but i do watch to see if the dps actually needs it or not.  i just do if it has mastery, since mastery is great.  it's a universal stat, and if an item has it with crit or haste or expt, i simply reforge the crit/haste/exp to parry.  mastery smooths out damage taken, so i'll keep that, thank you very much.  so if no one needs it, i'll need it for tanking.  this is one thing that i really like about mastery is that it's a universal stat.  although some classes might not categorize it as high priority, it has uses for EVERY class in the game. before, i was limited to dodge/parry gear.  now i have an option to add mastery gear too.

Besides the random "good" people and the toned-down version of each isntance, problem solving in-game makes tanking fun.  what i mean by this is that each dungeon group is varied. although the mobs stay the same, the types of people, the class compositions, and the style of pulling all change and i must adapt accordingly.  it is not the same as the Diablo-esque feel where each time you step into the 1st floor of a dungeon, the maze gets reset and the layout changes to make it feel like you're in a new dungeon.  it's more of the way i want to pull, where i want to move the mobs, who i want to CC and who does the CC and for how long. each mob has their own unique ability where i may be able to dispel, or a hope that mage who tried to lead knows how to spell steal.  or hoping the group just doesnt try to aoe down two mobs. yes, i've seen many mages and warlocks use their blizzard or rain of fire... on two mobs. 

The best, and pretty much most important thing that makes tanking fun are the tanking abilities. I have all tanking classes and the most fun tanking class i've ever played is the warrior class.  Dks are fun too, so are druidsd and paladins.  but high above those three is the warrior.  The reason? Charge/intercept/intervene and shockwave/thunderclap. Now the first one is charge, and i will include intercept and intervene in the smae category.  it's my charge.  i rush in and do damage.  mob's somewhere else? charge!  healer getting chewed on? charge!   mobility is key when tanking, because if im charged (no pun) with keeping people alive, one of the best abilities to have is a gap-closer that will allow me to tank stray mobs somewhere.  i found this very useful and very rewarding.  what paladins have is a shield that silences to bring mobs to them and dk's have deathgrip, which has a long cooldown.  the only other class with this are druid bears who have a charge.  however, since i charge to start a fight, my charge cooldown really sucks when, in the beginning of a pull, the objective is to round up all the mobs into one convenient pack.  not having an extra charge reders the druid almost unless when rounding up mobs when initiating a pull.

The other ability is shockwave and to a lesser extent, thunderclap.  the two things these abilities have in common are it's abiltiy to do some Aoe effect beyond cleave.  now cleave is great, as is blood strike, hammer of the righteous and swipe.  but only the warrior have something that he constantly uses to basically "stomp" the ground and remind the mobs just how awesome he is.  shockwave is a great ability because it stuns the targets, giving everyone time to catch up, pick the right target, and top everyone off.  this ability is wonderful because it also acts as one of my interrupts.  no other class really has these two abilities although there is similar.  dk's have blood boil, but it doesnt have the same "umph" to it, nor does it apply a debuff.  paladins have it in the form of hammer of the righteous, but even that doesnt have any "umph" to it, nor does it apply a debuff.  also maybe avenger's shield, but it's strange to use it in melee, even if it works.  druids, well,  nada.  i sometimes wish druid bears can get an ability like the rogue's killing spree, where they basically randomly bite several random mobs in front of them for five seconds, but i guess we'll have to stick with the swipe and glyphed maul. 

To recap, i really do find tanking fun, especially if it's a warrior tank.  i think that, based on the link above, tanks are few because they're boring, have responsibility, requires thinking, and arent engaging as dps or healing.  but... with a warrior tank, i find that the tools i have to use make up for some of the negatives.  now if i were a bear or a paladin tank, i wouldnt be as enthused.  but each tanking class has their own strengths and weaknesses, and offer a lot of utility in different ways.  even if, in the end, it equates to the same thing (different spells, same effect). i find warrior tanking to be a lot more fun, simply because of the abilities that i have with a warrior tank.  perhaps it's just "flavor" but perhaps it is more than that.  as a tank who has played all the tanking classes, i have a different comparison than those who replied with tanks vs. dps vs. healing.  instead, i see it as warrior vs. druid vs. paladin vs. dk, and i can see what makes tanking fun based on the various types of tanks available, and hopefully this reason will be a reason that outweighs all the little negatives out there to keep people tanking longer, even in pugs.