Hello,

After a small revamp on the theme of the site, and, lot’s of time without any posts, mainly due to the huge amount of work I’ve had during this time (which is good to be honest), here’s a personal view of why there’s a big lack of tanks and healers on world of warcraft PuG’s (mainly).

Well, I’m a tank, I’ve been one for more than 2 years, after changing main back in 2006 for several reasons, and i love the role, i find it one of the most challenging roles in WoW, hard to master, and you won’t do brainless boring instances spamming 1 or 2 buttons as a DPS’er (yes am exaggerating a bit on purpose), and although in TBC, blizzard improved a lot Paladin and Druid tanking, in an attempt to increase the pre-tbc almost TBC time, we reach the same kind of problem on TBC, almost WotLK. I also have a healer (which is a priest), and although the top 10 reasons I’m about to post are directed towards the tank shortage, the healer shortage is directly related to the tank shortage, why ? because of the ungrateful task healers have to keep people alive and often not a single word of gratitude is said when something was done good, or a goal defeated, because the quality of the tanks at this stage that accept doing PuG’s are either tremendously badly geared and are almost impossible to keep alive or they’re filled with PvP ‘purples’ that are only good to spam hamstring on NPC’s and throw out some font only big crits, which in turn makes the healers task even more harder, and they obviously desire less to spend 3 or 4 hours in and instance that can be done in 1.

10.
The challenging task of tanking an instance.
Tanking isn’t for everyone, you must be prepared to keep yourself informed about other classes, how threat and combat mechanics work. If you don’t, you will be a mediocre tank, sorry but there’s no other way to be a proper tank, it’s not enough to know that when tanking you need to spam ability X (which you don’t), you need to know how to perform your role the best you can given your gear, class, group composition and above all, how many and what NPC’s you are tanking. Due to this pressure, people just “can’t be arsed” to do such a task, it’s far easier to roll a class that can’t tank, and spam 2 or 3 buttons to dps than to tank.

9.
There is no tank shortage, they just have no interest in doing normal/heroic instances.
I can only speak for myself and those I know, but this, is the general consensus, in my situation for instance, I’m at Sunwell at the moment, farming Mount Hyjal/Black Temple for quite some months already, what does a crappy 5 man instance (be it heroic or not) interest me ? nothing !, helping friends and such, sure, but with friends you are not doing a PuG, you know who your friends are, and you are comfortable to tell them what or what not to do, they’ll hear it without spitting in your face stuff like “I R GLADIATOR” and totally ignore what you say/ask. Since the shortage only happens on PuG’s the ‘friends’ situation doesn’t count towards the statistics, 5 man instances offer nothing of interest to raiders.

8.
The inability to properly gear new tanks.
That’s right, I made a paladin recently, and simply because I love tanking, my intention at 70 was to tank with him, I thought it would be very nice for 2 reasons, first, I have the knowledge, second there is the so called tank shortage, thought it would be easy to PuG and get geared up quickly etc. Unfortunately, I was so wrong. So, here I am, a freshly dinged 70 protection paladin, that can’t run 5 man normal instances simply because no one wants to do them, that’s right, it seems that every new player or alt jumps straight away into heroics, or, they AFK farm 24/7 AV and think they can do heroics properly with 5k mana, 300 spell damage, 1000AP, but really it seems it doesn’t matter in they’re eyes, because, it’s purple and it should be better than blues that normal instances drop right ? NOT!!
So, here we are, a protection paladin, the king of the 5 man tanking, out of commission because he can’t gear up to be able to tank a few heroics, again in order to gear up, so he can have a chance at running a few Karazhan’s and so on. Then, people yell there’s a tank shortage…..

7.
Tanking gear is far more demanding than healing or dps gear.
If we keep in mind reason number. 8, and this one, things get even harder for newly dinged tanks at this stage. It’s fairly easier to do some runs under geared as a DPS or a Healer really, a pot here and a pot there, 1 minute more or 1 minute less in a fight, it gets done in the end really, but, a tank without proper gear instantly dictates if the group is capable of defeating a goal or not, this coupled with how scarce is tanking gear is even worse, I really don’t understand several Blizzard decisions, try to keep up with this thought, Blizzard announces they’re introducing a Deathknight also to fight the lack of tanks in game, but they release a content patch with a new 5 man dungeon where in all loot there isn’t a single proper tanking drop. Granted, the trinket is not bad, BUT, it’s not that great either, hell I have it in my bags getting dust, there’s a nifty blue ring with expertise on it, but hell, has no defense/dodge/block/parry and the stamina it has doesn’t make it preferable versus rings without expertise, thing is, either this bollocks marketing campaign around Deathknight release to also fight the tank shortage was just an opportunity seen by blizzard to use it, or it’s just plain hypocrisy, because nothing of the latest changes or content updates are directed towards fixing or even attempting to fix this tank shortage.

6.
Cost versus Reward.
Many players, specially those without a plate tanking class, do not understand how much money can be spent in a 5 man, and it always gets higher and higher the better gear you get. Many players would see this as a minor issue, but, for the majority it isn’t, specially if we think that the majority does not respec in a daily basis for 50g to farm some dailies, because farming as protection, in either warrior or paladin, I don’t have a druid so I can comment, is lengthy and becomes boring very quickly, and even for some without good gear can be hard, now if we think that a player with a tank main, without alts at a level where money is easy to farm (doing dailies of farming raw mats to sell etc), tanking instances in PuG’s can be a tremendous money sink. This is the major reason several highly geared players don’t tank 5 mans with PuG’s, there’s always that little voice banging your hear reminding you how painful it can be to PuG and instance with new players, or even PvP’ers that have no idea whatsoever of how to do instances.

5.
The Burning Crusade new players.
I have to hand it over to blizzard about the effort put into making this game guide, and i honestly hope that the majority of the new user base that started playing post The Burning Crusade release reads it. It’s very frustrating when in some madness thought of helping some guys almost crying in the LFG for a tank somewhere, and you end up with a bunch of cocky noobs that just because they are wearing a piece of purple gear they think they know the game in and out and could do they’re role with a hand in they’re back, quickly yelling at you when you kindly tell them something they shouldn’t do or something they should. I tend to be polite, except when I blatantly see an ebayer, in that case I just either ditch the guy asap or i go away, and explain why something should be done or shouldn’t, and when i read something refuting what i said without any argument backing it up at all, just stating things resemblant to ‘i know better than you’ (even if he’s wearing a BoE Epic bought in the AH to full Badge/S1(2) gear versus me fully MH/BT/SWP geared) I kinda loose my patience, hell, I think I am allowed to loose my patience, I think any tank doing a favour to a group asking for a tank for 2 hours is allowed to loose his patience in this situations, but the thing is, several rather not get into this situations at all from the start, so, again, they just refuse to tank for PuG’s, and I generally do, giving the current situation on the server I am, with the amount of PvP migrated morons, coupled with new players that started playing due to the recent Arena tournaments lying around, I just step foot into a 5 man instance with 4 people I do know (or my friends know and vouch for them) or I just won’t. And like me, 90% of the tanks in the server.

4.
PvP
Once upon a time, there was a World of Warcraft where the focus of the content and game objectives were those that were planned since the beginning of the game, but in a dark day, probably some frustrated commercial stuck in a dark office without any windows, tired of getting head shots on <insert the lamest FPS game you think of here>, thought about giving more importance on PvP in World of Warcraft than the original concept that was thought of right from the start, PvE. Now, speaking a bit more seriously, and tying up why PvP influences the tank shortage, I like PvP, but I like it as a thing to relax, have a break from your routine in wow, as a social aspect (yes it’s a very social aspect of the game), not as a competitive aspect, the competitive of it will just draw the bad things of each person into the game, which is seen already by many, the constant bashing and lack of respect from players in bg’s, the usage of each player ratings and honour kills as a mean to flame them in the forums, even if it’s not related to PvP at all, this is completely blizzards fault, all the bad things and behaviours of players in pvp is completely blizzard fault, but that’s not the worst of it, what’s more ridiculous, is the gear differences used for PvP and PvE and how they can be acquired. First, if there has to be a gear difference for PvP and PvE (which I do not agree AT ALL, resilience is the most stupid crap ever invented), is the need for the hardcore PvP’er to have to PvE to get some of the best PvP gear, like badges, or even raid!!, it’s absolutely ridiculous, and it gets worse, there is in fact better gear for PvE as PvP rewards, and it’s easier to get than it’s PvE counterpart, this is absurd. Now why does this influences tank shortage, simple, have you ever tried to PvP as a protection paladin ? or protection warrior ?, well I did, and I quit, thing is, for instance, if you keep reason number 8 in mind, it’s obvious that the new player will try to gear up the in the easiest way he can at the time being, and actually this works also for the DPS part of it, so, why should I spend 4 or 5 hours doing instances, or even if I’m unlucky, wiping for 4 or 5 hours in the same instance, where I get 0 rewards for wiping 4 or 5 hours or mediocre ones compared to the ones I can get in a couple of say 4 or 5 hours a day in PvP ?
Now add reason number 6 and 5 to the mix, and you’re going to end up with a tank in full S1 or S2 thinking he is a hell of a tank, trying to run heroics and failing hard, as the experience he got while levelling was 0, because at this stage it’s rare as hell to do an instance below level 70, thus he won’t tank, or he just doesn’t want to for whatever reason, reaches 70 and obviously rather spend all day in a BG working for gear that he can see and aim for, and above all, knows it will be certain to get, and not a random drop from a boss in an instance where you spent 4 or 5 hours trying to finish and the only thing you earned, was the need to press a repair hammer and pay a costly amount of gold.

3.
Number of tanks required for raids.

This is killing allot of tanks, again, speaking for myself, in a guild currently in Sunwell, it’s really hard for tanks to keep playing the role when you spend several nights a week staring at a door (because really, i can’t be bothered to do dailies or any other quest with the tank) while the other 25 guys are downing new bosses or killing previously downed ones. Of course people rotate, if you had 1 or 2 protection warriors in the guild it shouldn’t be so hard, but, what happens if you have 3 ? it’s getting ridiculous, again, instead of fighting the tank shortage, blizzard are in fact cutting off the amount of tanks required to raid, thus, less tanks you will get to a PuG. It’s even worse with paladins, although feral druids have it a bit easier, with the odd boss here or there that they can’t tank, but at least they can tank most of the stuff, paladins are less desired due to the lack of oh shit buttons also, and although I am completely against the fight that require a specific tank to be able to be killed, specially progressing, I also don’t like the fact that a guild is forced to have X number of tanks to clear a Tier X dungeon, and suddenly in the next progressing dungeon, of Tier X+1, less tanks are required. Think about it, no serious raiding guild has the exact number of needed class/roles to raid, there’s always 1 or 2 more than needed in raids to cope with people missing, so in the Tier X+1 dungeon instead of having 4 tanks raiding and 1 or 2 in standby, you get 2 tanks raiding and 3 or 4 in standby, and in the top of this, makes fights where you either need a protection warrior + feral druid or a protection warrior + protection paladin, it’s ridiculous this kind of designs from blizzard, again, I fail to see how blizzard is ‘working on this tank shortage’ when they make this kind of design decisions, several guilds I know (and high ranked in progress guilds) lost they’re tanks due to Sunwell plateau tank requirements, there’s no interest in being on-line for raids any more when you know you won’t raid most likely.
2.
The negative scalability of tanking gear.
This is the holy grail of all blizzard messed up decisions, for those that don’t know, can you imagine you to do your role worse the better the gear you get ? welcome to the tank world!
That’s right, the better the gear a tank gets, the harder it is for him to tank in lesser content, the warriors require rage to use they’re skills, rage is built with damage done by the warrior and damage taken, since damage done of a protection warrior is ridiculously low (almost irrelevant) the only proper way of getting rage is to get hit, now, by getting better gear, means that either you won’t get hit at all, and when you do, you get hit for less, thus, the amount of rage earned is very very low, result ? unable to keep the NPC being killed on the tank (thus doing his role). The same happens with paladins, but for different reasons, paladins use mana, which they get by being healed, so, less hits, less heal required, less mana earned, less skills used to generate threat. Druids have it a bit easier as they actually do a fair amount of damage, thus they are better in this situation but, they do suffer from the same issue, just not that much as they’re fellow tanks. Granted, this is being looked up in Wotlk, mainly due to threat scaling with AP , and a talent to help on rage generation while avoiding, which i think it should be a passive ability to the defensive stance, not a talent, but that would require another post (which I might do) to talk about.

1.
Lack of content for new players and new alts.
I think this is the most important reason why there is a tank shortage, we have to keep in our minds that the wave of new players in an MMORPG doesn’t happen only at it’s launch and/or expansion release, granted the majority happen in the mentioned situations, but, new players keep showing up, and since there is a very well defined progression path in wow, the new players get caught off on the timing, and when they reach the real game (which is at the moment, when they hit level 70), they’re way back in the progression compared to everyone else and they will fall upon any of the other reasons and feed up this vicious cycle of screwed up stuff for new players and thus influencing on how much people will want to tank or heal in PuG’s. There’s nothing much i can say here, it’s very obvious really, there should be more content for new players or event alts when there are content updates, like Magister’s terrace, the only problem with Magister’s terrace, was the fact that it only catered the group of players far from the start of the progression curve, instead of newly fresh players. There would be players willing to run new content at least to see it, thus more people available to PuG, if the drops were well thought, even catch the interest of each particular class/role to keep doing it etc. But there isn’t, only raids, or, in Magister’s terrace example, allot harder for new players instance.

Personally, I can only complaint about the Sunwell Plateau tank related changes, apart from that, I really have no complaints at all, as I started my progress on the expansion release so I never had a problem with my progression, but I completely understand and sympathize with the ones starting up or that started a few months ago, it’s very hard to progress, if not impossible on certain servers, and I think blizzard could do more about it, but, instead, they’re making it worse, and honestly, having 1 more tanking class (Deathknight) will not change this, it’s all going to rinse and repeat, on WotLK start there will be a flood of tanks, where everyone will complaint about how many bad tanks they find (of course, they have no experience whatsoever at it) and along the progress and content updates, the number of tanks willing to endure some of the current PuG pains will decrease, to the point where we will be at the same stage as we are now.

Best regards,

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