A Few Thoughts on Tanking

I have some thought on tanking.

     Recently, my wonderful sister Anna shared an article on Facebook and tagged me in it.  The subject of this article was someone who was new at tanking was talking about why tanking was difficult in World of Warcraft. He also discussed how it was possibly a flaw of game design since so few people tanked, and so much expectation is put on that one player.  He of course pointed to the things we all know about, impatient players, hard learning curve etc… the article is included Here in PC Gamer magazine and I suggest giving it a read.  So don’t my paraphrasing and take on it, read through it is well worth your time.  I agree with most of what he says.

     I have been tanking on and off since Wrath of the Lich King, Matt Rossi has pointed out several times on Blizzardwatch’s podcast that once people know you can tank, you often end up in that role even if your intention is to become DPS.  Good tanks feel thin in this game, and part of that is because of pressures like this.  The other part is because folks in raid finder, Looking for group, and elsewhere do have a tendency to be verbally abusive and will often blame things going wrong on said tank.  This means if you don’t have a thick skin you don’t tank very long.

    Or you become like me.  I won’t tank for anyone I don’t know.  It is not worth my time and effort to suffer verbal abuse at the hands of someone I don’t know.  I will queue as DPS thank you, and wait the extra thirty minutes.  I won’t lie, part of the social anxiety I have developed dealing with people in World of Warcraft has come from tanking.  I am wary of pugging people into groups, or tanking for strangers because I never know what I’m going to get.  And I know if it’s bad it will often be directed at me whether I have deserved it or not.

    On the other hand, I believe 95% of players in this game are decent people who aren’t looking to tear folks down.  The loud voices in trade chat and in groups are often a vocal minority who like to talk loud because it makes them feel like they matter.  The problem is, you can tank five groups in quick succession, but if you get a person in that fifth group that does nothing but tear you down and get abusive it stands out to the point where you think it’s everybody.  I know one person who is dps that stopped running group finder stuff because he says he has never had a good experience.  I personally can’t say if that’s true, but it sure feels like the game is full of negative individuals sometimes.

     Now, do I think this is Blizzard’s fault?  No.  I think the game is designed for specific types of groups, and that if you were to make everything dps with no heals or tanks it would feel more sporadic and less organized.  Do I think there should be DPS only content? Well, they tried with Scenerios, and my guess is they went away after a small percentage of players used them compared to the amount of time Blizzard had to use to design them.  I could be wrong on that, but for better or worse we are used to the tank, dps, and healer dynamic.

    Now, I wish they would stop gating my content behind mythics, or that the dungeons like the arcway that are gated behind content could be queued for in LFG, but those are minor complaints.  My playing hours right now pretty much make that content hard for me to get to.  I sure am not going to tank them for strangers.  At the same time, I don’t know if there are enough people on in my guild most of the time that need to run them.  That leaves me sitting on quests that are filling up my quest book and that are a bad feeling.

     How do we fix tanking? I hate to say this, but Blizzard can’t.  There is no magical button that is going to change how the group dynamics work.  There is no bit of programming that is going to change characters expectations of quick and clean runs.  The only people who can change this are the player base.

     Players need to openly call out folks that make tanking hard to do.  Players need to set the expectation, that if you start tearing someone down, that is tank or otherwise, the group will kick you.  Folks need to be a little more understanding and patient.  The only way we fix that is one player at a time.

     The other half of this coin, there are some bad tanks out there.  I’m not talking about folks that are learning, but tanks that take for granted that they are important.  Those tanks that are abusive to the groups running with them and tear down other team members are as big a problem as any negative, sweary dps.  (You thought I was going to totally be on just the tank’s side in this blog right?) One run with a tank like that and you might see why a dps would lash out at a tank here and there.

    I think a tank that gets kicked from a LFR, or LFG should have a time penalty before they can queue again.  Why? Because it kills the attitude of, “If they kick me I will get right back in again,” and likewise dps should have a similar penalty.  Not because I’m a jerk, but there should be a consequence when you exhibit bad behavior.   Yes this could be abused.  In my experience 90% of the folks that get kicked deserve it. 

         At the end of the day folks we are all human, and need to treat each other as such.   If we are going to fix this issue in game we need to do it one player at a time, just making the decision to be nice to each other.  I’m not asking you to be everyone’s friend.  Or even to like other people.  Just treat them with the respect they deserve.

Lag