This reasoning would fly if respeccing was in any form difficult or expensive. But as changing specs has never been easier, I don’t think that this is really the reason.
6/13 classes can tank.
6/13 classes can heal.
3 classes can tank ánd heal.
So with the ease of respeccing present, why don’t the people who play that 46% of the classes fill in the tank role? They’re playing a class they like, I assume, so the hurdle to just tank is marginal. Especially given the fact that 3 of the classes barely need to swap gear for it too.
I’d say it’s the tank role+responsibilities and not the available tank specs that’s the problem.
Your average holy paladin doesnt have a str weapon or tank trinkets. Same for the other tanks. The only one this makes somewhat sense on is dk and dh.
But again, you’re not going to get someone who really loves the aesthetic of magic and casting spells to swap from boomkin to bear. They were drawn to boomkin for a reason - they like magic and spells. They dont want to be a big bear.
And Druid (if the DPS spec is Feral). Besides, having optimal gear is far from required.
If currently people aren’t appealed by the tank-spec of their class, why would we assume that adding tank specs to other classes will magically do this?
This reasoning and these assumptions make very little sense. Perhaps for the niche bunch that love Shaman (tanking) or Warlock (tanking) but it probably creates more problems than it solves (hello balancing and dungeon designing, which is already on a debatable level).
But agreed! I have played almost all specs and classes… And the reason I don’t tank anymore is not the lack of gear… Heck that would be my least concern…
I have also never heard or seen my friends that play tank say “nah I don’t have a strength weapon”, they usually just buy one off of AH that may be 30 ilvls lower than the content, but hey they get the job done… But(!) they rarely do any pug content as tank, it is just too big of a headache for them to want to que up with pugs…
More tank specs may entice more people to try tanking, very big emphasis on try but I doubt very much that it will make them stay as one… If it would, all those “I have been in que for 4 hours no tanks que up!” posters would re-spec at least once to try
for the exact same reason that you can show 10 people a picture of a knight and a wizard and half of them will pick the wizard and half of them will pick the knight? come on, man.
not everyone is the same. some people main mage or lock or evoker or shaman or rogue or hunter. i main warrior. i like the aesthetic of warrior. i like shields and one handers and stocky looking characters. i think gimli was the coolest character in lord of the rings. i think captain america is the coolest avenger. i play reinhardt in overwatch. i play barbarian in diablo.
some people are the polar opposite. they think gandalf or legolas are the coolest. they main hanzo or really like scarlet witch or main wizard or necromancer in diablo. you take this person and put them in wow and they will never, ever tank because their aesthetic that they love and enjoy in all media simply isn’t available to be played.
it is a total waste of more than half the player base (if you go by class) and around 85% of the player base if you go by spec.
the aesthetic of the current tank roster is entirely ‘tough guy or bear stands in melee and gets punched in the face’ and that is about appealing to someone who wants to cast spells as death metal is to someone who listens exclusively to pop music.
But what makes them stay as tank? One thing is the aesthetic of a class… The other thing is the actual gameplay.
The problems current tanks have is not that they lack weapons… it’s the shear abuse from the community. You do 1 mistake, and people are ready to grill you… You have tanks in lvling dungeons, timewarped dungeons etc. that are being kicked for “Too slow tank” or “Noob tank” because they don’t pull the earth at the same time.
Cooler animations will not increase the tank player base drastically enough to actually make sense… It will give current tank players new options, but it will hardly make anyone switch main
the tanking playstyle doesn’t need to be mass appealing - it needs to be appealing to 20% of players because that is what the game demands at the highest end (1 tank, 3 dps, 1 healer.)
currently 15% of available specs are tanks. raise that to 20% by adding more tank specs with more variety and you solve the problem.
you do not need to make players love tanking as much as dpsing. you just need to make them love it enough that some of them stick around and tank and as someone who does tank, another ‘tough guy with shield/sword who stands in melee and gets punched’ isn’t going to drag in non-tanks to play it. if it was, they’d already be here as warriors or paladins or dks or brewmasters or dhs.
but a magic tank will. a pet tank will. warlocks have been wanting to tank since vanilla. so have shamans (they literally already use shields??) and so have hunters. SoD proved that there is a demand for tanking as warlock/shaman and theres zero reason why they shouldn’t do this in retail as well.
More classes doesn’t solve the core reason people don’t enjoy tanking… Your logic assumes that there are no feelings in the selection, turn your argument around… Does this mean there is an equal split between roles in specs? No of course not… Why? Because diversity doesn’t create players…
Your logic assumes “Oh they look at Gandalf and want to be a caster!” yeah… But week 1 of TWW had 74% playing augmentation, 20.4% playing pres and 5.9% playing Devostation…
3.8% played arms and 35% played fury… You can’t tell me the only reason people didn’t play arms is because they wanted to have 2 swords instead of 1…
There is roughly a 50/50 ratio between melee and ranged specs for dps (slightly more ranged ones) your logic would assume more players play ranged spec then? False…
Least played classes were:
Hunter: 2.9%
Monk: 4%
Priest: 4.2%
Warlock: 4.5%
Thats 6 ranged and 2 melee in the lowest 4 classes…
Top 4 was:
Shaman: 18.3% (Ele 21% / Enhancement 12%)
DK 13.6% (Unholy only being 6.1%)
Warrior 9.3% (Dps being roughly 39%)
Druid (Balance being 31%)
People may try classes based on some fantasy that they want to live out, but they won’t be doing keys and content with a role they don’t like regardless of how cool it looks… We literally have tanks that enjoy tanking but won’t que LFG… Because they know how it will end…
Half the playerbase only play wizards or pet classes. Half the playerbase will never even try tanking.
You want more tanks? Start by making them appeal to more than half of your playerbase.
You can fix the toxicity problem or the m+ issues and you’ll still be left in a world where 15% of your specs are tanks but the game demands 20% of your party be a tank.
The tank scarcity issue that has been a problem since vanilla will never be fixed unless you make tanks that appeal to more than half your playerbase.
You can make them easy like in WoTLK or top the meters like in MoP or have crazy utility like in Legion and you will still never temp your mages, locks, hunters or shamans or evokers to try tanking because they want to cast spells or shoot their bow.
Are we counting shaman as wizards? Even if we do, the list looks like this:
Shaman: 18.3% (68% being resto)
DK: 13.6%
Warrior: 9.3%
Druid: 8.8% (Half of them playing guardian)
Mage: 8.4%
Evoker: 8.1%
Paladin: 7.5%
Rogue: 5.4%
DH: 4.8%
Lock: 4.5%
Priest: 4.2%
Monk: 4%
Hunter: 2.9%
Even if we count Shaman as wizard, that leaves us with 39% being either a pet or wizard class… At least in M+, and assuming the thread is not about tank shortage in PVP, I would assume that is relevant.
So again, your logic doesn’t really hold. Regardless of how “simple” you think it is… You see it too binary… That people either play melee or ranged, and at a random probability this will be 50/50… But that’s not how it is.
I would assume this would make it more appealing…
But again… You miss that the world is not as binary… Just because there i 15% specs, doesn’t mean the playerbase won’t overextend…
Resto shaman is 33% of the shaman class, but 68% play it?
Protection warrior is 33% of the warrior class, but 61% play it?
Guardian druid is down at 25% of the class, but 54% played it?
Your binary logic doesn’t hold, it makes no sense in this case.
But the problem again is not the class… Its the role… Otherwise there wouldn’t be as much diversity IN a multi spec class
I might try to get my prot warrior, which I leveled during the memory event, from 70 to 80 during Timewalking.
Though I can be sure I will be trashtalked that I will either pull too much, pull not enough, being too slow, pulling more by accident, got the boss at the wrong position, not skipping the boss, or getting taken apart by casters because the DPS won’t kick enough to keep them rounded up. Or all of the above.
Using current mythic+ numbers to tell me popularity is like showing up at a music festival and going ‘80% of artists are pop artists, clearly no one would show up if we added more rappers.’
Yeah dude - of course most warriors in keys are going to be prot warriors when the only way to get into keys reliably is to fill the void of tanks that is caused by having less tank specs than there is demand for them.
And then you link me stats that prove my point. Add the numbers for hunter, mage, evoker, lock, priest and shaman and what do you get? Roughly half the playerbase playing magic or pet classes that cant even decide to try tanking because blizzard doesnt provide for them a tank that fits their preferred fantasy role.
Lets see if you can understand the reverse.
Do you think there would be a healer shortage if we removed the healing specs from Shaman and Paladins?
But 68% of the shamans are healers… And of course when you take the biggest groupings and add them together they will be like that xD What does a “pet class” have in common with a wizard? Its a far stretch from your side to make a point… No one looks at Gandalf and goes “Oh damn I’ll play a hunter!”
That has been your argument this whole time, and now you want to group “Pet and magic classes” like come on dude xD
And imagine actually saying “wizards” and counting both shamans and evokers… One of them having a melee class and the HEALER spec being the overrepresenting spec and the other being a dragon where the support class (Aug) makes up 75%
There already is a healer shortage. And removing them? yes. But thats because some people are already established in those specs. Adding more? No. Preservation evoker hardly moved anything… Wouldn’t that bring in more healers?
Look at PVP healer shortage… Look at PVE… Also a healer shortage… (As big as tank? Maybe not), but that’s hardly because of 1 extra spec
i’ll make it even more simple - with numbers and with repetition you will learn. i believe in you!
THERE ARE NO PET OR MAGIC CLASSES THAT CAN TANK.
HALF OF YOUR PLAYERBASE MAINS THESE CLASSES.
HALF OF YOUR PLAYERBASE CAN’T TRY TANKING WITHOUT REROLLING TO A NEW CLASS.
repeat this once before bed and once before every meal and you’ll finally understand basic statistics and why there has been a tank shortage since vanilla - a full 11 years before mythic+ even existed.
Then why not also add rogues? Come on now, make 1 argument that holds all the way through… I believe my guy! “BuT rOgUeS aRe MeLeE!.. BuT wE wIlL cOuNt HuNtEr BeCaUsE SuRvIvAl DoEsN’T mAtTeR” insert insult to try and sound smart because you have no actual argument
But… we are talking about SPECS… Not classes… You said ADD MORE TANKS not ADD MORE CLASSES… Come on now… I’m starting to think you can’t make any more mess of your own arguments…
You are in no way qualified to talk about basic statistics xD Your answers really do show that… The fact that you can’t see it as well, does say it. But sure, let’s pretend you can teach me <3
The solution is pretty simple but required people to actually make their brain work…
We have a shortcut of healers~ tanks since …classic wow as far as i remember . And of course people would choose to play as a dps>>>
So what is the most obvious solution for the numbers…
We have a format of 1-1-3 ~ Hasn’t change since the beginning of the game .
Change the format to 1-1-4 and everything is going to be smooth . This solution has an instantly answer to everything from lack of healer~tank to the high number of dps.
With 1-1-4 classes and specs that are having a hard time getting in dungeons/ m+ will have an easier way to get that spot .
We changed the raid format to 40-25-20 … We had 10 and now everything scale with number of player …
So yes Making dungeon with the format of 1-1-4 will solve plenty of numbers . End.
