Tank and Healer "Shortage"

Fully agree. “Fast run”, how can you even say that? It’s the tank who dictates the pace, which in turn is based on healer mana reserve, not DPS who dictate that it’ll be a ‘fast run’.

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Honestly, you don’t need a tank, most of the times. Take 4 good dps and just let them go nuts. Very few of the dungeons really need a dedicated tank.

Agreed up to let’s say lvl 45 dunegons… after that you need a tank to take blows from bosses and some mobs…

Indeed. Uldaman and upwards, the bosses and some of mobs do some solid dmg. Before that though, you’d get away with 4 dps and a healer easily.

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there are 3 points to take from this:

  1. people should be allowed to play as they want. heal/tank/dps. i personally find healing the least appealing to me because of “pressure”. however as i want to play paladin at least for now, i know that while tank is semi viable while lvling, you WILL be a healer at 60. i would rather be a tank. im even thinking of respecing cause there are always healers, but never tanks.
  2. the cost and pain of respecing all the time. some people might be ok with bouncing from dps to heal to tank for non extreme content in retail, but you cant be that flexible in classic if you want to have any gold left in your pocket. i would love to bounce between healer and tank, focusing on tank, but this was not a thing until wotlk.
  3. if you are talking about low low dungeons, then yeah, its ok and really makes sense for hybrid classes to step up to the plate if a certain role is missing rather than waiting an hour for 1 person. however, the higher you get, the more your talents will effect things. just attempted SM (library i think). the ret pala was going to tank because there were no other tanks. he said last run had been smooth with him being 2H ret. we got to the first boss (dog boss) and while i admit it was a bit my fault for letting him drop so low, once he was under 50% the other 50% of his health just vanished. i often let tanks get to about 50% because 1 heal will bring them up to about 100%, that way i can save mana if need be. but this was not the case here and he died. im not sure if it was because he was ret, or just unlucky, but he died so fast from 50-0%. didn’t even have time to cast 1 spell. he then “dc’ed”. meaning the 4 of us who had ran all the way up had wasted our time and the group fell apart. also i note, it wasn’t a wipe. i was able to keep 3 clothies alive to kill the boss and 2 dogs.

im lucky i’ve not ran into that. i just want to do dungeons. dungeons were a big part of the fun back in the day. i dont care if its deadmines or strat, the adventure and exploration was great cause you didn’t basically aoe pull the entire dungeon like you do in retail.

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Great points. It suck to miss a healer or tank. But why invite someone as DPS (if a person clearly state his intention) and try to persuade them into different role? You saw their class and the role they want to fill, just don’t invite them if you don’t like DPSing Warriors or Shamans, f.e.

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This whole discussion reminds me of that old WoW Meme, where you see the Healer dead on the floor and the Tank in from of the 5% HP Boss begging “heal me please!”

And behind him you see the Feral Druid and Shadow Priest avoiding eye contact while saying “Hay dont look at me! Im not THAT kind of Druid/Priest” xD

Or with the words of a german youtuber from bag then:
“That Shadows priests dont heal even when its necessary is old news. The consequent Shadow Priest of today wont even use Vampiric Embrace if theres even a small chance a party member could be in healing range.”

Or from another of his videos:
“Moonkin Druids are at the same level as Shadow priests. Not because they are as dangerous, but because in any given situation where just one heal would secure victory for their team, they will always manage to do something so stupid, that you start asking your self if improved mark of the wild somehow lowers intelligence.”

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does Subjectivity not exist in your country?

On my priest, I don’t look for or join dungeon groups for this reason because people do expect you to only heal. There is no dual spec in classic and re-speccing every time to make sure you can actually heal is painful. I happen to enjoy playing dps with classes that have heal spells (priest especially) but I have no intention of healing dungeon groups or raids. Even in a group of real life friends it gets annoying when they expect you to heal on your shadow priest then wonder why it all goes to hell. I’ve stopped levelling my priest for this reason. The only place I will change to heal are BGs when they come in as I used to really enjoy healing in those.

And it’s not “retail culture” - I ditched that s**t years ago. It’s about what I enjoy doing in game.

I can live without raids/dungeons to enjoy my class that happens to have healing/tanking abilities so if you /w me looking for a healer/tank and get no response that’s why.

IF, however I wanted to run dungeons or raid on a class that can heal or tank and it was a guild group, the OP is right - I would expect to tank or heal should my class allow it and the group need it and would make sure I knew how to.

The other misconception from the OP is he expects classes that can heal or tank to do so but does not allow for people not knowing how to. Tanks and to a lesser extent healers control the group so should know what they’re doing. Not everyone whose class can tank or heal knows how to; if they normally play dps you can’t expect people to suddenly know how to tank or what their heal priorities are.

OP, I suggest you make a guild and dictate your tank-able-class/heal-able-class rules/expectations. You might find people willing to join you and follow those rules. You’ll never get what you want from pick up groups or from a guild you don’t control. Or become a tank and healer yourself so then you can fill those slots when needed.

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Or…
Or…
How about you roll a Druid so you can play whatever role you like and stop arrogantly demanding others to play the way you want?
At the end of the day we play games to have fun, not everyone finds healing or tanking fun and just because they play a flex class doesn’t mean they must be able to play the other roles (and I don’t know about you but I would rather wait for an actual tank and a proper healer rather than telling little TImmy who has never healed in his life that he must heal SM Cath or he’ll be kicked).

I’ll throw out a few heals with my enh shaman if the group desperately needs it sure, but don’t expect me to fill the role of main healer (unless you want to pay for my talent reset as well as some pieces of int gear).

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#nochanges :joy:

Ignorant dps players make it hard to have fun at tanking.

When i tank (i never join as dps really), I want to do a good job at tanking. Maintain aggro, debuff my enemies, make sure we only pull 1 pack etc. I want it to be a clean run.
There’s a whole generation of DPS that makes that just impossible.

Consider that im just lvl40 and the experience might change on the higher lvls.

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I’ve noticed this issue too, I had a DPS during a SM - Arm run pulling more than I could safely control and end up causing a wipe. When I said I would handle the pulls, I was informed that he would ‘take up the slack’ meaning he would run into mobs and pull them towards the group while we were in the middle of a Mana break. We managed to survive past Herod, but when we wiped all the mobs respawned, and he just left the party, leaving the healer (a guildmate of his) to apologise for him

It seems especially bad with Warriors that just got their Spinny axe from SM.

“Feck the Tank and Feck the Healer, I want to spin and see big dps numbers.” In terms of selfishness I would put them right up there with Rogues that demand all chests in a dungeon.

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Just dropped by to say. People actually level in prot spec?

I do and I like it. Though I’m mostly questing, visiting dungeons once for quests. May be will do more at higher levels.

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You don’t need to be prot to tank, just slap on a shield and you’re good to go.

Yes

And all i do is mass farm mobs (:

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Sure, give me a taunt and passive that gives me mana when I get healed and I’ll start tanking. Before that, no chance. It wouldn’t be a fun experience with all the ‘gogogo’ people who don’t give even one global for the tank to establish threat on the mob(s).

How is your rage generation?
Heard it can be a bit slow with the mitigation and all.

I kinda wanna focus on tanking but haven’t dared put any points in prot…
i know i dont “need” to spec prot to tank, but would be nice to get to know the spec/tree :blush: