The current state of tanks and their ability to self sustain

Community General Discussion
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So I have a question for you all.
How do you feel about the current state of tanks, specifically their ability to self sustain?

My personal opinion?
In short, it’s too much, and I feel it should either dialed back a lot or outright removed for the most part. And this is coming from a long time main tank.

Let me explain.

While I do enjoy being borderline immortal, it does feel wrong and not healthy for the role of tanking. I would much rather go back to basics where tanking means mitigating damage rather than healing it.
High self healing used to be a niche reserved mainly for Blood DK, but over the years they added more and more to the other tanks as well. We are now in a situation where even warriors have high self sustain, where historically this was unheard of.

So, they heal a lot, whats the big deal?
When you have a role that can self sustain this much while also dishing out a considerable amount of damage, you breed a “one man army” mentality where you don’t really need the rest of your group. The only difference becomes how long it takes to kill things.
There is no more healer/tank synergy as they can for the most part ignore you.
For dps it’s a double edged sword as on one hand the tank protects you from being attacked, but on the other risk getting killed by pulling too much cause they forget or don’t care that while they can survive the dps and healer can’t.
The tank is no longer there to protect, it’s there for you to keep up with.
With the increase of AoE and random target abilities on mobs in Dragonflight, this is even a bigger issue than before.

With more focus on mitigation instead of healing, tanks would still be able to endure a lot, but eventually they would need assistance so they can’t go on alone indefinitely.

I also think there should be a massive nerf to AoE damage output of tanks, there is no reason for them to deal as much or more AoE damage than dps players, but that is a whole other conversation. Single target is fine though I feel.

Anyways, that is my 2 cents on something that has been on my mind for a very long time now, and I am curious, what do you think?

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I like the tank as immortal, then I can play healer nobody will know I am new at this! Good job me.

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Back in WotLK when I was more active as a resto Druid, I hated warrior tanks. I. Hated. Healing them. Paladin was a dream :rofl: I started levelling one now and in dungeons you can solo bosses and trash at any lvl basically, or the heal can go afk and you wouldn’t notice. It’s not right at all and feels weird.

This can be related to mythic concept where the only thing matters is “gotta go fast, can’t stop won’t stop”. It feels rushed.

But I’m only a casual muppet, I don’t intend to go hardcore, however levelling in dungeons feel like a sprint to keep up with ultra geared twinkers and suicidal freaks.

All my respect to people who main healer specs :saluting_face:

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I too would wish tanks were more about survival rather than leeching all that small dmg taken, but then I remember how squishy my tanks were in BfA and how painful it was to heal some of them. :sweat_smile:

Then, also add some dps are basically a damage magnet, so if this was to go through, you’d oom by the end of every pull from trying to keep the whole group alive at once while doing zero damage. Now, this sort of gameplay is what Classic is about, but Retail is much more hasty than that. If people were to wait for me after every pull to regain my mana we’d have difficulty timing even 15s, let alone 20+ I think.

I don’t even know if there’s a healthy compromise…

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Every week there is at least one post about how people wait for tanks because there isnt enough od them, and then we have post asking for nerf xd .

Yea go ahead, nerf tanks self sustain, so people cant play it in open world either , then completly remove all their defensives as well.

Also when u look at DK vs warr, as your comparsion, its kinda weird .
Back in the day DK was “self heal” tank, now there is also VDH . Warr does heal a lot and can sustain on its own, but its far from that . If u look closely at meters/logs, war actualy doesnt heal that much. They absorb half of dmg which is in “heal” category .
If u look at pure heals only then its not that crazy

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Well blizzard seems to just love extremes. 9.0 was the horrible kite meta that made me hate even the thought of doing keys as any role. Now they’re just soloing it. Fun!

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thats nonsense spoken only by people who play with very good tank .

take your average blood dk tank in low key pugs and you will have to spam heal them .

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Hm maybe I was unclear in what I meant.

I would not remove self sustain and leave the rest as is, it would need to be accompanied with a rather large mitigation buff. That way you would still survive way more than any other spec, but would not be able to live forever on your own. So more defensives, not less, just less healing.

It is true that there is a huge gap between DK and Warrior when it comes to pure healing, but the end result is the same, they do not need a healer if played at any reasonable level. DK takes more damage but in turn heals for more, while Warr heals for less but also takes a lot less damage.

As for absorbs, I am fine with that cause it does not bring you back up, so unless you have 100% absorb at all times you will need assistance at some point.

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Amen.
This is so true it hurts. I feel like as a healer, I’m only there to heal myself and the dps who struggle to keep pace with the tanks and have little to no self-heals.

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Tanks now work like in legion, which was the best expansion for tanking and should stay that way.

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I love DF tank design :smiley:
Blizzard needs to keep it this way cause right now tanking is lot of fun for me

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You have to keep in mind that is just start of expansion and “high dmg” content isn’t unlocked yet. I didn’t played many dungeons yet but i doubt tank will able too alive few good hits in short time.
Btw. 2nd thing worth considering is that if tank is whole time depended on healer, is boring.

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Eh I don’t know, if we look back at SL and KSM level then only season 1 was kinda rough on tanks and we had the whole kite meta. By the time we hit season 4 I could more or less forget about tanks (except warriors).
It’s always been like that though, as the expansion goes on, the tanks get stronger. In DF it feels like the starting point is is higher so I wonder what the end will look like. We will see how it pans out soon if the pattern repeats.

Depending on a healer is in my mind how it should be, and your job is to try to reduce the healing needed, not do it yourself. But again, that is just my personal opinion.

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It was a bit more nuanced in Classic and BC. Point is, it can be!

As a resto druid main, I made sure to have enough spirit to mostly keep up. For the odd drainage, I’d have Innervate, other healers their own tools.
I did occasionally weave in damage, but it was expensive, pretty much useless (1-5% of party), and due to the five second rule, definitely reduce my regeneration. Fine during a snoozefest, but otherwise not worth it.
(Also, using any damage spell, even Healing Touch would pop me out of tree, reducing healing quite a bit. Even in WLK, “restoration spells only”.)

If the tank pulled sensibly (one pack by default), I’d basically float at full mana and he could just keep going at this rate. Between pulls, some people would sit down to drink, which enabled the tank to build threat. Including pallies, who would otherwise be thirstier than a warlock. At best, I could afford innervating someone with mana.

Same for dps. By finishing the pack with a bit of wanding, they’d need to drink less and do an extra pack per drink.

Ultimately, the pace was roughly the same, and it certainly felt more controlled and safe. You could afford going faster as you’d gear up, but at one point it’d stop.

That aside, the main risk wasn’t just taking too much damage, but actual CC and debuffs. If I am (was, once) alternating between sitting in a five second stun and a six second silence taking 50% of my health as well, then random party members (including healer) will get charged, interrupted, spell locked and getting a 50% healing debuff on themselves and most inevitably splat.

Being able to pull so many packs sounds like good old LFR to me, lots of things happening but none of them matter, really. Bits of damage, adds up, but nothing dangerous.

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Self sustain is absolutely needed in higher difficulties such as m+ so in my eyes that doesn’t need a nerf. But it’s ridiculous that i basically outdamage nearly all dps in aoe and sometimes even single target as a prot warrior. Sure i am overgeared right now (371) compared to a lot of other people but i do find it weird

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True, it is needed as things exist today, but it doesn’t have to be.

I just feel it would make more sense to shift it over and boost over all mitigation and let the healer actually take care of the healing.

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post edited.

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A tank bieing able to solo an entire dungeon?
Sounds about right, innit? :rofl:

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And they just buffed it - or was it before? :slight_smile:
Anyway, my old wish may come true after all: dungeons to have a solo mode :joy:
But seriously, I totally enjoy doing dungeons just enough below so that there is still a fight without oneshots, but possible. Talking WLK, 60 dungeons with a 70-72 char, or 70 dungeons, at some point heroics with an 80 char. (Prot pally can handle them, I remember priests having more trouble. Or my partner was intentionally creating a sense of risk. :laughing:)

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I do love how I did Halls of Infusion m0 yesterday and the BDK tank practically solo’d all 4 bosses.

He also outdpst all off the DPSers in AOE and ST situations by pressing his 2-3 button DPS rotation.
He quadruppled the healing done from our healer, fair enough it was a disco priest but still…