[Nez]

I became one of "those" tanks. When I was working up my tank, I spent so much time in those 5 mans grinding rep to get in heroics ( when you had to :P ) that going back in now is just plain boring and annoying. Its usually half geared alts that are screwing around because they know they had a good tank, not paying attention to threat so I end up chasing mobs all over until I just start letting the mobs eat them. haha Plus with spending 4+ hours 5 nights a week tanking in 25 man raids, running 5 mans hold zero interest to me. And its nice to just screw around and relax for once to mine or farm greds etc. Get the alt non-raid tanks to do it IMO. I only do it for close friends or if its a geared group that is just going to blow up the place.

[thedrawrf]

I understand your tanks 100%...Tanking Kara, tanking 5 mans, tanking ancient content like that....Isn't fun. And when the group or raid decides to start f'ing around, who dies? The tank! Who feels like they suck, and it must be their fault? The tank! ect ect ect

[geros]

Source: Kazeyonoma O_o

exactly!

[Joanadark]

There is no real shortage of tanks. Only tanks for bad PuGs. So unless Blizzard can hotfix stupidity, there will always be a shortage of tanks because any tank worth a damn won't go near a random PuG.

Given assurance of a group that can clear the heroic/10-man with ease, I actually can get over sickness of the instance and enjoy it as an opportunity to kick back a little, have some fun, and make some money and shards for a change.

But most of the time it's not an undergeared player or two and the rest of the group composed of solid, reliable DPS and healers up to the tank's gear level, it's 4 terribly geared power-leveled alts that want you, the tank, to carry them
It isn't that running instances isn't fun, CARRYING people isn't fun.

Sometimes there's nothing more enjoyable than running some obscenely late-night drunken kara or heroic and just blowing stuff up in rediculous ways to see if you can.

But ask me to have to concentrate on trivial stuff because I have a healer alt in remnants of t2 responsible for keeping me alive....you'll find me less than enthusiastic.

If you can't pull your weight, or if the rest of your group can't pull their weight, without having to be told to, then don't expect any tank to want to burden themself with getting you free hand-outs.

[Gehn]

Source: Joanadark There is no real shortage of tanks. Only tanks for bad PuGs. So unless Blizzard can hotfix stupidity, there will always be a shortage of tanks because any tank worth a damn won't go near a random PuG. Given assurance of a group that can clear the heroic/10-man with ease, I actually can get over sickness of the instance and enjoy it as an opportunity to kick back a little, have some fun, and make some money and shards for a change. But most of the time it's not an undergeared player or two and the rest of the group composed of solid, reliable DPS and healers up to the tank's gear level, it's 4 terribly geared power-leveled alts that want you, the tank, to carry them It isn't that running instances isn't fun, CARRYING people isn't fun. Sometimes there's nothing more enjoyable than running some obscenely late-night drunken kara or heroic and just blowing stuff up in rediculous ways to see if you can. But ask me to have to concentrate on trivial stuff because I have a healer alt in remnants of t2 responsible for keeping me alive....you'll find me less than enthusiastic. If you can't pull your weight, or if the rest of your group can't pull their weight, without having to be told to, then don't expect any tank to want to burden themself with getting you free hand-outs.

Truly. Half of the reason I switched servers was this. A good offer and the guild doing Kara dies w/o the MT. As everyone else is alting about, find an alt tank.

[TomHuxley]

I've run into a bit of 5-man burnout myself. I ground my way through them, often with pugs or RL friends. I'll still run Kara or other "raid-lite" instances to gear up guildies (I do every week, both ZA and Kara) and so far I find them enjoyable and the badges are still quite nice. While I certainly do run heroics, they are quite a drag at this point, so I mostly do them either a) as a favor to someone in the guild, or b) with an OP guild run for badges and/or specific loot (e.g. MgT).

I really like to help out guild members, and there are lots of ways to do so (loans, donated materials, instance runs, etc) but I barely have enough time to earn gold for repairs and consumables as it is, let alone PvP. If a guild told me I "had" to do a certain number of heroics every week I'd /gquit as fast as my fingers could type it.

[rocket808]

I personally dont mind anything that the players come and put effort in. as you say, when we as tanks are helping pull the people through the instance as top dps (wtf) - this is when i get annoyed.

when the group is one that are testing my threat skills (with advanced notice), where i can test certain reaction times, or things that i wont do in a 25 man which could wipe a raid, i do still enjoy it.

[Elyvern]

What I found disturbing was - back when the ZA patch was released, there were some awesome badge gear such as Brooch of Deftness and Bracers of Ancient Phalanx that were better than gear that dropped in TK/SSC. Yet only a few of our tanks actively farmed badges (kara & heroics) outside of regular raids to buy those pieces. The rest continued to depend on raid drops for their gear.

Personally, I'm a believer that a good heroic tank can easily become a good raid tank, but not vice versa. Simply put, most raid encounters don't require the kind of control and situational awareness that a difficult heroic requires. So running heroics is a great way keeps your skills and reflexes sharp. Furthermore, a tank should always attempt to get the best gear he/she can obtain at that point in time. If it's crafted or badge gear, all the better, because now you don't have to depend on 25man to get upgrades.

Burn out or not, I find it hard to justify not running these zones when there are raid tanks that can obviously use badge upgrades but aren't out there running heroics and getting badges to buy them.

[Corise]

As said before, a good rapport with the tank from these new members is probably the best way to get assistance from your well geared tank. Usually the only thing a tank gets from running five mans are a few badges and a repair bill (and very rarely a thanks). You might think badges might be nice, but high end raiding can now get you a lot of badges, I have almost two stacks of badges with that just sit in the bank.

Also you mention nothing of your other classes, is it only your well geared tanks that are not helping? Is the person in need of help bringing three other well geared main raiders to help with this instance? Or are you expecting the tanks to gear this new person with three other alts?

Lastly I would like to say, with the advent of season three pvp gear made available for cheaper, and season two gear made available for mere honor, I find it hard to believe that these people NEED Kara and and five man items to make them competitive in a pve setting. Sure PVP gear is certainly not the best for PVE, but it is significantly on par with anything from what you want your tanks to run.

My advice, have the people you recruit spend their time doing BG's with your main tank, your tanks may enjoy the PVP and build a good relationship with them, as well as get honor for your recruits to buy some decent gear.

[Arrivan]

Source: Joanadark There is no real shortage of tanks. Only tanks for bad PuGs. So unless Blizzard can hotfix stupidity, there will always be a shortage of tanks because any tank worth a damn won't go near a random PuG. Given assurance of a group that can clear the heroic/10-man with ease, I actually can get over sickness of the instance and enjoy it as an opportunity to kick back a little, have some fun, and make some money and shards for a change. But most of the time it's not an undergeared player or two and the rest of the group composed of solid, reliable DPS and healers up to the tank's gear level, it's 4 terribly geared power-leveled alts that want you, the tank, to carry them It isn't that running instances isn't fun, CARRYING people isn't fun. Sometimes there's nothing more enjoyable than running some obscenely late-night drunken kara or heroic and just blowing stuff up in rediculous ways to see if you can. But ask me to have to concentrate on trivial stuff because I have a healer alt in remnants of t2 responsible for keeping me alive....you'll find me less than enthusiastic. If you can't pull your weight, or if the rest of your group can't pull their weight, without having to be told to, then don't expect any tank to want to burden themself with getting you free hand-outs.

Big fat QFT to this. This is why I no longer tank for anyone other than guildies, and even then I don't tank much these days. My reason is actually twofold, the first has already been described in great detail in this thread and the second is that since I'm usually Fury spec I can't stand tanking anything, even a normal 5 man, as Fury any more because my threat blows chunks and I have an annoying tendency to blame myself for things like losing aggro. Even if I spec Prot I still don't want to deal with the stress of a wipefest in content I've pugged to exalted and moved beyond. I don't even do that many pugs on my holy paladin alt any more either.

[bludwork]

As a guild leader, you should stop recruiting undergeared people.

[Krashtork]

Source: bludwork As a guild leader, you should stop recruiting undergeared people.

This.

[protonly]

The problem is that it becomes something of a chore instead of fun. And with "power-levelers" they usually don't want to do things the "proper" way but just want to "aoe spam" things to get done quicker...so you end up having to work your ass off to avoid repair bills for yourself. Heroics have always been a pain in the ass as it is, dealing with morons or *having* to tank/heal/whatever one when you don't really want to just makes it worse.

It's exactly why my retired paladin *only* tanks/heals (or logs on for) 25 man progression nights and why the best tank I know just retired his war for his lvl 50 lock. I'd rather go screw around in BRD or scholo/strat and have fun that feel obligated to "tank" this or "heal" that.

[gardek]

My guild brought up an issue with me at one point, that I only showed up for raids, and didn't run people through 5 mans...

I told them that I'm not in the business of running people through anything. I'm here to play the game at my level. I've been exalted with every 5 man for about a year now, and back when I needed to do those instances, I did them. With similarly geared players.

There is no volunteering or charity in this. Running undergeared players through instances which are tiers beneath what my gear level is at, and doing this for 2 hours and not getting a damn thing out of it? That is simply not one of my responsibilities to the guild.


The last Kara I ran was 4 months ago, and it took 3.5 hours (at this point I'm in Tier 5/6). The reason it took so long is because half the raids was on alts, or Friend & Family rank. I've not stepped into Kara since, and intend to keep it this way.

[loquatious]

I suppose if the guild shows strong support for 5 mans like top healers & dps going on the 5 mans its harder to complain about being a pack mule for undergeared alts. Is that often the case? Is it raid geared mains who need the tank or alts / new members?

[sammich]

The OP and anyone here who agrees with him are just idiot mooches that shouldn't be in guilds in the first place. Tanks like any class play for fun, their own enjoyment, otherwise playing becomes a job and no one pays $15 a month to go to work everynight on wow. If you are really THAT lazy have your guild recruit more tanks. Expecting your Black Temple MT to come tank any heroics is ridiculous, they already tank every 25-man raiding instance for the guild.

God knows everyone has to run every instance a couple dozen times to get all the drops they want. Do you really think tanks want to continue running content they can get no upgrades from? Would you do that on your dps? The answer is NO, you run a different instance.

Find a pug or create your own alt tank you lazy bastards. My last guild mooched off me for every little thing, leadership relyed on me so heavily to gear up the undergeared little sh!ts they were recruiting, only to have them leave as soon as they got gear. A vicious cycle that lasted indefinitely.

Before I left I was a hero, after I left they called me a "traitor" treated me like crap and banned me from the guild. 6 months of my life wasted on such dumb a$$holes in this game. I refuse to step foot into Kara anymore, that place is a noob magnet, so are all T4 dungeons, just to a lesser extent.

Final advice: Play this game for yourself, everyone else can go to hell.

[Calamity]

I really relate to this too. I hit the brick wall a while back. For me the biggest issue was hitting the point where nothing is new.

Nothing too look forward to. Even new areas really offer nothing new.

You reach a point where you're practised enough that the 5 mans offer no challenge anymore. in fact the only measure of difficulty becomes how much you have to "fight your
group."

Tanking a skilled group becomes boring and mundane, been there done that, kind of thing. While conversely undergeared/underexperienced runs only provide irritation.
(I understand that people need to learn/practice and you can't expect everyone to come in on an equal footing ,if you have played for several years,) but my take on that is :
you should be learning encounters as a group. Really tanking 'starter 70' instances should be done by people who need to be there. Kara and such shouldn't be relying on
BT level tanks. Simply put I have done all that stuff so freaking many times, I have absolutely no desire to do it again.

For those who think I have a duty to tank for them, pay my fee, and pay me a wage, and if it is high enough I will. I do agree with the poster above, I will help any who
helped me along the way, and if I like them enough, maybe even a friend or 2 of theirs.Also I helped my friends,guildees etc. this probably helped burn me out, it adds up to a lot of
extra runs. It was to the point where by the time my toon was done loading in I would have more tells than I could answer asking/begging me to run instances I had run to death,
which only offered me the prospect of higher repair bills, and a lack of time to farm my own mats, and get ready for my raid. People forget I have already run those instances
several times when I geared up ( with no higher toons to help, cus there were none,) and have run them again, and again for other people. it has to stop at some point, but it won't
until you put your foot down.

The so called tank shortage adds into "geared tank burnout" by funnelling requests toward highly geared players, and away from 'adequately geared/appropriately
progressed' newer tanks.

I will anecdotally support this.

I have a rogue alt. Actually it was in fact intended to be my main, oh so long ago, and was created before my warrior. I first started WoW right after release, on a
PvE server because a RL friend had started there. Didnt like it much, his computer died shortly after x-mas. I found out some friends I had gamed with were playing
on a PvP server, so I moved over. I started my rogue, but found they had no one tanking, so I rolled my warrior to fill that hole. I instantly loved it(well, after
we hit content you actually tank.)Later merged with a couple larger long standing guilds to tackle the larger content.
So the rogue sat at level 11 literally for years, never quite had time to play it.

After hitting a plateau with my warrior, where I enjoyed working on unconquered content (late SSC and TK at that point,) but felt burned out doing 5 man stuff, I
dusted off my rogue and started playing it. It was a huge change of pace. Don't get me wrong, the first time through the content tanking it will always
be my fondest memories from that era, but man you have way less to worry about. Tanking is more fun , when oyu are pushing ahead, but treading water as a tank sucks --must be that heavy plate armor!

Anyway after hitting outlands and doing runs there, I ran into your usual assortment of groups, and tanks. some good,some bad, some ugly. but one thing I did notice
was groups being way pickier on the level of gear expected from tanks. I had healers turn away tanks that were vastly geared better than my warrior had been on
the same content, and had run without much issue at all. They would then bitch in chat about the 'Tank Shortage' while we waited on finding replacements.som even called me a noob when I said the tank was fine!! I pointed out his stats, ya know health armor etc. And that it was better than I had used, and that content had been nerfed hard since then, but they don't want to play through, they want to ride through, on your back.

It was at this time that I realised I wasn't really having fun anymore. I actually became one of those "only log on for 25 man" tanks. I would only log on
to farm what ever I needed, and then do the raid. I was still 100% prepared, and 100% commited to the raid, but that was all I did. I found I need to be challenged
in order for wow to hold my interest. Older content doesn't provide any positive challenge anymore.And every nerf to raid difficulty hurts, as that was all I had to
look forward to.

Currently I am on hiatus. Maybe a break will help, but right now I am thinking, I will come back and see if I like WotLK, and if not
I will probably stop completely. Without a new challenge the game has lost its shine,for me. Actually I think all MMO's have lost that sparkle for me, I think once you and your guild/regular group get "good" at working together all these games become "too easy." When it gets easy, it stops being fun for the tank.

[Gigeer]

Haha, i have to agree with most of the replies here. And unfortunetely I was a "good" tank, and ran a lot of my undergeared guildies through heroics, and kara. Me and a Pally tank, we are the 2 main tanks in our guild, and we ran a lot of people through 5 mans, heroics, kara, even after we got tired of those instances. We got nothing out of it, just a repair bill, but we were "good" guys, and helped our guildies.

And this is the result we got:
Now we have a lot of semi geared people, that ran heroics and kara with good tanks, that always stayed far away on threat, so they could go all out all the time, without worrying about anything. The know shit about rotations, shit about slowing down dps, shit about CC. When we got to gruul's teh 1st time, no one could squeeze the needed dps, cause every single dps was lazy and didnt know how to be a sharp player. There are a few ways to be a sharp player. Wiping. PUGing, and playing with bad tanks. IMO no one should even think about running ppl through anything ( except if it's your brother, GF or something like that...), cause otherise you are just raising bad players.

[Kazeyonoma]

Source: Gigeer Haha, i have to agree with most of the replies here. And unfortunetely I was a "good" tank, and ran a lot of my undergeared guildies through heroics, and kara. Me and a Pally tank, we are the 2 main tanks in our guild, and we ran a lot of people through 5 mans, heroics, kara, even after we got tired of those instances. We got nothing out of it, just a repair bill, but we were "good" guys, and helped our guildies. And this is the result we got: Now we have a lot of semi geared people, that ran heroics and kara with good tanks, that always stayed far away on threat, so they could go all out all the time, without worrying about anything. The know shit about rotations, shit about slowing down dps, shit about CC. When we got to gruul's teh 1st time, no one could squeeze the needed dps, cause every single dps was lazy and didnt know how to be a sharp player. There are a few ways to be a sharp player. Wiping. PUGing, and playing with bad tanks. IMO no one should even think about running ppl through anything ( except if it's your brother, GF or something like that...), cause otherise you are just raising bad players.

Sea otter approves this post. Carrying people, makes people never learn to play correctly, they are... carried.

[Raginbull]

I can't answer this for the rest of the people out there, but I can discuss it coming from my own experience. From the time I hit 70, I spend 4 months chain-running every heroic and karazhan I could get my hands on. I basically lived in instances, and always wanted to pug in new people to see if I was good enough to cover for them or to hold up aggro against them (in good or bad settings, of course). I would try my hardest to get through every instance with as little CC as possible to teach myself how to best react to certain situations and how to best deal with multi-target aggro and overcoming bad players.

All this to say: I cannot take it anymore. If I'm in a heroic instance now, I want to be in it with the people I ran with while learning it. I don't want to even have the opportunity to say "LAWL I OUT-DAMAGED THE ROGUE" because that's not fun. It means that I was doing my best, and watching out for people who just wanted to carry on and do their own thing, and I'm tired of it. I left a guild who took multiple nights on kara after months of having it on farm for another guild who fully cleared BT in 3 weeks start to finish. I have been spoiled by playing with good players in equivalent gear to my own, and I just don't want to worry about dealing with players who don't even know how to spam the 2 buttons they have to hit to do well anymore.

With me, it's not that tanks are in short supply, it's that good tanks get tired of bad players. Yes, I sound like everyone else in the thread, but there might be a reason for this. We get scrutinized more than anyone else in the instance, we're the only ones who don't get any room to screw up, and we're the first ones to receive blame regardless of whose fault it was that something went wrong. I would rather off-tank or devaspam in fury gear than have to MT with a group of sub-par players again, and every time I find myself running alts through things where there are good tank alts/newbies available, I cringe.

To the OP, I think that you hit a nerve with the community without intending to, because you brought up a subject that the majority of the people here are all too familiar with. We aren't some pack-mules that you can just send along our way with no incentive, hoping that we can just carry an instance group without any whining or objections. Please, have one of the players who needs a tank find one on his/her own, or better yet, roll one up and see what it's like to do it: a love/hate relationship that more often than not ends in frustration and irritation until you learn it, and a position that you just can't force yourself to give up because it's too much a thrill when it does go well.