[skreed]

You might try to tap your guild's pool of non-tanking Pallies/Druids/Warriors to work on their offspecs a bit. Maybe offer to pay their respec bills or donate all shards if they tank a couple of runs.

IMO... Humping trash mobs is the definition of tedium (I'd assume this is the case for most tanks). When your tank greatly outgears the content youre in (T5 tanks in most low and mid difficulty heroics), everything is a trash pull.

[Turmoil]

The sentiment of the original poster is very familiar to me.. from 6 months ago, when my priest was my main. I saw more and more of our guild tanks just not bothering to help - as many people have said, they just don't find it fun. As soon as they were out of a raid, they'd be either offline or PVP spec.. until next raid.

The solution I found? Well, there were two.
1. I made friends with one of our raid tanks. I chatted to him and we built up a friendship, and we'd go to heroics together to have fun with other people from the guild. He didn't mind, because he was having a good time - he knew I was a great healer, and I knew he was a great tank.
2. I finished levelling my warrior alt, and started to take it through heroics and kara. I was happy to tank anything and everything that I could handle, and not just because I needed the badges... but because I really enjoyed providing the service to my guildmates - it was the main reason I levelled the character. I know the frustration of spending hours waiting on a tank; it sucks, and if I can ease others' pain while having fun.. well, so much the better. I also know the pain of being pretty much guilt-tripped into playing a specific character (long, long ago, I played an enh shaman...), and it really feels like crap, so if I could help take the pressure off our tanks to play their tanks, I was happy to.

These days? My tank is my main, and usually I'm the one asking for heroic groups, so I can get to know people and have some mindless braindead fun chainpulling my way through something for the millionth time. And no, I don't need badges, or heroic gear, since I'm kitted from old & new badge kit, and my large stash of badges on my healer pays for all my gems. I admit, sometimes I'm just not in the mood, or the wrong person asks me, and then I will make my excuses.

It does frustrate me a little seeing other tanks in-guild just refusing, especially if they actually could use the badge loot from heroics, when there's at least another whole group's worth of good players online and looking for a tank. Especially when one of those tanks is the GM.. but that's a rant all its own.


My advice? Try to foster the friendship element within your guild. If you're a casual raiding guild, then this should be emphasised anyway. If you're a more hardcore raiding guild, then you'll probably have to accept it is the way it is. If your healers make friends with your tanks, not only will it help in raids (because that trust & interaction is a very precious synergy), but a solid healer/tank team is always successful in getting a heroic group up. Of course, that depends on your healers not being bored with heroics too..
I guess it just depends on the player's history as well. If they've been in the "can't find a tank" situation quite a lot themselves in the past, then they'll possibly be more sympathetic.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Turmoil her

Yes.

/gasp it got edited

[Turmoil]

Source: Ciderhelm Yes. /gasp it got edited

Not because of your reply Cider <3 I just realised that my mind had wandered while reading through the thread and I hadn't directly addressed the OP's point.


Yes, I am a girl. I think female players do tend to be more sympathetic.. thus the ultimate solution could be... only recruit female tanks!? You'd just better hope they have staggered cycles, or once a month you'd have a week of complete hell... not to mention all the girl-talk in the tanking channel!

[Ciderhelm]

Half the chat in our tank channels is girl-talk anyway, even when it's just males.

[Muggs]

Source: Ciderhelm Half the chat in our tank channels is girl-talk anyway, even when it's just males.

*picks up some ice* I swear, it's all Klimpen.

[Elyvern]

Source: Turmoil It does frustrate me a little seeing other tanks in-guild just refusing, especially if they actually could use the badge loot from heroics, when there's at least another whole group's worth of good players online and looking for a tank. Especially when one of those tanks is the GM.. but that's a rant all its own.

Precisely! After reading through the 2 concurrent threads about Heroic 5man burn-out, it seems that almost every contributor agrees that they are truly sick of heroics, they've done those to death, and the last thing they want to do is carry alts and lesser geared people through heroics.

If you are the kind of tank that has run everything possible, gotten every single upgrade you could get on your own, I salute you. However, I must play the devil's advocate.

I've mentioned this in a previous post: too often, I see raid tanks that only log on for 25man raids. When asked to tank a kara run or a heroic, they plead tiredness, boredom, yadada. But when I inspect them, all I see is sub-par raid loot - many of these inferior to badge gear. Tanks with virtually no expertise, tanks in t5 gear wearing a blue belt, blue trinket "because so-so 25man boss refuse to drop my loot".

I am an alt tank - I have my Gyro-Khorium Destroyer, my Tankatronic goggles, my Darkmoon Card: Vengeance, I have every tanking item I can get my hands on through badges and heroics, every gem slot socketted with epic gems. As an alt, I don't have the obligation to get all these items, because I can afford to slack. I don't tank cutting edge content, but a raid MT does. A Raid MT cannot be waiting for the RNG system to smile on him. He/she is obliged to get every single piece of upgrade that can be obtained via solo play - in fact those are the best, because you don't need to depend in 24 other people to get them.

I feel that being a main tank is a special calling, and those that are truly passionate about it understand the need to go beyond and above what is required of other classes. This includes running heroics whenever there are upgrades available. I'm exalted with almost every faction in outlands, I've done 'em all to death. (and this is my 2nd alt, mind you, I've gotten exalted with almost every faction on my other toons too) But when new badge gear come out, I would organise kara and heroic runs because by god, I am going to get those pieces even if it means clearing Kara another 5 times.

Source: Turmoil My advice? Try to foster the friendship element within your guild. If you're a casual raiding guild, then this should be emphasised anyway. If you're a more hardcore raiding guild, then you'll probably have to accept it is the way it is. If your healers make friends with your tanks, not only will it help in raids (because that trust & interaction is a very precious synergy), but a solid healer/tank team is always successful in getting a heroic group up. Of course, that depends on your healers not being bored with heroics too.. I guess it just depends on the player's history as well. If they've been in the "can't find a tank" situation quite a lot themselves in the past, then they'll possibly be more sympathetic.

Yes, I have been very fortunate in the sense that several of my guildies are very serious altaholics with alts good enough to raid BT/MH. My healer alt friend and I have our pick of dps for any heroic run we want. Even so, we've about run everything to death and gotten just about everything we wanted out of heroics.

But the table is totally reversed when I log on my dps toons. It's come to the point where if I want a run to happen, I *must* play my tank. It's depressing that I get to pick from the cream of the crop while I tank, but I am forced to PUG when I'm playing dps. Do I expect to be carried through? No, I don't - I always make sure my toons are on par or above what is needed for the content I am doing. I don't blame raid MTs for being reluctant to tank, but few people roll healer alts, fewer roll tank alts. And tank alts do get tired of the same content the way MTs do.

I am always grateful for the fact that I never have problems finding groups as a tank. And when I start feeling uppity about it, begging for groups on my dps toon reminds me again of how fortunate tanks have it sometimes.

To some tanks, I do say, get off your high horses, run some heroics with your guildies and get those badge upgrades.

Let the flames begin.

[Auron]

Source: Ringthane Yeah, what was he thinking, hoping people would help their guildmates? What kind of insanity is that? Sigh...

This post was the soul reason I registered and am replying to this thread. "Good" tanks that have their gear and know how to play are indeed hard to come by. However, if they don't want to run a 5-man because they don't need anything from that instance or they simply just don't want to, don't guilt them into going or try to make them feel bad, as if they're letting you down.

I pugged all my runs when I was gearing up. Do you think I always got decked out priests or mages or competent hunters who knew how to trap to run with me? No. If I did get geared/competent people, do you think they stayed when they saw my health or inspected me? No. I just had to keep trying and pull together groups that weren't optimal. I did what I had to do to get the gear I wanted.

I don't consider it bad form to deny my "services" to undergeared people. If they think I'm mean for not helping them out, tough s***. Pug your group like I did. It's not fun to pug a healer when you don't know if they're going to spam Lesser Healing Wave, Flash Heal, or Flash of Light on mobs that regularly hit for over 4k (ie Defenders in SP or Bog Lords in UB) or DPS in cat form until I get "low". It's not fun to pug DPS that might rotate between fireball and frostbolt "because it's fun" or takes 20 seconds to go up and sap a mob after you told them to do so. Take your lumps like I did. Fair is fair.

For all the tanks that say they do help undergeared people with 5-mans, all I can say is kudos to you and your giving soul. Excuse me while I run heroic MGT for a trinket that I actually need. Enjoy the repair bill on those badge legs!

P.S. Ring, If that's your warock on Sen'jin, nice Int gems =P

[Jatz]

Source: Ringthane Yeah, what was he thinking, hoping people would help their guildmates? What kind of insanity is that? Sigh...

If all he was doing was hoping for was some help from in guild you might have a point, but to me it sounds like he's trying to order people to "help". How many times have you ever logged in going "I wonder what thankless person I can give my time and money to today?", cause I'll tell you from my experience most of them are just that.

As has been said if I ever got told that I had to run 5 man's for new recruits it would be the last thing i ever heard from my guild, it's a game not a Job. I have no problem with charity and helping people gear up to come play in new content, but I will do it as I see fit not as some guild master who likely isn't a tank anyway thinks I should. The key to this whole thing is Fun. Without it why bother?

[Rethalius]

As burned out as i am on 5mans and heroics, if there is something i could need, or if i need more badges, ill grind them without stop.
I was burned out on heroics a month or two before blizzard released Magister's Terrace, but when it was released i must have gone there every day, most of the time with guildies but also a few pugs.
Mostly because i needed some of the new things but the fact that it was something new did help a lot!
In my experiance thou i wouldnt say its just tanks that can get burned out...
Again using the MGT example: a lot of my guilds melee dps really have good use for the shard of contemp, but everytime someone in guilds ask for a DPS to MGTheroic, they refuse to go just because they are bored of it aswell or they dont want to risk whiping

To be fair, we are now raiding 8/9BT and im again finding myself unable to go heroics, just because i dont enjoy myself in there anymore.
Mostly because it is ppl trying to gear up alts and i would be the only main there.
Recently thou, A LOT of ppl in my guild suddenly had tanking charaters, now from about 5 main charaters that tank to about 12 alt with gear to tank any heroic and kara.
These ppl ask me for advise on tanking and gear quite often and thats given me a reason not to imediatly log off after a 25 man raid.
They have become as capable as any other normal tank and they still enjoy doing heroics and kara a lot! (one of em wants his tank to be his main in WotLK now)
And also this allows me to go DPS on the weekends and do a kara like that
Thats about the only thing i do thou, 1 kara a week as dps to get badges, from wich i buy a gem and sell to pay for the weeks expenses
Plus is does help me stay online and be social with the guild.

Some ppl say the occasional drunken Kara or heroic is a good fun.
Personaly its a lot less fun when your the only one that isnt drunk
So if that happens, make sure you got a bottle of wodka next to you or youll just get annoyed at your own guildmembers :P


about the women tanks: we got one feral druid whos a women and she idd tanks a lot more! but even she has her limits and just cant be bothered some times althou she did do heroic slave pens for that seasonal boss a redicilous amount of times...PUG or guildies! (but i think she wanted to get that little pet)

But to the tanks who get bullied or guildtriped into doing heroics or kara id say this : "it is a game that you have to make enjoyable for yourself!"
my GM used to try and guildtrip me into going instances with his 101 alts
but when he finaly had his own tank he changed his mentality really fast (shattered halls heroic changes a man! ) , now he even defends me a bit if i decline to a 5man :P
There is always one tank/tankalt that wants to do an instance, if its not you, dont let other ppl make you feel bad about it.

So just keep it Fun!

(just so you know, i only do 5mans/heroics with the hot chick on our vent or the guy that pays for my epic gems)

[Horacio]

At the risk of repeating previous comments, this is fairly common to both tanks and healers. At times, tanking and healing feel like work(in a good way, like a job you love) and once you've been there/done that, there's little incentive to do it again.

Look around. The people that are lamenting the lack of tanks for off-night heroic Bot, are they mains that have run it 46 times as well? Or are they your raiding roguue's warlock alt?

I had the chance to go to SSC on my mage last week and fight Leo. It was infintely easier and more laid back than being there on my tank or healer.

Tanking the same old content is a grind. Your mitigation scales up but, yeah but that's not the main thing. Threat is and while DPS even half asleep is destroying mobs that give you crap for rage. In other words, you as a tank are working hard to generate threat with less resources while your DPS is going apeshit on mobs and expecting your performance to scale like thiers. If you have an ounce of pride, you're not going to ask em to back off...you're going to use every trick you can think of.

Healers experience the same thing....because there is more threat bouncing, they have to stay alert. As a druid, I don't have a rez for the dumbass that yanks and often, I'm not with a leet tank anyhow and at times, I'm running for my life.

But because the tank/healer dynamic is so critical and so underplayed....especially at the alt level (how many of us have a 'farming' alt or a 'fun' alt?) You get asked by alts that want your main and can't take you're alt because they are all DPS.....stop being a selfish prick and help gear thier alt. Sure, they'll reciprocate, right after this....oh snap, I have to wash the cat, thanks for the run!

Heh...and when you try to maintain two main characters....a healer AND a Tank....forget it. Your life is no longer your own. Even if you decide you could stand to pick up some rep or an off set item on one, the other is always needed.

Eh, best you can hope for is to have good friends who are understanding and are worth playing with even if you aren't advancing your character. People you trust to help you when you need it in return. And remember, when the expansion is released, you'll be in all the good groups and a commodity in demand to see fresh content and take shit down.

[Muggs]

Heh, so, my new tactic is I've started "tradeing" runs for tanking. I have a alt I want to gear, but she never gets invited cause everyone wants my tank, so, I made a deal. You take my mage into Kara Saturday, I tank for you in ZA on Sunday x)

[Cynocide]

In my honest opinion, tanks are the one class that has the highest gquit/change spec/play less of any other class. This has to do with what everyone is talking about. Don't require your tanks to help in their off time. It is not their responsibility unless it's a scheduled raid. If they wish to help, that's their sole decision, not yours. You don't pay for their account, they do. Let them have some fun.

[minrog]

I was a raiding OT pre-tbc with 95% attendance in the raids. I ran 4 or 5 nights a week for 6 hours and my other time was spent farming to get mats/enchants/repairs. Post-TBC I'm the guild's MT and I have 100% attendance on 4 or 5 nights a week, though we have cut down to 4.5 or 5 hours for our times. If my GM told me that I had to carry a bunch of alts and re-rolls through 5 mans (hey it's only 2 wasted hours a day!) I would tell him to fuck off.

I firmly believe in the "Nothing for nothing" philosophy. Night before last I took my GM through ZG with no possibility for personal gain just so he'd have a chance at a tiger mount. He's helped me time and again over the last 3 years and I thought it would be nice to return the favor.

It's not my job to fix other people's characters and make them not suck. The quality players find a path to success and the others crap out and honestly you guys should be very cautious about dumping useless jobs on your solid MT's/OT's. You might find that they end up becoming Arms/Fury Warriors because they burnt out on having to log in every night to start their 5-man shift.

[Gorrack]

Source: 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.

The reason I am a Main Raid tank, Raid Leader, and Guild leader is because I perfected being the heroic tank, got my stuff straight with multi mob tanking and have run these zones on regular mode for rep and items, enough to get exalted, AND THEN did them enough to get exalted probably twice over taking people through them that needed stuff. Its enough to make my eyes bleed seeing heroic SL again, but that wouldnt matter if they were bleeding because I could probably do the flippin thing blindfolded.

As a tank I did Kara the right way, I geared up as best i could with regular dungeon blues, and rep rewards before I set foot in there. I didnt have a guild group drag me through it and get geared by osmosis. I fought my ass of for every drop that i did manage to get, wich wasnt many. Thank God for Badge gear. My raiders were running full epics while I was still tanking stuff in blues and rep epics.

I agree, I am pretty much burnt out on taking the lead as a tank, Guild has about 4 or 5 tanks, yet the ones that need work arent picking up the slack, so the ones who are tried and true get stuck holding the bag. Lately we have had a couple of alts that are willing to take up the role of Tank. But all in all, it seems liek a consensus here, Most tanks are flippin burnt out, and to require them to do the same BS for idiots that need to be carried is downright insulting.

Making your main raid tanks offer their time is only going to result in you having to recruit new tanks because these ones just flipped you the bird.

[Radhja]

Fresh 70s shouldn't expect others to do the dirty work for them. It takes a fair amount of effort to break the barrier between all-greens and all-blues, not to mention the all-purps. I have a close irl friend that just turned 70, and she wants me to run her thru Karazhan immediately. In turn, I told her to keep working instances until she has "mostly-blues". After dealing with her QQ-fest that immediately followed, I simply explained to her that everyone has to go through it, and as a reward for her diligence, I would try to squeeze her in as my personal OT on the next Kara run I did. Reluctantly, she conceded the point and has started grinding her gear...

...like everyone else.

[Bodasafa]

I am one of the Main Tanks in my guild for 25 man content. Were at Kara/Gruul/Mag on farm, 4/6 ZA, 5/6 SSC, VR in TK, Rage in Hyjal.

That all happened just this year in the past 6 months. Before that from the moment TBC dropped, I hit the ground running. I ran every instance a million times over and became exualted with all the major factions. I put in my time grinding the rep and badges. I have every badge gear peice that a tank could want. Im to the point where my only upgrades come from 25 man instance drops and epic gems. I theroretically could run SSC unbuffed based on the Effective Health Zone Minimims page here on tankspot.

And even before TBC, I worked hard for gear and made it to ZG before the expansion.

The shit that really kills me are the new players that dont even know what UBRS means. They power lvl thru TBC to 70 and say here I am! Im ready for Kara! They want to just bypass grinding and learning the 5 man instances on regular and not grind rep. This is the guy whos got epic shoulders from Kara and a crappy friendly shoulder enchant from aldor/scryers.

Screw that. I pretty much only log on to raid 25 mans and run my ZA crew once a week. I like the challange of new or hard content, keeps me awake! Ive seen x10 ppls share of 5 mans/heroics/kara, Im done.

Lucky me Im in a guild that dosent ask ppl to do anything they dont want to do.

If your having problems getting runs going that are "lowbie" in comparaison to where your guilds progression actually lies then you should pug that shit. Or make a effort to get a group of ppl together in the guild, like your tanks did a long time ago.

Put the time in and you will be respected.

Thats probably the biggest gripe anyone has in this game. When ppl are getting the "easy" way up and not putting the time in like we did for so long.

[Gromblee]

I agree with everything already said......and this is comming from one of the undergeared "blues and rep gear" tanks that would like to do heroics. I either get inspected and turned down or get a absolute nightmare group that I know is gunna be a wipefest. I actually don't mind the repair bills too much only about 2.5 gold a death if the group is fun and actually trying to complete the content. Having only starated about a year ago it has been a year of rude surprises and steep learnig curves. This site has helped me a lot with multi mob tanking. There are young tanks out there to do content. I am what I consider early Kara capable have yet to take Moroes down yet but I think we were light on DPS as we went to the 4th garote.

[Haltira]

Source: Ringthane Yeah, what was he thinking, hoping people would help their guildmates? What kind of insanity is that? Sigh...

Only problem this "help" sounds like it is going very 1 way only. Recruit people that can function at your desired raiding level. It is NOT the job of your Main guild tanks to drag undergeared new recruits thru Kara/ZA you name it.

This OP post sounds more of a recruitment issue than anything else, STOP recruiting undergeared players and you will NOT have this problem.

I can only speak out of a personal point of view but personally i only do heroics kara etc very very rarely and when it happens it is with a select few people. Already having a couple stacks of BoJ in my bank and nothing to buy with it outside of Epic gems for the AH gets old after a while

[Divinorum]

Quite simply as well, as a warrior with everything in the game for tanking up to M'uru loot, running 5mans is more work then running a 25man. I avoid so much, and take so little damage that I'm constantly rage starved and getting pissed off that I don't have 1600 tps. Don't ask a geared warrior to run anything other then what he's geared for, it's a chore, not a joy.

Thanks Blizz