Tank like a girl

This morning, as I was skimming through my Twitter timeline, I stumbled over Spinks posting about Blizzard’s new plan to get more tanks to use LFD: Call to Arms.

What a terrible idea. My immediate reaction to this on Twitter was the following summary: a terrible idea that won’t fix anything, aggravates healer and DPS players, and will breed terribad tanks.

I think we all agree that there’s a dearth of tanks using the LFD tool. I haven’t used it since WotLK, at least not on Kadomi. The reasons for this are manifold. I believe there are generally less tanks available than any other role, because it’s not as popular. The general consensus in most groups seems to be that tanks have to know every single pull, take responsibility for the run, and lead the group. Not everyone enjoys this, so there are less tanks. Add to this that LFD in WotLK created a new breed of player, who want to rush through instances at their own fast pace, and who are quick to point fingers at tank or healer after every wipe. Cataclysm heroics take practice, time and patience, and that’s all not factors you usually find in a PUG. In short, tanking can be extremely stressful.

If other tanks are like me, they did guild groups until they had sufficient raid gear, and just do the daily with guild groups. That’s my comfort zone. I know people won’t be stupid, will let me mark at my own pace, pull off CC flawlessly, are a blast to play with.

In comes Call to Arms, and the temptation of some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. Well, let me be pissed off for everyone else. Healers have an equally unthankful job, but there’s more of them than tanks. DPS are numerous, and are punished with long queue times. So in order to get a shorter queue, everyone has to watch tanks get rewards like that? Aggravating.

Also, that is assuming that tanks want gold, gems (dirt cheap on my server for the most part), flasks and pets/mounts. Well, I am sorry, if I want those mounts, I’ll just as well solo-farm them, getting lots of gold out of it for less time spent in a dungeon. For me, the biggest deal-breaker is that you have to solo-queue to qualify. I am sorry, but I like my pocket-healers, and I play WoW to have fun with friends. I do partial PUGs, but all the rewards above are zero incentive for me to queue. Why do something that will give me heart palpitations and will make me swear at my screen, and piss off the other group members when I get my goodie bag?

As further consequence, the people who are bad players, who already making LFD such a painful experience, they’ll only make it worse now. People have already mentioned it, but prepare to end up in groups with retribution paladins and dps warriors with a shield, frost deathknights in blood presence, balance druids in bear form, queuing as tanks to get a shot at the shiny, and just making it frustrating and impossible for everyone else.

I think the only way you could encourage tanks to queue up more often would be to give a Valor Point bonus. Change it so that you can do partial pugs, 2 or 3 random people, and offer additional points. And I still don’t know if that would fix it, but it’d be more incentive than dumping shiny things in the lap of a small group of players, and the majority gets nothing for their efforts.