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Tanks are a cornerstone of a successful team so it can feel good to know you are that important. It can vary per realm, but some have more tanks than others - in some cases you may find groups really easily compared to other realms. It is also nice as you generally have less competition for gear.

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Til next expansion on the gear part.

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Q u o t e:


Tanks are a cornerstone of a successful team so it can feel good to know you are that important. It can vary per realm, but some have more tanks than others - in some cases you may find groups really easily compared to other realms. It is also nice as you generally have less competition for gear.

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All very true...Tanking has some benefits...

1. Cornerstone of a successful team? Yes - but some encounters are ALL about the healers.

2. In demand? Yes - especially on my server - I've actually be paid to tank mid-level content when I was level 60.

3. Less competition for gear? Yes - until Cataclysm...now Def is gone...and I'm competing with DPSers for ALL the plate. Wonderful!

Tanking is great and probably the most fun I've had raiding, but it has a very high burnout rate. It's a responsibility, and for me I play this game to forget about responsibilities for a few hours.

I'm a Ret Paladin. On odd occassion I tank heroics for a change of pace. I don't have the best gear but can handle most instances because I run with a good healer. There have been lots of fights and pulls were, as the tank, I had so much going on it was almost too much to keep track of. It does get crazy but when things click and you survive that tough fight or that bad pull, you get a huge sense of accomplishment. You know you contributed to your team coming out on top.

Tanking is not for everyone so if you are content to sit back and dps (or melee dps) then do so. I have huge respect for tanks and healers as they are the cornerstone of a good group/raid.

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3. Less competition for gear? Yes - until Cataclysm...now Def is gone...and I'm competing with DPSers for ALL the plate. Wonderful!

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Still got dodge, and parry on gear. Don't think DPS needs anything (plate DPS) but strength, and hit rating. (AP is gone too)

I'm a Feral Druid, and my guild's Main Tank. I, personally, really like the responsibility of the position. I really feel like I "take care" of the other players/raiders in my group, and I like how much teamwork I need to employ between myself and the other tanks, and myself and the healers (especially my main healer).

Yes, sometimes it's annoying when people blame you for mess-ups. Yes, sometimes I get really sick of my job in raids. Yes, sometimes I feel horrible if all we did was wipe on encounters all night. But, really, I tank with a great group of people, all of whom I respect, and who I think respect me as well.

I have this toon and a Druid at 80. The druid is specced feral for tanking and resto for healing.

Why tank? Because I like being in more control over whether we succeed or fail and I also like being the person in charge of setting the pace.

My favorite part about tanking is being the one standing in front of the dragon. Standing before the fire, teeth and claws makes all those fights where I stare at knees the whole time worth it. =)

I also enjoy the challenge of keeping it together when things start to go wrong, picking up adds before the dps even know they have aggro, and doing what I can to save as many people as possible. What happens when things don't go as planned is what separates good tanks from bad.

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Q u o t e:
because its not as mindless as DPS?

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i would kind of argue that its not, well at least compared to being melee dps. ranged dps is pretty mindless.

ive been pretty drunk and still tanking just fine, getting the 'nice tanking' remarks and whatnot.



anyways i like tanking because i like being able to take the abuse and have runs go smoothly. i dont like having to look for a tank and getting some baddy who cant hold aggro and cries when dps use an aoe and junk like that.

if all the tanks in the game were good, i would probably dps as my main role, but they just arnt.

Its nice being a cornerstone and all, but the fact remains that it is a complete nightmare to gear up a tank character compared to any other class. It took me about a week to gear my enhancement shaman enough to do Ulduar, its taken nearly 2 months and thosands more gold to do that with my DK tank.

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So why become a tank?

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To control the instance. (pace knowing pulls, knowing HOW TO TANK etc.)

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It's funny, because just yesterday I was chastised by guildies for moving too fast through an instance. I got so used to doing quick runs and chain pulls, that I needed to stop for a minute when someone said they didn't have time to change specs.

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You set the pace for the entire run.

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It's exactly like other people in here have said: you set the pace for the instance. You're in control, limited only by the healer's mana.

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I want to stress this, because it's easily missed. Tanking is the closest experience to leveling you'll find in the end game. While grinding from 1-80, you decide when to enter fights, how many foes to tackle at once, how to respond to (and recover!) from a bad "pull", how much down-time you want between fights... just like tanking. it's just one more aspect of being in charge of your time.

DPS are often held hostage by their tanks: neither they, nor the healer, can really speed up an instance or heroic. If the tank isn't pulling, they're waiting. It's in this unfortunate situation that daring DPS classes start finding ways to entertain themselves: kiting, stun-locking, and other annoying tricks. No surprise that these classes usually have escape tricks (invisibility/ice block, feign death, vanish), and have a perceived stigma by old-school tanks ;)

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Still got dodge, and parry on gear. Don't think DPS needs anything (plate DPS) but strength, and hit rating. (AP is gone too)

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AP plate wat? where?

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Still got dodge, and parry on gear. Don't think DPS needs anything (plate DPS) but strength, and hit rating. (AP is gone too)

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Tank rolling on crit gear will be an easy way to spot retards I guess...

because getting hit in the face for epics makes all the ladies want to date my avatar.

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Q u o t e:
Its nice being a cornerstone and all, but the fact remains that it is a complete nightmare to gear up a tank character compared to any other class. It took me about a week to gear my enhancement shaman enough to do Ulduar, its taken nearly 2 months and thosands more gold to do that with my DK tank.

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Taken my warrior 2 weeks to have 32k hp unbuffed from just running ToC to get the 2h axe that I never got until I got my PvP axe :(
This game is ridiculous easy, and if anyone says tanking is hard they should be shot. 3 Tanks Paladin, Feral and my newest baby Warrior.

I like to tank because then I can haul ass through the content.

I love speed runs for some reason, as a tank, I have the most control over the speed.

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Taken my warrior 2 weeks to have 32k hp unbuffed from just running ToC to get the 2h axe that I never got until I got my PvP axe :(
This game is ridiculous easy, and if anyone says tanking is hard they should be shot. 3 Tanks Paladin, Feral and my newest baby Warrior.

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its not really that hard. you can look at the date i turned 80... 9/28... and i think im in a pretty good place for tanking.

i never bought crafted epics for thousands, and noone carried me to free loot either.

Never said the game was hard, just that gearing up tanks for Ulduar + is hard compared to DPS.

Though my tank is 1) a DK (little to no weapon mitigation other then the weapon enchant) and 2) could well have gotten poor RNG on tank drops.

I tank on my warrior because other tanks are simply god awful at their job. They don't know how to gem, they wear gimped gear (DK using block gear lol?), they do pitiful TPS, they take so long to pull mobs that it makes you want to pull for them just to get it over with, and the really bad tanks are the ones that ask if they want to glitch the fight or explain what to do for X boss in a 5man. JUST GO, 5 man heroics are all faceroll we don't need a strategy to defeat any heroic boss.

This is why I tank. So I can set the pace for heroics at a fast speed to make it go smooth and get things done. I enjoy doing 15min heroic runs. I absolutely hate sitting in a heroic for more than 30mins.