Your Theory on the Tank Shortage

My theory is that because tanking is by far the hardest role in the game and requires the most focus of all 4 roles people get timid about it and then when they fail on something or die to x mechanic some tactless or worse yet a toxic player will start dogpiling on this tank. And then they decide "well f*** this, I don't wanna do this if people are doing to jump my s*** if I make a mistake", then that turns them off from tanking. I don't think that toxicity is THE reason for the shortage, but I think its more of a contributing factor. I think the main reason is like I said above, that its the role that requires the most focus.

What are your theory's/explanations for the for the shortage of tanks? Discuss.

I'm starting a Save the Tank Foundation, I accept money and rare auras as donations. They will go towards a great cause

I guess people want me to rush back into raids now. Don't get me wrong I'm not a good tank, but if there is a shortage I'm not a terrible one lol. Its too bad I don't have time often to do most raids. The only thing that will have me abandon an instance is when range dps's think I should be the one to pick up a healer on the other side of the room. My tank is very aura dependent. I can pick up a melee dps right next to me.

I do avoid LFG requests for tanks myself, or did when I was here before. Because yeah, if you mess up everyone dies and you get piled on. A lot of these raids I've never done before so while I understand general mechanics, I might not be looking in the right direction, or in the case of having two melee dps's around me...sometimes the graphical noise causes me to miss something. I'm significantly better at tanking than being a dps.

ive been tanking since i started dcuo and is just that people expect tanks to perform like gods.

But the type of elite raids we get have been getting in past recent episodes are way easyier to Tank sadly.


Tanking itself is pretty easy outside of Elite raid content though.

Tanking is the hardest role but once you're a decent tank you'll be a much better player overall. Awareness should be important for all roles tho. It's good being able to play all roles because some groups need multiple coaches.

I don’t see why there is a shortage of tanks when the last 3 dlc’s have been stupidly easy to tank.

There's a lot more content available now, though, and a decent enough chunk of that content ISN'T as easy to tank.

As for why there might be a shortage? Unrealistic expectations from some players in group situations, some players not being willing to teach and some players not being willing to learn tanking and years of a situation where mechanics could be ignored by high CR players powering through the content (thus eliminating the need for a tank).

I can’t blame anyone not wanting to be a tank. Who wants to get yelled at or blamed for a mission failure? I tried tanking once and it was the worst. Never again.

I think the main reason is that the tank powersets aren't generally known for their DPS sides. Fire has good single, but rage and earth are more limited to melee, and atomic and ice DPS are both pretty weak compared to the field. A lot of players choose their power based more on the DPS role than the support.

So as those players progress or get interested in their support role, they just happen to be controllers and healer primarily. Personally, I've noticed an uptick in the number of Sorcery Healers since the buffs to Source Shard, for example. While I do think role intensity and blaming is a factor, I think it's moreso that when people look up "best dps power" they are rarely directed towards a tank powerset.

In addition to everything already mentioned, tanking requires a specific personality, and many people don't have it. In DCUO, the tank is the group leader. They're expected to know not just every mechanic, but also every pull. They guide the group through the instance, knowing when to start, stop, push ahead, etc.

So leader. Also teacher. The tank is often expected to teach ppl what's going wrong when the group wipes. This type of responsibility obviously isn't everyone's cup of tea, not just in DCUO but in virtually all MMOs.

Also, unlike what some people make it sound like (who are ice tanks yet forget to mention that detail when talking about difficulty) tanking as some powers isn't all that easy in elite content. It can require a lot of work to stay alive while hoping you have a good healer and teammates who will interrupt the right adds. So, if you want to use another power for RP reasons, it's another obstacle.

In my opinion there is no shortage of tanks, I know so many tanks on both US and EU however decent tanks are hard to come by and they aren’t just gonna play in dead end groups so no there isn’t a shortage you just don’t know any or have any willing to tank for you or your group.

I think DPS is the hardest role ever. You have to stop pew pew pew and follow mechanics, pick ups and sometimes have to stay far away, meanwhile tanks can survive because of their defense while DPS are cookie-cutter stuff....

I'll give an example of something that happened earlier for me in a Inner Sanctum Elite. We wiped on 1st boss 3 different times because I wasn't getting healed and theirs only so much you can heal even as a fire tank and you still rely on the healers to some degree. Sure enough the blame game started going around and 2 of the healers started to blame me. Then I correctly pointed out that I as a fire tank was out healing both of the healers and I can only heal myself, they can heal 7 other people. That shut them up fairly quickly, turns out everyone in the group died and I had to solo the last 2-3% of the boss...Thank goodness for 90sec cd allies. By the end of the run I had about 18.5M in healing out when both the healers had 26M in healing out between the 2 of them (16&10M on the healers)

So trust me I get being blamed for everything. But then again, you see the blame game in everything in this game because it seems to be a cardinal sin to admit fault in this game. However when I screw something up as any role, most of the time I'm one of the first people to admit to the screw up. I mean how hard is it for anyone in this game to say "sorry I screwed up" try not to do that thing again and move on.

Tanks are leaders and not everyone is ready for that, this is true in pretty much every game with a tank role. You have to know mechanics much better than everyone, be patient and ready to be blamed if someone dies. On DCUO specially there is much more pressure on the tank role since many one shot mechanics are unforgivable and there aren't many healer/troll specific mechanics out there.

Others have talked about tanks not being good dps, but when rage and ice were fotm I don't remember the situation being so different. Tank is a much harder role to perform okay than healer/troll, one can't just swap powers and go tank elite without previous knowledge of the role.

I think those who have mentioned that yes, the tank does get blamed for everything if things go bad...I'd agree. I good tank can't save a bad run and many people think they should be able to, so you have a lot of 'good' tanks not willing to put it out there just to get bagged on. Much easier to be the 4th or 5th DPS in a run and let someone else take the heat...

That and the tendency to 'require' that tanks be SS and wizz down the hall like every run is a speed feat run, then when the DPSs outpace the tank and whine about dying...yeah, that's a lot of fun.

Me tank and me bored. Give me something exciting and I may waste me time more
Also Me accepts funding<3 It's sucks to be poor

Now serious being a tank is hard, it requires good knowledge obtained by playing with other main tanks. I think this latest raids dont help either no only likes the current tank and spank raids. Gives mechanic heavy raids.

I like tanking. It is very active role and when you are good at it you can make instances much easier to other players.

I have eight characters; my main is Mental, but four of the others (and three of them are end-game level) are Tanks.

The problem i've noticed more frequently isn't "No Tanks", it's "People queueing as a Tank thern either refusing to do so or being incapable of performing the Role".

I think there's a lot of truth to this.

Spytle had the sets built so that each excelled at different things and lacked in other ways, (by design). This was his idea of "balance". Because of that, it makes some powersets less desirable than others in general. If they adopted a balance strategy that was more about homogenizing the powersets' (while keeping their playstyle and mechanics unique) outputs I think there'd be more adoption of the less used sets and by extension, the roles as well.

As a healer, I am also noticing a lack of Tanks when going into raids. Very rarely is there one. If there is one, I am on them like a cheap ****, cause I know if they live, my chances of living are better as well. The issue is you get these glass cannons going ham on a boss and wiping or pulling agro from the tank and then they end up dying and blame the tank.

Most MMOs I've played had limited amount of people playing support roles. I think people just prefer to DPS in general, it's a lot more competitive in nature than support roles. Also generally speaking, support roles are a lot less engaging in my opinion.

There's also issues with balancing and homogenizing powersets. A lot of powersets are just straight boring and limited.