Lately we have all had the distinct pleasure of hearing everyone opinion ofthe stacked DPS setup. To an extent I understand, this causes an imbalance to the roles and who gets to go into a raid. So I wanted to give you another point of view, a Tanks. As 3 year Tank, I have found that 2 tanks actually makes it more difficult to do your job. It becomes very difficult to selectively agro enemies. More often than not one tank has all the agro and the other is basically watching. With only one tank, he can set the pace, control the flow of enemies, and agro only what he wants and keep them exactly where he wants. With two, unless they can read each others minds or have synced their playstyles, then they just get in each others way. Now this is my opinion, and it is very difficult to come up with concrete evidence. My personal experiences have lead me to this conclusion. Anyone else agree/disagree? ( Lets keep this light guys no need for insults or "your not very good" nonsense here)
The way i see it as long as one of the tanks has aggro and keeps everyone else safe as a healer im happy if it causes few random hits on the dps/trolls im fine with it
Exaclty....one tank grabs the attention of the Lex / Batman that is to be killed first, the other tank grabs the attention of all the other Lexs / Batmen.
I'm not a tank but I can see what you're saying happening. A bad tank can make a good tank look bad, similar to how a bad troll can make both look bad to the less knowledgeable, just like what can happen with 2 lesser geared healers and a squishy group.
The other thing is communication. Tank 1: Just grabbed aggro Tank 2: (8 or 10 or 12 seconds later): Grabbing aggro in 3...2...1 Also: Random DPS or healer who's off to the side / back: Help....I'm being mobbed. Tank 2: Be right there to grab aggro. Controller: Don't worry, I've got them all stunned.
I have used these two references all the time. Early before anyone had t2 gear we ran 2 tanks in kandaque. Simply 1 tank on each side to deal with the waterkeepers. 1 tank to carry the red heart of something while the other tank pulls the adds off and dps burn. Finally when fighting black adam and brother blood spawns demons. One tank takes black adam and other tank pulls demons. This worked fine until everyone got t2 gear and we could do it with 1 tank. But then fos2 came out and we went right back to 2 tanks because nobody had full t3 gear. 2 tanks were used at the bridge especially and splitting the group instead of warping to rally. Also splitting power girl and super girl. And hitting the nodes faster at the final boss. The community doesnt want 2 tanks for every setup. But when fos2 came out it really brought back the 2-2-2-2. That your team could divide into 2 groups and still get things done. The simple fact that the content was so challenging at the time that it brought 2 of each role together to fight as 1 and to divide themselves to fight as 2 groups to get things done. Back then there were no scoreboard chasers, there may have been friendly competition between the 2 roles but it was a team effort not I beat so and so. Ran nexus the other night and used 2-2-2-2 and after the first boss fight we split the group up into 2 teams and each team took out the side boss and met back in the middle and really took me back to DCUO at launch. My point is, its not that running 2 tanks is bad, its not that running 1 tank is bad. Its the fact that when content challenges us to have to use 2 tanks you eliminate scoreboard chasers and create a real raid group. Us veterans want a raid that challenges us to have to use 2-2-2-2, We dont want insane 1 shots, devs learned from that. We want raids that require strategy, not 5 dps.
2 Tanks is absolutely amazing if they know how to work together - which is more or less a lost art these days, even in the theory behind doing it. People refuse to give it a go though, as it 'can't be done', it 'makes things difficult', etc. I scoff at those people, lol. It was handled fine for the better part of the first year of the game (and my league even ran T4 content often with 2 Tanks), so why is it so difficult to do now?
I've done dox with the 2 tank setup. I can't tell you how smooth the raid went. Only few deaths in the raid were in the main room with the tyrant and some people got hit with the blue ball. Mics,Mics,Mics! Great communication between both tanks, who goes where & who pulls what.
