#0 - Oct. 31, 2008, 7:13 p.m.
Let me just pre-face this by saying I have both a 70 prot warrior and this 70 feral druid that I tank on. Let me also add that the tanking changes the recent 3.0 patch have made are for the most part just awesome (notably the warrior ones far more so then the druid ones imho). Blizzard has done a great job in making tanking more interesting and buffing tanks damage so they can solo things in a reasonable amount of time. Blizzard's made tanking really easy (some might argue too easy) and it's certainly less of a headache to tank things now (even with a poor group) then it was pre patch.
Having said all of that, Blizzard has FAILED to address one of the primary reasons there always seems to be a shortage of tanks. I read a blue post (which unfortuently I can't find at the moment) a few weeks ago that stated blizzard intends in WOTLK raids there to be 1-3 tanks, 3-8 healers and the rest DPS.
Logically this means they probably assume you have 1-2 tanks, 3 healers and 5-6 dps in a 10 man. For a 25 man they might expect the raid to have 2-3 tanks, 7-8 healers and then 14-16 dps to round out your raid. This is not terribly different (if at all different) from what raids were bringing to raids in TBC.
So whats the problem? The truth is, finding a Tanking spot in a RAIDING guild is one of the hardest things to do in this game. On my warrior, despite having good gear and a solid grasp on how to tank (invites for heroics would always come flying my way whenever I logged in), I could never find a RAIDING guild that was recruiting TANKS. I switched to this druid, and managed to find a raiding guild, but the sad truth is, in about 80-90% of the raid encounters, I'm DPSING in cat not TANKING in bear, when what I really prefer to do is TANK. (My guild tends to bring 1-2 prot warriors a prot paladin and a couple feral druids to 25 mans....as a result, the feral druids rarely get to actually tank anything, and this was pre patch :( ).
So what causes this? The fact that the tank/dps/healer ratio for 5 mans is way out of whack as to what is required for 25 mans.
In a 5 man/heroic, your ratio is generally a 1/3/1 (tank/dps/healer) ratio.
In a 10 man, your ratio is generally 2/5/3 (tank/dps/healer) ratio until the content is on farm. This matches the 5 man ratio pretty closely (dps actually gets the short end of the stick slightly).
In a 25 man, your ratio is generally 3/14/8 (being generous giving the tanks a 3). This ratio is WAY out of whack compared to the 5 and 10 man ratio's and means finding a raid spot as a tank is extremely difficult to do.
So what's the end result? On my warrior, I eventually petered out and stopped tanking on him. I got tired of tanking heroics and gearing up for a role that I could never find a raid spot for (aside from a pug kara now and then). I eventually speced arms and PvPed on him, thereby largely giving up tanking on him. Am I the only one? No, I know I'm not. I know many people who play dps warriors in raids, or holy paladins, who really love to tank. However, they want to raid and thus are forced to spec into other roles to raid, because there's just not enough tanking jobs out there for raids.
I realize I'm starting to ramble abit, and I apologize, but I'm really disapointed blizzard has done nothing to address this issue. Due to this, i suspect our tank shortage will continue at 80, when tanks realize even though they may want to tank, there's no tanking spots out there in raids for them because the balance is out of whack.
