The Psychology of a Tank

I've recently gotten into a discussion with a few guild mates and real life friends about the psychological/sociological aspects of World of Warcraft. Now, in its entirety, this is has a HUGE scope, that I'm going to try to limit in this thread.

I'm would like to keep discussion to personality traits that determine what class/role a person chooses. How this relates to this site: What "type" of person chooses to be a tank? Whether it be a Warrior, Druid, or a Paladin.

In my experiences, I've moved between a few guilds, had encounters with various other tanks, conflicts have risen, some resolved, and some persisted. During these transistions, I've noticed trends in the personality of the so called "competition". I use that word lightly, in that I know and understand that we are a tank team, we work together, utilizing each others strong points to reach a common goal.

In the guilds i've been in, there has always been the old fashioned Warrior MT. The one that has been raiding for many years, not always the MT, but back in those days, 90% of the tanks were warriors (outside of five mans). However, now that other classes are viable raid tanks, I see conflict arising between the tanking classes.

The conflicts I see are seemingly about pride, or something along those lines. Some specific examples I will bring up:

I've had several warriors that during a multi-mob/tank pull, after the warriors target dies, he'll come taunt my target off me, for no reason at all. I'm just there burning time with my SoR/JoR rotation, trying to save mana (they move fast so I try not to take any down time) and he rips this off me, leaving me standing there.

Another point, on similar multi-mob pulls, if there are more mobs than tanks, I've had warriors favor tanking two mobs, over say letting me do it. Even on pulls with no CC, I do not understand their reasoning behind this. It just over-complicates things having to set up a MD (and which hunter will do it) so that he can get both targets.

I'd like to know if anybody has any experiences with any situations like this, and if/how you combat these situations. I know that the "omg let me tank the boss" discussion has been brought up before, but I'd like to take a more in depth and thorough look at it. I don't want to just hound my raid leader that I am a viable slot to tank, and have him piss off the tank by back-seating him, but I would like to discuss how to talk to these types of people and dealing with the "tank dilemma"...

I realize this post got a little off, I'm at work and have been tabbing back and forth between what I should be doing...

see also: http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=9167
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Well, in my mind, this question is asked in 2 ways:

What traits make a SUCCESSFUL tank
what traits are COMMON in the average tank

please note, these 2 rarely overlap

Successful: Willingness to take a back seat if there is a better way to get the job done, rational and calm under pressure

Common: Prideful, sometimes Arrogant

these are the first things off the top of my head...

back to your point...


if I was going to bring this up with a guild leader, I would start by preparing a strengths vs weakness of each tank, point out what each tank is designed to excel at.

Warriors ARE the best tank for slow, hard hitting bosses. Does that make them the ONLY OPTION? No. But, in a lot of cases, it does make them the best choice.

We all have our Niche, and when a tank team understands them, they can function far better as a cohesive unit.

Druids are the best tank for slow, hard-hitting bosses. Especially those that can't crush for whatever reason. Warriors are not the best for this; their physical mitigation isn't close to a druid's until far into T6 content.

Warriors are the best tank for bosses that have spell damage. Especially if you can spell reflect.

Paladins are the best for fast, light-hitting bosses, transition bosses (things like Leo), and of course multi-mob tanking.

In general, I've found tanks to be one of two natures: they are either the alpha male kind of person or they're the kind of person that wants the group to succeed no matter what. Both tend to have to know their stuff and study a lot more than a lot of players, both tend to have control issues and want to be in some position of control.

If a warrior taunts off of you, thank them for the free health pot and taunt them right back. You've got a taunt too. Use it. If he does it again, BoP him. But before pulling this passive aggressive crap, ask him why. Most warrior tanks I've found - especially those who have been playing for a long time - still do not believe that paladins are as good of tanks as warriors are for jobs, and they feel that it is more risky for you to tank more than necessary. That's one reason they'll taunt things off of you. Another is the rage issue; without getting damaged they'll not be able to do much of anything. So they'll go and get damaged. Really, if you explain to them that you need to be damaged just as much as they do to be a tank and that you can handle the trash just as well, they'll usually accept it. If they don't, taunt 'em back.

The only way to make those ppl aknowledge you is showing them repeatedly that you simply rock the house. Druids had the same problem while ago, before they were acceped as viable tanks.
One important thing about Druid tanks is their armor. They can easily reach the armor cap an show they don't tanke much damage. But now luck at a Tankadin - except for int we have similar but a little inferior stats to warriors. Also Druids had much more time to show their tanking performance (at least on horde side, if there were many tankadins out there before BC, i just know they weren't what they are now). It will need much more time until Tankadins are commonly aknowledged as an equally viable tanking class.

When I created my pally half a year ago my whole guild just laughed at me. Now I have a couple of fans who would like me to forget about my priest an make the pally my main and there is no one left inside the guild who would speak lightly of Tankadins. I sm modtly chosen as 2nd tank for timed ZA runs as the only alt in an otherwise fully BT/MH/SWP geared group. But the MT would still taunt mobs off me...so i still got plenty to do proving my worth

Yet again Warriors are still the best tanking-class in the game overall. There are encounters a Druid can't tank, there are encounters a Pally can't tank (or at least not without severe setbacks), but there are no encounters a Warrior can't tank.
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There may not be a fight a warrior "CAN'T" mt, that doesn't mean there aren't fights that palies/druids are better at MTing. People who wanna stay in the old pre-bc mindset will find their progression staggered by an inability to run their raid based off the mechanics of the fight/classes involved and not off their MT's ego.
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The 'king of the hill' attitude stems from the fact that in 75% of the game (everything outside raids) there is only room for 1 tank, if that (questing). Most raiding tanks in top-end content have minimal use for heroics anymore, so the one and only thing that they are designed for is to take a beating from a raidboss.

The problem as I see it, is pre-BC, not too many people truely enjoyed tanking. They did it because their guild needed a tank, and back then it was possible to maintank a majority of the content as a 15-point protection warrior. Now, it seems everyone has a feral druid or a protection paladin, which causes a lot more competetion than there once was -- leading to the 'alpha male syndrome'.

Too much competetion, and because 2 of the 3 tanking classes are highly specialized into a role that only allows them to tank (warrior/paladin) players of those classes want to be the 'one and only' of their guild.

Since I have been tanking in raids the only thing I've seen a warrior do better than me was tank a casting mob with spell reflect. I tanked the same mob and didn't need spell reflect anyway.
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You just have bad warriors, Frickit. Except for powerful design (Consecration and spell reflect), there's really little difference between tanks.
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