Tank shortage

[Cafat]

Hi, not sure if it's the case for every server but on Evernight there is a tank shortage.

It's interesting because on paper we have 6 classes to tank with, yet it takes a lot of time to find a tank to do the current 3/6s.
(Sometimes you can't even find if the preferred tier is too high or low.)

One reason must be that, only 2 classes are taken seriously (guard, captain), 2 are optional (beo, warden) and 2 or non viable (brawler, champ).

Other then the above, what other reasons do you see?

[JERH]

I stopped gearing for tanking after ered mithrin on my guardian. 1h/shield fully maxxed went to 2h. Gearing for both leveling and tanking was too much work. Also, guardians were POS after @V got done with the revamps.

Guardian is stoned at 135 in dps gear until the Gundabad gear gets better. Still no reason to go do any of that grind again.

Just my opinion.

[Joedangod]

Also, guardians were POS after @V got done with the revamps.

The revamp that moved Red Guard from a low DPS spec with high afk self-healing value towards being a solid ST DPS that still has strong self-healing but requires buttons actually be pushed?

[Braer]

Used to be a mitigation/avoidance guard. I wanted Block, parry, evade, resistance, armour, incoming healing, phy mit, tact mit, critical defence, partial block, partial parry, partial evade would've been nice too. Then some joker tied threat to guard damage and hacked the mechanics with taunts with 900% threat copy - and topped it off with avoidance bypasses because of the moronic morale stacking and spamming of taunts. Can't fix that mess just by removing morale essence in the last essence tier.

That's why!

[Winzhi]

Tanking in lotro is boring and easy. Right now you have 3 instances, heck, you currently have 1 instance where you need a "real tank" - Why would people put in effort playing a spec they hardly ever use if tanking is boring to start with and the spec is only needed for 1 instance.

It doesnt help either they slaugtered avoidance tanking and its all about mit and morale now. When they nerfed guardians they also removed a lot of the potential tank players which didnt help much either.

TLDR; Nerfing classes, killing avoidance tanking, boring overall tanking gameplay, needing two set gear and not enough content is why there is a shortage of tanks.

[JERH]

The revamp that moved Red Guard from a low DPS spec with high afk self-healing value towards being a solid ST DPS that still has strong self-healing but requires buttons actually be pushed?

Geez... Sorry, I thought this thread was about tanks. My guard is now a solid red ST/AoE much higher DPS char with strong self healing..... (but not a blue tank anymore).

The BPE/mits/stat cap revamps really didn't do TANKING guards any favors.

[WeirdJedi]

I think it is much easier to get gear to tank than ever before. By doing all the quests in Gundabad, you get a full dps set and tanking set. It is pretty easy getting gear from all sorts of places. Even crafted pieces are now relatively easy to get with a pile of shards from the rare chests. An actual normal shield recipe that doesn't require anything special? Yes, please. With the LI Revamp, I no longer have to dread trying to get another set of LIs up. The dailies (available immediately upon hitting level 140) offer me so many Enhancement Runes that I have already capped out both sets. My mitigations are capped probably for the first time ever and there is plenty of other essences to choose from (since there are no Gundabad Vitality essences that trump the others).

That said, I'm not too fond of how the instances turned out. Kiting and hoping I don't instantly die from a mechanic are two things I really don't like to see in a boss fight. I understand the higher tiers need to be difficult, but they aren't fun to tank. I'd much rather see fights that require repositioning, threat management, watching for interrupts and corruption removals. House of Rest boss 2 gets real close to that.

[Ivaril_the_Huntress]

As a new player, the prospect of tanking seems daunting. It's a lot of responsibility, seems to be one of the most gear-dependent builds, and as someone already mentioned probably involves needing to gear not just once but twice if you plan to run around doing your own thing/soloing while leveling.

I've wanted to run a Guardian, but I chose a DPS class instead because I can't invest as much time and attention as I'd like. I suspect this might mean other new players avoid tanks as well.

[TobiasEstForte]

Consider a lot of the player base are waiting for a store drop of Gundabad, or are taking a break from running the same 3 instances a limited amount of times per week and are waiting for the raid.

[Cafat]

Consider a lot of the player base are waiting for a store drop of Gundabad, or are taking a break from running the same 3 instances a limited amount of times per week and are waiting for the raid.

Unfortunately, this is true for the dps, heal, support players as well, the problem is not the "LFF" activity, but the proportion of tanks compared to the rest of the roles.

[bohbashum]

Hi, not sure if it's the case for every server but on Evernight there is a tank shortage.

Yo, bubu from Evernight!

Yeah. Absolutely a tank shortage... in pugs run...

Most kinships seem to have there tanks that are well practiced. After them, there is a line of people wanting to tank.

In pugs? People rarely want to play the most (...) demanding role.


I will explain why I say it's the most demanding role.

First, you are the focus of aggro, heals, and every dps must follow where you direct the target.

In many fights, you need to kite. This is an easy tactic but it is demanding. Take for example HoR boss 1: A dps can go afk for a few secs and nothing happened. If the tank stops kiting, wipe.


The truth is there is no lack of tanks. Just a lack of players wanting to tank. And a lack of people willing to take non-ideal tanks.

Champs are more than viable tanks. Champ is the second most played class. But there are very few tank champs.

Warden, Beorning, Brawler, are 3 of the least played classes (likely in that order too). All are tanks, but not ideal.


SSG have done an aweful job balancing tanks while splitting the player base into playing different tanks.

Guardians were the tanks. Captains became a flavour of the month and many guards just stopped...

Wardens were once the flavour of the month. There tanking has been demolished and tanks left...

Champs are probebly the best DPS in the game right now, giving lots of utility too. Why should a champ nerf themselfs to a less fun / less practiced role of tanking?

Brawlers are actually OK tanks... But they're so broken it's unreal. I could make an entire thread of why they're not good tanks in current content.

Beorning tanks again just not as good as captains / guards so they've been religated to healers by most players. You rarely see Beorning tanks.


It's no surprised tanks can't be bothered to tank. People don't want to play it. Lets break down the instances

DoP B1 : Kite, no challange
DoP B2 : Stun galore, Anyone but Guardian not ideal - Needs good team work, hard to pug

AoD Bat : Kite, Captain can solo heal group
AoD Troll : Actually good fight in my opinion

HoR B1 : Kite. Blow up with mistakes. Very little give. Hard to Pug
HoR B2 : Stand still. Ignore everything. Just try and do some dps and survive stuff. Only interesting on captain to arms on aoe + heal
HoR B3 : Boring

SS : No challange. Watch dps kill themselves B1 or fail to kill adds B3 last phase.

Wow... 1/10 boss fights have anything interesting to them...

[Cafat]

Yo, bubu from Evernight!

Yeah. Absolutely a tank shortage... in pugs run...

Most kinships seem to have there tanks that are well practiced. After them, there is a line of people wanting to tank.

In pugs? People rarely want to play the most (...) demanding role.


I will explain why I say it's the most demanding role.

First, you are the focus of aggro, heals, and every dps must follow where you direct the target.

In many fights, you need to kite. This is an easy tactic but it is demanding. Take for example HoR boss 1: A dps can go afk for a few secs and nothing happened. If the tank stops kiting, wipe.


The truth is there is no lack of tanks. Just a lack of players wanting to tank. And a lack of people willing to take non-ideal tanks.

Champs are more than viable tanks. Champ is the second most played class. But there are very few tank champs.

Warden, Beorning, Brawler, are 3 of the least played classes (likely in that order too). All are tanks, but not ideal.


SSG have done an aweful job balancing tanks while splitting the player base into playing different tanks.

Guardians were the tanks. Captains became a flavour of the month and many guards just stopped...

Wardens were once the flavour of the month. There tanking has been demolished and tanks left...

Champs are probebly the best DPS in the game right now, giving lots of utility too. Why should a champ nerf themselfs to a less fun / less practiced role of tanking?

Brawlers are actually OK tanks... But they're so broken it's unreal. I could make an entire thread of why they're not good tanks in current content.

Beorning tanks again just not as good as captains / guards so they've been religated to healers by most players. You rarely see Beorning tanks.


It's no surprised tanks can't be bothered to tank. People don't want to play it. Lets break down the instances

DoP B1 : Kite, no challange
DoP B2 : Stun galore, Anyone but Guardian not ideal - Needs good team work, hard to pug

AoD Bat : Kite, Captain can solo heal group
AoD Troll : Actually good fight in my opinion

HoR B1 : Kite. Blow up with mistakes. Very little give. Hard to Pug
HoR B2 : Stand still. Ignore everything. Just try and do some dps and survive stuff. Only interesting on captain to arms on aoe + heal
HoR B3 : Boring

SS : No challange. Watch dps kill themselves B1 or fail to kill adds B3 last phase.

Wow... 1/10 boss fights have anything interesting to them...

Hi mate.

I do agree with most of you have pointed out, but have some comments.

Champs:

I really enjoy my lv71 blue champ, but i don't think its viable, simply because the horn of champoins (30 sec CD aoe forced attack) is not copying threat, thus you won't be able to kite more then one target (single target taunt still works). Correct me if I'm wrong but our only aoe threat copy forced attack is on a 2 min CD which won't cut it, yet all 3 instances require kiteing multiple opponents on higher tiers.

PUGS vs Kins:

I haven't split the topic since my personal experience is that, small Kins are lacking tanks too.
The main reason why ppl are PUGing is probably that, there is no tank available in their Kin, otherwise why would they PUG?

I could be wrong though so feel free to correct me.

[Shirewhistle]

The harder the content, and the more limited the gearing options the more tanks get killed and then yelled at for "failing." Giving tanking gear to PVP only, then taking that tanking gear away... basically made tanks go, nah. LOTRO itself went from a casual grouping fun game to a serious grumpy "thou must be serious gamer" type of game. Which made me go nah and start playing my low levels again.

But a lot of the replies in this thread are dead on. Relying on mits and morale causes people to swap and swap and swap and it's annoying. Imagine me saying, brb with my tank... relog... get invited. Before I have even one item of clothing on, they open the instance. So I enter, better to get battle lore.... Before I have half my gear on, they're attacking trash without me. I haven't even had time to check if I'm still in Red or Blue, and they're at the first boss.

Who wants that?

For a long time I was just playing in Blue but it became annoying on landscape. So it was unworkable, so I stopped leveling my tanks.

Even if they gave us one click gear swaps, the trait swap would still take time, and with captain, starting up all the buffs. It's way more annoying to play tank and messing with the stats to make BPE useless was the last straw for a lot of people. We need to jump through one hoop too many now, or several hoops too many.

Then of course, it's our fault you were all running for the first boss while we were trying to buff ourselves and swap traits. Mm-hmm.

Maybe they need to stop making dungeons that require tanks and we can all play and be happy. Tanking theory is just not that good. Every game that requires tanks has this problem. Maybe it's just a bad idea.

[bohbashum]

I haven't split the topic since my personal experience is that, small Kins are lacking tanks too.
The main reason why ppl are PUGing is probably that, there is no tank available in their Kin, otherwise why would they PUG?

That's a really good point, hadn't thought of that.

I'm a bit ignorant on that subject. Cats is a small kin but we have a few tanks now thankfully. But I'd believe you cos yeah, a lot of pugging for tanks.

I really enjoy my lv71 blue champ, but i don't think its viable, simply because the horn of champoins (30 sec CD aoe forced attack) is not copying threat, thus you won't be able to kite more then one target (single target taunt still works). Correct me if I'm wrong but our only aoe threat copy forced attack is on a 2 min CD which won't cut it, yet all 3 instances require kiteing multiple opponents on higher tiers.

This is somthing champs would have to answer I think.

I've done HoR with a champ tank... However... That was t2 and he was able to face tank. So I can't confirm that they have copy threat.

Will ask about to make sure, but if they don't that seems like like a bug than anything.

[Pavlin]

Hi, not sure if it's the case for every server but on Evernight there is a tank shortage.

It's interesting because on paper we have 6 classes to tank with, yet it takes a lot of time to find a tank to do the current 3/6s.
(Sometimes you can't even find if the preferred tier is too high or low.)

One reason must be that, only 2 classes are taken seriously (guard, captain), 2 are optional (beo, warden) and 2 or non viable (brawler, champ).

Other then the above, what other reasons do you see?

All classes but brawler can do all the current content/ tier.
Brawler simply cant pass HoR 1st boss. Outside that hes is more than viable. Will be even more after the upcoming update /min of february.
I do agree that cpt and guars are prefered.
Hope with the little change they did to warden masteris, he will be back in the game /as blue/ unless new raid have lots of 1 shot mechanic on bosses

[Vilda]

The harder the content, and the more limited the gearing options the more tanks get killed and then yelled at for "failing." Giving tanking gear to PVP only, then taking that tanking gear away... basically made tanks go, nah. LOTRO itself went from a casual grouping fun game to a serious grumpy "thou must be serious gamer" type of game. Which made me go nah and start playing my low levels again.

But a lot of the replies in this thread are dead on. Relying on mits and morale causes people to swap and swap and swap and it's annoying. Imagine me saying, brb with my tank... relog... get invited. Before I have even one item of clothing on, they open the instance. So I enter, better to get battle lore.... Before I have half my gear on, they're attacking trash without me. I haven't even had time to check if I'm still in Red or Blue, and they're at the first boss.

Who wants that?

For a long time I was just playing in Blue but it became annoying on landscape. So it was unworkable, so I stopped leveling my tanks.

Even if they gave us one click gear swaps, the trait swap would still take time, and with captain, starting up all the buffs. It's way more annoying to play tank and messing with the stats to make BPE useless was the last straw for a lot of people. We need to jump through one hoop too many now, or several hoops too many.

Then of course, it's our fault you were all running for the first boss while we were trying to buff ourselves and swap traits. Mm-hmm.

Maybe they need to stop making dungeons that require tanks and we can all play and be happy. Tanking theory is just not that good. Every game that requires tanks has this problem. Maybe it's just a bad idea.

Just dont enter instance till you are ready.

I love holy trinity, if you dont like tanking - go and play Guild Wars 2, it is fantastic game - it has regular raids, raids for pugs (strike missions), dungeons (instances), fractals (fast instances for 5) and you dont need tank (but various supports yes) and all is good. But i missed the old tanking

[Cafat]

That's a really good point, hadn't thought of that.

I'm a bit ignorant on that subject. Cats is a small kin but we have a few tanks now thankfully. But I'd believe you cos yeah, a lot of pugging for tanks.

This is something champs would have to answer I think.

I've done HoR with a champ tank... However... That was t2 and he was able to face tank. So I can't confirm that they have copy threat.

Will ask about to make sure, but if they don't that seems like like a bug than anything.

Good to hear that you have tanks and can enjoy the game.
(We have 1 tank currently and I know another small Kin without any tanks in endgame...and there are the scheduling challenges too.)

Are you sure that it was T2? Pls. if you have any info how blue champs handle current content, let me know.

If champ is capable of securing aggro by face tanking in CD windows then its fine for me, after all, its a dmg/soak type of a tank.

[Cafat]

The harder the content, and the more limited the gearing options the more tanks get killed and then yelled at for "failing." Giving tanking gear to PVP only, then taking that tanking gear away... basically made tanks go, nah. LOTRO itself went from a casual grouping fun game to a serious grumpy "thou must be serious gamer" type of game. Which made me go nah and start playing my low levels again.

But a lot of the replies in this thread are dead on. Relying on mits and morale causes people to swap and swap and swap and it's annoying. Imagine me saying, brb with my tank... relog... get invited. Before I have even one item of clothing on, they open the instance. So I enter, better to get battle lore.... Before I have half my gear on, they're attacking trash without me. I haven't even had time to check if I'm still in Red or Blue, and they're at the first boss.

Who wants that?

For a long time I was just playing in Blue but it became annoying on landscape. So it was unworkable, so I stopped leveling my tanks.

Even if they gave us one click gear swaps, the trait swap would still take time, and with captain, starting up all the buffs. It's way more annoying to play tank and messing with the stats to make BPE useless was the last straw for a lot of people. We need to jump through one hoop too many now, or several hoops too many.

Then of course, it's our fault you were all running for the first boss while we were trying to buff ourselves and swap traits. Mm-hmm.

Maybe they need to stop making dungeons that require tanks and we can all play and be happy. Tanking theory is just not that good. Every game that requires tanks has this problem. Maybe it's just a bad idea.

When I was actively tanking, experienced the similar issues, how ever, I don't think that the problem is with the concept of tanking, its rather with everything else, like you and others have mentioned.

I've started this thread to see if it's just my personal experience or others are experiencing tank shortage as well and if yes, what are to rout causes (both objective and subjective)?

[Mithithil]

Relatively new to tanking and my main has long (2007) been an LM but have been playing captain as tank for a couple of years. My experience from the most recent content has been that getting the requisite gear to be able to do T3 lavel has so far eluded me but I'm comfortable at T2 for DoP, AoD and HoR. I'm quite willing to suggest that I lack sufficient experience to rescue the situation if it really goes South, but I can hold stuff together while we recover from some porblem.s

I have no notion at all how to tank B2 T3 DoP, which I'm sure will raise the usual "ITS FACERIOLL EASY" from folk who have never actually done it, or are too smug to assist. I'm not usually willing to PUG, I find far too many experiences of folk who always claim to know better, but for some rason are not playing the class they claim to know better despite wanting to do the most difficult level:-) I've also had too many occasions of a demanding player with unrealistic expectations, perhaps expecting a "carry" and when they dont get one (why is it always a champion or hunter?) they tend to fill the chat with profanity, insults and then a peaceful gap when they quit. Leaves a nasty taste.

Our kinship has the usual "first team" tank but the player is always willing to advise and suggest ways to improve so someone else can tank and then that person gets to play an alt in hard content. In long chat we've concluded that the current end game content lends itself to very much more defensive builds than we'd anticipated based on initial quest gear rewards and for tanking that's then a complete spare set of gear you need to acquire compared to any non tanking content such as a misison or craft instance. That's quite a lot of work and a certain amount of good fortune because there do seem to be some mechanics where being lucky (one of Napoleon's requiremenmts in his Marschals) is a significant help.

[Rothan117]

I mained a warden tank from the day the warden was released. When they broke avoidance tanking, I completely stopped tanking for groups. Now, I just solo on my warden. Warden was fun as a tank, completely b/p/e based. When they changed direction and went completely morale/mit on tanking design, warden tanks were badly gimped due to being medium armor and being unable to match the raw mitigations of a heavy armor tank. I have a cappy tank and he can solo stuff that eats my warden alive, while wearing worse gear. Used to be the other way around when tanking was avoidance based.

And the change so soured me that my playtime of LOTRO overall dropped off by a good 80% and has never recovered. Only reason I still play at all is I bought a lifetime before Moria released.

[bohbashum]

All classes but brawler can do all the current content/ tier.
Brawler simply cant pass HoR 1st boss. Outside that hes is more than viable. Will be even more after the upcoming update /min of february.
I do agree that cpt and guars are prefered.
Hope with the little change they did to warden masteris, he will be back in the game /as blue/ unless new raid have lots of 1 shot mechanic on bosses

I've done HoR T2 as brawler.

T3-5 may be possible but it'll be tough. We can survive the first 15s fine.
- 78% damage reduction (not counting mettle shield cos it'll drop instantly with 4 mobs hitting)
- 70-77.5% mits do wonders. (65% base, 5% plant feet, 1% over 70 for each person who is within 5m range + 2.5% with setup+spend)

1 issue is aggro. Brawlers have very low aoe aggro. We can only AoE tauntand cycle our single target taunt around. We may lose aggro to aoe damage.

2nd issue is kiting. While brawler goes kiting, we can't use some cooldowns as they need us to be mobile. Buffs drop as we can't setup+spend (2.5% mits). No runspeed buff. No helping with heals.

No reason to go brawler over cap/guard, but it might be possible!

[Cafat]

Relatively new to tanking and my main has long (2007) been an LM but have been playing captain as tank for a couple of years. My experience from the most recent content has been that getting the requisite gear to be able to do T3 lavel has so far eluded me but I'm comfortable at T2 for DoP, AoD and HoR. I'm quite willing to suggest that I lack sufficient experience to rescue the situation if it really goes South, but I can hold stuff together while we recover from some porblem.s

I have no notion at all how to tank B2 T3 DoP, which I'm sure will raise the usual "ITS FACERIOLL EASY" from folk who have never actually done it, or are too smug to assist. I'm not usually willing to PUG, I find far too many experiences of folk who always claim to know better, but for some rason are not playing the class they claim to know better despite wanting to do the most difficult level:-) I've also had too many occasions of a demanding player with unrealistic expectations, perhaps expecting a "carry" and when they dont get one (why is it always a champion or hunter?) they tend to fill the chat with profanity, insults and then a peaceful gap when they quit. Leaves a nasty taste.

Our kinship has the usual "first team" tank but the player is always willing to advise and suggest ways to improve so someone else can tank and then that person gets to play an alt in hard content. In long chat we've concluded that the current end game content lends itself to very much more defensive builds than we'd anticipated based on initial quest gear rewards and for tanking that's then a complete spare set of gear you need to acquire compared to any non tanking content such as a misison or craft instance. That's quite a lot of work and a certain amount of good fortune because there do seem to be some mechanics where being lucky (one of Napoleon's requiremenmts in his Marschals) is a significant help.

Very good points, I also can confirm these from a healer's POV.

[TronGilrain]

There is no shortage of tanks on Evernight. You could see it easy when there was Storvagun farm. The reason why you don't find tanks on t4/5 content is that there is 1 lock per week and no one in right mind would waste their lock in pugs if they can do it with kin/friends.

[Mithithil]

There is no shortage of tanks on Evernight. You could see it easy when there was Storvagun farm. The reason why you don't find tanks on t4/5 content is that there is 1 lock per week and no one in right mind would waste their lock in pugs if they can do it with kin/friends.

That Sir is so right on the money it virtually IS the money!

+++cookie or in a much better language ++decent port

[Cafat]

There is no shortage of tanks on Evernight. You could see it easy when there was Storvagun farm. The reason why you don't find tanks on t4/5 content is that there is 1 lock per week and no one in right mind would waste their lock in pugs if they can do it with kin/friends.

Ok, first off all, good point regarding the T4/T5 lock.

Now, if there are 6 dps/support and 3 tanks, then you can form 3 groups for T4/T5 and every one can participate, if there are 60 dps/support and 3 tanks and tanks will do only 1 T4/T5 runs / week cos no favoured roll for them, well, that's called tank shortage, because 54 ppl out of 60 won't find a tank.

Storva: I did 20+ runs on my blue capt sometimes several runs on the same day (no favoured roll but still could get loot from others if they don't need it) and I don't remember if we had to wait too much for a tank. Also, if I remember right, you could run Storva daily, not weekly.

So one reason could be that, there was only T2 what ppl run that time and now ppl are spread out in 5 possible tiers, while most tanks already focusing on T4-T5 only and they run it once / week, not daily like Storva.

For me, it looks like a tank shortage.