What do you get if you take a raid group and split it up into 5-man groups to do smaller instances? Not enough tanks. The 40-man raid groups usually had 4 to 5 tanks, so if you try to go to 5-man instances with the same 40 people, half the groups end up without a tank. I haven't done 25-man raids yet, but my guess would be that those only have 2 to 3 tanks, and thus exactly the same problem. Now assume that raiding guilds recruited members in proportion to the needs of the raid groups, and you can see why I'm regularly experiencing problems getting a tank for my groups.
The big question is whether the current tank shortage is just because everyone is in 5-man instances now, and soon everybody will move on to 25-man raid and the required tank ratio changes. Or did the Burning Crusade change that tank ratio permanently, by making the heroic 5-man instances, where you can get "raid gear" in small groups? Will people still visit 5-man instances regularly after they started raiding, and thus need more tanks than their guilds have recruited?
The question is most interesting to druids. At level 60 druids were expected to go healing spec, because most guilds had a shortage of healers. But the Burning Crusade gear made druids a lot better as tanks, and I've been conquering hard 5-man dungeons with a bear with 14k hitpoints as tank, which worked as good as a protection spec'd warrior. In fact, I did other dungeons with an arms/fury warrior, and the feral druid was clearly the better tank.
It must be difficult to decide on a talent tree for druids and warriors nowadays. Go tank and get flooded with invites to 5-man groups, but risk being superfluous in raids. Go for the better raid spec, and be stuck like everyone else in 4-man groups waiting for a tank. What do you think, does the Burning Crusade require a higher ratio of tanks than the old WoW?
No comments:
Post a Comment