Gear is partially to blame for tank shortage

Theres often posts about lack of tanks and healers.

The root cause of this is gear (the playstyle to, but gear is definately contributing to this).

Being a tank you need 2 totally different sets of gear if you want to do any dps at all and healers have it to a slightly lesser extent.

Its really easy to solve so i dont understand why it never gets addressed.

Now if ever anyone says that, some troll will say "so my smart *** say how to solve it" well here you go-

All tank stnaces increase stamina by 20%.

in the 25-30 talent point slots in the talent trees add the following talent
1 point crit gives an equal amount of defense
2 points surge gives an equal amount of absorb
3 points power gives an equal amount of shield

Add a similar talent in the healing trees at the same place whwre accuracy adds an equal amount of alacrity.

With that simple fix gear stats become more even, just primary stat and endurence, with power or cit and surge or accuracy.

All classes then just need 1 set of gear (2 for pvp).

Also if they made it so shielding worked on all attacks, people would then play full on tanks in PVP also.

They could even fix their hatred of hybrid specs by having set bonuses be decided by which 31 point talent you have. Hybrids would get no bonus as they have no 31 point talent (which would make the devs happy as all devs seem to try to stamp out hybrid specs in any game).

Now im no genious, but to me that would make tanks and to a lesser extent healers (as there are already more of those) much more apealing, as the tanks would do more damage than they do now (they would have all the damage stats as well as tank stats, but with not having damage talents, they would still only do about 80% of the dps of a pure dps) and you could just keep your dps gear and not have to grind out a new set of gear to even give tanking a try like you need to now.

Coding that would not take 3 months, so it could be put in soon and really have an impact on the number of tanks and healers we have available.

I have a hard time understanding. Why do I need 2 sets of gear? All I do is tank and raid and I do fine with 1 set. Why do I need a dps set? That what a dps is for. I don't care how much damage I'm putting out. I'm there to control the fight and keep the attention on me.

This.

I agree with you, but I would like one more skill for taunts. There is nothing as frustrating when both of em are on cooldown and you hear someone getting hit.

Sorry but you will have to wait 18 seconds...

IMO, it's a small part of the reason why they are shortages and it really only impacts tanks that want to do dailies as dps because they don't gear out their dps companions.

Let's be honest here, the shortage of tanks has more to do with it requiring more thought and planning than dpsing. That combined with now easy way to show off your big numbers ie. no "I just had a 7k crit on that boss" or "I just had a 7k crit heal", makes tanking a role that doesn't provide any glory or bragging rights.

Hmm. I don't think that gear is the problem. I run tanks, healers and DPS. My PT and Shadow are tanks, I've just dinged 50 on a JG who is pure Vigilance DPS. I think the problem is, more people want to DPS than tank or heal. No matter how many people run dual specs, they're only going to be queueing in one role at a time, aren't they? You know if you queue as tank and DPS, you're going to get matched as a tank. I'd far rather wait a little longer for someone who knows how to play as tank than end up with someone who doesn't know their role but queued as tank for a faster queue pop.

But tanks do get glory and do have bragging rights. While they are off saying they got a 7k crit on a boss or a 7k crit heal, the tank can say, "And I kept the boss off of you so you could get that crit." Or, "And I took the damage that let you get that 7k crit."

Yes, you can brag about it, but it is by gut feel only. Other than parsing logs and analyzing threat gen, there is no easy in game way to show it with the exception of PvP end game summary. There is nothing equivalent for the tank to screenshot big numbers as proof.

Cool, exactly what we need. More tanks putting out crazy damage and never dying in PvP (Sins/Shadows in particular).

There are a lot of tanks who seem to get along just fine. It just takes more effort to be a good healer and a good tank than it does to be good DPS. Most folks do not want to make that effort.

I am not demeaning anyone who DPS's for fun here, but no matter what you say, DPS is a role where you can kick back, spam your rotation and enjoy the show. Healers spend a lot of time watching health bars. Tanks spend all of their time trying to maintain control. They take effort.

Gear has nothing to do for a perceived tank shortage. If you want to chalk it up to anything, it is an abundance of people with a lazy playstyle.