A lack of tanks and healers is normal in MMORPGs. But World of Warcraft is currently exacerbating the problem.
Basically, there has always been a problem with the distribution of roles in World of Warcraft. There are endless DPS characters, but tanks and healers are in short supply. This leads to long wait times for group formation, whether automated or manual.
Over the years, Blizzard has introduced new classes that can function as tanks or healers, but the original problem remains unchanged.
Currently, it even seems that Blizzard has exacerbated this issue, as the shortage of healers and tanks is increasing. The reasons for this are obvious – at least part of the community believes so.
What is the problem? With The War Within, tanks and healers have undergone massive changes. Tanks have to endure significant restrictions on their self-healing across all classes. While all tanks still have numerous cooldowns to keep themselves alive for a while, fully healing independently is nearly impossible. Tanks are extremely reliant on healers this season.
At the same time, healers are facing multiple problems. On one hand, they must focus more on the tank, and on the other hand, there are significantly more fights with a lot of unavoidable AoE damage.
Additionally, the interrupt system for enemies has been changed. As a result, spell interruptions are now less frequent, which in turn leads to more damage in the group and on the tanks. This adds extra strain to both roles.
What has happened as a result? These changes have led to more and more players throwing in the towel and losing their enjoyment of healing or tanking over the course of the season. The consequence is that groups are forming less frequently, and wait times have increased.
This is how the community discusses it: In the WoW Subreddit, the problem has been discussed for weeks, and various threads about it appear almost daily. In one of them, there are these opinions:
- “I’m sorry, but nerfing all tanks so that ‘healing is more engaging’ was incredibly dumb. They need to revert the tank nerfs and change something about how horrendous healing is this season.” – Jigsaw-Complex
- “You know what would help with the shortage of healers and tanks? Let’s massively nerf the survivability of tanks and make healing even more stressful. That will definitely encourage the player base to play those roles!” – Someone at Blizzard, probably” – Heybarbaruiva
It is clear that Blizzard needs to come up with something for the upcoming season. Because if the distribution of players in the tank and healer roles remains as it is, then fewer and fewer groups will form. And that harms the whole community.
Another problem for many people at high play levels is that catching up is virtually impossible.
