I tank, and I tank very well. And I really, really couldn’t care less about doing it even once a day, let alone enough to make up for all the LFD-trolls.

I tank for friends only because I’m so bored with dungeons in general. For me, it’s not an inability issue. It’s a motivational issue.

…That said, I also don’t care enough that a few cheap shinies will persuade me to run with anyone other than friends who need it.

It went live at a time where most folk were already somewhat overgeared for heroics already. You could pick up a Naxx run and have a good shot at finishing at least half the place with just random folks from /trade.

We are not there anymore, that train has left the station. Come back in a year when we overgear the heroics and we will be AoE farming them again.

My own experience with LFD tanking was pretty much in line with what Stabs said earlier.

1. Level in a non-tank spec (Dps in my Dk’s case, and resto in my Druids case).

2. Decide to try tanking.

3. Spend several hours researching what buttons I should be pushing and when, then a few more watching video.

4. Gather a moderately decent set of tanking gear, crafted quested or BoE generally.

5. Attempt to tank for an LFD group, telling them (with a handy macro) that I am so new my gear doesn’t even have scuff marks on it yet.

6. Watch each character have 2-3 groups in a row of whiney entitled Dps’rs complaining that the run is taking too long, that CC is for sissies and those that can’t hold aggro, pulling extra crap before I am ready and then bitching when they die. Generally making my life miserable.

7. Vendor the tanking gear, respec the Druid resto/balance and make the DK my bank alt.

8. Shake my head when people complain about there not being enough tanks, and can’t understand why.

In short (which this isn’t) It’s not that there are no tanks out there, it’s that the ones that are stick to guild groups or groups of known friends.

I know that’s the case with me, and no goodie bag is going to change that.

Things that I would like to see:

1. Cross server friends list, with an option on the lfd screen to choose from that list first if availible. I know the tech exists, we have across server ignore list already.

2. Somewhat shorter instances. A lot of people got used to fitting a 45 min to 1 hour run into thier schedule, now they are fiinding it hard to fit in a 2 hour run.

3. An easier gearing path for entry level tanking and healing gear. Something along the lines of the blue PvP set, only set up for those roles.

As to people in less represented roles getting a shot at extra goodies, fine by me. The only reason it might annoy me is if it cut into my flask sales or gem sales. Someone gets a new pony I could care less.

Here’s hoping this works.

Would also love to be able to get added to a tank’s “favorites” list if I do my job well.

I don’t tank PuGs and this change will not change that. The only bribe that might work would be a tier token per time and only for the first 5 pugs of each content patch.

They really are thet bad compared to good guild runs.

* 5-man instances and raids are the main things to do.
* In order to raid, you have to do heroics.
* The ratio of people who want to play DPS v.s. tanking is much greater than 3:1.

Blizzard is trying to address the 3rd point by increasing the number of tanks. But they could also try to reduce the number of dps in the LFD queue.

What if DPS didn’t need to gear up through heroics?
What if there were end-game PvE content that wasn’t raiding?
What if there were raiding options that didn’t require heroics?
What if there were alternate gearing paths that were solo-able?