Are tanks a scapegoat for performance issues?

[RopeDrink]

Hell I was in Baelsar's Wall yesterday, and we couldn't do the first big pull because the healer didn't know how to Esuna, use Asylum, Tetra, Benediction, etc.

"If you liked it then you shoulda put Asylum on it" doesn't do the situation justice. Imagine a fresh 60 with decent gear after a day of Sohm Al getting Bael for the first time with a tri-pack rush tank at the start - there's a lot of variables for Healers to account for. Probably the first time in 10's of levels where the Healer will actually be challenged in the decision making department (would love to see some of their faces when the aether hits the mill). I've healed Bael-Fail many times but even I'm wary when I see tanks making a mad-dash for the first tri-pack as I know we're all going to be dotted before tank stops and at that point I've had absolutely NO way to guage just how tanky they are and how stingy they are with their mitigation CD's, and both Healer + Squishy HP bars can end up in ping-pong mode if the stacks get out of control (HP whittles down by default no matter how many Esuna's - eventually you need to cure as well - and not all tanks have steadily declining health when three packs are chewing their face - most are being sporadically chunked - meaning dedicating cures to anyone but the tank at that point is a risk in itself). Tet/Ben are only two safety nets, and one of those is almost always negated within its own GCD unless critical or sealed.

Chances are if you Asyl and/or MedII (which most will panic button due to the 'OH SHIT' factor) then the Healer is going to enjoy picking up some stray mobs to boot, and they don't exactly hit like wet noodles. Stacks ensure nobody has Stoneshield at this point. It's on the Healer if they choke, but it's not always just them if things go south. I have no personal problem with it, just I understand when some do. Also translates when I get Bael on my PLD - tend to just grab the first two packs if nobody is communicating at start. In either case, I'd rather secure a guaranteed two-pack clear vs a chance at a tri-clear // chance of a wipe that then has us doing a late two-pack anyway. Problem is most just say "Hi" then go autopilot. If people aren't comfortable, it should be said before sprinting off.

[Tint]

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yes, i don't dispell anything in that pull. there is simply no time for that. i can spend 6 GCDs or whatever with dispelling and then i still have to aoe heal the party. so i'll just aoe heal. or maybe not even that, as long as they don't die... ^^ even one aoe heal can cause a dead tank in that situation. when i start dispelling we will wipe.

[dragonseth07]

Except that it's not increasing "skill level", it's only maximizing dps during downtime when you aren't actively playing your role (i.e. enmity control or healing). That's not skill.
When an encounter is adjusted to require players to use their abilities to perform their roles 100% of the time in order to clear, then it develops player skill.

A proper rotation is beyond the skill level of most players in this game. I would say asking for better dummy DPS is still a skill improvement.

[Nesoi]

It's not always an tank fault for wipes there many things that can cause a wipe if someone miss a mechanic an can cause a wipe some times a tank swap at a bad time during a pushed phased , I feel people will always blame others for a mistake it's easy to do than accept your own mistake , plus also most people are scared to tank there a lot of pressure at times. Also the fact that tanks damage is so low an some utilities aren't as good as other.

[HyoMinPark]

In most of the situations (but not all of them), it seems like it's "easier" for people to blame either the tank:

• Overgeared DPS going ham on one mob, steal aggro from the tank. DPS then proceeds to tell the tank to "git gud" rather than manage their own aggro generation.

Or blame the healer:

• Tank is biting off more than he can chew, at either the behest of the DPS (or healer), or to just look like a big baddie tank. Tank then doesn't use cooldowns, and overwhelms the healer, leading to the tank dying because the healer is unable to keep up, or...

• DPS (or healer) decide to "help" the tank by pulling more mobs than the tank is comfortable with. Tank either a.) doesn't take the mobs off the DPS/healer, who then dies, followed by the healer/other DPS, or b.) tank takes the mobs, but is overwhelmed and dies, followed by the healer, and then the DPS in a domino effect. People then proceed to blame either/both the healer (for not keeping everyone alive while simultaneously being a punching bag) and the tank (not taking the mobs/doing the "standard pulls").

Regardless of who is at fault, it's usually "easier" to tell when a tank or healer is messing up, although if one pays close attention to DPS, one can also tell when they mess up.

Don't get me wrong; there are definitely bad DPS that I have noticed a lot in this game. I have often out-DPS'd some on my AST (even with me buffing THEM). And there are also poor tanks and poor healers. There's just less of the two latter groups, so the bad ones are easier to spot, compared to the ocean of DPS, who tend to go unnoticed in most dungeons (usually). Usually, the one who is pointing the finger and placing the blame is usually the one who is a hindrance. People don't want to admit their own faults/mistakes, so they pin them on someone else. Tanks and healers are the easiest targets.

I used to enjoy tanking on DRK, but I got tired of getting AFK/Netflix healers and DPS that thought they would "help" me pull more mobs than I wanted to pull. That's one reason I stopped pugging as a tank, and only tank in premade parties with my friends. Tanks set the pace of the dungeon, not the DPS. Sometimes, if the healer is undergeared, they set the pace. But people are so impatient, and just want to bulldoze right though dungeons.

[Venjenz]

Tanks set the pace of the dungeon, not the DPS.

I agree with this, but new dungeons are tough, and what some DPS and heals don't understand sometimes is that a tank may be seeing a dungeon for the first time and practical experience is a whole lot different than watching Mizzteq videos. So sometimes, even if DPS and heals can clearly handle more, newer tanks like me will go slow the first run or two through a new spot just because we're learning the lay of the land.

Most of the time though, in dungeons I am familiar with, I let the first couple pulls dictate my pace. If it is plainly obvious my DPS and heals can handle me grabbing 3-4 packs at once, I am off and running. If I can tell however, that despite their demands, they cannot handle more than a single pack, I'll stay on normal slog pace no matter how much whining I get in the chat box. That gets tough when you have Captain Uber_Deepz who think they can one shot the whole place but really can't, and the healer and other DPS are new, undergeared or whatever, and the demands keep rolling in to go go go, so doing the right thing by the WHOLE party leads to 15-20 minutes of nonsense in the chat box. That can be tough, but I figure even if I get kicked, my re-queue timer will be a few seconds, so whatever.

A ton of the "my tank sucks" stories come from that scenario though. One person absolutely convinced they can faceroll a whole dungeon all by themselves and they clearly can't. The tank allows themselves to be bullied into overpulling to shut that person up, party wipes and now it is tanks fault, or the tank is like me and does the job right and the chucklehead DPS doing all the griping goes to forums to blame the tank. Either way, blame the tank. If I am being blamed either way, I err on the side of caution and everyone living through the dungeon with lowest possible repair bill.

[Ama_Hamada]

For everyone saying it is a group effort and that it can be a healer or DPS issue as well are correct.

However it is easier to see tanks and healers mess up more then DPS can. Sometimes under performing DPS do not even know they are the issue and see someone die, healer blame (and I got unfair blame myself over that) I had to say " ohh nonono people are not dying because of my healing, people are dying because they keepstanding in stuff you need to dodge and getting 5 stack. I can't heal 1 hit kos" This was a comment givin to me when I tried to suggest to this one BLM who was underpforming since I can see cast bars and know what they are doing for rotations. Basically they where using blizzard IV and blizzard III too much and I told them that, and they said they where doing fine but it is my fault when people die to 5+ stacks.

So yes healers and tanks can be passed for blame for no reason because it is easier to see issues with regarding healing and tank, and can be misleading as a surface issue.

edit:
How fitting, I was doing leveling roulette so i can get 18 clusters and got some kind of troll BLM in odd gear. That's okay I first thought as long as they try it will be np. Well I noticed things where dying too slow so I was trying to figure out why. (fire I and fire II can look alike animation wise depending what is going on) So as I was trying do my thing with heal and dps it was a bit hard to focus on what the BLM was casting but I knew something was off.

This ended up being proven right when the BLM pulled hate from the tank, usually when that happens it has to do with over dps off single rotation. So that is what they did for that pull casting fire I spam, fire III procs etc. But on the boss on add part they did a proper aoe rotation and I thought maybe they noticed the mistake. Well next pull was single target again when I commented, "fire II spam 3+ smonters plase then flare, convert flare" next line "aoe damage is low atm" but no one said anything back except the other dps doing "?"

After a wipe I said their name with saying "Aoe rotation please" then the DPS said "BLM is doing fine" I said we wiped because of it, because of that + a pull I was not used too so I was unsure how time healing spells and the damage taken from it (faster then I expected) So then I was kick abused out of the vault, only to enter a new vault DF for leveling weekly quest for clusters.

I hate vault so much, along with a tank that can't see the issue with a DPS pulling hate because they are fully going out single target rotation with a grouping of 5????

So yes people are really blind to DPS issues and blame others because it is easier to see. In people's minds, tank not holding hate = tank fault, people die = healer fault while not looking why that happened. (singe target DPSing or stuff not being killed fast enough)

[Mikazuki_Aura]

In my experience the most common problem with DPS happens when they do not follow marked targets. This virtually guarantees they pull aggro off the unmarked targets from most tanks, and also increases the amount of healing healers have to do as incoming damage input is elevated for longer than necessary.

I've also had DPS with positioning issues, where monks are obviously not moving at all, so they benefit from only the rear-bonus attacks, not the flank ones; bards who do not have permanent uptime on their DoTs on the marked target, DPS (especially black mages) who do not move when they are supposed to and end up drawing extra patrolling mobs, DPS with weapons that are 10 iLvls below the dungeon level who the healer can routinely outdamage. Wipes sometimes occur because DPS pull in extra mobs who should not be pulled, and then the incoming damage outweighs the amount the healer is capable of healing, but their failure to focus on marked targets makes the encounter take too long for the healer+tank's cooldowns to prevent a wipe. It's not exactly true that you need a DPS parser to know when DPS are doing badly. If they're slightly suboptimal you may need one, but wipes aren't caused by suboptimal DPS, they're caused by terrible DPS.

I had issues in dungeons before of AST healers insisting that they needed to AoE DPS to be optimal even though neither DPS role user was particularly suited to AoE. My priority was to hold aggro against the DPS, while the AST never stopped bitching at me because his use of nonstop AoE attacks plus AoE heal spam (with Ethers) repeatedly drew aggro off the unmarked targets.

Healers sometimes die by doing weird crap like standing in fatal AoEs, even though the tank should usually be the first to die, and sometimes it's the DPS's fault. Stone prison was not broken in one Titan fight by the DPS, and he ate a line AoE before I could help him. The remainder of the fight involved running in circles around the arena while healing myself with a cross-class Cure, and eventually one other DPS died so I had to deliver the final blow myself. When healers die, wipes usually happen, that Titan was a strange exception to the rule.

There's a lot of bad players out there, many because they're new, some because they make mistakes even new players shouldn't, some because they're downsynced and think a group of first-time runners can keep up with a speedrunner strat with underlevelled gear. Tank problems are usually the most fatal type of problems, so they get the most aggro from players as well as from mobs, but the primary cause of wipes can be other players as well. Ultimately I run non-single player content almost exclusively as tanks or healers now as they have the highest carry potential.

My first character during the trial weekend was actually meant to be a Kujata healer, but after seeing dungeons during the trial and the horrendous state of low-level tanks, I switched to a Aura tank as more or less the new 'main'. (The breakpoint was when an early Haukke Manor run included a tank who didn't know how to interrupt, and presented his back to all except one mob - and the healer ran a tanking pet that he didn't know to sic on something the main tank isn't attacking. I had to draw aggro as a monk, and interrupt the maids with Arm of the Destroyer. Before outright taking over the tank role in a DPS, the original setup was so bad the tank died on the first mob pull - with 3 mobs. After that I decided that it'd be less annoying all around if I could either compensate for tanks by healing, or tank myself and compensate for healers with potions/cooldowns.)

Sure, I get more abuse now, but at the same time the wipe rate goes down a lot, so I select whatever people say that might actually be useful to listen to, and tune out the rest, especially if I know I'm doing something specifically to counter the mistakes of another. There's no point having arguments over blame; I want the content cleared as fast as possible, and every moment I spend arguing with an unfair attack is a moment I'm not using to attack a mob.

[spelley]

DPS blames Tank (if they lose Enmity/pulling too much) and Healers (if anyone dies while the healer still has MP)
Tank blames DPS (if mobs stay alive so long they run out of CDs/messing up mechanics) and Healers (if they go down and the Healer still has MP)
Healer blames Tank (for not using enough CDs/pulling too much) or DPS (if the enemy lives so long the Healer runs out of MP/getting hit by AOEs)

Literally everyone blames everyone else, when it's usually a combination. DPS forgets a mechanic or eat an AOE trying to eek out damage, Tank is a little overzealous with pulling enemies while with undergeared/inexperienced DPS and/or Healer. Healer stays in Cleric Stance too long or doesn't compensate for Tank/DPS mistakes. The best players are able to objectively review their own play and point out their own mistakes.

I know as a DRG I am well aware that if we do big pulls back-to-back in the Expert Roulette dungeons (I'm not super well geared yet) I am going to run out of TP pretty quickly as I just don't have the damage yet due to gear limitations to kill quickly and keep up my AOE Rotation TP-wise. I let the Tank and Healer know so they can compensate. So far they have listened and understood, but I guarantee I'll run into a group someday soon that won't (or I'll get geared up enough that it's moot).

[Kosmos992k]

If the community develops a higher standard for expected play, that is a GOOD thing. Increasing the skill level of the playerbase should be a goal.

If the community develops an unrealistic standard and expectation for the standard of play, that's a BAD thing. Increasing the skill level of the playerbase is less a goal than a hope. The higher the level of expectation that a portion of the community has, and drives down to the rest of the community, the less likely it is to be met at any level.

A proper rotation is beyond the skill level of most players in this game. I would say asking for better dummy DPS is still a skill improvement.

Do you mean 'proper' or perfect? I see 'proper rotation' bandied about a lot, and I often wonder, what exactly that means. Is it 75% of potential performance? 85%? 95%? more?

Potential performance is nothing more than an ieal world number. Players who can hit within 5% of that in ideal conditions are doing very, very well. in less than ideal conditions, during a dungeon run, what is reasonable to expect? 85% of the maximum possible? 75%? At what point do you stop calling it a proper rotation? When to you take into account the differing conditions from run to run when evaluating performance?

Perhaps it's best not to expect anything even remotely close to perfection from anyone except yourself?