When I tried some hillbilly kid showed me up :(
The problem is often that due to mechanics the tank population is lower than the DPS population. Why? Because raiding standards in WoW-like game often are 1~2 MT per encounter maximum (in a 20+ mans raid). Make that 3 if an offtank is needed.
Same goes for healers/supports, in lot of encounters, you will have about a third of your raid dedicated to that. What gives? DPS remain the biggest part of the raid (50%+). So the DPS population is obviously higher.
Also, tanking mean owning tank gear and lot of players don't bother to gear a tank, especially when the guild they raid with already have their 1/2 dedicated main tanks. Any proper raiding guild will distribute loots to their MT first, so whoever isn't a full time tank in a raid will never have priorities on loots which discourage players to tank.
So it's not only about people being lazy, it's more a game design issue. If the needed tank/heal/dps ratio was 1/1/1 on high level encounters, then player population would be close to that 1/1/1 as well. But no encounters are designed to work with the same amount of tank/heal/DPS.
Don't forget that you will be able to raise your chocobo as either a tank, healer, or dps role, and it has been requested that they be sufficiently competent to replace a player of that role for most things.
So... go go 100% DPS population...
Mizukage get banned and started posting under a new name?
Yes and no. When tanking was more open and less...reliant on you being a keyboard master with a crapton of binds and macros, a lot more people were willing to take up the role of tank. Sure, you could make a case for 696 and passives making prot pallies easier to play than bear druids or warriors, but it also meant more people were willing to tank because of it. I don't buy into the whole e-pride thing (the "this class is easier to play so it should perform worse so that I don't feel bad for not choosing it" idiocy), so I was very happy to see so many people that actually wanted to take up the role. The shift in "difficulty" had a large hand in reducing the tank pool. And it's that approach to design that makes people hesitant of taking up the mantle of tank. Healing works the same way, too.
I can agree that growth opportunities are limited for tanks and heals, but that's not entirely why there's less people playing tanks and heals more people playing DPS.
White Mage is my favorite job to play, as it was in FFXI. Can't say I'd complain to get free goodies too though :3
I approve!
Fix a problem that isn't there? I think this is a comunity essue, like right now not many people like to tank or heal mostly because too much responsability, they don't like it or simply they are not good doing it. DPS crowd will always be higher