Why do so many FF XIV players have anxiety??

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Snip. . .

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As someone who suffers from and has an official
diagnosis for anxiety and panic attacks among other things, I will say I agree but we live in a world people people use autistic as an insult and as someone who is on the spectrum it is annoying but I do not think we should get overly upset or sensitive on both sides when people use the wrong terminology in the wrong context.

Might be annoying, and we may personally view it as wrong but to those who are not well informed such symptoms may seem like anxiety, and I also cannot blame people that much either when even our media and schools throw around the word left and right.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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i am sorry then nedkel, i used the term wrong in my post to the OP.
just like awha said about people dont use it right, i didn't meant it as a medical term but as context to fear/stress which was wrong and again sorry.
i know u used past tense but still i hope you feel better :) .

p.s-edited that post and deleted the word anxiety from it.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong.

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you don't have anxiety because you don't have it bad enough or for reasons i find valid!

It's more of performance phobia than anxiety. Tanks and healers have to deal with all kind of issues, while dps can easily underperform without anyone noticing. Were there more pressure put on the dps, introducing in-game parser for example, the other roles would cause less "anxiety" because it's relative.

The words evolve with the usage. One day it can mean medical condition, the next one an insult or something else. We have to adapt, because the change does not care about our out-dated definition.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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The word for "anxiety" has been around longer than the medical use of "anxiety disorder". To me at least, "anxiety" and "anxiety disorder" are two separate things, just like how "eating" and "eating disorder" are separate. You can feel anxiety without it having to be the medical condition. I'm sorry for what happened to you, but it's a bit vulgar that you're trying to somehow own a word that's used for other things.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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The problem is the word is both used for the disorder and for the emotion. The same with depression.

People without an anxiety disorder can still feel anxiety, like those who don't have depression can feel depressed. Sure this can fuel misunderstandings, but unless somebody is claiming to have the disorder but don't (like the OP might be) then I don't see an issue.

I am also saying this as somebody with the disorder, I of course would rather the misconceptions weren't there, but I just feel it is always worth establishing the difference between an anxiety disorder (and of course these come in all shapes and sizes) and somebody experiencing the feeling of anxiety. Otherwise it can go the other way too, people just assume you're being silly for feeling anxious when actually it's not that but their experience of anxiety is just the emotion and not the disorder.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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What you’re describing here is more akin to hypochondriasis—which is a somatoform disorder—if you’re thinking that every small physical ailment is actually a far more serious diagnosis. Anxiety disorders generally do accompany hypochondriasis, though; in all fairness.

That said, people can still feel anxiety or feel anxious without being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Feeling anxious is actually quite normal for a lot of people, especially if they are of a more introverted or shy personality type. It’s not really a misuse of the word; and it’s not really ridiculing anything. In all fairness, you don’t know how deep anxiety goes for anyone. It may just be crippling enough to be diagnosed as something “more proper”—it’s not really anyone’s place to say. Certainly not yours to attempt to police the use of the word.

As someone who was diagnosed with generalized anxiety over ten years ago, and as someone who has learned to deal with it, I don’t feel like others are “taking away from the seriousness of what I went through” when they say they have “tank-xiety” or “heal-xiety”. Same for when people call themselves “depressed”.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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As someone with an anxiety disorder (agoraphobia), I disagree with you completely. You can't just take the most extreme levels of anxiety and say "this is anxiety, other things aren't." Anxiety comes in extremely varying degrees, from nervousness to being completely crippled and unable to do anything. All of them are anxiety.

The primary reason is I want to familiarize myself with the mechanics first. Using our rotation and cooldowns means little if you die to the one shot dance too many times (cough Eden Part 4 cough). Tanks and Healers aren't very numerous in a party and have important tasks to keep everyone alive. It's logical to say a death from them has a higher chance of a wipe to occur compared to a DPS biting the dirt. The next part is the jaded reason of meeting with a few jerks doing stuff they shouldn't do and having the nerve to blame you for their actions. As a healer, I can usually choose to stop targeting heals on a person if their actions are malicious and genuinely causing problems. As a tank, I sometimes have to roll with it since the healer player(s) I am with might reflexively heal and get aggro. I try to protect the innocent bystanders after all.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

You're on something all right, but I don't think it's nerve pills...

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https://i.imgur.com/J1Ejc8h.gif

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

This is a word misuse imo.

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The misuse is actually construing anxiety with generalized anxiety disorder. Sorry, but anxiety is something everyone in the world will have to varying degrees about varying things, as others have pointed out more eloquently.

I have issues like this whenever I'm doing extreme or savage content. I feel that if I mess up and cause a wipe, everyone will hate me for it. I rarely use dps in ant content because parsers and "you are doing 0.00001 less dps than the top player, you suck go kill yourself."

Exaggerating a lot with the dps obviously but that's what my mind does.

Yeah in general that isn't true at all, but it doesn't stop that feeling. It's prevented me from doing any of that content since early stormblood. I won't even attempt it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I have issues like this whenever I'm doing extreme or savage content. I feel that if I mess up and cause a wipe, everyone will hate me for it. I rarely use dps in ant content because parsers and "you are doing 0.00001 less dps than the top player, you suck go kill yourself."

Exaggerating a lot with the dps obviously but that's what my mind does.

Yeah in general that isn't true at all, but it doesn't stop that feeling. It's prevented me from doing any of that content since early stormblood. I won't even attempt it anymore.

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Learn a rotation from the balance, clear the dummy and get into the content with a new static. Dont make excuses just do it and you will find satisfactory results.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

Learn a rotation from the balance, clear the dummy and get into the content with a new static. Dont make excuses just do it and you will find satisfactory results.

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I feel like you're heavily missing the point of what they're saying, and what they're saying is totally understandable. To them I say that I get that, and it's the main reason I play tanks and healers - I know I can't play DPS well, so I play the easier roles. Best of luck in future, Adeacia.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I have issues like this whenever I'm doing extreme or savage content. I feel that if I mess up and cause a wipe, everyone will hate me for it. I rarely use dps in ant content because parsers and "you are doing 0.00001 less dps than the top player, you suck go kill yourself."

Exaggerating a lot with the dps obviously but that's what my mind does.

Yeah in general that isn't true at all, but it doesn't stop that feeling. It's prevented me from doing any of that content since early stormblood. I won't even attempt it anymore.

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Just practice your rotation and join a learning party for whatever content it is. Everyone's gonna be fresh and will work together to understand the fight of whatever you run into.

The new EX that drops in 5.1 is gonna have learning parties for everyone since it's legit just come out. Even if you want to run through some older ones like Titania EX and Inno EX there are still people getting to those fights now. They're not that bad, just gotta pay attention. Honestly once you clear both those EX's E1S is gonna be as hard as Titania imo. 460 gear being easier to obtain will make the fight easier to manage.

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Originally Posted by Videra

I feel like you're heavily missing the point of what they're saying, and what they're saying is totally understandable. To them I say that I get that, and it's the main reason I play tanks and healers - I know I can't play DPS well, so I play the easier roles. Best of luck in future, Adeacia.

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I'm saying we are anonymous people and just doing it will yield satisfactory results. Their anxiety is valid, I'm saying learn a rotation, beat the dummy, watch a video, and do it. They wont get kicked, they wont hold anyone back, they wont suck as bad as they think they will. I'm trying to be positive by giving a path into just doing it. If they where on my server I would take them in e1s.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Before anybody feeds it. There's a lot of trollish posts from the OP. This is very likely one of them.

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Blessed post.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...khrohrh321.jpg

[But just to answer for anyone who may be falling for it, people just don't wanna get yelled at for making mistakes or playing differently since no one will ever be perfect and no one will ever please everyone. You can blame the part of the community that expects the entire player base to give a damn about optimization for that one. #NotEveryoneRaids #DungeonsAreNotRaidContent]

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Originally Posted by Noitems

Just practice your rotation and join a learning party for whatever content it is. Everyone's gonna be fresh and will work together to understand the fight of whatever you run into.

The new EX that drops in 5.1 is gonna have learning parties for everyone since it's legit just come out. Even if you want to run through some older ones like Titania EX and Inno EX there are still people getting to those fights now. They're not that bad, just gotta pay attention. Honestly once you clear both those EX's E1S is gonna be as hard as Titania imo. 460 gear being easier to obtain will make the fight easier to manage.

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Doesn't matter if it's new content and everyone is messing up. If I mess up I feel like crap (only if I cause a wipe) and feel like I should not be there. Pressure to preform is too high.

Thing is I never used to have this issue, until I came to the forums

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Originally Posted by Lacan

I'm not saying the anxiety is just in your head. I know people are genuinely feeling that. I'm saying that this idea that "people are silently judging me while I tank stuff!" is just in your head. People aren't doing that unless you are reaaaaally messing stuff up. :v

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And then they usually aren't silent about it. lol

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

They dont.
Anxiety is mental disorder associated with physical symptoms through panic attacks, depression, chest pain, vertigo and etc. this is being treated with drugs by medical professionals.
Playing game is not going to trigger anxiety disorder, especially FFXIV, people are just oversensitive and think being nervous is anxiety disorder.

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This. Or they don't actually conflate the two and are just speaking hyperbolically. "It gives me anxiety" is the same as "it freaks me out" as far as meanings go. Its not something super serious. Just interchangeable with "I am feeling pressure".

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

Doesn't matter if it's new content and everyone is messing up. If I mess up I feel like crap (only if I cause a wipe) and feel like I should not be there. Pressure to preform is too high.

Thing is I never used to have this issue, until I came to the forums

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Just do your best and then tell anyone who gives you **** about it off. And maybe ignore the threads on the forum about dungeons/combat. And tales from the duty finder, if you're worried what randoms might think of a story involving you somehow. You won't feel that way anymore.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

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It's a shame that you can suffer a condition like that, understand how bad it really is and what you go through ...and then judge other sufferers as making it all up.

Anxiety disorders are a very wide spectrum. It can be physical, mental or both. They might not all be as bad as what you go through and sure there may be some who apply the label to themselves without understanding it, but it's very real for a large number of people and a struggle and unpleasant to live with, affecting your everyday life in many ways. In general mental anxiety disorders are where your brain perceives danger where there isn't any and is highly sensitive to others emotions, particularly with social interaction and very sensitive to rejection. This applies to gaming with other people, the dangers of all the things you might mess up, the potential social rejection if you were told you suck, were insulted and kicked and the awful impact it would have causes your brain to overact. It's not that you can't do it, a lot of us do, it's just very difficult.

If you don't understand something, don't judge it. Anxiety isn't a "cool" trend we adopt for fun. It's something many of us would give a heck of a lot to be free from.

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Originally Posted by Lacan

I'm always hearing about tank anxiety and I don't get it. It's just a vidya game. You just pull the stuff and keep running. What is there to be anxious about??? Are you guys taking your nerve pills?

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eh I know this is a bait troll and I shouldn't respond to it. People have tank anxiety because people are jerks in general. A tiny mess up and they get yelled at and called the lowest scum for the rest of the run.

To be honest I just want to kind of punch people in the face when they make posts like these. Because I feel that people who posts like this just deserve to have a forced forum vacation for judging other peoples problems. You do not know the people on the other side of the screen, people like you are the reason society is so messed up.

I give this post a 5/10 in bait troll posting because he was successful in getting me triggered for how low people seem to be able to go for a reaction.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I have issues like this whenever I'm doing extreme or savage content. I feel that if I mess up and cause a wipe, everyone will hate me for it. I rarely use dps in ant content because parsers and "you are doing 0.00001 less dps than the top player, you suck go kill yourself."

Exaggerating a lot with the dps obviously but that's what my mind does.

Yeah in general that isn't true at all, but it doesn't stop that feeling. It's prevented me from doing any of that content since early stormblood. I won't even attempt it anymore.

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Work your way up at your own pace.
I was incredibly late to the raiding party, I only started this tier with raiding in FFXIV in general, so no prior experience of any kind... not even with old content, neither sync nor unsync. I switched jobs two times over the past few weeks, first to RDM and then to BLM, both jobs I had never touched before but caught my interest for the most random reasons (*coughBackflipcough*) and I got them from 1/ 50 to 80 in one go.

So I spent time on balance, bashed dummies, spent more time on balance, bashed more dummies and joined practice parties. Worked my way up from "practice from start, only guide exp needed" through "practice from [insert late mechanic here] onward" to "going for kill, enrage exp please". Didn't matter that I already had enrage or kill exp, I started from the bottom with each new class.

I died to the most stupid things at first because playing a fight on a different class feels completely different even if you know the mechanics. So did others. That's what "practice from start" parties are for. Many people were there who either just switched classes, practiced an alt job or even had no experience whatsoever with a certain boss.
Most people are way too focused on staying on their feet and doing their job anyway to watch you like a hawk.
And nobody chews anyone out for a "shit forgot surecast, my bad" or "fuck totally forgot that one...". Even in kill parties people sometimes make stupid mistakes because humans are humans and it happens.
But coming prepared helps a lot with the nervousness you have. Preperation in form of committing your rotation to muscle memory by tormenting some unassuming dummy over and over, practicing the earlier phases even if you have seen enrage etc.
Try it. You might be surprised.

Troll bait or not it has created an interesting conversation. Though I do believe a lot the confusion stems from not looking into the context. While different, but I do feel it is similar. Yesterday during our raid a trial member asked for me to stop sperging in chat when they were screwing up.

Most the group got upset over this comment because I happen to be on the spectrum and when I laughed at how they were taking far more personally then I am it sort got me thinking, people really view it as an attack or marginalizing behavior when they use a condition, term, or whatever in either a negative or wrong context from what they deem appropriate. Though actions like this utterly confuse me sure we can disagree and even choose to not associate with the person for their beliefs and thoughts, but if someone wants to use a word in certain context that differs from my own who am I to say they are wrong. I can correct the terminology but the context they use and view it in is their own subjective view and while they may try to use it as a personal attack it only becomes one if I let it.

So let us not take things personally sure we can question and seek understanding and even if the questions are askee with malice no need to view it as such and take it personally. Hope that makes sense, that event yesterday just got me thinking about this thread and the discussion going on.

Troll or not, I'll give a straight answer. And I'm not going to get into the word semantics of some other comments.

People get anxious when tanking or healing because they don't want to do something that someone else in the party will find wrong. The reason they don't want to do this is the incredibly prevalent idea that if someone does something you don't like in a group, you're free to "call them out" for their imperfection. Some may be constructive. Many aren't. Not everyone can just let this roll down their back. I can myself, since I know I'm a person and not a robot and people fuck up sometimes. But if you can't ignore this sort of thing and you have had an experience where someone raked you over the coals for your performance, then it's perfectly understandable how someone could get nervous or anxious when taking on that role in a group. You might say it's just a vidya game, OP, but there are many who treat even a basic MSQ dungeon as Serious Business and are willing to make someone else's life hell if they don't have everything go exactly as they want.

People should really learn not to care what strangers on the internet think about them. I understand having severe anxiety in real life where it affects you at home, your job or school, however random people in duty finder don't mean anything to you. If people are worried about how they perform the best way to improve is to study up whatever you're playing and put what you learned into unsynced solo fights. And if you're leveling, start from the bottom dungeons and work your way up like the game was designed, it'll help you learn your rotations and skill usage as time goes on. Read every skill and try to think how best to put it into practice, if applicable.

Not toward the OP or the bait thread, but this is aimed at the follow-up posts;



You guys all realize "Anxiety" is a word, right? that has... multiple definitions?

like. i dont know. "The state of being anxious"? how about an actual dictionary one;
"a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome." -straight off google. took 2 seconds.
It isnt limited to the diagnosis; though it is there.

im sorry, but having a disorder doesn't give you a monopoly on the use of a word. You people that would use a legitimate and crippling disorder as a weapon are- I dont have the words for it. even a certain historical group from germany had more tact and credibility than that.

you CAN be anxious or have a specific anxiety to something.... without having or co-opting an entire disorder. this should be common sense. If tanking makes you anxious and gives you some anxiety? you have tank anxiety.
It's not a diagnosis. It's not a co-option. It's a perfectly standard and basic human emotion toward a very specific activity.





EDIT:I feel the need to add this since the internet is what it is. I am not downplaying or even addressing those with legitimate fights with anxiety. I've not dealt with it myself but have attemtpted to aid those that do. Its very crippling. But I dont want your condition being used as a weapon. you are free to feel offended by people using something like "tank anxiety", but I hope you can at least see, reasonably, that the word and its usage doesnt revolve around attacking or belittling you. It does have other uses beyond that.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

What you’re describing here is more akin to hypochondriasis—which is a somatoform disorder—if you’re thinking that every small physical ailment is actually a far more serious diagnosis. Anxiety disorders generally do accompany hypochondriasis, though; in all fairness.

That said, people can still feel anxiety or feel anxious without being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Feeling anxious is actually quite normal for a lot of people, especially if they are of a more introverted or shy personality type. It’s not really a misuse of the word; and it’s not really ridiculing anything. In all fairness, you don’t know how deep anxiety goes for anyone. It may just be crippling enough to be diagnosed as something “more proper”—it’s not really anyone’s place to say. Certainly not yours to attempt to police the use of the word.

As someone who was diagnosed with generalized anxiety over ten years ago, and as someone who has learned to deal with it, I don’t feel like others are “taking away from the seriousness of what I went through” when they say they have “tank-xiety” or “heal-xiety”. Same for when people call themselves “depressed”.

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And interestingly enough, we don't use "hypochondriasis" as part of the diagnosis anymore. As of DSM-5, it has been replaced with "Illness Anxiety Disorder."

I actually have social anxiety but I mained healer for 2 years and then tank for another 4 years and I only quit now and switched to DD because they have destroyed Dark Knight :x

Especially playing DRK was a lot of fun. It was very hard at the beginning, but at least I read a lot of guides and played WHM before so I knew the content and knew exactly what I would expect from a tank. That helped so I basically had no problems with playing the job from a technical standpoint. But it was hard to overcome the fear to tank for these other people and it never was going away.

It got better with the time in regards to queueing up for content without fear, because I got more confident in my skill, but I think overall my social anxiety got worse. People are just not nice to tanks and maybe it is better for my health that DRK is not fun to play anymore >.>

Another big factor is that they stripped the defense of the tanks away. The party demands that I have to speed-pull large groups, but I have cooldowns for only 40 seconds wich I have to spread out over more than one pull plus the occasional TBN wich often gehts destroyed in 1 or 2 seconds. I feel terrible now playing tank because I often have to pull without any defense. All my confidence is gone and I don't feel safe anymore.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Before anybody feeds it. There's a lot of trollish posts from the OP. This is very likely one of them.

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Bless you... almost got baited myself by the trollish post.

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Originally Posted by FF16Necromancer

Bless you... almost got baited myself by the trollish post.

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Sorry to tell you this, but you did get baited. Just by responding to the thread you are doing exactly what the troll wanted you to do. Be more careful next time, good luck!

Must be too much caffeine.

I went through A Realm Reborn and Heavensward as Warrior and Dark Knight, respectively, but going into Stormblood now I'm realizing the content is only going to get harder from here and... honestly I'm not that good, I don't have the best reactions times or anything, so I've kind of lost my nerve for it. I really like Tank classes for the aesthetic™ but... I'm probably doing everyone else a favour by ditching them.

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Originally Posted by Lacan

I'm always hearing about tank anxiety and I don't get it. It's just a vidya game. You just pull the stuff and keep running. What is there to be anxious about??? Are you guys taking your nerve pills?

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Hmm when I first started tanking back in TBC-WoW I did feel somewhat anxious. Back then holding aggro needed attention, you had to pull the mobs out of a room in the right order, wait for patrols and pull at the right moment, be careful not to pull too many of them, interrupt, position them correctly, quickly pick up dangerous adds etc.

There was a lot do be done wrong and most of the time, erring in judgment resulted in a wipe. Man, those were fun times. I could certainly understand that tanking wasn't for everybody.

Nowadays in MMOs though, you just charge in, barf AoEs and... well you can basically AFK the rest of the fight, since a sneeze is enough to hold aggro until the mobs die. Being anxious of tanking a dungeon is pretty idiotic.

Savage bosses are another matter though. Though I seriously doubt anyone suffering from anxiety in a video game would subject themselves to doing these.

Troll or not, if anything, this game helps me forget about anxiety. I can just relax and craft, or if I'm having a particularly bad day, go pound other players into paste in PVP. It's cathartic.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Nowadays in MMOs though, you just charge in, barf AoEs and...

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Barf AOEs cracked me up. i'm going to refer to them like this from now on.

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

I went through A Realm Reborn and Heavensward as Warrior and Dark Knight, respectively, but going into Stormblood now I'm realizing the content is only going to get harder from here and... honestly I'm not that good, I don't have the best reactions times or anything, so I've kind of lost my nerve for it. I really like Tank classes for the aesthetic™ but... I'm probably doing everyone else a favour by ditching them.

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It can actually get easier, as you unlock more abilities you have more toolkit to reduce damage. In particular life gets easier for DRK once you get The Blackest Night. Raid tanking is often easier than dungeon tanking too so once you reach lv80 it's not going to spike in difficulty unless you're doing EX/Savage/Ultimate and even then it's not too bad to learn. There's also the advantage over dps that you have a much easier rotation and can get hit by a mechanic or two by mistake and still live.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Savage bosses are another matter though. Though I seriously doubt anyone suffering from anxiety in a video game would subject themselves to doing these.

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My FC is specifically for players with anxiety and they're progressing e8s at the moment and having fun with it. I've cleared the tier myself and dipped into PF a fair bit, hoping to move into Ultimate in the near future. Anxiety disorders are difficult to live with but you don't have to let it limit or restrict what you do in life.

I want to say it's an issue on any role, be it tank, healer, or DPS. But it's just further compounded by tanks and healers generally having a higher responsibility, from boss positioning to keeping everyone alive, etc, etc. Of which is very, very easy to see

For anyone who thinks playing an MMO doesn't trigger anxiety.. well specifically Social Anxiety, just having to communicate can be tough, just because you're behind a screen and keyboard, doesn't remove the anxiety symptoms that come with communicating with another human being (perhaps people with SA actually 'feel' more connected to people? I know some folk who don't see people over the internet as 'real people' which I find shocking.) So in my own experience, I even put off the MSQ for a week when I hit level 15 cause I was too anxious to queue for the first dungeon. The good thing is, in general, MMO's help people with anxiety disorders to gradually and safely overcome some of their fears. There are still days when I don't wanna do dungeons, but mostly I'm fine now. As for Tanking, well, people suck, there are a small percentage of players (just like there are in real life) who are horrible people, and no one wants to be called out, attacked, or given a rude comment for screwing up (this is doubly hurtful for people with social anxiety) so they tend to avoid Tanking, since the tank generally gets the blame if the party dies.

As for anxiety in general, for those who don't have it, or have never experienced it, it is not a concious thing, I don't think "wow am I scared to do this" it's more like, a physical reaction occurs that makes you feel sick, and can create many physical symptoms, therefore, because no one wants to feel that sick, they avoid whatever triggers the reaction. So it's not a 'fear' per-se, more of a fight or flight response where you go "do I want to feel good, or do I want to feel ill?" if the risk is worth the reward, then you accept the anxiety attacks, but it's a video game.. if tanking or healing invokes anxiety.. just avoid it :)

I think politics playing and increasingly larger role in our lives is the cause.