Tank and heal shortage

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Originally Posted by Gramul

Tanks and healers get all the responsibility if something goes wrong. Who wants to deal with that?

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get over yourself. if anything there are more mechanics that fall on dps to be good in the new instances. I always crank up the ilevel req for dps in ct groups then reduce it for tanks/healers and go as summoner, because well geared dps make things go MUCH smoother than well geared tanks or healers.

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Originally Posted by jars

get over yourself. if anything there are more mechanics that fall on dps to be good in the new instances. I always crank up the ilevel req for dps in ct groups then reduce it for tanks/healers and go as summoner, because well geared dps make things go MUCH smoother than well geared tanks or healers.

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Why would you even put Ilvl requirement for CT?

People are just generally rude to tanks and healers. That's a huge turn off to even attempt those roles.

I imagine they eventually get fed up with it and either unsub or just change to a no blame DPS role.

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Originally Posted by jars

get over yourself. if anything there are more mechanics that fall on dps to be good in the new instances. I always crank up the ilevel req for dps in ct groups then reduce it for tanks/healers and go as summoner, because well geared dps make things go MUCH smoother than well geared tanks or healers.

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Sorry.
I meant to say "blame".

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Originally Posted by Tridus1x

I imagine they eventually get fed up with it and either unsub or just change to a no blame DPS role.

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It's just simpler, really. If you don't know what to do as a DPS, you just hit things and everything turns out just fine most of the time. There are very few encounters where you even have to think about when to use your cooldowns. If you don't know what to do as a healer, you bash the heal button and often only risk going OOM (which is fixed by BRD). If you don't know what to do as a tank, you're going to wipe the group each time you meet a critical juncture and don't have a solid understanding of the mechanics. Adds eat the healers, the raid gets cleaved, or you eat the non-indicated hits without mitigation and watch the wipe from the floor.

The big problem with CT the exact opposite: it's not only faceroll easy, there are also 6 tanks where you never need more than 3. You can do the entire dungeon as a tank and tank absolutely nothing, having no idea what you're supposed to be doing. While tanking CT, I've pulled 6 skeletons in one Bone Dragon phase and held 7 Nemesis during a Thanatos fight. Where were the other 4 tanks? They don't know the first thing about it, and they may have done the dungeon a half-dozen times as a tank before enough of them congregated that it become a problem.

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Originally Posted by Doo

Why would you even put Ilvl requirement for CT?

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so I don't have to deal with a bunch people that can't dps their way out of a paper bag? why would you want to run with someone in AF1 gear

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

@Iecerint: they can put whatever they want, the trouble to be fun at play is not there... because of the gameplay of the class and the reaction of most people with who to teams up.

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If people were more understanding and less "ME ME ME!" then most tanks would not have given up (I would still be playing a tank instead of a healer). People are so disgusting when it comes to a small mistake that I fear for those people in real life. (How do they cope with small accidents around their home?!)

In the end, I think it comes down the 'bads'. My husband's tank got kicked from a group for asking the lvl 35 Pug (NOT MNK) why he was in all INT gear (and suggested that he needed STR gear) ... <---THIS is the problem, he wasn't mean, he wasn't nasty, he just asked and got kicked.

Immature people need to stop hiding behind how nasty they can be and grow some balls and deal with mistakes and suggestions!

Tanking has the most pressure of the jobs, followed by healing. As a tank, you have to know the fights, know where to go, handle the kill order, call OTHER people out on their shit when they screw with the system and then they get pissy at you for telling them what to do, even though they're interfering with your job. A lot of people don't like having that kind of responsibility.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Learn to be a team player instead of a team hater and maybe you'll find more enjoyment in it....

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Your apologetics are weak.

You know nothing about me. You know nothing about my playstyle. I am a good tank. I am a very patient tank. I am the tank who tries to explain the fights to new runners. I do not abandon duties, ever. I am in it for the win, come what may.

And I get nothing but crap for it. BLM and BRD who want to run ahead and start shooting up the room every. single. time. WheeeeDEAD. I mark targets and no one pays attention. People who won't stop standing in the icky green stuff. People who won't burn adds. Et cetera et cetera ad nauseum.

I'm out. No Duty Roulette ever again. PF and statics only for me.

I love healing!

A perfect way to solve the tank shortage would be to have bosses give a debuff that requires 2 tanks for a fight... No, wait a minute....

Non sarcastically, the only viable solution to this problem is to allow most all content 1 tank, 2 heals, 5 dps.
If CT didn't force a group of 2 tanks 2 healers 4 DD jobs queue times for DD classes would be cut drastically.

You cracked it, champ.

I love the paladin AF armor, and I have both a mogaxe and mogsword ready should I get to 50 with warrior or paladin, but though I have both above 30, I don't use them in Duty Finder or Duty Roulette. Mostly because of how critical people are of tanks. It's worse now with DR because most of the time you get 50s who just want to run through as quickly as possible because they just want their tomes.

tl ; dr If people were nicer to tanks, nicer to new players, nicer to everyone really, you might get more "would be" tanks and healers to put themselves out there. There are tanks and healers out there but the rude players make them stick with their own FC/LS/static.

A few reasons:
- Most of the time, tanks want dungeon drops that aren't for tanks. For example, I'd want Vortex Ring of Healing over Vortex Ring of Fending. Unless I know I can get this as a tank, chances are I won't want to queue as a tank.
- Everyone has different play styles - the moment one tank cannot adjust to a group's strat, he's going to get vitriol. A lot of it.
- Due to said vitriol above, tanks would rather tank for groups of friends, FC, or LS. There's no real point using DF.

I do enjoy DF however. I'd usually do Duty Roulette as a tank, for the extra adventurer in need bonus.

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Originally Posted by Verius_Nox

All of your examples are DPS checks, though. So DPS's only real responsibility is DPS checks, ergo knowing their rotation.

Wow, so difficult.

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DPS also have to dodge a lot more, and not only know their rotation, but rely on the tank to set up proper postions (melee dps) or not pull out or range or LoS (ranged/caster dps). They have support abilities they should use to take load off of healers and tanks.

People like you who act like DPS roles are a walk in the park are a significant part of the problem: why there are so many terrible dps players.

I went from DPS and healing roles to tanking and it is 1000x less stressful and less work to me. Defensive cooldown rotations are actually easier than 99% of all dps rotations sans the lowest-levels of them. The only difficult parts I found were late endgame with tank swapping or stun/silence duties, and not even that is particularly hard once you macro it out. Some duties are a complete joke as a tank, like Titan HM, where they are a terror on DPS and healers.

My argument is thusly that it is BS that people act like there's so much difficulty in tanking and people are terrified of doing it, when it's actually being played up and they should actually be terrified of dps (twitch game) and healer (micro-management) roles.

I tank a lot more than anything else these days because it queues instantly and I feel a lot more comfortable doing it over the hectic of dps or healing.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

DPS also have to dodge a lot more, and not only know their rotation, but rely on the tank to set up proper postions (melee dps) or not pull out or range or LoS (ranged/caster dps). They have support abilities they should use to take load off of healers and tanks.

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Still sounds like part of their job is done by tanks. I mean by this you're basically saying if the tank doesn't do his job for the DPS, they end up not doing much damage...or can't play their jobs right (doing damage?). So...yeah, tank still has to do more of the work.

Wouldn't it better to give a DD class a tank job?
This way the players only need to do the job quests, learn a bit the mechanic and are ready to tank.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

People like you who act like DPS roles are a walk in the park are a significant part of the problem: why there are so many terrible dps players.

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People like me, eh?

Well, since you want to get to know me so well, I'll go ahead and inform you that I've played multiple DPS jobs at 50 as well as my tank, and have done endgamey-wamey things with them. It -is- a walk in the park.

I play all roles and I have to say, that DPS is less worrisome. As a DPS, I just have to take care of myself and not die while repeating a rotation. As a tank, I have to worry about positioning, keeping strong hate before someone pulls and try to dodge/ take as few damage points as I can. As a healer, I have to watch what people are doing and react to HP drops and status bars while dodging whatever the enemies throw.

Now for tank, skills have to be on the spot or they can get hit by something nasty. As a healer, you have to be on it with the heals or tank WILL die. For DPS, you can mess up and still recover. You can mess up your rotation and NO ONE will see it. Unless someone has a parser and calls you out on it

The reason there are so few tanks is other peoples attitude. I've failed at AK so many times cause people couldn't get past the wall. When I got with a group in DR, finally got past it. I didn't know where to position the 3rd boss, so I did the best I could, faced away from party into a corner. I got raged on so bad because I didn't know where to put the boss cause that was my first time there. That is why there are so few of us, cause we're tired up putting up with everybodies crap.

I didn't read the whole thread but I gotta say that people have less patience with tanks in general.

My fiancé, who has bard and white mage at 50, is now trying to tank as warrior and I don't want her to be
alone in DF until she is more comfortable with the role. I know how you get treated if you are a little slow
as a tank and I don't want her to experience that. Every little mistake you do as a tank/healer is much easier
to spot and it impacts the whole party/raid.

I've started playing the game this weekend, and working on becoming a white mage, as i mainly enjoy playing support roles in mmo's. I think the duty finder system is a great way to promote fast and easy grouping (i have done a few runs of the level 15 and level 17 dungeons) but as with every other mmo, it also promotes the mindless pick up group "syndrome", in the experiences i have had (few as they might be) i have still to group with a competent tank, every tank so far has played like a glorified DPS, with aggro all over the place while i scrambled to heal.

As a healer in many mmo's, this lack of "tanking skills" and players simply not caring because of the cross realm grouping, are the biggest problems and lead to a lot of healers simply not bothering to even group outside of their guild or friends.

Just started leveling a tank having a lvl.50 smn/blm/sch. I have to say MRD pre lvl.30 horrible absolutely hated it and felt like I was constantly fighting to keep agro and would usually lose it. Post lvl.30, tanking so far has been easy mode (only up to brayflox) dps has to be trying pretty hard to pull agro off of me. I'm actually really enjoying war now recently hit lvl.35 I can see why more people aren't enjoying it but at this point if one butchers block combo then i can go afk have a coffee and come back and still have agro lol.

I always tank high level roulette, heal main scenario roulette and then DPS low level roulette (leveling DPS alts).

So, I'm helping the cause in two out of three roulettes. :)

I do agree that DPS queues are horrible. It takes 20+ minutes to get into the low level roulette and then upwards of 40 or more if I just want to DPS the highest dungeon for my level.

Heck, I started doing dailies for this reason. I can do all of my dailies while I'm waiting on the DPS queue.

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Originally Posted by Left_Hand

I've started playing the game this weekend, and working on becoming a white mage, as i mainly enjoy playing support roles in mmo's. I think the duty finder system is a great way to promote fast and easy grouping (i have done a few runs of the level 15 and level 17 dungeons) but as with every other mmo, it also promotes the mindless pick up group "syndrome", in the experiences i have had (few as they might be) i have still to group with a competent tank, every tank so far has played like a glorified DPS, with aggro all over the place while i scrambled to heal.

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If I get a tank like this, I simply say "Please flash (or overpower) the group a couple times to start with and then watch the enemy bar. If anything turns yellow, flash (overpower) again". I'll also ask them to mark (and mark myself if they don't). A lot of tanks aren't being bad on purpose. They just don't know how to tank properly yet.

I think what turns most people off tanking is that in the low levels, pre-30, it's absolutely awful because of how SE designed the skill unlocks. Rage of Halone and Butcher's Block really should be unlocked much sooner. That would make things easier on new tanks since without those, it is much more difficult to hold aggro. This leads unknowledgeable DPS to assume the tank doesn't know what they're doing and makes the tanks life stressful since it seems they can't hold hate on anything.

Beyond that though, you can't fix this discrepancy. People who want to play tanks/healers will and people who don't, won't. More tank/healer classes won't fix this unless you make them overpowered, but that has drawbacks of it's own. You tick off everyone who wants to play the (now) underpowered classes and when you eventually bring them all in line, people who FOTM'd flip back to DPS.

tanking, as a marauder anyway, is very easy. run to pack, overpower a few times, switch to single target threat.

in my experience healers are not rare. healers are quite common and if I queue as scholar I will have a comparable wait time to summoner, maybe only a little shorter. tanks are the rarity.

One good way to handle this (which I would hate, but still), would be to skew drops somewhat in favor of tank gear. I've started tanking coil recently because it's easier than waiting forever for a party and praying the tank that finally shows up is actually any good, and suddenly it dropped a buttload of tank gear on me so I'm seriously considering switching my main to tank....

Personally my biggest problem is the potential 40 (!!) level gap for level 50 dungeons.

My main is WHM and i love to heal. But with duty roulette, and since i had a lot of gear for tanks on my retainers, i resently leveled both, PLD and WAR, to 50.

Now i don't say i'm an awsome tank, but i did pretty well and hardly lost hate on any encounter. I even grew to like PLD so much, i want to make it my 2nd main.

At 50, i geared up in DL and went to tank my 1st level 50 dungeon. The DDs were all in myth and allagan gear, with glowing relics... okay... I tell em i'm new to level 50 tanking and go to work...

1st pack of mobs, i run in, Shield Lob, COS, Flash, Fast Blade the 1st mob... and i see the other 2 running towards the BLM... O.O ...i chase after them, Flash, Flash, Flash... and i see the 1st mob run towards the BRD...

After the fight i apologise for loosing hate, but they just laughed and said it's ok and they went full out on (AoE-)damage. There was no flaming or bad blood, but i felt completely useless chasing after the mobs like a dog.

And this was true for 4 of the 5 level 50 dungeons i tanked so far, and almost made me loose interest in tanking anything level 50 until i get better gear (wich, by the time i get the full myth set, will already be outdated)

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

One good way to handle this (which I would hate, but still), would be to skew drops somewhat in favor of tank gear. I've started tanking coil recently because it's easier than waiting forever for a party and praying the tank that finally shows up is actually any good, and suddenly it dropped a buttload of tank gear on me so I'm seriously considering switching my main to tank....

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If anything, it would make the problem worse, because current tanks would gear up faster than everyone else and have no further incentive to re-run things for, you know, the larger populations of healers and DPS. Go farm King Moggle or CT for hours at a time and you see this problem very clearly.

I try to do at least my roulette every day on my paladin, but I have to agree with some of the sentiments I have seen out here so far: It's kinda nerve wracking at times. Folks get *really* up tight even in non-end game dungeons and I can't fathom why.

For the most part, I have great runs with a lot of friendly and understanding folks. However, it only takes a few bad instances to make me want to only tank for my FC. Last night I had my second *bad* run. I had a sch healer who was spending more time DPS'ing than they were healing (clearly trying to speed the run up, nothing unusual about that), this wasn't a big deal, but I got killed as a result of it. Again, no big deal but I died before a boss room (First boss of Sunken). They rezed me, so I had the death penalty on me. I remembered that this boss can actually hit pretty hard at times, and where I had nothing to negate crits and the like due to synch, I wanted to wait to get rid of the penalty. You know, all of two minutes. That's when the insults and put downs started.

Now, this part was on me I think, but between the sch and the black mage in the party, I was having a bit of trouble holding the aggro on everything. I was managing, but some stuff would slip away which I would then switch focus to in an attempt to pick it up. This became somewhat of a topic to needle at me while I waited for the penalty to wear off, but I decided to just brush it off and not say anything back. Try and learn from it, etc. After the first boss went down I continued on, only to notice that the heals were only coming in when I was near death and that no one was following my marks at all. In fact, they were reassigning the marks on their own. Everyone was just attacking whatever they wanted and honestly, I just about lost my patience. Regardless, we cleared the dungeon but I couldn't help but notice that at the end one of them put "Fail tank" in the party chat as I was leaving the dungeon.

It was nearly enough to make me not want to tank a dungeon again.

TL;DR version: A few rotten apples make people not want to tank/heal. It's not the sole cause of the shortage, but something that can really go a long way in making people want to tank is to try and be friendly and understanding with folks, regardless of job or role in the party.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

If anything, it would make the problem worse, because current tanks would gear up faster than everyone else and have no further incentive to re-run things for, you know, the larger populations of healers and DPS. Go farm King Moggle or CT for hours at a time and you see this problem very clearly.

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Just make one BiS item have a really low drop rate and deny it vehemently when players start suspecting this is the case =P

I have given up on Moggle Mog farming -_-
CT I run as tank for the queue time and grab the first piece of gear I want that isn't needed on.
Incidentally, roulette has been pretty successful in getting me to tank a very large fraction of the time I'm playing.

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Originally Posted by Demetirus

I had a sch healer who was spending more time DPS'ing than they were healing, this wasn't a big deal, but I got killed as a result of it. Again, no big deal but I died before a boss room (First boss of Sunken). They rezed me, so I had the death penalty on me. I remembered that this boss can actually hit pretty hard at times, and where I had nothing to negate crits and the like due to synch, I wanted to wait to get rid of the penalty.

Now, this part was on me I think, but between the sch and the black mage in the party, I was having a bit of trouble holding the aggro on everything. I was managing, but some stuff would slip away which I would then switch focus to in an attempt to pick it up. This became somewhat of a topic to needle at me while I waited for the penalty to wear off, but I decided to just brush it off and not say anything back. Try and learn from it, etc. After the first boss went down I continued on, only to notice that the heals were only coming in when I was near death and that no one was following my marks at all. In fact, they were reassigning the marks on their own. Everyone was just attacking whatever they wanted and honestly, I just about lost my patience. Regardless, we cleared the dungeon but I couldn't help but notice that at the end one of them put "Fail tank" in the party chat as I was leaving the dungeon.

It was nearly enough to make me not want to tank a dungeon again.

TL;DR version: A few rotten apples make people not want to tank/heal. It's not the sole cause of the shortage, but something that can really go a long way in making people want to tank is to try and be friendly and understanding with folks, regardless of job or role in the party.

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JooC, were you marking the Bee's as #1 target? Because this is quite common to see, in sunken temple, if the tank doesnt mark the bees 1st.

Healers will help DPS, if the bees dont die fast enough, and only throw up heals when u really need it (during bee pulls) and if the tank marks something else, ppl will reassign the marks to the bees.

The 1st boss hits like a wet noodle, but those bees will nearly 1 shot ya, if not 1 shot ya.

I cant say i know what ur group was doing, but im fairly sure that was the case there. (not that tanking isnt a bitch anyways with ppl doing w/e they want.)
There was a bee in the pack right before the boss room, so thats what most likely killed you.
And they were most likely complaining because u weren't fighting the bees.

Would have been nice, if they explained the situation though.

After the 1st boss, some enemies need to be pulled to different locations, which some may have been trying to pull enemies off ya, in order to pull the enemies into proper locations.
Same with waiting on the heals, so as not to pull hate, if the enemy is in the proper location.

Thanks for the response!

I was marking the bees as #1 (with one exception), and yes, the Bee *is* what got me before the boss. As for the positioning stuff, I was doing that as well, but they were actively pulling off of me and moving it *away* from the spot and then complaining that I had failed (that's where the remarking started, I wanted the adds down first so that the heads could be moved easily.. they wanted to do the heads first, apparently). I honestly think they were just trying to do things that they felt sped up the run, but ultimately just made it more chaotic than it needed to be.

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Originally Posted by Verius_Nox

People like me, eh?

Well, since you want to get to know me so well, I'll go ahead and inform you that I've played multiple DPS jobs at 50 as well as my tank, and have done endgamey-wamey things with them. It -is- a walk in the park.

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Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

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Originally Posted by jars

tanking, as a marauder anyway, is very easy. run to pack, overpower a few times, switch to single target threat.

in my experience healers are not rare. healers are quite common and if I queue as scholar I will have a comparable wait time to summoner, maybe only a little shorter. tanks are the rarity.

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It's when you queue....I have almost instant queues on my WHM whenever I queue. I had longer queues on tank while I was leveling it TBH. My DPS queues when I choose to DPS instead typically are in the 10-20 minute range (with 20 minutes being CT)

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Originally Posted by Moirear

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

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It's easy when you do dungeons but it gets harder when you're doing say Garuda Ext. Grab adds, hold aggro, grab spiny , watch for stacks, pop cd for ww, get into the right positions, and watch for slipstream from both adds. Any of these slip ups result can result in the party wiping. Compared to a dds role of just dpsing down stuff. Healer has to esuna windburn and get ready to heal incoming ww damage.

Then you have fights like Ultima HM and Titan HM where it's mostly on the healers to be able to keep up the healing.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

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Everyone will have their own opinion naturally, but the general consensus is tanking/healing are more difficult/have more responsibility than DPS. You can count me among those who have both a tank and DPS in end-game and find that playing a tank is more difficult and stressful than my DPS.

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Originally Posted by Moirear

Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

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You can quit the condescending attitude anytime you like.

Since you say you queue everyday, tell me which Extreme Primal is more involved as a DPS than a tank? Where is the responsibility beyond a DPS check in Twintania?

There are some DPS out there, such as myself, who would love to tank but won't because of how terrible attitudes are in the dungeons. Those DPS that do tank however, may only do it for a select few (ie: FC, LS & friends). Honestly, if I were to start tanking it would only be for those in my free company, link shells or friend lists, as I've developed a bond of trust among them and I know that they will be patient and help me learn how to be a confident (and competent!) tank.

The few tanks that there are I am truly grateful for (except for the ones that act like jerks).