What do you guys think is the cause of severe lack of Tank users?

The tank is expected to lead the way, set the pace, etc. so people tend to assume it's something you don't even attempt until you're a relatively experienced veteran. Some people are never really comfortable in that position and with that responsibility. Once you get used to it though it's pretty easy.

I think functionally DPS is actually harder than both healing and tanking. It has the most difficult rotation and very little slack for making mistakes with mechanics; it feels like more often than not healers will just let DPS die if they make a mistake, and if they screw up a mechanic they die FAST.

As a tank if I screw up a mechanic I have mitigation I can pop, self-heals and the healer is always prioritizing me. Pretty forgiving. And healers are just mechanically the easiest classes in this game; literal 1 button DPS rotation and basically deciding between single target or party wide healing based on what attack is coming. Not exactly overwhelming.

Goji, I agree and disagree. Mechanically, most of the DPS are more complicated than all tanking roles; only gunbreaker has a degree of complexity in its rotation, especially during No Mercy windows but even that's simpler than most of the DPS classes. Healers have easily the simplest DPS in the game, with only White Mage having another button to hit in Misery when they expend their lilies.

Unfortunately, that's where most player's thought process ends, because that's all they need to be exposed to. In Expert roulette, the responsibility of the tank and healer, while still outweighing the DPS, is nowhere near the responsibility in Savage. Healers have to prepare for each wave of damage, compensate for other's mistakes, and handle a lot of healer-only mechanics, all while trying to pump out as much DPS as possible and sustaining the MT from meaty autoattacks Tanks have to memorize tankbuster timings and tank only mechs, have to keep the boss positioned correctly, worry about their own squishyness so as not to overstress the healers during healing- or movement-intensive moments (Thunderstorm, for example), all while keeping their GCD running as much as possible.

Point is, yeah, for most of us, tanking is probably the easiest to pick up and play at a rudimentary level, but there's so many intricacies to it that go overlooked. Maybe that's why it gets dropped; players don't engage with it like they do DPS classes because they lack depth, or get yelled at for being bad enough that they drop it.

The only reason why dps is considered even remotely 'challenging' in this game is because the developers simply cannot design a tanking or healing challenge to save their lives. And part of the reason for this is that instead of fixing an exploit based around legacy 1.x coding, they would much rather have their rail-shooter bosses position themselves.

There is no content here. Just pretty pretty princess cash shop glamours and a glorified ping test that generates fancy numbers for you. If you want tanks, make tanking relevant. If you want tanking to be relevant, you need to design something to challenge existing tanks with, to the point where good tanks are valued and you want to gear them up first. DPS pay your subs, but prioritise them over us at your peril.

Unsurprising as they made all the tanks too similar, baked in a tank stance severely taxing their damage so much that healers under certain circumstances can outdps them (eventually, they will) rather than allowing tanks to do the dps that they should be, and doing mechanics that have nothing to do with being a tank whilst forcing them off the boss (with a trait that is already taxing their dps), and not rewarding better tanks vs mediocre ones when it's easy to see a skilled dps over a less skilled one....

Tanks are players too and they want to play the game. Tanks aren't even an afterthought as that implies they'd get attention eventually -- they didn't. DPS got buffs or adjustments in patches, the tanks were ignored.

Forcing unnecessary downtime isn't fun. AFK isn't my rotation on tank. That's ridiculous. Already taxed 20 to 25% of my damage, why are tanks being forced into unnecessary downtime? Messing up a tank rotation is more punishing than a healer missing a broil/malefic/glare. And yet there they are, tailgated the tanks damage

We can't really do anything creative being a tank with self- healing. We can't adjust now that there is no tank/dps stance. Whm gets rewarded healing. Ok? Tanks don't get rewarded for tanking. Trashy tank mounts with inexclusive music isn't a reward

Every fight in shadowbringers is a massive FU to tanks. OFC tanking is trash right now:

Titania, Hades, ruby, memoria (unnecessary downtime. 3/4 you can't hit the boss at all)

Leviathan Savage, Titan Savage, Ramuh Savage, Garuda/Ifrit Savage, Shiva Savage (Eden 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) all punishing the tanks just for being a tank. Not even the healers face this discrimination. Only 7 and a little bit of 6 actually has "tank mechanics".

Only dungeons don't disrespect the tanks. Dungeons.

Enmity is bad too. Everyone but the tanks have stronger innate enmity. Babysitting a TS isn't fun. And why does it have a 10s cooldown? There's no justifiable reason for that. Make it a gcd at most.

Only Paladin grew, but got things that other tanks have

Dark Knight just mimics Warrior with sparkles

Gunbreaker is new, but doesn't require much thought and is given a cheat sheet and it's too complete that its just going to end up like warrior, getting nothing

Warrior lost most of its toolkit, lost deliverance losing its damage as well, then got nothing new. All its "new skills" arent new. They got the same skills. Same animation, same icon. It lost variety in its rotation, so you fell cleave more, decimate/cyclone less.

Not. Fun.

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Originally Posted by millktea

not rewarding better tanks vs mediocre ones when it's easy to see a skilled dps over a less skilled one....

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"Max" compared to 25th percentile on Ramuh shows DPS ranging from 20-38% higher, with 20% belonging to a job with near no variance (Machinist) and 38% belonging to a job with a fair amount of variance (Black Mage)

For the tanks, this is around a 28-37% difference.

The outliers are healers who range from 80-90% more damage, but that's to be expected, as "bad" healer runs are often the symptom of bad runs in general.

The gap range is still smaller (also, that's only measuring damage output, it doesn't acknowledge actually being more skilled at tanking, unfortunately....)

tanks dps is more rng and circumstantial compared to dps, who are usually just hitting a dummy (did you sit in the back or the front on titan savage? Did you get the flare? Did you get the waterbomb?). Its very superficial.

Are you saying only healers get a big reward gap, and that's also partially chance (more so in pf/rf) but they have a similar opportunity like the dps compared to tanks

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Originally Posted by millktea

The gap range is still smaller.

Are you saying only healers really get rewarded?

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I'm saying a 25% tank deals 28-37% less damage than a perfect tank, and a 25% dps deals 20-38% less than a perfect DPS.

I'm saying Healers depend on their party for their performance, and the best healer performances likely pair up with the best parties.

Take from that what you will.

I think what is meant here is that when the overall raid dps contribution of tanks is significantly lower than that of dps, then there's much less value in being "good". This is an obvious observation that requires absolutely no math to figure out.

I also hear that name-dropping random terms from your first-year college stats class alongside numbers that don't end in '0' or '5' helps your argument sound more convincing and more intellectual, even if you don't know how to apply the terms properly. Personally, I'm a big fan of kurtosis, if I had to pick a standardised moment. Everyone and their carbuncle knows about variance by now. Adding random decimals is another trick that you can try, especially if you ignore significant figures. 28% is good, but I like 28.3% better.

Based on my personal opinion and some other feedback I received about, the reason is the lack of engaging concept:
The concept of tank is based on a fierce warrior equipped with a sword, a maxi sword, a gun sword or an axe. Kinda flat isn’t it ?
This game has 4 caster, everyone with a distinct weapon concept, disting behave and concept and still we have 4 tanks all inspired by the same mood, no variety, no strange catchy ibrid, nothing kinda exclusive and this can be also seen by the gameplay: flat and similar.
I really hoped for a caster tank, for a magician one (i m not watching u pld! xD) or a guy with a strange weapon.
When everything u have is 4 similar concept for a role, the people who will play the role will always be the same ones but when u also as dev reduce the role into a joking unfun button smasher, the few ones who played that role will move away and that s what is happening With tanks but also with healers.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think what is meant here is that when the overall raid dps contribution of tanks is significantly lower than that of dps, then there's much less value in being "good". This is an obvious observation that requires absolutely no math to figure out.

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There's that contribution word again.

Already been handled elsewhere. Check it out.