Did tanks really need more healing

I'm curious about current player motivations for wanting to tank. What originally drew me to the role many years ago was that it felt high-stakes and was player skill dependent. You had the core elements of DPS gameplay, but you also needed to have good fight knowledge, cooldown timing, positioning, on top having the situational awareness to be able to reverse potential wipes. You needed to be versatile, perceptive, and flexible.

The current iteration of self-healing tanks with an overabundance of defensive cooldowns in the current climate of self-positioning bosses feels like it's aimed at the sort of player who wants to play melee DPS but lacks the mechanical skill to do so, and needs their personal defensives to survive multiple vuln stacks from unenforced errors. I understand that I'm probably not the target audience anymore, but I just don't know how anyone finds the current design direction satisfying. It feels like you don't need a 'good tank', you just need a tank. Don't people normally pick support roles because they have a degree of pride in their work?

I will say that as long as I've played this game, DPS has progressively gained impact with every expansion, while supports have progressively lost it. It's nice to feel invincible, but tanks do, what, 60% of a DPS job nowadays? It's great that the role is powerful in dungeons, but that survivability feels meaningless in any fight with an enrage. You're basically playing in spectator mode so that you can practice mechanics without dying, while the DPS do the real thing alongside you. It feels like they've removed all the tanking skill checks in the interests in creating a role on training wheels for players to get comfortable in content, without having to worry about failing mechanics.

It just seems so strange that people are defending this design direction. Does this not bother you at all? Or has everyone who liked the perception of tanks as a high-stakes role long since left?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

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I'm personally not defending the design direction fully, but I'm not against the self and group healing in concept, I think tank is in a really odd spot currently.

As someone who likes Paladin in particular (although I preferred older versions of the job), I like being that "Support" job with cooldowns/raidwides that can help my team while having a decent DPS rotation other then spamming glare and dot, just from a personal preference, Although I think tank rotations need to be more interesting (and healer too), with the current direction.
Healing on tanks to a degree isn't even the issue as I see it, I think the actual mitigative value is way more of a issue (outside warrior lol), I do think theirs some areas where they could tune tanks down, such as PLD's holy blade combo, I much rather PLD have their healing not be "selfish" as I don't really think that fits the job. while on the other hand Warrior outright healing allies more then a Paladin feels really unfitting, I think the trade off to warrior's absurd sustain (even then it should be nerfed), is that it shouldn't be able to heal others, though it should still give out mitigations or reducing the bosses damage.

If I were to change tanks I think I'd
1. Reduce the Self survivability and Sustain down a lot. I think the best way to do this is to nerf the role passive and change some of the short Mits, mainly to not have two mitigative effects stacked on top of each other.
2. Increase the power/importance on Tanks raid wides and cooldowns to save team mates.
3. Increase the Complexity of DPS rotations on Tanks to at least have more combo paths and nuances between each other, instead of 1, 2, 3 builder spenders. Healers should also get some more fun damage buttons

While I enjoy tanking in FF14, I know I would enjoy it more if it was took in a different direction personally, I want Tanks and healers to both have group/party responsibility, which may be harder to balance then have healer do the job 100% and tanks be big hp DPS, but I really don't want tanks to lose forms of party protection ect and just become the most baseline generic definition of a tank.

If anything it's the off tank role that feels the most in dire need of actual things to do in a fight. Sure, the MT has lost so much to do as well, and sure the OT is supposed to help with covering single targets with their short cds on the MT and whatnot, but let's be honest, that's not exactly required most of the time. I'd really like them to make those interactions to cover party members especially more prevalent, one way or another.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“Playing off meta gives large disadvantages for little benefit”
“Open PF and you’ll see the trinity is in tact”

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Those two statement aren't incompatible or oppose themselves.
You're simply free to play both ways, players are given the choice and choose to play with 2 healers instead of 1 or 2 extra tank.
That choice made by the community proves the trinity remains unbroken.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The fact that the system enforces the trinity is not an argument that the trinity isn’t broken

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PF doesn't enforce trinity, only suggest it, you're free to create any composition you want.
If tanks indeed "stole" the healer work, pf would have for 3 or 4 tanks and 0 healers since tanks deals much more DPS than healers. Trinity remains unbroken.

Look, healers are in a bad shape, that's true.
But screaming that the healer apocalypse is happening is exaggerating the current situation and will obscure the facts that matters.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It just seems so strange that people are defending this design direction. Does this not bother you at all? Or has everyone who liked the perception of tanks as a high-stakes role long since left?

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I used to play MCH because I love being a supporting DPS, Dismantle, Palisade, Manasong were all abilities I really loved and I felt useful to the party beyond DPS.
Tanks evolved to be that, lower DPS jobs with much more mitigation. Despite MCH recovering Dismantle, I felt more at home with tanks.

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT, you still take the enmity, position the ennemies and use mitigation accordingly.
While it's true more and more bosses places themselves or have huge hitbox, that responsibility has been replaced with mitigations in the form of Reprisal, Party wide mitigation or single target mitigation.

While progging savage and ultimate, one of our healers struggled with the content. The fact that I could compensate with my tools and assist them is a gratifying feeling.
Half the party is dead and the remaining healer is occupied with ressing? I can use my abilities to make the other players survive longer.

A tank will do the minimum.
A good tank will go beyond.

If those things were to be removed, we would lose all ingenuity and creativity just for the ego of some healers. The game would become even more braindead that many claims to be.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I used to play MCH because I love being a supporting DPS, Dismantle, Palisade, Manasong were all abilities I really loved and I felt useful to the party beyond DPS.
Tanks evolved to be that, lower DPS jobs with much more mitigation. Despite MCH recovering Dismantle, I felt more at home with tanks.

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT, you still take the enmity, position the ennemies and use mitigation accordingly.
While it's true more and more bosses places themselves or have huge hitbox, that responsibility has been replaced with mitigations in the form of Reprisal, Party wide mitigation or single target mitigation.

While progging savage and ultimate, one of our healers struggled with the content. The fact that I could compensate with my tools and assist them is a gratifying feeling.
Half the party is dead and the remaining healer is occupied with ressing? I can use my abilities to make the other players survive longer.

A tank will do the minimum.
A good tank will go beyond.

If those things were to be removed, we would lose all ingenuity and creativity just for the ego of some healers. The game would become even more braindead that many claims to be.

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Nobody wants you to lose things like cover or the mitigation aspect of shareable mits or even something like POA (hell I’d support POA having more mitigation attached to it)

The problem is you sharing 30% mit to help a DPS survive something is a good idea, you sharing 30% mit then also healing them for half their health with no downside to you while also being so tanky the loss of your own shareable mit means nothing is the problem

I’m perfectly fine if you want to protect me with something like cover while I try to rezz someone that’s good tank design and good expression, I don’t think such skills should be so strong on the healer front that you can basically also replace the healer, just like how you don’t want your mitigation effects to be minimalised I don’t want my healing to be minimalised by the tank being able to do it for me

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT

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I disagree. I think there's been a big drop-off in the amount of raid responsibility on tanks which started around Stormblood, but has gotten progressively worse with every expansion. There has been a general shift away from 'role responsibility' towards 'personal responsibility', but the impact of dps remains unchanged. This has resulted in an erosion of the value of supports over time.

If you want to use a physical ranged example, this akin to having a moment like T1 High Voltage or A6S Spaghetti where you have to hit an interrupt or wipe the raid. At that moment, your role is critical and centre stage. There are 'softer' examples as well - moving and positioning a boss in a way that facilitates uptime while keeping the party out of danger is another, although we rarely see this in the current era of self-positioning bosses. I think if you don't have those types of moments on a role that offers less damage output, then other players don't really have a sense of your personal value as a player. Anyone in that role would be equally as effective.

Valence brings an important point about off-tanking as well. Holmgang being on four minutes essentially deletes most interesting tankbuster swaps that you could design and pushes you towards a WAR main tank with an understudy that pretends to be melee. Even if you somehow die because you're sitting at 8 vuln stacks and daydream through a tankbuster instead of pressing one of ten on-demand defensives with built in burst heals, you have a backup tank who is probably very bored and has a full set of defensives available. So your personal impact is completely replaceable on demand outside of the standard body check requirement that all players are subject to.

It's hard to say if the real problem is between excess healing or mitigation inflation as Rithy suggests, but I think the real answer lies somewhere between the two. I think that if you gave tanks positioning responsibility back, or if you had more cases of snap enmity, then you could make a case for skilled tanks providing additional value despite having excessive survivability. But those responsibilities have been gone for several expansions now, and all you really have left are mitigation checks. And there are so many layers of failsafes here that your skill in using these defensive tools doesn't really matter. You're not rationing your defensives. You're not using any deep insight around fight timings. You have no 'creativity' or 'ingenuity' in the use of these tools. It's just kitchen-sink/invuln. There is no skill expression in this role - and what's worse, everyone else has caught on to this fact.

As things stand, I would prefer the weakest players in any group to pick tank, simply because the defensives make the role more forgiving when learning mechanics, and your relative damage contribution is low enough and rotations are simple enough that you don't need to be good. And that's incredibly disappointing, as someone who previously loved the impact and community value that the role has had for many years.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Nobody wants you to lose things like cover or the mitigation aspect of shareable mits or even something like POA (hell I’d support POA having more mitigation attached to it)

The problem is you sharing 30% mit to help a DPS survive something is a good idea, you sharing 30% mit then also healing them for half their health with no downside to you while also being so tanky the loss of your own shareable mit means nothing is the problem

I’m perfectly fine if you want to protect me with something like cover while I try to rezz someone that’s good tank design and good expression, I don’t think such skills should be so strong on the healer front that you can basically also replace the healer, just like how you don’t want your mitigation effects to be minimalised I don’t want my healing to be minimalised by the tank being able to do it for me

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I think you're over estimating tank cooldowns at least from the healing side, most will not heal "half their health" Take Intervention for example, it's a 250 Heal over time for four ticks so it will heal 1000 Potency (Which that isn't the same potency as a healer potency because healers have a passive 30% buff to all healing). a Regen such as that I don't see as the issue. when it's things like warriors nascent flash, which is 1600 potency for you and the warrior and the warrior can force crits on it, then yes it becomes a massive issue.

I think having some overlap with Tanks and Healers is fine, I like that healers can help tanks mitigate and I like that tanks can help contribute some limited forms of healing, I just think we can tone down certain aspects of tank jobs, such as the passive mitigation value, Short mits having way too many stacked effects, some cases of sustain being too high like Warrior, slightly toning down PLD/GNB.

Personally I would want tanks to step away from absurd survivability, but gain more importance in helping others survive too, partly its because of sustain but i think the mass amount of mitigation is at such a point where it needs to be tuned down, Warrior being a exception to this as I think it's a case where they have too much Self and target healing which the target healing doesn't even make sense for the "job identity"

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I disagree. I think there's been a big drop-off in the amount of raid responsibility on tanks which started around Stormblood, but has gotten progressively worse with every expansion. There has been a general shift away from 'role responsibility' towards 'personal responsibility', but the impact of dps remains unchanged. This has resulted in an erosion of the value of supports over time.

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You're absolutely free to disagree but:
Silence is a lazy way to excuse the presence of a ranged, just like Esuna.
I've avoided to bring Esuna for this exact reason.
It's on the same level as role bonus.

You're also greatly underestimating the differences between a good and a bad tank.
Mitigation goes way beyond kitchen sink tank buster or using holmgang, many tank buster are designed to go beyond invuln, that leads me to believe you haven't touched any endgame content in a while.

As such, I can only conclude you're evaluating tank in a casual settings.
But the same applies to DPS and Healers, as long as they damage and keep your health up, there's barely any difference between a good and bad DPS/Healer.

In short, that's just weird to say that you don't need to be good, that logic applies to all roles. DPS can be ressed by healers if they miss and backed-up by other DPS, healer have a co heal as well.

From my perspective there are something like multiple intersecting strings to these arguments and opinions. Lyth is certainly right that the current tank role feels like a shell of it's former self, even if that shell had it's own set of problems at the time. On the hand, there are still particular moments in particular fights where things need to "click" between roles, or the party more generally, so the concepts have not been entirely abandoned. The time period early on where correct mitigation response/damage output is required to succeed, when the content is "relevant". After a time we gear up and gain a leniency which seems to trivialize mechanics. I'm not sure if this could be avoided, or even if it should be.

Regarding tank invulns and OT responsibility.. It's certainly true of many fights, and I'm starting to think that invulns themselves are the main culprit in all this. There's always been so much controversy over trying to balance them, and my prior opinion was more or less make them equal as much as possible, but maybe they actually just need to go entirely. If nothing else it seems like the easiest remedy for many of the discussed ailments.

As a side tangent, I wish there was a way they could freeze or restore our old kits for the old fights. Like, actually go back and do BCOB with my OG Lv50 warrior kit, or any other fight with that time period's kit. It's just sad that so many fights have lost their original integrity over the years.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

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No, I'm specifically talking about raid-level content with enrages. Tanks have won the battle in casual content by taking value away from healers, but lost the war when it comes to overall value. Tanks have plenty of carry potential in casual content without enrages, sure, and if that's the hill that you're trying to defend at all costs, by all means. I just think that you should be aiming higher than that.

Good DPS players will always be the top value in raid content because we make or break dps checks. The community has long since moved away from the perception of tanking as being a 'high-skill role'. I would assume that you should be aware of this by now.

I'm sorry if that bothers you, but it's the truth.

Yeah but when ur whe team wiping XD I don't wanna see u screaming healer lb in chat. Nae scream for the tank to lb3 in chat

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Originally Posted by Lyth

No, I'm specifically talking about raid-level content with enrages. Tanks have won the battle in casual content by taking value away from healers, but lost the war when it comes to overall value. Tanks have plenty of carry potential in casual content without enrages, sure, and if that's the hill that you're trying to defend at all costs, by all means. I just think that you should be aiming higher than that.

Good DPS players will always be the top value in raid content because we make or break dps checks. The community has long since moved away from the perception of tanking as being a 'high-skill role'. I would assume that you should be aware of this by now.

I'm sorry if that bothers you, but it's the truth.

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Here's an actual truth:
You are not the one who decide which opinion is the truth, especially not your own.

I'm not arguing that tank or any role in the game is a high-skill role. What I'm arguing is that there's a clear difference between two tanks of varying level.
To quote you: "rotations are simple enough that you don't need to be good". But I'm going to teach you something: no rotation, tank or DPS, are difficult. XIV is a very easy game to learn, you should know that, especially when you have Viper listed as your main class.

"Good DPS players will always be the top value in raid content because we make or break dps checks."
Guess what, tanks and healers too. And guess what allows DPS to focus on DPS? Tanks and healer, without them you wouldn't be able to DPS for a minute.
Trying to debate which role brings the most value in a trinity meta is incredibly delusional like trying to debate which wheels of a car is the most important.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

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You're missing the point. Tanks have seen a definite reduction in their responsibilities over time, in terms of positioning, mitigation, and snap enmity requirements. There is less room for a good tank to differentiate themselves from an average tank outside of pure dps. When roughly 1/3 of your toolkit is defensive and you do only 60% of the damage of a pure DPS, you need a skill differential outside of raw damage to demonstrate additional value.

The only place where that value can exist in current fight design is in your use of mitigation tools. Unfortunately, when you make tanks overly survivable, then you remove that last skill check altogether. And this is the core problem - because you're so intent on defending the status quo, tanks will continue to lose what little impact that they have left.

The most entertaining part about your response is that you yourself admitted being skill gated out of VPR earlier this week:

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

The Coil (hunter & swiftskin) have side and back positionnal but are both green.
To be fair I'm being massively skill checked by the positionnals I wish at least it would be easier to read if we're going to end on a side or back positional. I know it depends on the GCD you start but after a burst, you can easily forget with what you started.

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Rather than taking affront to everyone who objects to the current level of tank survivability, why don't you look at ways that we can improve the role and expand out the skill differential so that good players are valued on the role again?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The most entertaining part about your response is that you yourself admitted being skill gated out of VPR earlier this week:

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So that's where we end, digging post history to make a point? At this point you just gives up trying.
My performances are public on the forbidden website, you're free to check them if you absolutely wants to evaluate my DPS capabilities.

Whatever I said somewhere else doesn't devaluate my points, but attacking me on that front doesn't validate your points either.
I'm not a top world player but can definitely pull my weight when it comes to DPS.

It's no great mystery. I've naturally been keeping an eye on the upsurge in threads where people were demanding unwanted simplifications to VPR due to apparent difficulty, so it's only natural that I'd remember your participation. The best part was that the retort was completely predictable, given the line of your previous posts in this thread. But I'm unfortunately not here to trade banter, as charming as it's been.

I think if you actually look at the substance of my post - namely, around the challenge of mitigation - then you'll see that high survivability, built-in passive regens, and on-demand burst self-sustain is antithetical to this. When I play a tank, I want to feel like I'm on the razor's edge. I want there to be a feeling of risk. Do you remember T9 at launch? The boss autos in P1 hit for half your health, and the cleaves for even more. There were more tankbusters in a single phase than you see in most modern fights. Every cooldown was rationed out so that you could survive. You even needed to make use of Foresight to survive. Remember Foresight? Foresight would be unrecognizable in the modern era of inflated defensive cooldowns with five or six built in additional effects including shields/regens/heals.

I understand why this game has moved away from having tanks position bosses. The netcode is janky compared to a lot of 'modern' MMOs (including circa 2004 Warcraft). Bosses can't move and auto at the same time. That, and the average tank can't position bosses. I know why we've moved away from add spawns - partially so that they don't have to balance jobs based off of AoE, but also because snap enmity on a mob that beelines and oneshots your healers is probably too much of an ask.

So that leaves mitigation as the unique 'tank check', which is just pass-fail. But why are we so afraid to let tanks fail? And if you're unwilling to challenge tanks on mitigation and survival, to really bring them to the brink - then how can tanks ever be anything more than melee dps with training wheels?

I don't know what the answer is, but it doesn't seem like there's a good one in this current design direction. It feels like they don't actually want a trinity design, but are obliged to stick with it because that's how the game started out. And it's the support jobs that have lost out, in the long run. I want more support mains to speak out about this so that we can see some semblance of value brought back to these roles, but at this point, it's probably not worth it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's no great mystery. I've naturally been keeping an eye on the upsurge in threads where people were demanding unwanted simplifications to VPR due to apparent difficulty, so it's only natural that I'd remember your participation. The best part was that the retort was completely predictable, given the line of your previous posts in this thread. But I'm unfortunately not here to trade banter, as charming as it's been.

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So you back away despite you being the one who started the banter. That means enough.

The game hasn't moved away from boss positioning and adds, those things still exist, they're simply diluted in all the new mechanics we got compared to ARR/HW.
It would be boring if all bosses were moving them around, tank buster and adds to manage. Don't forget that mitigation wasn't a thing until tank rework.
The netcode is perfectly fine to deal with these kinds of mechanics just taking a loot at EX2 where the boss moves are pretty smooth unless he jumps

Tanks are blue DPS with extra tank mechanics&skills and that's more than fine. 60% is mighty fine and very valuable in early savage/ultimate, anything more would be too much.
After all, ranged DPS is 90% of a melee DPS.

And you can keep your provocations, "training wheels", "afraid to let tanks fail", that's just banter again.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

So you back away despite you being the one who started the banter. That means enough.

The game hasn't moved away from boss positioning and adds, those things still exist, they're simply diluted in all the new mechanics we got compared to ARR/HW.
It would be boring if all bosses were moving them around, tank buster and adds to manage. Don't forget that mitigation wasn't a thing until tank rework.
The netcode is perfectly fine to deal with these kinds of mechanics just taking a loot at EX2 where the boss moves are pretty smooth unless he jumps

Tanks are blue DPS with extra tank mechanics&skills and that's more than fine. 60% is mighty fine and very valuable in early savage/ultimate, anything more would be too much.
After all, ranged DPS is 90% of a melee DPS.

And you can keep your provocations, "training wheels", "afraid to let tanks fail", that's just banter again.

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I’m not sure whether “the games hasn’t moved away from x they’ve just diluted x” or “mitigation wasn’t a thing until the tank rework” is the statement I want to focus on here because I have no idea how you reached either of those statements

Saying “they don’t move away from positioning” when 90% of the EW bosses just reposition themselves without the tank every mechanic is strange as a statement. Back in something like thordan EX tank positioning is super important because it dictates where you can solve the mechanics, in panda the boss with its moon sized hitbox just teleports itself to the centre and orients north before every mechanic

As for “mitigation didn’t exist before the rework” I just have no idea what to say to that, where did you get this idea from

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Saying “they don’t move away from positioning” when 90% of the EW bosses just reposition themselves without the tank every mechanic is strange as a statement. Back in something like thordan EX tank positioning is super important because it dictates where you can solve the mechanics, in panda the boss with its moon sized hitbox just teleports itself to the centre and orients north before every mechanic

As for “mitigation didn’t exist before the rework” I just have no idea what to say to that, where did you get this idea from

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Thordan was very minor movement. Boss did not moved from the middle in phase 1, tanks grabbed adds and only moved it to the eye, nothing more. Let's not act like if the boss was always moving.

As for mitigation, sorry I forgot to precise "party mitigation", obviously personal mitigation existed since the start of the game but party mitigation became much more present in Shadowbringer with a first small springle back in Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Thordan was very minor movement. Boss did not moved from the middle in phase 1, tanks grabbed adds and only moved it to the eye, nothing more. Let's not act like if the boss was always moving.

As for mitigation, sorry I forgot to precise "party mitigation", obviously personal mitigation existed since the start of the game but party mitigation became much more present in Shadowbringer with a first small springle back in Stormblood.

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The boss wasn’t always moving but where you moved the boss to what essential for doing the fight right, now the boss just moves for you

As for party mitigation party mitigation is a healer job, there is no skill in pressing SIO when the shield healer tells you to press it, you are just part of the healers mit plan

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Good DPS players will always be the top value in raid content because we make or break dps checks.

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You don't need to bring any dps at all in all the fight that lack a dps check. The truth to the matter is that the most important role is tank, you can't clear synced non casual content without one, yet some fight are clearable with a single tank and nothing else. a single tank is more fit for clearing content that whole team of dps.

That being said it kinda balanced by the fact you don't ever need more than 2 tanks for a single fight.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's no great mystery.


I think if you actually look at the substance of my post - namely, around the challenge of mitigation - .

I understand why this game has moved away from having tanks position bosses. The netcode is janky compared to a lot of 'modern' MMOs (including circa 2004 Warcraft).

So that leaves mitigation as the unique 'tank check', which is just pass-fail. But why are we so afraid to let tanks fail? And if you're unwilling to challenge tanks on mitigation and survival, to really bring them to the brink - then how can tanks ever be anything more than melee dps with training wheels?

I don't know what the answer is, but it doesn't seem like there's a good one in this current design direction. It feels like they don't actually want a trinity design, but are obliged to stick with it because that's how the game started out..

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Agreeing and adding on...

Tanks do have it a lot easier because it's the least played role in general. Grabbing mobs was harder for tanks when leveling from ARR so that was gone. Gone are the days when tanks actually needed to learn their 1-2-3 combos properly to keep hate on a mob and DPS had to use skills to make sure they didn't gain hate as quickly or dump it so it can go to the tank.

Tanks can tell DPS and healers "Well just don't die" while memes of them getting hit by 7 VULN stacks continue on.

Tanks die - the encounter tends to be over fairly quickly where as a tank survives people can see more of the Dance Battle Choreography to witness how the mechanic may work (but it can be an instant wipe if it's like light party or partner needed mechanics)

They didn't give tanks much to do, they just gave them more to survive. They also tend to have the most uptime on a boss/mob as well.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

So you back away despite you being the one who started the banter. That means enough.

The game hasn't moved away from boss positioning and adds, those things still exist, they're simply diluted in all the new mechanics we got compared to ARR/HW.

Tanks are blue DPS with extra tank mechanics&skills and that's more than fine.

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Okay, look at the boss encounters for a majority of content that's not a dungeon pull. A lot of them are arena bosses. And ones that are not, are generally bosses that eventually have to reset themselves because the tanks didn't put them in the correct position. That's why they designed more annoying "Boss jumping" or phases where the boss transforms into an arena boss at some point.

No one said they didn't exist - but they DID design fights to position better without having a tank do it. So things like wiping the party with "Haircut" in Weeping City exists way less often.

Sadly again, tanks roles were dumbed down so more people could play them so we're at the state we're in now with them being overtuned for encounters for the reasons I mentioned.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Sadly again, tanks roles were dumbed down so more people could play them so we're at the state we're in now with them being overtuned for encounters for the reasons I mentioned.

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The most ironic thing to me is they’ve done so much to simplify and diminish tanks’ role responsibilities and complexities to try and get more people playing it. Yet it’s literally that simplification and diminished responsibility that turns everyone off from playing the ‘blue dps (now with extra invincibility!) role, in my view

I think diluted is a good term since a lot mechanics still exist but they are much less memorable/important. As a veteran player I sometimes wonder how much the nostalgia factor plays with my memory of "the good ol days", but also the game was still fresh and there was a lot of stuff we - as players - were still figuring out. And now, 10 years later, we have honed our playstyles so well that things we might remember as a struggle before are now seemingly trivial. Compare this to players who haven't yet figured out how many aoe's in the game they can dodge without missing a GCD, or somehow that popping 8 oGCDs in a row isn't weird.

Another thing to consider in regards to (lack of) tank/boss positioning - we did gain gap closers. They'd be kinda useless if the boss stuck to us like glue all the time so positioning itself at least allows more opportunities to use them strategically.