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

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Nobody forgot about Shirk. It's not worth mentioning, in the context of hate combos, because it's one of the things that helped people shy away from them. You know, swapping before Shirk entailed loading up that enmity combo and then provoking and getting up past the other tank by force.

In Heavensward, if you had a WAR, and if they were MTing like they should have been, yeah, sure. And that's largely also due to Butcher's Block at the time being the higher damage combo for the WAR's rotation as well. DPS did catch up to tanks in those days, PLD and DRK, DRK especially, were really easy to catch on hate. Of course, then came swapping with the WAR, and what did that entail? The WAR either curbing his use of Butcher's Block or the PLD or DRK putting on their tank stance on top of the enmity combos... unless you wanted to risk that back and forth. Enmity was much more of a game back then.

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Trust me, if you were playing properly emnity was really not a thing. At most you did 1-2 aggro combos at the start of a fight in tank stance, then you dps'd the rest of the fight, and that was playing the most safe. Ninjas shadewalker and smokebomb also helped with this in hw. Aggro was always a joke.

Edit: Even in ARR aggro was a joke, ranged/casters had quelling strikes, and both tanks main dps combo was their aggro combo so even stanceless maintaining aggro was easy. In HW ninja's made it even easier, as even though tanks had dps combos now, ninjas could curb the aggro gen of other melee dps.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Trust me, if you were playing properly emnity was really not a thing. At most you did 1-2 aggro combos at the start of a fight in tank stance, then you dps'd the rest of the fight, and that was playing the most safe. Ninjas shadewalker and smokebomb also helped with this in hw. Aggro was always a joke.

Edit: Even in ARR aggro was a joke, ranged/casters had quelling strikes, and both tanks main dps combo was their aggro combo so even stanceless maintaining aggro was easy. In HW ninja's made it even easier, as even though tanks had dps combos now, ninjas could curb the aggro gen of other melee dps.

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Which I thought was a bad idea given that Ninja was valued for Trick attack. Giving NIN those aggro tools made it basically an instant lock. But that’s a whole other balance topic

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Trust me, if you were playing properly emnity was really not a thing. At most you did 1-2 aggro combos at the start of a fight in tank stance, then you dps'd the rest of the fight, and that was playing the most safe. Ninjas shadewalker and smokebomb also helped with this in hw. Aggro was always a joke.

Edit: Even in ARR aggro was a joke, ranged/casters had quelling strikes, and both tanks main dps combo was their aggro combo so even stanceless maintaining aggro was easy. In HW ninja's made it even easier, as even though tanks had dps combos now, ninjas could curb the aggro gen of other melee dps.

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About ARR, true for boss fights but less so for dungeons. It might have also been easy for dungeons but it had nuance. It was a unique mechanic for the tanking role and keeping enmity on mobs wasn't that easy from what I remember, it definitely required the tank stance (however I only remember the leveling experience well). I had only played Paladin and you had Flash which also required MP and wasn't the greatest enmity tool especially with well geared dps. Many players marked mobs so they could get killed in order and enmity could be kept under control. Imo felt somewhat like a more real and less arcade-ish experience which was nice.

That said, PLD rotation was disgustingly boring and I'd take current PLD over that any day.

Enmity management is not an intrinsic part of tanking. Human players in PvP games ignore enmity, and yet tanks still often exist in these games.

Tanking is about how you control the space around you and your team. It doesn't matter whether it's because the AI is told to attack you specifically (enmity) or because you represent a credible threat in being able to intercept/stun/punish a human player who tries to slip past you, so long as you have a means to control the fight.

Several adds spawn around the arena. The tanking 'test' is never about knowing what enmity buttons to press. It's about knowing when and where they pop up, and corralling them in the shortest period of time (ideally before they eat your healers).

The removal of the old stance system and enmity combos didn't take anything away from tanking that wasn't already lacking in raid design. As for the question of bloat, well, the majority of the buttons that you press in any MMO are bloat. Pressing several buttons when just one would suffice helps to soothe and reassure you that you're doing something skillful when you're grinding mind-numbing content ('look at how complex my rotation is, even though the decision-making never changes'). That's why some of the more mechanically complex genres out there have much fewer buttons (but are more positioning dependent).

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

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I'm not sure how long you've played, possibly longer than me, possibly not, but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity, and it was only present on skills and spells themselves. The tank I took up back then was Warrior. To hold hate in AOE, you had to have Maim + Berserk, and then you had to go through each monster with your enmity combo as fast as you could, or you were going to lose something. When they added enmity to stance and to overpower, it got better, easier, but depending on gear differences and whether or not your DPS were AOEing like normal or not, then it was still possible to lose agro.

As far as Heavensward goes, again, it was only a "joke" for Warrior, and only because Butcher's Block combo was higher potency than the other two combos while still giving a Wrath stack. Ninjas weren't in every comp, and not every Ninja was on the ball with Smokebomb and Shadewalker. Plus, Smokebomb usually went to the WHM, because AOE healing created such a high amount of enmity that it had to be curbed, particularly without a WAR tank.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Enmity management is not an intrinsic part of tanking. Human players in PvP games ignore enmity, and yet tanks still often exist in these games.

Tanking is about how you control the space around you and your team. It doesn't matter whether it's because the AI is told to attack you specifically (enmity) or because you represent a credible threat in being able to intercept/stun/punish a human player who tries to slip past you, so long as you have a means to control the fight.

Several adds spawn around the arena. The tanking 'test' is never about knowing what enmity buttons to press. It's about knowing when and where they pop up, and corralling them in the shortest period of time (ideally before they eat your healers).

The removal of the old stance system and enmity combos didn't take anything away from tanking that wasn't already lacking in raid design. As for the question of bloat, well, the majority of the buttons that you press in any MMO are bloat. Pressing several buttons when just one would suffice helps to soothe and reassure you that you're doing something skillful when you're grinding mind-numbing content ('look at how complex my rotation is, even though the decision-making never changes'). That's why some of the more mechanically complex genres out there have much fewer buttons (but are more positioning dependent).

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Incorrect assertion from the get go. Enmity management is how you intercept and control. It's present in PvP, it just doesn't have a tangible/numerical value. It's the feeling you create by making your presence impactful, tilting the players you are against so that they will seek to remove you from play.

I can tell you right now that you are wrong again. Sometimes the tanking test was knowing which enmity button to press, since due to animation timing vs. enmity change registering, this could and did mean the difference between life and death. Example: Wyvern adds in Turn 13. If you didn't preload a hate combo, stage two of the combo, they were going to kill your WHM. If you used Butcher's Block the enmity didn't register until the animation was on the final swing, giving ample time for the Wyvern to dart to the healer and kill them.

The removal of the old enmity system removed the need to be mindful or contemplate such things as starting a fight with Overpower vs. Tomahawk. Don't be disingenuous.

Pressing multiple buttons takes more effort than pressing one, and it gives us more agency as players. If one button did everything that we needed to do, our hands would be less busy, and button wear would destroy both controllers and keyboards in a way that was irksome. It also wouldn't let us create these rotations that the devs find irksome, and later patch away from being practical to do.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

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This is called equivocation. You've said the same thing that I have, except that you've re-defined "enmity" to be both "the numerical value that the AI uses to determine who to attack" as well as "the threat of retaliation that deters a human player from entering your zone of control".

By the way, you could just as easily have used overpower to pick up those adds, back in the day. Holding a GCD just for the sake of sitting on the right step of your combo was a dps loss.

It's not about the number of buttons you press, but rather about the number of decisions you make. Play smart.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity, .

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Unless I'm having crazy mandella effect, I'm pretty sure Paladin Shield Oath increased enmity gain.

edit: Found a PLD guide from 2014, it did increase enmity, but also lowered damage by 30%, I'm guessing you're assuming that evens it out? I don't know for sure but I recall pretty well that generating enmity became easier when you unlocked Shield Oath, Brayflox being one of the most difficult to hold aggro since it was the last dungeon before you'd unlock Shield Oath.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This is called equivocation. You've said the same thing that I have, except that you've re-defined "enmity" to be both "the numerical value that the AI uses to determine who to attack" as well as "the threat of retaliation that deters a human player from entering your zone of control".

By the way, you could just as easily have used overpower to pick up those adds, back in the day. Holding a GCD just for the sake of sitting on the right step of your combo was a dps loss.

It's not about the number of buttons you press, but rather about the number of decisions you make. Play smart.

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There's nothing equivocal about what I pointed out to you. You just don't think of enmity being anything more than a choice word for a gameplay mechanic, whereas I do.

TP considerations were present back then, and Warrior had no way to recover their own TP until Equilibrium in HW.

Oh, but it is about the number of buttons you press. Each press in itself is a decision.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Unless I'm having crazy mandella effect, I'm pretty sure Paladin Shield Oath increased enmity gain.

edit: Found a PLD guide from 2014, it did increase enmity, but also lowered damage by 30%, I'm guessing you're assuming that evens it out? I don't know for sure but I recall pretty well that generating enmity became easier when you unlocked Shield Oath, Brayflox being one of the most difficult to hold aggro since it was the last dungeon before you'd unlock Shield Oath.

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It had a lower enmity effect until 2.1, if it had one at all. I can't say for certain, because I did not play PLD until after 2.1.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I'm not sure how long you've played, possibly longer than me, possibly not, but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity.

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It has always offered additional enmity. Its modifier was just significantly lower, as if more to compensate for the damage loss (via modifier and the loss of Sword Oath) inflicted rather than being an "enmity stance" per se, such that wielding a dagger in Sword Oath could quite possibly out-enmity Shield Oath in single-target (since, back then, Sword Oath's bonus potency didn't scale with weapon delay), while they were otherwise relatively neutral. This was quickly buffed.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It has always offered additional enmity. Its modifier was just significantly lower, as if more to compensate for the damage loss (via modifier and the loss of Sword Oath) inflicted rather than being an "enmity stance" per se, such that wielding a dagger in Sword Oath could quite possibly out-enmity Shield Oath in single-target (since, back then, Sword Oath's bonus potency didn't scale with weapon delay), while they were otherwise relatively neutral. This was quickly buffed.

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Yeah, Shield Oath did, but not Defiance.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Yeah, Shield Oath did, but not Defiance.

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I could have sworn it had a minor one, too. It most definitely got one before the 2.1 rework, as you'd still start each trash pull in Defiance (yes, even without Unchained), grab up some heals and a Regen or shield while your 4/5 or 5/5 Wrath stacks were raising healing taken, Inner Beast to top off, and then drop Defiance for further damage during Bloodbath. Admittedly, my Warrior was already at 50 going into ARR, whereas I spent the MSQ leveling my PLD (starting at 35 or so, iirc), so the latter is fresher in my mind, but I'd done enough no-heal WP/AK runs as Warrior prior to the 2.1 changes (marginal dungeon nerfs for notable raid buffs) to remember that much.

That said, given how much larger Skull Sunder and Butcher Block's potencies AND enmity modifiers were, and that Overpower had a modifier that could at least scale, AND that it didn't have the further penalty of just not being in Sword Oath, it'd make sense if Defiance's modifier was noticeably lower than Shield Oath's.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I could have sworn it had a minor one, too. It most definitely got one before the 2.1 rework, as you'd still start each trash pull in Defiance (yes, even without Unchained), grab up some heals and a Regen or shield while your 4/5 or 5/5 Wrath stacks were raising healing taken, Inner Beast to top off, and then drop Defiance for further damage during Bloodbath. Admittedly, my Warrior was already at 50 going into ARR, whereas I spent the MSQ leveling my PLD (starting at 35 or so, iirc), so the latter is fresher in my mind, but I'd done enough no-heal WP/AK runs as Warrior prior to the 2.1 changes (marginal dungeon nerfs for notable raid buffs) to remember that much.

That said, given how much larger Skull Sunder and Butcher Block's potencies AND enmity modifiers were, and that Overpower had a modifier that could at least scale, AND that it didn't have the further penalty of just not being in Sword Oath, it'd make sense if Defiance's modifier was noticeably lower than Shield Oath's.

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Nah, it just didn't have one. WAR just had bigger hits and more damage going out than PLD on weaponskills. The Maim buff was +20%, Berserk +50%, and then you had the 20% crit rate increase from Internal Release. Crits got that 1.1x enmity modifier, and then you could spam Flash when you went Pacified. Original Defiance was -25% damage dealt for +25% HP each Wrath stack adding 5% healing received, and 2% crit rate, but I can't remember if that came later. I know it was changed to 2% parry in HW with the crit going to Deliverance.

I do also remember using Flash first for pick up a lot, because Overpower had that weird animation delay until they made it snappy after 2.1 sometime.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Original Defiance was -25% damage dealt for +25% HP each Wrath stack adding 5% healing received, and 2% crit rate, but I can't remember if that came later.

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Crit and healing were both there from the start, I think? And it was up to +25% maximum HP and healing received, which the change just made flat at 4 stacks, despite leaving the penalty at 5 stacks.

I just, again, am like... 80% sure there was an enmity modifier there as well, if only attached to the Wrath stacks just as max HP and healing taken was (in the style of 1.x Rampage and Berserk)?

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I do also remember using Flash first for pick up a lot, because Overpower had that weird animation delay until they made it snappy after 2.1 sometime.

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It did indeed. There was a LOT more swish (and swirl) before its flick when it still followed the 1.x animation. Plus, what else were we going to use MP on, especially when we had no Bard for Army's Paeon?

I really wish I had the tooltip from 2.0. We can still look at the 2.1 update notes, and the wording for the changes makes it sound like it had none, while PLD's definitely makes it sound like it did have one and it got improved.

But yeah I miss how weird tanking used to be at time, and just how good WAR felt after the 2.1 changes. Phew. From no mitigation to UNSTOPPABLE! And then me being slightly weirded out that Holmgang had a chain now instead of the, "C'mon, bring it!" beckoning sorta gesture. I remember Holmgang worked on the Flan boss in Wanderer's Palace, and you could stop it from chasing its randomly selected target around trying to slice them to death.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

But yeah I miss how weird tanking used to be at time, and just how good WAR felt after the 2.1 changes. Phew.

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I actually vastly preferred the 2.0 direction for Warrior. I loved that my Storm's Eye was essential to my survival, of all things. It was just such a dark horse personality among tanks of almost any game that I found it conceptually kinda awesome, even if it felt... only half-complete.

I just felt it was undertuned and lacked a core mechanic or two to balance out its play -- preferably something to do with playing the advantages of low %HP or high flat HP, especially if it could offer higher action rate.

Heck, I feel like most of my concerns of jobs being pigeonholed into and gradually replaced with "roles" all tie back to that fateful decision to favor content-scaling (ability-based percentile mitigation) over gear-scaling (self-healing, scalar Defense buffs, etc.) for tanks in anything that actually mattered to, well, surviving -- essentially copying PLD rather than just making WAR a viable contender in its own right.

People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but they never no-healed the entirety of dungeons like WAR could. StB mass-pulls made DRK look invincible, but in single-target, their self-heals were kinda garbage, and it wasn't much better in HW, either. WAR, on the other hand? That job was popping itself from critical to full HP off meaty crits since 1.x. and... right up until they decided to copy PLD twice over instead of allowing PLD to better scale with its own gear and allow for actually distinct ways of tanking instead.

At the time I never really took it to its apex, but I do remember that I wanted to be the best WAR that I could possibly be so I farmed dungeons for Philosophy Tomestones relentlessly until I could buy enough Animal Fat for my friend to make my HQ Gryphonskin accessories, which I put VIT IV materia along with Parry materia into it. When we finished pentamelding those, I had like 531 parry, and then like 450 crit or something, don't remember the determination, but I was also making sure to meet the accuracy values. Best of all I could use them on my DRG and have it be a little more survivable if I mistimed a jump.

But like WAR with that parried like every other attack, parried for -24% due the STR boosting parry mitigation, and I think that was when DEX still added to parry as well, and like 45 DEX gave like something silly low like 6 parry or something lol. My biggest grin was probably tanking the snake in Turn 1, and the group being like, "Can you even live past 3 stacks? We're going to make the SCH heal you for extra goodness." And then due to some weird luck I lived till 5 stacks, but as it got the 5th stack it died anyway. I probably woulda died to the next cleave though from full HP haha.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

My biggest grin was probably tanking the snake in Turn 1, and the group being like, "Can you even live past 3 stacks? We're going to make the SCH heal you for extra goodness." And then due to some weird luck I lived till 5 stacks, but as it got the 5th stack it died anyway. I probably woulda died to the next cleave though from full HP haha.

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That was the 2.0 Warrior life, getting neglected by healers, and still outliving the (admittedly, much less timing-aware) PLD. I just wish we had the stack (now 'gauge') banking margins, Unchained CD, and Infuriate frequency we have now. Muahaha.

Would have been sick to have the passive disbenefits scale in the same way as the benefits and to have had smaller spender options, too... Though at that point any future stances like Deliverance would have been all too clearly the bloat they were unless they dipped into OT-only Berserker territory, which... would have been even more OP than HW WAR.

Yeah, imagine if Inner Chaos/Cleave/IB still healed 300% with the current damage levels lol. It'd be a full HP heal or close to it xD 45,000 Critical Direct Hit! Healed self for 135,000, phew!

I remember when I got my Bravura, I started being able to hit 1000~1100 on my Inner Beasts, and getting a 3300 heal from that was pretty ridiculous. With how WAR plays since Berserk became Inner Release I kinda of always find myself wishing it had more oGCDs like Upheaval and Onslaught. Some sorta crazy flipping headbutt would be cool.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I'm not sure how long you've played, possibly longer than me, possibly not, but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity, and it was only present on skills and spells themselves. The tank I took up back then was Warrior. To hold hate in AOE, you had to have Maim + Berserk, and then you had to go through each monster with your enmity combo as fast as you could, or you were going to lose something. When they added enmity to stance and to overpower, it got better, easier, but depending on gear differences and whether or not your DPS were AOEing like normal or not, then it was still possible to lose agro.

As far as Heavensward goes, again, it was only a "joke" for Warrior, and only because Butcher's Block combo was higher potency than the other two combos while still giving a Wrath stack. Ninjas weren't in every comp, and not every Ninja was on the ball with Smokebomb and Shadewalker. Plus, Smokebomb usually went to the WHM, because AOE healing created such a high amount of enmity that it had to be curbed, particularly without a WAR tank.

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I wasnt saying it was a joke for only warrior in HW. If you just did 2 aggro combos at the start of the fight then switch out of stance on any tank you could pretty comfortably hold aggro in pug groups, and in organised groups it was even easier.

I was around from mid arr and holding aggro wasnt a challenge then. I dont remember anyone telling me there wasnt an aggro mod initially on overpower, and id have to see some patch notes or something, but from when i was playing aggro holding in single target was easily done by just comboing, and aoe aggro was just spam your aoe aggro move, nothing interesting about it.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

There's nothing equivocal about what I pointed out to you. You just don't think of enmity being anything more than a choice word for a gameplay mechanic, whereas I do.

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Equivocation and equivocal mean different things in this context. You redefined the phrase "Enmity management" in a non-standard way at the start of your post and then proceeded to reiterate my post using your new definition. It's a bit odd, but given that you're re-enforcing my point, I don't really mind.

Either way, you don't need to have a numeric point-based system to control the space around your team. Generating fictitious threat points that tell the AI who to attack should never take gameplay focus away from positioning, movement, mitigating damage and actually being a credible threat by beating down your opponents. the latter four are what make up the heart of tanking.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Each press in itself is a decision.

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Not really. Every job has a target dummy rotation that represents optimal play. The only actual "rotation decisions" that you make are when a mechanic forces you to alter it and then return back to it. Even then, once you know the script, you can basically take the decision-making out of it with a spreadsheet, unless the fight has branch points.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Yeah, Shield Oath did, but not Defiance.

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The nice thing about wikis is the page history function.

July 2013

2.1 just increased the enmity generation rate.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Stuff

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Since you're playing word lawyer here, I think you've failed to see that what I said runs counter to what you've laid out. I'll try to clear that up for you. Tanks by their nature have skills that are antagonistic to the will of their opposition. In games that aren't FFXIV kinds of skills they get include full body rams, deployable barriers, knocking the opponent prone, marking the opponent so they suffer a severe penalty should their attention stray from the tank etc. The role of the tank is domination. This draws ire from other players when used against them. Having mechanics which reflect this truth for PvE is just being faithful to what is intrinsic to tanking, and mathematical variables are necessary as an indicator that the Tank is doing their job and doing it well. The current system which only takes into account the tank turning on their stance, that changes literally nothing about how they play, is just as arbitrary as hate combos were, only it's a worse representation since it basically amounts to a dramatically lower level of participation on the tank's part, allowing them to be less involved with the enemy while simultaneously yielding greater control.

The act of practicing a rotation is a decision. The act of using a spreadsheet aid, is a decision. Picking up the controller/keyboard to play is a decision.

Heh, well, guess my memory's not as good as it once was. Thanks for taking the time to find it though, and for your decision to press the right buttons to link it in your post.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Tanks by their nature have skills that are antagonistic to the will of their opposition. In games that aren't FFXIV kinds of skills they get include full body rams, deployable barriers, knocking the opponent prone, marking the opponent so they suffer a severe penalty should their attention stray from the tank etc. The role of the tank is domination. This draws ire from other players when used against them. Having mechanics which reflect this truth for PvE is just being faithful to what is intrinsic to tanking, and mathematical variables are necessary as an indicator that the Tank is doing their job and doing it well.

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I agree with all of this.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

The current system which only takes into account the tank turning on their stance, that changes literally nothing about how they play, is just as arbitrary as hate combos were, only it's a worse representation since it basically amounts to a dramatically lower level of participation on the tank's part, allowing them to be less involved with the enemy while simultaneously yielding greater control.

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I disagree with this, because I never found enmity generation itself to be challenging. It only actually matters at transition points where an add spawns or the odd time where a boss resets enmity. And let's face it, when you were optimising, NIN and shadewalker did all the heavy lifting here, rather than our Power Slash combo of raw domination.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

The act of practicing a rotation is a decision. The act of using a spreadsheet aid, is a decision. Picking up the controller/keyboard to play is a decision.

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1 -> 2 -> ?
I mean, you can certainly stop at the second step of your combo, and ponder deeply on what your next act should be. I wasn't aware that there was a subset of players who considered this to be a challenge, but I'll take your word for it.

I just run and slice shit. I have the issue well I think I'm over doing it all the time. But I'm a sam main first so leveling gun breaker I just had my DPS mindset put on hold. I think long as my healer is able to heal me then I can pull as much as I want. I haven't had a healer who's told me to stop.. most when I ask push me to keep going til I literally hit a wall. They seem to enjoy it. And I'm a new tank.

I think part of the problem that there aren't a whole lot of tanks around, are 8-man battles.

They are rather detrimental to tank players. I find the Adventurer in Need is almost always tank for Trials and Normal Raid, and the reason why is simple: 50/50 chance you're just going to be a gimp DPS with a very boring rotation.

Very few Trials have anything for an OT to actually do, no adds to pick up, no swaps, nothing. You show up, and if you're the lesser-geared, you do a 1-2-3 rotation the whole fight and..... nothing else.

I think there really could be more add phases for battles to give the OT something to actually do, and make it so you don't want the MT grabbing the adds because of cleaves and such. Or maybe the adds place a defense-down on the tank, so you don't want the main boss and the adds both on the same tank. That would at least give tanks more reason to run 8-man content.

For example, Titania is awesome. The MT and OT actually have to go through an add phase, and if they screw it up, the whole group dies.

However, fights like Ravana, Byakko, half of the Eden fights, etc... no adds, and no swaps, the OT is only there in case the MT dies and that's just boring.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

However, fights like Ravana, Byakko, half of the Eden fights, etc... no adds, and no swaps, the OT is only there in case the MT dies and that's just boring.

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I mean Ravana has a thing to be aware of as the OT; Surpanakha. Which is get away from the rest of the team and try to align the incoming AoE waves with the open space in the wall.

At least when the content was releavent it was something to really take notice of but I havne't done Ravana enough these days to know if you can ignore that. Too bad he only does it about once per fight now.

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

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The tank shortage is in relation to content that most people will do and have a high RNG nature when it comes to the participants... so your DRs for 4 man and most 8 man content. If you queue as a DPS for any of those, other than Trials and Normal Raids, you will have a good amount of wait time.

Your situation is an exception... plus it's missing context (how long have those PF groups have been looking for members, are those tank players static, can those tank players change to DPS, etc.)

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

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It's funny how far a thread can be taken with zero linked sources to back it up, isn't it?

Lodestone Census

The proportions of level 80 jobs reflects what you might expect, with a new dps and tank this expansion. What is interesting, however, is how those proportions change when you look by ilvl to see what main roles people are actually keeping their gear up to date on.

You can filter by world to see what it's like locally for you.

So lets preface this with some expectations.

There are currently 4 tanks, 3 healers, and 10 DPS jobs.

This is a ratio of
Tank: 23%
Healer: 17%
DPS: 60%

In a perfect "Everyone is equally happy and divided between the jobs" these are our expected numbers.

In "Rate of Role" at level 80, it records 35,518 "Units".

Tanks represent 8610 [24%]
Healers represent 6660 [19%]
DPS represent 20,248 [57%]

In Rate of Role in "Upper content", which based on their ilvl and the breadth of this survey implies "Doing Current Content", we have recorded 2948 units.

Tanks represent: 599 (20%)
Healers represent: 790(26%)
DPS represent: 1568( 53%)

For i505 weapons

Tanks have: 52 (25%)
DPS have: 119 ( 57%)
Healers have: 38 ( 18%)

This has likely changed as the cutoff date was April 7th.

Eden's Verse dropped on February 18th. The duration from the 18th of Feb to the 7th of April is 8 weeks.

The only glaring bracket appears to be level 50-59 in terms of tank count.

The spike at 60-69 occurs because GNB is a level 60 job. The 60-69 bracket is the one where you're most likely to find a tank in, as most expansion players are going to at least unlock the job. Below that and above that the ratio falls off.

All this should be intuitive. When the population dips below the target ratio, queue times go down for the underpopulated role and go up for the overpopulated ones. Most content is designed around 1:1:2 tank/healer/dps ratios, which is why most tank queues are fast. When the ratio is set at 1:2:4, tank queues become lengthy. It doesn't have to be skewed by much to make a difference.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xtrasweettea

Your situation is an exception... plus it's missing context (how long have those PF groups have been looking for members, are those tank players static, can those tank players change to DPS, etc.)

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there’s really no context, i can’t be sure if they’re static, some maybe, but i assume most no. and this could be a crystal issue, who knows, but most groups are looking for dps or sometimes healers, and i’ve been in pf looking for hours before. as for the roulette thing, it’s probably because those that play tank for end game content want to play other roles, i know that’s my reasoning if i even queue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

there’s really no context, i can’t be sure if they’re static, some maybe, but i assume most no. and this could be a crystal issue, who knows, but most groups are looking for dps or sometimes healers, and i’ve been in pf looking for hours before. as for the roulette thing, it’s probably because those that play tank for end game content want to play other roles, i know that’s my reasoning if i even queue.

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It might not be a Crystal issue, you are probably the one of many facing this issue.

I know when I queue for DR, it is usually Healer since the queue's are super instant (like the window pops up less than a second after roulette assignment queuing). I can wait up to 5 to 10 minutes on tank. Healers got boned this expansion so I am not surprised there would be a lack of them. Of course, if I hop on a DPS, I can expect 15+ minutes wait.

When most people think of "shortage" it's always in relation against the number of DPS for DR. In reality, experiences like yours and the numbers drawn out by Kabooa above draws a different picture.

The numbers that Kabooa copied over from the site show a relative lack of tanks in raid content as well.

PF groups are often a reflection of who starts them.

I think its because tanks when they are level synced have it the worst. Especially if you are the OT in content outside of alexander raids and a few trial fights due to your gimped rotation.

In terms of other content outside of raid and trial roulette. I find healer being the adventurer in need the most often but that has been a discussion going on for almost a year now in the healer section.

Responsibility. This has always been the main factor regardless of which mmo or year it is. Most players can handle simple tanking responsibilites but they DON'T WANT to. It doesn't matter if there's 4 tanking classes or 10. The amount of players playing tanks still stays relatively the same. Devs have tried to reinvent tanking mechanics throughout the years to make them more approachable but their responsibilities do not change no matter how much you reinvent it.

Fear of failure, lack of confidence, stressful life and other factors are the reason people avoid accountability. Most people look ways to avoid responsibility but still want the carrot. This is a fact. It's just players being people.

It isn't just an unwillingness to take on the associated responsibilities. Many players simply do not wish to have drama thrown in their laps because someone else -- usually a DPS -- decided to ignore a mechanic that would either kill them or blow up the entire group. More often than not, tanks are blamed for virtually everything that goes wrong regardless of whether or not it is something they have the ability to influence. This is in addition to the aforementioned fear of failure, inability or lack of desire to handle additional stress, etc.

There's also the fact that, as mentioned numerous other times in this thread, tanks had their damage so savagely curtailed for no discernible legitimate reason. While we do have the option to play whatever jobs we want, the fact of the matter is that most people have one that they simply focus on far more than the others. For tanks mains, this means they'll typically want to concentrate on their tanking job(s) almost to the exclusion of all else, meaning they might not have a DPS sufficiently leveled and/or geared for full use, which essentially pigeonholes them into taking twelve years to kill things "out in the wild", so to speak. Sure, they probably won't die, but who wants to waste so much time? More than a few people started concentrating on damage dealing jobs after the damage nerf owing to the fact that the only thing they're really giving up by doing so is near-instant queue pops, whilst simultaneously they gain the ability to perform far better in virtually every other aspect of the game.

For normal content, has the Tank shortage changed that much since launch of game? It may have but the more I think about this, the more I believe that responsibility and gameplay of the role itself is actually a smaller factor while the role aesthetic and archetype/theme is the biggest factor. It seems that in every game that the damage dealers are most popular compared to the heavy armored damage sponge (or healer). Take mobas for example, stakes seem lower there responsibility wise if you play a tank (for casual matchmaking at least), yet still most people want to play the assassin or high dps characters and I'm guessing most are simply drawn to being the one who deals most damage.

Beside the fact that you deal most damage, the specific job archetypes seem also to be more popular than the tanking archetypes (mages, rogues, ..). As you can see, Gunbreaker brought good amount of popularity to the Tank role (leveling Tank queues has gotten significantly longer since ShB) and Gunbreaker aesthetically doesn't look like a typical Tank job, but rather a damage dealer.

For me personally, the main reason I switch mains to another role is because I start digging a certain aesthetic and theme, while the role they play in is a much lesser factor. I think a good solution for both Tank and Healer shortage would be to release less typical and more unorthodox or dps looking jobs (aesthetically) for the roles. Might sound crazy but imo they could have made RDM either a tank or healer with some creativity and I think either role it would have been in would have (much?) less of a shortage right now.

One problem with this might be immersion and also the armor sets for tanks/healers wouldn't fit certain dps/unorthodox jobs.