Four Ways to Die - why the Tank Meta feels "off".

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Originally Posted by Instrumentality

I can't think of a current MMO where this isn't the established 'meta'. WoW scaled back on it kind of hard recently, but at one point tanks were the top dps because of Vengeance, but DPS stacking still exist in Mastery even now.

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I've seen this type of comment a lot on both of my threads, and whilst there's truth in it, it's missed the point. The issue isnt that tanks are having to push their dps as hard as possible. That -will- always be part of tanks. You accept it'll be less than a DPS class but all tanks in all MMOs have always been able to contribute to the dps to the best of their abilities.

The issue in FFXIV is just HOW MUCH YOU SACRIFICE in order to push your dps, and how this requirement not only reduces that "feel" of tankiness but pretty much prevents you from gaining any real satisfaction that the gear you gain from progression rewards is helping this.

In WoW, prot warriors didn't suddenly drop to Battle stance and wear leather armor in order to max their damage. Virtually all WoW tanks now gain damage from their tank stats. A tank with huge amounts of gear trying to do the most damage they can will be wearing almost identical gear to a tank who's trying to be as survivable as possible, and their rotations wont be that different either. They might just swap out a trinket or something.

That's the point here. Tank DPS has always been important, and there's emphasis on it in all MMOs. But here, the balance is skewed hugely far in favor of DPS. Tanks are expected to tank in their DPS stance as much as humanly possible. Any gains in gear that make them tankier are immediately sacrificed into a direct dps conversion (get a new chest? Drop a vit acc for str so your HP stays the same. Already wearing full slaying? Probably means you can tank more in Sword Oath). The way the game mechanics are set up, coupled with the fact that tanks can waltz into alex savage and perform perfectly well in base level "undergeared" stuff just means there is ZERO incentive to gear up as a tank, even if it's incidental.

Tanks never really get to feel the benefit of getting tougher and tougher here - the satisfaction the game gives them for playing their class well and getting upgrades comes from higher DPS, not in seeing past tankbusters barely move their health bar when it used to nearly kill them.

There are arguments that "extra dps is always important" and "tankiness is a binary state - you either survive or dont". This is short sighted. Survivability of a tank is a two person job - healer and tank working together. The Meta in FFXIV is for the tank to push as much responsibility for this onto their healer as possible. They specifically try to go into an encounter wearing as little designated tank gear as possible and tanking in dps stance as much as possible as long as the healer can cope. That's fine and all, but getting tankier DOES help your healer out. It may be a binary thing of "if the tank survives you dont need any more tankiness" but is this really any different to "if you have enough DPS to beat the enrage, you dont need any more dps". It adds security and safety to the encounter. It makes it easier, the same as higher dps makes it easier.

The reason why people are eschewing tank stats isnt because "dps is always better" or "tankiness isnt important". Both of those are purely subjective. The issue is the balance - tanks can survive Alex Savage fights in 190 gear with slaying accs in dps stance, but a lot of undergeared raidgroups couldnt hit the DPS checks. The DPS check remains the harder part of the encounter and the tank survivability is easier. Yes, taking a 25,000 health tank with 50% parry chance who always tanks in Shield Oath -would- be far far easier to heal than a sword oath 15k health one... but the increase in healing ease doesnt translate to any significant increase in the chance to complete the encounter.

I counter with this: let's make a few hypothetical changes to A1S. The Hyper compressed Plasma now hits for 10,000 more damage than it does now. Royal Fount now hits for closer to 8,000 on a tank in tank stance and is no longer scripted - it can come at random points throughout the fight, including very close to the tank buster (and can be blocked/parried). Auto attacks are increased by 50%. The total health of the oppressor is reduced by 5%.

In this situation, with 5% less health the enrage timer is still tough but tanks woudl be fine just pushing as much dps as they could in tank stance. Every other person in the raidgroup would play the same with the same mechanics, but tanks would always be at risk of dying if healers werent lookign after them. The fact that royal fount could come at any point, the harder autos, all would mean that tanks would need to use some cooldowns more reactively, and would benefit hugely from tank stats - not that Parry is good, but if parry had a bigger return then it would -help-. A big health pool would -help- as it would reduce the chance of tanks being randomly burst by unfortunately timed royal founts.

Maybe the numbers are off but you get what I mean - the issue with tanks being so focused on DPS isnt that dps shouldnt be important... it's that incoming tank damage is so fundamentally MINOR in this current patch (even compared to 2.0 raiding - T9 and T13 felt MUCH harder on the tanks than anything in alex savage from a damage-income perspective) that tanks can just ignore any reason to make themselves tougher. And THAT is what feels off.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Yeah I think the main point of my post was simply : This is how the meta is. This is -why- the meta is. This is why the meta feels fun to a lot of warriors and other players who favor aggressive dps, but understand there's a lot of players who are unhappy about this and don't enjoy it.

I don't think the meta is likely to change, and I think the mechanics of the game in general are likely to make it too hard to drastically alter the entire way tanks go about mitigating stuff. That said, some small quality of life changes, some gearing changes, and a bigger focus on high incoming tank damage in hard encounters would go quite some way to making it not feel quite so hugely swayed into the "dps>all" camp.

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Nice post. The current trend to what has occurred in the current tanking meta, is because this is how SE designed it to be. You can clearly see that more effort and thought was put into WAR and DRK designs. They have made one tank a staple and the others a either or, depending on the encounter. SE need to realize that the community is going to push hard even though the content is not designed around that ilevel, they will do math around DMG output to DMG input to Job requirements and most effectiveness in the current raid. This system will in turn work it's way into the more casual base and new tanks starting out, who don't really know the job yet.

I know so many players that have switched jobs that they have been playing since 2.0, because that was required. I don't think SE will do any rework of the current tank's at this stage, I don't think raid encounters will change in terms of mechanical type. i.e set time for certain abilities that never change static encounters.

Unfortunately the way things are is here to stay, and I suspect that only in the next expansion will maybe see some drastic changes, if more care and thought is put into the individual jobs, and not just how they fit into the story. It might become better, only time will tell at this moment.

To be honest this is one of the main reasons I don't enjoy this game as much anymore. When I tank I'm an old school tank. When I heal I'm an old school healer. Sure I'll dps if I want to but ONLY if I want to. I don't want to feel forced to do it like the current meta. Same with tank. I don't want to be forced to be a tanky dps. That isn't a tank to me. If I wanted to dps I would play blm more or my smn. I've actually started looking at other MMOs that I've played before for that reason.

Sapphida, you have basically just written one of the dozen or so essay threads I have planned to write for me (which is to say, I agree with your assessment). I absolutely fall into the "immovable wall" paradigm myself. I participate in the tanking game, but I'll absolutely agree that gear over iLvl 180 hasn't really made me feel any more powerful a tank than I was before, with the exception of now being able to hold threat off that 210 DRG that doesn't think "hold back" is a viable option in a boss fight.

It doesn't help matters that gear actually has very little impact on survivability right now. For tanks, the overwhelming majority of our mitigation in a fight comes from out cooldowns; and most of our cooldowns are flat reductions to the amount of damage taken, rather than impacted by our character's stats. This makes gearing up my PLD feel incredibly unrewarding, because it doesn't really have an impact on my ability to survive. Indeed, the tankiest feeling I get from my gearing progression has been that enmity thing, where the only way a DPS will pull off me anymore is if I muck something up during the pull.

And I'll also admit that yeah, it doesn't exactly feel great to have my extra HP basically be an accessory. I hold enmity, but surviving is almost no challenge once I've got enough HP for the "tankbusters." And that doesn't feel very good at all.

I will chime in, though, that in my experience as PLD, the most rewarding times for me (outside of seeing my HP barely be hit when the boss is firin' her lazor), are when I'm doing things that only my class can do. Throwing out that Clemency heal to rescue the DPS that the healers couldn't get to in time; keeping Stoneskin up for many of the fights to eat white damage and take a chunk out of tankbusters; completely negating the knockback damage from the second boss in Fractal Continuum with Tempered Will; throwing a 1.6k shield on my party for the jump in A1; using Cover on the only healer who survived and popping Hallowed Ground so they can use their lb3 and save the raid - these are all things that only PLD can do, and when they work, they actually feel great (the downside is that they are a little clumsy to use right now, and are, like the cooldowns, mostly not dependent on gear). An added bonus here is that they also all fit with the "immovable wall" fantasy of "no, you will not hurt my friends."

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

The issue in FFXIV is just HOW MUCH YOU SACRIFICE in order to push your dps, and how this requirement not only reduces that "feel" of tankiness but pretty much prevents you from gaining any real satisfaction that the gear you gain from progression rewards is helping this.

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I need to stop you here, because this is not true. Death Knights in WoW for quite a while in the current expansion had the option of sacrificing a tremendous amount of 'tankability' for very notable DPS increases which, unsurprisingly, was pretty much the only choice to make. This also happens in how you build Rift tank specs, and in how you build 'tanks' in Tera or tanks in SWTOR for what mods/enhancements/etc you place in your armor.


This is what I mean. I simply don't accept that your premise is true that tanks are somehow unused to this concept or that it's stretched obscenely here, and the assertion otherwise feels more like a myth/nostalgia to me than it does to any thing that actually exist in the tanking world of today. Tanks have for multiple expansions across multiple different MMOs had the choice of sacrificing durability for DPS, FFXIV isn't even the most extreme example of it that comes to mind (which would be warrior tanks in Tera).

One of the heavy problems about the meta isn't just that it doesn't fit with the classic tank themes but that it has generally succeeded where it was supposed to. That is to lure people into the tank position. There are alot of people who play tank, and are very good at it, that would not traditionally play a tank role in a game like this. They want to have the freedom that tank gives in this game where they can have both survivability and damage potential. It's kinda a catch 22 now for everyone. I know I would certainly be disappointing in a complete rework of tank stats in the game. I enjoy pushing my DPS. However, I can also get where alot of people are put off by the type of gameplay that tank offers in this game.

I wouldn't mind a tune up of damage, or even a way for more bosses to throw vulnerability down onto a tank. This would still need a rework of the whole accessory system though. We need a more thorough way to mitigate through accessories outside of just HP. If it forced me to stay in tank stance more then that switch over to DPS stance in between busters to throw out that 3x FC would feel even sweeter.

I definitely don't want to lose the freedom of tank stance swaps, but I also wouldn't mind seeing fights that would call for more survivability means. Parry also needs to be completely recalculated so that it's meaningful mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

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Apart from what Instrumentality has said; the point we're pushing is that it's a lose-lose situation.

Solve the DPS meta so that the balance is shifted in favour of 'wall-tanks' (kind of like First Coil, though that may have more to do with WAR just being poop in more than one way) and 'DPS-tanks' will be here in your stead writing 4600 word (maybe not so eloquently) essays on how we can shift the meta back into their favour. You can only shift the meta, you can't kill the concept (which is the underlying problem) entirely.

This dance is done to death in every MMO. That is the constant jockeying to make the game in their image (which is understandable). The only real solution is homogenization of performance, which has the natural consequence of diluting the 'fantasy' inherent to each unique class. Fantasies are after all based on a unique distinction.

Excellent read Saph! This has made me trying to find you in the game for the past few days just to praise you directly. I completely agree with the post and its point of view. Personally, I am some sort of a "Traditional" type of tank, although I too have embraced the meta and am currently mastering stance-dancing as well as tanking with your HP pool just-enough to survive the tankbusters. Contradict to some of the players posting answers in this threat though, I believe Square Enix can totally and easily fix this problem without revamping the whole game. Instead of making our "Active" part of tanking just popping cooldowns, why not making more of the "Inner Beast" type of skills where you can actually enhance your own mitigation for a short amount of time just by actively timing the skill? Disable, Sheltron as well as Dart Arts + X cooldowns came close to it, but we need more of those "Active tankiness management skills" in my opinion.

That, or just abandon the accuracy stat altogether so that healers can DPS as well as tank. Some healers are indeed taking advantage of tanks' mitigation to deal DPS, but seeing all these "Miss" messages popping up isn't fun or incentive.

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Originally Posted by AbandonedPaladin

Instead of making our "Active" part of tanking just popping cooldowns, why not making more of the "Inner Beast" type of skills where you can actually enhance your own mitigation for a short amount of time just by actively timing the skill?

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So, basically...you want SE to implement WoW-style "active mitigation". As someone who played through half of Warlords of Draenor (the expansion that really relied on active mitigation), that's not as fun as you think. You still use the same rotations, same dCDs, etc. The only difference is, if you mess up your rotation, rather than screwing dmg (done or taken) by a small % for a few sec, you died. Granted, it's not like the rotation was hard (it was super easy); but you did the same thing all the time. It was all homogenized and boring.

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Originally Posted by Ralvenom

Granted, it's not like the rotation was hard (it was super easy); but you did the same thing all the time. It was all homogenized and boring.

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I stopped enjoying WoW's tanking when they started the general shift toward active mitigation in Cataclysm (though they also got rid of Frost tanking for Death Knights, which soured me even further).

I'm not necessarily opposed to more active stuff here (I loved the Utsusemi tanking in FFXI in part because of the active, risk/reward style), but for active mitigation to really feel active, it needs to be less rotational and more reactionary. FFXI's NIN required you to pay attention to your shadows, and you could play really aggressively, forgoing Parry and Evasion but needing to refresh shadows more often, or more defensively, prolonging the life of your shadows, but above all, Utsusemi was never rotational.