Should I switch to tank or stay as DPS?

The reason I'm asking for advice for this is one reason:Queue times.

I've been a dragoon for 3 months now since I started playing and up until post game....the queue times weren't too bad....until the Coils of Bahamut Raids

As a DPS,it takes,no joke,over an hour to assemble a full party and sometimes I can't even manage to find a party after this time.

But when I invited a friend of mine who's a tank.....it took less than a minute.

I know tanks are on much more demand than DPS which is why I'm considering to fully switch to tank once I start Heavensward and get the Dark Knight class

Well for starters, Coil of Bahamut isn't current tier raids, it's rather old. You may have better luck using Party Finder instead of Duty Finder for these.
But at the same time, yes Tanks are in demand for a reason. You should play one. I do and the feeling is fantastic.

It's the only role type that makes me feel alive anymore.

I switched to tank main shortly before the release of SB primarily because I anticipated the DPS queue times I experienced in HW (main'd DRG in ARR and BLM in HW) would only bloat further with the addition of RDM and SAM in SB.

I also started leveling my alt characters again, and for the sake of convenience... I'm leveling them all as Tanks and Healers. Almost always get instant queues.

I have all jobs at 70 on my main though, which I primarily level'd via side activities and daily roulettes. Things like BST Tribes and FATEs can be completed while waiting on queues. An additional incentive to play a Tank to quickly get to the 70 cap is that any other job level'd after that will receive the armory exp bonus. Which kind of balances out the atrocious queue times on DPS since so much more exp is gained from the activities.

Here's the way I see it:

-If you're short on time on a general basis, even days like weekends and you want to get some weekly things done: queue as tank.

-If you're short on time but weekly goals are not really your thing: keep playing as dps.

-If you have time but you're mostly focused on very few activities in the game: keep playing dps

-If you're short on time and you have only few activities you're focused on: keep playing tank.


So TL;DR: if you want to accomplish the most group focused activities in the least amount of time as well as complete other goals: tank.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Well for starters, Coil of Bahamut isn't current tier raids, it's rather old. You may have better luck using Party Finder instead of Duty Finder for these.
But at the same time, yes Tanks are in demand for a reason. You should play one. I do and the feeling is fantastic.

It's the only role type that makes me feel alive anymore.

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Well I tried Party Finder for Coil 1 but problem is since it's pretty old 90% of the parties I find play unsync.....I had no choice but to hop in and literally before I even move the rest of the party completed the dungeon while I was in cutscenes

But yeah,once I get to HW I'm going full Tank from now on

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Originally Posted by MetalSnakeXI1

Well I tried Party Finder for Coil 1 but problem is since it's pretty old 90% of the parties I find play unsync.....I had no choice but to hop in and literally before I even move the rest of the party completed the dungeon while I was in cutscenes

But yeah,once I get to HW I'm going full Tank from now on

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Coil T9 is the one that you're likely never going to get anything but unsync.

If you enjoy Tanking, then tank. But be aware you'll get a lot of grief from parties expecting a speed run if you can't pull it off. Just ignore them and go at whatever pace is your pace.

Don't tank for the sake of queue times. Tank because you enjoy it and you're reasonably good at it.

You'll hate it very quickly if you're not enjoying yourself and you'll hate it even more if you're taking a lot of verbal abuse from others because you're not good at it (or because they just like being verbally abusive, and tanks and healers tend to be targets since they're the minority in a group).

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Coil T9 is the one that you're likely never going to get anything but unsync.

If you enjoy Tanking, then tank. But be aware you'll get a lot of grief from parties expecting a speed run if you can't pull it off. Just ignore them and go at whatever pace is your pace.

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To add to this, just use it as motivation to get your gear up to date so you can pull at the expected pace.

The short queues are nice, but this shouldn't be the reason why you take on the role. Not if you want to separate yourself from the sheep tanks that likely drove you crazy when you played your DPS jobs.

Tank mains in their comfort zone are so attuned to their role and enjoy it that they make all the intricacies involved look easy, and likely view it as such. An agro combo, is just an agro combo. But if you ask them why they hardly use it, or why it's looked down on, an elaborate tank can really break down the why/when it is sub optimal.

There is a reason why tank mains are the minority representing the playerbase. There's a lot of responsibility with this role. Arguably more than the other two, and you will be scrutinized to the gills even in casual content. Something else you may not be used to is your healer following you around like a lost puppy, and constantly staring out you. They are literally your beating heart in content, and you are going to need to keep a good eye on them.

In short, the quick queues are usually not enough to sustain interest in the tanking role long term. You actually have to find one or more of the jobs interesting and enjoyable to play.

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Originally Posted by MetalSnakeXI1

As a DPS,it takes,no joke,over an hour to assemble a full party

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This isn't surprising considering Coils are not current content and they're not in any of the roulettes. However this may change in the future. Coils' counterpart from HW has been added to a roulette so I think it's only a matter of time until Coils will be added as well. If you want to do that content sooner rather than later, as someone else said try to use party finder or assemble your own group. Maybe this will yield better results.

If doing Coils is the only reason why you considered tanking but you still do enjoy playing dps, then I would say stay as dps. But the beauty of this game is you can pick up any class and switch as much as you like so really you can just do whatever :)

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Don't tank for the sake of queue times. Tank because you enjoy it and you're reasonably good at it.

You'll hate it very quickly if you're not enjoying yourself and you'll hate it even more if you're taking a lot of verbal abuse from others because you're not good at it (or because they just like being verbally abusive, and tanks and healers tend to be targets since they're the minority in a group).

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Listen to Jojoya ^^ I encourage you to try tanking. You may find it fun and short que times are plus. But it is only plus. It shouldnt be main reason for playing tank. You may find it to stressful and pushing yourself to play it will only make you hate the role and maybe even the game.

Switch to Tank Main xD Just gear up all 3 tanks and play 1 each day. Eureka is great if you want to play DPS :D.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Don't tank for the sake of queue times. Tank because you enjoy it and you're reasonably good at it.

You'll hate it very quickly if you're not enjoying yourself and you'll hate it even more if you're taking a lot of verbal abuse from others because you're not good at it (or because they just like being verbally abusive, and tanks and healers tend to be targets since they're the minority in a group).

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Exactly. The only reason to play a tank or a healer is if you enjoy it and nothing else.

Only reason you switch to tank is if you enjoy it.

I played a little bit of PLD back during 2.0 but my main was SMN.

When DRK was announced for HW I quickly jumped ship, fell in love with the role and job and havent looked back since. The fast queue times are just a perk, but IMO being the tank in Ex trials, raids and 24 man is way more fun than being a dps, but that is just me.

Long story short, just play what you like the most.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

This isn't surprising considering Coils are not current content and they're not in any of the roulettes. However this may change in the future. Coils' counterpart from HW has been added to a roulette so I think it's only a matter of time until Coils will be added as well.

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Don't be so sure of that. Some of the turns in Coils (in particular T5, T9, and I suppose T13) are brutal when done synced, and I wouldn't expect a PUG to be able to beat them unless everyone involved know the fights well.

The story-mode Alexander raid from HW is by comparison a lot easier.

Changing to tank will NOT help you with Coil queue times. Seriously. It is old content, and the only times folks bother with it is when they run it unsynced for Wondrous Tales.

Finding folks willing to run old raids level synced is nearly impossible to do in a short amount of time. If you seriously want to do the old content synced, your best bet is to seek out seven other players with the same interest. It will likely take you days or weeks to assemble your team, but you can use Party Finder to collect members. Get their contact information, get them into a cross-server Linkshell, talk with them on Discord or another voice chat - whatever it takes to make sure you can hold your team together. You will need to arrange days that you can all meet together to practice the content. In short, you'll be forming a static party to challenge the content. It can be difficult enough to form a static to handle current content (stuff with actual worthwhile rewards), so you can expect it to be even worse trying to get together a team for older content.

Once you have your team together, be aware that the old content is still no joke. This was the hardest of the hard back when it was first introduced to the game - particularly the final raid in each tier - and is still challenging even with the various nerfs (echo, equipment at cap ilvl, various other difficulty nerfs such as ADS's paralyze being cleansable and petrification no longer leading to being one-shot by damage).

I can understand the desire to want to experience these cool battles as they're MEANT to be played, and there are likely others out there who feel the same way as you do. Find them, befriend them, and team up to take it on. As for becoming a tank, while it will not help you with queues for old raids, having a variety of jobs you can play means that if you DO get your team together, you can be less picky about the jobs THEY play. Being able to play as both tank and DPS means that one of your team slots is flexible - you can accept either a tank or a DPS into the group to fill it, and just play the other role yourself.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Don't be so sure of that. Some of the turns in Coils (in particular T5, T9, and I suppose T13) are brutal when done synced, and I wouldn't expect a PUG to be able to beat them unless everyone involved know the fights well.

The story-mode Alexander raid from HW is by comparison a lot easier.

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I think for the exact reasons you stated is why Coils still isn't part of a roulette yet. I actually expect SE to nerf quite a lot of Coils if they make it part of a roulette.

So heres the thing:

Tanks will always be in higher demand (followed by healers, if the two dont swap in necessity) simply because there are more DPS. So you will almost always have longer queue times on DPS. On rare occasion, DPS queue faster. Now as what was pointed out, if you want to do older content, you should keep in mind thats going to make things longer for DPS.

If your interest is the cutscenes, go in and clear the content (with whatever class) and then watch the cut scenes at an inn or log book in an FC/house. Cause the thing your going to find is people want to clear that content, not run it synced, and not wait on people to watch the cutscenes. Its a good way to get kicked from a group if your spending time watching cut scenes.

As has been said, dont let the cue times for 4yo obsolete content be the deciding factor. That stuff is not a good representation of what its like for day to day stuff. Tank if you want to be more flexible or enjoy it. DPS cues are not very bad at all for level cap content.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

I think for the exact reasons you stated is why Coils still isn't part of a roulette yet. I actually expect SE to nerf quite a lot of Coils if they make it part of a roulette.

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They'd have to release a "story mode" version of coil to put it into the raid roulette without the enrage failure conditions.

I play with my Wife, And when Queueing. One of us are DPS and one of us are Tank/Healer Just for queue times.

Sure you can do other things while queue but bam your in the middle of something and queue pops isn't good option quit this to do that.