Tanks are at their most fun when you can solo certain old Extremes and Savage Raids

About one of the few times every action matters, I had a lot of fun when it came to Neo Exdeath, God Kefka (though only Warrior can do it I think?) and Chaos as few examples.

True, but I've found them fun soloing leveling dungeon bosses as well because of the tight sync. Novice tanks just get destroyed in that situation a lot.

Yeah, I'm a RDM main but I maxed and geared up my WAR for solo stuff. :D
Grinding/lvling in Eureka - grabbing 10 mobs and AoEing them to death is so much fun (while self-healing myself like crazy).
AoE grinding FATEs for quick Bicolor Gemstones.
Solo farming group treasure maps.

I'm getting BiS this tier mostly because I want to see what stuff I can solo now.

I disagree, I had the most fun when tanks were actually tanks, and not dps who can heal and take lots of incoming damage.



They've really ruined the role for me. It was at its best in 2.0 honestly. It's gone downhill from there.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I disagree, I had the most fun when tanks were actually tanks, and not dps who can heal and take lots of incoming damage.

They've really ruined the role for me. It was at its best in 2.0 honestly. It's gone downhill from there.

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I was worried all the changes would make me feel that way, especially the removal of stance dancing, but it didn't. I still really enjoy tanking.

Being able to throw flash or TBN on people, or use reprisal or raid-wide mit when they are about to die is great, because you know you saved them and protected the party which is the tank's job. We didn't used to have most of that - reprisal, raid-wide mit, short CD abilities, these were what we were given as other things got taken away.

As much as it feels unfair to healers, being able to survive without a healer's help feels really good. There's a reason people get so excited at WAR+3 dps dungeon runs. Because it is, actually, fun.

Subjective statement.

The most interesting combat content to me is PvP, solo'ing old content overpowered (either as a tank or blue mage, honestly I enjoy tank more than blue mage BUT I believe if SE can add more interesting spells, particularly kit/style building, that blue mage will be a strong contender), and then MSQ content when not everyone knows what to do (myself included, 500th repeat on MSQ content is yawn fest unless someone is terrible.. which actually makes it more exciting lol).

Unless I decided to become a streamer or a group of absolute death machines invited me I have no intention of touching any savage or ultimate content when it is current, just sounds like pulling nails and teeth out. When someone on the forums was like 10 hours progression minimum, I was like 'oh lord that sounds awful'. Naturally that's just my style, it's fine others like that- but given I have about 2 hours a week and exclusively play DF (which has less gameplay quality control, and probably lower gameplay quality average)... those harder contents are just an actual waste of gameplay time.

In terms of /most fun/ though I would say a dungeon or alliance gone horribly wrong as a tank can be really fun as you go from 4 / 8 group content to 1 man machine. Tanking the last few % or absorbing critical damage for another player and saving the entire run is quite fun. It's like being able to chain raise the party as Red Mage and that be the reason why you win.

I'm actually fine with the sustain buffs to tanks because it makes this type of solo fun more possible, and I really appreciate and enjoy that most content becomes solo-able (and gently push for things like that to be more and more possible, ideally in a fun way... not just 1 shot, but reasonable pace with reasonable gameplay mechanics). That said because of that I also strongly support improving Healer kits to be more fun with that in mind... as in general healers are less valued as everyone is stronger / plays better, and so they should be adjusted so their value is not damaged so strongly (my suggestion is to add SCH and SGE to offensive support / combat style and WHM / AST to defensive support (buffing) / combat style- equal approximately in potency gains in combat just different methods to do that).

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I disagree, I had the most fun when tanks were actually tanks, and not dps who can heal and take lots of incoming damage.



They've really ruined the role for me. It was at its best in 2.0 honestly. It's gone downhill from there.

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I don't miss the "Tank should've use the STR accessories with VIT melds" thing back in ARR till SB to be honest...

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

I don't miss the "Tank should've use the STR accessories with VIT melds" thing back in ARR till SB to be honest...

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And you had to stay out of tank stance as long as humanly possible. It's always been about dps, always lol.

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

I don't miss the "Tank should've use the STR accessories with VIT melds" thing back in ARR till SB to be honest...

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It was mostly a HW thing, I dont think it was common in ARR, at least I didn't hear of it back then.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

As much as it feels unfair to healers, being able to survive without a healer's help feels really good.

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For the TANK, sure, because...

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There's a reason people get so excited at WAR+3 dps dungeon runs. Because it is, actually, fun.

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...is the problem.

Basically, we have a Trinity game where Tanks are ALSO Healers, meaning Healers have no place in normal content, only in hard mode stuff. Which feels bad for the Healers and is bad for the game.

I do agree Tanks should be masters of protection and mitigation - not of HEALING, too. IMO, it'd be cool if we took most of the DPSers mitigations and gave them to the Tanks, but stripped Tanks of any party heals. They can have their self-sustains, but they shouldn't be healing up the entire party on the side. Stuff like Intervention or Cover or Passage of Arms are good, stuff like Nascent Flash or Shake It Off are not. DRK gets it - it has TBN and Oblation it can put on party members, but those things reduce the damage they take, they don't act as heals.

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I disagree with Valkyrie about 2.0 being the best and it all downhill from there. I strongly disagree with that.

But there's so much healing on non-Healers and so much mitigation on everyone (except WHM) in Meleewalker that it's just absurd. Go look in the Healer subforum here and see how they feel about WAR+3 DPS runs. To give you a hint, "jaded" or "salty" don't even begin to describe it. Same on Reddit. In both places, I've gotten demolished for suggesting that Healers are at all okay in this game, with the very reason they site being Tank + 3 DPS runs being the optimal way to run content and 8 mans only needing 1 (or sometimes 0) Healers.

While I don't think things are as dire as they do...they're absolutely RIGHT about Healers being devalued in the current content model. And a big part of that is Tanks have so much HEALING and DPS have so much healing and also mitigation that it's breaking the Trinity.

Would it be fun for Healers if they had Taunt, a slate of mitigation abilities that let them eat tankbusters for breakfast, and outdamaged SAMs and BLMs?

Probably.

But would it be good for the game if 4 mans were routinely Healer + 3 DPS and 8 mans were frequently done with 0 Tanks, even Ultimates?

Probably not.

Put yourselves in the other role's shoes and then ask yourself how you'd feel if it was your role that was completely redundant and unneeded in general content and the optimal way to clear 4 mans was without your role in them.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I do agree Tanks should be masters of protection and mitigation - not of HEALING, too.

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In the same way, healers should not be able to mitigate (ie. we should not have barrier healers, that's literally the job of tanks to protect the party). But we do. Tanks and healers have always been stepping on eachother's toes and that has only grown.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In the same way, healers should not be able to mitigate (ie. we should not have barrier healers, that's literally the job of tanks to protect the party). But we do. Tanks and healers have always been stepping on eachother's toes and that has only grown.

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"masters of".

Tanks should have some self-sustain (as they do), PLD specifically have some healing (as it does owing to the general class thing of PLD having some limited White Magic), and Healers should have mitigations (but not as many nor as powerful as Tanks).

Strictly speaking, most Trinity systems don't have Tanks with party mitigation - their mitigation suite is personal protection with them keeping agro. But I personally don't mind them having the lion's share of mitigation. Before coming to Healers to steal theirs (WHM literally has only one - Temperance - on a 2 min CD), you might steal what the DPSers have first.

HOWEVER: Healers having mitigation doesn't put Tanks out of a job. No one's doing 1 Healer + 3 DPS runs of 4 mans because the Healers are mitigating so much the party doesn't need a Tank. The irony is, this is somewhat possible, but no one does it because it's not efficient or as braindead easy, and Tanks do more damage as well as sufficient healing and mitigation.

Tanks do way too much healing, possibly too much DPS (fun fact: In HW, Tank Jobs did less damage than Healer Jobs, the reverse of today), and also have powerful mitigation for both themselves and the party.

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In any case, the issue comes when you're a one-man army rendering other parts of the Trinity irrelevant. That's the issue. Again, Healers aren't taking Tanks' jobs, but the reverse is increasingly true.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

HOWEVER: Healers having mitigation doesn't put Tanks out of a job. No one's doing 1 Healer + 3 DPS runs of 4 mans because the Healers are mitigating so much the party doesn't need a Tank. The irony is, this is somewhat possible, but no one does it because it's not efficient or as braindead easy, and Tanks do more damage as well as sufficient healing and mitigation.

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It is indeed. When there isn't a tank I just shield the DPS and start fighting (or can you believe, sometimes I am doing the most damage as a healer and have to shield myself!).

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Tanks do way too much healing, possibly too much DPS (fun fact: In HW, Tank Jobs did less damage than Healer Jobs, the reverse of today), and also have powerful mitigation for both themselves and the party.

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We did try pretty hard as tanks to do a lot of damage. Wearing DPS accessories, melding Strength, dropping tank stance all the time, we were relentless in our pursuit of DPS so SE just gave way.

I do want to feel, as a tank, like I'm doing meaningful damage that I can notice nudging a boss' healthbar so I'm content with where they are now. Obviously it shouldn't be as much as DPS jobs.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In the same way, healers should not be able to mitigate (ie. we should not have barrier healers, that's literally the job of tanks to protect the party). But we do. Tanks and healers have always been stepping on each other's toes and that has only grown.

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Preventing damage is literally the same thing as healing. . . otherwise healer shielding wouldn't exist.

It's a concept called "effective hit points".

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I disagree, I had the most fun when tanks were actually tanks, and not dps who can heal and take lots of incoming damage.



They've really ruined the role for me. It was at its best in 2.0 honestly. It's gone downhill from there.

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Pretty sure that was never a thing.

Tanks always prioritized DPS with their gear, rotation, materia, etcetera.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

It was mostly a HW thing, I dont think it was common in ARR, at least I didn't hear of it back then.

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It was absolutely a thing even in ARR, it was just less common because frankly, most people back then had no idea what they were doing. You had tanks in ARR actually believe that stacking parry was a good idea.
HW was where the strength accessories really kicked off, at first out of necessity and slowly people realized that you really didn't need all that much HP to survive tank mechanics.

By Stormblood it was common for tanks to use crafted accessories with strength melds for the entire raid tier, because you simply never needed more vit.

And I actually kind of liked not having to worry about accessory upgrades until the next raid tier.

Fun? Meh. Profitable? Yes.

If you're a war you can do this with just about any content when the healer dies, barring the current expansion's end-game duties.

Just don't do it when you're in a party unless the thing is nearly dead. :') Nobody wants to wait 10-15 minutes to watch the war slowly murder a thing. Sorta why I don't entirely hate the concept of an enrage after a set amount of time.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Preventing damage is literally the same thing as healing. . . otherwise healer shielding wouldn't exist.

It's a concept called "effective hit points".

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So your argument is that tanks and healers are the same thing. That's a fair argument I suppose.

But the definition of a tank is to "protect the party". The top way they do this is to hold the attention of enemies so that they take all of the damage, but alternative ways they can achieve it is by applying mitigations to the party.

Whereas healers are supposed to heal them when they actually do take some damage.

The lines are blurred here because of the fact healers are able to "protect the party" and tanks are able to "heal the party".

Are we seriously pretending the healers step on tank toes because they have some shield spells? Tank, the one-man-army overpowered role that does near prange levels of damage, apart from DRK has busted party and personal heals like Medica 2 + Succor It Off and 20 second personal Bloodwhettingdiction, and is the only role with the defense required to survive tank mechanics?

Tanks are currently quite fun when soloing content. Because they're overpowered. They're the only ones with the power to perform their own role, plus have gobbled up sufficient ability to perform the others that they don't need any help.

Again, odd party and solo comps are definitely a fun challenge to take on! And why is this a multiplayer game again? If you want to make all roles useful, tanks need nerfs. They're too good at everything.

I think i'm bit of a boomer vanilla wow enjoyer, but i miss threat mattering for tanks. They were alot more fun when they weren't just blue DPS

No idea how I managed to reply in the wrong thread.

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I think i'm bit of a boomer vanilla wow enjoyer, but i miss threat mattering for tanks. They were alot more fun when they weren't just blue DPS

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Yeah because forcing the DPS to stop DPSing is... fun... right?

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Originally Posted by Pratini

Yeah because forcing the DPS to stop DPSing is... fun... right?

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There used to be skills that dumped aggro for DPS/Healers. It actually made the whole game more engaging...but can't have much thought process in this game because that was apparently too hard for a LOT of people.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In the same way, healers should not be able to mitigate (ie. we should not have barrier healers, that's literally the job of tanks to protect the party).

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Healers in Final Fantasy have been able to mitigate damage since the very beginning. It'd be a sad turn of events to make them nothing but cure bots…

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I disagree, I had the most fun when tanks were actually tanks, and not dps who can heal and take lots of incoming damage.



They've really ruined the role for me. It was at its best in 2.0 honestly. It's gone downhill from there.

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Was there ever a time when tanks only cared about tanking? Even back in ARR tanks were prioritizing strength over defensive stats, and I can certainly say I do not miss stance dancing in an attempt to maximize damage dealt. SE even tried to stop tanks from using strength accessories in SB by job restricting them and they would just overmeld strength in crafted stuff over raid items.

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Originally Posted by Denji

If you're a war you can do this with just about any content when the healer dies, barring the current expansion's end-game duties.

Just don't do it when you're in a party unless the thing is nearly dead. :') Nobody wants to wait 10-15 minutes to watch the war slowly murder a thing. Sorta why I don't entirely hate the concept of an enrage after a set amount of time.

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Back in ShB, we had diamond weapon normal that only 2 tanks (PLD and WAR) did the fight while the 6 other guys dead because of tower. The fight become sooooo long but they managed to defeat it...

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Originally Posted by Pratini

Yeah because forcing the DPS to stop DPSing is... fun... right?

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All dps had threat drops, and tanks had abilities that generated extra threat to make up for dps not using these.
I found things more engaging with that extra layer on the gameplay

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I think i'm bit of a boomer vanilla wow enjoyer, but i miss threat mattering for tanks. They were alot more fun when they weren't just blue DPS

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I thought it was fine until there was the level cap dungeons where sync got out of whack and made it nearly impossible for a freshly geared player to hold enmity over overgeared players (who also refused to realize they had enmity skills themselves). Or sometimes a better geared warrior with butchers block pulling from a lesser geared Paladin in tank stance. There was something certainly broke there. Personally I'm okay it went, but I am not surprised some people also enjoyed the extra layer of engagement.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Or sometimes a better geared warrior with butchers block pulling from a lesser geared Paladin in tank stance. There was something certainly broke there. Personally I'm okay it went, but I am not surprised some people also enjoyed the extra layer of engagement.

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You didn't even need Butcher's Block in Stormblood, if the Paladin was exceptionally bad, and let's be honest a lot of them were, you could pull aggro by just doing your normal dps rotation.

I didn't particularly care about enmity management on tanks, it basically boiled down to "don't be bad at doing dps on a tank and you're good". It was slighty more interesting on Ninja since you had a bunch of tools for enmity manipulation.

What I do miss are the mechanics that came with stances. Beast Gauge giving you 0.1% crit or parry per point of gauge depending on your stance, Darkside giving +15% (later +20%) damage but removing your MP regen and Sword Oath dealing an additional 75 potency after each auto attack.

If it were up to me I would reintroduce offensive and defensive stances but with some changes. Remove the damage penalty from defensive stances, add benefits to the offensive stances that stack up the longer you can maintain them, make all of them oGCDs with no cooldown so switching stances doesn't feel terrible and lastly design boss fights in such a way that you can't just deal with everything by cycling mitigation cooldowns and have to eventually use your defensive stance to survive.

Then it becomes a question of when you want to use your cooldowns to get the most out of the offensive benefits and when you want to swap to your defensive stance to survive mechanics.

But obviously this is just a rough idea for now.

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Originally Posted by Avatre

There used to be skills that dumped aggro for DPS/Healers. It actually made the whole game more engaging...but can't have much thought process in this game because that was apparently too hard for a LOT of people.

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Unfortunately, that made aggro less a tank mechanic and more a "everyone else" mechanic. I can't say I entirely miss having to fight with people because god forbid they press Division. It got to the point I used several Samurai, Black Mages and the occasional Monk has my "rampart" button.

Either way, tanks have always been blue DPS even when aggro was still a thing.

As things are they really should revise the roles.

Just transferring all or majority of party buffs to Healers would go far in solving the buff stacking 2 minute meta, it would allow for more options in Job abilities instead of every one being tied to 1 or 2 minute rotation.

Making most mitigation maybe aside from actual shields Tank actions would give them slightly more things to do as boss positioning, enmity management etc. are nearly non-existent now.

Changing DPS to mostly selfish ones without jank like ranged tax would allow them to be balanced more purely based on damage output instead of utility, when there's very little to consider aside from raw damage they can go more wild with the Job actions without having to worry if someone has heal or party buffs.

Along this or entirely alternatively just making the Jobs loop satisfyingly from doing their things would be massive boon. Using mitigation or healing properly resulting in big DPS buttons and doing consistent DPS with basic stuff resulting in juicy mitigation or healing buttons would not only teach people to play the jobs properly, it would also feel more rewarding.

But it's highly likely they are just going to make Tanks more self-sufficient, DPS more same-y, Healers even simpler and give everyone a shiny but mostly pointless capstone ability in next expansion.

As someone who mains tanks I'd be happy if they got redesigned to be tanks and not just "DPS who with no positional who have to occasionally hit a cooldown in response to a red circle around you", but they aren't redesigning anything at this point in the games life. Way to much would have to be changed so best we can hope for is FF17 or 18 or whatever the next MMO one will be.