And what situation with tanks on your server?

[Stormblossom]

There is definitely a shortage of tanks overall. It's pretty painfully obvious when you've got all the basic roles at 50. If I queue on DPS it's usually a 20-30 min wait for most things. On the healer it's more like 10-15. On the Tank I'm surprised if there is a delay between my clicking join and the ready window popping up.


There are definitely community problems with this game that exacerbate the number issues though. People tend to be nasty whenever a group fails at something, and the first shots are either taken at the tank, the healer, or both unless it's a painfully obvious DPS test that wasn't done properly. I have been yelled at for "failing to hold aggro" on the 2nd boss in Longstop before because he turned to breathe on Brayflox and as recently as last night in a CM roulette group I was yelled at for "not picking up the adds" on the final Livia fight. Well, I picked up the giant just fine. Sorry about those soldiers who are scripted to be immune to taunts, buddy! People who don't play as tank sometimes don't notice things like the tank being WAY at the top of the aggro chart when a mob turns to fire an AE at them, and they usually immediately respond with overwhelming hatred toward the tank even if it's NOT a party-killing experience. It's small wonder there aren't a lot of casual tanks, and that those who do tank for the open community usually try to find a static to run with so they can get away from the bile-spewing masses.

[synaesthetic]

Square dun goofed when they designed this game's content around a 4-player 1-2-1 (tank-dps-heal) composition, instead of the far more sensible 5-player 1-3-1 composition, or the even better 6-player 1-4-1 arrangement.

I feel that queue times would be significantly better if party size was six. Single-party dungeons would have twice as many DPS per instance as our current 4-player parties do, which would greatly reduce queue times. Simply increase the "Light Party" size to six and the "Full Party" size to twelve. Endgame Trials and The Binding Coil would become 12-player dungeons and Labyrinth of the Ancients could be tuned slightly downward for three 6-player groups (raid size of 18) instead of three 8-player groups.

[Lilyanna]

I've tanked before in other MMO's but I haven't yet for this game. I was thinking about trying it after I level a healer...

Like someone said, the problem is all the tanks are Ilvl90 and are leveling other things. As for party size. A 5/6 man group would be nice, but that is 1/2 more dps that could be derpy (I've seen tank's mark and the dps STILL go after the wrong one), more people to push the tank/healer to hurry, a lot of things could go wrong as well as right with it.

I am also guessing it would depend on your time of day? I mostly play 3am - 6/7pm ... I rarely queue during primetime. Most people are online for FC Raids anyway.... (During the early morning, my queues (even for DPS) are <15minutes).)

In the end, if people were more willing to help out new tanks/players, then a lot of people would probably roll tanks just to skip the queue ... but I think most players see how harsh most people are to the tanks and decide that they don't feel like putting up with it.

P.S. Any New tanks on my server need a healer to back you up and help you, give me a shout (only lvl 31 though, lol).

[Gardes]

Was a tank in 2.0 and did most of the content as a tank but I switched to blm due to my loot luck. I'd like to get back into it, I suppose, but I'd have to learn the 2.1 fights I've won again as a tank and there are far less learning parties than 'perfect' parties in the party finder and I'm not so keen on organizing such parties, especially since my schedule is getting tighter.

[LiadansWhisper]

I have like...two or three pocket tanks I run with all the time.

I don't use Party Finder, though.

---------

Square dun goofed when they designed this game's content around a 4-player 1-2-1 (tank-dps-heal) composition, instead of the far more sensible 5-player 1-3-1 composition, or the even better 6-player 1-4-1 arrangement.

I feel that queue times would be significantly better if party size was six. Single-party dungeons would have twice as many DPS per instance as our current 4-player parties do, which would greatly reduce queue times. Simply increase the "Light Party" size to six and the "Full Party" size to twelve. Endgame Trials and The Binding Coil would become 12-player dungeons and Labyrinth of the Ancients could be tuned slightly downward for three 6-player groups (raid size of 18) instead of three 8-player groups.

I like everything but the last. CT already suffers from feeling like LFR. If they did that, it would end up not even feeling like a raid. At least from a healing standpoint.

[Onyxys]

I think, that the main problems with tanks appeared on exPrimals, because the previous content was too easy for tanks. Only Coil is hard. But all another content ... What tanks need to do? Just stand, hold agro and thats all. But exPrimals showed, that tanks must not only stay like stupid puppets without a piece of brain, but tanks now need to move and make some another tricks. And we see tanks with wide opened eyes and saying "I need to do more, than just stay? Ohhh... it is so haaard" The best example is exTitan- tanks cant dodge Landslides and cant hold mobs. Very nice example of common tank's low skill level (not all of the tanks, but most of them)

[Miiu]

[...]

It might be an attitude like this which makes it hard for you to find tanks.

[Grailer]

If it's anything like it is on our server the reason maybe be something like this

Player Finder

LF ILVL 80+
LF Experience players only. Know the fight.
Must have mumble, 3 forms of ID, and come to Revenant's Toll for full cavity search.
3 derps and you're kicked no hard feelings.

So yeah, doesn't really promote new or inexperience players to join.

lol yeah , I will never beable to tank extreme mode primals because I don't have experience. Oh well I will just stick to daily random DF

[Ri_ri]

Square dun goofed when they designed this game's content around a 4-player 1-2-1 (tank-dps-heal) composition, instead of the far more sensible 5-player 1-3-1 composition, or the even better 6-player 1-4-1 arrangement.

I'm completely against this. The easier you make it to play a DD, less and less people will be playing tanks.

It's bad enough that most fights in this game boils down to "deal max deeps" for DDs.

[Onyxys]

To be honest- I've seen good tanks, who first time came to exGaruda or exTitan and killed it with party using 1-3 tries. This is good tanks, because they were told what to do and they just did it. Very simple for good skilled players. But such tanks are really unique