Tank and heal shortage

[Tingel]

I didn't read the whole thread but I gotta say that people have less patience with tanks in general.

My fiancé, who has bard and white mage at 50, is now trying to tank as warrior and I don't want her to be
alone in DF until she is more comfortable with the role. I know how you get treated if you are a little slow
as a tank and I don't want her to experience that. Every little mistake you do as a tank/healer is much easier
to spot and it impacts the whole party/raid.

[Left_Hand]

I've started playing the game this weekend, and working on becoming a white mage, as i mainly enjoy playing support roles in mmo's. I think the duty finder system is a great way to promote fast and easy grouping (i have done a few runs of the level 15 and level 17 dungeons) but as with every other mmo, it also promotes the mindless pick up group "syndrome", in the experiences i have had (few as they might be) i have still to group with a competent tank, every tank so far has played like a glorified DPS, with aggro all over the place while i scrambled to heal.

As a healer in many mmo's, this lack of "tanking skills" and players simply not caring because of the cross realm grouping, are the biggest problems and lead to a lot of healers simply not bothering to even group outside of their guild or friends.

[jlewiss]

Just started leveling a tank having a lvl.50 smn/blm/sch. I have to say MRD pre lvl.30 horrible absolutely hated it and felt like I was constantly fighting to keep agro and would usually lose it. Post lvl.30, tanking so far has been easy mode (only up to brayflox) dps has to be trying pretty hard to pull agro off of me. I'm actually really enjoying war now recently hit lvl.35 I can see why more people aren't enjoying it but at this point if one butchers block combo then i can go afk have a coffee and come back and still have agro lol.

[Versiroth]

I always tank high level roulette, heal main scenario roulette and then DPS low level roulette (leveling DPS alts).

So, I'm helping the cause in two out of three roulettes.

I do agree that DPS queues are horrible. It takes 20+ minutes to get into the low level roulette and then upwards of 40 or more if I just want to DPS the highest dungeon for my level.

Heck, I started doing dailies for this reason. I can do all of my dailies while I'm waiting on the DPS queue.

[Versiroth]

I've started playing the game this weekend, and working on becoming a white mage, as i mainly enjoy playing support roles in mmo's. I think the duty finder system is a great way to promote fast and easy grouping (i have done a few runs of the level 15 and level 17 dungeons) but as with every other mmo, it also promotes the mindless pick up group "syndrome", in the experiences i have had (few as they might be) i have still to group with a competent tank, every tank so far has played like a glorified DPS, with aggro all over the place while i scrambled to heal.

If I get a tank like this, I simply say "Please flash (or overpower) the group a couple times to start with and then watch the enemy bar. If anything turns yellow, flash (overpower) again". I'll also ask them to mark (and mark myself if they don't). A lot of tanks aren't being bad on purpose. They just don't know how to tank properly yet.

[Dedayius]

I think what turns most people off tanking is that in the low levels, pre-30, it's absolutely awful because of how SE designed the skill unlocks. Rage of Halone and Butcher's Block really should be unlocked much sooner. That would make things easier on new tanks since without those, it is much more difficult to hold aggro. This leads unknowledgeable DPS to assume the tank doesn't know what they're doing and makes the tanks life stressful since it seems they can't hold hate on anything.

Beyond that though, you can't fix this discrepancy. People who want to play tanks/healers will and people who don't, won't. More tank/healer classes won't fix this unless you make them overpowered, but that has drawbacks of it's own. You tick off everyone who wants to play the (now) underpowered classes and when you eventually bring them all in line, people who FOTM'd flip back to DPS.

[jars]

tanking, as a marauder anyway, is very easy. run to pack, overpower a few times, switch to single target threat.

in my experience healers are not rare. healers are quite common and if I queue as scholar I will have a comparable wait time to summoner, maybe only a little shorter. tanks are the rarity.

[eagledorf]

One good way to handle this (which I would hate, but still), would be to skew drops somewhat in favor of tank gear. I've started tanking coil recently because it's easier than waiting forever for a party and praying the tank that finally shows up is actually any good, and suddenly it dropped a buttload of tank gear on me so I'm seriously considering switching my main to tank....

[Rednight]

Personally my biggest problem is the potential 40 (!!) level gap for level 50 dungeons.

My main is WHM and i love to heal. But with duty roulette, and since i had a lot of gear for tanks on my retainers, i resently leveled both, PLD and WAR, to 50.

Now i don't say i'm an awsome tank, but i did pretty well and hardly lost hate on any encounter. I even grew to like PLD so much, i want to make it my 2nd main.

At 50, i geared up in DL and went to tank my 1st level 50 dungeon. The DDs were all in myth and allagan gear, with glowing relics... okay... I tell em i'm new to level 50 tanking and go to work...

1st pack of mobs, i run in, Shield Lob, COS, Flash, Fast Blade the 1st mob... and i see the other 2 running towards the BLM... O.O ...i chase after them, Flash, Flash, Flash... and i see the 1st mob run towards the BRD...

After the fight i apologise for loosing hate, but they just laughed and said it's ok and they went full out on (AoE-)damage. There was no flaming or bad blood, but i felt completely useless chasing after the mobs like a dog.

And this was true for 4 of the 5 level 50 dungeons i tanked so far, and almost made me loose interest in tanking anything level 50 until i get better gear (wich, by the time i get the full myth set, will already be outdated)

[Lyrinn]

One good way to handle this (which I would hate, but still), would be to skew drops somewhat in favor of tank gear. I've started tanking coil recently because it's easier than waiting forever for a party and praying the tank that finally shows up is actually any good, and suddenly it dropped a buttload of tank gear on me so I'm seriously considering switching my main to tank....

If anything, it would make the problem worse, because current tanks would gear up faster than everyone else and have no further incentive to re-run things for, you know, the larger populations of healers and DPS. Go farm King Moggle or CT for hours at a time and you see this problem very clearly.