Tank and heal shortage

[Demetirus]

I try to do at least my roulette every day on my paladin, but I have to agree with some of the sentiments I have seen out here so far: It's kinda nerve wracking at times. Folks get *really* up tight even in non-end game dungeons and I can't fathom why.

For the most part, I have great runs with a lot of friendly and understanding folks. However, it only takes a few bad instances to make me want to only tank for my FC. Last night I had my second *bad* run. I had a sch healer who was spending more time DPS'ing than they were healing (clearly trying to speed the run up, nothing unusual about that), this wasn't a big deal, but I got killed as a result of it. Again, no big deal but I died before a boss room (First boss of Sunken). They rezed me, so I had the death penalty on me. I remembered that this boss can actually hit pretty hard at times, and where I had nothing to negate crits and the like due to synch, I wanted to wait to get rid of the penalty. You know, all of two minutes. That's when the insults and put downs started.

Now, this part was on me I think, but between the sch and the black mage in the party, I was having a bit of trouble holding the aggro on everything. I was managing, but some stuff would slip away which I would then switch focus to in an attempt to pick it up. This became somewhat of a topic to needle at me while I waited for the penalty to wear off, but I decided to just brush it off and not say anything back. Try and learn from it, etc. After the first boss went down I continued on, only to notice that the heals were only coming in when I was near death and that no one was following my marks at all. In fact, they were reassigning the marks on their own. Everyone was just attacking whatever they wanted and honestly, I just about lost my patience. Regardless, we cleared the dungeon but I couldn't help but notice that at the end one of them put "Fail tank" in the party chat as I was leaving the dungeon.

It was nearly enough to make me not want to tank a dungeon again.

TL;DR version: A few rotten apples make people not want to tank/heal. It's not the sole cause of the shortage, but something that can really go a long way in making people want to tank is to try and be friendly and understanding with folks, regardless of job or role in the party.

[eagledorf]

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.

Just make one BiS item have a really low drop rate and deny it vehemently when players start suspecting this is the case =P

I have given up on Moggle Mog farming -_-
CT I run as tank for the queue time and grab the first piece of gear I want that isn't needed on.
Incidentally, roulette has been pretty successful in getting me to tank a very large fraction of the time I'm playing.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I had a sch healer who was spending more time DPS'ing than they were healing, this wasn't a big deal, but I got killed as a result of it. Again, no big deal but I died before a boss room (First boss of Sunken). They rezed me, so I had the death penalty on me. I remembered that this boss can actually hit pretty hard at times, and where I had nothing to negate crits and the like due to synch, I wanted to wait to get rid of the penalty.

Now, this part was on me I think, but between the sch and the black mage in the party, I was having a bit of trouble holding the aggro on everything. I was managing, but some stuff would slip away which I would then switch focus to in an attempt to pick it up. This became somewhat of a topic to needle at me while I waited for the penalty to wear off, but I decided to just brush it off and not say anything back. Try and learn from it, etc. After the first boss went down I continued on, only to notice that the heals were only coming in when I was near death and that no one was following my marks at all. In fact, they were reassigning the marks on their own. Everyone was just attacking whatever they wanted and honestly, I just about lost my patience. Regardless, we cleared the dungeon but I couldn't help but notice that at the end one of them put "Fail tank" in the party chat as I was leaving the dungeon.

It was nearly enough to make me not want to tank a dungeon again.

TL;DR version: A few rotten apples make people not want to tank/heal. It's not the sole cause of the shortage, but something that can really go a long way in making people want to tank is to try and be friendly and understanding with folks, regardless of job or role in the party.

JooC, were you marking the Bee's as #1 target? Because this is quite common to see, in sunken temple, if the tank doesnt mark the bees 1st.

Healers will help DPS, if the bees dont die fast enough, and only throw up heals when u really need it (during bee pulls) and if the tank marks something else, ppl will reassign the marks to the bees.

The 1st boss hits like a wet noodle, but those bees will nearly 1 shot ya, if not 1 shot ya.

I cant say i know what ur group was doing, but im fairly sure that was the case there. (not that tanking isnt a bitch anyways with ppl doing w/e they want.)
There was a bee in the pack right before the boss room, so thats what most likely killed you.
And they were most likely complaining because u weren't fighting the bees.

Would have been nice, if they explained the situation though.

After the 1st boss, some enemies need to be pulled to different locations, which some may have been trying to pull enemies off ya, in order to pull the enemies into proper locations.
Same with waiting on the heals, so as not to pull hate, if the enemy is in the proper location.

[Demetirus]

Thanks for the response!

I was marking the bees as #1 (with one exception), and yes, the Bee *is* what got me before the boss. As for the positioning stuff, I was doing that as well, but they were actively pulling off of me and moving it *away* from the spot and then complaining that I had failed (that's where the remarking started, I wanted the adds down first so that the heads could be moved easily.. they wanted to do the heads first, apparently). I honestly think they were just trying to do things that they felt sped up the run, but ultimately just made it more chaotic than it needed to be.

[Moirear]

People like me, eh?

Well, since you want to get to know me so well, I'll go ahead and inform you that I've played multiple DPS jobs at 50 as well as my tank, and have done endgamey-wamey things with them. It -is- a walk in the park.

Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

[Kinseykinz]

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.

It's when you queue....I have almost instant queues on my WHM whenever I queue. I had longer queues on tank while I was leveling it TBH. My DPS queues when I choose to DPS instead typically are in the 10-20 minute range (with 20 minutes being CT)

[Doo]

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

It's easy when you do dungeons but it gets harder when you're doing say Garuda Ext. Grab adds, hold aggro, grab spiny , watch for stacks, pop cd for ww, get into the right positions, and watch for slipstream from both adds. Any of these slip ups result can result in the party wiping. Compared to a dds role of just dpsing down stuff. Healer has to esuna windburn and get ready to heal incoming ww damage.

Then you have fights like Ultima HM and Titan HM where it's mostly on the healers to be able to keep up the healing.

[Dedayius]

Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

Everyone will have their own opinion naturally, but the general consensus is tanking/healing are more difficult/have more responsibility than DPS. You can count me among those who have both a tank and DPS in end-game and find that playing a tank is more difficult and stressful than my DPS.

[Verius_Nox]

Compared to tanking?

IME way too many tanks act like it's so hard to do, because they want the praise and adulation. It's far easier than DPSing or healing, IMHO. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

I know I queue every day as PLD or WAR so I'm actually combatting the problem, as opposed to pretending tanking is so hard and scaring people off of it...

You can quit the condescending attitude anytime you like.

Since you say you queue everyday, tell me which Extreme Primal is more involved as a DPS than a tank? Where is the responsibility beyond a DPS check in Twintania?

[Noshpan]

There are some DPS out there, such as myself, who would love to tank but won't because of how terrible attitudes are in the dungeons. Those DPS that do tank however, may only do it for a select few (ie: FC, LS & friends). Honestly, if I were to start tanking it would only be for those in my free company, link shells or friend lists, as I've developed a bond of trust among them and I know that they will be patient and help me learn how to be a confident (and competent!) tank.

The few tanks that there are I am truly grateful for (except for the ones that act like jerks).