A Tankless Job

[Ashkendor]

The facts are straight forward: Playing DPS requires 0 skill and less awareness. I have played many games with lackluster players pushing decent numbers by following someones DPS guide and gear list. The majority of these players are dumb as rocks and really lost their edge when new content was released; because no one was spoon-feeding how to adapt. The sheer exertion it takes to memorize the information, positioning, timing, timers, etc. as a Tank (and occasionally healers) is so high, that it does limit interest. It's a responsibility role at it's core, and I have found myself spending my time online queuing for randoms as I level up to start gearing out and have nearly instant commencements because of it.

In the end, I chose Tank because I wish to drive my game play; and not wait for someone else to consider, possibly somewhere down the line, standing up and taking the same action. You should thank your Tank and Healers because they are sacrificing fun play, so you can enjoy it.

The things you listed there don't apply to all DPS. A DPS with zero awareness of his positioning and what's going on around him is simply a bad player. It gimps his damage, it makes him take hits that he could easily dodge, and it makes him a burden to the rest of the party. The thing is, there's bad players in every role. I'm a tank main myself (i99 PLD) but I do have reasonably well geared WHM/SCH and DRG. I've seen it from all sides and no, DPS is not just about hitting stuff mindlessly till it's dead. Hard DPS checks mean that you have to know your rotation; you have to know what to hit and when. If an add gets on the healer, I try to pull it off of them with my DRG, or at least stun and kill it so that they don't die. I try to stun annoying AoE abilities. There's many ways to be a good DPS.

Honestly, in a lot of the endgame content the tank (specifically the main tank) has it very easy. You stand there, you keep aggro, and you play punching bag. Titan HM is a great example of this. There's an "In Depth Tanking Guide" to Titan HM floating around on somewhere that consists of "Just stand there" as a response for basically every one of his actions. On the whole, that isn't entirely inaccurate. A lot of the time you DO just stand there. I don't think tank is any more difficult to play well than any other role; it simply has a lot of responsibility attached to it like healer does. Most of my problems that I have as a tank come from dealing with idiots (I'm looking at you, CT tank wars...), but you get that no matter what class you play; it's hardly specific to the tanking role.

Personally, I enjoy tanking and I don't see it as sacrificing my fun. I see it as a chance to work together with people that enjoy the other roles in the game so that we can explore and clear content in a cooperative way.