Why not just make everyone a DPS?

[Kaonis]

It's not that black and white. The problem isnt that tanks don't find it fun to max their dps - it IS fun, it's part of optimising the class. The problem is that a lot of people who play tanks play it because they love the feeling of being tough and unkillable, and they like gear upgrades to feel like they're increasing their survivability and making them easy to heal.

The current FFXIV tanking meta has tanks tryign to get away with as little health as they possibly can, use DPS accessories rather than tank ones, and spend as much time as possible in DPS stances, forgo tanking debuffs like storms path/rage where possible, all in the name of max DPS. This is what feels UN FUN to me.

I want to do as much DPS as possible, yes, but I hate the feeling that I'm having to make a conscious decision to make myself harder and harder and harder to heal in order to do that. I'd much rather if optimising DPS was done via mastering a complicated rotation rather than making so many tradeoffs on the "power fantasy" that a lot of tanks prefer.

I'm sure most DPS players would hate it if they kept having to sacrifice huge amounts of crit or strength in order to stack Vitality for raiding.

This is pretty much exactly why I quit tanking. These issues were nagging at me while I leveled, but hitting savage for the first time and seeing the DPS checks it needed made me quit tanking and never look back. I played a tank so I could make big numbers smaller, NOT to do big numbers myself. When tanks are expected to drop out of tank stance to do more damage (you know, outside of a burn phase with no incoming damage), something is very, very wrong with a games design.

[AriaEnia]

There was one time when I was doing fractal as a PLD, I was wearing all fending law accs, and at the start of the dungeon, a DRG peeked at my character and said "lol a vit tank, sucks." Then left the dungeon. This had me quit tanking.

[ZDamned]

The only time a tank is expected to drop out of Tank stance is when they off tank, AKA when nothing is hitting you..

[Ultimatecalibur]

The only time a tank should be expected to drop out of Tank stance is when they off tank and during no damage burn phases, AKA when nothing is hitting you..

Slight modifications, but I agree with your sentiment.

[Hydrium]

We already don't have a trinity. We just have DPS classes that can heal and soak damage in exchange for slightly less damage.

[Yorumi]

I really wonder why people think it would be more fun without having to consider respectable DPS.

I wanted to add something to the responses to this because I don't think they've been entirely sufficient. The only reason considering dps is "more fun" is because pretty much everything else about tanking is passive. There's no real difficulty in keeping up debuffs, or managing resources so the only option available is to then maximize dps. The fixed tanking rotations means there's little to nothing to really think about while tanking.

Don't look at this within the confines of ff14's current system but just in broader game design. Imagine if in order to survive the encounters and maximize mitigation tanks had a whole bunch of debuffs and self buffs that wern't trivial to apply. Some are only available after a parry, some dodge, some require building of stacks, some require consuming a secondary or tertiary resource. Now you don't have fixed rotations but priority systems and the management of these buffs/debuffs for survival and tanking becomes a game of mitigation not dps.

[Sapphidia]

I don't think anyone is really debating that it's not fun to max your dps - if you enjoy playing ANY class to its fullest extent in an MMO then it's a fun thing to do, to theorycraft optimal rotations, practise them on dummies and in the field, and select gear appropriate to it.

The problem tanks suffer is that they have to make sacrifices to the OTHER aspect of their fun, the feeling of tankiness. Feeling forced to find as many moments as possible to swap into Sword Oath, turn Grit off etc is skillful yes but also makes you feel squishy. Same as being forced to give up the security of a huge hitpoint pool in order to wear strength accessories. It's necessary/optimal but it takes away from that feeling you can get when tanking.

I agree it would be good to have the tanking rotation more complex to introduce more skill into the mitigation side, rather than just "keep these debuffs up and press one of your cooldowns before a big thing happens". But I don't mind the complexity in the job role being in the optimal dps output area. What I object to is that the current meta encourages tanks to merely have the bare minimum of survivability and optimise DPS, rather than maximising their survivability and considering DPS once the tanky element is minmaxed.

Different people like different things, but the current meta only really caters to the kind of tank players who would probably gravitate towards Warrior as their choice of tanking archetype - they want to be aggressive and deal heavy damage from the front. The players who gravitated towards paladins -probably- prefer more the feeling of the immovable wall and don't care if their DPS is lower than other tanks as long as that isnt a detriment to the group, because they get a good feeling from being solid and hard to kill.

The problem doesnt really stem from the kits of the tanks. I think the tanks are nicely balanced and all play well. The issue is that each tank is designed to solve a different problem, but there's only really one type of problem being displayed in raids. Warriors are a hammer, dark knights are a hefty wrench, Paladins are a screwdriver. The problem is that every raid so far is a Nail.

[Dante_V]

The tanks job is to hold aggro on enemies > mitigate as much damage possible being received from those enemies > maximize damage output while doing the first two.

All of these things are indeed the tanks job. Some of the tank jobs do some of these things better than others. Tanks that refuse to do these things by limiting themselves to imaginary "role restrictions" are just limiting their contribution to the team. A good player will try and maximize their output in favor of the team in every way possible. At the end of the day efficiently clearing content is everyone's job. Those who are refusing to give their all to this end are holding the team back. This isn't just applied to tanks.

[Sapphidia]

The tanks job is to hold aggro on enemies > mitigate as much damage possible being received from those enemies > maximize damage output while doing the first two.

This is the point. This is what it SHOULD be. But it isnt. Right now it's:

Hold aggro on enemies -> get just enough gear/cooldowns to not die in 1 second -> maximise DPS output -> mitigate as much damage as possible after the first conditions are met.

The focus is vastly different in practise. Right now as soon as your health levels and general mitigation is -just enough- to survive an encounter, tanks are expected to focus 100% on improving their DPS rather than improving their survivability. I'm sure for a lot of players this is really fun, and it's certainly great to feel like you're doing your best for your group. But for others, this subtle change in focus is making the class feel somewhat different to what was signed up for.

[HoodRat]

So many bads in here.