Why not just make everyone a DPS?

[Sapphidia]

I fully agree, Izsha. Most of my own personal whining on the matter is very much from a perspective that I -personally- do not enjoy the direction the designs seem to have taken in 3.0, though admit that others may adore it, but it's a little more than that.

It's that the Developers have been sending stark messages that this IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE.

Not only did the Developers imply that DPS checks were being tuned to be focused around healers/tanks doing their primary role, there's been a number of decisions made that fly in the face of the current meta that tanks should maximise dps:

- Tank-specific Fending accessories contain zero Strength.
- Tanks cannot roll on Strength accessories.
- Devs have stated they do not like the advantage Pentameld Crafted gear gives. There are no Accessories higher than 150 whites for tanks.
- 3.0 added Accuracy to tank stances, implying the Devs expect tanks to only use DPS stances from the side/flank.
- Healer gear contains zero accuracy now and they've specifically stated they dont want to balance fights with healers dpsing.
- Devs stated Warrior's advantage was "damage" as an offtank, but there's no current raid need/advantage for the "utility" PLD/DRK OTs offer.

These are all fairly minor things of course, but they all point to the fact that Devs intend tanks to gear up as tanks with survivability in mind, and balance encounters around that. Tanks were going Slaying accessories in 2.0, and prioritising pentamelds too, so it's not like this is a new thing, but instead of fostering that playstyle the Devs made changes in 3.0 that seem to DIScourage it.

All of those small things make it quite frustrating to play the current Meta as a tank and focus on pure damage. The game is set up to tell you "this isnt how you should be playing" and makes it intentionally hard to gravitate towards playing your role in the apparent optimal way. It's the mixed messages. By all means make tank's damage output the most important part of their kit, but if you're going to do that either slap Strength on our fending accessories, let our damage scale with Vit, or let us roll Need on Slaying accessories. And take the 5% accuracy off our tanking stances or slap it on our DPS stances too if we're expected to use them to max our damage when tanking.

Izsha says the current meta is a "design choice", not a "design flaw". I counter by saying that the current meta is NOT how the developers actually intended it to be. It doesnt mean it's wrong/bad, but I don't think it was truly their choice how things have developed.

[Yorumi]

Izsha says the current meta is a "design choice", not a "design flaw". I counter by saying that the current meta is NOT how the developers actually intended it to be. It doesnt mean it's wrong/bad, but I don't think it was truly their choice how things have developed.

I would add to the counter by also saying it seems to make tanks kind of an afterthought. Right now a "tank" is basically just a dps with defensive cooldowns instead of offensive. To me it's one thing when a game has you swapping a few things to get a bit of extra damage, and another when the tanks are playing and gearing essentially identically to dps.

[Seku]

Izsha says the current meta is a "design choice", not a "design flaw". I counter by saying that the current meta is NOT how the developers actually intended it to be. It doesnt mean it's wrong/bad, but I don't think it was truly their choice how things have developed.

It is a design choice. If SE wanted to strip away or make DPS impossible for Tanks / Healers they could. Increase MP on healer's DPS spells to the point where it takes a lot of MP and would run them dry fast. Throw up a damage taken increased % on PLD's and WAR's offensive stances while tuning bosses and even normal monsters to throw out higher consistent damage that would force them to stay in their tanking stance as well as forcing healers to use their abilities to keep their tanks alive instead of passive healing that allows them to damage. But they don't do this because the game wasn't designed with that in mind and was in fact made for people that like casual play and in reality is mirroring ideas that were set into motion years ago in FF 11 when they started easing up on the games difficulty and borrowing ideas from WoW..

I would add to the counter by also saying it seems to make tanks kind of an afterthought. Right now a "tank" is basically just a dps with defensive cooldowns instead of offensive. To me it's one thing when a game has you swapping a few things to get a bit of extra damage, and another when the tanks are playing and gearing essentially identically to dps.

Every tank that does damage is a DPS with defensive abilities. Even if their doing 1 damage by just poking, their still adding onto raid damage and if their not taking heavy amounts of damage to require them to stay defensive, their always going to ease up on it to increase their dps. Maybe the next tank made will be one that 100% kills off a tanks damage and instead requires them to sit around casting abilities to negate damage and generating threat by casting spells that don't do almost nothing to bosses other than....generate hate.