Why not just make everyone a DPS?

[Ercapote]

You don't clear content by only DPSing.

no, but I think she meant how do you like solo content stuff, which is true we all need some sort of attacks and stuff to move throught the meta if the game, which is fine but what is wrong is that a class is being more push toward the dps side rather than intensifying our tank class...

[Izsha]

if someone want to play tank THEY WILL play tank, if someone wants to heal THEY WILL play healer and if somone wants to play dps THEY WILL dps. not because tanks and healers have a few dps abilities will push anyone to move from a dps class to a healing class for the dps aspect of that healing class. if you think that's an smart choice then you are missing the point of the "trinity" in which case instead of helping, is hurting since with all this dps BS I'm starting to lvl up a CASTER DPS to drop this tank stuff, I love tank and tanking an as a 2.0 paladin since the beginning this is bothering me and making me not want to play this class, something that never happened on the 2.x series

That's just just an opinion. I have been a dps in every mmo I have played. I thought the idea of turtle tanking was really silly. The 1st time I ever leveled a tank was in XI when the meta shifted and paladin stopped being a turtle tank and started gearing for damage to keep threat. I enjoyed that. I didn't main it because at endgame it was still turtle city, but it was fun to mess around with on lower content you could dps on. I started as a drg in this game and have played every dps here. I leveled war for faster cues in AK spam and hated it. But over time the meta shifted to dps style tanking and now I love what war has become, largely because I spend my time figuring out how to do more damage, because that is what I've always liked to do in mmos.

Flatly, you are wrong. I and others HAVE changed roles exactly because of the aggressive tank style that has evolved. I would be sitting pretty playing drg/dps as a main like I have been my whole life if tanking was turtle or bust. Instead I've been tanking for nearly 2 years almost every day. As for cue times, they used to be much, much worse at launch. Cue times now are around 10 min or less for dps. That was not always the case at all.

[Phoenicia]

And if queue times are any indication it didn't accomplish anything at all. When I play dps I wait just as long in queues in this game as any other game.

Considering we used to spend 20 minutes looking for a PLD or NIN to tank and 40 minutes looking for a RDM/BRD in FFXI.

Or dance on top of the bank building in Orgrimmar while spamming the trade channel with trash in WoW for an hour to find a tank and/or healer in WoW.

Or even going into dungeons without an actual tank in Tera.

I say this game pretty much succeeded in making the tank and healer roles more popular, even if by a little.

[Drtoxicmedica]

Honestly tho let's just throw this out there. Healer dps and tanks dpsing outside of tank stance is only a thing in savage where the dps checks are tight. Eventually this will be elevated by gear. So really you don't need to focus on absolute optimal dps on tank or healer unless your doing high end progression content. Which just sounds to me like if you'd rather not worry about such things you just wait till you get the gear to get on the same level of those who do choose to push there class further.

[Iagainsti]

Considering we used to spend 20 minutes looking for a PLD or NIN to tank and 40 minutes looking for a RDM/BRD in FFXI.

Talking XII queu times:My lvl 12 thf in Valkurm dunes LF party #sadface

On another note, Even as a war/NIN it was boring to tank, so much better in xiv. I won't bore you here by listing reasons.

[Drtoxicmedica]

Loot at the second boss from Copperbell normal. DPS doesn't matter but you still need someone to keep aggro on it.

Which is boring as hell imo. Why would I wanna tank if the only thing I did was flash a few times then go back to watching netflix. Actually contributing to damage imo is much more interesting then oh look at me take all dis damage! Outside of making my damage irrelevant I'll do my best to dps effectively while being a survivable tank. Which if my only job is just to baby sit a boss or add while having no say in what happens then I'd rather just dps...

[PogueX]

Isn't the purpose of a tank to mitigate damage for the rest of the group, whereas DPS is to do as much damage as possible. If everyone is DPS that means you would have tanks specing gear differently to get that max damage and therefore it comes down to the mob attacking whoever does the most damage which maybe some DPS with low vitality. I like the fact that their are tanks in this MMO, don't change a format if it works. Guild Wars 2 just wants to be different for the sake of being different

[Phoenicia]

Talking XII queu times:My lvl 12 thf in Valkurm dunes LF party #sadface

On another note, Even as a war/NIN it was boring to tank, so much better in xiv. I won't bore you here by listing reasons.

You mean for the fact of standing there doing nothing but provoke every 30s and WS every minute or so? lol

[Doudousteve]

Isn't the purpose of a tank to mitigate damage for the rest of the group, whereas DPS is to do as much damage as possible. If everyone is DPS that means you would have tanks specing gear differently to get that max damage and therefore it comes down to the mob attacking whoever does the most damage which maybe some DPS with low vitality. I like the fact that their are tanks in this MMO, don't change a format if it works. Guild Wars 2 just wants to be different for the sake of being different

Guild wars 1 had no tanks and it worked pretty well, each class brought its own utility. Also, it kinda works in Gw2 since the gameplay is much more fast-paced and engaging than ff14, you have to rely on dodging to evade attacks, which makes having a tank useless.
Also "if it aint broken dont fix it" does not mean we cant try to improve it.

[Yorumi]

Isn't the purpose of a tank to mitigate damage for the rest of the group, whereas DPS is to do as much damage as possible. If everyone is DPS that means you would have tanks specing gear differently to get that max damage and therefore it comes down to the mob attacking whoever does the most damage which maybe some DPS with low vitality. I like the fact that their are tanks in this MMO, don't change a format if it works. Guild Wars 2 just wants to be different for the sake of being different

The point of the topic was not to seriously suggest changing everyone into a dps. The topic was highlighting the flaw in the class design in this game where in this game tank do no in fact try to reduce damage. They gear for full dps and tank in dps stances and just use a cooldown when a scripted large attack is incoming. SE has made no attempt to make actual tank stats and no attempt to have tanks actively trying to reduce incoming damage.