Four Ways to Die - why the Tank Meta feels "off".

[Kyne_Lyons]

I just do what the content requires, personal preferences are always left wayside in the name of progression.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I'm one of those old school brick wall tanks. Forgoing survivability for DPS just sounds wrong. Maybe that's what the cutting edge groups are doing but I plan on having a nice health pool and some great damage mitigation when I tank.

[Anova]

Hmm, I'm wondering if SE should improve healer DPS and healing on tanks so that beefy tanks can contribute to the party by putting less pressure on healers. Overall team dps will then rise as a result and make beefy tanks viable as a support build.

And did not know about the 20k hp tier for tanks.

[AriaEnia]

Yeah been in a neverreap dungeon with 21k hp paladin and one drg left the dungeon after saying "suck tank" before even start. I just shrugged then another drg came in and we started the run. Finished the dungeon in 18 minutes (12 minutes left on protect buff)

[Awful]

Very good post it sums up how I feel about tanking and honestly i've been gravitated towards playing a Summoner more than my tank because I don't feel like a meat shield, I feel like a DPS class with better emnity and defense. I just don't agree with a lot of the design choices for tank there's only so many defensive stats that we use and there's not much (parry: useless, Hp: we use enough till we feel comfortable then switch out.) I find it so odd that I got full fending when 3.0 came out feeling so giddy about being a tank then I remembered that near the end of 2.X we used slaying as Str contributed to our defenses (paladins more than other tank classes.)

I do miss the old style MMOs such as WoW where when I did gear up I felt like a beefy tank getting dodge, more hp, more armor, more block but in here I just improve my dmg and slowly increase my defense + magic defense. It's such an odd concept to me that i'm gearing as a DPS while i'm playing a tank it's like looking both left and right at the same time.

[Kabooa]

I'm one of those old school brick wall tanks. Forgoing survivability for DPS just sounds wrong. Maybe that's what the cutting edge groups are doing but I plan on having a nice health pool and some great damage mitigation when I tank.

That doesn't exclude having strength, or dumping parry.

Parry isn't amazing damage reduction, and you get 'amazing' health with i200+ leftside. i200+ right side is plain overkill in regular dungeons, and equates to maybe 1 extra hit in a relevant raid.

[IndigoHawk]

3.0 has been really bad for defense tanks. It's been great for dps tanks. Before 3.0 I would look at a tank with high health and respect the work getting the gear. Now I wonder if they can hold aggro or if they have high health because they're new.

In 3.0, I changed to str stats, and now only use a couple fending accessories. I don't feel I've become a better geared tank at all since 180. I do more dps now and do't struggle with aggro, but in terms of survivability, about the same ... at least for paladin. I barely have more health than dps and healers. I don't feel like a tank.

On warrior, increased dps means I swap to dps stance, pop some buffs and mitigation, and heal myself while going through fell cleaves. It's fun, and I'm playing warrior mostly now. I prefer paladin but warrior has better debuffs, benefits more from dps gear, and can change stances easier. They're an excellent main tank or offtank with basically no disadvantage in 3.0 right now.

[Kacho_Nacho]

That doesn't exclude having strength, or dumping parry.

Parry isn't amazing damage reduction, and you get 'amazing' health with i200+ leftside. i200+ right side is plain overkill in regular dungeons, and equates to maybe 1 extra hit in a relevant raid.

Um... I don't know what you mean when you say i200 + left side or i200 + right side. *embarrassed* I'm a new arrival from WoW.

[Sapphidia]

Um... I don't know what you mean when you say i200 + left side or i200 + right side. *embarrassed* I'm a new arrival from WoW.

Left side and Right side refer to the slots on your paperdoll character sheet: Left Side is the armor parts - chest, head, belt, gloves, pants and boots. Right side is the five accessories.

As of now, tanks dont get much choice in their Left Side gear - they use the highest item level in each slot they can, as it all contains strength and vitality. When it comes to the Right Side slots though, they have a choice between full Strength with no vitality at all, pure vitality jewels, or some mix and match of both (or melded crafted accessories with a bit of str/vit on each). Basically the right side slots is where you get the chance to tweak how much strength or vitality you're taking into a fight, outside of the 35 stat points.

The i200+ means item level 200 or above (in this case, Esoterics Tome gear or anything from Alexander Savage). Basically the consensus is that if you have item level 200 or greater in all of your left side armor parts, this equates to so much vitality that it's just pointless to have any vitality on the accessories, so tanks will most likely use nearly full Slaying strength accs on the Right side at this gear level, in virtually all encounters ingame.

[Amiaze]

Firstly, excellent post, OP. I actually cracked open a small bottle of wine while reading this and had a blast. Excellent points, and major kudos to you.

And I have to say that I completely agree, but I wanted to focus in on one specific point that you mentioned before anything else:

The problem with that though is that the mentality of Str>All and "tank outside of tank stance" is filtering into levelling players who don't really understand the positives and negatives.

I've seen this quite a bit recently, and it's really what worries me the most about FFXIV's stance that everyone should by DPSing in top-tier content. The demand becomes so high from the playerbase that newer players (or newer tanks/healers) believe it to be the "correct" way to play. I was leveling AST in The Aery the other night and had a DRK who was perfectly geared for the dungeon -- in fact, I believe he may have been a bit over-geared -- but I had to fight to keep him alive. Every mob he pulled made his health plummet as if he were, ironically, a DPS. I kept checking his gear over and over again, trying to figure out why he was taking so much damage, until a friend of mine pointed out that he was using all STR gear.

The demand for DPS is, currently, so high that it almost completely overshadows each and every job's original intent. While leveling PLD, I've found myself questioning why my healers were allowing my health to drop so low that I was using literally every defensive cooldown I had to stay alive during trash mob pulls, just to realize that it was because they were DPSing. As a result, I did not have cooldowns prepared for upcoming boss fights. Not even cross-classed abilities were up.

Tangent:

I'd like to touch on your point about the mentality of the "player fantasy" from a DPS/Healer perspective before moving to Tank. When I originally picked FFXIV up, as my first MMO, I went straight for ARC. When I learned that it later turned into BRD, I fought it tooth and nail. I didn't like the idea of being a support class because I thought it would go against how I'd built my character, and the reason I'd picked my class in the first place. Eventually, I did it and wound up enjoying it. I would eventually switch to WHM for numerous reasons, but wound up loving the job because I liked the idea of having something to actively manage. I did not like that I couldn't discern how much damage I did to a boss during an endgame raid, or that to play my support skills, I had to lower my own damage.

Now, that same issue of player fantasy disconnect has returned. I'm nearly done gearing out MCH (which I was very excited for come Heavensward, enough that I ditched healing for a while), and I've gone back to healing, this time with AST. And it will certainly be what I take into Savage and all other content, but for once, I'm not really excited to do it. Why? Because I know I'll be required to DPS more than I feel I should be. Now, to make my point clear, I normally DPS quite a lot as a healer; but if I see someone's health fall into the 75%-80% range, I will switch and heal them, or throw out a more powerful heal while still in Cleric Stance to boost them back up. I'm very much for playing my role and being as useful as I can be, even if it means stepping outside of my normal job requirements.

However...I remained a healer for most of A Realm Reborn because I realized I didn't like to DPS as much as I thought I did. I enjoyed keeping my party alive and quickly figuring out ways to mitigate or heal damage when we missed a mechanic or failed to miss a DPS check. When I'm in a leveling dungeon, it's normal for me to not DPS at all. In fact, I won't until I'm positive that we're well-geared enough for the tank to not suddenly drop to a critical point in their HP. I'll do a few runs where I do not DPS, then go back and do it again and DPS as much as I can while keeping everyone healed so that I can grow used to being flexible. But now, to do Savage, I have to do more than just step outside my role to help maximize my input: I have to more or less forget about healing altogether for the sake of DPS. Healers in Savage are literally just DPS that have good healing capabilities...at least, that's how I feel about it.

End tangent


I say this to point out that the disconnect isn't just with tanks.

Now, as an alternate character, I am leveling PLD for HW progression. But I'm finding the same issue. Again, I know I'll be required to DPS, but I'm enjoyed fighting to keep enmity from people (not those who purposefully steal it, mind you, but those DPS who are just very good at their jobs or high geared). I can understand this for WAR or DRK, but I'm a PLD. I've leveled this job before on my main character, and I loved it because it wasn't designed to DPS. I was managing and micro-managing much like I did as a healer, except I was doing it only for myself. I was just mitigating incoming damage so that my healers could keep me alive.

I've honestly just come to terms with the fact that the game is heavily DPS-focused...I like flexibility, although I prefer testing my abilities for the job I signed up for rather than something I didn't. I signed up to be a medic. That doesn't mean I cannot use a gun, but I shouldn't be expected to take out an army or have pin-point accuracy. My biggest concern with this is, as you've said, what this shift does to the rest of the playerbase.