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

[eagledorf]

There was a very interesting response to this post on Reddit (that cannot be linked here for obvious reasons, but you can find by looking at the cross-post of this thread) where somebody had numbers from T9 Savage and A4 Savage that showed tank damage had only increased like 10-20%. Second Coil, not final coil. (Well, there's no Final Coil Savage anyway.)

Now that's outright scary.

[SpookyGhost]

There was a very interesting response to this post on Reddit (that cannot be linked here for obvious reasons, but you can find by looking at the cross-post of this thread) where somebody had numbers from T9 Savage and A4 Savage that showed tank damage had only increased like 10-20%

Yeah, you can notice this simply by checking how much the bosses auto you for. It's reaaaally strange that the damage didn't scale higher with our HP going up so drastically. I mean it is the first raid, maybe they just wanted to ease people into it, but 3k-4k autos are super tiny. Med2 + Fairy heals takes care of those with ease. It was always that way, to be fair, but it's even less of a problem now with all the new healer abilities, Equilibrium/self healing scaling in general, and the stat scaling. Hopefully the next raid rectifies this, but I guess only time will tell...

[eagledorf]

Not even just autos though. The tank busters as well!

BTW, the average auto in A4 was 1.9-2.2k, not 3k. You can check out some fflogs to get an idea.

Obviously this is including shields and buffs, but still that means the healing demand on tanks has virtually vanished.

[SpookyGhost]

BTW, the average auto in A4 was 1.9-2.2k, not 3k. You can check out some fflogs to get an idea.

Well I was more talking about Alex Savage in general, I think autos on the tanks in A4S at least make some sense because of the Nisi mechanic (if people actually did it).

[eagledorf]

The trend is for all the damage to be on the party these days. Nisi is one example, but it holds true for other mechanics like the lasers as well.

In fact, in that guy's parse the highest damaging abilities were AoE damage on the party. Party-wide mechanics exceeded the tank buster by as much as a third. Of course that includes the fact that the tank buster usually has a cooldown for it, but it gives you an idea how badly things have shifted.

The problem is...what's the point of the tank if the party takes all the damage? You can't reduce the healing load by popping Sentinel if everybody takes damage except for yourself.

[Awful]

We've got concrete defensive cooldown rotations and decently planned out healing rotations. The fact of the matter is, we've got near exact amounts of HP necessary to perform as well as needed and going over it is technically a waste of stat points.

The problem is there's no point to using fending pieces at all tanks who are doing Alex Savage look at fending off pieces and go meh. There's also no active mitigation, parry is crap, there's no dodging, you can block as a pld but there's no way to get +block from gear or block str other than shields (idk how it scales either). I only go slaying because that's the meta I don't like it but what can I do, i'm slowly not playing my tank as much except for raids and that's about it. It's just not as exciting dying because of strict DPS checks because we didn't get that extra bit of dps, i'd rather SE focus on actual defensive stats on items. But that would mean they have to fix mitigation, skills, redesign stats on items it's a lot of work I just feel like a DPS that has a big sword that gets hit hard every 60 seconds or so, because even with full slaying the extra hp and worthless parry in fending gear is disregarded.

It's just bizarre to me that i'm a tank but I have to be on par with other dps? I'm an old school MMO player I used to be a protection paladin on WoW, Lancer in TERA, the only other game where you're a DPS tank is Aion being a Templar/Gladiator. Prot paladins had amazing AoE and blocked everything being a real great tank, lancers stopped EVERYTHING big stomp? Massive shield block. Enemy charging? Send em back flying. Aions tanking was "okay" because there were some elements of being tanky the game wasn't yelling at you to be a better dps just a better tank. It honestly makes me sad that when I run an expert and I do more dps than say a Bard, Dragoon whatever and i'm sitting there in my tank stance being yelled at for wearing str accs when if I go fending i'll still get laughed at. I just feel that tanks are in a very awkward situation that the community is torn in 2 or even more possible ways and I just hope that there's something for say an old school meat shield or a strong battle hardened tank that does dmg actively.

Sorry for the rant this is my favorite thread in here I hope it gets some love and that people can give more feedback I love reading everything in here it's all very interesting to me.

[Kumori_Kumo]

I'm one of the 'brick' tanks. If I wanted to do a bunch of damage, I'd roll a DPS. Or rather, I did. I play DRG and it's really fun, but when I'm done with Dragoon, I don't want to just go play a different, slightly more durable dragoon. I respect that the game needs tanks, and this was the easiest way to get people to play it, but... boy, it really was at the expense of those of us who wanted to be the unkillable stalwart sentinels. It wouldn't even bother me that much if the community wasn't so pushy. I'm getting dogged left and right about wanting to play a tank with a lot of health, it's like... this is the Duty Finder, I don't know how good this healer's gonna be. Why make both our lives hell? We're not taking eternity or losing, so why the pushback? It's all really disconcerting.

[Instrumentality]

What IS the current Tank Meta?

As anyone with some 3.0 raiding experience will tell you, the current tank meta is very much focused on DPS. Contrary to how a lot of veteran MMO players might expect to have to build and play as a tank, the way top end raiding works is such that if played properly a tank can contribute a large amount of DPS to the raidgroup's overall total. The catch? In order to do so, they have to sacrifice quite a large amount of "tankiness".

I can't think of a current MMO where this isn't the established 'meta'. WoW scaled back on it kind of hard recently, but at one point tanks were the top dps because of Vengeance, but DPS stacking still exist in Mastery even now.

I get that nostalgia is really strong for a lot of MMO veterans (I've been playing MMOs since 2000 with EQ), but when we're reaching back years and multiple expansions in other MMOs to find comparisons maybe the conversation has gone a bit astray.

[Cidolfas86]

I'm getting dogged left and right about wanting to play a tank with a lot of health, it's like... this is the Duty Finder, I don't know how good this healer's gonna be. Why make both our lives hell? We're not taking eternity or losing, so why the pushback? It's all really disconcerting.

Eh, DF healers really aren't as bad as people let on. Out of 10 DF runs I'll get maybe 2-3 healers that are truly bad in the realest sense.

DPS from tanks/healers has the been the part meta even before HW. In a lot of the job/class quests they pretty much spell it out for you that you'll be doing more than just heal/tank. Most modern MMOs on the market have tank/healer DPS part of the meta. This really isn't something new. Its just a lot of the more casual players and people that aren't familiar with more modern MMOs are finally catching up to what the top 20-30% are doing. It's all trickling down.

I can't think of a current MMO where this isn't the established 'meta'.

Honestly, at the moment, neither can I. Even some MMOs I used to play years ago (FFXI) brick wall tanks weren't really a thing, or were quickly abandoned when something was found that could better replace it.

[RapBreon]

I can't think of a current MMO where this isn't the established 'meta'.

Think of a game (not necessarily video games either) that has a competitive scene that doesn't. I'm at a loss, except for stuff like Tic-Tac-Toe (which may have one, beats me). It's a natural consequence of a drive to perform better than your peers.

I don't think any game that has the potential to be taken seriously can avoid developing a meta. It can function of more microscopic levels; but it tends to be there.