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

[Nadirah]

Bribing people to play tanks by letting them psuedo dps results in "tanks" that can't hold aggro for crap because they only think their damage counts.

I'm a wall tank. My job is holding stuff and pissing it off so it punches me and not the guy stabbing him in the arse. I should want to make that easier.

I *hate* the dps meta they shove on both tanks and healers.

And people complaining about queues going up because of tank shortage after... You're playing dps. You should expect it. It's the most attractive role. There's more of them.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Vitality is probably getting a nerf in health if it affects Tank Damage.

Here is my conclusion.

Vitality=0.75-0.8x for Tanks Health.
Vitality=0.4-0.5x for Tanks Damage.

[karateorangutang]

Have they though? You're saying you notice more tanks. I myself haven't noticed any difference in the number of people playing tanks, none of the people I know, have switched, and in fact some people I know who do play tanks have stopped. My wait time as a melee dps in 2.0 was never long aside from when ninja's were first released and it's not really any different now so I don't notice this big influx of more tanks you seem to be talking about.

That being said I do think tanks should contribute to DPS, maybe a little less than they are now but not much. That is really up to SE who have the numbers to decide on where they want it to be though.

I honestly hope while they're adjusting numbers for tanks in 3.2 they remove the damage reduction from tank stances. Tanks should be at their best while tanking, and for me dropping my tank stance while tanking a boss just feels wrong. I do it, but I don't like it.

Just look at DPS queue times.

When i queued DPS in 2.x it was 15 minutes +. Could be server dependent, but in 2.0 it was downright awful. I waited for queues at level 50 for 20-30 minutes. Now that eased with time, but that time also brought increases to tank DPS and the reformation of WAR's toolkit. Could be coincidence though. Even by reading the forums though, there seems to be a large influx of new tanks, but im incapable of getting hard data on this as it's not my database.

In 3.0 I have only waited more than 10 minutes once. Queues are generally under 5 minutes leveling and at cap. Its the shortest I've ever experienced. Again could possibly be data center specific.

Bribing people to play tanks by letting them psuedo dps results in "tanks" that can't hold aggro for crap because they only think their damage counts.

I'm a wall tank. My job is holding stuff and pissing it off so it punches me and not the guy stabbing him in the arse. I should want to make that easier.

I *hate* the dps meta they shove on both tanks and healers.

And people complaining about queues going up because of tank shortage after... You're playing dps. You should expect it. It's the most attractive role. There's more of them.

Ok, so its my way or the highway. Got it.

The idea is to make tank a more "attractive role". That way more people play it. DPS players are paying subscribers too, they should not be treated as lesser because they don't wanna play a tank. If you play tank cause that is fun for you then great, maybe you should hit a checkbox and wait in line behind the people that play it out of duty. Thats essentially the connection you are making.

I've never understood the whole "I'm a tank so you gotta listen to my attitude." It's ridiculous.

[Sapphidia]

The above responses are the perfect example of the points I made in my original post.

The issue isnt that the tank meta is -wrong-, it's that it's different to what a lot of people expect. This has the consequences of attracting a different kind of player to the tank role, but also turning off some people who would naturally gravitate towards the tank role anyway.

The only way to fix it so both parties are happy is to ensure that there's positives and negatives to both styles of tanking - that you CAN run a squishy dps stance tank that does a buttload of dps, and that this is viable and a good strategy if your healers can cope. But conversely, there needs to be reasons for the super tough brick wall tank that maximises their mitigation to ALSO be viable.

Right now only the first is catered for, so there's dissension in the ranks.

[Cynric]

snip

Then my question to you is. How do you balance the Str tank getting hit for the tank buster meant for the higher health tank, while keeping the DPS checks somewhat heavy, without making the Higher Health/low DPS tank a burden for having low DPS.

It's very hard to strike a middle ground without changing the design philosophy not only behind the mechanics of fights but of the tanks themselves. If you require too much health and enforce passively using CD's and not DPSing to your fullest, you lose the tanks who enjoy this meta. If you make it so the lower health tanks can survive but tank DPS is important, you lose the tanks that enjoy the main portion of what tanking is.

You could say well have the DPS oriented one OT and the defense MT, however due to the way the game is currently designed Warrior is absolutely the best OT and usually you won't see the other 2 tanks OT except when a Warrior isn't available. However the balance between the 3 tanks definitely doesn't encourage this. Especially considering some moves are absolutely useless OT. (Reprisal,Shield Swipe)

It's very easy to say well we need to fit both styles in. But due to the way the game is it's a lot harder to actually do so.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Then my question to you is. How do you balance the Str tank getting hit for the tank buster meant for the higher health tank, while keeping the DPS checks somewhat heavy, without making the Higher Health/low DPS tank a burden for having low DPS.

Best way (which seems to be SE's goal) is to shrink the gap. The Str tank would still have a slight kill speed advantage while the Vit tank would have a survival advantage without feeling that they are far behind. Currently the Str Tank has a 27% DpS advantage over the Vit tank.

[Alahra]

Best way (which seems to be SE's goal) is to shrink the gap. The Str tank would still have a slight kill speed advantage while the Vit tank would have a survival advantage without feeling that they are far behind. Currently the Str Tank has a 27% DpS advantage over the Vit tank.

If they don't approach it this way, they're more likely to just merge the two styles to some degree by making VIT contribute to damage in some way. My assumption is that they want tanks wearing Fending gear, so when all is said and done, I suspect Fending accessories in 3.2 will provide the same rough increases to attack power and HP that a full set of pentamelded accessories do now, resulting in a meta that's somewhere in between the two extremes.

[Dhex]

How would it be a step backwards to be able to focus on your mitigation? It's called a tank class for a reason...it tanks, if you were confused at character creation that's a problem on your end. As it stands it's like you said, we're all just DPS classes except some of us have a few more defensive options and a few others have some healing utility.

Because "focusing on mitigating" is boring. Nearly everything about incoming damage in this game is scripted and controlled. Most of 2.X you could have played one handed while eating a sandwich - save T5/T9.

Now we at least have to pay attention and contribute more than, "Critical button push! You survived the damage!" every 60s while on auto-pilot or drooling into our keyboard/controllers while our group figures out how to do enough damage or deal with a mechanic right. We matter now - our damage and ability to maintain output while still fulfilling our function to the party means what we, as tanks, bring to the table matters; and that's great because it makes the role more rewarding to fill.

Edit:

Additionally - Warrior in v1.22-1.23b was both. It fulfilled a DPS role and a Tank role - you stacked your Crit. Rate/Hit and STR materia and brought damage and self-healed. Warrior was at that point a perfect retaliation tank that dished as much damage as it took. When 2.0 dropped everyone who picked up Warrior was frustrated because it didn't function in the timed tank-buster script oriented damage output world we were/are playing in. Some people wouldn't take a Warrior (Titan HM) and in some cases couldn't take a Warrior (Coil Turn 4 & 5) because it didn't play like a traditional "pop a cooldown" mitigation first turtle-tank. It was not functional in that capacity so Paladin was king.

Why Warrior didn't measure up in key encounters was entirely because it's toolkit scaled off gear. Making pre-2.1 Warrior work hinged on being able to land a huge damage hit (Inner Beast) post-buster which - in turn - could literally heal you for most of your HP bar. Your healing bonus came from building & hold stacks. During big pulls you had to use Bloodbath & Vengeance together to weather trash packs Overpowering to maintain an inflow of HP & outflow of enmity; you did this until you could expend stacks safely to add damage/enmity/self-heal or had to expend stacks to make up a HP deficit. Since you had no PDT/MDT % cooldowns all mitigation was parry, stack building, and self heal all scaling off your damage. Defiance gave you your bonus HP - making VIT pointless. Yet people still stacked up on Fending accessories and couldn't understand why they seemed squishy. Warrior ruled against packs of monsters (still does). People figured out that melded equipment was the best way to make Warrior work 2.0 - to make tanks work better in general.

2.X players settled into a comfortable dual-tank setup where often Paladin was the primary target while Warrior dished damage and slipped in to manage a forced-swap mechanic or short high damage phase and nothing more.

This is a type of active tanking we do all the time now has been growing since BCoB - damage is central to function. Whether people can accept it or not. All tanks can sufficiently mitigate - only one suffers in the damage department currently. Square knows this and is going to address the situation.

I sincerely hope they don't go back to push-button-afk-eat-sandwich tanking with v3.2; they might change this or it may highlight this even more as it makes tanking invigorating and dynamic.

[Gameplayzero]

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.
.

I know this is an old post and maybe someone mentioned this already, but to be fair if he was overgeared than the accessories had nothing to do with his squishiness. Either he didn't use his cooldowns, was in dps stance, pulling way too many mobs, your gear was low at the time or etc. Too many factors for that. Nothing in HW's normal content, as long as you are properly geared, really requires you to have Vit "IF":

A) you know how to play your class optimally and are comfortable enough with it.
B) healer knows what they are doing
C) you aren't chewing more than you can handle (pulling too many mobs).

POSSIBLY research facility and the Vault since those can stress healers out, but even then.

But overall I agree with OP. Which is why I'm temporarily a monk. I'm secretly a masochist and enjoy constantly taking hits. Thats changed so much from old content.

[RyuRoots]

Ok, so its my way or the highway. Got it.

The idea is to make tank a more "attractive role". That way more people play it. DPS players are paying subscribers too, they should not be treated as lesser because they don't wanna play a tank. If you play tank cause that is fun for you then great, maybe you should hit a checkbox and wait in line behind the people that play it out of duty. Thats essentially the connection you are making.

I've never understood the whole "I'm a tank so you gotta listen to my attitude." It's ridiculous.

And a lot of people find it extremely unattractive. "my way or the highway" was never said, and you just sound hyper-defensive about the ability to play as a glorified dps while tanking. If you like this sorry state of affairs then you're free to, but don't shove words in someone's mouth and then complain that THEY have an attitude.