A few ideas about the current tank meta, Hard enrages, stacking str gear, etc.

[Immut]

I originally started wearing str accessories because I intended to be my FC's second string tank to do already farmed content that we outgeared. I never imagined it would become the progression meta.

See, I like CHOICES in my games. This is not a game with many choices, granted. Hopefully 3.2 with meldable gear changes that.

Personally I think gear is one of the big big things that is screwing this game up. How healers have no accuracy, how vitality and parry are useless, and how determination, skill speed, and critical hit rate can be expressed in terms of how many strength points they're worth. I think the effect of all the secondaries needs to be increased. By a lot. Piety should be at least twice as strong as it is now. Imagine if piety was so strong paladins took it to get a third clemency in. Now imagine if all the other stats are just as strong. Suddenly you'd have build choices. You'd have crit specced monks that did less damage overall than speed monks but did ungodly burst damage during IR. In general dps could choose between higher sustain, higher burst, or a faster opener. Now imagine all accessories had two primary stats, and that they didn't take dex out of the parry/block equation. Just a random two. Do tanks get vit/dex for maximum defense, str/vit to ignore parries entirely, str/dex to maximize RI/DD/Bulwark effectiveness, str/pie for maximum clemency? Giving ALL classes a use for MP would make things even more ambiguous. And even if your class didn't get to use both stats, you only have one damage stat so that would mean you'd just get to use it on TWO classes. This is the beginning of horizontal progression.

As far as the need for all classes to dps, this is a game where the only win condition is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. When we start having endurance fights where you simply have to outlast the enemy or races, or some other win condition, then you'll see situations where you won't be expected to put out maximum dps. But right now, with current encounter design, your raid's dps = how good you are at the game.

[Bashum]

Thordan HM is definitely a step in the right direction for me.

I agree, this is great fight design where you actually need to TANK.

[Ishkar]

As far as the need for all classes to dps, this is a game where the only win condition is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. When we start having endurance fights where you simply have to outlast the enemy or races, or some other win condition, then you'll see situations where you won't be expected to put out maximum dps. But right now, with current encounter design, your raid's dps = how good you are at the game.

The general goal of these types of games is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. Similarly to many other MMOs, Squenix has opted for the trinity of class roles: tanks, healers, and damage dealers. The goal is to work together as a party for your common goal of bringing the enemy's HP to zero, and maybe it's silly of me but I assumed that the damage dealers would be the ones responsible for dealing the damage...

It's very simple in theory to up the consistent amount of healing an encounter requires and reduce the amount of damage needed to kill the enemy. That would immediately solve the healers-have-to-DPS issue that many healers are complaining about. As for tanks, again I have to refer to Thordan HM where we are challenged in other ways than our DPS output, effectively gaining a different criteria to be considered a good player other than bringing (relatively) high DPS.

[Leonus]

Well, I may be in the minority but, the only reason I find tanking interesting again to level drk and war is because tanks can actually do damage, and not just stand there getting their faces torn apart. It's the main reason I stopped playing a tank in 2.1, was because most people just... tried not to die. Which to me was incredibly bland and boring. From what I've seen of the higher tier tanks, it's now about riding a "fine line", which appeals to me.

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

Snip

This guy gets it. Very well written and I agree 100% The current meta is what is fucking tanks as well. If we had more variety in fights you would see multiple party comps being used and various tanking methods.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE aggressive tanking but I would really like to see some varity.

In essence I hate that BiS is a thing. There should be multiple routes one could take with their gear that could drastically effect their playstyle.

[Sandamar]

I personnally like aggressive tanking it is indeed more fun. We can complain all day long but SE actually managed to make the tank appealing in a mmo which Is quite rare.
Aggressive Is also harder to play than a turtle tank.

The main problem in this game is itemization and it sucks.

And btw early progression use melded acc. You cant go full slaying if you dońt have enough gear on the left side.

[Syzygian]

In essence I hate that BiS is a thing. There should be multiple routes one could take with their gear that could drastically effect their playstyle.

You could argue that it isn't, particularly for tanks. You're constantly changing gear on a fight by fight basis (sometimes even pull-by-pull if a particular strat isn't working) depending on required accuracy/vit caps in conjunction with whatever gear you have available at the time. By the time you are "BiS" it doesn't matter cause you've cleared everything and then there's what, the next raid tier? Once that shows up, its no longer BiS...

Aggressive Is also harder to play than a turtle tank.

A friend of mine had a nice response to this, something along the lines of "Its very... strange that people accuse people that are tanking in such a way as to render enmity management a challenge, of being 'lazy'."

Basically that is to say when you aren't in full slaying gear you actually have to manage the hate part of your job whereas when you are it actually becomes an irrelevant part of your job and has next-to-no consideration in your rotation (if you're not a WAR, anyway). Interesting.

Another thing I'd like to add to that sentiment is that if you full-vit tank, just as people say you aren't any easier to heal, the flip side of that is that you don't necessarily have to work any less to stay alive, you just might have 1 or 2 fewer sphincter-clenching moments during progression pulls.

Even Xeno has said that on truly onerous fights he stacks considerably more vitality than otherwise because as he puts it his goal in those scenarios is not to "be 1337 and top FFLogs" but to "not die, get in there and 1-shot and be done with it" (referring to how much he hates A4S, specifically, if you're curious).