Are there more tanks playing now?

[Synestra]

As an aside, anyone claiming to be a career tank who avoids dungeons due to these changes really needs to stop lying to us and, more importantly, lying to themselves.

There is no need to avoid dungeons anymore as we can que for roulettes as an premade now! \o/

[FallenWings]

For the sake of clarity, those numbers are arbitrarily used to communicate the point. You simply have more impact as a DPS when trying to excel at a job in DF dungeoning.

It is pretty much matter of fact that doing basic tanking should be expected of all tanks in this regard. No shitake mushrooms you can't clear a dungeon if a tank can't even do the basic fundamentals of 'hold aggro'. Have some hope for DF! You could argue that Tank contribution has a bit more weight with healer DPS (and/or vice versa) but then that's just another roll of the dice on whether or not you have a good healer to utilize your efforts.

Honestly DPS only require the tank and healer to do their bare minimum to play at maximum effectiveness as opposed to where a tank needs a good healer to push in DPS stance or a healer needs a tank mitigating very well to push out some DPS themselves.

[RapBreon]

I switched to a tank! :O

Miss my slaying accs though :<

[Zadocfish]

After reading this thread, I can say with confidence that I am and probably will in the future be a mediocre tank. That is, mostly using Shield Oath and enmity combos rather than focusing on DPS as well. I suppose it's better that I come to terms with that fact now rather than feel bad about it later.

[Reynhart]

Honestly DPS only require the tank and healer to do their bare minimum to play at maximum effectiveness as opposed to where a tank needs a good healer to push in DPS stance or a healer needs a tank mitigating very well to push out some DPS themselves.

That was always the case. In 3.0, DPS could go full power with a PLD sitting in ShO 24/7 just spamming Rage Of Halone.
Even staying out of tank stance didn't really bring any issue when it comes to enmity generation.

Look at now. Damage as decreased for tanks, but increased for DPS just because the gear is higher. It means that, if you want to go medieval on your DPS, you need a tank that has no enmity issue.
But with the damage nerf, it now takes more skill for the tanks to push them further with stance dancing, while still keeping enmity on the rest of the team.

What will separate good tanks from bad tanks is not DPS anymore, it's enmity. And that's the good part, since enmity is something a tank should focus on.

In fact, it brings a feeling I had back when 2.0 WS were introduced. Back then, people complained that the game would just become a dumb spamfest for DPS, and I always thought "Yes, but if you spam like an idiot, you'll probably steal aggro and then die". For me, it meant that the enmity generated by the tank would gate how close DPS could come from their maximum output.

And it's exactly like that now, as long as you consider stance dancing in your playstyle. And it's very clever. For basic groups, enmity won't be an issue, cause the tank will sit in its tank stance, and go on.
For advanced players, it will be like I thought it would be back then, to create a synergy between what enmity tanks can generate and how much DPS can push.

[Artemiz]

Honestly DPS only require the tank and healer to do their bare minimum to play at maximum effectiveness as opposed to where a tank needs a good healer to push in DPS stance or a healer needs a tank mitigating very well to push out some DPS themselves.

I completely disagree with this, on DPS my maximum output is almost always decided by the tank by how many mobs he pulls, how static he keeps the pull and how much of a hate ceiling he gives me to work with. The better the tank the more damage I can do.

As for the main topic I've no idea, I switched over to main PLD a couple of months ago and I'm loving the new meta personally. I have no interest in being able to out damage crappy DPS players and I take no pride in it. WAR was blatantly OP though before the patch so I'm not surprised by the changes to be honest. Most of the people I see complaining are just whining that their OP job isn't (as) OP anymore so I have zero sympathy to be honest. It's still a very strong job and still the best tank and most in demand job in the game.

[DGladius]

I'm having fun still. I think Warrior got hit the least in this patch in holding aggro and maintaining high dps. Starting the fight with unchained and go storm's eye combo and then butcher's block under berserk and switch to deliverance for fell cleave or 2 if you have infuriate back up will hold aggro for a long time. This is still high burst during the opener.

Last week my Warrior was at 1150-1160 dps in 3.5 mins of dummy hitting, this week I should be close to 1200. Definitely will be once I get sephirot weapon. Had fun in void ark today hitting 1100 on void ark second boss and even got a 14.8k fell cleave at the end lol.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I completely disagree with this, on DPS my maximum output is almost always decided by the tank by how many mobs he pulls, how static he keeps the pull and how much of a hate ceiling he gives me to work with. The better the tank the more damage I can do.

Then you're not a very good DPS. A good one can give their maximum regardless of the situation by being able to adapt on the fly to everything.

[IndigoHawk]

After reading this thread, I can say with confidence that I am and probably will in the future be a mediocre tank. That is, mostly using Shield Oath and enmity combos rather than focusing on DPS as well.

That's probably not true! It takes a while to grow as a tank. You may become comfortable doing dps in the future. Also, paladins reduce incoming damage in tank stance as well as increase aggro, so it's not mediocre to use tank stance and let your healer dps more. However, if the healer is lazy and spamming heals, then try to use dps stance to take advantage of overhealing.

Warriors on the other hand have tanking benefits in dps stance. I can use cds and self sustain for short periods in dps stance. However, warriors have been so OP that they could do a lot of dps while self sustaining and also tanking. They are still quite powerful but were recently brought a bit more in line with their role as tanks instead of dps.

[RocheKat]

That was always the case. In 3.0, DPS could go full power with a PLD sitting in ShO 24/7 just spamming Rage Of Halone.
Even staying out of tank stance didn't really bring any issue when it comes to enmity generation.

The main reason I don't care for tanking in FFXIV is this. I have been playing MMOs for over a decade now and I almost always play tanks but I get bored easy with them here because I never really feel important. In normal content in other games the difference between a functional tank and a great tank is huge. That isn't true here... Sure I can make runs a little smoother but that isn't doing much. Very rare content is pass/fail based on the tanks ability to do anything at all.

Outside of raid content you often don't even need a tank and I don't think that helps. When I am on monk a tank that can't keep stuff off of me usually just means I lose some positionals and spend time tanking. His abilities really don't mean much to me. If 4 man content felt more like easy 8 mans/24 man stuff for the tank then I would spend much more time tanking.

I have similar feelings about healing... and because I feel that way about healing and tanking I think they did it on purpose. There is such a major tank and healer shortage in pretty much every other MMO I think they reduced the requirements for the majority of FFXIV for those two roles to get people to do it.