How to get people to tank!

[Dzian]

In a perfect world Tanks would have more self sustain, attacks that close gaps or draw in enemies, and have attacks that cleave into multiple adjacent enemies at once. Until that time comes though Tanks will rely on boring 1-2-3 combo skill rotations, press cooldown button for defensive awesome, and overzealously pretend like their armor means something. Especially with 100% useful stats like Parry.

It's less about Tanking and more just playing a smoke and mirrors game of memory match.

I main PLD and I d somewhat agree with this. I wish my defensive mitigation was a lot more interesting than pop a cooldown here and there. I've said for a long time one of the things I miss is aegis boon in 1.23. there was a huge sense of cool when you used that skill properly and laughed off a 4k tank buster with more hp than you had before it hit you... it had a huge impact if used right. where currently defensive cooldowns don't have any real impact

shelltron is sort of ok. but simply doesn't feel powerfull enough, because you block an attack you still take ~80% of the hit. so it doesn't really feel like its made a huge difference or actually done anything at all really. cool downs are kind of the same. and I see this from the tank and healer perspective. as a healer I often don't even notice if a tank has used a cool down or not. it simply doesn't make that much difference generally speaking. a tank will need healing after a smash regardless of whether he used a cooldown or not so nothing really changes... and as a tank they're quite boring to use. 20% less damage for 20 seconds. but visually nothing really changes using it. just the numbers are a bit smaller.

making that 10k hit only do 8k damage to you doesn't really matter when my next heal is gonna heal you for 10k anyway.. what was the point??

where using shelltron for example it feels a lot more involved even as weak as it is... it is a bit more rewarding though. use it badly and you just waste it on an auto attack. and maybe mitigate a couple of hundred damage. time it right you might block a couple of thousand..... as weak as it feels it's probably one of the most interesting tank skills defensively speaking

personally in some cases using mitigation on other jobs is more satisfying than tanks for example pop a manaward / shadeshift and watch that hit smack you for a big fat zero damage. feels more substantial than rampart or something because it's changing the outcome of an event. if you use shadeshift or manaward or something and a hit hits you for zero. you've changed the result of a hit from tanking damage to taking no damage. it's had an impact... aegis boon was the same I.n 1.23 you went from taking damage to taking no damage. or in somecases actually getting healed.

compare that to tank cool downs. you pop a ramapart and you don't change the outcome. you're still taking damage. and most of the time the reduction is barely noticeable at all.

I sometimes think if they made the defensive aspects of the job more involved and interesting you'd probably have more people playing them... but many of my friends tend to agree that the defensive aspectsare very lacklustre because they don't really make a huge difference most of the time