The Final Reason on why we have more DPS than Tanks or Healers

[Derio]

Agree GW2 shows exactly what happens when you remove the meta. It creates a boring game. And honestly the tank and healer population is actually very good right now compared to other games. Hopefully it stays that way after Stormblood or becomes better. The issue is the lack of tank and healer queuing at random. That's where the population needs to increase

[Ultimatecalibur]

The real reason is (Harsh Version):

Both Tanks and Healers are artificial roles with no point nor purpose. They are forced into the group via un-avoidable damage and are only ever as useful as they are mandatory. That's also why they end up becoming DPS as soon as Mitigation/Healing requirements are met - They are innately useless. That's also why they need Damage abilities for solo play - Because they are useless at their core. Damage is what matters, all that matters. And people subconsciously pick on, hence they prefer playing DPS.

False. They are not artificial roles. Both roles emerged due to how players specialized when doing content. The tools used are artificial as new tools have been added as enemy AI has gradually improved to make fighting enemies more enjoyable, but the tank and healer roles are not.

Early on players figured out that having the toughest and hardest to hurt characters take point and block enemies from getting to the weaker characters made killing enemies without being killed easier. These characters, "nicknamed" tanks, gradually specialized more and more in survival because the tougher the enemies and the greater the number they could survive being attacked the greater the rewards the group could get.

Soon after, it was identified that having one or more characters specialize in healing the "tank" allowed groups to take on even greater threats for greater rewards.

Two other roles also gradually appeared after that: Supporters(Buffers/Debuffers) and Mezers/Crowd Controllers.

Soon you had 4 specialized roles that every group needed in addition to the general damage dealer role but the roles were not played in numbers close to how many of each were needed by the player base. Designers started to try and balance the numbers them in various ways. The cost of specializing in tanking (i.e. decrease in damage dealt) was reduced, supporter and mezer abilities were given out at low cost to everyone so specializing was unneeded, and healers were strengthened and given damage abilities so they would be easier to level.

[Allyrion]

Do you think so?

Let's remove DPS, aka damage dealers from the game then. This means that you also remove damage from the game, as anything that is able to deal damage is a damage-dealer and we just removed those from the game. Let's see what happens.

*crystal ball mode*
Everyone stays at full HP forever. Tanks cannot mitigate any damage since there are no enemy DPS anymore, healers cannot heal anything since there is no damage to undo anymore and aggro doesn't matter because nobody takes damage anyway, as all damage dealers and thus damage has been removed. Since you have no damage either, every enemy is invincible.

Congratulations, you broke the game. Got any more bright ideas?

Wanna know what really forces DPS into the game? Health. Because damage is a means to reduce health. And without damage, both tanks and healers break. Everything irreparably breaks. Damage dealers are a necessity. In contrast, you can remove tanks and healers and only need to adjust a few numbers, because only health and damage matter. Both of these roles exist for no sake but their own. They are superfluous. And because they are superfluous, they are ditched for DPS whenever possible, aka the DPS meta.

It's the cold, harsh truth of the trinity. People crack it up to far more than it really is.

Wow, that is a ridiculous rant.
There is a point in there, but it soaked in hyperbole and misconstruing terms to make an argument.

The trinity design is simple. Yes, damage is how you finish a fight because of health, while healing and tanking is how you survive so that you can keep doing damage. Both parties have that ever important resource (health) and the enemies goal is to take yours before you take theirs. It's like saying in something like football that the whole back field and referee are pointless because all you need to win is to score enough goals.

Damage is your offense, it's how you finish the fight but without defense, it's meaningless. The only option to remove defense is to make all damage completely avoidable. That's just as broken as a game without real dps.

What you're right about is that defense only needs to matter to the point you can finish the fight through damage. But that's the basis of design. In other games, I've seen people stack healers and tanks when dps checks weren't strict and enemy damage was heavy. That resulted in slower but guaranteed clears because you were basically invincible and the enemy would go down eventually. Slow and steady was popular at the start of this game at times too, but the Meta shifted (as it tends do).

The only reason we have a dps meta is because encounters aren't that taxing on healing and tanking. Also both kits lack the intricacy of mechanics that dps have which is one of the actual reasons they're unpopular. WAR is kind of the exception since it has a more active mitigation kit.

Lastly, I'd jump on the bandwagon of looking at GW2's lack of roles to show how mindless only dps combat is. Even they backed out of that design pretty quick.

It doesn't need to be Tank-Healer-DD, but team based combat should have some role based tactics. This game chose the tried-and-true Trinity that's pretty safe, so we just need to work with that.

[Vincent_Mateus]

OP is clearly one of many players I find in the DF and thinks being a DPS holds no responsibility to the rest of the party other than doing half ass DPS and contributing minimally in all other aspects. Good to know

[Kazrah]

OP is clearly one of many players I find in the DF and thinks being a DPS holds no responsibility to the rest of the party other than doing half ass DPS and contributing minimally in all other aspects. Good to know

Wait, DPS have responsibility? When did that happen?

[SeriousxSarcasm]

Guys, you know that OP is being ironic, right? You see people get on tanks/healers for every little mistake, but how often does anyone say anything to the BLM farting around with Ice/Thunder, or the BRD just using Straight Shot? They say healer needs to DPS more (keep in mind, usually healer is already DPSing), or tank should stance dance. Just... why does no one say, "no, DD needs to get off their butt and do their job."

You gotta realize that a lot of content can be done without any DDs at all, because tanks and healers are learning to push numbers that a lot of DDs are too lazy to even get close to. My LS often does lvl60 EX farms with 2 healers, 4 tanks and 2 DPS (sometimes only one DD, purely for the LB lol).

Dunno, it's a silly and old argument, but it's relevant. I know a lot of great tanks and healers, and they aren't queuing for randoms anymore 'cause they're tired of the BS, or they're anxious they're gonna get yelled at (again) for a mistake. It's just kinda depressing.

[Jonnycbad]

Sarcasm is lost on most.

[bswpayton]

Guys, you know that OP is being ironic, right? You see people get on tanks/healers for every little mistake, but how often does anyone say anything to the BLM farting around with Ice/Thunder, or the BRD just using Straight Shot? They say healer needs to DPS more (keep in mind, usually healer is already DPSing), or tank should stance dance. Just... why does no one say, "no, DD needs to get off

I really have been thinking about doing a similar party for zurvan even 5 dps cant even get zur past soar its very annoying, I dont claim to be an expert dps or anything but if I play a dps job im gona look up a rotation so many players just literally press buttons that at this point on some stuff it might be better to leave the dps out.

[SeriousxSarcasm]

I really have been thinking about doing a similar party for zurvan even 5 dps cant even get zur past soar its very annoying, I dont claim to be an expert dps or anything but if I play a dps job im gona look up a rotation so many players just literally press buttons that at this point on some stuff it might be better to leave the dps out.

ikr? Sure maybe the stacked tank/healer parties go a little slower (I swear not by much. :/ You know in pug groups our PLD can make top 3 DPS? Ridiculous. She doesn't even have STR melds yet), but with tanks being able to mitigate what hits they do take and extra healers meaning there's less concern about falling behind on healing when someone goes full DPS mode, it can go a lot smoother than getting stuck with lazy DDs to carry lol. Not sure if you could ever skip soar, but when you stack DPS and still can't manage, what difference does it make? XD

Of course, keep in mind we don't intentionally leave DDs out when we make a preformed party from the LS, haha. It's just we have an overabundance of tanks, so we make it work. :3

[Kaethra]

could be bad tanks and awful healers, could be anything. DPS leaving a 24 man is usually highly the fact they got their drop finally and said f it.

I have no idea what you're talking about with this. Couple of linkshell peeps grouped up, tank, healer and DPS. For at least 10 minutes the queue read 3/3 Tank 6/6 Healer and 6/15 DPS. I've seen this happen just about everytime we queue for 24 man stuff. It wasn't a group in progress and no one was kicked.

The ratios don't match up across content. In 4-8 mans its 1:1:2, in 24 its 1:2:5. So you get a quick queue leveling and gearing a tank. But not so much afterwards. And I just checked the statics again, they're all looking for BRD/MCH/AST. I have yet to see one looking for PLD, WAR, or DRK.

Of course, keep in mind we don't intentionally leave DDs out when we make a preformed party from the LS, haha. It's just we have an overabundance of tanks, so we make it work. :3

For some odd reason, people don't believe there's that many tanks. They hit the roulette and see 0/1, 1/1, 2/2 and think no one plays tanks. They don't realize the tanks are already 60, already 260+ geared. And have nothing to do. Hell in my personal group of friends, minus online (meaning all RL friends of decades) half of them play a tank. Which is way more than we need too.

The ratio of non-endgame stuff is skewed against damage dealers. There's three tank classes, three healer classes, and Seven DPS classes. If population was even among classes, then a DPS queue ideally would be 40-45 minutes. That's... madness.

To top it off, Tanks play a little too similarly to one another. Sure its the same with MNK/DRG/NIN, but then you can play a BRD/MCH, or a BLM/SMN to switch it up. Three types of DPS that are very distinct. Tanks not so much. Healers.. a little better off than tanks.

What they should consider doing is flex the DF queues. When DPS for a specific duty get to waiting too long (only for PUGs, cannot premake a party more than 4 as normal). Flex it out to include up to 1-4 more DPS (up to 8 man) to speed things along. Adjust HP by the same margin of the mobs to balance things out (with a little extra). Sure things might get easier. But lets be honest. Expert/60/50/Level Roulette is pretty easy already. Its pull to boss, AOE, kill boss and then repeat till duty is done. if that isn't going to be fixed then at least let the DPS have a shorter queue for it.

This will allow more DPS to hit endgame more quickly and more DPS means we need more tanks. Fixing the overabundance of tanks there. Reducing the need for the flex as often.