Are tanks a scapegoat for performance issues?

[RopeDrink]

As you said, it is something that can easily be discussed beforehand. I hit 60 on my PLD about 3 days ago, but having already levelled two others to 60 before it meant I had a good idea of what I was in for along the journey. Getting to places like Vault at 57 was the point where I'd simply wait at the start while everyone is shielding and say 'hey, look, I know this dungeon hits hard and I know my shiny Titanium gear won't be optimal for pulling massive packs so, you know, deal with it' (in less, usually more polite words). 9/10 chance is you'll get an "Ok" and everything proceeds as normal, except everyone now knows what to expect rather than just charging headfirst and testing the acid-bath.

Meanwhile, I still get BWall Expert Roulette runs with tanks pulling all three first packs and getting the group killed with DoT's while the Healer is strained trying to keep the tank alive and unable to cast a single Esuna. No communication, nobody knows what to expect, just 'CHARGE', /splat, followed by the inevitable "It's healers fault... Wait, no, it's the tanks fault... Hermagurd".

[Mejingjard]

For maining tank since 2.0, What I can tell is tanking in this game became easier and easier. No more patrolling mobs to be aware of (like giant tomberies in the first Wanderer Palace), nothing dangerous in the environment.
Just a straight corridor with almost everytime packs of 3 mobs.
The "I dont know the dungeon does not apply verywell as the same pattern is everywhere".
More of the times, bad tanks I came accros are those who don't even look at the party composition.
Simple exemple : If I get grouped with a Ninja and a Monk, that means few aoe to burn huge packs. In such a case, pulling everything is useless, because I will get hit harder for a while, preventing the Healers to dps. In such a case, simply pulling step by step while marking a short pause to allows the monk to refresh his GL stacks is way more effective.
The first huge pull in BWall, I see it often, but few tanks can actually manage it well.

[winsock]

Some common blame games:

Tank:
Tank pulls big and dies. Healer tells you you pulled too much.
Tank pulls small. Healer tells you to pull more.

Healer:
Tank pulls large, doesn't use a cooldown, and dies. Bad healer.
DPS dies, but would not have had they stepped out of the avoidable AoE.

DPS:
Tank runs out of cooldowns because stuff isn't dieing fast enough/healer runs out of mp. DPS gets blamed but no one thinks it is they are the problem. Or tank/healer gets blamed.

DPS meters would be a welcome addition to the game in some respects.... But then jerks just get a new target.

[bounddreamer]

The way most encounters are designed, a tank's failures are the most highly visible.

Ravana, even in normal - if the tanks don't know what they're doing they will cleave the party and kill people, resulting in a wipe.

Almost any fight with adds, if a tank isn't prompt about picking up adds they will aggro a healer or dd and potentially kill them.

You can be a halfway decent dd or healer and just muddle through. It's a lot harder for a tank to muddle through anything but basic dungeon content.

[dragonseth07]

When a tank or healer fails, it's often plainly visible.

When a DPS fails, you can't say anything because you get reported for using a parser.

[seekified]

When a tank or healer fails, it's often plainly visible.

When a DPS fails, you can't say anything because you get reported for using a parser.

This is so true. Unless of course there's a significant DPS check, but we can't have those in casual content now can we because that'd be mean.

[bounddreamer]

This is so true. Unless of course there's a significant DPS check, but we can't have those in casual content now can we because that'd be mean.

Every encounter with a dps check has either gotten nerfed (original steps of faith) or people get overgeared to the point some are carrying the new person.

[Jpec07]

A tank's job is ultimately to control and focus the enemies' damage output to the best of their ability. Usually a wipe can be attributed to enemy damage getting out of control (e.g. Tank loses a mob that slaps the healer, tank overpulls, tank doesn't handle mechanics and eats a deadly tankbuster, healer is making a sandwich and doesn't help the tank recover enough, there is some mechanic that deals damage that they cannot control). In most cases, a wipe can be directly attributed to some inability of the tank to control the incoming damage. There are some other cases where a wipe is due to something else (a BLM refusing to use Enochian paired with a SMN who won't use Dreadwyrm Trance against the adds of the first boss in Baelsar's Wall and failing the DPS check, for example), but it usually is the tank's fault. A good tank learns from a wipe and adjusts. A bad tank just keeps doing it the same way.

[Awful]

It's mostly a community issue not wanting or adapting to how they've played the game this whole time it leads to:

If you can't pull the whole first room of Baelsar's Wall, you're bad.
If you can't heal giant pulls and DPS as a healer you're bad.
If you haven't figured out your DPS rotation yet and you're level 60 you're bad.

You mix that in with over half the playerbase not knowing how to: Cycle CDs as a tank/Proper CD pairings, how to stance dance as a healer, how to effectively DPS as a DPS with all the skills you have, then yeah that's what we're left with today in common DF.

Hell I was in Baelsar's Wall yesterday, and we couldn't do the first big pull because the healer didn't know how to Esuna, use Asylum, Tetra, Benediction, etc, and the DPS was a BRD and SMN, BRD didn't use Foes and 2 CDs (BfB, IR), and the SMN didn't use Shadowflare or Dreadwyrm Trance. Did we succeed? No. I cycled my CDs, and used LD but the healer died before me and we wiped 3 times before we finally had 6 adds left.

I honestly wish people would learn how to at least play their class instead of coming into DF demanding big pulls and -15 minute clears when they can't even handle it back when Gordias was a thing. So from my perspective I don't blame the tanks/healers/DPS just whoever isn't playing optimally as this has been an ongoing issue since whenever and it hasn't gotten any better, so no I don't think tanks are scapegoats just the bad players who play those roles stick out more.

[Inosaska]

snip

That's why they're making the game easier by reviewing the abilities. They plan on closing the gap for dps to be fairly close. I would have to guess the same thing will be done with tanks and healers.