Shower thought...There is no shortage of tanks.

[Gravton]

That sounds about right, I rarely df on tank unless I need to cap tomes real quick. I lvl the other tanks through pvp, hunts, side quests and even then it's not a priority.

[NewSinz]

Pugs are garbage.

There is a dynamic, that has been lost to the great people of Eorzea. Teamwork is gone, letting the tank go first.... gone and healers worried more about their DPS then the healing itself. Everyone knows better then everyone else on how things should go. You should be relying on the healer to keep you alive not their ability to do dps. If you are having a problem with DPS and feel the healer is responsible for slower runs... think again.

Most tanks dont trust Pug healers and most healers dont trust pug tanks. So often like myself we find a person to go with from the FC that knows their role. Then we often say something along the lines of Doing the dailies need 2 DPS and there is usually always 2. I think that is the situation with the low tank and healer numbers in Duty Finder.

[YitharV2]

So, when people are talking about there being a shortage of tanks - look at your FC or LS, and you will probably see many with tanks leveled, but who never DF with them while being more than willing to run things with you. Not much for it, however, since no one can change the nature of DF unless everyone (tanks, healers, and dps) make an effort to understand each other and understand that regardless of role, everyone is a person who has different comfort zones and such, but is still a human behind the character you see on your screen ^^

This totally describes me as a tank.

There is a shortage of DF tanks though. Trials Roulette used to be 5min in HW as DPS now it's 13min in SB as DPS.

PMost tanks dont trust Pug healers and most healers dont trust pug tanks.

Yeah, it was the same in TERA, except in TERA I had a really high ability to carry considering I had the ability to completely mitigate damage while holding aggro on the boss. I don't think the trinity needs to be removed, but I think tanks need a higher ability to self-sustain if the community wants more tanks in DF.

[BlackironTarkus]

This totally describes me as a tank.

There is a shortage of DF tanks though. Trials Roulette used to be 5min in HW as DPS now it's 13min in SB as DPS.



Yeah, it was the same in TERA, except in TERA I had a really high ability to carry considering I had the ability to completely mitigate damage while holding aggro on the boss. I don't think the trinity needs to be removed, but I think tanks need a higher ability to self-sustain if the community wants more tanks in DF.

DRK used to fill this niche.

Til they made our blind cost 50% of an MP bar, removed our 20% dodge CD, Knocked blood price from 5 hits is a dark arts to 20, nerfed overall tank damage again, and lowered the lifesteal of abyssal drain by 12%. They really want us to struggle with aoe packs. They even cut the potency of unleash by 50%? The only thing that served to do was make unleash an aggro tool and force an efficiently minded DRK to use single target combos unless there are 6 or more mobs once hate is established.

The changes baffle me.

[Tsukino]

My "secondary" job is PLD, and I very rarely do anything with it in the duty finder. I will sometimes join leveling dungeons, but nothing else. I have it because there are other people who I play with who like me to tank.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the duty finder who are very demanding of tanks and healers. They want them to pull more mobs or do more DPS, and then they also get the blame whenever any of those demands go wrong. I and many others don't want to play with them.

[TankHunter678]

DRK used to fill this niche.

Til they made our blind cost 50% of an MP bar, removed our 20% dodge CD, Knocked blood price from 5 hits is a dark arts to 20, nerfed overall tank damage again, and lowered the lifesteal of abyssal drain by 12%. They really want us to struggle with aoe packs. They even cut the potency of unleash by 50%? The only thing that served to do was make unleash an aggro tool and force an efficiently minded DRK to use single target combos unless there are 6 or more mobs once hate is established.

The changes baffle me.

And yet people go "but, but, The Blackest Night!"

DRK at 60 vs Paladin at 60 feels like a house with 1 wall, a roof, and half the foundation vs an actually complete house. Then the Paladin just goes and adds on a fully decked out yard on top of that...

Really killed my willingness to tank. Which means if I am to tank, got to work on my level 35 Pally.

[Jijifli]

My two cents on this issue.

This is correct. There are plenty of people with the jobs leveled, with the gear and skill to play them well, that refuse to go into duties without people they know. It's why I end up dps queuing, despite 45+ minute waits on the expert. I'd rather wait a long time, and be more likely to get a smooth run, than almost instant on my AST and get dps that would do more damage auto attacking than whatever they're doing, through some magic.

In fact, leveling an alt, I just got through with someone who was told by their friends they wouldn't have to do anything important because they're a dps. It's annoying.

[Claire_Pendragon]

You are correct.
You can also look at 24man content as an example as well.
As a tank or healer, average wait time is 0seconds to 5mins in 4man, or 8 man.
Average wait time for a DPS in 24man content in heavensward Lv60 content was 0s-30seconds. (unless u queued with ppl, then maybe 3mins)
Average wait time for a Healer was 5-25mins.
Average wait time for a tank was 30m-2hours. (unless the 24man content is new, then tank queue is closer to 3hours+)

When Void Ark came out, everyone hated being DPS at Lv60, due to complex rotations, and tanks saw an easy way to get their tank gear, so the queues were unreasonably high. I think my 1st queue was somewhere around 26 hours, and my next queue was about 12 hours, and then it tapered off to average 6-8 hours till a bit over a week, then it was 2-3 hours.
If I jumped to healer it was shorter, if I was a DPS it was instant.

Anyways, most people have a tank leveled, its actually quite small how many people dont have a tank leveled.
They could use the roulette as a tank for any bonuses they want, but chose not to.
But now that its offering materia, the tank queue for leveling roulette just jumped up, and DPS queues were roughly 2-7mins.
(Havnt seen if it changed since yesterday.)

Obviously not everyone likes being a tank, but the shortage is a combination of factors, including what you said.

Ill tank for people I trust, but I wont tank for strangers, or even friends I know who make my job harder (which is all of them atm.)

[FallenArisen0990]

SE may have nerf'd DRK to the ground but I will not abandon that Job. I love that Job way too much to let it go.

[Zojha]

The general census for the time I've been playing (since beta) have always shown about a 25%, 25%, 50% (tank/healer/dps) distribution.

That's incorrect - the closest we ever got was 21%/23%/55%. It's usually closer to 20/20/60.

And that's just the people who got it leveled, including the ones that leveled it and never touched it again.