Tank Scaling still a massive issue

[Inuakurei]

You can play as a tank. You can even play as what you believe a tank is, and I assume that is the focus on purely mitigation and aggro. You can stay in ShO/Grit/Defiance and press your aggro combo only and you will pass.

Just accept that you are objectively playing bad.

When you are given the choice to do more, and you choose to play a factually inferior playstyle for the sake of abiding to your belief of what a tank should be in your eyes then you are actively choosing to play badly, and the people calling you bad have every right to.

I like playing as a tank that does more then be a required meatwall. I like playing a Warrior with a greataxe that shrugs off hits AND cleaves fools. That is a tank to me. That is a WARRIOR/DARK KNIGHT/PALADIN THAT REMEMBERS THEY HAVE A SWORD TOO.

Because being an inferior dps is such a great playstyle. Everyone is just fine! Nothing at all should change, we should keep everything exactly how it is. All we just need to fix everything is more str! /s

My gripe is that we can't seem to get past this idea that tanks should have the damage of a dps.

There's a reason why Tanks have always been the most least played class in this game, no matter what SE does to get people to play tanks. They can throw all the extra tomes, gil, prizes, mounts, etc, that they want as incentives for people to play tanks, but it wont matter. As it is currently tanking in this game is fundamentally bad. All tanking is, is playing a gimped dps that holds aggro. No matter what you see yourself as, thats all you are.

There are ways to make a tank fun and engaging, but SE has taken the easy way out when it comes to tanking in this game. Just give tanks some dps skills, a few mitigation CD's, then call it a day. The worst thing about it though, is that the community seems to be ok with that. There are some good discussion about tank mechanics, but for every one good discussion there are three more that boil down to "muh dps" and think every problem can be fixed by just adding more str. Although as it turns out, if you base the Tank class playstyle around dealing damage, it'll attract players who enjoy dealing damage. Only problem with that is, the DPS role already exists, so tanks will ALWAYS be underplayed.

Just look through the "why do you tank" thread from a while back. Majority of the responses are either "I like low queue times", "I like 2H weapons", or "no one else in my static wanted to tank". And I assure you, there are people out there that like to be a "meatwall" and enjoy the tank playstyle of holding aggro, mitigating damage, etc. But what we have right now is a forum of players who want to dps that are forced to play tanks. Which is mostly SE's fault but eh.

Maybe one day if SE decides to add some better tank mechanics, people would actually play tanks more. But I doubt that will happen at least until 5.0 because people like you halt any kind of evolution we could have in tank mechanics beyond "does x do more damage than y" and until we can move beyond that will will never be more than a gimped dps role. But if you're ok with that then by all means.

[AziraSyuren]

My gripe is that we can't seem to get past this idea that tanks should have the damage of a dps.

nobody says that

[SunAurel]

Tank accessoires need to be scaled proportionally to the dps accessoires and i think 70% is a good number.

About defense vs offense approach to tanking...look i get it. I was a Defensive tank until i learned to cycle my cd's and now with you not losing gauge you can spam sheltron like hell in sword oath and you get the mitigation you need.

Tanking is not about 'surviving stuff with the most hp possible', you don't get a Cookie if you Stand with 5k hp or 20k as long as you stand.

You need to maximize your damage and survive and if you say you don't want to take the risk that"s fine but calling dps stance tanks wrong when their parties are very efficient at killing the boss bc of extra dps is nonsense

[FallenWings]

....

Nice generalizing. Have fun doing ~33% less DPS to let your healer maybe do 1 more GCD of Stone 4 if they feel like it.

Atleast try and backup your shitposting with research.

Snip

No. I've actually stopped playing tanks for various other reasons and being ineffective and unrewarding DPS is infact a terrible playstyle. See Summoner and Dragoon.

Explain to me then that why Tanks cannot have the same damage range as DPS. Does it truly make you feel bad that a class you believe should be nothing more than an inanimate wall for all intent and purposes does more damage then you? Does it bother you that tanks in this game or others does not follow with your ancient belief that tanks should be a wall and nothing more. Who is the narrowminded one here?

If you pay attention to any of my posts, you will see that I actually advocate for a REWARDING and IMPACTFUL tank play.

Every single battle orientated game has one clear cut goal.

DEFEAT

THE

ENEMY.

The fact of the matter is that no matter how you cut or slice it. No matter how much you believe otherwise. Damage is king. Damage is what matters because damage contributes to the goal of the fight.

Do you know what the purpose of tanking and healing is? To allow damage to occur by insuring the survival of the DPS. Yes that's right. If you purely tank or purely heal, you will never win. Because if you do nothing to the enemy, you have no impact.

People aren't playing tanks because they're not like whatever your standard for previous tanks is. It is because of other unrelated reasons such as leadership or whatever the thin skinned casual playerbase can't handle. It is also because DOING DAMAGE and DOING SOMETHING IMPACTFUL is more fun than doing a job that is only there because of design. People want to feel good, people want to feel strong, people want to feel rewarded when they play.

Yes. There are people out there who enjoy pure meatwalling. Did you know that I also advocate for mitigation to be in the vein of something like Vengeance or TBN? Where your proper usage of MITIGATION rewards you with MORE DAMAGE which DIRECTLY contributes to the fight? But you know why tanks AND healers in this game are so simple and easy to execute?

Because it makes it accessiable to everyone. And most people are bad. SE is first and foremost a company, they have shown that they do not care as much for the top players and prefer to make the game as dumb and easy as possible so that Johnny McCasual can cruise by and reap all the rewards. Players who are happy pay more. And there are more bad players to make happy then there are good players. The pitch of Stormblood supports exactly this. Simplication and consolodiation of gameplay as well as lowering of skill ceiling and raising of skillfloor. They removed the gap for exactly this purpose. (Admittedly, from what we've seen of the balance of all classes, they haven't exactly fulfilled this front either)

Face it, tanking in this game is not how you like it not because of the community but because SE's design, whether they themselves are aware of it or not is about surviving ENOUGH and pouring the rest of your resources into something USEFUL. Which is, YOU GUESSED IT. DAMAGE. Whether it be indirectly through more effective mitigation allowing Healer offensive GCDS or your own personal output.

I'd argue that more people would prefer offensive tanking then Dance Dance Revolution tanking. The popularity of tanks in HW and the DPS roles atleast support this theory. And as many people have attempted to point out in a derogatory and condescending manner, most here on the forums seem to prefer something that has a rewarding skill ceiling. (I.E DAMAGE).

Mind you, I couldn't care if we're 80%, 70% or even 60%. But if we're 10-30% then it just means there is absolutely no worthwhile skillgap for tanks and it just becomes the class where you dump your weakest player because you can.

[Reynhart]

If you pay attention to any of my posts, you will see that I actually advocate for a REWARDING and IMPACTFUL tank play.

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

[FallenWings]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

I can get behind that. But it'll be funny when the purist healers complain that we're making them bored by being too tanky.

[Reynhart]

I can get behind that. But it'll be funny when the purist healers complain that we're making them bored by being too tanky.

It's like in a couple, you need to find someone with a compatible mindset. If both your healer and your tank are agressive, it will clash at some point.

Why be a turtle that tanks things with his face, when you could just make the enemies not be able to attack you to begin with? If they cant hit you then you never need healing.

I use the term "turtle tanking" for tanks that focus primarly on surviving, even at the expense of damage. But you can have different ways of turle tanking yes. My favorite is self-healing.

I recall something in FFXI that I would have liked to do. Before the last expansion, they created a weapon and a shield that massively increased your self healing. Using these items on top of items that reduced physical damage and items that refills your MP when you take damage, I wondered if you could reach a point where the damage you take give enough MP to cast your Cure spells and your Cure spells are powerful enough to compensate for the damage you took, creating a self-sustained loop. My conclusion was that you could but obtaining all of those items was a real pain...and no one cared since you didn't even needed a tank back then.

[TankHunter678]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

SE could do that with Paladin if they simply removed the CC resistance build up from mobs allowing Paladins to stunlock small groups of enemies.

Why be a turtle that tanks things with his face, when you could just make the enemies not be able to attack you to begin with? If they cant hit you then you never need healing.

That being said, pure turtles are boring as all hell and wont receive play because they are pure turtles. Its why in WoW tanks do such high damage, to get people to play them. Also why in WoW healers ask for damage output buffs because taking 10 minutes to kill a mob that a DPS kills in 10 seconds drives people from playing the class/spec.

[Shurrikhan]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage output would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

Sure, as long as they could consistently produce the same output, which will only ever be reduction of clear time (i.e., which until a fight is about, say, topping off the health of a wounded dragon, will only ever be rDPS), and scale as well as anyone else.

I honestly want this. But I worry about what it could force in design, such as requiring the turtle tank to clear at x gear levels, not because it allows more healer DPS at equal cost to its own, but because no other tank has that eHP.

The most likely solution would be quite simply a (self) healer-tank, thereby one that provides the same free healer time and healer-like gear scaling, but without monstrous eHP. But SE purged that concept in 2.1.

[Reynhart]

I honestly want this. But I worry about what it could force in design, such as requiring the turtle tank to clear at x gear levels, not because it allows more healer DPS at equal cost to its own, but because no other tank has that eHP.

Back in Gordias, there was a significant gap in eHP between PLD and DRK if you take all their toolkit, mainly because PLD could not do well against magic damage. So, on top of PLD doing less damage, they also needed more healing.

Right now, PLD is not bad in the self-healing department. And since the tank stance doesn't directly reduce your attack power, you could technically stack lots of STR for stronger Clemencies. Now, we just need ShO effects (postitive and negative) to be stronger.