Is Tanking Boring?

[Kavrick]

Now i recently leveled my DRK to level 62, and i think i've realized why there are so few tank players, now to start this off i'm gonna bring up wow, and not in a million years would i ever ask SE to take advice from the trainwreck that is the current state of wow, but they did get one thing right, and that's tanking.

In wow, for example, the warrior tank has three abilities, shield slam, devastate and shield block, now these three abilities work together in pretty good synergy, shield block increases your blocking chance and at the same time increased the damage of shield slam, and devastate has a chance to reset the cooldown of shield slam while shield slam increases the duration of shield block. If we were to look at the other tanks in WoW, their rotation is based around keeping themselves alive, not necessarily doing damage, blood death knight uses DOT's to heal itself and the paladin builds up charges to do massive self healing bursts.

1/X

[Kavrick]

Now why am i bringing this up? well what i've noticed from leveling a tank in FF!4 is that it feels like playing a glorified dps that stands their and soaks up damage, although your actual dps is normally around 50-30% of the actual damage dealer's dps. Doing your rotation as a tank is extremely unsatisfying, you land all these OGC and use your resources to do damage, although the damage you do with even your longest cooldown damage dealers is pitiful and a joke (I'm looking at you, Carve and Split). While your only real source of doing anything really "tanky" is turning on a static 20% reduction buff (Or 20% hp and extra healing for warrior) and a handful of 60~ second cooldowns, so the majority of your time is spent pretending to be a DPS.
2/X

[Ramzakristos]

hello Kavrick,

I understand why you questioning the role of tank,however,there are a few things that you can do to improve your overall experience.the way you run a dungeon,raid or trial can affect wildly you experience in said instance.the DRK has a set of utility,albeit reduced compared to the other two,that will help your party overcome certain obstacles.i can think of The Blackest Night,in your case,Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP..now you can use this on you as your CD rotation.
when on a party member that's in need you might have very well just helped out your healer,this can even apply to trials when there is a tank swap before a tank buster,you can shield your fellow tank and therefore mitigating some of that damage ensuring his survivability for the rest of the fight.now the healer only needs to top him off with the rest of the party,instead of having to use single target heals to bring him back up.

this is just and example of what tanks can and should do.after a point in the game you are really required to use your utility. and that makes things interesting.one last advice would be to level your other tanks as well, so you can learn the broader spectrum of tanking for this game.and of course they have their own utility that brings so much to a group

i hope this answer your question and will help you in the future,tanking is not boring but you can make it so,it's up to you to do your research and find ways,that fight your style,to improve your tanking and the experience of the party you take with you.

[Kavrick]

Now i cant speak for paladin, and i know that WAR used to have pretty significant self healing and that DRK has TBN (But you dont get your core self mitigation until max level, not sure who thought that was a good idea.) But as it currently stands, doing your regular rotation doesn't really feel like it's doing anything, you're just doing it because there's nothing else to do, perfectly performing your rotation wont have any real impact on the fight.

TL;DR: Tanking rotation is just akin to a simplified, dps rotation that doesn't actually do any damage and your only real "tankiness" comes from rolling your face on your cooldowns when shit hits the fan.
3/X

[Kavrick]

Sorry for the long post, i found it difficult to explain my thoughts in 1000 characters, i hope to get some sort of clarification on something that i might be missing

[Abelfei]

First of all if your tanking skill is anywhere near your posting skill, thats probably why it isnt fun....haha j/k but uou could've did that all in one post, just edit next time.
Secondly, carve and spit is highly used in all the best tank logs out there from what i understand, but you're probably not using it with Dark Arts, which yes, would make it pretty trivial at the least. Wait til you get all the Sb abilities, it will liven up alot more. I'd be curious to see your rotations though to see if your " boring " has any merit, but in my experience with DRK, it is very fun, and the role as tank in general is as well. Pretty much use Dark Arts as much as possible, keep TBN up if in Grit, always use Bloodspiller etc.

[Kavrick]

Sorry i didn't realize you could edit a post to give it more than 1000 characters, i dont often use forums. I do as a whole, find the rotation "fun" but it just kinda feels pointless, my favorite thing about dark knight is the aesthetics, big swords and plate armor in all, but i feel compared to the other two tanks we're in a kinda bad position, WAR can dish out respectable damage, and PLD has the most mitigation, while DRK are awkwardly in the middle with nothing to really stand out.

[urban]

Np we see these type of thread alot after every buff n nerf....... Everything is being so-called "dumb down". I perfer 2.0 and 3.0 tank but...meh

[Kabooa]

Yes, tanking's boring. Which is why they also share a fair amount of the Damage dealing responsibility.

[Abelfei]

Yes, tanking's boring. Which is why they also share a fair amount of the Damage dealing responsibility.

Tanking isn't boring.