Is Tanking Boring?

[Kabooa]

Tanking isn't boring.

Hey if you like it, more power to you.

[DBelmont]

I understand why one might not like tanking for themselves. But to say WoW of all games has better tanking than FFXIV without even being at max level?

All I can say is this: One of the many reasons I am choosing FFXIV over WoW is the fact that I cannot find a tanking class I like in WoW. Why is that? Because WoW is a button mashing game and tanking makes you feel like a meat sack going ahead to take the hit before everyone else. Oh and every tanking mechanic like mitigation, swaps or adds is spoiled by DBM(addon that calls each and every mechanic in both dungeons and raids).

On the contrary, being a tank in FFXIV takes a good advantage of the slower combat to add tactical depth to tanking. That also includes the damaging utility the tanks offer.

[Usho]

Tanking is only boring if you have a terrible party. Terrible parties make tanking more of a chore than fun.

[Canadane]

The opposite, in fact. Tanking is the only exciting role in the game.

[Liam_Harper]

I also find FF tanking rather dull. The comparison to WoW is interesting. I got a free week sub on WoW recently. It was indeed a trainwreck, the new raid was bland, the game was empty and they'd had no other new content in months. Don't bother with the game, ff14 is better overall right now. But my Death Knight... damn, tanking felt amazing. I'd missed that so much.

I did some mythic+ dungeons. Despite the above posts, button mashing in WoW is only what bad players do. You have a diverse toolkit and you can do ridiculous things if you utilize it skillfully and effectively. In danger situations, I was taking hits that could put me to 40% in a second, putting every ability to use and standing my ground, with the healer dead. Any mistakes and I'd have died, but instead we got kills. Playing well was so rewarding.

Which brings me to FF. You can make smart decisions and use your mitigation efficiently, but ultimately there's a set limit on how much damage intake you can handle, any more and you simply die. You're very healer reliant. You don't have any toolkit to pull off "I can take on the world" advanced play. Your take x% damage and your goal is to mitigate as high a portion of that as you can for your healer, but it's never a huge portion.

FF's focus on tank dps isn't very engaging either. You lose some of your already pathetic defensive toolkit and almost become a standard dps who the boss hits. There isn't skill in the actual gameplay, it's simply a decision of "if I reduce my surviability, can the healer cover for me without losing dps?". You make the choice and done.

[Rufalus]

Warrior can do some crazy damage but only when Inner Release comes off cooldown (lv70 ability). That's one of the most insane abilities in the game for doing burst damage. The other tanks don't have a huge spike like that but their sustained damage is not so bad at lv70 with melds and stuff. Normally I'd prefer to play dps jobs, but I find tank can actually be more interesting than them when you're doing content that is boring. In really low level dungeons when you only have 2-button rotations, you can at least control the pace by going tank and rushing to get it over with xD. Seriously though I think all 3 tanks play style is actually well designed in Stormblood and almost balanced. If they can borrow any good stuff from WoW that's cool but maybe incorporate them into a new 4th tank job for an alternative style choice.

[Alsbet]

Anything can be boring if you let it be boring.

[SoulSkyheart]

Answer depends on the person. However through personal experience, tanking became boring not because of the role itself, but the dumbed down complexity of what it’s become to it’s previous expansion’s counterpart.

Tanks used to have a big responsibility of debuffing the enemy, apply their dot which they tried to uphold 100% of the time. Maintain aggro cause there was no shirk or diversion back then. Pop defensive CDs for hard hitting attacks all while trying to maintain the best dps possible.

Fast-forward to SB and tank’s lost a lot of that complexity. They lost their dots (except PLD), they lost their responsibility to debuff the boss, they lost the worry about aggro, which dumbed won the class madly imo.

This is why tanking is boring for me, but there will be others with different views on it and I feel as though there should be a solution for everyone’s issue.

[LeoLupinos]

Most of the content is not 70s, let's begin with that. So stop with that "You're not 70, you can't say anything bla bla"

Tank and Healing are boring. The queue proves that, what else would make the queue for DPS too long? DPS kicks boringness.

There's no thing like "I messed up my rotation" with tanking or healing, and that's the boring thing. Simply hitting 1>2>3 you can complete most of stuff as DRK. At Healing you don't even need to do damage.

DPS is a lot more fun. You have a lot of things to keep things dynamics, keeping your buffs active, dbuffing enemies, dot, etc, mastering your job.

I would like to see rotation for tanks and healers. Synergy to keep defencive buffs active, like "50 gauge to active buff, and X rotation can add 30s to the timer, so you can use the rotation without wasting another 50 gauge points", same for healers for keeping healing boost buffs on. It's just too simple now.

[RokkuEkkusu]

Tanking is only boring if you have a terrible party. Terrible parties make tanking more of a chore than fun.

This is the answer I agree with. Ever since Stormblood got released, the amount of terrible parties gone up dramatically. Lots of Zero-DPS healers, DPS who don't use aoe when we're all overgeared for big packs, people who don't avoid easy to dodge stuff, etc.