Community Opinions on Tanking

[Refrain695]

First time posting in forums so bare with me here, but I\\'m curious as to what the community would like to have change with the play style of current tanks within the game. Not specifically with the jobs, but tanking in general. I personally hope that SE creates more of an emphasis on actually TANKING, mitigating damage etc. and base our rotations around providing these tools. Fundamentally a large amount would have to change within the game:
-Tank job skills reworked pretty significantly
-Bosses and adds would have to hit WAY harder to create a necessity for these changes
-Much of previous content would have to be balanced to accommodate the new playstyle
I have a few ideas for the current jobs, however I wanted to review the community consensus regarding these changes in general before discussing further. Any input is appreciated!

[Rongway]

"Make tanks have to tank" sounds good as a standalone concept, but it's terrible in the world of matched parties. There are already parties that can't complete content (or can't complete it in a timely manner) because the people can't figure out their roles in the current system. Requiring them to be good at tanking would just frustrate a lot of people, mostly non-tanks who have to deal with the repercussions.

[Refrain695]

Yeah, I also forgot to mention the "mind set" change that the player base would have to make. I suppose the solution I'm trying to solve is getting more tanks playing more frequently, and I do think this would resolve a bit of the issues. Thanks for the input!

[Kalise]

To be honest, much of the problem can be solved with tuning down Healers so they're not as super rigged af.

Like, things such as using Tank stance and skills such as Inner Beast are redundant because who cares when you're getting massive shields from Critlo, 140/150 potency heals every 3 seconds from Regen ticks on top of 600+ potency oGCD heals. That's just way more than enough to let you survive incoming damage so long as you're not super undergeared.

If healers had to like, actually work at healing, tanks would have more of a reason to utilize defensive options.

Then it would just be a matter of then tuning boss damage so there's more emphasis on AA's hitting hard than just everything being focused around Tankbuster skills. So that rolling CD's would be more relevant.

On the topic, if CD's were more relevant across the board. For example, replacing Covalescence with something that reduces incoming damage rather than increasing incoming healing (IMO it should be the healers that have healing boost CD's not tanks having healing taken CD's because the Tank won't know when the healer will actually benefit from that, especially if using shields to prevent damage) and maybe put a minor damage reduction on Anticipation to give it some guaranteed mitigation alongside its parry chance. Perhaps a better CD or duration on Reprisal too. That way, you'd still try and save your big CD's for the tankbusters (Shadow Wall, Vengeance, Sentinel or failing that, Rampart) but otherwise would try and roll your CD's to have maximum mitigation.

Outside of that:

Remove the damage penalty on Tank stance. It serves no purpose. DPS stance (Or non-Stance for Dork Knights) is already a damage gain due to access to damage abilities (I.e. Fell Cleave and Blood Weapon) or damage bonuses (Such as the 5% bonus damage on Deliverance and the procs on Sword Stance) - Also, change the defensive bonuses to something that actually functions properly with CD's and isn't subject to the way stacking DR is multiplicative (I'd suggest something like giving base stats like DPS stance could give a bunch of STR (Of course, DRK would need an actual stance to use outside of Grit if that was the case) while Tank stance could give like TEN/VIT/DEF)

Finally, a suggestion I once posited was the implementation of a "Stagger" mechanic akin to FFXIII allowing Tanks to take on a similar role to the Commando/Ravager supporting the team through building the Stagger bar of bosses.

Like, the way I envision it would be something like, Tanks "Enmity Combo" skills (Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block, Savage Blade > Rage of Halone and Spinning Slash > Power Slash) would have a secondary component that builds up and maintains the Stagger meter for a boss (Kind of like the Limit Break bar, only individual for each boss rather than across the entire duty). With Tank stances as well as Vitality and Tenacity providing a bonus to Stagger generation.

Then, when a boss is staggered it provides a hefty boost to its damage taken, basically meaning that Tanks provide DPS without actually having to sit in DPS stance and spam nothing but DPS skills all day (They would only really do that during the stagger when everyone's popped CD's and they want to just nuke the boss as hard as they can)

So, not only would Tanking be more about well, Tanking, with more emphasis on mitigation and Enmity (By way of making Enmity combo's useful) as well as making Tanking stats desirable, but it would also provide a bit more depth of gameplay rather than mostly just playing like a DPS spamming your DPS rotation but just not having quite the flashy numbers that an actual DPS job would put out (Outside of Inner Release > Fell Cheese)

[Refrain695]

I agree with the healing aspect as well. I think more mechanics similar to WHM confession stacks could be used to keep healing interesting. Of course as you stated healing itself needs to be turned down a bit relative to the content and these mechanics would need to feel powerfully (unlike current confession), but yeah currently it's just too easy to slap a shield and/or Regen on tank and be ace for a while. I do understand that a enjoyable feature of this game is that every role is responsible for everything within the party (healing, mitigating, and damaging) but at some point it all just begins to feel homogenized which is already a glaring issue with tanks IMO. I threw this in a different post erlier, but I guess I'll slap it in here too for feedback:
I suppose this thread is an appropriate place to throw my ideas in. I won't toss out potency and mitigation amount since I am no game dev. however the concept is more what I'm trying to pitch:
If tanks were required to be in Tank stance in standard content (be that raids or dungeons) and the "rotation" revovled around mitigating damage. We have seen some implementations with this concept in mind with inner beast and WAR beast guage and PLD with sheltron. I recently created a post regarding these changes and what would be required to implement them, and I do have an idea in mind on how a few of the tanks would function under this.
For DRK they would be more along the lines of "health shield" tank based off TBN and would generate a health shield in some way throughout thier combos so while primary threat target this recource would be used to ensure survivability of tank Buster's auto attacks etc. however with dps stance active (grit off in thier case) this shield recource can be expended on dps skills so that tanks like myself who enjoy dealing damage still can assist toward burning phases, dps checks and the like. This also plays to the DRK style of "spending health" to do damage. An additional skill can be thrown in that procs upon taking damage so that unavoidable AOE's aren't necessarily taking away from thier damaging tool once the player is hit.
WAR could actually play similarly to it's current state with this concept in mind. Just increase the parry rate while under Defiance a large margin and have inner beast do what it does currently with higher mitigation or increase max HP to fit WAR theme. Throw in more skills similar to upheaval that scale off hp so that the tools usually used to mitigate damage in tank stance still have relevance when out.
I unfortunately do not have any ideas for PLD, since I am very inexperienced with it, but I'm sure a similar design could be made for them too.

TLDR I agree that Tanking is a bit unintuitive and would like content to be scaled so tanks needed to be in tank stance when primary threat target and used same recources when in dps stance to deal damage

[Valdegarde]

Right now it feels like for tanks to excel, they act as a blue icon DPS while trying use cooldowns efficiently and separately. Tank stances feel like a gameplay punishment rather than an alternate turtle mode or something.

What I'd like is for tank's defensive qualities be built into their rotation and class design, so that performing well satisfies both ends. Right now Warrior's Inner Beast is the only thing that comes kind of close to this, but even that pales in comparison to just using Fell Cleave instead. Instead of the stances being gameplay limited 20% damage reduction, perhaps have the "dps" stance be a resource accrual stance and the "tank" stance be the resource expending stance.

Anyway, I dunno, just make tanking and rotational damage stuff work with eachother instead of feeling like two separate systems.

[Shurrikhan]

"Make tanks have to tank" tends to take optimized gameplay in which tank, healers, and DPS feel in sync and each directly capable of good value and replace it with gameplay in which they don't, all in favor of enmity-slapping enemies enough to ensure they don't look away. I don't find that aspect of "tanking" particularly fun or even remotely tank like. It's just a table metric to stack that has little to do with facing, thwarting, or overpowering an enemy offense. If the people pushing for tanks to feel more like tanks actually pushed having more tank-like things to do (e.g. interception, active mitigation, key stuns/silences), rather than merely gutting tank mitigation as to require tank stance (which just removes options in another way while ensuring that lower-end players can't survive) or requiring a deluge of enmity combos, I'd be all for it. But I've yet to see such suggested.

Give everyone more tank activities to be a part of, giving more depth to tanks but also spreading the responsibility around some so that everyone's already a bit trained to tank and the pressure is less uniquely on the one player, and I think you'd get more tanks.

[Nedkel]

I would like to see tank stances replaced with something else, with enmity CD buff, so that way we could deal dps of offensive stance and our playstyle would be more interesting, since we would have to put more effort into holding the enmity, instead of just sitting in tank stance and press random combination of buttons. Keep the offence stances and give us a cooldown that will give us bonus to enmity generation from damage dealt, 100% for 10 or 15 seconds with cooldown of 60 sec. They could also give us some defensive buff maybe about 10-15% on the use of our enmity combo for 10 sec or so, to compensate lack of deff stance.
I think that would make it very nice to play that way.

I would also love to see the enmity progress for each monster, so it will be more clear which mob needs more enmity and which doesnt. Something like a bar that will show the enmity going down, the shorter the bar the less enmity it has, something like that, or just show the number which enmity represent.

Warrior could keep his stances i dont see a problem here, DRK and PLD however are different pair of boots.

[Lyth]

...

Every role has its share of responsibilities in raid content. If your dps players can't make the fight checks, you lose. If your healers mistime their abilities, you lose. You can't make tanking "safe".

There's a paradoxical difficulty curve to tanking. Gear is a big barrier to entry for new tanks. When you're learning to tank in dungeons, you're not only at a disadvantage in terms of experience, but you're going to have more difficulty holding enmity and staying alive, simply because you're playing at a lower gear level. This tends to discourage and intimidate newer players, so they avoid the role.

Once you cross that initial threshold, though, the difficulty drops off very rapidly. In raid content, everything becomes incredibly scripted. Boss positioning and movement is on auto-pilot, and your tank has very little actual influence over it. There's not even the worry of accidentally cleaving the group while dodging mechanics, because the bosses all work on animation locks during ability casts.

On a defensive level, there are a surplus of cooldowns. Holmgang is broken to the point of absurdity. You can just ignore 2-3 tankbusters in any given fight with Holmgang alone. That's not even factoring in your other tank's invincibility move. You can just alternate. Holmgang, Hallowed, Holmgang, all of one tank's defensive abilities, Holmgang, all of the other tank's defensive abilities, Holmgang, Hallowed, Holmgang, etc.

Shielding is completely out of control. Most MMOs have the sense to keep flat damage shields on a tight leash. This game hands them out like candy. They don't decay over time. They don't have diminishing returns. You just stack them and ignore damage. And then you wonder why healers are healing with just oGCDs.

Damage is the last bastion for tanks to contribute, but the devs are obsessed with removing that despite an intense amount of backlash and protest from the tank community. We have nothing left.

So here's the problem. The people attracted to tanking are generally looking for a way to impact their team and make a difference. But you're turning away players at the gate because they're too intimidated, and you're also turning away experienced players because they can't make a meaningful impact. Right now, raid tanking is by far the lowest skill and lowest impact role in the team.

So who are we attracting to tanking?

[Kalise]

If the people pushing for tanks to feel more like tanks actually pushed having more tank-like things to do (e.g. interception, active mitigation, key stuns/silences), rather than merely gutting tank mitigation as to require tank stance (which just removes options in another way while ensuring that lower-end players can't survive) or requiring a deluge of enmity combos, I'd be all for it. But I've yet to see such suggested.

I think the main issue with this, is the limited amount of shared utility between tanks as well as the fact that much of this would be dependent on encounter mechanics rather than specifically to do with tanking.

Like, utilizing Stuns/Silences are purely down to fight mechanics. It needs bosses to have skills that need to be stunned/silenced out, it also can be achieved through physical DPS whom have stuns and silences themselves. Add in diminishing returns and you can't even add in frequent need of these abilities, unlike other games which have been able to utilize having both tanks focused on silencing out skills due to the frequency compared to the CD of an individual's interrupt skill.

Outside of that, I once suggested that there would be more onus on Tanks doing stuff like protecting allies, or taking the place of the convenient pillars that protect against those massive AoE spells... But the issue with this kind of thing is that they're uniquely Paladin skills (Cover, Intervention and Passage of Arms) and thus PLD players would be extremely miffed if these were then transferred over to Dork Knights and Warriors and thus reduced their uniqueness (It would also require them to get something in return to make up for it)

As it is, Tanks are limited in what they can actually do.

They can smash their Enmity combo or they can smash their DPS combo. Sometimes, this isn't even a choice, because if DPS/Healers aren't using their Enmity dumps then it doesn't matter how good a Tank player you are, you have to smash your Enmity combo to keep aggro.

Which is the thing about making everyone have Tank activities, you start to make the role feel worthless because you're not in control of anything, other people are. It's like if Healers could only regain mana through Mana Shift and Refresh. That wouldn't make more people play Healer, it's make LESS people play Healer because they would rely on DPS actually paying attention to something other than their DPS combos - Which is something that often turns people away from Tanks/Healers, is that you have to pay attention to more than just your rotation and not standing in the fire.

It's one of the main reasons why games tend to make Tanks just feel like DPS, by cranking up Enmity gains and reducing the need to think about mitigation and consolidating skills so that Enmity/Damage/Mitigation bonuses are not separated. So that all that's required is to mash your rotation and not stand in the fire. Just like DPS. They do this in hopes that DPS players will pick up tanking because it won't feel different. Only, it doesn't work. In fact, all it does is turn away actual Tank players who hate the fact that there's no thought or choices about what to do. It's all just mash your rotation yawnfest.

So, tanks tend to ask for more control. More focus on mitigation, so they can focus on having control over reducing the damage they take. More focus on Enmity, so they're in control over whether they have aggro or not rather than relying on DPS/Healers to detaunt. Because that's the defining thing about a Tank, is they are the ones with control over the fight. They start the fight, they position the fight, they're the ones that pay attention to mechanics because cleave attacks (Both frontal and rear). But then to pander to DPS players who don't play Tank developers remove any and all control that tanks have (Fights where bosses position themselves, fights where bosses don't really do much that requires the Tank to react aside from "Tankbusters" where it's a simple "Pop a CD at X time", remove Enmity control in favour of getting non-Tanks prepared for Tanking, push Tanks into just wanting to sit in DPS stance and spam DPS combos so that non-Tanks feel more at home)

Which, you know what? Doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. Taking away all the aspects of Tanking that lets Tanks have to think about what they're doing, doesn't make any more non-Tanks suddenly start playing them (If anything, it turns them away because they come up and say "Tanking is boring") while it makes Tank mains feel like they're getting screwed over and aren't wanted in the game at all.

Give Tanks actual Tank things to do. Don't give DPS/Healers Tank things to do any more than giving Tanks things to make Healers and DPS do their job. Like, DPS wouldn't like it if a Healer had to press a button every minute to let them deal damage and if they forgot or didn't care to they wouldn't do anything. Neither would a Healer like to ask DPS permission to have mana. Why make Tanks have to have their job reliant on other people to let them do it?