Community Opinions on Tanking

[Shurrikhan]

Ehh... It's not always the case.

Since, there have been times in MMO's when the top tier tanks were the ones that were most self sufficient, which meant that the healers could spend more time DPSing, or they could replace a healer altogether with another DPS, replace the off-tank with another DPS (Because said self sufficient Tank could cheese through boss mechanics #JustDKThings) or otherwise adjust to push out more DPS than if they just took the Tank(s) that would provide the most personal damage.

Though this was alongside more options for healers, such as builds that would work via dealing damage to things acting like a 0.5 healer 0.5 DPS. Or other mechanics such as WoW's Shadowpriest giving an aura that gave lifesteal to everyone so basically everyone had a mini-Bloodbath active at all times. I suppose the FFXIV comparison would be running a RDM over a healer to primarily damage but also spot heal with Vercure and help out against deaths with Verraise. (If not also including any changes to classes, such as if Mantra was turned into a mini-Bloodbath effect for the team)

Heck, I remember some boss encounters in WoW where you just didn't need a healer at all because a Death Knight could cheese the bosses mechanics so hard that damage wasn't taken due to various things like AMS removing the stacking debuffs as well as percent health healing with a exponentially increasing health pool.

True, but as a Blood (or even as Frost if you go back as far as Wrath) tank I could also outdamage most other tanks at the same time as doing all that... WoW tank balance has some weird weighting to utility, and on the whole, far from the tightest of parity.

I agree on all other points, though. I should have been more clear in reference to just the idea of changing out a set role slot, e.g. the choice between a Protection Warrior or Blood Death Knight or Guardian Druid. When more slots follow from the consequence of a tank change, then rDPS is always the lead concern.

Whenever it's the case of Tanks doing too much, it is always, without fail, due to how much damage they push out.

I don't think that's true at all. It's frequently the issue, but as in the WoW examples you've just made, may not even make up a majority of cases.

Pretty much exactly as you said just above, but just giving my own experience here:
In Cata and Mists, I considered Blood OP not because it's damage also happened to be ridiculous, but because unless my party was incapable of interrupts and CC, I wouldn't bring a healer to speedrun dungeons. Because healer damage hadn't yet been raised to anything consequential, they just weren't worth having. The rDPS value of my healing, therefore, was tremendous. I could do blue DPS damage, yes, but I could also allow for another orange at the cost of a grey, all while making things easier for my party than any other tank could via Deathgrips and AMS.

And then I went and did the same thing with a few other tanks, even if not quite as easily. Some needed a Ret or Feral, but Feral's healing was a HoT and thus easily made early or late and either that Regrowth or Ret's Flash of Light took up only an open GCD (i.e. one they had no resource to do anything else in anyways). In each case the majority of the ridiculous power found in tanking came down to self-sustainability, not damage. And 12 years of frequent WoW foruming's worth of anecdotal evidence, alongside some statistical compiling thereof by certain in-depth threads on the subject, indicate that self-sustain (be it a lack compared to previous expansions or an overabundance that forces out healing specialists) is the lead controversy surrounding tanks, not their direct power level. At the upper end, WoW tanks have rarely had the relative throughput our tanks enjoy except in AoE alone. XIV tanks don't scale as well as DPS, but WoW tanks scale even worse over time.

Tanks get into trouble for "Doing too much", when, ironically, they have little to do.

I feel like this is where we such discussion could use some delineation. There is activity, and there is capacity. The capacity of tanks may be too high, but at the same time the activities of tanks can be too few or shallow.

For instance, I'd like to see the capacity curtailed a bit in the ways that can bring into use (new) breakpoints in compositional or tactical decisions, but at least cost to sustained value, while enhancing the quantity and quality of tank activities.