Do you have a "tank fantasy"?

[HJHolon]

Question to other tanks, doubly so for those that play tanks for the MSQ: do you think there's an element of power fantasy to either the job or the way you play it? For instance from a roleplay perspective, the tank jobs have a lot of control over solo instances, and in a party you often have a position of authority and leadership.

If not, what would you consider to be the fantasy or social appeal of tanking, if you experience any?

[Canadane]

Absolutely.
When on a tank role, it's me vs. the enemy. The other players are all background and supportive characters.

[GrindShack]

I always wanted to be the tank that has all the same but shittier mechanics as other jobs, but just shittier, and as a Drk I can live this fantasy with SHB.

[KatsuraJun]

Absolutely.
When on a tank role, it's me vs. the enemy. The other players are all background and supportive characters.

This is why I encourage new players to tank through the MSQ.
Nothing breaks the feeling of being the warrior of light more to me than "oh yes, this is the final super climactic battle against nidhogg/ultima weapon/whatever. Ok now I'm gonna poke his butt with knives while he fights someone else."
That's why being able to deal damage is so important as well, really makes it feel like it's a showdown between you and the boss.

[Kalise]

Honestly, for me Tanking comes down to something like this:

Big Bad Monster Dude: "Grrr I'm so powerful and evil, I'm going to smoosh you all into small pieces! >:["

Tank: "I disagree."

There's also the appeal for being the first one to rush head first into danger. Especially so for the MSQ, where you are generally the one who's seen rushing into all the dangerous situations and fighting toe to toe with bad guys in solo instances.

Gameplay wise, there's often that feeling of control, one gets as a Tank (As someone who really likes to feel in control of things, it's possibly why I'm so drawn to the Tank role).

Since, you can control your own survival via mitigation skills and self sustain (Also in some games, iframes and CC too), you can control enemies via making them attack you with enmity/taunts and then move them around (Also, in some games, CC and interrupts too), you often control the pacing of dungeons because you're the default person who pulls and so you get to decide how big a pull to make and when to make it (Such as considering patrols, other players readiness etc) and oftentimes you even get to have some control over the wellbeing of your party with support skills.

Lacking some of those things can have some appreciable effects on how fun and fulfilling a Tank is to play (One only needs to look at the fact that because encounters disregard CC, often move themselves and rarely have trash (Let alone patrols) and have pretty lame damage outputs where it's basically non-existant outside of Tank/Raid buster skills to be able to easily understand the meme around Tanks being called "Blue DPS" because essentially the game has cut out a lot of tanking tools and gameplay so they have little more to their kits than a DPS job whom has a couple of defensive CD's...)

It also creates that odd dynamic when games do the typical 2 Tank set ups for Raids, because they also invariably end up with a majority of bosses being single target tank and spanks so you have 1 tank actively being hit and the other sitting back slapping the boss waiting for the designated time to Tank Swap for mechanics reasons. Which tends to suck for whomever gets saddled being the "Off Tank" unless they're just filling in for the role while normally like a DPS main or something... With those encounters where there are 2+ targets to tank constantly are rarer to find.

Which always strikes me as odd. But then, I also sort of understand the reasoning behind such a design. That being, to make more room for Tanks in end-game content so that more people can level up and main Tanks and still be able to participate in raids (As opposed to if there was only one spot per static for a Tank)

But I digress...

[MaraD_]

I like defense strategies.
I like thinking of unique ways to mitigate damage, or make a character have higher rates of survival.
I also like thinking up ways to do the same thing, but in a different way. (not just tanks)

So I tend to play all the tanks, just to see what all is different. (and in the case of some MMOs, nothing, and in the case of FFXIV, only a tiny bit.)

Being "the leader" isnt interesting to me.
Enmity isnt that interesting to me, usually due to it just being a number. (this is hard to explain, w/o going into details about other MMOs) It essentially is the same reason i dont like DPS.

But in the end, I have my favorite tank, and the rest were just to mess around with. Similar with Healers.
DPS I hardly touch in games, except sometimes I play them here, just to have more variance, since the healers/tanks seem the most shafted of the 3 roles when it comes to variety of playstyles between them.

My ideal character has the ability to heal others. (be it a main healer, tank, or even DPS) melee with a 2hand sword, and wear plate armor. (for aesthetics. dont care if im squishy as a caster or not) Anything that does this, would very likely be my main class. (In the case of FFXIV, nothing does this, the closest is DRK, excluding the heal, soon to be GNB, but not a fan of gunblades, and PLD w/o a shield, though still not as good, even with a large 1 hander. Any healer kinda works, but lacks the 2hand sword. and for DPS, RDM is probably the closest.)

Though I think id favor a melee healer more than a tank, if allowed to melee with a 2hand sword, and had some sort of party mitigation/HP shields, that were interesting mechanically.
(While I hate DoTs, I love HoTs. I hate cast bars on anything, but tollerate short cast times, like the .5s casts, and some tolerance of 1s cast times.)

So it's not so much "tanks" im after, but they are the closest thing to what ive always wanted to be/play as.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes and no.

It's just a different perspective of the same core fantasy I have for any other role (or, more precisely, any other job): feeling like an integral part of my party, with nearly my every action being made in awareness of and fit unto the optimal actions of my party.

If/when I feel like my actions having nothing to do with my team, that fantasy fails. That's not to say that every skill must be a skill-chain component, but if I'm solo-diving an enemy, it's with the vital and exact intent to ensure that enemy dies before <X action> occurs, so that my party can <Y action/state>.

The problem is... if any party member in that system feels without agency and relevance, not only would their fantasy shatter, but so would everyone else's. Thus my fantasy would likely only ever be seen in inventive and extremely difficult dungeon content or the like.

That takes on very different aesthetics as a tank compared to when a healer, but even many of the functions are identical. I can mitigate damage by self-buffs and enmity control, by misdirection, by kiting, by suppression, or by outright killing it. In some other cases I even need only outlast it to mitigate all future damage. Some of those approaches may be consolidated mostly within a single role, but the goal is always universally approachable.

I have, give or take, three favorite aesthetics:

• the high-speed melee pseudo-saboteur with a sustained and significant damage presence and good damage banking (imagine a Monk, but far less braindead than in Shadowbringers and a with notable at-cost supportive/saboteur options);
• a ranged-melee hybrid with significant on-ally utility and a bit of on-enemy utility;
• and the "bastard" tank -- the subversive, tactical, but frequently clutch brawler with good ways of drawing enemies into disadvantageous situations.

[Big-Isaac]

I think if there needed to be a canon job for the player character to have, PLD would be the best contender, being an actual "warrior of light"

[FallenWings]

Frontline STR Warrior/Knight archetype

Nothing quite beats the feeling of actually engaging in actual combat with the enemy head on. Evading/Blocking their attacks and returning the pain, none of that "pure defensive" or "attack from afar/behind" nonsense. Just raw 1v1 fisticuffs.

FFXIV has indeed stripped Tanks of alot of mechanics and nuance and despite my shade at DPS roles, they do have the far more complicated, varied and rewarding mechanics. But my mental fantasy will always envy/want the Frontline fighter role and that will never allow me to truly give up on tanks.

[Kabooa]

I just want a shield fighter, man.

As much as paladin got pretty toys, WHERE ARE THE SHIELD ATTACKS