Tanking feels unimportant

[RinaB]

I don't know if this has been talked about to death but the feel of the tank role in ff14 just feels very unimportant and I'm gonna rant. I haven't played this game as long as a lot of people but I was tanking well before ShB and you felt appreciated and were often thanked for playing the role and you wanted to perform perfectly (at least I did).

I'm not going to sit here and say I agree with all the class changes because I don't and I'm confused by overlooked issues but my biggest issue is with enmity. All the easy aoes the tanks have gotten and simplified rotations coupled with insane enmity generation just ruined the role imo. everyone and their dog is running around as a tank especially GNB and it's not nearly as common to get any player commendations even when you played perfectly because...who cares. I started leveling a healer for a bit of fun and the horrendous tanks are in no short supply but I feel like these tank changes just trivialized the role and promote bad gameplay.

pugging with other tanks? there used to be conversations about who was going to MT and OT etc and now you best just turn off your threat generator and let the GNB rush in even if they have no idea what they're doing. I'm ranting but it's sad to me for those out there who have dedicated themselves to the tank role for a long time get pushed into obscurity by the devs allowing any idiot to tank.

[Tlamila]

Uhm.
Bad tanks always existed. Most tanks in DF have always been bad, it's nothing to do with ShB.
I think I can count on the fingers of a single hand the times I've seen tanks discuss any strategy or role pre-pull.

I also never understood why a tank should be appreciated and thanked more than the rest of the group, every role has its difficulties and responsabilities, tanks are not some sort of heroes.

[Brightmore]

IMO they did that to incentive players to play a tank class and solve the waiting time for duties.
I think they should at this point relinquish comm system, it became more like a like button than anything else.
What I dislike on tanks now is their short tools it's 1, 2, 3 and hit one skill 5 times when not in CD.

[ReiMakoto]

Tanks rotations have not been simplified (maybe exception drk but thats pushing it). Aggro combos weren't interesting, they were a press once or twice a fight button then go back to dpsing. If anything theyve gained complexity in rotation, if only minor. Aggro was always a joke, especially in stormblood, on my DRK i didnt touch my tank stance button for literally all of Alphascape. In heavensward aggro combos were more used, but it was still 90%+ damage. The ShB emnity changes didnt ruin anything, they just streamline an unnecessary part of the kit

[Payadopa]

Personally speaking, tanking is too easy now. I liked the fact that I had to watch my mob flock and keep them from escaping while picking up stragglers. Now I just DPS. And I thought we already had like 100 DPS classes already.

A middle ground between the old and the new system would be nice.

[aqskerorokero]

A real is who is who can roll a dice, then play whatever tank comes up as result and play it in both Mt or Ot pos, actually if you start Ot you have more responsibility if shits go down.

[Phileas]

The issue is that they made tanking easier in terms of losing aggro management and lowering the skill floor since now you can set stance and forget.

However tanking mechanics in raids are not that interesting and a bit braindead. The only battle really where positioning might be important is E2S.

Tanking invulns also make a lot of mechanics quite trivial. There is never a time during savage raid where i have to worry about cooldown rotations.

Also whitemage damage can match or just be slightly lower than tanks. So it feels like tanks dont contribute much except holding the boss and aggro and taking a tank buster.

[RylaBee]

everyone and their dog is running around as a tank

And yet, even after 4th tank class added, most of the waiting in queues is due to waiting for a tank.

If you realy want to feel important (as any job, not just tank), start raiding EX and Savage. There, making bad move will kill not only you, but often wipe whole party.

This game does not offer hard version of 4-man content - I would love it too, but so far SE only says "We will consider it in the future".

[KalinOrthos]

Removing the DPS/tank stances, with the exception of gutted Warrior, was the best thing to happen to tanking, for me. I don't play a tank to just be a blue DPS, I play it to feel like a wall, and being forced by the meta-babies to be in DPS stance, something that got me kicked from my raid group back at the start of SB when I was undergeared and stayed in tank stance to not have aggro issues and to make life easier on the healers, made me almost leave the game permanently. Sorry, but I'm going to hard disagree with the idea that enmity management was fun, and just being able to turn it on or off is the way to go.

If you really want to feel "appreciated", even though that's really not why you should be tanking, go into Savage and EX trials. A good tank there is massively appreciated. You're not going to get much from the random plebs in DF, nor should you expect anything.

[shao32]

tanking is not rewarding to play anymore and the best is they didn't increase the amount of tanks with the oversimplification and generate only disatisfaction on WAR and DRK gameplays being gutted and cloned so poorly, even on trials and savage tanking don't represent a challenge due how low the skill ceiling is overall,