Tanking feels unimportant

[HollyWhyte]

It's rather sad what people have accepted as tanking in these modern times. Things like "threat management is pointless and boring", for example. The point of a tank has ALWAYS been to manage threat, and ideally tanking should be a mix of threat management, mob placement, managing one's defensives, watching out for the party, and THEN damage. Like, seriously, how could any self-respecting tank say threat management is boring? That's the point of tanks!

Without a threat management component, tanks are just literally beefier, less damaging blue DPS. The rotations are all boring and no matter how much my weapon is upgraded, my attacks never feel impactful even during burst cooldowns. When DPS are good, you notice. Look at how varied the DPS classes are and how noticeable dungeon clear times are when they are played well. What happens when I play well as a tank? My healer can stand around and do their own boring DPS rotation more? Woohoo. Healers don't seem to like their 1 DoT 1 nuke 1 AoE options either.

I would LOVE it in the next expansion if they made tanking engaging again, because without a threat management component I just feel like a mediocre, unimpactful DPS. Tanking and healing should have their own rewarding experiences, and they should stop trying to just make us all different colors of DPS because if I wanted to DPS I would just play a DPS.

Like, even the cooldowns are boring. I could just not use reprise, dark mind, dark missionary, etc in boss fights and most healers would never notice or care about the 10% reduction in damage. The only thing that seems to matter is blocking the tank buster.

And before someone says "Well savage raiding", the game should not be just about that one, singular aspect. Many aspects of the game should be fun and abilities/good job play should matter and feel rewarding in more than just the top few fights.

[Yorumi]

I would LOVE it in the next expansion if they made tanking engaging again, because without a threat management component I just feel like a mediocre, unimpactful DPS. Tanking and healing should have their own rewarding experiences, and they should stop trying to just make us all different colors of DPS because if I wanted to DPS I would just play a DPS.

I don't know when tanking has ever really been engaging in this game. I mean back in HW on pld scorn was enough to hold targets until dps could aoe them down and it had a short enough cooldown that it would be up again before things got out of hand. At worst I'd have to tab to a target and hit it with a halone. Warrior was even easier with just overpower spam. Tank swap was never an issue even before shirk as all you did was provoke and one agro combo and you'd secure it forever. I would certainly appreciate some more complicated mechanics but lets not kid ourselves from ARR tanking has been a 1,2,3 affair.

[Ultimatecalibur]

It's rather sad what people have accepted as tanking in these modern times. Things like "threat management is pointless and boring", for example. The point of a tank has ALWAYS been to manage threat, and ideally tanking should be a mix of threat management, mob placement, managing one's defensives, watching out for the party, and THEN damage. Like, seriously, how could any self-respecting tank say threat management is boring? That's the point of tanks!

Threat management was always pointless. If you were Tanking as intended (with Tank Stance on) a properly geared Tank never had enmity problems with equally geared dps and healers. The "enmity game" was always a player creation completely built from HW era "how much can I tank in dps stance without losing hate."

[xvshanevx]

I don't need to be "thanked" for the role I main, but, jesus christ, does it get old always hearing "tanking is the easiest role in the game" or "tanking is too easy now".

A little appreciation goes a long way.

[Karious]

Tanking does feel like a DPS class these days. It wasn't like that in Stormblood or Heavensward.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Tanking does feel like a DPS class these days. It wasn't like that in Stormblood or Heavensward.

That's not true. Especially Warrior felt more like a DPS then a tank in Stormblood.

[KalinOrthos]

That's not true. Especially Warrior felt more like a DPS then a tank in Stormblood.

Because, for all intents and purposes, it was. Hell the raid that kicked me out had me as MT even when I was undergeared, because they wanted the Warrior to focus on DPSing.

[Karious]

That's not true. Especially Warrior felt more like a DPS then a tank in Stormblood.

Well, I can't say I ever played Warrior beyond leveling to 70, so I don't know much about it playing like a DPS. PLD and DRK felt more like tanks. Idk how to describe it.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Well, I can't say I ever played Warrior beyond leveling to 70, so I don't know much about it playing like a DPS. PLD and DRK felt more like tanks. Idk how to describe it.

That was possibly due to the Counter mechanics those Jobs had. The PLD and DRK had abilities that would potentially proc when they took damage between ARR and StB.

PLD's Shield Swipe proced off blocking which meant that every time you successfully blocked you could weave a counter into your rotation. Shield Swipe's initial ARR version was on gcd while the HW and StB versions became an ogcd. With a 15s ogcd you could expect it to proc between 2 and 4 times every minute while MTing

During HW, DRK had procs tied to parrying. Every Parry activated Reprisal and had a 30% chance of resetting Low Blow's cool down. During StB this was replaced by TBN generating Blood when it broke allowing for a Bloodspiller/Quietus. Combine this with Blood Price recovering MP when hit and DRK played differently while being the one taking hits.

When you were actively tanking something the rotations of these jobs changed some unlike the unchanging rotation of the Warrior.

[KalinOrthos]

That was possibly due to the Counter mechanics those Jobs had. The PLD and DRK had abilities that would potentially proc when they took damage between ARR and StB.

PLD's Shield Swipe proced off blocking which meant that every time you successfully blocked you could weave a counter into your rotation. Shield Swipe's initial ARR version was on gcd while the HW and StB versions became an ogcd. With a 15s ogcd you could expect it to proc between 2 and 4 times every minute while MTing

During HW, DRK had procs tied to parrying. Every Parry activated Reprisal and had a 30% chance of resetting Low Blow's cool down. During StB this was replaced by TBN generating Blood when it broke allowing for a Bloodspiller/Quietus. Combine this with Blood Price recovering MP when hit and DRK played differently while being the one taking hits.

When you were actively tanking something the rotations of these jobs changed some unlike the unchanging rotation of the Warrior.

I would very much like to have some of these mechanics back. I remember falling in love with PLD and DRK back in Heavensward because it made the jobs feel that much more active. I do like that TBN is tied to Dark Arts, I think that's a better use of it than the way DA was in StB, but it just doesn't feel the same. Give Gunbreaker a Trigger ability tied to Camo's increased Parry rate. Give Paladins back Shield Swipe procs. Give Dark Knight something more than TBN bubble. Give Warrior literally anything.