Tanking feels unimportant

[MerlinCross]

Join an Orbonne Monastery Raid, reach Thunder God boss, then come back and tell me how unimportant having a tank is. In fact, try any Savage or Ultimate content without a tank.

There's a difference between "Required" and "Unimportant".

Tanks are currently required because no other Job can take that damage, and if that's the only thing that makes tanks stand out, why have tanks? Also I see more groups wipe on Thunder God due to DPS running to the wrong spots. Or not taking teather for the Tank and expecting them to live through the multihit Damage taken up debuff. And even then, you'll probably get people that go "Well the tank can live through 1-2 procs so that gives us more time for damage before moving" or something.

Yeah okay fine. Go try Savage/Ultimate without a tank and get instant gibbed. Go ask the OT how they feel in such content though.

[Yorumi]

There's a difference between "Required" and "Unimportant".

Tanks are currently required because no other Job can take that damage, and if that's the only thing that makes tanks stand out, why have tanks?

This is a distinction without value. You could also just as easily say DPS classes are only required because of artificial enrage timers. The whole point of a tank in any game has always been that they're the only classes capable of taking the incoming damage. In any game a tank is only special because of their defense, a dps is only special because of their damage, and a healer is only special because of their heals. I guess I just don't understand what people want out of tank besides damage mitigation.

[MerlinCross]

This is a distinction without value. You could also just as easily say DPS classes are only required because of artificial enrage timers. The whole point of a tank in any game has always been that they're the only classes capable of taking the incoming damage. In any game a tank is only special because of their defense, a dps is only special because of their damage, and a healer is only special because of their heals. I guess I just don't understand what people want out of tank besides damage mitigation.

And yet we grade on damage across the board. Not how tanks they are, not how well they can take hits and use mitigation, just damage. If just hp and defense make a tank, I say again; axe the roles and let anyone who wants to take the tank buster.

What do I want besides CDs? Anything that doesn’t steer the discussion of tanks back to “blah blah blah, damage”. Managing Aggro, having to move the boss more, regaining Aggro if it’s lost, more mechanics that take advantage oh my HP and CDs besides just tanks busters. Because of how binary the fights are you could upgrade DRG to a tank with 4 new skills and tweaked stats. And if it’s that easy and uninteresting, what’s the point of tanks beats sandbag DPS. Heck, most people treat OT as one anyway.

What do YOU want out of a tank besides a DPS that can survive a tank buster? I don’t understand why people enjoy being a meaty DPS.

To put it a different way; when it feels like tanking could be done with a well programmed bot, yeah it doesn’t feel important. Do as much damage as you can, do DDR, and hit your CDs at these fixed points.

[Yorumi]

What do YOU want out of a tank besides a DPS that can survive a tank buster? I don’t understand why people enjoy being a meaty DPS.

To put it a different way; when it feels like tanking could be done with a well programmed bot, yeah it doesn’t feel important. Do as much damage as you can, do DDR, and hit your CDs at these fixed points.

Most any class in this game could be done with a well programmed bot. The thing is in MMOs mitigation is mostly passive. Defense is just a stat and depends mostly on gear. We of course have our cooldowns but that's still largely passive, the active component is mostly just knowing when to activate it. I mentioned Tera before, that's about the most active mitigation you could possibly get. It was cool but your primary rotation was just using damaging skills. That's just the way tanks work.

In terms of what a tank could actually do, well it gets complicated. Agro management is actually a healer and dps skill more than a tank skill. You could give them a rotation and the better it's executed the more agro they get but that's just dps by another name. If a dps can challenge a tank for agro then it mostly becomes about how finely they can push the limit more than how much the tank can generate. Most anything they could add to a tank could be done just as well by a dps. Can they not move? Can they not do a rotation to keep up buffs? In any mmo the only real difference between a dps and a tank is the cooldowns and passive elements. A tank has passive defense and defensive cooldowns, a dps has passive damage and damage dealing cooldowns.

The reason people are happy with tanks being heavily armored dps is because that's exactly what a tank is. In any MMO that's what they do. Their damage rotation generates agro and they have cooldowns for reducing incoming damage. Even in games with full active mitigation they still seek to maximize dps by doing dps rotations for agro and minimizing the uptime of their mitigation.

[JumpnShootnMan]

Thats because in this game, there is no need to sacrifice DPS for the sake of tanking and no random situations in which that would happen. Even when tank stances were a thing, you would barely use them as they were a means of generating initial threat before going to DPS stance as practically everything in the game was tankable without those stances (further made redundant by Shade Shift and Provoke+Shirk).

With every fight being scripted, its mostly a case following a dance where the most random occurrences never warrant the necessity of sacrificing DPS for mitigation, or calling for a situation where your tank tools could save the day since you should be using them (unless your in a terrible party but you could only do so much even then.) This isn't like how in WoW where stuff is often tied to a fast GCD, and that fast GCD makes OGCDs still tough to use without quick thinking. In XIV, you press a button between a 2.3-2.5s GCD, you don't sacrifice anything other than possibly delay an OGCD damage ability which you could double weave anyway.

Most of my enjoyment from playing tank is 1) I can play something akin to a "fighter" role as I can deal the damage and also take it, which is a role I love to play in most games; and 2) Simply having the boss or enemies look at me gives a greater sense of heroism that you would expect from a standard hero adventure, something that constantly looking at the back of the boss doesn't give. (Love all of my DRG, MNK, NIN, and even SAM friends). 3) Doing the job no-one really wants to do. After the hype for ShB ended, most people dropped DRK and GNB after realizing the role they actually are and went to another job. Getting my instant queues again feels all the more satisfying again.