Tanking feels unimportant

[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.

[Allooutrick]

I could be mistaken but it feels like there's a lot less risk to underperforming as a tank now. When I started in SB it seemed like my health would melt if I mistimed a cooldown. Not so much anymore.

[BarretOblivion]

The removal of the stances honestly was fine. Aggro management was something that tanks didn't do, it was the group, not the tank in ShB outside of shirking twice a fight. If we go back aggro management we will just start barking at DPS again to watch their hate or healers to use lucid at X time. The biggest issue is the rotations. Besides PLD (PLD was always kinda brianless) all the other tanks became a brainless mess with GNB having a slight hint complexity somewhere. They didn't build on anything this expansion for tanks, they kinda just ripped what they had and set us back to square 1, and yes our damage got hit in the process. At some point I will question at least in Savage the point of the OT being forced into fights instead of having proper mechanics to do. At least in TEA it definately feels like both tanks are equally important, probably why enjoy it so much.

[MerlinCross]

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.

Yeah most jobs can be done with a bot, look at all the Black Mages used to farm for gold and mats to sell.

And if that's all the difference is between a tank and DPS I say again, Ax the roles. If anything that can be added to "Tanks" could be added to to the DPS and Healers to do instead, what's the point of a tank? To just stand there, unmoving and deal damage, hit your "not die button" at these points. This is beyond simple and boring so why not let any Job that wants to tank do it? Just change the numbers. There's only 4 things that seperate a tank from a DPS at this point; Stance and 3 CDs. Granted most Melee DPS have to move around the boss but that can just go away because who wants to actually move if they have to?

I'll be honest, I hate tanking now. I really do. The only time I have fun is if something is going wrong and we have to try and salvage it, or in older content where some of the mechanics are either new or mix up people. I still have fun in A5 because most the time I have to explain and then react to my fellow tank about Concussion. I don't see anything like that these days it's just "Here's particle effects dodge or die now".

Maybe you're right. Maybe Tanking isn't just for me. But tanking in this game is just so boring and unimportant to me for the most part.

The removal of the stances honestly was fine. Aggro management was something that tanks didn't do, it was the group, not the tank in ShB outside of shirking twice a fight. If we go back aggro management we will just start barking at DPS again to watch their hate or healers to use lucid at X time. The biggest issue is the rotations. Besides PLD (PLD was always kinda brianless) all the other tanks became a brainless mess with GNB having a slight hint complexity somewhere. They didn't build on anything this expansion for tanks, they kinda just ripped what they had and set us back to square 1, and yes our damage got hit in the process. At some point I will question at least in Savage the point of the OT being forced into fights instead of having proper mechanics to do. At least in TEA it definately feels like both tanks are equally important, probably why enjoy it so much.

Oh, you know because Tanks don't do as much damage, we could actually throw out the aggro combo some more. Oh right, tanks only feel good if they do damage right okay my bad.

Yeah okay I was a 'bad tank' cause I threw out the Aggro combos. I couldn't generate enough aggro on pure damage alone, I was 'wrong'. But I felt more like a tank role back then, and had more enjoyment in the sudden realization of "Oh hek, I need more aggro BLM is catching up". I never blamed DPS, I blamed myself for not paying attention.

Now? I just assume I have Aggro to the point I forget to turn on stance pretty often. I just assume I will auto aggro. Heck I wouldn't be surprised next Expansion they do that, with Stance giving a aggro bonus in Boss fights so the two tanks can figure out who's MT.

[Yorumi]

And if that's all the difference is between a tank and DPS I say again, Ax the roles. If anything that can be added to "Tanks" could be added to to the DPS and Healers to do instead, what's the point of a tank? To just stand there, unmoving and deal damage, hit your "not die button" at these points. This is beyond simple and boring so why not let any Job that wants to tank do it? Just change the numbers. There's only 4 things that seperate a tank from a DPS at this point; Stance and 3 CDs. Granted most Melee DPS have to move around the boss but that can just go away because who wants to actually move if they have to?

You're sort of missing the point. What separates an agro combo from a dps combo at a fundamental level? Nothing at all. When halone and royal authority were separate skills all that changed was one traded a few points of potency for an agro mod. You wouldn't be doing any more managing agro because the math nuts would just figure out exactly how much a agro a dps can generate over time and create a tank rotation based on that. Even if you added complexity to agro such that it clearly separated the good tanks from the bad all you've actually done is changed the number the tank is trying to maximize. In a way you could just change the label on the tank numbers of on parses from "dps" to "agro" generated. You're still ultimately performing the same actions a dps does only changing what you call it.

What I'm trying to get at here is that you're barking up the wrong tree or perhaps you don't actually want what you think you want. Perhaps you just want something more complicated to do during fights as a tank. That's fine and I agree they could do some more with tanks. On the other hand if you really want to separate yourself from a dps we're going to have to dive down a rabbit hole.

SE is catering to the player who just wants to be an all powerful god. That's why dungeons are so easy. Most video games do this, they don't ask for much real skill but make you think you're doing amazing. When you play something competitively like a fighting game you realize just how much games have been lying to you. Unless SE were to essentially say casual players can't tank, you'd get a lot of skill bloat. There are ways to make a tank feel like their role is reducing damage and controlling the mob more than dpsing but it would require a radical redesign of the tanking mechanics of this game. Most games go with the dps with armor route because they play it safe and this game plays it safest of all.

Going for the realistic here I'd like them to do with passage of arms type skills. It would be mostly window dressing but it would feel a lot more like you're actually defending your party.

[Seku]

This is because mitigation and aggro is binary. You live or you die, you hold aggro, or dont, damage however is not binary, theres always more to do, more ways to optimise the whole parties dps, sometimes through mitigation. Good use of tools leads to more damage, which is why it is the yardstick for all.

Dps is also Binary. You have enough to meet the DPS check before enrage or you don't. We strive to push it to a 1 shot. But anything beyond that is wasted DPS.

Tanking feels unimportant probably due to the fact that it isn't really interactive. As long as the game continues it's Fight's on rails approach it won't change (I can't speak for savage and ect but normal content I can).

They could make mitigation more interactive. Or if they continue with the standard press one button for damage reduction, put a bit of randomness to the enemy's rotation and lower the amount of damage that they enemy can take. But they won't do this either as the game is intended for a wide number of people, which means not making a majority of the content extremely hard or difficult.

For now guess we'll jsut have to stick to sprinting through dungeons with a brick wall on our back and standing there with a cool down up.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Dps is also Binary. You have enough to meet the DPS check before enrage or you don't. We strive to push it to a 1 shot. But anything beyond that is wasted DPS.

Not really. Higher DpS often shortens fights leading to few mechanics that need to be done. Take Zurvan Ex for example. You had 3 rough Tiers of DpS: "insufficient to clear," "sufficient to clear" and "more than enough to skip Soar."

Tanking feels unimportant probably due to the fact that it isn't really interactive. As long as the game continues it's Fight's on rails approach it won't change (I can't speak for savage and ect but normal content I can).

The fights are less on rails and more tightly choreographed with very short hard enrages. Fights are more determined by "can the party output enough dps to kill the boss before enrage" than "can the tanks and healers keep the party alive long enough for the dps to kill the boss."

Post-3.1, getting to enrage is more a question of properly handling mechanics rather than a test of the tanks' and healers' ability to deal with the damage the fight puts out. This is likely part of what makes the tanks feel unimportant.

Or if they continue with the standard press one button for damage reduction, put a bit of randomness to the enemy's rotation

The lack of randomness in high end boss attack patterns is the result of an attempt to make skill the primary determiner in completion of a fight rather than hoping that the RNG gives your group an easy pattern. They do not want World First Savage/Ultimate completion to be determined by which group was luck enough to get the easy pattern.

and lower the amount of damage that they enemy can take.

Lowering the amount of DpS need to complete a fight wouldn't make tanks more important even with added randomness. It would just make DpS even more important. It would actually require a very different fight design to make Tanks feel more important.

[Seku]

Not really. Higher DpS often shortens fights leading to few mechanics that need to be done. Take Zurvan Ex for example. You had 3 rough Tiers of DpS: "insufficient to clear," "sufficient to clear" and "more than enough to skip Soar."



The fights are less on rails and more tightly choreographed with very short hard enrages. Fights are more determined by "can the party output enough dps to kill the boss before enrage" than "can the tanks and healers keep the party alive long enough for the dps to kill the boss."

Post-3.1, getting to enrage is more a question of properly handling mechanics rather than a test of the tanks' and healers' ability to deal with the damage the fight puts out. This is likely part of what makes the tanks feel unimportant.



The lack of randomness in high end boss attack patterns is the result of an attempt to make skill the primary determiner in completion of a fight rather than hoping that the RNG gives your group an easy pattern. They do not want World First Savage/Ultimate completion to be determined by which group was luck enough to get the easy pattern.


Lowering the amount of DpS need to complete a fight wouldn't make tanks more important even with added randomness. It would just make DpS even more important. It would actually require a very different fight design to make Tanks feel more important.

By that logic mitigation isn't binary either. you have "Not enough mitigation, you die", "Enough mitigation, a healer can heal the tank up", "The tank has mitigated enough damage, no GCD or OGCd required HoT's will handle it" or the"Tank takes 0 damage from any method, no GCD or OGCD required from the healer." The only issue is that no one cares in a majority of cases about option number 3 or 4.

The fights are on rails. No boss has a different sequence in which they use their moves. It's the same rotation every....single...time. and how just about every group goes about approaching a fight. The only "change" is if you force a phase change by knocking it into another phase of the fight. But again, that rotation of the new phase will be the same and repeat every single time.

Your fourth point, may I have evidence please? I'm unaware of this statement being made by any official about randomness being excluded due to not wanting luck to be a factor in determining World First.

Lowering the damage as in, incoming damage to the boss. Not faster kills. Anything to slow the death of the boss down while increasing damage output on the party would force more of a defensive stance. The fact that we can get away with "deal enough damage to skip mechanics" is a major reason as to why DPS is valued, which you have agreed to

Fights are more determined by "can the party output enough dps to kill the boss before enrage" than "can the tanks and healers keep the party alive long enough for the dps to kill the boss."

If there is a hard cap on damage and a set length of the fight that people have to get through it forces players to actually do mechanics and soak / heal the damage, then DPS wouldn't be as important and would be a step in a different direction. This can be done a number of ways out side of lowering the damage dealt to the boss as well. But I do agree that the fight design would need to be vastly different than what 14 is currently offering.

Randomness of the monsters attack pattern while DPS is limited to a set amount (damage is already limited to be fair, but SE let's us do a lot while content is relevant) would put more focus on healer's and tanks. Reason being is that a fight can go very side ways out of the blue. This would make keeping a certain amount of MP pretty crucial for healer's and force them not to contribute as much to DPS and could force tank swapping in the case that one tank's cool down's run out. This would also make it harder for groups to optimize a fight as each encounter would be different.

You can also add in mechanics such as "If party or tank takes to much damage, X mechanic happens" and apply it through out the fight. Or "Monster uses Tank buster, check tank for Cool down, No cool down = bad things happen. Cool down = normal things happen."

[MerlinCross]

You're sort of missing the point. What separates an agro combo from a dps combo at a fundamental level? Nothing at all. When halone and royal authority were separate skills all that changed was one traded a few points of potency for an agro mod. You wouldn't be doing any more managing agro because the math nuts would just figure out exactly how much a agro a dps can generate over time and create a tank rotation based on that. Even if you added complexity to agro such that it clearly separated the good tanks from the bad all you've actually done is changed the number the tank is trying to maximize. In a way you could just change the label on the tank numbers of on parses from "dps" to "agro" generated. You're still ultimately performing the same actions a dps does only changing what you call it.

What I'm trying to get at here is that you're barking up the wrong tree or perhaps you don't actually want what you think you want. Perhaps you just want something more complicated to do during fights as a tank. That's fine and I agree they could do some more with tanks. On the other hand if you really want to separate yourself from a dps we're going to have to dive down a rabbit hole.

SE is catering to the player who just wants to be an all powerful god. That's why dungeons are so easy. Most video games do this, they don't ask for much real skill but make you think you're doing amazing. When you play something competitively like a fighting game you realize just how much games have been lying to you. Unless SE were to essentially say casual players can't tank, you'd get a lot of skill bloat. There are ways to make a tank feel like their role is reducing damage and controlling the mob more than dpsing but it would require a radical redesign of the tanking mechanics of this game. Most games go with the dps with armor route because they play it safe and this game plays it safest of all.

Going for the realistic here I'd like them to do with passage of arms type skills. It would be mostly window dressing but it would feel a lot more like you're actually defending your party.

We agree this game plays it safe.

That’s why tanking feels unimportant and there. You aren’t a tank your a DPS because they keep shaving off mechanics for tanks and refuse to add anything.

Also the “Aggro” debate, short term vs long term. Long term is; Kill boss before enrage. Short term is; making sure the DPS don’t get past you and get nuked, move/turn the boss, make a mess. Right now tanks really don’t have a short term goal/worry to deal with. Sit, DPS, DDR and hit CD when the telegraphed and on a timer buster comes out. Okay I’ve said I was a bad tank before but I had more fun being bad back then than being average/good now; as in I wasn’t good enough to never worry about Aggro.

And saying “But the math will be solved” is a bad response because that applies to everything. Damage, Aggro, Healing, Placement, Gear/Materia; everything. If we can’t add in aggro back because the rotation will be solved, why add in anything else, it will be solved. May as well make raids a math equation and save time

Can we at least agree that Tanks need something else but it won’t happen.

[Yorumi]

And saying “But the math will be solved” is a bad response because that applies to everything. Damage, Aggro, Healing, Placement, Gear/Materia; everything. If we can’t add in aggro back because the rotation will be solved, why add in anything else, it will be solved. May as well make raids a math equation and save time

Can we at least agree that Tanks need something else but it won’t happen.

What I mean by the first point is that if you had say an agro combo and dps combo you'd have no more complicated rotation. You'd just maximize by doing say 1 agro, 2 dps, repeat, or 1 agro, 1 dps, repeat, etc. I mean back in HW when I was running warrior on a group pull I'd do about 2 overpowers and call it a day. For a boss it was just an agro combo and turn off tank stance, they'd never catch up. My point is just that it won't solve anything.

Yeah I agree it would be nice to give more for tanks to do. A simple solution would be to give more interrupts to tanks and make them actually interrupt the actions of a boss. I don't totally excuse the devs but they are kind of stuck in a bad position. If they make one tank more complicated people will whine that it's not more powerful as a result. If it's more powerful as a result then it becomes required or trivializes content.