Tanking feels unimportant

[SargentToughie]

E1-4 normal and savage have been some of the most Tank dull fights we have had in a while. The tanks as a whole have a lot of new common tools with ShB, but those tools are very underutilized.

Only because you're not utilizing them yourself. Also, please clear E3S, and E4S before talking about all of Savage. Progging Titan demanded me to use basically all my tanking tools to make things easier on both myself and the party. To say nothing of Ultimate.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Only because you're not utilizing them yourself. Also, please clear E3S, and E4S before talking about all of Savage. Progging Titan demanded me to use basically all my tanking tools to make things easier on both myself and the party. To say nothing of Ultimate.

But he's not wrong though, it's been pretty bland as far as raid tiers go, forced swaps, double buster/ autos, and boss glued to the edge of the arena for the best part of two fights, make it pretty dull as far as things go from tank perspective.

[SargentToughie]

But he's not wrong though, it's been pretty bland as far as raid tiers go, forced swaps, double buster/ autos, and boss glued to the edge of the arena for the best part of two fights, make it pretty dull as far as things go from tank perspective.

It's no different from the previous tiers, though. Let's just pick a random previous raid tier: Sigmascape.

Phantom Train: The OT exists for a cart halfway through the fight, and to bait a Meteor, boss is otherwise pasted to the side with no movement. Small add phase in the middle.
Art Class: Omnidirectional boss that drives himself. Only tank mechanics in this fight are the TBs, and the OT cheesing those stacks with their invuln
Guardian: Position the boss, grab the adds, silence Ultros, and do Virus
Kefka/God: A compelling fight with a lot of stuff going on, mostly a positioning and healing check, however. I'll admit, I only cleared this fight on DRG so I can't speak to tank stuff, but he mostly jumps around and drives himself. Base kefka needs to be pointed towards/away from the tower near the end, based on true/false though.

There's more room for tanks to be given interesting gameplay, absolutely. That, however, is not the discussion being had here. This entire discussion is centered around "tanking is easy now because enmity is gone: Also I'm mad about DRK". If people want tanking to feel 'important' or better, just going back to the old tank stances won't be enough, and would actually be an active detriment in my opinion.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

It's no different from the previous tiers, though. Let's just pick a random previous raid tier: Sigmascape.

Phantom Train: The OT exists for a cart halfway through the fight, and to bait a Meteor, boss is otherwise pasted to the side with no movement. Small add phase in the middle.
Art Class: Omnidirectional boss that drives himself. Only tank mechanics in this fight are the TBs, and the OT cheesing those stacks with their invuln
Guardian: Position the boss, grab the adds, silence Ultros, and do Virus
Kefka/God: A compelling fight with a lot of stuff going on, mostly a positioning and healing check, however. I'll admit, I only cleared this fight on DRG so I can't speak to tank stuff, but he mostly jumps around and drives himself. Base kefka needs to be pointed towards/away from the tower near the end, based on true/false though.

There's more room for tanks to be given interesting gameplay, absolutely. That, however, is not the discussion being had here. This entire discussion is centered around "tanking is easy now because enmity is gone: Also I'm mad about DRK". If people want tanking to feel 'important' or better, just going back to the old tank stances won't be enough, and would actually be an active detriment in my opinion.

Sure Phantom Train and Chardanock weren't terribly exciting from a tank perspective admittedly, and optimised strats, you could forgo OT for another DPS in Phantom Train.

Having positioning requirements and dealing with adds that carry their own set of mechanics in Guardian was exciting, but was a fail in regards job design at the time, namely paladins abhorrent ability to generate aggro without seriously butchering it's flow of the job in comparison to WAR or DRK.

Kefka was probably the most enjoyable fight as tank overall for me in Sigma, especially god kefka, mostly for the positioning aspect, which became crucial to carry out certain mechanics, and the flow of the fight, making use of veil and cover, overall just felt good in all honesty as a tank.

As for your final points, tbh, most tanks did one combo in tank stance and swapped to DPS stance for the rest of the fight, people will sensationalize or look through rose-tinted glasses, but aggro was a dead mechanic since 3.x. Removing aggro combos that were scarcely used, and removing the penalty on tanks doing their job is a good thing for the role.

I'm not surprised about the DRK crying, it's all I ever see, but personally I never enjoyed dark knight to begin with, too much cringe for my taste. Strictly my view on the matter, and each to their own, but I wholeheartedly agree on not turning this into, 'just another dark knight thread', instead of a tanking in general thread. More tanking mechanics specifically fight designs by large extension, and tools that would help us better or uniquely do things that haven't been done before to a smaller extent, not q.q over drk.

[MerlinCross]

Only because you're not utilizing them yourself. Also, please clear E3S, and E4S before talking about all of Savage. Progging Titan demanded me to use basically all my tanking tools to make things easier on both myself and the party. To say nothing of Ultimate.

"All my tanking tools", which are? Really the only new tool we got was Arm's Length which, thank god for that don't get me wrong. But I see nothing new in the "Tanking Tools" that we didn't have before other than, more damage.

There's more room for tanks to be given interesting gameplay, absolutely. That, however, is not the discussion being had here. This entire discussion is centered around "tanking is easy now because enmity is gone: Also I'm mad about DRK". If people want tanking to feel 'important' or better, just going back to the old tank stances won't be enough, and would actually be an active detriment in my opinion.

And yet something changed from Stormblood to Shadowbringers to make it feel like my job could be done with a pet. Enmity isn't the only issue, design and expected/predicted numbers are also a problem. However any changes to either seem unlikely or result in gnashing of teeth from the Tank community, so Enmity seems to be the best option to try and work with, and even then it has it's own problems/expectations.

Randomized damage? Complained till nerfed or mathed out and here's your rotation.
More movement? Complained again, by Tanks and Melee DPS.
Spiced up adds? OT's problem, keep hitting the boss MT.
Enmity brought back and spiced up? Oh we want to deal damage/Aggro combo twice and be fine.

I can't think of a design/gameplay addition that won't get instantly solved or complained about which in my mind, vastly limits the design of what you can do with Tanks. Why try to be different or make it feel better if the majority of tanks are so willing to be Blue DPS and argue against trying to be anything else(Which is why I partially suggest going full damage, self sustain gameplay to skip this trend rather than letting it grow slowly).

I'm not saying Tanking had a 'golden age' or something like Enmity of the past was best(Titan tanking Ramuh kinda proves that wrong). Though I have to ask, why would adding in the old tank stances be a detriment? Someone like you and other hardcore raiders should be able to manage it to the point it doesn't exist anyway, so how does that harm your fun?

Something happened during the expansion transition and none of the tanks feel fun to play anymore, at least to me. WAR feels the best mainly due to animations and flow, but I play it more to skip the long timers than "oh boy I want to play WAR for this". Again, not saying there was some Golden Age of tanking, as everyone has their own opinions, but I had more fun back in Heavensward tanking, and even Stormblood. Enmity, Design, and Tank Kits; something about all three has changed or flat removed has affected how tanking feels to me.

Or maybe Tanking was already so Shallow that merely sheering off the details/fat of the role has let me see more clearly that it's a Blue DPS at it's heart. Something I could deal with with the extra bits covering it but laid bare now maybe it is just me growing out of the role.