Tanks and super pulls

[Shurrikhan]

This is throwback behavior from previous expansions. Because there is a preconceived notion of what a tank is and how they should act and I think in Stormblood it finally came to a head.

It came to a head long before that. And while the notion can certainly be conceived prior to actual play, actual play also proves it out.

Last Expac, people took the concept of 'optimization' and ran with it. Hard. Even in basic content you were expected to optimize, and Tanks were often the worst offenders where if you took enmity from them you could expect A) a shirk, B) verbal abuse, or C) a vote-kick. Or if they were passive aggressive they just wouldn't take aggro back so you could lie there dead and think about what you'd done.

They've run with that concept since 1.x. It's called wanting to be good at a game.

This squeezing every drop of dps to the detriment of your role, your class and your enjoyment of the game is why this Expac has neutered so many jobs.

Squeezing out every drop of dps is no detriment to one's role or class. Being shortsighted, blowing cooldowns too early, or forcing others to lose more dps in compensating for your actions than your actions gained (such as not sufficiently healing), does. But that, too, is a failure to squeeze out dps.

The super-pull was part of that community tank expectation and unfortunately still carries on to this day. I've seen my group wipe 3 times to the same pull before the tank either leaves or finally adjusts. For those of you who pull to your group or to the duty layout--I'm glad you're the next generation of tanks. I miss smart pulls, instead of just big ones.

Smarts are a requisite only for the big pulls, and only while undergeared. A small pull has almost never also been a smart pull since early Amdapor Keep.

That said, if the tank and healer cannot handle big pulls, they are wasting dps. The question is whether you allow them to learn their roles or complain that they're wasting your time (in the short run) when they're learning how not to waste people's time (in the long run).

Now, to be fair, I wish the game gave us reasons to vary our pull size. I'd like to have reason to use CC. I'd like to have reason to burn down specific mobs first. But the community doing as it has isn't, in this case, a mark of collective insanity. It's just a mark of a incredibly barebone dungeoning experience that does little to lend itself to any other playstyle.