What do you guys think is the cause of severe lack of Tank users?

[Xtrasweettea]

[snip]

I had this huge multi-page response on MS Word written up and I said "forget get, lol." So here's my TL;DR

• You're asking a group of people who do not want to get hit on purpose to get hit on purpose for the sake of control and dominance over three other people.
• Tank pulling allowed DPS and Healers to start damaging the mobs while in transit to another group of mobs to get a head start on killing, reducing burden on the healer and tank.
• Excessive damage can also be categorized by having the mobs left alive for too long, leaving the healer and tank depleted of efficient tools thanks to the DPS's damage being low (but we cannot say anything about that). Excessive damage isn't just the tank taking a good amount of damage per hit.
• Healers have more up-front responsibility of survival than the other two roles thanks to SE stripping almost all means of self-survival from those roles. Also, as more mobs die, that responsibility of keeping people alive reduces from healers.
• You want to give healers something else (pulling) for them to take the blame for too? The group of people who feel they get blamed for almost everything?

I play both tanks and healers, by the way. Healer a little bit more this expansion than tank, but about even. So, no bias here.

[SamRF]

What you said is only true if you know and/or trust your healer. Some healers won't take responsibility and many players don't want that BS.

Basically what I mean is that it would be the healer's fault at that point, so you may blame, complain or kick them then. After they have proven to cause a wipe by prepulling, not before. I think healer's will usually only pull more mobs in faceroll content where tanks are basically redundant anyway (that's when I used to do it) and still tanks get upset.

[SamRF]

I had this huge multi-page response on MS Word written up and I said "forget get, lol." So here's my TL;DR

• You're asking a group of people who do not want to get hit on purpose to get hit on purpose for the sake of control and dominance over three other people.
• Tank pulling allowed DPS and Healers to start damaging the mobs while in transit to another group of mobs to get a head start on killing, reducing burden on the healer and tank.
• Excessive damage can also be categorized by having the mobs left alive for too long, leaving the healer and tank depleted of efficient tools thanks to the DPS's damage being low (but we cannot say anything about that). Excessive damage isn't just the tank taking a good amount of damage per hit.
• Healers have more up-front responsibility of survival than the other two roles thanks to SE stripping almost all means of self-survival from those roles. Also, as more mobs die, that responsibility of keeping people alive reduces from healers.
• You want to give healers something else (pulling) for them to take the blame for too? The group of people who feel they get blamed for almost everything?

I play both tanks and healers, by the way. Healer a little bit more this expansion than tank, but about even. So, no bias here.

To your first point.. getting hit, be it on purpose or not, is something the healer has to deal with in the end because they are responsible for keeping the party alive.

And the other points, I'm not sure in what way we're at odds. I never said healers should be responsible for all pulling in general, just saying you should not feel offended or think its wrong when an individual healer does decide to pull another mob group. Not something that must be expected from healers in every dungeon run. A right, not a plight.

I think you may have misunderstood me or haven't read the context in which I made that post.

[Lyth]

I wonder what it would be like if Square Enix released potions without recasts so that tanks and dps could heal themselves quickly up to full without a healer. And we all know the sheer outrage from developers and players alike at the thought of tanks doing dps that threatens the 'real' damage dealers.

So by that same token, why do we have game design that allows non-tanks to pull mobs without getting instantly smashed into mush? Why do we have bosses that tank themselves? Nobody wants to play a role that lacks impact. Why is this such a difficult concept?

[SamRF]

I wonder what it would be like if Square Enix released potions without recasts so that tanks and dps could heal themselves quickly up to full without a healer. And we all know the sheer outrage from developers and players alike at the thought of tanks doing dps that threatens the 'real' damage dealers.

So by that same token, why do we have game design that allows non-tanks to pull mobs without getting instantly smashed into mush? Why do we have bosses that tank themselves? Nobody wants to play a role that lacks impact. Why is this such a difficult concept?

Sometimes feels like tanks are only necessary to catch tankbusters. Other than that they're just there to increase efficiency in most content it seems. I agree this shouldn't be the case.

[Lammas]

This is a contradiction to all the healers complaining about pally using clemency to do there job.

Healers are complaining about clemencydins because those people are wasting time doing something pointless.
In here we are complaining about small pulling tanks because they are wasting time doing something pointless.

I've been playing for awhile try pulling that nonsense on savage and see what happens.

What do either of those things have to do with pulling an extra mob for a tank in a dungeon?

If you're a good dungeon tank this doesn't even concern you because you'll just make those pulls yourself in the first place.

I had a healer pull for a tank in Anamnesis this week as all of us kept running and then the tank just stopped short. On the second time the healer just brought the next mobs to him. Nobody died, nobody complained and I'd assume 3 people out of 4 were glad that it happened.

[Ramura_Sono]

Sometimes feels like tanks are only necessary to catch tankbusters. Other than that they're just there to increase efficiency in most content it seems. I agree this shouldn't be the case.

That's not really a tank only thing though. "Sometimes feels like dps are only necessary to beat enrages. Other than that they're just there to increase efficiency in most content it seems."

[DRKoftheAzure]

That's not really a tank only thing though. "Sometimes feels like dps are only necessary to beat enrages. Other than that they're just there to increase efficiency in most content it seems."

So what's the healer equivalent of "Tank are only there for catching tankbuster/DPS are only there for beating enrage timers" then?

[Kabooa]

So what's the healer equivalent of "Tank are only there for catching tankbuster/DPS are only there for beating enrage timers" then?

Only there to "Keep hp from hitting 0"

[Lyth]

Sometimes feels like tanks are only necessary to catch tankbusters. Other than that they're just there to increase efficiency in most content it seems. I agree this shouldn't be the case.

That's not even all that necessary. Most game content only utilises one out of two tanks at any given time, with the other functioning as a wannabe damage dealer (who, let's face it, doesn't deal all that much damage nowadays, and is really just a glorified understudy waiting for their turn to actually pretend to tank something again). So you always have a back-up if one dies. And even in the catastrophic event that both tanks die, the tickle-me autos usually give your healer time to sort things out until a replacement tank can be pulled from the grave.

Efficiency is a really good thing, if you can provide it. Efficiency means that skill impacts performance. For a tank, that would be a situation in which your boss movement and re-positioning determined how well your melee landed positionals or allowed your casters to minimise movement. I pointed this out recently and one response was "b-but *gasp* melee will lose dps if you aren't up to par!" Yeah, but that's kind of what people want in skill based games. Recognition for good performance. A bit of agency, you know? It means that teams will want to have a good tank player on their side, rather than just "any tank player".