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

[Vyrerus]

To answer the OP:
1. Tanks have been nerfed 3 times in regards to the damage dealt, along with their complexity. It started in Heavensward when they first shifted Tanks from relying on STR for ATP to 45% of STR + VIt for ATP, echoed into Stormblood moving back to STR and making tank accessories VIT only, until a little later on after outcry/people using level 60 accessories for damage until Sigmascape.

2. By trying to make Tanking more inviting to general players, rather than doubling down and making it feel like home to people that love it, SE has erred greatly. Psychologically, most people do not like playing Tank. The reasons for this are myriad and vary person to person.

3. The new job being a tank only works for a short time to increase the tank population. People will level it out of love for its fresh look and aesthetic, but very few will stick to tanking just to enjoy that aesthetic.

4. Tanking involves some level of accepting responsibility within a party dynamic as well as making decisions. Most people in this day and age are horrible at making decisions, even if they are as small as, "Should I pull one group or two?"

5. In high end content, other players look down on tanks and treat them like numb skulls, unless the tank is exceptional. This usually involves the Tank having proven themselves in roles other than tank, putting the group into the mindset of, "He's an exceptional player."

6. There's no longer any knowledge dynamic or race for enmity. It's a binary of, "Is stance on?" "Yes." You're tanking. "No." You're not tanking. This means an entire branch of joy from actually being good at managing that, though it wasn't much harder than it is now, was destroyed.

7. Enmity Combo vs. Damage Combo removal. Ties into #6. Before you had a choice on tank between doing more damage/gaining more resource, or edging yourself up a little higher on the enmity table. WAR had a weird thing where, depending on a lot of factors, the enmity combo did more damage(and back in Heavensward it just did more). This let you make a a risk/reward choice that felt good if your choice paid off.

8. Big changes to two of the older tanks resulted in longtime players of those tanks no longer enjoying them. Ties into #2. No self heal on Inner Beast/Inner Chaos is criminal. What was once a 300% of damage dealt heal no longer heals at all. While people complained about Dark Arts, it was a cool animation, and originally allowed DRK to buff itself in unique, albeit sometimes useless ways. The fact that it was a CD that could be used for damage or for mitigation enhancement is why it was fun. There was also the fact that DRK could self sustain on big pulls, the larger the better with DA + Abyssal Drain spam. Self sustaining on the wall to wall pull right after Magitek Scorpion in Ala Mhigo was the most fun I had on a tank in a dungeon.

There's more, but there's also a character limit.

[MerlinCross]

The new job being a tank only works for a short time to increase the tank population. People will level it out of love for its fresh look and aesthetic, but very few will stick to tanking just to enjoy that aesthetic

To add to this, having the poster job be a Tank job also brings people in but this is short term gains, there’s not a whole lot to keep them in the job.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

7. Enmity Combo vs. Damage Combo removal. Ties into #6. Before you had a choice on tank between doing more damage/gaining more resource, or edging yourself up a little higher on the enmity table. WAR had a weird thing where, depending on a lot of factors, the enmity combo did more damage(and back in Heavensward it just did more). This let you make a a risk/reward choice that felt good if your choice paid off.

Dunno why people still try highlight this as if it was something good, Aggro combos sucked hard, they were terribly implemented and disrupted the flow of rotations. EVERY tank actively looked to avoid using their respective aggro combo, especially paladin who took the biggest loss by a large margin compared to the other tanks as it forced it's rotation out of raid buffs. WAR saw the ability to circumvent any use of Butcher's Block combo thanks to utilising unchained, equilibrium and the stupid amount of burst from IR. DRK suffered a loss of mana and blood gauge, but initial potency remained the same on the aggro combo as it did on the Souleater combo, iirc.

Honestly to argue they should have kept combos, that were actively and adamantly avoided to quite extreme levels kinda stands to reason they should not be kept which I agree with SE decision in their removal, only adds to button bloat for some of the tanks, and keeping them would have prevented the rotation that we have for GNB, or prevented devs fleshing out AoE a bit more for tanks. The only people I've seen use Aggro combos en masse are the idiots that insisted on OT followed up with spamming aggro combo and not having a clue at level cap what they are doing, thus punishing tanks that wanted to avail of tanking in dps stance. It was more whatever if they were actually holding aggro as it didn't impact the other tank.

[ReiMakoto]

Dunno why people still try highlight this as if it was something good, Aggro combos sucked hard, they were terribly implemented and disrupted the flow of rotations. EVERY tank actively looked to avoid using their respective aggro combo, especially paladin who took the biggest loss by a large margin compared to the other tanks as it forced it's rotation out of raid buffs. WAR saw the ability to circumvent any use of Butcher's Block combo thanks to utilising unchained, equilibrium and the stupid amount of burst from IR. DRK suffered a loss of mana and blood gauge, but initial potency remained the same on the aggro combo as it did on the Souleater combo, iirc.

DRK did suffer a loss of mana regen, however it was in the unique position where it didnt even need tank stance to draw its aggro. This is cos after the buffs towards the middle of SB their aggro combo finisher not only got upgraded so when dark arts it would do the same damage as a dark arts soul eater (meaning you only lost 20 potency across the whole combo discounting the mana gained from syphon) but the DA version of power slash had a ridiculously high aggro modifier, basically double that of the other tanks aggro combo finisher, on top of dealing more damage, and cos it wasnt crazy enough it had a built in "flash" effect generating even more aggro. On top of that DRK had a crazy high aggro mod on Dark Passenger as well which was dps nuetral if you had a smn in your party. This made aggro on drk even more braindead than most other classes as you didnt even need to touch your tank stance to generate a shit load of aggro, which is even more of a reason why aggro needed to be ditched, the entire mechanic existed for your opener or add spawns/aggro resets, and it wasn't even engaging. Bringing back aggro managment on tanks is a mistake.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

DRK did suffer a loss of mana regen, however it was in the unique position where it didnt even need tank stance to draw its aggro. This is cos after the buffs towards the middle of SB their aggro combo finished not only got upgraded so when dark arts it would do the same damage as a dark arts soul eater (meaning you only lost 20 potency across the whole combo discounting the mana gained from syphon) but the DA version of power slash had a ridiculously high aggro modifier, basically double that of the other tanks aggro combo finisher, on top of dealing more damage, and cos it wasnt crazy enough it had a built in "flash" effect generating even more aggro. On top of that DRK had a crazy high aggro mod on Dark Passenger as well which was dps nuetral if you had a smn in your party. This made aggro on drk even more braindead than most other classes as you didnt even need to touch your tank stance to generate a shit load of aggro, which is even more of a reason why aggro needed to be ditched, the entire mechanic existed for your opener or add spawns/aggro resets, and it wasn't even engaging. Bringing back aggro managment on tanks is a mistake.

I remember the buffs to DRK aggro management, but I rarely played DRK outside levelling it, just never been a fan of the job on the whole, personally. Because of this, I only touched on what I do recall for a fact, omitting the minor details that I couldn't recall, and yes, Dark Arts boosted Power Slash was insane amounts of aggro generation.

Like you, I don't really see the need to bring back aggro management, it was never remotely engaging. You pulled boss in stance, WAR did it's thing, other two did one aggro combo, dps stance rest of the fight, with the odd voke and shirk if the fight allowed it. With everything taken away from tanks, with little to no return, I would like more heavily focused tank mechanics be added to fights, (not run to the side of a wall to bait fire tornados just because...why not...), but since they have had two-thirds of a raid series to address this and failed miserably, I would rather tanks get a slightly bigger piece of the damage pie to compensate for the lacking on the dev teams part for neglecting tanks, outside of minor defensive buffs made to WAR and QoL to Reprisal. Further, I find it difficult to see them adding decent tank mechanics into savage next tier either at this rate; it's only been TEA so far that I've actually had any fun with tank aspects.

Once engaging tank mechanics have been incorporated into fight designs, then revise whether tanks should take a DPS cut or not, but after playing tanks for 5 years it's getting pretty sad putting in so much efforts to optimise rotations and get so little out of it in return.

[Vyrerus]

Dunno why people still try highlight this as if it was something good, Aggro combos sucked hard, they were terribly implemented and disrupted the flow of rotations. EVERY tank actively looked to avoid using their respective aggro combo, especially paladin who took the biggest loss by a large margin compared to the other tanks as it forced it's rotation out of raid buffs. WAR saw the ability to circumvent any use of Butcher's Block combo thanks to utilising unchained, equilibrium and the stupid amount of burst from IR. DRK suffered a loss of mana and blood gauge, but initial potency remained the same on the aggro combo as it did on the Souleater combo, iirc.

Honestly to argue they should have kept combos, that were actively and adamantly avoided to quite extreme levels kinda stands to reason they should not be kept which I agree with SE decision in their removal, only adds to button bloat for some of the tanks, and keeping them would have prevented the rotation that we have for GNB, or prevented devs fleshing out AoE a bit more for tanks. The only people I've seen use Aggro combos en masse are the idiots that insisted on OT followed up with spamming aggro combo and not having a clue at level cap what they are doing, thus punishing tanks that wanted to avail of tanking in dps stance. It was more whatever if they were actually holding aggro as it didn't impact the other tank.

Only in Stormblood, and only after WAR was fixed. Not before. As far as hate combos, "disrupting" a tank's rotation, that is only because SE chose to make it a design where to generate enmity would deal less damage or to focus on higher damage would = less enmity. And really, tanks only got away with not using hate combos in Stormblood raiding because SE took the responsibility out of tanks' hands by giving everyone and their mom huge enmity mitigators or dumps, with mitigators having the edge. It then became the party's responsibility to let the tanks tank, rather than the tanks' responsibility to keep agro because, "Muh parse, muh what if 0.1% wipe?!" But really more because, with other people being able to reduce their enmity, it meant the function of hate combos became moot. Why trade damage for enmity when you don't need to?

Without those mitigators in place, like in Heavensward where they were either non-existent or so weak that they hardly affected hate, the importance of agro generation was always a consideration. Riding the line was where the fun was at. No way to ride it now.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Only in Stormblood, and only after WAR was fixed. Not before. As far as hate combos, "disrupting" a tank's rotation, that is only because SE chose to make it a design where to generate enmity would deal less damage or to focus on higher damage would = less enmity. And really, tanks only got away with not using hate combos in Stormblood raiding because SE took the responsibility out of tanks' hands by giving everyone and their mom huge enmity mitigators or dumps, with mitigators having the edge. It then became the party's responsibility to let the tanks tank, rather than the tanks' responsibility to keep agro because, "Muh parse, muh what if 0.1% wipe?!" But really more because, with other people being able to reduce their enmity, it meant the function of hate combos became moot. Why trade damage for enmity when you don't need to?

You are discounting the benefit of Shirk which was a major reason that tanks could tank in dps stance to the point of not needing tank stance outside of openers and enmity resets. Circle Shirking had the tanks OT Shirk -> OT Provoke -> MT Shirk (OT swaps in with a 140%+ the enmity the MT started with and the former MT is likely between 80%~90% the enmity they started with) during swaps and OT Provoke -> MT Shirk -> MT Provoke -> OT Shirk (MT ends with ~156% their starting enmity and OT ends with ~94% the MT's starting enmity) without tanks swaps to increase their enmity leads by massive amounts.

Without those mitigators in place, like in Heavensward where they were either non-existent or so weak that they hardly affected hate, the importance of agro generation was always a consideration. Riding the line was where the fun was at. No way to ride it now.

In HW, enmity was mostly ignored as well. The main way fights were done involved a Warrior pulling and abusing Equilibrium, Unchained and Strength Accessories to generate a massive enmity lead that would allow both Tanks to swap to DpS stance for the remainder of the fight with the lead mostly maintained by tank dps rotations.

Even if you had a Vit Accessory tank, enmity was not a problem if they sat with tank stance on and did their dps rotation. The "Enmity Game" was completely artificial and made possible by tank access to Str Accessories.

[Vyrerus]

shirk stuff

Nobody forgot about Shirk. It's not worth mentioning, in the context of hate combos, because it's one of the things that helped people shy away from them. You know, swapping before Shirk entailed loading up that enmity combo and then provoking and getting up past the other tank by force.

In Heavensward, if you had a WAR, and if they were MTing like they should have been, yeah, sure. And that's largely also due to Butcher's Block at the time being the higher damage combo for the WAR's rotation as well. DPS did catch up to tanks in those days, PLD and DRK, DRK especially, were really easy to catch on hate. Of course, then came swapping with the WAR, and what did that entail? The WAR either curbing his use of Butcher's Block or the PLD or DRK putting on their tank stance on top of the enmity combos... unless you wanted to risk that back and forth. Enmity was much more of a game back then.

[ReiMakoto]

Nobody forgot about Shirk. It's not worth mentioning, in the context of hate combos, because it's one of the things that helped people shy away from them. You know, swapping before Shirk entailed loading up that enmity combo and then provoking and getting up past the other tank by force.

In Heavensward, if you had a WAR, and if they were MTing like they should have been, yeah, sure. And that's largely also due to Butcher's Block at the time being the higher damage combo for the WAR's rotation as well. DPS did catch up to tanks in those days, PLD and DRK, DRK especially, were really easy to catch on hate. Of course, then came swapping with the WAR, and what did that entail? The WAR either curbing his use of Butcher's Block or the PLD or DRK putting on their tank stance on top of the enmity combos... unless you wanted to risk that back and forth. Enmity was much more of a game back then.

Trust me, if you were playing properly emnity was really not a thing. At most you did 1-2 aggro combos at the start of a fight in tank stance, then you dps'd the rest of the fight, and that was playing the most safe. Ninjas shadewalker and smokebomb also helped with this in hw. Aggro was always a joke.

Edit: Even in ARR aggro was a joke, ranged/casters had quelling strikes, and both tanks main dps combo was their aggro combo so even stanceless maintaining aggro was easy. In HW ninja's made it even easier, as even though tanks had dps combos now, ninjas could curb the aggro gen of other melee dps.

[MerlinCross]

Trust me, if you were playing properly emnity was really not a thing. At most you did 1-2 aggro combos at the start of a fight in tank stance, then you dps'd the rest of the fight, and that was playing the most safe. Ninjas shadewalker and smokebomb also helped with this in hw. Aggro was always a joke.

Edit: Even in ARR aggro was a joke, ranged/casters had quelling strikes, and both tanks main dps combo was their aggro combo so even stanceless maintaining aggro was easy. In HW ninja's made it even easier, as even though tanks had dps combos now, ninjas could curb the aggro gen of other melee dps.

Which I thought was a bad idea given that Ninja was valued for Trick attack. Giving NIN those aggro tools made it basically an instant lock. But that’s a whole other balance topic