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

[Kabooa]

"30 potency" might not give it to you, but people are satisfied by many different things and if people are more satisdfied by that they are right to argue for it. You seem to believe changing proportions of damage doesnt change anything, but people can feel more satified with different proportions, even if the net effect is the same. Superficial as it may seem, people derive there satisfaction from things in ways other people don't understand because its personal to them. Also its been a few years but i don't think new war has more sustain than bloodbath warrior, if anything id put them about the same.

Which is fair.

I haven't said "Under no circumstances ever can tanks have more damage".

In fact in almost every 8th response there's a blurb about a small corrective adjustment that can happen to our current gamestate without upsetting anything, and even provided suggestions to allow greater gains, combined with basic examples of where decision making and thus gameplay come back into the fold.

It is incorrect to say "Tanks need more damage", but it is fine to say "Tanks want more damage". I concern myself mostly with the point "Tanks need more damage". When it's done under the guise of contribution, gameplay, or anything to try and mask it as necessity when in reality it's want.

I don't remember the exact specifications of warrior-only bloodbath in heavensward, or the role version. (Think it was 20% 20/90 for role), only that Steel Cyclone was the real offender, and that NF > Stormblood BB.

[Marxam]

I don't remember the exact specifications of warrior-only bloodbath in heavensward, or the role version. (Think it was 20% 20/90 for role), only that Steel Cyclone was the real offender, and that NF > Stormblood BB.

Bloodbath was roughly 25% heals from damage dealt for 30 secs and stacked with vengeance, in addition to Berserk (20 secs) increasing Attack Power by 50% which was insane when you think about it from a dps perspective since vengeance was no capped during that time. Also storms path was a flat 50% heal of damage dealt and did not scale with level unlike what we have now where it heals somewhere around 20% at lvl 80. It was insanely strong to those who know the BIIR rotation and essentially let healers dps for almost half a minute without worrying about the tank.

With regards to tank damage I think it's fine and its this whole meta of more dps that goes into every raid design. No longer is there a point where a phase transition penalizes you for too much dps like in coil. Honestly if they just redesign the fights to be more consistent with tanks keeping aggro like continuous adds or aggro resets and utilize rework tank stances back in the game I think the focus will shift from tanks need more damage to tanks need more utility.

[Kabooa]

Bloodbath.

Thank you, it's hard finding information on the old state of the game without scrubbing patch notes.

[Hunky]

I believe it's the amount of responsibility placed on tanks. Tanks usually are the ones to lead others in a dungeon. They determine the pace of a run. As a tank, you have to be more familiar with the layout of a dungeon and know how to navigate through it in an efficient manner (knowing where to stop pulling mobs and such). Healers and dps players follow the tank, and are usually not responsible for leading the group. There are times though when a tank receives assistance with navigation from a healer or dps.

On top of that, there's less room for error when it comes to tanking. Tanks always have to perform at an adequate level, or else the run is noticeably sloppier, or a failure. Healers also have to perform adequately, but if they are "pure healers", they are pressing way fewer buttons. While optimizing a dps rotation can be complex and challenging, dps players can perform a less-than-standard level. While this can make a run slower, it doesn't spell death for the group. Of course, there are instances where enrage is a potential threat and dps players must deal as much damage by optimizing their rotations. But these instances are not as common as instances where there is no enrage. Most players do not play high-end content like extreme trials, savage raids, etc. Generally speaking, tanks have more responsibility.

In 8-man groups, I would say the most stressful relationship would be between the two tanks. Two healers who don't communicate might end up overhealing, but no harm is done. Worst that can happen is one healer ends up raising a dead player when the other healer had just used up their swiftcast and raise spell. DPS players usually support one another with buffs. Tanks, on the other hand, have to shift aggro with provoke and shirk. If you're not communicating with your fellow tank, mistakes can be made (especially if one or both of the tanks don't know mechanics or when to exchange aggro). You could end up with a dead tank and the encounter suddenly becomes a potential wipe. The success of exchanging aggro depends on both tanks' knowledge of the encounter's mechanics.

I don't think people shy away from tanks due to difficulty. It's rather moreso due to responsibility and pressure to perform adequately. I don't think there will ever be a time when there is an equal distribution of tanks, healers, and dps. DPS will always be the most numerous, and tanks/healers will be the rarest. It all comes down to people not wanting the responsibility.

There was a study done by Iowa University a few years ago that correlated people's personalities with the roles they played in mmos. This study probably explains why people don't play tanks.

According to the study's findings, tanks are the most emotionally stable of the roles, whereas ranged dps had the lowest score on emotional stability. Could be that tanking, with all its responsibilities, does require a certain degree of emotional fortitude to be able to handle the critiques and comments from other players. According to the study, ranged DPS players tend to be more jittery and have more anxiety. This makes sense to me. I would say ranged dps is the least stressful of all jobs/roles (especially dancer and bard). Anyone who's trying to avoid playing a difficult class could easily go with dancer or bard (and avoid tank!). Of course, a lot of players level up jobs from every role, but few actually play tank as a main job.

[BarretOblivion]

Bloodbath was roughly 25% heals from damage dealt for 30 secs and stacked with vengeance, in addition to Berserk (20 secs) increasing Attack Power by 50% which was insane when you think about it from a dps perspective since vengeance was no capped during that time. Also storms path was a flat 50% heal of damage dealt and did not scale with level unlike what we have now where it heals somewhere around 20% at lvl 80. It was insanely strong to those who know the BIIR rotation and essentially let healers dps for almost half a minute without worrying about the tank.

With regards to tank damage I think it's fine and its this whole meta of more dps that goes into every raid design. No longer is there a point where a phase transition penalizes you for too much dps like in coil. Honestly if they just redesign the fights to be more consistent with tanks keeping aggro like continuous adds or aggro resets and utilize rework tank stances back in the game I think the focus will shift from tanks need more damage to tanks need more utility.

Meh, they would have to nerf healers then to make teams rely on that utility, else, who cares really? DPS>Ultility if it doesn't increase the party's DPS.

[MerlinCross]

Meh, they would have to nerf healers then to make teams rely on that utility, else, who cares really? DPS>Ultility if it doesn't increase the party's DPS.

And I dislike that, but that could probably use its own topic. I just dislike that Utility in this game is either never use or must have it seems.

[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.

[HeulGDarian]

Imo the reson why tanks arent popular is simple. They suck. Im not a tank main but i had to tank since no one else wanted to during stormblood, which is how imagine most People get into tanking. First of all the tanks dont feel complete with the exception of gnb. Not only was the aggro managment removed as meaningless business, something that Hurt every job mind you by removing game play, they also removed so many cooldowns
Stating that it was cause nobody used them. A moment of silence for convalescense, ultimatum and the other unsung heroes lost. The aggro management was something that gave responsibilty not only to the tank but everyone else as well and also keeping aggro in dps stance was what made tanking fun to me since you either had to be a good dps or ask for help from your co tank with a shirk or you could take the easy way and switch into tank stance and do a bit of aggro combo. Speakimg of that ill go to one of the biggest offenders this expans. Warrior, warrior was the Best tank in the game yet in shb all his power was removed nerfed split and the given as New exciting abilities gone are the days where you could self sustain and mitigate with Just your tank stance now youre all the time dps stance and you dont even have the 20% extra hp now. Not only that convalescense was so good on him. In fact you could do 30k plus critlos before shadowbringers which made them Best friend with sch. Now its Just another tank. Next is old Who had bulwark and seltron consolidate into one which sounds great but now without the role action ones he feels like he is lacking one self mitigation cooldowns and as a pld this sucks cause i always though pld was suppose to be the unbreakable wall/helping tank yet now it feels awkard to mt as him cause he has so many cds for ot making it feel like a waste to play like mt especially with that lacking CD. And lastly wtf did they do to poor dark knight. Self sustain gone, faster gcd buff gone, dark arts decision making gone, now he has a 60 second buff that couldnt drop even if i 90ked and Come back in. And they got inner release??? I guess the reasoning was it worked for war so meh. Only dark knight thing drk got was fray and that is more look than substance. Thats about it really tanks were gutted, tanks gameplay was gutted and alot of People Just gave up on them

[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.