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

[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

[SamRF]

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.

About ARR, true for boss fights but less so for dungeons. It might have also been easy for dungeons but it had nuance. It was a unique mechanic for the tanking role and keeping enmity on mobs wasn't that easy from what I remember, it definitely required the tank stance (however I only remember the leveling experience well). I had only played Paladin and you had Flash which also required MP and wasn't the greatest enmity tool especially with well geared dps. Many players marked mobs so they could get killed in order and enmity could be kept under control. Imo felt somewhat like a more real and less arcade-ish experience which was nice.

That said, PLD rotation was disgustingly boring and I'd take current PLD over that any day.

[Lyth]

Enmity management is not an intrinsic part of tanking. Human players in PvP games ignore enmity, and yet tanks still often exist in these games.

Tanking is about how you control the space around you and your team. It doesn't matter whether it's because the AI is told to attack you specifically (enmity) or because you represent a credible threat in being able to intercept/stun/punish a human player who tries to slip past you, so long as you have a means to control the fight.

Several adds spawn around the arena. The tanking 'test' is never about knowing what enmity buttons to press. It's about knowing when and where they pop up, and corralling them in the shortest period of time (ideally before they eat your healers).

The removal of the old stance system and enmity combos didn't take anything away from tanking that wasn't already lacking in raid design. As for the question of bloat, well, the majority of the buttons that you press in any MMO are bloat. Pressing several buttons when just one would suffice helps to soothe and reassure you that you're doing something skillful when you're grinding mind-numbing content ('look at how complex my rotation is, even though the decision-making never changes'). That's why some of the more mechanically complex genres out there have much fewer buttons (but are more positioning dependent).

[Vyrerus]

Snip

I'm not sure how long you've played, possibly longer than me, possibly not, but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity, and it was only present on skills and spells themselves. The tank I took up back then was Warrior. To hold hate in AOE, you had to have Maim + Berserk, and then you had to go through each monster with your enmity combo as fast as you could, or you were going to lose something. When they added enmity to stance and to overpower, it got better, easier, but depending on gear differences and whether or not your DPS were AOEing like normal or not, then it was still possible to lose agro.

As far as Heavensward goes, again, it was only a "joke" for Warrior, and only because Butcher's Block combo was higher potency than the other two combos while still giving a Wrath stack. Ninjas weren't in every comp, and not every Ninja was on the ball with Smokebomb and Shadewalker. Plus, Smokebomb usually went to the WHM, because AOE healing created such a high amount of enmity that it had to be curbed, particularly without a WAR tank.

[Vyrerus]

Enmity management is not an intrinsic part of tanking. Human players in PvP games ignore enmity, and yet tanks still often exist in these games.

Tanking is about how you control the space around you and your team. It doesn't matter whether it's because the AI is told to attack you specifically (enmity) or because you represent a credible threat in being able to intercept/stun/punish a human player who tries to slip past you, so long as you have a means to control the fight.

Several adds spawn around the arena. The tanking 'test' is never about knowing what enmity buttons to press. It's about knowing when and where they pop up, and corralling them in the shortest period of time (ideally before they eat your healers).

The removal of the old stance system and enmity combos didn't take anything away from tanking that wasn't already lacking in raid design. As for the question of bloat, well, the majority of the buttons that you press in any MMO are bloat. Pressing several buttons when just one would suffice helps to soothe and reassure you that you're doing something skillful when you're grinding mind-numbing content ('look at how complex my rotation is, even though the decision-making never changes'). That's why some of the more mechanically complex genres out there have much fewer buttons (but are more positioning dependent).

Incorrect assertion from the get go. Enmity management is how you intercept and control. It's present in PvP, it just doesn't have a tangible/numerical value. It's the feeling you create by making your presence impactful, tilting the players you are against so that they will seek to remove you from play.

I can tell you right now that you are wrong again. Sometimes the tanking test was knowing which enmity button to press, since due to animation timing vs. enmity change registering, this could and did mean the difference between life and death. Example: Wyvern adds in Turn 13. If you didn't preload a hate combo, stage two of the combo, they were going to kill your WHM. If you used Butcher's Block the enmity didn't register until the animation was on the final swing, giving ample time for the Wyvern to dart to the healer and kill them.

The removal of the old enmity system removed the need to be mindful or contemplate such things as starting a fight with Overpower vs. Tomahawk. Don't be disingenuous.

Pressing multiple buttons takes more effort than pressing one, and it gives us more agency as players. If one button did everything that we needed to do, our hands would be less busy, and button wear would destroy both controllers and keyboards in a way that was irksome. It also wouldn't let us create these rotations that the devs find irksome, and later patch away from being practical to do.

[Lyth]

...

This is called equivocation. You've said the same thing that I have, except that you've re-defined "enmity" to be both "the numerical value that the AI uses to determine who to attack" as well as "the threat of retaliation that deters a human player from entering your zone of control".

By the way, you could just as easily have used overpower to pick up those adds, back in the day. Holding a GCD just for the sake of sitting on the right step of your combo was a dps loss.

It's not about the number of buttons you press, but rather about the number of decisions you make. Play smart.

[SamRF]

but in ARR originally, the tank stance offered no extra enmity, .

Unless I'm having crazy mandella effect, I'm pretty sure Paladin Shield Oath increased enmity gain.

edit: Found a PLD guide from 2014, it did increase enmity, but also lowered damage by 30%, I'm guessing you're assuming that evens it out? I don't know for sure but I recall pretty well that generating enmity became easier when you unlocked Shield Oath, Brayflox being one of the most difficult to hold aggro since it was the last dungeon before you'd unlock Shield Oath.

[Vyrerus]

This is called equivocation. You've said the same thing that I have, except that you've re-defined "enmity" to be both "the numerical value that the AI uses to determine who to attack" as well as "the threat of retaliation that deters a human player from entering your zone of control".

By the way, you could just as easily have used overpower to pick up those adds, back in the day. Holding a GCD just for the sake of sitting on the right step of your combo was a dps loss.

It's not about the number of buttons you press, but rather about the number of decisions you make. Play smart.

There's nothing equivocal about what I pointed out to you. You just don't think of enmity being anything more than a choice word for a gameplay mechanic, whereas I do.

TP considerations were present back then, and Warrior had no way to recover their own TP until Equilibrium in HW.

Oh, but it is about the number of buttons you press. Each press in itself is a decision.

[Vyrerus]

Unless I'm having crazy mandella effect, I'm pretty sure Paladin Shield Oath increased enmity gain.

edit: Found a PLD guide from 2014, it did increase enmity, but also lowered damage by 30%, I'm guessing you're assuming that evens it out? I don't know for sure but I recall pretty well that generating enmity became easier when you unlocked Shield Oath, Brayflox being one of the most difficult to hold aggro since it was the last dungeon before you'd unlock Shield Oath.

It had a lower enmity effect until 2.1, if it had one at all. I can't say for certain, because I did not play PLD until after 2.1.