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

[ReiMakoto]

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.

I wasnt saying it was a joke for only warrior in HW. If you just did 2 aggro combos at the start of the fight then switch out of stance on any tank you could pretty comfortably hold aggro in pug groups, and in organised groups it was even easier.

I was around from mid arr and holding aggro wasnt a challenge then. I dont remember anyone telling me there wasnt an aggro mod initially on overpower, and id have to see some patch notes or something, but from when i was playing aggro holding in single target was easily done by just comboing, and aoe aggro was just spam your aoe aggro move, nothing interesting about it.

[Lyth]

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.

Equivocation and equivocal mean different things in this context. You redefined the phrase "Enmity management" in a non-standard way at the start of your post and then proceeded to reiterate my post using your new definition. It's a bit odd, but given that you're re-enforcing my point, I don't really mind.

Either way, you don't need to have a numeric point-based system to control the space around your team. Generating fictitious threat points that tell the AI who to attack should never take gameplay focus away from positioning, movement, mitigating damage and actually being a credible threat by beating down your opponents. the latter four are what make up the heart of tanking.

Each press in itself is a decision.

Not really. Every job has a target dummy rotation that represents optimal play. The only actual "rotation decisions" that you make are when a mechanic forces you to alter it and then return back to it. Even then, once you know the script, you can basically take the decision-making out of it with a spreadsheet, unless the fight has branch points.

Yeah, Shield Oath did, but not Defiance.

The nice thing about wikis is the page history function.

July 2013

2.1 just increased the enmity generation rate.

[Vyrerus]

Stuff

Since you're playing word lawyer here, I think you've failed to see that what I said runs counter to what you've laid out. I'll try to clear that up for you. Tanks by their nature have skills that are antagonistic to the will of their opposition. In games that aren't FFXIV kinds of skills they get include full body rams, deployable barriers, knocking the opponent prone, marking the opponent so they suffer a severe penalty should their attention stray from the tank etc. The role of the tank is domination. This draws ire from other players when used against them. Having mechanics which reflect this truth for PvE is just being faithful to what is intrinsic to tanking, and mathematical variables are necessary as an indicator that the Tank is doing their job and doing it well. The current system which only takes into account the tank turning on their stance, that changes literally nothing about how they play, is just as arbitrary as hate combos were, only it's a worse representation since it basically amounts to a dramatically lower level of participation on the tank's part, allowing them to be less involved with the enemy while simultaneously yielding greater control.

The act of practicing a rotation is a decision. The act of using a spreadsheet aid, is a decision. Picking up the controller/keyboard to play is a decision.

Heh, well, guess my memory's not as good as it once was. Thanks for taking the time to find it though, and for your decision to press the right buttons to link it in your post.

[Lyth]

Tanks by their nature have skills that are antagonistic to the will of their opposition. In games that aren't FFXIV kinds of skills they get include full body rams, deployable barriers, knocking the opponent prone, marking the opponent so they suffer a severe penalty should their attention stray from the tank etc. The role of the tank is domination. This draws ire from other players when used against them. Having mechanics which reflect this truth for PvE is just being faithful to what is intrinsic to tanking, and mathematical variables are necessary as an indicator that the Tank is doing their job and doing it well.

I agree with all of this.

The current system which only takes into account the tank turning on their stance, that changes literally nothing about how they play, is just as arbitrary as hate combos were, only it's a worse representation since it basically amounts to a dramatically lower level of participation on the tank's part, allowing them to be less involved with the enemy while simultaneously yielding greater control.

I disagree with this, because I never found enmity generation itself to be challenging. It only actually matters at transition points where an add spawns or the odd time where a boss resets enmity. And let's face it, when you were optimising, NIN and shadewalker did all the heavy lifting here, rather than our Power Slash combo of raw domination.

The act of practicing a rotation is a decision. The act of using a spreadsheet aid, is a decision. Picking up the controller/keyboard to play is a decision.

1 -> 2 -> ?
I mean, you can certainly stop at the second step of your combo, and ponder deeply on what your next act should be. I wasn't aware that there was a subset of players who considered this to be a challenge, but I'll take your word for it.

[Canada_bangs]

I just run and slice shit. I have the issue well I think I'm over doing it all the time. But I'm a sam main first so leveling gun breaker I just had my DPS mindset put on hold. I think long as my healer is able to heal me then I can pull as much as I want. I haven't had a healer who's told me to stop.. most when I ask push me to keep going til I literally hit a wall. They seem to enjoy it. And I'm a new tank.

[Maeka]

I think part of the problem that there aren't a whole lot of tanks around, are 8-man battles.

They are rather detrimental to tank players. I find the Adventurer in Need is almost always tank for Trials and Normal Raid, and the reason why is simple: 50/50 chance you're just going to be a gimp DPS with a very boring rotation.

Very few Trials have anything for an OT to actually do, no adds to pick up, no swaps, nothing. You show up, and if you're the lesser-geared, you do a 1-2-3 rotation the whole fight and..... nothing else.

I think there really could be more add phases for battles to give the OT something to actually do, and make it so you don't want the MT grabbing the adds because of cleaves and such. Or maybe the adds place a defense-down on the tank, so you don't want the main boss and the adds both on the same tank. That would at least give tanks more reason to run 8-man content.

For example, Titania is awesome. The MT and OT actually have to go through an add phase, and if they screw it up, the whole group dies.

However, fights like Ravana, Byakko, half of the Eden fights, etc... no adds, and no swaps, the OT is only there in case the MT dies and that's just boring.

[MerlinCross]

However, fights like Ravana, Byakko, half of the Eden fights, etc... no adds, and no swaps, the OT is only there in case the MT dies and that's just boring.

I mean Ravana has a thing to be aware of as the OT; Surpanakha. Which is get away from the rest of the team and try to align the incoming AoE waves with the open space in the wall.

At least when the content was releavent it was something to really take notice of but I havne't done Ravana enough these days to know if you can ignore that. Too bad he only does it about once per fight now.

[Zomkei]

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

[Xtrasweettea]

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

The tank shortage is in relation to content that most people will do and have a high RNG nature when it comes to the participants... so your DRs for 4 man and most 8 man content. If you queue as a DPS for any of those, other than Trials and Normal Raids, you will have a good amount of wait time.

Your situation is an exception... plus it's missing context (how long have those PF groups have been looking for members, are those tank players static, can those tank players change to DPS, etc.)

[Kabooa]

y'all say theres a lack of tanks, but im struggling to find tank spots open in PF for savage content... to the point im actually gearing up dps ;_;

It's funny how far a thread can be taken with zero linked sources to back it up, isn't it?