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

[MaxDetroit]

So, I played the Doma Castle Dungeon with my Level 67-68 Gunbreaker recently. My equip for the Gunbreaker is about ilvl 270, and yeah, that's leveling gear.

So, from my experience with this dungeons I took smaller pulls, tried to clear each add-group one by one, because I know I could not take larger groups with my tank. One dps was rushing to the next group of mobs, kept dying, and was calling my way of tanking catastrophic. The healer was very nice and told the rest of the group that he/she would support my style of tanking, and that it is fine if I do not pull multiple groups at once.

Anyway, if you play dps or healer you will most likely never get into this position and into the center of discussion. I had to defend myself and explain why I play like this and had to live with the complaints of one dps - well, I guess that is what 'taking responsibility' means.

But, I still see the reason why many players avoid playing tanks, because you will inevitable end up in a situation where a dps or even a healer will start arguing with your playstyle. And I am not a person who enjoys arguing with other random players in an online game, I play in my free time to relax, socialize in a positive way and have fun.

[SamRF]

So, I played the Doma Castle Dungeon with my Level 67-68 Gunbreaker recently. My equip for the Gunbreaker is about ilvl 270, and yeah, that's leveling gear.

So, from my experience with this dungeons I took smaller pulls, tried to clear each add-group one by one, because I know I could not take larger groups with my tank. One dps was rushing to the next group of mobs, kept dying, and was calling my way of tanking catastrophic. The healer was very nice and told the rest of the group that he/she would support my style of tanking, and that it is fine if I do not pull multiple groups at once.

Anyway, if you play dps or healer you will most likely never get into this position and into the center of discussion. I had to defend myself and explain why I play like this and had to live with the complaints of one dps - well, I guess that is what 'taking responsibility' means.

But, I still see the reason why many players avoid playing tanks, because you will inevitable end up in a situation where a dps or even a healer will start arguing with your playstyle. And I am not a person who enjoys arguing with other random players in an online game, I play in my free time to relax, socialize in a positive way and have fun.

You took the responsibility because you didn't follow along with the dps who was rushing ahead. If you went with the dps and at least attempted to tank those mobs and it turns out that it ends in a wipe, you can easily blame it on the dps who was rushing ahead and they would have to take responsibility for it, not you, since they either forced or requested you to pull more.

[MerlinCross]

which essentially pigeonholes them into taking twelve years to kill things "out in the wild", so to speak.

Tanks complaining about damage, take a shot.
Merlin complaining about tanks complainging about damage, take 2. But seriously don't, you'll damage your liver.

*Downs entire bottle*

Okay. Let's do this.

Point of Note; this is the first time I've done something like this and this can certainly be done far better but I was curious.

I went and compared my DRK and my MCH, both level 70 and classes I just dropped after Shadowbringers. Weapon is first Shadowbringers sold, armor is antiquated Stormblood, and accessories is a mix match.

Target: Lv 71 Hoptrap.
348 DRK vs 341 MCH
Skill understanding: Poor.
Final Times; DRK around 26ish seconds. MCH around 29 seconds.

I repeated it the fight a bit but it stayed rather consistent. If I had a better grasp of the flow of each(the changes in Shadowbringers has completely destoryed my groove with both) I could probably do better with both but hey this helps to simulate a possible new level jump player.

Now I know what some people might be thinking, the DRK has a 7 item level gap on MCH. That and not full ability usage. Well I wouldn't just test the start and call it a day.

Target: Lv 79 Dagon
383 WAR vs 381 SAM - I really had to drop some things from both and requip their weathered gear from Shadowbringers. Weapon is Shadowbringers Relic. No Materia.
Skill Understanding: Good. I like to think that I understand the classes enough at this point though could use some help in pushing damage further.
Final times: WAR about 30-35 seconds. SAM about 23-27 seconds.

Now I did this second one a couple more times than the first, trying to figure out a good testing rotation without dumping everything into a single Dagon to try and simluate either someone not wanting to or couldn't as they just fought one. That means no Ikishoten and Senei for Sam, or Inner Release and Infuriate for WAR. As using those really helps to delete an enemy but again a player might not wish to use those or can't if they get into repeated fights.

But my stupid quick bad test didn't make it seem like tanks took too stupidly long to kill something "out in the wild" as was claimed, an part of the argument I keep seeing but question if people have sat down and checked. After I get some gil to standardized the gear across all 4 jobs(Sam=War, MCH=DRK) in terms of gear set/item level along with coming up with a more set test rotation, I might come back and put the numbers up if people are interested. That and if people have advise on how to test this better, let me know. Should be fun.

[Lyth]

Tanks being able to complete story mode content is such unbelievably low hanging fruit that I'm surprised that you wasted time testing it. That doesn't change the fact that our relative damage has severely slumped over the past two expansions and there isn't all that much actual "tanking" to compensate for it.

[Kabooa]

Point of Note;

The best part about "But the world mobs" argument is that the tanks can murder groups of 10-15 at the same time via AoEing them down.

But oh no. They take another 8-10 seconds to kill them in single target.

[Erit]

But oh no. They take another 8-10 seconds to kill them in single target.

They do? In my leveling experience, my Paladin was taking about as long as my Bard to kill overworld mobs. That is to say, "not very." Granted, I'm both patient and somewhat biased because my initial tanking experience is in another MMO where tank classes can take anywhere from two to four times as long to kill overworld stuff, but here in XIV it's really not that bad.

[Ultimatecalibur]

That doesn't change the fact that our relative damage has severely slumped over the past two expansions and there isn't all that much actual "tanking" to compensate for it.

The damage has only "slumped" because you are trying to use the Strength Accessory 100% DpS stance meta as your frame of reference. During HW, Str tanks (which provided the top parses on fflogs) were seriously overperforming (in dps and enmity generation) to the point where dps could be a lot sloppier while still making dps checks. If you look at thing from the perspective of a Vit Accessory tank using tank stance you would see that tank dps has significantly increased over the past 2 expansions.

[Hierro]

The damage has only "slumped" because you are trying to use the Strength Accessory 100% DpS stance meta as your frame of reference. During HW, Str tanks (which provided the top parses on fflogs) were seriously overperforming (in dps and enmity generation) to the point where dps could be a lot sloppier while still making dps checks. If you look at thing from the perspective of a Vit Accessory tank using tank stance you would see that tank dps has significantly increased over the past 2 expansions.

Let me get this straight: even if the damage ceiling has been continuously falling for the past couple expansions, we should be happy because the floor, filled with bottom-of-the-barrel tanks, has been raised to appease such players? I'm not sure what you're arguing here.

Should tank players not be able to perform to the point where they can visibly make a difference in their party? Are you actively advocating for tanks that serve the purpose of an enmity punching bag?

The perspective of the HW vit accessory tank is invalid.

[Lyth]

I don't think that dps were slacking in HW. As much as everyone wants to forget about Gordias, which was tuned such that raid drops actually were a limiting factor for progression, everyone had to pull their weight. I don't think you can say that about Midas, either. Most of the changes both to tank stat progression as well as the push to simplify gameplay came after that, circa patch 3.4.

Damage values are meaningless in isolation. They significantly increase for everyone each expansion. This is because of HP inflation. It's the relative value that matters.

I think there's a balance to be had. In ARR, there was a good amount of overlap between WAR damage output and BRD damage output, when both were played well. That's tuned too high. But what we have at the moment is tuned too low. This isn't like healing, where both healers can always do something at any given moment to contribute. You generally have one active tank, and another whose entire purpose is to put out damage until their turn to tank comes up again. If you're not going to let them tank, and you're not going to let them contribute meaningful damage, maybe give them a coffee break debuff that removes them from the arena while they get some snacks, hey?

[Kabooa]

Should tank players not be able to perform to the point where they can visibly make a difference in their party? Are you actively advocating for tanks that serve the purpose of an enmity punching bag?

There's room between "Tanks do nothing" and "tanks do too much".

We sit north of the middle ground. Their contribution is meaningful at all stages of the content, from week 1, to farm, to speedrunning.