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

[Ultimatecalibur]

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.

The Str Accessory Meta was never a case of skilled player versus non-skilled player. It was always only a case of swapping out Vit accessories for Str accessories to get a passive increase in damage dealt that inflated parses. Both Str Tanks and Vit tanks played identically. They would have pushed pretty much the exact same buttons at the exact same times (Only real difference would have been the amount of stance dancing which likely meant that the Vit tanks were potentially more skilled in their percentile). What the Str Accessory meta did was increase healing requirements and lowered DPS dps requirements.

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?

No and no. I am saying that those HW tank dps numbers are inflated and use of them does not properly reflect the changes in relative dps output. If you actually use Vit Accessory users as the base line you will see that ShB increased tank dps by normalizing tank stance and dps stance damage to dps stance numbers.

The perspective of the HW vit accessory tank is invalid.

Not really. It gives the relative intended value of tank dps during HW which can then be compared to current relative values to show that it has increased.

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.

They were and it wasn't completely their fault as HW dps job design just wasn't friendly to many of them. Switching both tanks to Strength Accessories and limiting time in tank stance was just an easy way to reliably increase total party dps by about 5% or more without really changing how anyone played which was important in both Gordias and Midas.

Most of the changes both to tank stat progression as well as the push to simplify gameplay came after that, circa patch 3.4.

The Tank stat changes and role locked accessories occurred as a result of 3.0 to 3.3's Strength Accessory meta (Fending Accessories were in many ways considered useless drops and tanks, dragoons and monks were all fighting over Slaying Accessories).

[Lyth]

...

The reason why Gordias took a relatively long time before the first clears happened (34 days) was because the checks were deliberately not attainable with gear that was available on release. It's probably the only real example of a gear check that we've seen. Accessories and stance usage partially offset that, but not to the point that it really allowed for "slacking".

The reason why I mentioned 3.4 in particular is because Creator was the transition point where the devs expressed a wish towards making the gameplay more accessible and lowering the skill differential across the board. As a case in point, 3.4 was also the point where auto-attacks went from being directionally dependent to occurring regardless of the direction you were facing. Prior to that, about 30-40% of your outgoing damage as a tank or melee could be unknowingly lost if you didn't orientate yourself correctly.

Not that the change wasn't for the better. But I don't think you can say that tank damage allowed for sloppy dps play when the standard has been deliberately reduced for everyone.

...

It's nothing personal, hence the term "healers and dps". I could just have easily said "everyone else".

When we've spent three expansions consistently doing more damage than healers, I don't see why tank dps also needed to be reduced relative to healers. The reasoning why the difference existed was simple: there is no strict transition between healing and not healing. With tanks, on the other hand, you're either tanking something, or you're a glorified melee dps. That's why provoke wars happen in 24-man content. You have to make that downtime meaningful, if it exists. Nobody wants to be just warming the bench.

[Kabooa]

When we've spent three expansions consistently doing more damage than healers, I don't see why tank dps also needed to be reduced relative to healers. The reasoning why the difference existed was simple: there is no strict transition between healing and not healing. With tanks, on the other hand, you're either tanking something, or you're a glorified melee dps. That's why provoke wars happen in 24-man content. You have to make that downtime meaningful, if it exists. Nobody wants to be just warming the bench.

Uh, what.

Tanks still apply more damage than Astros and Scholars, but in terms of where the damage is sourced from, they haven't been higher for "The last three expansions". Astrologians dominated in Creator. Nearly 10% of the raid's damage belonged to them.

Astrologian was practically at DPS levels once the cards factored in for Stormblood. Scholar was mostly equivalent to tanks were Selene used well.

ARR, sure. Heavensward, some of it, but not the majority. Stormblood, no.

It's never been so clear cut in favor of the tanks that we can say "The last three expansions". If anything, it's favored healers more recently, and when it didn't, there was absolutely a distinct "Heal / don't heal" transition, and it was called Cleric Stance.

[Absimiliard]

No and no. I am saying that those HW tank dps numbers are inflated and use of them does not properly reflect the changes in relative dps output. If you actually use Vit Accessory users as the base line you will see that ShB increased tank dps by normalizing tank stance and dps stance damage to dps stance numbers.

You are operating under the mistaken impression that running VIT accessories was either uncommon or discouraged, while neither of these are the case. The norm was for tanks to run STR accessories as soon as was feasible for them to do so. An endgame tank running full vit -- THAT was the outlier.

Not really. It gives the relative intended value of tank dps during HW which can then be compared to current relative values to show that it has increased.

The fact that the accepted norm was to run STR accessories -- a norm wholly accepted by SE, I would add -- does in fact completely invalidate this argument. The fights were designed under the assumption that tanks would in fact be pulling their weight in the DPS department, up to and including the player-invented (but ultimately SE embraced) habit of min-maxing tanks exclusively for damage output. SE's eventual efforts to discourage this stemmed largely from complaints they'd received from the minority of "endgame" players that did not, in fact, want to optimize for damage output. Added to this decision was the frequency with which tanks would use pentamelded crafted gear over raid drops because, again, it afforded them more damage.

Regardless, there's some math that doesn't add up here. You're making the assertion that tanks are in fact comparatively stronger, yes? The reality is the opposite. Even discounting use of STR accessories for added damage -- which is to say doing the math with the assumption that stereotypical "tanking gear" is in use -- there is still a discrepancy. Tank damage is the latrine.