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

[Lersayil]

Apparent and visible responsiblity combined with 2 jobs of 4 having braindead rotations (at least not as bad as healers, amirite?). The other 2 don't require a science degree either, but at the very least they can keep you awake.

That being said, I don't think the tank numbers are any worse than before. If I had to guess, I'd say we've got more tanks relative to other jobs, than ever before.

[DemonicNeko]

Three of them were dumbed down, and that killed a lot of interest right there.

This is why I stopped playing as a Tank. I really wanted to love Dark Knight but the rework was terrible. They keep that terrible walking dead ult. They pretty much copied and pasted warrior kit and added black/red particle effects to it but made it worse. Worse part Paladin pretty much got the Warrior Kit. All 3 are pretty much the same class. Unlike back in heavensward where all there have a very unique and different play style. Sorry if I wanted to play boring 1 dimension classes. I would go play wow. The reason I left and a lot of people left wow was because it became to dumbed down. Now FF14 is making that same mistake. The none stop spamming 123 waiting for cool downs to come up to break the monotony

Look I understand Square painted them selves in a corner with the combo system. Which for fighting/action games. Combo can be very good. Sadly they do not work very well in tab target game. Let's not forget unless you are in a raid team. You have very little to do in the game as max level. You can run dungeons or level up alts. Well dungeons get boring after awhile. With alts being a pain in the ass because of no good way to level them up. Really wish they had made a new game plus that really awesome way to level up alts. Sorry why do I want to play NGP as a level 80? Why not just make an alt at that point and level up from level 1.

Square has really made a ton of Mistakes with Shadowbrings but the story is not one of them.

New players don't want to tank because it looks like the role with most responsibility (seemingly high skill floor).

Veterans don't want to tank because it's the easiest role to optimize (low skill ceiling).

I agree with this. Would also add vets who played all of them. Will notice that 3 of them play 90% the same. With Gunbreaker only major difference is that ammo spender abilities. If they made tanking more difficult. I would play it in a heart beat. I would not mind it if they made it like. "Warriors low skill ceiling for new people to tanking. Paladins/Gunbreakers medium skill tanking. DRK WTF did our tank just sacrifice 25% of their hp for a massive defensive bonus. We are going to whip this tank is hard to master."

[DemonicNeko]

Its not the case of SE trying to make dungeons more interesting, but a case of stupid design decisions and "self balancing" designing if i would have to call it.

Why we cant have AOE and single target merged together to create more engaging gameplay, where your best skill could do aoe damage and have more skills to rotate in. It only takes space for separate aoe and single target skills, creating an illusion of complexity where there is none. Why cant we have a 1-2-3 combo turned into aoe combo, and another 2 buttons reserved for OGCD? Whats the sense there is trying to "balance" out the dps output against multiple targets, things dying faster would feel so much better.
Balancing the multi target and single target combos and creating two separate rotations, dividing our crucial keybind space for 2 things is the worst design decision ever made in this game.
Instead of having 1 rich and fun to play skillset we are left with pathetic 1-2-3 and 1-2, this is complete nonsense.

I feel that what a proc system is for. Though a proc systems require classes to have more passes that synergies well with synergies each other. FF14 really does not have a good passive system. Most passive are 5% more this or 5% more that.

Knowing when to use single target and when to use AoE is one of the few ways left that you can be smart about optimisation. It's also one of the few ways at present in which your position sense as a tank can benefit your team.

Combo systems exist because 1-1-1 gets tedious over a three to five hour stretch of relatively static, predictable gameplay. That's also the reason why PvP can afford to condense down so much button bloat.

123 does not get tedious over multiple hours? I played many games where I did not have a combo system and I was pushing more then 11111. Honestly I find proc systems more fun to play then this combat system. Sad true is. I really feel there are other mmo with better combat system the FF14. FF14 has the best story in MMO. Though story can only last so long before you run out of it.

[Lyth]

I don't think that a combo system is intrinsically good or bad. There is no such thing as a "complex" rotation, because any fixed rotation is going to become auto-pilot when you do it for long enough. The one downside to having a lot of random procs is that it creates a lot of variability in damage output, and it can be frustrating to play if you don't get your procs. MCH was historically very proc based.

At the end of the day, it's really the fights themselves that determine how engaged you are. For tanks and melee, that means "how do we maintain uptime while doing mechanics?" which comes entirely down to positioning and movement. What does that mean? Bosses that follow a fixed movement pattern are boring. Bosses that the tanks are able to consistently move to a fixed set of safe-spots are marginally more interesting. Bosses that the tanks are forced to make decisions on the fly about the safest route and coordinate with the rest of their team to optimise uptime are the most interesting.

It's a puzzle. Also, it should be one which does have a solution. Mechanics where you deliberately force a tank off a boss to go to afk in some other corner are incredibly irritating, until we find ways to cheese them. The ideal melee mechanic is one that you can play with 100% uptime, but forces you to really be clever on the fly and really be spot on with your sense of timings to do so.

[DemonicNeko]

I don't think that a combo system is intrinsically good or bad. There is no such thing as a "complex" rotation, because any fixed rotation is going to become auto-pilot when you do it for long enough. The one downside to having a lot of random procs is that it creates a lot of variability in damage output, and it can be frustrating to play if you don't get your procs. MCH was historically very proc based.

At the end of the day, it's really the fights themselves that determine how engaged you are. For tanks and melee, that means "how do we maintain uptime while doing mechanics?" which comes entirely down to positioning and movement. What does that mean? Bosses that follow a fixed movement pattern are boring. Bosses that the tanks are able to consistently move to a fixed set of safe-spots are marginally more interesting. Bosses that the tanks are forced to make decisions on the fly about the safest route and coordinate with the rest of their team to optimise uptime are the most interesting.

It's a puzzle. Also, it should be one which does have a solution. Mechanics where you deliberately force a tank off a boss to go to afk in some other corner are incredibly irritating, until we find ways to cheese them. The ideal melee mechanic is one that you can play with 100% uptime, but forces you to really be clever on the fly and really be spot on with your sense of timings to do so.

The problem with MCH old system was it a poor percent chance proc. With no way to increase your proc chance. Sure you can use a bullet to give you 100% chance but bullets had decent cooldown. Now a percentage proc chance done right is the fire mage in Wow. Where if you do not get a crit on your fireball. You gain a crit chance buff. That stacks tell you hit a crit. You could go with SwtoR 100% chance proc. If you use ability A. Then Ability B cooldown is refresh and does 50% more damage. Can proc once ever 10 seconds. MCH/Bard are really the worse version of proc chance. Where you are forced to spam tell it happens.

Now I will agree with you that boss fights need to be interesting. Which right now they are not. They are very straight forward and simple. Only time boss fights get interesting is in high raid content. Sadly you need a team to get to those good fights.

Now because 95% of the player base does not have a team to do the fun content. You can not raise the normal content difficulty up to much as the lower skill players could not do it. The only option left is to rebalance the tanks. So some are more skill based then the others. This will give them the ability to make the different tanks to feel unique. Right now we have warrior, 2 warrior clones, and gunbreaker. The classes need to go back to being unique styles. They can not be like 7.0 we have Warrior and 3 warrior clones.

[Kolsykol]

People have already brought up a lot of things, but honestly dps not respecting the tank as a role is something else that I think can be really annoying to players who aren't super fast.
A lot of people are older and may not have the same reaction times as younger people or simply enjoy a slower pace, and some people even have disabilities whether it be mental or physical or injuries that cause them to not be able to run at full speed pulling three packs one after the other and just sprinting trying to speedrun the dungeon.

Personally I do move fast, I test the healer out the first pack and if the healer seems capable I just keep going fast.
But not everyone is like that, and it honestly even irritates the shit out of me when I am healing and I see dps not respecting the tank at all and just sprinting ahead and aggroing everything while the tank is clearly having trouble keeping up.
This is a problem in other MMO's too, a certain speed becomes the standardized norm. But that shouldn't mean that people should just refuse to adapt...
It even instils anxiety in me even just seeing it happen to other tanks if I am healing or dpsing when the tank is clearly having trouble keeping up, and then when you say something about it and ask them to stay behind the tank people just blatantly ignore you or get rude.
Why are you even running in front of the tank to begin with? It's just common sense to stay behind the tank...

It even happens to me sometimes even tho I do pull quickly, I know my own limits and I can feel out the healer and what their limit is. But then you get dps that are super impatient and want to go even faster.
Sometimes I simply have to go slow because the healer is struggling and isn't the best. Which is fine, the game isn't just for '' pro 1337 try-hards ''. I just adapt and go at a pace they're capable of dealing with, there's no use in trying to stress it it's just going to end badly.
And it's not fun tanking with people like that who do stress and pull ahead, when dps pulls I honestly feel like just letting them die every time whether I am healing or tanking.
I don't do that unless it's extreme cases and at that point I normally just leave if they won't listen, but if I was a slower tank and not someone who quite literally grew up playing video games and can still keep up and play like a twitchy teenager then I'd probably hate it.

I kinda feel bad for tanks like that.
It's not even that they're bad tanks, they can be really good tanks.
But they're like the battle hardened old war veteran who has a lot of experience but took an arrow in the knee so now they can't run at 100% capacity.
And they have to deal with these twitchy kids who are high on sugar and can't sit still for two seconds.

If ya wanna have any say whatsoever in the pace that we go at in a dungeon, then play a tank or healer.
As a dps you have no say in it tbh, it's not for you to decide for very obvious reasons.
And every time this happens to me I just feel like not tanking anymore, it's just really annoying.
If you're not the tank then don't act like one, and usually there are reasons why the tank is slowing down.
I've even had this happen when I've had to go brb, then I come back and the dps has pulled and wiped us.
I don't even understand what goes through their heads...

[MaxDetroit]

One thing I have to add in general is the 8 player content design when it comes to tanks (trails / raids) - especially in roulette / random groups. For statics this will not apply to you at all.

But, this thread is about severe lack of tank users, and I feel this is especially for roulettes, where they are most of the time the missing class. So, I believe doing trial or raid roulettes as a tank most of the time suck, because you will always get another tank in your group. If you want to play OT, you're most of the time fine, but playing OT is boring as hell. And if you play tank, you want to tank the big boss and MT, that's what at least I like to do. Maybe tanks are some little divas as well.
So you always have to make clear who will MT and who will OT at the beginng, which can be nice if you are person who loves conversation, but most of the time you get another tank who does not answer or automatically assumes he will be MT. You either get into the "Aggro-Fight", as I call it, and you fight for the boss aggro with the other tank, or you play the OT and think about playing a Damage Dealer the next time you wil do this roulette.

I know, this is a bit exaggerated, but the problem of having two tanks in this kind of content (and the roulettes are most of the time so easy that you only need one tank) - and feeling most of the time useless as the OT might be a bit of the problem having not enough tanks for this kind of content.
Just a thought ...

[Marxam]

They made them boring imo. In the short term people will be able to pick up tanking and master it relatively quickly but in the long term they failed to keep it engaging and rewarding for those who decide to take it to the next level. Removal of OT stances and putting it into a trait and is one of the laziest things I've seen them do. The idea of tanking was to control enmity but now enmity is so easy to gain its no longer appealing to long time tanks like us. I enjoyed the risk/reward of dancing in-between the stance and if anything the OT stance made you feel more like a tank because you could lose aggro at any second but the trade off was damage and playing on another level that separated you from other tanks.

I guess skill based tanking was what I missed most. They should have just kept the stances and made them all like war and put them on a 10 sec cd. The main complaint in 3.0-4.0 for PLD and DRK was that it was tied to the gcd and not intuitive like WAR and somehow they interpreted that as they don't want OT stance and only want tank stance. I guess we won't see what interesting new tank stances they can come up with in the future. I'm just glad I played WAR in 2.0 to know how good Defiance and Unchained was, even more so after the 2.1 changes.

[TofuPenguin]

In response to the original question of this thread:

I just returned to the game after several years and this time I brought someone along. This person usually plays main tank in the previous MMOs I've played with them but this time they had no interest in it. His reason for this was, "I just want to chill this time. Tanking is a leadership role and is stressful, especially when it comes to learning new content."

As someone who used to main PLD before quitting, I feel the same way. After coming back, I don't remember much of the dungeons, much less primal and raid fights. And thinking about doing even this older content makes me anxious. I would feel less so if it were with people I knew. But now, it feels like i'm starting from scratch. I generally dislike pugging because of previous experiences in other MMOs and I'm sure a lot of others share the same sentiments.

[TofuPenguin]

This is very true. I just did a guildhest today on a fresh PLD. The DPS literally ran in before I could even type "Hi." It brings back memories of when I did some pugging as both tank and healer. Twitchy dps can really annoy tanks.