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

[Videra]

For me it's a mixture of the general homogenization of tanks, (IE: See how WAR and DRK are practically the same class but one has the best mitigation ability in the game) and the general removal of past systems. HW tanking was a much more complex dance between aggro, mitigation, and your DPS rotation. Some classes being more complex than others, like Dark Knight. The fact that tanking has been severely dumbed down and made more accessible - while this might sound petty - is part of why I don't really do it anymore. A lot of what made tanks fun to play was what drove DPS players from playing it.

[ForgottenScholar]

For me as someone that suffers tankxiety as they say, it’s generally down to other players in df that don’t allow tanks to learn and grow and instead undermine by the means of pulling for the tank. The tank has always been one that sets pace, and pulls what they think is good for themselves and the party....... only to have the dps and/or healer decide for them and put them off playing the role or developing the “you pull it, you tank it mentality”. No one ever communicates and encourages in chat...........cos that takes up too much time cos we should do this dungeon as fast as possible, even at the expense of enjoyment.
Essentially the role needs to be fun in order to play it, and for most that have crazy lives that take a lot out of them daily, the prospect of having that in game will discourage most.

One other thing I will say as a separate note, wall to wall pulling in dungeons is boring as hell. I say this as a dps that there is nothing more mind numbing that spamming aoe rotation (and I play Sam!!). For me I abandoned DF these last few patches and find my tomes elsewhere. I use trusts, even though there slow, so I can Netflix and chill. I also got into frontlines and rival wings more, as for me it’s just more fun than trash pulling and boss burning to the point of no fun mechanics to play with either.

By the way I don’t recall OP explaining their reasoning that there is in fact loss of tanks in this game? I have recently attempted to level all my jobs for amaro mourn and have regularly seen tanks levelling alongside me in pots, hoh and pvp.

If OP doesn’t like the tank changes, comes to the forums which essentially will only ever have negativity and complaining, as no one praises in the forums, then I can see drawing the conclusion they did of their wait times got a little longer.

Essentially the tanks were brought back to what they were essentially designed for, along with the healers. Tanks have always been a tad OP since 2.0 days when they could mitigate damage, out dps a lot of FPS jobs and have so much survivability that they didn’t really need healers for a lot of content. SE have slowly brought them back with this expansion having the largest changes. For some I can definitely see why they no longer like their OP job. But for me I have yet to see anyone ask for better dungeon and fight design to incorporate these changes, instead it’s a never ending complaint on lack of what you used to be? But with no real clarification of what you want other than seeking the past?

Sometimes the only way I see SE fixing this is by making all jobs dps in design with role abilities being selected to move you on the direction you want. Isn’t that how wow works? You class off in a role later on and can respec to another role when you want? Be a healing paladin or a tanking Druid or a dps warrior?

[Seraphor]

Is there a severe lack of tank users?
Half my FC play tanks, and I don't know anyone who has stopped playing tanks since ShB.
I know of more people who have taken up tanking due to GNB.

I think it is almost certainly 'tankxiety' if anything.

[Kabooa]

Is there a severe lack of tank users?
Half my FC play tanks, and I don't know anyone who has stopped playing tanks since ShB.
I know of more people who have taken up tanking due to GNB.

I think it is almost certainly 'tankxiety' if anything.

In the lucky Bancho linked on...page 19? There is a small discrepancy at current content range (RE: i470+), and a significant one at level 50-60.

I highly doubt that's what's being referred to by the OP though.

[Hierro]

Wanna fix tanks? BUFF THEIR DAMAGE. All of them. Do it by at least a solid 10%, very least. That's it.

[Jimmymagic]

Wanna fix tanks? BUFF THEIR DAMAGE. All of them. Do it by at least a solid 10%, very least. That's it.

This would be nice but not gonna happen.

[SamRF]

You know, doesn't really matter but not gonna lie it does sort of sting that healers will do more damage by mostly just spamming 1 button. It makes you look kind of cheap as tank who has to comparably put much more effort into their DPS rotation. Of course its sort of reward for healer's managing oGCDs well and I'm not making any statements about difficulty or what's fair, it's just the fact that 1 button spam surpasses your dps lol

[A_moth_called_rose]

Honestly for me, leveled a DRK to cap, and a GNB to 73 and just flat out stopped caring for the role entirely. Your impact as a tank feels so muted compared to that of a DPS, CD management is laughable, threat is not an issue, skill disparity between optimized tanks and snooze-mode semi-AFK tanks is only a few 100 dps. The game doesn't reward the time and effort that tanks can potentially do in proportion to healers or dps and that breeds a ton of apathy for those who initially got over the learning curve of 14 tanking.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I'm not certain if there is a true shortage of tanks. What I think is happening is the same thing which occured in World of Warcraft, players rather tank for friends than strangers.

[Kaeoni]

My main point is that I feel like this question is asked a lot with the intent/idea that those who do tank will continue to tank and that the problem is getting new people to tank. My perception is that I no longer want to tank because It's no longer fun to do so. Although one could assume you meant that in your original intent, I think that this is a very largely overlooked aspect that needs to be addressed. Naturally This could very well just be the natural order of things in this very game. A "New order" of tanks who enjoy this style over the old may have taken up the mantle in our (my) stead. But here is my take on things, Sorry for the length in advance, and for possibly bad grammar/spelling. I don't have much time before I need to go.

Tanks became too boring for me over the years. They became less complex and easier to play (such is the case for me and healing as well now). For me, you can boil down tanking into 3 different situations.

1: Dungeon Trash pulls
2: Main tanking a Boss mob
3: Off tanking a Boss mob

This hasn't really changed since ARR. Tanking just got easier and easier.

I don't mind Accuracy being removed.
I don't mind TP being removed.
I don't mind stance dancing being removed.

But when you keep on removing a bunch of different things compounded on-top one another, Things change quite a bit.
The removal of Accuracy, TP and Stance dancing should have inherently made keeping threat very manageable; but then threat generation got buffed. Building threat and holding it is literally a non-issue now. You could sneeze and maintain threat. That isn't very intelligent a move to make because it..

1: Actually encourages bad tanking.
2: Removes an additional aspect of tanking that has existed for tanks since forever in many other games, Keeping threat off those big dick DPS and the Healie Bois keeping our dumb meat shields alive. And this compounds with what i'm about to outline.

Warrior, along with some other classes that had something similar, no longer have Slashing and the like Debuffs to maintain on monsters, Halone Combo no longer lowers monsters Strength. Dark Arts for Dark Knight is gone. Point is, a lot of maintenance and fun options just got removed from our kits. And i'm not saying they needed to stick around. But you can't just keep on cutting things out of classes without replacing it with something else. When you do that, then continue to simplify tanks as a whole to make them more accessible, well people like myself are going to lose interest. You could argue that they do keep on adding new stuff, and theoretically they do. but these new things aren't compounded upon things we already know. Some things get extrapolated upon like Blood of the Dragon over the years (and that's (drg) one of the more well designed classes imo). But mostly it's just you adjusting to how they changed your class, and sometimes realizing they aren't properly tuning some classes to lower level content. We press less buttons now than in the past. A lot of it is streamlining, sure. Slowly but surely though, we're losing that Job identity, and it really sucks that that's the case.

It's joked about, but tanks really are just dps with mitigation that don't mind a leadership role at this point. So why should I play a Leadership role DPS that has half the dps options that a real DPS has? I take on more responsibility and have less fun doing my job since there isn't a support structure built up to encourage tanks to be tanks. That is to say play intelligently and with more structure. And there is a very good reason for why things have turned out this way. Speed.

After a certain grace period in most games, everything boils down to efficiency and speed. Efficiency and Speed have no need for things like Sleep, Bind, Paralyze, Blind, (add in other status affecting ailments). If these options were available in real scenarios, Tanks would have more things to be aware of. As things stand, Sleeping things is a waste of MP, Binding things is an annoyance and everything else either doesn't affect, exist or is confined right now, to Gimmick Mage (Bluemage).

Add that onto the fact that for the most part, since the removal of things such as slashing, piercing and blunt resistance down effects, we also removed buffs like Mages Ballad, for MP restoration, Foe's for TP since TP doesn't exist anymore and replaced them with what we currently have. Every class is becoming more and more isolated in how it can help the rest of the party function outside of Damage output, but even this is very measured. The dev team doesn't want to see the power couple that was Dragoon Bard return to the fray. How about instead of nerfing power combos you create more of them. How about we function more as a party should, instead of passively like we're currently doing. Ninja lost abilities like Smokescreen and Shadewalker, those were really powerful abilities because they would allow a tank to pass through the veil and Stance dance their way into doing things they couldn't before. These fun little things we could do in the past are all gone.

This isn't JUST a Tank issue, It's the entire game as a whole, It's that Tanks and Healers suffer the most for it because of how the game is inherently designed. Astrologian literally got bait and switched with their card mechanic. And Sure There is more or less a use to be had in every single card you draw. But that wasn't the (pun intended) draw of the job. People went in with the understanding that sometimes you might get stuck with a Bole you didn't want and you'd maybe have to slap in on a tank. There were mechanics to manipulate the outcome making those things less likely, but the possibility still existed and it made things interesting. Highs and Lows, why isn't that ok if the job is tuned correctly to account for that? Why is there even any memorization required at all at this point? Why have more than 2 different cards you can pull? It's a remnant of a bygone era and you feel inclined to keep it in? But it's ok to entirely remove other things but not that. is it because you would have to entirely redesign the ability? how about just make It Two-Face the job. Heads i win Tails you lose.

I don't hate the game, and I don't hate the team behind this game. but homogenization for the sake of balance is a bullshit excuse. FUN should be your top priority. Otherwise, why are we all even here wasting our time. I just can't be bothered to Fell Cleave/Decimate 5 times in a row anymore... ugh xD