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

[Khimer]

Honestly, I'm surprised how easily they straight up remove mechanics from the game, as if no one's gonna miss them, as if some of them weren't the very things that made people fall in love with this game. Very ballsy of them or very reckless.

The unnecessary pruning has been a bane since SB and devs don't show any sign of stopping now. When i look at the tanks it feels like there's only one person responsible for their development and they main paladin. It honestly looks like they don't play the jobs that they are working with. What kind of warrior main would've removed bloodbath or berserk or inner beast or steel cyclone? What kind of drk main would've removed a skill that was part of a full combo that had a purpose and felt good to use like delirium? Why would a drk main remove scourge, dark arts, dark passenger and change the job completely without any trace of what it used to be? The only explanation to that would be catering to new players instead of those people who have been supporting the game for years. Now some noobies start playing the game and really enjoy how the jobs are easy to pick up, and after that excitement from trying something new is gone, after you've mastered all tanks as soon as you hit level cap, without even having to look anything up, they get bored and leave the game anyway.

I'm not the one to jump on throats of devs and call them out as soon as they change minor things that don't satisfy me, because usually they work hard and put their soul in what they do with the sole reason to satisfy players, and going all out on them would be disrespectful to their work. But with shb it really feels like they have did very poorly when it comes to jobs . DRK rework? Just copy paste warrior, they seemed to love the changes in 4.2. New skills for warrior? Just copy paste old skills and add some minimal extra effects... What the hell? Its painfully obvious that war and drk were shoved in the back, while pld and gnb got most of the attention. Hell, war and drk play the same, they even have the exact same dps. Devs were working with 3 tank jobs this expansion if not with 2.5. But i have to give credit where credit is due, gnb is a really good tank. I might have some small issues with its self-sustain, maybe make aurora give extra healing on demand + regen like in pvp? Increase the potency of shield effect and heal on brutal shell? Idk, but job is really fun and that's what really matters.

Basically, what I'm saying is the dev team is bigger than it has ever been, but the content we are getting and the amount of thought and work that has been put to jobs seems at the lowest it has ever been. They can at least name a reason. With such a trade off it would seem they are making another expansion within this expansion. They could've at least addressed any complain that has been on forums, ANY. But it seems they just proudly left tank forums after they unnecessarily changed gnb sounds.

[LeonKeyh]

I'm a somewhat newbie to the game. I'm _almost_ done with Stormblood at this point on a DPS.

From what I've been seeing from other people talking about the recent changes to tanks, I think that there are ultimately big reasons why players are not playing tanks. Essentially, the tank is the 'leader' of the group, and is expected to direct the party through the dungeon and dictate the speed of pulls. So, within the community you have:

1) People like me, who do not feel comfortable leading a party through a dungeon that they have run once or twice. They're afraid of the pressure involved with leading people through the dungeon. They feel as though there's an expectation of the tank to know the dungeon, know the fights, and ultimately be familiar enough to help everyone through. I'm starting to see from my tanking runs that this is not exactly a reality. The community has been fairly patient with my lack of mastery of the dungeons/role/class, but you won't really see that until you get over the fear of tanking which isn't easy for some people. Tanking and Healing are really the big roles where it's somewhat obvious whenever you're not doing your job. Whereas a mediocre/bad DPS can usually hide within the group, whereas a mediocre/bad Tank or Healer can become very obvious. While healers really "just" need to keep everyone alive, tanks have the requirement of keeping all the enemies on them, managing the flow and speed of the run, and leading the group through. Given all of those responsibilities and that you're the only one with those responsibilities, people fear negative feedback from others in the group, and possibly _tried_ to tank and gave up after their first bad experience

2) People who love playing tank classes. People who enjoy the rush of leading a group through a dungeon; people who enjoy the juggling of holding hate/taking less damage and doing DPS. Juggling stances to pull out as much efficiency as they can on their run. It seems like this has just recently gone missing from the game. I am, granted, a low level tank (30), but there's really not much difference, combat-wise, between being DPS and being a tank. I just toss on my tank stance, and DPS the enemies. I feel like this gameplay ends up disappointing the people who actually enjoy tanking and it pushes them away from the role.

I didn't play before this update, so I'm not sure what the goal of it was. I'm sure that there was a good reason behind them making the changes that they did, but I feel like it ultimately disappointed the people who enjoyed playing tanks, who enjoyed the nuance and mechanics behind that stuff. The problem is, if they did that to "fix" the anxiety behind tanking, to try to get people that normally wouldn't play a tank to try it out, I think that they "fixed" the wrong thing. I end up watching MTQ videos before I tank dungeons because not knowing the dungeon is ultimately what gives me anxiety, not the mechanisms behind the combat.

[Quintessa]

I don't feel like I'm leading anything. I'm just there to keep the other 3 from dying.

[Lyth]

If dps have to do markedly more damage than tanks and healers in order to preserve their identity, then they also need to have markedly less defense. Getting cuddled by even the softest of mobs in dungeon or raid content as a dps should oneshot you. It should be to the point where you're scared of even peeking around the corner without a tank in front of you, let alone pulling for your tank.

If that's unfair, then let us do equivalent damage, because our vaunted defense doesn't count for much.

[Mavrias]

Not gonna lie here, this isn't making a whole lot of sense. Shiva Savage's auto attacks two shot non tanks, just as an example. Its a bigger drain on resources to heal a non tank through big pulls in dungeons.


And for some reason, you feel tanks should do equivalent damage as DPS because... sometimes damage dealers pull ahead of you in casual content and aren't instantly smited for their sins?

[Satarn]

If dps have to do markedly more damage than tanks and healers in order to preserve their identity, then they also need to have markedly less defense. Getting cuddled by even the softest of mobs in dungeon or raid content as a dps should oneshot you. It should be to the point where you're scared of even peeking around the corner without a tank in front of you, let alone pulling for your tank.

If that's unfair, then let us do equivalent damage, because our vaunted defense doesn't count for much.

And how would that make tanking any more enjoyable? Or feel more impactful? You already need to make sure that you're the target and not them(as easy as that is to achieve), making dps/heals more squishy wouldn't change anything about it. Not to mention, as Marvias said, in savage it's already the case - TBs will straight up delete you with zero chance of survival as dps and autos will make a short work of you as well. Hell, any proper mass pull in a dungeon will eat you - a NIN and MNK can survive a bit, but only while their few cds are up, other dps don't even have such option really.

Dude I wish people pulling ahead was the biggest issue with tanks in this game, because it's not an effin' issue whatsoever - unless you're a princess tank who runs crying on reddit as soon as somebody implies 3 mobs are too small of a pull.

But let's be real, that last line is likely what you're really asking for, while framing it as "more reasonable" - despite just asking for more dps being totally fine, people have given actual good reasons for that before, without trying to cover up their intentions.

[LeonKeyh]

I don't feel like I'm leading anything. I'm just there to keep the other 3 from dying.

You follow the DPS around and they pull, or is the healer you follow around and have pull?

[Kabooa]

Not gonna lie here, this isn't making a whole lot of sense. Shiva Savage's auto attacks two shot non tanks, just as an example. Its a bigger drain on resources to heal a non tank through big pulls in dungeons.


And for some reason, you feel tanks should do equivalent damage as DPS because... sometimes damage dealers pull ahead of you in casual content and aren't instantly smited for their sins?

Don't you bring something so irrelevant as numbers into this. Numbers that contradict claims are completely and totally counter productive.

Don't even think of reverse engineering how much HP tanks actually have.

Don't take their baseline health of 170,000, and then apply their passive armor bonus of 37% (current end game gear) to that. Don't point out the formula, that has been used for the last two decades, of Health / Damage Taken so anyone else can check these numbers. Be sure to forget about the tank trait adding another 20% mitigation on top of that.

Don't do the same for the healers and the DPS. Definitely don't look up that really useful Theory Jerks sourced calculator that lets you do all this with some degree of reliance. Don't cross reference it with damage values in game to test it yourself.

And most of all, certainly don't adhere to basic conventions of RPG balance.

[Ramura_Sono]

If dps have to do markedly more damage than tanks and healers in order to preserve their identity, then they also need to have markedly less defense. Getting cuddled by even the softest of mobs in dungeon or raid content as a dps should oneshot you. It should be to the point where you're scared of even peeking around the corner without a tank in front of you, let alone pulling for your tank.

If that's unfair, then let us do equivalent damage, because our vaunted defense doesn't count for much.

Yes, we get it. You have a hate boner for DPS.
They already have markedly less defense than the tanks. To claim otherwise is being willfully ignorant.

And how would that make tanking any more enjoyable? Or feel more impactful?

It wouldn't. But it's never been about Enjoyment, Impact, Contribution, or anything of the sort. It's a case of the pretty unga bunga flying numbers not being big enough. Like it's always been.

But let's be real, that last line is likely what you're really asking for, while framing it as "more reasonable"

I love how the proposed solution to issues such as; "We don't do enough tank things", "our rotation is boring!", "Tanks aren't engaging enough", etc. is just a hollow flat increase to tank DPS. Which does nothing for these supposed issues.
At this point I'm starting to think tanks in general don't actually want to be Tanks but rather an easier, safer DPS instead.

[Satarn]

Also don't consider that if tanks actually did equivalent damage to DPS, then DPS would be literally worthless and even if you think that the survivability difference is not enough at the moment, there's still a difference, so it wouldn't be "fair" unless you give DPS the same survivability as tanks as well, at which point they're just one role.

The way to make tanks feel impactful is to focus on the actual tanking mechanics(mitigation management, actually holding threat in an active way, positioning and protective mechanics), not just upping their damage while maintaining the braindead gameplay.

There is certainly an argument to be made about tank dps being too low right now, and more importantly the damage output variance, which makes optimizing tanks feel unrewarding, on top of lackluster role mechanics. That said, the process of optimizing itself is boring at the moment, due to the extremely dumbed down rotations - healers might only have to press a couple of buttons for their dps, but at least their superior output is reliant on properly utilizing the healing side of their toolkit.