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

[Mithia]

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Tanks deal with mechanics like anyone else, Healers have a high responsibility true, and they have the responsibility to push their buttons in a timely manner to counter the damage going out from the boss. Should tanks not mitigate properly they risk going splat if the healer isn't putting in extra legwork. Tanks their job is to make the life of the healer easier so they can cast their glares.

The only responsibility dps has is to dish out enough damage for the boss to die and the tanks and healers help them there. Asides from doing the mechanics there isn't much more responsibility, if a dps or two dies along the way nothing changes unless there is a mechanic that requires them alive.

However tanks make mistakes like anyone else due to "stupidity", should they however die during the dragon phase of Shiva you will quickly see the dps dying one by one. And that isn't the only instance where it can quickly spiral downward when a tank dies. Of course, if we are talking about max item level characters then it's more lenient depending on the content you are doing.

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I've been tanking for quite a few years, I've seen many iterations or versions of the tank class and the one that FFXIV provides right now is quite good and most importantly easy to roll in to since holding agro isn't an issue and that's what the majority of newcomers tend to be afraid of.

"Plenty of people" is essentially hearsay from your surroundings. Truth is however that when you are under-geared or barely geared for the content, a mistake from a tank will increase the taxation on healers by quite a load. Missing a Divine Veil or another tank cooldown will lead to a casualty or two.

Now when everyone is out gearing the content of course you won't miss a reprisal or the off Rampart, that's the privilege of gear. It makes dps their lives easier as well because now they don't have to try as hard to dish out the same damage as they are supposed to do to kill the boss. Tanks can just survive more! It's in the end a difference of what, 25k health and quite a substantial amount of armor/magic resistance when we compare the previous tier of gear to the current tier.

I know that now I can take 4 stacks at Ramuh and I can still live through it when getting tank bustered by the bird. Was I able to do that in the first week? Nop.

However, if we look out of the raiding scene then any job out there is "easy".

However, the part where you said that you'd kick a dps for performing low but you'd keep a tank purely based on the criteria that he doesn't die is quite the double standard. A tank has his responsibility to dish out damage and position the boss correctly so the dps can have max uptime with a minimum amount of movement. If he can't do either, the party can compensate or adjust but then you are playing with an awful tank. On top of that, they are also responsible for their own dps and to mitigate accordingly so the healers don't have to waste a GCD healing them.

And this is why I believe the current tank iteration is pretty good considering it follows these criteria:
1. They use cooldowns to mitigate damage on themselves and the party
2. They position the boss accordingly so the dps can dish out as much damage as possible without losing uptime
3. They contribute to an actual metric that is accepted by the community

[BarretOblivion]

However tanks make mistakes like anyone else due to "stupidity", should they however die during the dragon phase of Shiva you will quickly see the dps dying one by one. And that isn't the only instance where it can quickly spiral downward when a tank dies. Of course, if we are talking about max item level characters then it's more lenient depending on the content you are doing.

Not really. DPS will start getting auto attacked but a quick rez and voke within about a minute can result in 0 deaths outside of the original death. There are far more mechanics where if one person dies everyone dies than those that are tank specific where they just need to do a simple thing with a cooldown. At this point healers/dps have more responsibility than tanks. If DPS die too many times its a wipe due to not having the damage. One healer dead can led to a group wipe because they can't quite solo heal and fall behind keeping the group healthy. A tank? Lol, tank dies but the OT can cover with voke resulting in no change, and DPS loss from tank death can mean nothing.

[Mithia]

Not really. DPS will start getting auto attacked but a quick rez and voke within about a minute can result in 0 deaths outside of the original death. There are far more mechanics where if one person dies everyone dies than those that are tank specific where they just need to do a simple thing with a cooldown. At this point healers/dps have more responsibility than tanks. If DPS die too many times its a wipe due to not having the damage. One healer dead can led to a group wipe because they can't quite solo heal and fall behind keeping the group healthy. A tank? Lol, tank dies but the OT can cover with voke resulting in no change, and DPS loss from tank death can mean nothing.

Any death is recoverable, the game is designed around that way once you have the gear to comfortably clear the content. Note this part that I said: if we are talking about max item level characters then it's more lenient depending on the content you are doing.

The number of times where I've had to salvage a boss fight in an expert dungeon where the healer died at around 70% and I then kept the dps and myself alive with my utility kit can be counted on more than the fingers on my hands and the toes on my feet.

At this point, everything is laughable in savage as your armor, magic resistance, dps and health is 20-30 item levels higher since week 1. So, of course, the party will get away with more shenanigans.

Secondly, it's absolutely false that it's just about pressing a cooldown. You mitigate damage true, that is one thing, then you position the boss in such a way where the dps can have their uptime. Then on top of that, you have to push out the required numbers and do the same mechanics that everyone else in the party has to do.

The only thing that dps has to worry about is avoiding telegraphs and executing the mechanics! That is their only responsibility that is shared by the rest of the party! Everyone has to contribute to the dps!

I'm not complaining that tanking's been made easy because of enmity changes - I'm complaining that it's been made easy for several reasons(streamlined mitigation, less positioning, braindead damage mechanics on the tank jobs) and that also threat should be a thing tanks pay attention to - those are two separate points.

Threat is still a thing that tanks need to pay attention to. There are multiple mechanics in the current tier where tanks need to keep an eye on their enmity. Streamlining of CD utilities had to be done, look at DRK for example who are the most wanted tanks right now just because they have that extra 20% magic resistance cooldown.

"braindead mechanics" I mean, let's be honest, every mechanic can be seen as braindead. As a dps however you'll appreciate a good tank from a bad tank immediately. Especially because he will give you that sweet uptime you've always wanted. Same goes for healers, tank CD's mean not using a GCD on healing, no tank CD's means 2400 mana on a raise or a GCD of healing.

Dude, are you going to pretend that SHB hasn't started a mass of difficulty and engagement complaints on the tank and healer side, which were not nearly as prevalent in the previous expansions? You can be content yourself, that's your right and good for you, but you can't argue that nothing changed in terms of player satisfaction.

The first tier was a joke difficulty wise. This goes on all levels. DPS requirements, tanking requirements and healing requirements. I can't remember the exact value that the developers gave it but I believe it was something like 20 or 30% nerfed versions of what they found as the ideal difficulty, which we now received in the second tier.

And currently, while I'm not the biggest fan of this tier, it was good to see a few walls this tier that people had to spend more time on. Even now statics are still being formed just to clear Shiva. The first tier allowed many players to succeed in end game content by clearing the tier, some much faster than they usually would because it was so forgiving. Others were actually able to clear the tier for the first time. This wasn't because tanking or healing got dumbed down, its also because dps requirements got heavily reduced.

Never said I would do that, just that it's an approach many people have - since you were trying to argue that the community looks harsher at tanks than DPS, which I find untrue. The shit I've seen and heard of tanks do and get away with in savage/ultimate is unreal.

I think I can provide a list of dps and healers that do similar things as those tanks you are talking about. I rather play with a bad dps than a bad tank to be fair. It just makes the entire fight so much more difficult. Lack of dps can be compensated anyway.

[BarretOblivion]

Any death is recoverable, the game is designed around that way once you have the gear to comfortably clear the content. Note this part that I said: if we are talking about max item level characters then it's more lenient depending on the content you are doing.

This is definately not true. There are plenty of mechanics where you must have every single person do the mechanic correctly to not wipe. This also includes everyone alive as well especially in savage.

[Mithia]

This is definately not true. There are plenty of mechanics where you must have every single person do the mechanic correctly to not wipe. This also includes everyone alive as well especially in savage.

I have never argued against that. Of course, there are certain points where the boss will wipe you should one not be able to execute the mechanic correctly. But even then, the community has found different ways around that through smart use of LB3 or other shenanigans. The point is that you claimed that a tank death wouldn't matter, my counter-argument is that it doesn't matter for any role to die at any point since the game is made to be forgiving in terms of deaths during a boss fight as long as you are max-item level or slowly out gearing the encounter.

Should a DPS die during any point of the fight, unless he had a mechanic he was assigned to resolve, nothing will change and you will just have to make up for his dps as a party. Should he have a mechanic, a healer or tank will have to step in for him, and that's that.
Should a healer die, your only hope is that his co-healer has enough resources to sustain the healing until the other healer gets raised and has his mana back, this is excluding potential mechanics he will have to execute.

Should however a tank die, the first thing you will notice is the boss turning towards the other tank if he had some enmity, then the question is, does this tank potentially have debuffs from the last tank buster? If so, another tank dies. Then hopefully by that time you had a RDM so he could raise the tank that died, because as per usual, swiftcast is on CD and hard raise takes some time. But say for example that the tank dies and the other tank did not have a debuff post tank buster. What if a tank buster is coming? These days tank busters are either share, invul or swap. But, invul is usually on CD since you cheese the first few tank busters anyway in most encounters. Means he has to share or swap, he can't swap, so either a dps sacrifices himself and you hope that his sacrifice was enough to soak up enough of the dmg or you also die. No tanks alive at that point? Easy wipe.

So, as I said before, any death can be recovered.

But on topic again, tanks are just expected to do their job since their rotation is "easy" anyway and so is their enmity build-up, what people often forget is the support nature that they provide to the group with their tank CD's, group-wide CD's, and above all reprisal for AoE's. On top of that they have to study the encounter thoroughly to understand when to use a CD and when to keep a CD to mitigate the incoming damage spikes. This study is also important to place the boss in ideal spots to keep things consistent for the dps so they can have full uptime and positionals.

But hey, you can also wait a few weeks and then kill the boss because you outgear it anyway and then those small things don't really matter so any tank you find will do, but that also counts for dps and healers mind.