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

[Tlamila]

I honestly don't get this "tanks are too easy and boring" thing.
I mained healer for years, I levelled most of the DPS classes, now I got into tanking and I find it waaaay harder.

At least as paladin, I have a long and tight rotation to follow, keep track of aggro, mitigate, position the boss and also do mechanics like everybody else. At least at 80, I find it absolutely overwhelming and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to play it right.
Even monk and ninja seem a joke to me in comparison, you just have to do your rotation and keep track of mechanics, and if you die w/e, you'll just eventually get ressed, so even mechanics you don't even to do so well.

And healing, yes it's responsability and can be stressful if the group utterly sucks, but mostly it's just spamming your 1 single target ability/1 AoE ability and reapplying the long lasting DoT while throwing a heal here and there. If the group is good you have so few to do you'll fall asleep, and unlike tanks you not only don't have a complicated and long dps rotation, you just have none, you just spam the same button until your finger falls. You have to hope for the group to be bad to actually get to do something. Oh right, AST also has cards.

[Seraphor]

I honestly don't get this "tanks are too easy and boring" thing.
I mained healer for years, I levelled most of the DPS classes, now I got into tanking and I find it waaaay harder.

At least as paladin, I have a long and tight rotation to follow, keep track of aggro, mitigate, position the boss and also do mechanics like everybody else. At least at 80, I find it absolutely overwhelming and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to play it right.
Even monk and ninja seem a joke to me in comparison, you just have to do your rotation and keep track of mechanics, and if you die w/e, you'll just eventually get ressed, so even mechanics you don't even to do so well.

And healing, yes it's responsability and can be stressful if the group utterly sucks, but mostly it's just spamming your 1 single target ability/1 AoE ability and reapplying the long lasting DoT while throwing a heal here and there. If the group is good you have so few to do you'll fall asleep, and unlike tanks you not only don't have a complicated and long dps rotation, you just have none, you just spam the same button until your finger falls. You have to hope for the group to be bad to actually get to do something. Oh right, AST also has cards.

To be fair, PLD is the worst tank for having a long complicated rotation, and having the most and most bitty mitigation skills to keep track of.

If you want to learn to tank, I'd start with WAR or GNB, both have a much more straightforward rotation (I wouldn't call GNB's "simple" exactly but it's intuitive, where PLD's isn't at all) and both have much simpler mitigation tools.

Really, playing as a GNB, it just feels like playing the DPS that goes first, with a few extra mitigation utility skills to use.

[Satarn]

Why create an engaging system of enmity generation for tanks when you can simply create an engaging system of damage generation for tanks (the latter being what most people are actually asking for, outside of a few like yourself)?

Nah, I'm actually constantly whining about tank dps mechanics being way too dumbed down as well. I've done so in this very thread too.

The reason I advocate for things beyond dps rotations to have depth added, is simply because I actually like, you know, tanking and want the role to be able to express player skill in more ways than just being a good Blue Icon DPS that happens to take autos. If I just wanted more complex rotation and more damage I already have that on DPS jobs - with tanks I want all of it. With reasonably scaled down dps of course, because trinity rules.

What I want from threat generation is for it to be playing in tandem with the damage mechanics - it's an easy way to add extra variance to the rotation as well as something more to pay attention too, while also making you feel like you're actually making an effort to protect your team. I can not stress that enough - I am not asking for hate mechanics to be restored to how they worked in XIV in the past, as I completely agree it's been done poorly and lacked engagement. If you can't imagine why people would like enmity to be a thing though, then I guess you haven't played games in which that aspect was really impactful to the point where players really noticed it when you were good at it.

I find it strange that you on one hand complain that tanking is too easy because of the enmity changes (which were one of the few things that they got right), and yet you seem to think the idea of tank deaths having more impact is too unforgiving.

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.

Neither have I argued against deaths having more impact - just against going so far as to wipe the entire, damn party every time a tank dies. There is also a difference between something being difficult in a challenging way by being easy to fail if you don't pay attention and being just terribly punishing while unlikely to fail. I find the first engaging, the other cheap. As an example - I'd rather have mitigation and enmity require more planning and attention, leading to more frequent tank deaths/aggro drops(if tank isn't doing their job well of course), leading to single DPS/healer deaths every time and thus snowballing into a wipe after happening a couple of times, rather than just missing a single cd once in a blue moon, instantly wiping the group.

"Plenty of people" is essentially hearsay from your surroundings.

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.

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.

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 mained healer for years, I levelled most of the DPS classes, now I got into tanking and I find it waaaay harder.

Tbh everything seems hard when you're only just learning it for the first time.

[Tlamila]

Tbh everything seems hard when you're only just learning it for the first time.

Mh no, not true, as I said I never had similar problems with any other class so, not everything is.

[Seraphor]

What I want from threat generation is for it to be playing in tandem with the damage mechanics - it's an easy way to add extra variance to the rotation as well as something more to pay attention too, while also making you feel like you're actually making an effort to protect your team. I can not stress that enough - I am not asking for hate mechanics to be restored to how they worked in XIV in the past, as I completely agree it's been done poorly and lacked engagement. If you can't imagine why people would like enmity to be a thing though, then I guess you haven't played games in which that aspect was really impactful to the point where players really noticed it when you were good at it.

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.

The only issue I have, and it's not really an 'issue' just further counter thoughts, with tying enmity to damage mechanics, is that you will inevitably have some trade off between DPS and threat generation.

Lets just say, making it as simple as possible, that you have a 1-2-3 combo, and an alternative 3rd combo that deals less damage but generates more hate.
Meta will result in ignoring that hate finisher because more DPS is better, and generates enough hate anyway.
If the enmity balance is so close that not using that skill will mean you don't get enough aggro, then that means enmity management is a much bigger issue anyway and because DPS deal so much more damage than tanks you'll need to give DPS their hate sinks back in case they deal too much damage, which would easily be enough to tip the enmity meter.
Either way, tanks will end up feeling 'punished' for using their enmity finisher due to getting less damage out, just as we used to be 'punished' for staying in Tank stance.

Alternatively, if there's no trade-off, if for example tanks are rewarded with more enmity for successfully pulling off their DPS combo correctly... then surely they're dealing more damage anyway, they're already doing what they should be doing, maximising DPS, which means they should be getting the most enmity they can get anyway.


Now, if for example there was no real danger in a tank losing aggro to a DPS/Healer, and was instead just a more elaborate way of pulling off tank swaps, basically more interesting versions of Provoke/Shirk, then sure, I'd be all for that. But they also made those into role skills for a reason, and I don't think they're going to go back on that decision.

[Satarn]

Meta will result in ignoring that hate finisher because more DPS is better, and generates enough hate anyway.
If the enmity balance is so close that not using that skill will mean you don't get enough aggro, then that means enmity management is a much bigger issue anyway and because DPS deal so much more damage than tanks you'll need to give DPS their hate sinks back in case they deal too much damage, which would easily be enough to tip the enmity meter.
Either way, tanks will end up feeling 'punished' for using their enmity finisher due to getting less damage out, just as we used to be 'punished' for staying in Tank stance.

Pushing threat responsibility on DPS rather than tanks as well the feeling of being "punished" when you had to actually use the enmity skills, came from the fact that free aggro dumps made it optimal for combined rDPS to just let the others handle their hate. If the game was designed in such a way that you simply can not get away with that - or at least the dump skills come with a higher cost than tanks' enmity generation skills, then I doubt it would be an issue(well in XIV's case specifically we'd probably need to get over an adjustment period while community gets over the old habits).

The way things worked before, a tank would feel bad using enmity skills not because of the act itself, but because they knew that it was the result of DPS/healer incompetence at pushing their free buttons and because that wasn't optimal - it's similar to when a healer rolls their eyes when they have to waste a gcd/aetherflow to heal somebody who ate an avoidable mechanic.
If managing hate as tank was optimal - because otherwise people will die or have to use more costly aggro dumps - then that feeling should go away and be replaced with satisfaction of doing your job well.

As evidence, look at how it works with healers balancing their own dps and healing - while optimally they want to avoid gcd heals as much as possible, you will still see them using those when needed and it's accepted as part of the job(there's also quite a bit of people asking for that balance between heals and dps to be less one-sided towards dps). The skill of the healer is measured by their ability to utilize their kit to keep the party alive without losing too much damage. I would like to see a similar approach to balancing dps with the ability to protect your group as a tank - make it so the best tanks use their enmity skills just often enough to stay above the rest while still pushing for more damage whenever possible. Maybe throw in some aggro resets or add spawns to make it more reactive too.

[Lyth]

...

From my experience, most enmity systems work the same way. As long as you stay above everyone else, it doesn't really matter. The only difference between games is the amount of time you spend generating fictional damage vs. generating actual damage. I'm not sure how enmity can be made to be 'fun', 'exciting', or 'engaging', but if you could provide an example of such a system, either actual or theoretical, I'm all ears.

People care about outcomes. That's why dps is king. Every encounter has a dps target that you have to meet. So the more impressive someone's numbers are, the more value they have. Don't have enough numbers, can't clear fight. The value of damage output comes from the raid wipe potential.

Enmity is a number. But if you maximise it, nobody cares. That's because it doesn't have the same raid wipe potential. You have two tanks. The second tank is probably out mentally making a coffee while they wait for their turn to tank again. They'll be back if the first tank dies or some forced mechanic brings about a switch, just give them a shout. You don't need a great tank. Just a marginally competent one.

Healing is also a number. But if you maximise it, nobody cares. It has a bit more raid wipe potential, because if too many AoEs hit without being mitigated or healed adequately, your dps die, and their numbers decrease. And then when the dps number decreases, you lose. It's a slightly more important, but only by virtue to the impact it has on dps output. But you still don't need a great healer. Only a marginally competent one. And you'd still be better off letting your tanks die than your dps.

The only way to change the emphasis is to change the raid wipe potential that each role has. Make tanking tough, with a high risk of failure. Make healing tough, with a high risk of failure. The same type-A personalities are still going to be tanking and healing, because they're the kind of people who take intense pride in what they do. Give them the spotlight, they deserve it. They want to carry. Let them carry.

And if that kind of intensity is not your cup of tea, there's always dps. Kick back and enjoy the scenery. The vast majority of people are not intensely goal driven. Let them be themselves.

[Kabooa]

I'm not sure how enmity can be made to be 'fun', 'exciting', or 'engaging', but if you could provide an example of such a system, either actual or theoretical, I'm all ears..

I'll give it a whirl.

This will cover only the concept of threat and the related damage.

We're going to alter the "Tank Mastery" trait given at level 10 to simply be a 25% threat bonus. This does a few things.
A) It becomes our baseline moving forward. For a tank to function, they have to be able to generate enough threat to hold enemies against jobs who have weaker or no threat tools.
B) It shaves off a significant portion of the passive stat bloat tanks get. 20% damage reduction and the +50% HP pool. Doing this reduces current tanks from something like 335,000 EHP to around 190,500. The Tank's mitigation kit and/or Boss Damage has to be altered with this change in mind but that isn't the scope of this post.

We're also removing "Tank Stance" as it currently exists. It can return in other forms, but "Press to ignore" won't be it.

This is our design goal.
An equally skilled tank utilizing no additional management will have their arse ridden by their DPS and/or healers and will eventually be overtaken. The tank's ability to manage threat is a limiter on their team. The team's ability to aid the tank in this endeavor will be limited. Threat modifiers for DPS will primarily be Suppression effects - Not reducing threat generation or amount, but causing it to be ignored for the duration to give time for the situation to be remedied.

At a 25% modifier, this means a tank needs around 70-75% of the damage of a DPS to ensure that Threat isn't something that can be auto'd away. If it cannot be lost, it's pointless and shouldn't exist.

We adjust kit potency in a basic level (I'm not going to create a whole job to illustrate this) extends this range to 60% to 90%. At 60%, the combined threat modifier is +100%. At 90%, the modifier is 0%. Maybe it's stance exclusive, maybe it's always available and you pick what you need at any time. Whatever floats your boat, I personally prefer hard stance exclusives with radically different ability functions, but the form it takes isn't overly important. It really doesn't take much to improve the 123 fest we have.

With the removal of shirk, I'm going to borrow a bit from another post on here that had an intriguing idea.

First Provoke no longer gives you "top + a billion". I'm partial to one of the following.

A) Set to Top +6 seconds of "taunt" to establish yourself.
B) Set to Top - 10%.
C) Set to Top +5%

These mostly all have the same end result but change some subtleties and specifics during boss fights depending on what they do and the strength of swaps.

The idea I'm borrowing from the other post is effectively a disengage / execute. The tank tags out with a big hit that dumps its own threat but gives it to no one.

A TLDR
A) The Main tank is dealing with the boss and is the main inhibitor of the group. The Off Tank cannot aid greatly in this endeavor. "It is entirely on the tank."
B) There is a "beginner mode" (The threat buttons) and an "expert mode" (max derps, threat is an issue), as well as the learning curve between them.
C) DPS and Healers have suppression. Not reduction or negation. It is their job to help you. It is your job to not need it. It's everyone's job to potentially abuse this for gain.
D) The heavy reduction of passive stats and rebalancing content around it means that the loss of tank control early on is less punishing and scales higher as level and content difficulty increases. Basically 4man -> 8man -> Expert -> Savage has appropriate training wheels.
E) Tagging is aesthetically less about throwing mean words and more about throwing a disorienting haymaker to set up your partner, and is able to be personally exploited in a more end-result manner than Shirk.

[Mikey_R]

I'll give it a whirl.

This will cover only the concept of threat and the related damage.

(NOTE: this is post #390 and is an attempt to try and make enmity meaningful. I have not read this thread fully so I am unsure if this poster wants enmity to be more prevalent or if they just wanted to take a stab at the challenge for some fun)

The first thing I will note is that it sounds very very similar to SB tanking, but making it harder to keep the enmity with just DPS combos. Obviously, most people did not like that system, so proposing something similar isn't going to end well.

However I want to address some points. From your first list, point B. You state that current tanks have an effective HP of ~335,000, which is not the case. Current highest gear tanks have about 160,000 HP which put then at about 200,000 eHP after accounting for the native 20% damage reduction. I have no idea where you get the 50% extra HP from, unless you are just saying that in relation to a DPS health pool. regardless, 200,000 eHP is what we are at now, which isn't too dissimilar to the 190,500 you wanted.

For the tank damage, 80% of a DPS is what a tanks damage needs to be in order for it to come out even. So less is fine if that's the course you want to take, however, it's the paragraph after that I don't understand. Are you trying to say that the less DPS you do (down to a point) increases your enmity generation? If so, I guess this is a way to try and mitigate less skilled/geared tanks dragging the team down and prolonging runs for no reason. However, clarification on this would help.

As for the 3 'provoke' replacements, the first one isn't too bad, but it seems pointless to have a 6 second taunt when you have an enmity dump, which is would be used in the same way that shirk is currently used, and current provoke works fine with that system. As for the other 2, provoking to 90% of the top seems like a good idea, you still have to take into account fight length. The longer the fight goes on, the larger that 10% becomes, making it harder and harder to catch up. This would of course mean the enmity dump would also have to be % based, but then, again, we end up with where we are with shirk, just without any benefit to the MT and it does damage. as for top +5%, if you don't need provoke, you can use it to keep gaining bigger and bigger leads on enmity, making any sort of enmity combo become pointless as the fight goes on. If you have 2 tanks, assuming you don't need provoke in the near future, you can have the OT provoke then the Mt provoke, giving the MT a little over a 10% boost to their enmity.

I won't go into too much here, but in my opinion tying a tanks damage output to enmity is a bad move and helps noone. I made a post in the other topic where this was suggested:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...exity-to-tanks (post #16)

The long and Short of it is, there are way too many variables and inconsistencies involved with making a tank rotation based on enmity that it would be impossible to balance (and I do mean that it would literally be impossible).

[Kabooa]

However I want to address some points. From your first list, point B. You state that current tanks have an effective HP of ~335,000, which is not the case. Current highest gear tanks have about 160,000 HP which put then at about 200,000 eHP after accounting for the native 20% damage reduction. I have no idea where you get the 50% extra HP from, unless you are just saying that in relation to a DPS health pool. regardless, 200,000 eHP is what we are at now, which isn't too dissimilar to the 190,500 you wanted.

Yes. I am saying in relation to DPS hp, because there is constant comparison to DPS...DPS as well.

The raw EHP of tanks currently is absurd, and alone cements their place in the raid team even if they were dealing approximately 30% less damage than they are now. You simply cannot replace it, as the moment non-tanks are getting hit, you not only shut them down, but shut down the healers. EHP isn't only the damage you take, it's the effectiveness of healing upon you.

The passive stat bloat of the tanks is a problem.

Regarding the rest, it's just, like, our opinions man.

The "Damage" shirk would have a cooldown. It's less about spamming it for DPS and more about changing the aesthetic of a tank swap. The cooldown is ideally long enough to prevent spam, but short enough that a really good and knowledgeable tank pairing can eck out additional uses without endangering the group.

The Provoke changes are not just for swapping threat, but recovery scenarios as well. "Top + a billion" alone removes the need of Shirk. The Shirk Button might as well just be a tank stance toggle at this point.

There would be no more threat dumps / reductions for the DPS and healers. They only gain suppression effects. They can only help you, not do it for you, which is the way threat should be, and technically the way it is, if it didn't have a stupid 1000% modifier.

The reason you, at base, deal less threat potential than a DPS/Healer puts out is bolded. If you have no threat of losing it, then it's pointless and shouldn't exist, which is our scenario right now. Just let whoever hits it first keep it and it only changes on provoke.