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

[HeulGDarian]

I don't think you quite grasp just how bad it could get at times.

You can have ridiculous differences between players average itemlevels in this game. The minimum entry and max before sync can be dozens of average item levels. That's huuuuuge.
You can hit diversion on burst, it goes on 2 minute cooldown, and then you'll still pull aggro eventually unless the tank takes a double bullet of turning stance back and sitting in it for the rest of the fight and also spamming multiple extra aggro combos.

I've been on both sides of that.
Multiple times as a BRD taking aggro from a tanks with both aggro dumps used when ripping.
As a DRK catching up on gear unable to keep aggro from BLMs with Diversion and Lucid on cooldown.
Also saw multiple other people either ripping and getting punched to death or realizing their only option and holstering their weapon and just sitting down.

And this is just the item level difference portion of the problem with the old system.

I wouldn't mind aggro being somehow relevant but between the old system and the current one where aggro is just granted, I'll pick this current one any day of the week.

on dungeon pulls theyd have to stay in tank stance on 8 mans however the ot could help by provoking and then shirking the guy who mts. This is what people did to help me in my case. In a more controlled enviroment a nin can help as well. It had gameplay behind it , ill say that i rarely had such problems back in stormblood. For the sake of arguement though and cause thats something that cant be disputed nor confirmed lets say that it was indeed a huge problem. The solution they ended up with, the current system, removed rather than fix and it brought way more issues, something that seems to be the theme of shadowbringers job direction.

Ill try to summarise any pros annd cons cause this has been going for like 2 3 pages

old system
+ satisfying sealing
+ team gameplay
+ can help newer players
+ can sacrifice dps to pass ilvl problems
+ More cooldowns
- ilvl can still fck you
- cant keep dpsing
- aggro combos can screw you over
- looks scary to newer people

Current system
+ No need to care about ilvl for aggro
+ doesnt gimp your dps
+ easier for newer players
+ dont have to care about other people
+ Pld and gnb have more fun dps rotations
- less cooldowns
- sealing has been lowered to boring levels
- there are still people who lose aggro
- a huge part of the gameplay was removed
- job homogenization
- Drk and War dps rotations are boring


This is my take on the thing at least, Id like if instead of removing stuff they fixed them.

[Lammas]

I don't see those pros and cons. Before you had a load of buttons that you were pressing just so your tank could avoid tankstance because nobody liked tankstance. Lucid, Refresh and Tactician were ok because they added something else to the package while Diversion was something that you just pressed prepull and then kept hitting every 2 minutes just because. Then there's poor SAMs and especially MNKs who initially had only Diversion but got aggro dumps that literally cost them their DPS resourses. Then when someone doesn't use them, you as a tank are just screwed. If tanks don't want to be in tankstance as it's both worse and boring while these buttons existed only so tanks can not go into tankstance then removing both just seems like a pretty good idea to me.

To top it off WAR and NIN were already otherwise in really good spots but to top it off WAR could Unchain the huge downside of tankstance on pull and switch into DPS stance off GCD while NIN could provide them extra aggro while suppressing the top DPS or Healer aggro generation to boot. More buttons that you're pressing just to not have to deal with aggro combos or sitting in tankstance. While I'd say NINs stuff was at least flavorful, I don't miss any of these buttons at all.

In an optimal setting you barely used tankstance or didn't use it at all and nobody draws aggro. Makes perfect sense to me to just make the change where nobody has to use old tankstance and take all the aggro related button bloat out.

Homogenization or WAR & DRK boring rotations don't really have anything at all to do with the aggro change.

I also don't really see how the old system "can help new players" while being "scary looking for them".
People still losing aggro isn't really something you can list as a con as the only way to fix that would be to make tanks automatically get all aggro. That's like listing people watching Netflix while playing as a new con as if that wasn't happening before. Not to mention people lost aggro before way, way more than now. Now it happens if they miss the mobs, before it could happen anyway.

Can help by sacrificing DPS is not a pro. Having to stop pressing buttons is a con. Having to use band-aid purification instead of forbidden chacra is a con. That's something that nobody wants to do so why list that as a good thing.

Then we get back to the ilevel. How much worse do the problems get when the tank has a weapon 10 or 15 ilevels below best DPS's? 20? Someones going to have to do something that they really don't want to be doing and it's not anyones fault in particular, just getting screwed over by gear.

There's dungeons out there where the difference between minimum entry and maximum allowed is 60 ilevels. At that point dungeon bosses can become pretty frustrating experiences for everyone involved.

There's a whole another can of worms in the minimum item level system itself that still allows people to get their average up without all of their gear being above minimum, such as their weapon. That's something that still needs to be fixed but as you can probably imagine it didn't help the old system any. I'll also just drop this here because I don't know where else to mention it: NQ exists.

For me the con-list is pretty much losing a bit of flavor in aggro that I'm willing to sacrifice to get rid of all the previous cons. The biggest downside is not being able to troll my friends with Shirk anymore. I don't think tanks are great right now but the old aggro is not why.

[HeulGDarian]

Can help by sacrificing DPS is not a pro. Having to stop pressing buttons is a con. Having to use band-aid purification instead of forbidden chacra is a con. That's something that nobody wants to do so why list that as a good thing.

i said can bypass ilvl by sacrificing dps, not can help by sacrificing dps , what i meant is the tankstance giving the extra aggro and tankiness but losing some dps and i most certaintly didnt say that stopping button pressing is a pro. Youre the one who said the only thing to be done was doing nothing, something that i have never seen and gave you the benefit of the doubt. What youre considering as using cooldowns to not deal with aggro , are buttons that deal with aggro. besides that i dont see the arguing going anywere so you got your opinion ok and i got mine, its a shame that i cant change your mind.

Ill give my opinion once more . Pld who was tied the least with his stance only lost the cooldowns of the role skills they removed,war got completely screwed over since he lost all the abilities the tank stance provided and bonuses making level 80 trying to give back what he lost as lvl 70 in stormblood and failing at it, while drk got reworked to the point of being a second war and also he lost his blood price. On top of that the aggro management got literally removed. I dont really understand the sentiment of hey my tank stance has 20% less dps this sucks so hard , Especially when it was different gameplay depending the stance ,I loved inner beast it was the most thematic ability war could have a hit that healed you and gave you mitigation , Drk ability to aoe was the best thing ever during big pulls due to what the stances provided and even on single target tank stance allowed you to manage mp better, They gave utility to compensate for the dmg and that supposedely sucked? on a tank?. All those effects and depth were tied to the tank stance and tank stance was the start and end of aggro management. Ill say it again i rarely had troubles with aggro in stormblood both as a dps and as a tank
the only times i did were in an aoe pull with me doing single target dps on the big mob as a dps, as a tank if i had troubles my current random teammates helped me, I enjoyed it so much i got both mounts as drk without noticing or trying to get them. I do not understand why it needs explanation that removing gameplay while replacing it with nothing is worse than having to do 20% less dps as a tank while youre learning a tank or are outgeared.

[Lammas]

i said can bypass ilvl by sacrificing dps, not can help by sacrificing dps , what i meant is the tankstance giving the extra aggro and tankiness but losing some dps and i most certaintly didnt say that stopping button pressing is a pro. Youre the one who said the only thing to be done was doing nothing, something that i have never seen and gave you the benefit of the doubt. What youre considering as using cooldowns to not deal with aggro , are buttons that deal with aggro. besides that i dont see the arguing going anywere so you got your opinion ok and i got mine, its a shame that i cant change your mind.

Then I just misunderstood the sacrificing DPS part.
I'm very surprised if you've never seen aggro being ripped. It was pretty rampant after patches where new content came out after all the well geared regular players had gone through it asap but the people who mainly resub for story still kept trickling back in. Wasn't exactly good during the patch lull towards the end of SB either.

I'm not really surprised if I'm not changing anyones opinion on the internet but the least I'd hope is for them to see my side of the argument. Might not be what everyone wants to see but neither is yours.

I like how you practically say "let's just agree to disagree" and then do an immediate 180 going into a wild rant about everything and acting like your opinion is the absolute truth. Carrying this on will probably just damage my mental health so I'll just go enjoy the summer. Hope you have a good one too.

[HeulGDarian]

Then I just misunderstood the sacrificing DPS part.
I'm very surprised if you've never seen aggro being ripped. It was pretty rampant after patches where new content came out after all the well geared regular players had gone through it asap but the people who mainly resub for story still kept trickling back in. Wasn't exactly good during the patch lull towards the end of SB either.

I'm not really surprised if I'm not changing anyones opinion on the internet but the least I'd hope is for them to see my side of the argument. Might not be what everyone wants to see but neither is yours.

I like how you practically say "let's just agree to disagree" and then do an immediate 180 going into a wild rant about everything and acting like your opinion is the absolute truth. Carrying this on will probably just damage my mental health so I'll just go enjoy the summer. Hope you have a good one too.

im going on a rant cause i had to write that while playing league and i kept getting more and more frustrated. Besides that though i called it my opinion not the absolute truth
this is why i gave it one last time , this time instead of writing in pros and cons trying to be as objective as i could, i simply put my own feelings on it.

[BarretOblivion]

And on the other side of the coin if you're the DPS that's outgears the tank and they don't spend all of their time in tank stance and spam extra enmity combos the only thing you can do to avoid getting aggro is to just stop doing anything.

That wasn't a thing if your OT voke shirk'd like they are supposed to maybe... 2 times during the fight.

[Mikey_R]

That line of reasoning is fine for 8 mans, but you cannot apply it to dungeons, which is where the majority of the old enmity issues come into play.

[BarretOblivion]

That line of reasoning is fine for 8 mans, but you cannot apply it to dungeons, which is where the majority of the old enmity issues come into play.

Why didn't you just sit in tank stance in dungeons until the boss?
You just redo your opener and you should be good on hate for how fast bosses died in SB.
I never once have seen an aggro issue last expansion even using DPS stance during mob pulls. This just sounds like excuses or bad tanking.

[ForteNightshade]

That line of reasoning is fine for 8 mans, but you cannot apply it to dungeons, which is where the majority of the old enmity issues come into play.

Pull in tank stance and drop it once you have everything. Like Barret, I seldom had any issues. Perhaps the occasional mob would nibble on the healer but really, who cares? Trash mobs barely do any damage worth noting.

[Mikey_R]

I never had issues either, but this isn't a point about my tanking ability, this is a point about tanking in general. This means you have to take into account all tanks of different abilities and different gear levels compared to DPS. There was many a time when I could out aggro a tank in tank stance on my monk, why? gear levels, and yes, this accounts for Diversion as well.

Again, the point is, you should not have to change what you do as a tank based on your own gear level compared to your party. especially since you don't know the skill of the DPS either. They could be an average DPS or they could be a top tier raider, both would have to be dealt with differently with a lower geared tank.

So I pose the question again. If you can come up with a system that doesn't completely mess with a tanks rotation and how it flows and doesn't depend on the gear levels of the tanks compared to DPS, I would like to hear it. And just to clarify, 'just get good' isn't a valid point. If DPS can get away with being average (which I have no problems with FYI), then the system should allow an average tank to also perform their job well.