Are tanks currently too OP?

[Sqwall]

So nerfing their damage only serves to drive players away as the role neither has unique gameplay for their role nor the damage output to compensate. Being nearly unkillable is cool and all. At least until you realize it doesn't really matter in content that also matters. I'm never going to be able to survive current Savage fights as the last man standing unless the boss is at 0.5% and zero mechanics are coming up.

Good points. I suppose I never really cared about how much damage a tank does. I suppose I have only ever cared about how much damage I can mitigate/absorb to fulfill my role rather then being top tier tank DPS. If I wanted to do that I would have rolled SAM.

Ugh. FFXIV has been nothing but a DPS fest and it's annoying. I just wish it was possible to try fights without an enrage timer, and make the bosses more lethal by making the attacks random order vs. a lovely ballet. It just becomes....calculated.

[Lyth]

...

Tanking is about helping your team to perform more effectively. Most people can tell you when you're tanking well, but often can't tell why.

The reason why a lot of beginner to intermediate tanks fixate on mitigation and enmity is because errors in either of these are obvious and everyone calls you out on them. You can fairly easily develop a reputation for being a 'good tank' in your local community of friends by just having the gear to not fall into these pitfalls regularly. That doesn't mean that what you're doing is actually good tanking, and you only realize the weaknesses in your play when you see another tank doing a better job in the same fight. The problem is, you can spend years doing a fight and still not realize that there are better ways of doing it.

A lot of what we do is based around positioning. A7S is probably one of the best fights this game has ever designed from a tanking perspective. Position the boss so that melee can continue uptime during bombs. Position yourself such that when the boss jumps to you during jails, your team can swap off of the lock and on to the boss without having to reposition. Slow backstep during cat phase so that your dps don't lose uptime, while simultaneously maintaining distance so that the heart has maximal travel time. Target lock and swivel around the boss and stun the heart just as it comes towards the boss for bonus points. When you watch a good tank doing that fight optimally, it's amazing how many thoughtful little things you can do to make your entire team play more optimally. I wish Miyuki still had his old videos from A7S up. They put most tanks to shame.

The reason why Stormblood and Shadowbringers fights are weak when it comes to tank design is because the boss controls most of their movement independently of what we do. This is likely an anti-frustration measure for your dps, but it also completely removes the need for tanks. That's fine if you want to turn tanks into a subtype of melee dps with frontal positionals who do defensive quicktime events every so often. But we'd need to see a substantial boost to our dps to support this kind of gameplay.

I think the devs need to recognize that making a role overly accessible inevitably comes at the expense of impact. Anyone can play it, but nobody wants to.

[ForteNightshade]

I think the devs need to recognize that making a role overly accessible inevitably comes at the expense of impact. Anyone can play it, but nobody wants to.

Dark Knight and Bard are the two standing examples of this. Both having been neutered in an effort towards accessibility that's resulted in nothing but complaints from all skill levels.

While I would prefer tank gameplay actually emphasised, I'm not entirely opposed to essentially being beefier DPS... if we're compensated for it like we were in Heavensward. Instead, we're the weakest role in the game now despite having the least amount of impact beyond taking hits. That alone highlights how little thought went into tank gameplay this expansion.

[Kabooa]

Instead, we're the weakest role in the game now.

If we translated PVE kits and stats directly into PVP, a Warrior would solo kill 3 DPS without ever being in danger themselves.

[ForteNightshade]

If we translated PVE kits and stats directly into PVP, a Warrior would solo kill 3 DPS without ever being in danger themselves.

Who cares?

This is a discussion pertaining to the PvE aspects of the game. Warrior could be the god king, uber job that's capable of 1v15 in PvP. It's entirely irrelevant because PvE and PvP are balanced differently. In PvE, tanks have the least impact of any other role and contribute the least damage in a relatively optimized setting. This, in turn, makes them the weakest role overall.

Edit: To further define "weakest". Currently, tanks are essentially gimped DPS. Their impact is low because boss design this expansion has drastically reduced dedicated tank damage. Couple this with enmity being essentially non-existent, and movement and positioning primarily automated, the tank's specific role in a given fight is severely impacted. So they have to fall back on their damage to compensate. Except their damage is tuned so low, even a Dancer with Brick will still pull ahead of them. In the past, our lack of CDs forced us to make decisions on what to mitigate, and our damage was high enough we could surpass an underperforming DPS. Nowadays, we exist to take hits and little else. Ironically, the incredible self-healing Warrior and Paladin have hinders the gameplay of actual healers.

They may be able to solo old content or even current dungeons. Other then being a cool novelty, what impact does that have?

[Kabooa]

This, in turn, makes them the weakest role overall.

No, it doesn't.

Power isn't just damage. Power is the combined total of stats and toolkit breadth.

Dealing the least amount of damage makes the role the one that deals the least amount of damage. That's it.

Unless you want to tell me Healers were the weakest role in Heavensward or Stormblood, you may want to reconsider your stance here.

[ForteNightshade]

No, it doesn't.

Power isn't just damage. Power is the combined total of stats and toolkit breadth.

Dealing the least amount of damage makes the role the one that deals the least amount of damage. That's it.

Unless you want to tell me Healers were the weakest role in Heavensward or Stormblood, you may want to reconsider your stance here.

Except I wasn't only talking about power but impact and the overall gameplay of tanks.

Healers had and still have impact, albeit less than before given the current state of things. Not only do they have to heal, but have to plan out said healing in harder content. Compare that to tanks in say, Eden's Promise. They press their Invuln, faceroll every CD they have and press their Invuln again. That and dragging the boss south once is the only impact they have in an eight minute fight beyond being a damage sponge. The OT literally wouldn't have a purpose whatsoever if the boss did tank buster both tanks. It's that lack of impact on a given fight that brings down the role as a whole. And with the low damage, they no longer have even that to fall back on.

[Liam_Harper]

Good points. I suppose I never really cared about how much damage a tank does. I suppose I have only ever cared about how much damage I can mitigate/absorb to fulfill my role rather then being top tier tank DPS. If I wanted to do that I would have rolled SAM.

Personally I'm more interested in both. SAM can't tank and deal damage. Mitigating damage is your primary focus but when you've mastered that and there's still another layer of depth in doing high damage while mitigating well, it gives a class more engagement. There's more to master and it really rewards you for doing so and gives you more value to a team. Other MMO's have seen this sometimes but sadly FF14 tanks and healers lack that. There's very little to master with both the mitigation or dps and not much reward. Which is a shame.

Ugh. FFXIV has been nothing but a DPS fest and it's annoying. I just wish it was possible to try fights without an enrage timer, and make the bosses more lethal by making the attacks random order vs. a lovely ballet. It just becomes....calculated.

It'd still be a "dps fest". The tanks and healers who deal damage would continue to do so and adapt just fine. Because that's what you do during downtime.
If you bumped the incoming damage significantly to try and discourage tank and healer dps, the tanks and healers who deal damage would still squeeze in some dps and probably be fine because they generally know their toolkit well. The "pure tank and healers" would crumble within a week and be out with pitchforks demanding nerfs because they have no idea about rotating tank mitigation efficiently or any heal besides Medica II spam.