Are tanks currently too OP?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Lyth]

PvP is also based around the refreshing principle that the big angry player with the giant hammer/axe/sword is actually dangerous and that it is a bad idea to go toe to toe with them as a squishy. Tanks control positioning by denying space to the enemy, instead of by doing fictitious damage using foam bats.

This is also why kiting is a thing in PvP.

[Kabooa]

PVP is based around tight balance.

"Big angry man with stick" is no more and no less dangerous than "squishy mage waving fingers".

When "Big angry man with stick" can basically just be W + 1 to victory while 3 other people have to work around perfect team work to stand a chance, that's not balanced.

Not one, single PVP game worth its salt allows 1 equally geared/skilled archetype murder 3 others with no more effort than 'picking a target and killing them in 3 globals'.

Now, FF14 is a primarily PVE based game, therefore the balance is only concerned with your Role vs the Content vs your Competitor, but if at any point you change this, you see how absurdly stacked the tanks are, and how ridiculous claiming they are the weakest role actually looks.

[Lyth]

Which superhero is superior? Who knows.

PvP is actually based around how understanding how specific matchups and engagements work. There are some matchups that are always going to be bad for you. You just make a conscious decision not to take them. I mean, you could try to 1v1 big hammer guy as a squishy caster from melee range, but that wouldn't be very bright of you. Likewise, if you chase after that agile ranged player on the other end of the map as big hammer guy while they kite circles around you, you're gonna have a bad time. Sometimes you just say ok, decline the 1v1 and let a teammate take care of it while you smash someone else's face in.

This is especially true if you're a PvP healer. Nearly every match-up is a bad one. Yet it tends to be the single most demanding, versatile, high-skill, high-impact, game-changing role. They dive you, you kite them and your team destroys them while you dance circles around them. But if they ignore you, nothing dies. I'd main healer in PvE if it was half as engaging.

PvE tanking has the potential to offer the same level of player engagement, except it takes a fight designer who actually understands tanking to actually bring it out.

[Kabooa]

PvP is actually based around how understanding how specific matchups and engagements work

Let me tell you how a PVE Kit/Stat warrior deals with every 1v1 match up that's also PVE Kit/Stat'd.

You put up Storm's Eye, Low Blow, and kill the other guy in 3 Globals. The only ones that don't die are, surprise, the tanks.

Take a balanced team of 4 (1 Tank, 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Healer) vs 4 Warriors, and the result is 1 Tank vs 4 Warriors.

Tank kits are phat, stacked, and absurdly overstuffed. The warrior is just the easiest one to illustrate this with, because 4 Paladins may not 3-global a team, but they'll throw the warriors in the dirt.

[Lyth]

Unfortunately, I didn't ask you about how your hypothetical scenario worked out in your head.

[FallenWings]

Let me tell you how a PVE Kit/Stat warrior deals with every 1v1 match up that's also PVE Kit/Stat'd.

You put up Storm's Eye, Low Blow, and kill the other guy in 3 Globals. The only ones that don't die are, surprise, the tanks.

Take a balanced team of 4 (1 Tank, 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Healer) vs 4 Warriors, and the result is 1 Tank vs 4 Warriors.

Tank kits are phat, stacked, and absurdly overstuffed. The warrior is just the easiest one to illustrate this with, because 4 Paladins may not 3-global a team, but they'll throw the warriors in the dirt.

You are confusing the arguments of tanks in PvP games(LoL, DotA, Overwatch etc) with tanks in FFXIV PvP and oddly using FFXIV PvE kits and balance in FFXIV PvP which already has its own kits and balance and is irrelevant to the topic of FFXIV PvE tanks being low impact in FFXIV PvE.