Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Mikey_R]

But, for the start it's just a matter of giving tanks more to do and shaking up fights a bit, giving us some further reason for our actions beyond just "heal everyone to at least Y amount by time X:XX" or "hold at least one point of Enmity above any non-tank".

I think this one point here is the crux of everything. Tanks just need more to do. We now all have tools to mitigate damage on other people, but as far as I am aware, they are mainly used on the other tank. They have used mechanics where the tank has to be in front to take the most damage before (Thordan EX comes to mind) but it really is rare and I don't think it has come again since then (from memory).

One thing I will say though with the example of the AoE, only healing enough to survive and then the boss throwing out another, the problem with things like this is it could be seen as a punishment mechanic. As a healer. you knew the party would survive, they do, but the boss decides to throw out another anyway to kill everyone, whereas if you had healed more before the first, you wouldn't have the second AoE. It could be seen as a punishment as you have to spend more resources before/after to ensure you stay above the HP threshold rather than knowing you would survive and allowing your regens to do their job. This is where you have to be careful with mechanics as you do not want to feel like you are being punished by taking more damage for no reason.

[Atreides]

I think this one point here is the crux of everything. Tanks just need more to do. We now all have tools to mitigate damage on other people, but as far as I am aware, they are mainly used on the other tank. They have used mechanics where the tank has to be in front to take the most damage before (Thordan EX comes to mind) but it really is rare and I don't think it has come again since then (from memory).

P2S has such a mechanic too, tank has to go in front and mitigate to take the brunt of the group damage. We had a few others since then too but thats the most recent one that comes to mind.

[Sqwall]

P2S has such a mechanic too, tank has to go in front and mitigate to take the brunt of the group damage. We had a few others since then too but thats the most recent one that comes to mind.

Double tank buster tethers on P3S, Purgation with Holmgang cheese or strait shirk swap with OT having to watch what's going on in P1S, Grace tank buster stack with OT, P2S Coherence flare on MT and Stack with OT. P2S has 5 shared tank busters, with the last one being the most crucial as it's right after a knockback + light party stack. P2S also has the final coherence + stack DURING a downflow, with the tank with the longer timer grabbing the tether away from the group, while the OT has to get hit with flow AND get positioned in front of party to soak the stack line AOE.

Hydalen EX has to be the most busy fight I have ever been in next to Seat of Sacrifice. Hydalen has nearly a mechanic every 10 seconds, and the tanks have PLENTY to do with shared tank busters, add phase literally healing each other while the party DPS the crystals down, a decent frontal cleave tank buster, and the final phase with a 5 hit stack aoe followed up with a spread and a shared tank buster, all the while you have to position the boss at the area with no light wave coming in, and after all is said and done...RUN MIDDLE to reposition boss for light party stacks.

EX zodiark is probably the easiest fight for a tank, but the tank buster ain't no joke, and you can't cheese it as the debuff you get will delete you. Zodiark EX is pretty simple from a tank perspective.

Ruby Weapon EX was a stupid fun tank fight. Loved the whole add phase and tank swaps. Same for Hades EX as the whole fight for tanks was busy, and especially the hot/cold add phase with a tank swap, and tethers.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....I don't know where this is coming from that tanks have NOTHING to do in EX/savage content. But I am ANYTHING but bored.

I'll say this though....i'm glad I don't have to worry about agro on top of EVERY example that I listed.

[Atreides]

snip

Unironically those suggestions usually come from a group of people who either play another role alltogether and think tanks are not busy enough for their liking or/and people who don't engage in Savage/Ultimate content. They want the game to be solely balanced around ex trials and expert dungeons which are indeed a snoozefest for tanks for the most part.

[Alzinor]

Unironically those suggestions usually come from a group of people who either play another role alltogether and think tanks are not busy enough for their liking or/and people who don't engage in Savage/Ultimate content. They want the game to be solely balanced around ex trials and expert dungeons which are indeed a snoozefest for tanks for the most part.

Give this man/woman, a huge cookie.

truth has been told.

[Sqwall]

Unironically those suggestions usually come from a group of people who either play another role alltogether and think tanks are not busy enough for their liking or/and people who don't engage in Savage/Ultimate content. They want the game to be solely balanced around ex trials and expert dungeons which are indeed a snoozefest for tanks for the most part.

I know my FC has struggled to find main/OT's for savage as most tanks have switched to DPS. Their reasoning is that tanks just have way to much responsibilities, and they didn't think it was fun having everyone watching you front and center.

Those tanks imo, are quite happy with dungeons and EX trials.

I however FALL ASLEEP in dungeons when I tank. If only dungeons had a hard or extreme mode to keep things interesting.

EX's can be boring, and some can be insanely good. Seat of Sacrifice comes to mind, I think by far the best one to tank...has to be Hades EX. There is SO MANY mechanics that are tank dependent, and co-tank dependent.

Savage I found this tier to be VERY main tank/OT dependent specially from a tanking perspective. It's just something special when the OT provokes and I instantly shirk in response thinking "Ok, he want's to be MT now, and he must have a reason....here you go brother!" Then I go immediately in to OT mode and take over that clock position. Switching from Bloodwhetting to Nascent to provide mitigation and heals to him.

Same goes for when he shirks to me, and I provoke. Then he mentions Hallowed is gone... I nod with understanding and instantly know what he means. Then we swap again. I think we swap maybe 6-7 times in P2S.

Personally I feel horrible during P3S as it's nearly impossible to keep that boss centered or oriented in a way for the DPS to hit positionals. I'm constantly telling the group sorry for bad pull, or poor positioning with that dumb bird, but nobody in the group berates the Main Tank as they all know the tanks have quite a bit to handle with tethers, adds, and staying alive to boot.

Maybe it's true. People just don't want the responsibility with tanking and find tanking boring outside of savage/ultimate.

Savage tanking is anything but boring.

[eagledorf]

Yes, please bring back aggro. It's incredibly stupid now, you can often grab aggro with Aurora as long as you're in tank stance, you have to intentionally do nothing to lose aggro now.

Also please bring back:

Positioning the boss

While there are some clever positioning things tanks can do to improve party DPS like tanking the boss at the edge on P4S, SE clearly intends for bosses to just sit in the middle with no tank decision making involved whatsoever. P4S for example the boss frequently cast locks so in some cases (like after Setting the Stage) how far the boss moves depends on the sever refresh rate, which wouldn't be the case if SE thought tanks might actually move the boss. P1-2 the boss actually puts itself back in the middle for you automatically, and don't even get me started on bosses like Zodiark that literally can't move!

In fact, I think the only positioning that's intended and not automatic is after Gloryplume and before Dark Fire in P3 and after Pinax and Act 3 in P4S when you get the exciting task of...going to the middle. This is trivial for any even slightly experienced tank, and a slightly good tank will know to position it until it's cast-locked. This is compounded by fewer positionals and so many instant casts that LoS and angle only matter anymore if you are spinning the boss like a fool.

Something for OT to do:

Despite all the complaints about DRK, DRK remains perfectly viable in this raid tier even in PF. That's because as long as they OT, they never have to tank. Literally whenever I run with a DRK in PF, they want me to tank 100% of the time except for brief moments when they Provoke for a tank buster mechanic and then Shirk it right back.

Other than these occasional gimmicks, there is no reason to have two tanks in any of the current raid contents because there's no adds (except the birds in P3, but they don't spawn when the boss is up) or anything that requires actually tanking. Yes there's the tethers in P3 and P2, but other than hitting hard there's no reason that mechanic couldn't have been designed for a DPS to do instead.

Also, speaking of EX content. Hydaelyn doesn't require an OT at all even in the base tome gear, I've literally always done it as solo tank.

Synergy with healers:

Many of the tank skills work against instead of with healers now. For example, Heart of Conundrum just lowers the potency of Essential Dignity, Clemency is just annoying to healers who have been saving an oGCD to top you, Equilibrium guarantees Excognition never procs, etc. Other than the occasional coordination of raidwide mits, tanks and healers barely feel like a team anymore, just green support DPS and blue support DPS.

Decisions (other than delaying DPS rotations):

Used to be Paladins needed to decide if they want to Flash to refresh Blind on trash pulls or do DPS. WARs had to decide if they wanted to use IB for mitigation or Fell Cleave for DPS. While some of these were dumb (like IB/FC, because IB almost never got chosen over 'yell at the scholar'), having some degree of technical play was way more interesting than the 1-2 of tanks now, especially on trash pulls. There's got to be some way to reach a compromise that is not so punishing to DPS that nobody will use it or so trivial like timing Divine Veil that it barely matters.

Hard autoattacks

Tanks don't need to rotate cooldowns or self-heal to survive anymore, even in Savage content. All they need to do is push the button when the cast bar starts. Optimizing cooldown rotations still has some benefit, but frankly it's pretty small with how weak damage on tanks between busters is compared to AoE damage. The only actually remotely interesting autoattacks are the OT damage in P3 and P4 part 2 when they continue through mechanics.

I incidentally do agree savage raids are fun and busy enough, but it is not really much to do with tanking.

[Tlamila]

I however FALL ASLEEP in dungeons when I tank. If only dungeons had a hard or extreme mode to keep things interesting.

That's more a problem with dungeons tbh. I actually find tanking or healing in dungeons at least a bit of a "challenge" since depending on the situation the tank or healer might have to compensate for the other, or for the low dps, and adapt, while the dps does the same rotation no matter what, and with 0 threats in dungeons, and that's even more boring.
If anything a tank might have to do more in a dungeon than in a normal trial and some exes where you don't have to move the boss and the only tank mech is tank bsuters.

[baklava151]

Bumping an old thread since it seems like an appropriate spot for it

I joined during ShB so I didn't get to experience old tank stance and enmity management, but the general idea sounds like it could be interesting and give tanks more to think about during a fight. Just from what I'm reading it sounds like good tanks would use tank stance once during their opener to get aggro and then ignore it the rest of the fight, I guess between doing high damage and DPS using their enmity tools. I wonder if they could have tweaked some numbers, possibly remove DPS enmity tools, to make it mainly the tank's responsibility to maintain aggro and they had to swap between stances throughout the fight to hold aggro. I also see reading old guides that DRK and PLD would get increased defense when they had tank stance on, and WAR increased health and healing received with Defiance, maybe they also could have also played with mechanics where you had to be in tank stance to survive or just generally give bosses harder hitting autoattacks (if that wasn't the case already).

[DannyDeDitto]

I honestly think Square should FIRST focus on PROPERLY teaching new players about how to play a tank. I feel they've made tanks so bloody simple for the sake of accessibility, and yet you still see people from time to time that don't know what a tank stance is.

I don't think it's too much to make AT LEAST A BASIC tanking tutorial a mandatory thing that teaches you what to do as a tank in dungeons as well as trials and off-tank shenanigans. It's a good thing the game's community is usualy very welcoming and helpful, i always enjoy cheering up and giving advice to new tanks but let's be realistic, teaching you how to play the game should be the game's job, not the other players', i've had one tank that almost had to be kicked because they wouldn't hold aggro off of single packs, they just stood there and 1,2,3'd a mob, stance off (although that one in particular also didn't really seem to care so there's that)

It doesn't matter how simple and easy you make the job, people will always find a way to mess it up.
I think it would be best for everyone to raise the skill floor (and the skill ceiling) JUST A LITTLE bit so it's not so braindead, update tutorials including guildheists, in a way that people will at least bother to find out what they're supposed to do. For the record i feel tanxiety comes a lot more from people not knowing exactly how to do things right, knowing that their role is supposed to be leading the party.