This is the biggest reason why Tanks and Healers are designed to be braindead easy.

[ty_taurus]

I have a serious question:

Why is it considered toxic for a DPS to pull adds, but not toxic for a tank to not use AoEs? Both are examples of not playing the game “the right way,” and both can cause a wipe, or at least make the run harder for everyone else, so what’s the difference?

[AnotherPerson]

I have a serious question:

Why is it considered toxic for a DPS to pull adds, but not toxic for a tank to not use AoEs? Both are examples of not playing the game “the right way,” and both can cause a wipe, or at least make the run harder for everyone else, so what’s the difference?

It's not really toxic to consider DPS to pull adds in expert roulette, but only seems that way to ... bad players actually. Both are originally considered toxic because it creates more things to consider on the healer's and tank's side. It's 100% toxic for a tank to not use AoEs. However, the former (DPS grabbing adds) actually benefits the party when done moderately due to how healers, tanks, DPS, and dungeons are designed while the latter is actually griefing behavior and cannot be justified in any way. Healers have ridiculous amounts of free healing in relation to casual dungeon content, including expert roulette. DPS benefit more from bigger pulls. Mobs do low damage and rarely do untelegraphed cleaves (and when they do, it's generally not lethal to a non-dps so healers have ample room to heal them up). Tanks and Healers both have more than the minimum amount of mitigation and sustain to get through a wall-to-wall trash pack safely. You'd see it more discouraged if it was more dangerous like in Stone Vigil (Lv 43, SCH+SGE no oGCDs, healing power limited) or Aurum Vale (Good ILVL Sync prevents Wall to wall pulls and no standardized invuln for all tanks at this level). However, that's just not the case by lv 90 in expert roulette. In reality, DPS actually can help more because they usually have their own personal self mitigation (SMN has radiant aegis x2, melee have arms length + whatever self sustain tool + bloodbath, ranged DPS have 10% party mit on top of extra utility, etc.). It's also because tanks can easily and instantly take aggro back due to how big the modifiers are on tank aggro generation, provided they actually use their AOE combo and not single target in wall to wall pulls.

Edit: A better example to see this difference would be to look at it in Criterion dungeon mobs vs regular dungeons. Yes, you'll die in criterion dungeons if you pull as a DPS. That's where mobs REALLY hurt and adheres more to the holy trinity model. In such a case, tanks should be pulling and DPS should not be running ahead because a DPS' self sustain and mitigation doesn't do the healer any favors when the damage they take per hit is still is exceedingly high on any role that isn't a tank and deaths are more punishing due to a limitation on raises. A DPS pulling here would be making things considerably more difficult rather than efficient as the healer have to focus more resources on spreading out their healing too -- therefore it's neither ideal and can be considered toxic mindset for DPS to pull ahead simply because it's not very beneficial in any way other than DPS might be doing slightly more damage -- a significant and risky tradeoff. On the other side, if you have a tank deciding to single target in Criterion? Well, I hope you're ready for a wipe and nothing other than wipe galore cause even if you end up pulling one pack, the other pack of mobs tied to the pack will definitely kill the rest of the party if tank doesn't maintain aggro.

[Renathras]

I have a serious question:

Generally? Role and rate of push for content/comfort zone of players. Or to put it another way, the difference between making someone uncomfortable and merely inconveniencing someone GENERALLY.

The Tank's ultimately responsible for controlling all of the enemies on the field/drawing their agro, as well as using their abilities to survive the hits and prevent themselves from dying and the party from taking damage/wiping.

Meaning when they've pulled all they feel comfortable with and you pull more onto them, you're pushing them outside of their comfort zone. In life, it's generally considered rude to push people you don't know out of their comfort zone. It's like walking into someone's personal space, clearly making them uncomfortable, and standing there even when it's obvious you're doing so. Not to be too blunt, but it's something that people without...social difficulties?...learn not to do to other people by the time they get to be adults.

On the other hand, not using AOEs/doing wall-to-wall pulls/etc is GENERALLY (will get back to this) not making the DPS players uncomfortable/pushing them out of their comfort zone, it's just going slower, making the impatient feel inconvenienced. Now, I say GENERALLY, because most MMOs' single target rotations can be performed (or mostly performed) on DPSers. FFXIV has moved towards a lot of single-target things doing AOE damage now. This is a relatively new thing, though. For instance, in ShB, RDM's burst combo was single target only. Holy/Flare/Scorch became AOE in EW. SMN's Bahamut has always been AOE when it comes out, but it used to have a single target version in SB/ShB (Phoenix used both, however). But we're talking a general perception here.

There's also a part that the Tank may be considering the Healer (or an over-concern for the Healer), etc. Tanks watching Healer's MP bars before pulling more things has long been an MMO staple, again, until relatively recently in MMO history.

I'm not sure the best way to describe it other than "social graces"; it's the difference between making someone uncomfortable/making more work for something against their will and merely inconveniencing someone by going a little slower. Like the difference between standing up in someone's face that's clearly uncomfortable with it vs walking down a sidewalk slowly with the person behind you being annoyed you aren't going faster. One is rude, the other merely a natural inconvenience of dealing with other people in a social setting.

Again, as a general thing.

The proliferation of "single target is now AOE" changes the mechanics somewhat, but keep in mind this mindset is 20 years old at this point, and so predates that modern innovation.

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I know it's not an answer that people may like, but to a serious question, that's the serious answer.

EDIT:

In super short, it comes from an older time in MMOs where mechanics were a bit different and people were generally more polite/social and less in a hurry/caught up with the hustle and bustle of modern life to the expense of social graces, so to speak.

[Calysto]

...

At the risk of derailing - and just for the double standard - what about the healer then ?
A tank that only pull "what they are comfortable with" (or wall to wall for that matter) may actively harm their experience.
By that logic it should be fine for a healer to pull or use rescue on the tank either to the next pack or away from it.
If the tank is already using AoE, one or two packs make little difference, as long as the healer is comfortable with the healing required they should dictate the pace, not the tank, right ?

[KenZentra]

At the risk of derailing - and just for the double standard - what about the healer then ?
A tank that only pull "what they are comfortable with" (or wall to wall for that matter) may actively harm their experience.
By that logic it should be fine for a healer to pull or use rescue on the tank either to the next pack or away from it.
If the tank is already using AoE, one or two packs make little difference, as long as the healer is comfortable with the healing required they should dictate the pace, not the tank, right ?

If a tank isn't comfortable double pulling, no one should be forcing that on them.
If a healer isn't comfortable with the tank double pulling/healing a double pull, no one should be forcing that on them.

Doing otherwise is toxic.

[Saraide]

If a tank isn't comfortable double pulling, no one should be forcing that on them.
If a healer isn't comfortable with the tank double pulling/healing a double pull, no one should be forcing that on them.

Doing otherwise is toxic.

A tank single pulling has legit no reason to exist in a complete light party. You dont need a tank at all then and a dps instead would genuinely be better for the group.

[Musashidon]

A tank single pulling has legit no reason to exist in a complete light party. You dont need a tank at all then and a dps instead would genuinely be better for the group.

this is the reason they keep adding walls inbetween pulls keep it up and they will force single pulls everytime. goodluck though.

[Saraide]

this is the reason they keep adding walls inbetween pulls keep it up and they will force single pulls everytime. goodluck though.

They're not forcing single pulls though. Almost all pulls in newer dungeons are in groups of 2. And it's just the truth. You can clear any single pull with any combo of 3 people.

[TaleraRistain]

If a tank isn't comfortable double pulling, no one should be forcing that on them.
If a healer isn't comfortable with the tank double pulling/healing a double pull, no one should be forcing that on them.

Doing otherwise is toxic.

It all goes back to understanding your party and being a responsible member of it. I got a healer the other night in Mt Gulg where we tried the big pulls but it just wasn't happening. I can tank them just fine with other healers. But they were struggling, I saw this, and I dialed it back. We got through just fine. If a tank pulls small when I'm healing, I'll let them know I have their back if they want to try larger, but I'm cool with adjusting for small as well. It costs us nothing to be a little kind and adjust if needed to what our party can handle.

[Renathras]

There was a movie I once saw, but can never remember the name of. I think it had the guy from The Mummy as the main character. He and his parents had hidden out in a bomb shelter the father had bought back in the Cold War. They got a message of an incoming Soviet strike and went in, but never received the all clear. So years later, the boy, now grown, comes out. Their shelter was under the red light district, so of course hilarity ensues with him and the parents thinking these mutants (punk hair styles and piercings) was a result of the nuclear fallout, and they resolve to stay in their bunker. But when the father comes down with some illness, the son goes out to find medicine and learn about the new world.

He befriends a stripper girl and a gay guy, and when figuring out the guy is gay - obviously at odds with 1950s social norms, and this movie was from the 90s when that topic was still somewhat risque - he's still entirely polite to him. Later, the gay guy, talking to the stripper, explains to her that the 1950s guy told him his definition for what a gentleman was. I don't remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect of helping others and making them feel comfortable, embodied in politeness and self-sacrifice, and regardless of if it was reciprocated.

While I don't always manage, I've always thought that's a nice definition for how one should conduct themselves in general.

So, I think that applies here...

But aren’t those explanations highly subjective?

They are.

But that's how social norms come to exist. Think about general social norms. You generally stand about 3-4 feet from someone talking to them. Why not 1 foot face to face? Why not 10? During the pandemic it was 6. It's also different in different cultures, with some being fine with 1 foot, practically nose-to-nose, while that's considered rude and very uncomfortable to people from other cultures.

It's not a data thing, at the end of the day. "discomfort" is not a statistic you can quantify. If there's a small rock in your shoe on the one hand but your underwear band is digging into your skin at your hip on the other, which is more uncomfortable? Is there a device to measure the two levels of discomfort so we can quantify that? Can we verify that the one more uncomfortable to you is also more uncomfortable to everyone else? While we can attempt to establish things like the frowny-to-smiley face pain scale or "1-to-10" that hospitals will ask patients, those are entirely subjective. A woman who has given birth multiple times and lived through stepping on a landmine may have a different "5" than someone who...hasn't done thhose things.

But your question was "Why is <this>..?"

That's the answer to your question: It's from a time when agro management was actually serious business, AOE rotations were extremely rarely used (and many times, classes might only have a single AOE button and it be very resource intensive to use), and that's when role responsibilities were established in the primordial before times of early MMOs. And such is the power of inertia that it still stands to this day.

And I will tell you, being on both ends, a run going slow is WAY less distressing than being a tank in a run where people are over pulling and you're trying desperately to hold the situation together. The latter of those is FAR more uncomfortable, subjectively, to me. To others, they thrill at the excitement. This is why I'm a natural healer and a functional tank, but not a NATURAL tank personality type.

And what established the consensus is that, to a majority of people, wipes were more uncomfortable than slow runs. Again, the before times. But it's honestly even true today. For all we say that wipes aren't a big deal, if someone causes a wipe (or feels they do), that bothers a lot of people. It's the "great fear/anxiety" that tankxiety and healxiety are. Those are very real things that exist. You can say it's not rational, but that doesn't change the fact it exists and is the norm, since it seems to be true of more people than not.

Fear of failure (wipes being failure) is greater to most Humans than fear of going slow, even if the consequences of failure are relatively minor. Human psychology.

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Though I do agree with you that intent is a basis for what is toxic..."just trying to help" isn't always a defense. Help WHO? The person doing it or other people who don't want them to do it? It's a pretty loaded thing. "Why did you steal that $100 from my wallet?" "I was just trying to help." "Who? Because that's not helping me!" "Oh, I was trying to help myself pay my bills this month." If it seems clear someone else in the party (particularly the tank) doesn't want them doing it, then persisting is toxic.

I think in THIS case, it was likely toxic based on what Mane said in the chat (as Sebazy said, the hot mess that was) and his actions since have definitely been toxic.

But if you were asking the question in a vacuum:

Inertia (established norms) and people's natural fear of failure.

At the risk of derailing - and just for the double standard - what about the healer then ?
A tank that only pull "what they are comfortable with" (or wall to wall for that matter) may actively harm their experience.
By that logic it should be fine for a healer to pull or use rescue on the tank either to the next pack or away from it.
If the tank is already using AoE, one or two packs make little difference, as long as the healer is comfortable with the healing required they should dictate the pace, not the tank, right ?

Again, see above:

It's not actively harming anyone to "go slower".

This gets into a concept libertarians call "the NAP" or "non-aggression principle". In short "Your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbor's nose", or your rights are limited in a general sense by where they would conflict with the rights of others. At that point, disputes are decided by who was the aggressor, and if neither was, who would be most harmed. It's kind of a flow chart thing.

Also, force movement on other people/forced control of someone else against their will would generally be considered aggressive and a violation. So using Rescue on someone to force them to pull more would generally be considered VERY uncomfortable to the victim and bad. I remember PvPing in WoW some, and the single most "OMG!! HEARTATTACK!!!" inducing thing was the Death Knight grip pull thing. I f***ing hated that ability. It's making me mad just thinking about it, honestly, lol

.

Here's the way I see it:

Go at the speed of the slowest person.

When traveling with a group of friends, if one person has a long stride and walks fast, it's generally rude to walk at that speed and either force everyone to keep up or outpace them.

What's generally considered polite is to slow to the speed of the slowest member. When you walk somewhere with your grandma (if she's older and slower than you), are you going to grab her arm and pull her down the block, or slow to her pace? Which would be rude and which would be respectful?

It's that simple.

In military or other joint movements (police, firefighters, etc), a similar principle applies. You can only move as fast as your slowest guy. In that sense, it's a more tactical consideration, obviously, and you also have to consider being ready for a fight at any time, including your destination (so a leader can't force march his people too much or they'll arrive exhausted and be easily beaten - Sun Tsu), instead of a matter of rudeness/politeness-respect, but the same principle is seen there as with you and your grandma walking down the street.

So, if 2 people want to go fast and 2 people want to go slow, you defer to the slow people. Same if it's 3/1 or 1/3. If all 4 agree on going fast, you go fast. If anyone doesn't, politeness and not being a social troglodyte would demand going at the slower person's speed.

Again, recall the explanation of a gentleman. To try and make others happy and comfortable, regardless of if it is reciprocated. If the slow person is just not okay with going fast, then forcing them to is bad. Whereas most people aren't terrified of going slow, they just...dislike it. It's kind of the difference of forcing an arachnophobe into a room filled with spiders vs making an Olympic sprinter walk to the store with grandma. One is intensely uncomfortable and cruel, the other is just mildly annoying. Some people may not be able to get over their fears. And that's okay. It's being a good person to accommodate that. Doubly so if the sacrifice to oneself in doing so is minimal.

And, at the end of the day, we're talking 4 man dungeons. Even if you go through them with everyone only using their 1 button, single pulling and single targeting down everything, you're in and out in 40 minutes or less. It's not like we're talking years of your life here or any substantial investment. And, as always, if you REALLY don't like what the group is doing or the pace it's going, the option always exists to leave, as you are not held hostage at the end of the day.

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Or, in a nutshell, this:

If a tank isn't comfortable double pulling, no one should be forcing that on them.
If a healer isn't comfortable with the tank double pulling/healing a double pull, no one should be forcing that on them.

Doing otherwise is toxic.

NOTE: You can, of course, do whatever you want. I'm only talking about social norms, politeness/respect, and answering those general questions in vacuum. As you say, at the risk of derailing, since we're pretty far in the weeds away from the topic itself at this point and talking in complete hypotheticals.

I know, speaking for myself, I don't grab my grandma and drag her down the street at my pace, so I wouldn't do so with strangers in a videogame, personally. To me, that's rude, so I avoid it. I can go double pulls, so whatever role I am, I'll go the pace the party goes. If someone wants to go slow, I have no issues with that; as I say, I never que for dungeons when I don't have time to burn.

It all goes back to understanding your party and being a responsible member of it. I got a healer the other night in Mt Gulg where we tried the big pulls but it just wasn't happening. I can tank them just fine with other healers. But they were struggling, I saw this, and I dialed it back. We got through just fine. If a tank pulls small when I'm healing, I'll let them know I have their back if they want to try larger, but I'm cool with adjusting for small as well. It costs us nothing to be a little kind and adjust if needed to what our party can handle.

A very wise and mature take, I think.

Are you aware that completely changing 8 classes would actually have a significant impact and require SE to adjust old content which is a waste of everyones time?

This is actually a really good point.

Adjusting Tanks and Healers to be just DPS with a 3-5 oGCDs to do actual mitigation and healing would make old content unclearble. Meaning all that old content would have to be reworked ANYway.

Not to mention I STRONGLY suspect a majority of FFXIV players do not want to play an "everyone's a DPS" game. If they did, they'd be playing something like GW2...which tried that and then eventually shoehorned the Trinity into the game anyway because it doesn't work well in organized content to have no healers/tanks, and players were basically figuring out ways to do it anyway.

The game would need to be completely redesigned from top to bottom to do it, it wouldn't just be some light impact change.

I saw this whole thing on Twitter. The SAM explained the stop running comment was because Mane grabbed a boss and was running it around and died because of it.

The tank does need to AoE but even when Mane first posted the conversation on his Twitter account and there wasn't the SAM's response, I felt like it seemed he was being kind of a jerk dps in the run, too.

Getting back on topic:

Yes, that's my take as well..