What's up with tanks?

[teh_nam3less]

ofc...we are tank

@OP : if you dislike the way the other play tank, be one yourself. Play the tank style you want to be instead of complain on forum

Ahhhhhhhh finally! Someone got that.

[MomoOG]

I think this is more an issue of the Tank trying to speedrun (most likely wp) and the rest of the party/healer not being on the same page.

[ShinHikari7]

Has anyone else seen this:
The past few weeks I have seen a trend where tank players have been playing with more reckless abandon than normal. Specifically, they run ahead if the rest if the party and throw themselves into groups of enemies without any regard for whether the rest of the party (especially healers) are even nearby. This results in one of two outcomes: healers have to spam heals causing aggro to shift to them (and their eventual death), or tank dies (which usually results in tank blaming healer).
When did this lack of strategy and teamwork with regards to tank players become a thing? Is this just a NA phenomenon? Is anyone else seeing this?

Part of the problem is boredom from lack of endgame content. Also some parties DEMAND speed from their tanks and as such we are always pressured to move as quickly as possible through dungeons or risk endless bitching. Also some tanks are just not meant to be Tanks.

[Doo]

Part of the problem is boredom from lack of endgame content. Also some parties DEMAND speed from their tanks and as such we are always pressured to move as quickly as possible through dungeons or risk endless bitching. Also some tanks are just not meant to be Tanks.

Yeah lol usually tanks are the ones that are being pressured to know how to do everything and go as fast as possible without messing up.

[Bluevann]

As a tank I often find myself FORCED to hurry to the next monster, because I know that the DPS will try to get it before me. And since the puller always starts the fight with maxed enmity pool (those little pools next to your name in the party list, for reference), the other party members will be forced to start the fight with a 0 enmity pool. It's very stressful and sometimes difficult to slowly climb my way up to max enmity to get the monster off the puller, who almost never even tries to help his enmity go down and just keeps shooting arrows or spells at the target in a "I'll kill it before it kills me" spree.

[amnie]

if people are being silly I tell them I stop healing if they do that again. you wait for me. period.
if they still do it after me warning them, I may just ask if someone not involved is on my server, and then leave. 'aint nobody got time for that' indeed. I have no time for not enjoying myself.

I'm also one of the healer that absolutely support the tanks that say 'you pull it, you tank it', and if it's agreed upon I'm not healing the puller. they are so badass they don't need it, obviously

[Fendred]

Its because tanks end up running way more dungeons than DPS or healers. As a result, they've done the content so much that they're bored to death of it. They still want the resources of running the dungeon, but they want those resources as fast as possible. There is nothing wrong with that, but if they want to run things fast they need to form a group with that agreement in mind. I play heals primarily and I really hate running WP and AK at this point. I just want to get them done, so if a group takes a while to get through the dungeon, its a coin toss just to see if I'll snap depending on my current stress level.

[Kal-El]

Tanks are automatically expected to run through everything as fast as they can. And, especially in coil at the moment, tanks are expected to be experienced while DPS aren't. Which is pretty shit.

I was running AK. Patiently waiting for Healer to teleport after first boss and some MNK says "Pull or I will".

My reply was "Waiting on the healer"

"I have no time for this. Pull or I will"

So he pulled. Brought it to me and expected me to take them off his hands.. He expected wrong.

He died. The healer LOL'd. I took hate and then we raised him. He was quiet for the rest of the dungeon.

It's not always the tank that's like that

[DSanchez]

Has anyone else seen this:
The past few weeks I have seen a trend where tank players have been playing with more reckless abandon than normal. Specifically, they run ahead if the rest if the party and throw themselves into groups of enemies without any regard for whether the rest of the party (especially healers) are even nearby. This results in one of two outcomes: healers have to spam heals causing aggro to shift to them (and their eventual death), or tank dies (which usually results in tank blaming healer).
When did this lack of strategy and teamwork with regards to tank players become a thing? Is this just a NA phenomenon? Is anyone else seeing this?

If the healer isn't staying with the tank, then it's the healer that is playing bad. Tanks will only stop if the healer mana is running low. Otherwise, when the last mob of the current pack is low he should be running to the next pack.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

I may be one of the "better tanks" people speak of in this thread —always checking on the minimap to see if others were following and close enough to engage the next pack, checking the healer's mana, explaining strategies to first-timers, marking mobs all the time to set kill priority; overall basic tanking stuff like this, things we tank are supposed to do in every MMO. But eventually, I left the game. Why is that so?

Abuse from others
Duty Finder happened, and from my level 30's or so on, I had to cope with insults and the likes on a regular basis. That put me off using this tool (I must say I never experienced as much sh** as I did in this game, in all other MMO's I played from WoW to TOR passing by Aion or STO, the community was overall much more civil, less "LOL-esque" or "CoD-esque", and I was always using similar auto-grouping features). I got insulted in Ifrit too, back when I was learning the stun rotation. The last straw happened in CM, when I quit a group two times in a row for reasons of abuse I just can't condone (literally people insulting me for explaining to first timers how to run the dungeon fast, since I thought it was better to lose a few minutes explaining than to lose more wiping). I hate leaving groups, I never do that (and bash those that do, even friends of mine), but I just couldn't take it any more. After this day, I never used the Duty Finder again alone (only with friends if we couldn't make a full group).

Clunky and unresponsive combat, which adds up to many other more minor issues not readily addressed by SE
Then Titan HM and Coil happened, with the global unresponsiveness of the combat system (silence randomly not working, dodging randomly not possible since the red areas would appear too late or we would get hit even if we were out). People would get mad at each other ("L2P!!!!" — "but I WAS out" — "no I saw you IN" — when clearly what we see isn't what's really happening in the game, we can't even tell if an AE or cast bar is accurately displayed on time, how can we judge what others do? nevermind, people are just so agressive and harsh...) Since SE didn't answer on any of those issues (this one and again this one, both speaking of the same problem, that one must memorise enemy skills' order exactly to beat the encounters instead of reacting to what's happening). Also, as a PLD, I hate it when my skills are unresponsive (as explained here for instance, in the case of Hallowed Ground or WHM's Benediction), it just takes the fun away from playing for me, that I would randomly fail or succeed when I (or others) do the right thing on my screen (or confirmed via vocal chat). I also don't like that this game takes away my social choices, and in general developers here want to dictate how we should play in a patronising manner ("zoom your camera out!…" yeah…), but these are minor inconveniences compared to the combat issues, I suppose. It just adds up to many other small issues (UI limitations, tabbed bags, no sorting feature, long delay for every single action in the game, even moving an item from a slot to the next…) that made crafting a whole world of pain and frustration, way too much time-sinking for me. Issues that SE doesn't plan to address before months, if ever, even when some of these issues could be fixed in a couple hours of work (such as naming the map next to teleport destinations, no need to create a map next to it seriously…)

FF has changed in a way that doesn't fit the fan I used to be, but clearly some others still enjoy it
By the end of October, I hadn't played for two weeks. So I suspended my subscription to the game, and won't come back until I see something being done in terms of combat responsiveness. Because as it stands, it's just not fun for me. All the other issues, I can probably live with, even if it's very sub-par to all other MMO's I've tried, but that the combat feels frustrating is a huge problem for me, it's just not acceptable for a "game" —I mean, if I'm not having fun, why should I stay? I really like the game overall, and used to be a big FF fan (at least up until XII included), but in ARR the clunkiness of combat just kills my fun (a bit like the inability to control my team killed the fun for me in FFXIII: it's only one thing but it's too huge to ignore or get over with, it's just frustrating to lose and die because of it so often, even more so when it was a staple of the FF IP in all other canonic titles). SE doesn't say a word about these issues in ARR, though, or they claim it's "working as intended", they only address minor cosmetic issues overall; so I guess I have to come to the realisation that their vision no longer fits my tastes. Sad to see one of my favorite IP evolve in a way I don't like, but that's life. Who am I to criticise SE when clearly millions still buy their vision of FF? I must be wrong, they must be right. That FF XIII (2009) sold less than FF VI (1994), even though the video game market has been multiplied by ten in the same time, is probably not an objective a sign of dismay, is it? So those of us who criticise SE's choices of design must be wrong, that must be it.

Everything may be connected… or not? Who's to say?
To answer your question, OP, here's the thing: there's no reason why people like me would be "better" or "worse" as players, right? These tastes of mine (responsive game, decent community, getting basic social/UI features available in most MMO…) shouldn't be linked to a particular sense of respect for others, or objectivity as a critic, right? That's what heavy defenders of this game claim, they say I'm wrong and not objective to want it different or to criticise how this game was designed, because for them it's perfect as it stands: the "memory game" is fine, that's how it should be, memorise everything and then you can dodge/silence/etc. I'm not having fun doing that —I'm very good at conceptualising and analysing, but very bad at memorising stuff. So be it, I left. I'm pretty sure some of the whiteknights claiming there's no problem are very nice, very good players, aren't they? And as they say, "you're wrong to ask for better tanks, you should play tank yourself" —in other words, eat it, or fix your own problem. Well… I, for one, am done with this selfish and closed-minded mentality. The whiteknights can keep this game to themselves, I just hope they're ok with getting half the content they could get if there were a million subscribers —as this game should have, if a few key issues were fixed, and people weren't finding excuses for SE all the time. Because it's not helping players like me. It's making us leave, and not looking back.

In the end…
I only wished this game to be better than others, I only wished this game to be at least on-par with the competition, and provided feedback and sound arguments as to how and why it could, and should be. I played as such, too, because I go with the motto: "be the change you want to see". I was met with silence from SE, and insults from many players. It makes me sick. So, why should I waste any more of my personal time? Clearly, be it the FF IP, or its community, I no longer belong here. SE and its players made that very clear. Now, I'm looking forward to Star Citizen, where player feedback is taken seriously; and in the meantime, I still have WoW and others with their good to excellent combat systems (and in the case of WoW, the best customer service in the industry). Not to mention quite appreciable communities, whatever people say about them: I've never been so abused in a MMO as I've been here. As a customer, I (and others voicing valid complains/feedback) have never been so ignored and patronised by the developers.