Does tanking carry more responsibility than most?

[bokchoykn]

In Titan HM, you can at least time your shield bashes and slow down/stop tumults early.

They fixed this months ago.

[Instrumentality]

ITT: "My job is the hardest. Your job is the easiest. Get on my level, noobs."

My job is super hard. I have to put up with my raid group standing in red circles while I stand still!

How dare they make me look competent, I am super bad and should die first!

[Menae]

Tanking doesn't really carry more responsibility than any other job. It's just most NOTICEABLE. If a DPS uses the wrong ability, with a few exceptions in the late game, it's hard to tell. If a healer uses the wrong heal, the tank might die or it might be confused with the tank taking some big damage. If the tank loses hate, well, it's pretty obvious.

Without a tank, the group can't survive the boss damage. Without a healer, the tank (and thus, the group) can't survive the boss damage. Without DPS, the group can't kill the boss and it either takes forever or the group wipes to attrition/enrages/more opportunity for mistakes. That's why they call it the trinity folks; 'cuz you need all three.

[Wadoka]

...That's why they call it the trinity folks; 'cuz you need all three.

But we only need the three roles, because that's the way people have been designing MMOs since... shucks, UO? I can't remember. The concept of Tank didn't exist prior to. It wasn't there in the old text-based games, it wasn't there in the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL, it wasn't there in tabletop Dungeons and Dragons.

Philosophically I disagree with this "Holy Trinity" because it has soooo many issues - starting with, if you're fighting an intelligent enemy, it doesn't matter how many flashes or "hate-generating" attacks or taunts you throw out... an intelligent enemy is ALWAYS going to kill the Healer first, come what may, if they identify a Healer amongst the attackers. Or, if they have a certain level of another kind of experience... "I smell... bat guano. And sulfur. HOLY CRAP GET THE MAGE! MAGE MAGE MAGE KILL IIIITTT...!"

Heh. Another day for that discussion

[IndigoHawk]

The idea of a tank for the trinity is that enemies fight the tank because they must, not because they want to. A lot of times MMOs portray tanking with taunts, like a generic yell. Another way to think of tanks is like a grappler. If you try to run by to kill the healer or the mage, the tank grabs you as you run by and holds you so that his allies can kill you. You fight the tank because you can't ignore them safely, not because you want to fight them.

Most MMOs don't have precise directional attacks. If they did (and better positional code than FFXIV), then tanks could get targets of opportunity on anyone who ran by or wasn't facing the tank. It would achieve a similar result, that enemies would need to face the tank when the tank gets in range and be cautious about disengaging.

The problem you point out is that most tank skills look like they can be ignored. That's an unfortunate portrayal, not a problem with the tank role.

[SwordCoheir]

It depends on the content, the fight, and even other people in your group.

Tanking a dungeon can be faceroll, or a stressful nightmare depending on how hard your party is making it for you.

Some fights put all the pressure/work on the tanks, and others you can almost AFK.

This applies to all roles, really.

I pretty much share the same sentiment. It's not that tanking is easy, as experiences vary person to person, but people tend to take tanks for granted. I mean there are always things you can do to really improve your performance or make fights go smoother, faster, and more interesting, for instance on KB if your watching a tower next to him you can always run in and throw out Circle, Spirits, and Fracture before the Towers light up again, you just have to find your own way to make the fight more entertaining for you without taking unnecessary risks.

[ashwich]

tanking is easy, but tanking carry a lot of responsibility. those are 2 separate things. typically when tank screws up someone dies, could be tank/healer in most cases. sometimes dps. so depends on the situation it could mean more or less a wipe. that's a lot of responsibility.

[granz]

I think tanking is a hard job, they carry the burden of the whole party. A good tank would not just tank, but find new strategies to win the fight. A good tank is never an idle tank, meaning they will always have something to do, like casting stone skin on healers, etc. The Tank job, mainly paladin, is more than just a meat shield.

When you've played with a good tank, you realize how inefficient a bad one is. The main problem why i think there isn't many tanks, is because most people stomp out learning tanks, and lump them with bad tanks.

[inkuzen]

I agree with granz and ashwich. Tanking isn't hard, there's just a lot of responsibilities that have lumped in with tanking. People taking on tanking for the first time won't know what is expected of them. Especially first time MMO players, which would be the learning tanks. After a few parties of angry party members I can see a learning tank just be like "Well F**K THAT!" Because they had no idea what was actually going wrong. I kind of feel like there should be tank coaching for noobs :P While there are many tutorials and compendiums on the forums, some players just don't come here.

[Elkya95]

I gotta admit that when I started the game I did choose Gladiator because it looked pretty and wasn't prepared for people assuming that I would be the leader, so it usually went to the DPS or a Healer to lead. Because of that I don't think they actually do carry more responsibility, it should rather fall on the person who's done the instance before and sure if everyone's new THEN it can fall on the tank by default since they run in first anyway.
I did stop tanking for a while after feeling the pressure and me being new, this is my first MMO and all that, but I still had to lead sometimes on my bard while leveling, simply because I had done it before. Now I am comfortable leading, but really it falls to the person who's cleared it in my opinion.

(err sorry if it's clunky and hard to understand what I write >.> )