How to make tanks more fun to play (devs please read)

[Ehayte]

The real problem is not the nostalgia of FF being removed from PLD. I love FF games, and I don't even notice that. BLMs get to see: "Fire III 1973!" and MNKs get to see steady streams of 795! 698! 590!, even healers get to see huge amounts of tank HP restored on critical hits. When a tank is successful in their job (mitigating dmg), it makes the fight LESS exciting!

They should figure out a way to either display damage mitigated as its happening, or add cool animations to show dmg is being mitigated by the tank. Feeling powerful in a digital world is all about seeing things happen. When I use HG on Garuda X and zero out 2 WWs, a Slipstream, and a downburst, NO ONE will notice except maybe one healer. I would love for there to be reactive lighting/plasma effects for the damage that I mitigate with abilities. Its probably a lot of designer time, but I think that is the main fun factor missing.

[Tiggy]

I stopped reading when you said warriors aren't fun and only 5% of the community plays tanks. According to census data players have scrapped from the lodestone it's closer to 20%-25% with some variability server to server. Also, personally, I find warrior very fun. Every single person in my FC that went warrior loved warrior, and several have both pld and war leveled so they know the difference. So based on my personal experiences in terms of warriors, and in terms of factual numbers on your 5%, you're flat wrong and based this entire essay on false assumptions.

[ChaozK]

OP really got me thinking there about some pillars of tanking in FFXIV. Maybe giving tanks more dps wouldnt unbalance the game. All it would take is revolving that dps around tanking, meaning tanks would get access to powerful counter strikes.

I think what would go a long way for tanking would be adding more tank specific mechanics to the encounters. I find myself enjoying stuff like ultima HM 10 times more then everything before. When you look at the game for dps'ers they get a lot of little stuff thrown at them that makes every battle a little different. Kill add here, dodge there, stack over there aso.

Tanking bosses is usually stand there and get hit and when there is a tank specific mechanic its usually you either do it right or we wipe - thats just not very enjoyable. Tanks need to get a more active role when it comes to bosses and it should be stuff that has more room for mistakes. I am thinking maybe changing how stuns work in this game. Get rid of the stupid diminishing returns and give a ton of stuff that tanks can interrupt and let every successful stun trigger a nice counter attack to reward the tank. Something like that.

[Grizzlebeard]

MMOs have been around since the late 70s, beginning with MUD1 in 1978. So they've been around for nearly four decades.

MO's (MUDs) =/= MMO's. Big difference there. Namely the size and nature of the end user. The audience size of the early games were limited by access to technology let alone the facility to actually get online. As such the limited playerbase were generally programmers making games for other programmers not a paying public. Wasn't until the early 90's that some games offered an online facility but it never really became huge until Ultima Online and then Everquest where the genre gained momentum.

Claiming you have 30 years gaming experience, even online gaming experience, would have been less misleading. Your post would have stood on its own without having to resort to using that as a stamp of credibility to be honest.

[Ehayte]

Also, since no one else seems to be saying it - not to be a jerk or anything but your experience of needing to spam RoHalone on a boss in an 8 man to keep enmity is NOT typical for the tanking community. First, that's a really really inefficient way to generate enmity, and second, you are i58, so if you are trying to do anything beyond Ifrit HM with that gear I could definitely imagine you are struggling to hold enmity against people who are i80-i90.

If you are going up against other people with comparable gear, then you should not be having any issues holding enmity.

[ErikMynhier]

Crazy big wall of text OP

Some of those changes are crazy man. Change Cover to a toggle? Give up Shield Oath? So cover the whole party all the time, taking every drop of damage from idiots that stand in AoEs? Why not just lobotomize the Healer at the start, ahead of the insanity they will meet trying to keep up with that. Also my madness from trying to hold hate off of well equipped DPS without Shield Oath.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You're not trying to make tanking fun, you're trying to make tanking fun for you. You have to go DPS for fun man, tanking is responsibility but if done right gives you respect. If you like R&R, then you'll like tanking. But most people don't like that and that's why we tanks are rare.

I read the whole wall, and the only thing I saw that I liked was Esuna on Pally.

[UBERHAXED]

This is less the fault of PLD and more the fault of the devs for making stuns, 1-second silences and 1-second pacifications replace interrupts seen in other games. Generally the DPS are supposed to be responsible for interrupting with the tank being part of that interrupt order/rotation if gameplay allows and they have the opportunity to do so. This aspect of combat is ass-backwards when the tank is expected to do the brunt of the interrupting (moreso when BRD's selling point is not so much DPS or buffs but the ability to interrupt spells with Blunt Arrow...). In a perfect world DRGs and MNKs should be the ones equipped to do interrupt rotations on encouters like Ifrit.

You are mistaken... DRG do have a stun (with the same cooldown as a warrior) and MNK has 2 stuns and a silence. It's the people you play with (and the tendency to only use ranged) which makes the tank do interrupts. Don't blame the game mechanics. In fact, the sole fact that you didn't know this invalidates your entire argument.

[Lumiin]

I would play my tank more if I didn't have to argue with the OT half the time and dealing with extremely under geared tanks trying to have aggro wars because they don't want to pick up adds. Then if I say to hell with it, let them tank and pick up adds I have the healers screaming at me for not being MT ._.

[Tiggy]

I would play my tank more if I didn't have to argue with the OT half the time and dealing with extremely under geared tanks trying to have aggro wars because they don't want to pick up adds. Then if I say to hell with it, let them tank and pick up adds I have the healers screaming at me for not being MT ._.

This sounds like a CT problem. CT isn't normal tanking at all.

[Xandim]

You are mistaken... DRG do have a stun (with the same cooldown as a warrior) and MNK has 2 stuns and a silence. It's the people you play with (and the tendency to only use ranged) which makes the tank do interrupts. Don't blame the game mechanics. In fact, the sole fact that you didn't know this invalidates your entire argument.

Im guessing he said that MNK and DRG should be doing the interrupt (since they DO have skills for that) but people still leave stun duty for the PLD. Maybe its a game mechanic problem, maybe its a community problem. In every ifrit fight that I did on my PLD I was on stun duty, even when there were some stunners in the group. =\