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

[juniglee]

This thread is about how to make both tanks more fun to play.

How does your solution increase the number of tanks in the game? If I change from PLD to WAR, it doesn't do anything to increase the appeal of being a tank. It doesn't encourage more people to play tanks.

This is not something players can solve for themselves by switching classes.

What makes me want to play a tank? I like to lead. I like to be the one to guide people. I obsess over the perfect pull (case here where pulls never go perfectly most of the time is the 3 Scourges in T5). Most people don't have the mental strength for it. Simply increasing their damage doesn't change the fact if they don't know their dungeon mechanics and get ragged on for being new. Its the community at fault here.

Dealing damage doesn't make me want to play a tank. If I wanted to see big numbers I'd play a DPS.

[eagledorf]

I'm pretty sure autoattack isn't 25% of anyone else's DPS

I don't know what the exact percentage is, but auto-attack is very important to a MNK's DPS. Greased Lightning boosts auto-attack potency and frequency. Given MNK DPS, dodging mechanics clearly isn't a problem.

Shield Oath over-rides Sword Oath. So you can't even use Sword Oath while tanking.

Yes...and Warriors can't turn off Defiance while tanking and healers can't sit in Cleric Stance while healing. I don't see how this is a unique problem with PLD? Hell, MNK can't use FoE and FoF at the same time...

The fact of the matter is, at i70 (with relic) my character does 76 to 150 points of damage per ability,

Hm...my PLD hits with a comboed Halone for over 400 at i83. If you factor in the auto-attacks, that's quite respectable for a class for which DPS is a secondary or even tertiary concern.

You really have to factor in the sustainability and cast time when comparing to healers. Do you think BLM does higher DPS than a MNK because their fire spells hit for over 1k damage and a MNK hits for just a few hundred? The reality is that MNK pretty much always destroys BLM for any single target or small group of mobs. The comparison is even more striking with SMN that almost never hits for anything but pathetic damage. SMN also pretty much destroys BLM in anything but a huge swarm of mobs.

[therpgfanatic]

Hm...my PLD hits with a comboed Halone for over 400 at i83. If you factor in the auto-attacks, that's quite respectable for a class for which DPS is a secondary or even tertiary concern.

You do 400 on a dummy or an actual NPC that has actual DEF stats?

I'm talking about real gameplay here.

[Allyrion]

Auto-attack might be 25% of a Paladin's damage, but that doesn't mean it's significant damage. I'm pretty sure autoattack isn't 25% of anyone else's DPS.

30% of MNK damage is Auto-Attacks. Can be up to 35% if you're really good at keeping boss uptime.

[jwang]

400 on a Halone is perfectly doable on dungeon mobs without any buffs and in Sword Oath. In Shield Oath, with FoF up you can hit up to 400. On Asclepius add, with 4 stacks, you can even break 1k! Anyways, if you're finding tanking boring, you should play something else or find a different way to play. Pull more adds, maximize your DPS, add additional cross-class DPS skills, sneak in Stoneskins in between ability casts; there's plenty to do as a tank.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

There is no way to feel powerful as a Tank, you can dodge all the AoE, pop all CD in the right time, it be ruined by a bad healer and you still going to hit the floor. The best you can do is yell at him, then it come to an argument about who is bad... is it the Tank or the healer? Who come first EGG or Chicken? Pointless as hell.

The Job should not depend that much on healer. Hey, am a godlike tank, but healer are holding my BALL, RARW!! i mean seriously. Is unquestionable why Tank class is so boring and sad to play.

Give PLD some healing power, at least to keep himself alive, add more random dmg to DPS to keep healer job busy, problem solve, everyone happy. Now you can have super good tank, average tank that require healer attention and Bad tank that have no clue how to play his job.

A good healer can keep a BAD tank alive, they just need to be PRO.
The best tank in the world simply can't stay alive with a BAD healer, i think that enough said.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

This is also the reason i keep saying: there is no "GOOD TANK".

Average one = they know what they are doing.
BAD one = they have no clue how the game work.

Any good/PRO healer will make the BAD one look "AVERAGE TANK", in fact they are still bad....
Any average healer will make the average one look "AVERAGE TANK", in fact they are still average....
Any good/PRO healer will make the Average one look "GODLIKE TANK", in fact they are still only average...

[juniglee]

A good healer can keep a BAD tank alive, they just need to be PRO.
The best tank in the world simply can't stay alive with a BAD healer, i think that enough said.

Brayflox disagrees with this statement.

Go on, try the bad tank/good healer combo, and the good tank/bad healer combo. Let me know which one you have a higher failure rate with.

The Job should not depend that much on healer.

Oh gee, like how the healer depends on the tank to not let mobs run to him? Hmmmm...if I didn't know any better, I thought this was a team game.

Is unquestionable why Tank class is so boring and sad to play.

I enjoy playing my tank, I really do. Seems like you don't take pride playing a tank, so why are you even talking like you represent the tank population?

Sounds like you just had bad experiences with bad healers. I've never had such a problem, and I always feel powerful as long as I'm alive. The longer I'm alive, the more powerful I feel. Such is what my job is meant to do.

[therpgfanatic]

I enjoy playing my tank, I really do. Seems like you don't take pride playing a tank, so why are you even talking like you represent the tank population?

It's great that you, personally, are happy with tanks. It's not like anyone is calling it badfun.

I keep reminding people this thread is about making tanks more fun so that OTHER people want to play them.

I and others have listed the things we personally dislike about the class. If you don't share that sentiment, thats fine. But don't think that just because you are satisfied that means nothing should be changed.

The majority of FF XIV players don't want to be tanks. I believe it's largely because of the way they play, and not necessarily about the stress of being a tank. There are plenty of healers and healing is a high stress role, too.

Again. This thread isn't about how you think nothing is wrong. It's about making the tank classes more appealing to other players so there will be more people willing to be tanks.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

Oh gee, like how the healer depends on the tank to not let mobs run to him? Hmmmm...if I didn't know any better, I thought this was a team game.

To hold hate: spam 1,2,3 combo, or flash/overpower on multi adds, if Tank unable to do that, please uninstall the game asap.