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

[Casper]

A good tank is something that is noticeable.

Proper use of your cooldowns and defensive abilities (stoneskin) will allow you to either die a much lower percentage of time than worse tanks, or at least allow you to always have a "cushion" of hp. A tank that never goes under 25% hp allow healers not to have mini heart attacks every 5 seconds. It also allow healers to make more efficient use of their mana -- emergency healing is costly.

Proper use of stance switch will increase noticeably your dps, assuming you spend half your time offtanking due to tank swaps.

Proper use of your other tools will make stuff easier on your whole party (although this is harder to see). Stoneskining the MT, keeping rage of halone up, stoneskining low hp people before a big aoe move (this one has visibility), all this helps. When needed, proper use of silence and stuns is also very noticeable.

By improving on those 3 axes -- damage reduction, dps, and utility -- you can make a MASSIVE difference in a party, one that is noticeable. Of course it will never be as visible than a healer behaviour. But i would argue it is much easier to differenciate a good tank from an average than a good dps from an average (everyone notice the difference between a good player and a bad player anyway, whatever the role).

[Dhex]

Talk about a long-winded thread.

[Lafiele]

stuff
-Carey

Tanks are fun, there are more than 5 % of player base playing tanks it's just not as high as DPS. Put it this way, there is almost as much tanks as healers.

OP you clearly are not a good tank and haven't soaked yourself enough in real end game content to even make some of these statements.

Also your argument on auto attacks and sword oath for tanks is ridiculous. Melee class have to auto attack too btw and as some have mentioned before, auto attacks accounts for 20-30 % of the classes total DPS. You can auto attack fine even if you're moving as longas you're facing and within range of the boss, not a big issue for tanks to be honest since you're facing the mob 90 % of the time even when you're dodging (not so true for melees).

[Orophin]

Tanking's just not for everyone, and this spreads over all MMOs that have the Holy Trinity. Some people don't want the responsibility while others prefer to heal or do damage. I tanked in MMOs for 10 years before ARR relaunched and I just wanted to do something different. That's why I DPS now over tanking.

Apart from making them completely overpowered, there's really not much SE can do to attract people towards playing a tanking class. Regardless what abilities they give them, at the end of the day they're going to be a class designed to soak up damage, and to a certain extent, lead the charge into battle. This play style and responsibility just doesn't work for everyone.

[therpgfanatic]

Tanking's just not for everyone, and this spreads over all MMOs that have the Holy Trinity. Some people don't want the responsibility while others prefer to heal or do damage. I tanked in MMOs for 10 years before ARR relaunched and I just wanted to do something different. That's why I DPS now over tanking.

Apart from making them completely overpowered, there's really not much SE can do to attract people towards playing a tanking class. Regardless what abilities they give them, at the end of the day they're going to be a class designed to soak up damage, and to a certain extent, lead the charge into battle. This play style and responsibility just doesn't work for everyone.

...except that I am the kind of player who typically plays a tank in MMORPGs and enjoys tanking. And I think the tanks could be better, because there are parts that are more frustrating than they ought to be as compared to playing a tank in other MMORPGs.

[jwang]

Why are you leveling a GLD to DPS? It's a tank class through and through and is designed as thus. You're there to soak up damage, not to deal it. Also, Sword Oath tanking is perfectly viable since the extra damage component from auto-attacks generate additional threat, and the damage boost to Halone combo from not having Shield Oath up will make it perfectly capable of holding hate. If your GLD can't hold hate, it's because he's either not using enough enmity abilities or your LNC is attacking something that your GLD isn't actively tanking.

[therpgfanatic]

Also, Sword Oath tanking is perfectly viable since the extra damage component from auto-attacks generate additional threat, and the damage boost to Halone combo from not having Shield Oath up will make it perfectly capable of holding hate.

Paladins have significantly less HP than Warriors do, and thereby need the constant 20% damage reduction from Shield Oath.

Unless you believe you can survive Mountain Busters w/o it. Which hasn't been my experience. Even using Flash to blind him right before, I don't see any way for an appropriately leveled Paladin to tank Titan without Shield Oath. And that's true for several other boss encounters.

-----

This thread seems to be getting a lot of trolling because it's in the General Discussion. There is a similar post in the tanking section which has a lot of good ideas, too and I think the devs should read it as well.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-to-see-happen.

[juniglee]

If you want to deal damage, play a DPS. If you want to tank, play a tank. You can't have the best of both worlds, because otherwise it completely negates the point of having one or the other - if a tank can deal DPS level damage, why take a DPS in at all? Just go 3 tanks, 1 healer, and call it a day.

Also to point out that Sword Oath vs. Cleric Stance argument. Cleric Stance always ends up dealing more damage, because it goes off the MND stat (healer's primary stat). When Sword Oath swaps out STR and VIT, then you might have an argument. Regardless, on my i90 PLD, using a combo'ed Rage of Halone on Sword Oath without Fight or Flight, I am hitting about 300 damage or so. On my i79 DRG, a non-crit combo'ed Full Thrust usually hits for about 800 - 900 damage. So it is still at least 1/3rd of a DPS' damage. Also, keep in mind that my PLD has about 350 STR, and my DRG has about 450 STR, so I cannot account for if they both had equal STR.

Don't worry about the numbers too much, know that if you didn't help DPS, you just might not be able to pass that DPS check. I cleared Twintania yesterday, with about 1 minute or so to go before we hit the enrage timer. Your contribution could mean the difference between seeing an extra Dreadknight, or an extra Conflag. Try going to a fight like Twintania where the off-tank does nothing but helping DPS for most of the fight, and compare the results if you were to help DPS, and you were to do nothing.

Or you can just play a Warrior/Marauder using DPS accessories - Marauder is better for having more cross class skills, given if you want to do DPS, you don't need Defiance, and all the other Warrior/Defiance-related skills anyway. I think I've heard numbers where a Marauder with Raging Strikes was critical striking Titan Extreme using Butcher's Block for 2000 damage (don't quote me on this).

Also: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1868212

According to the link above, the poster's Inner Beast crits for 1.3k, and he main tanks everything in the game bar Ifrit Extreme and BCoB Turn 5 using pure STR build, and i90 DPS accessories.

Sounds like you're playing the wrong class, you should be playing a Marauder/Warrior.

[therpgfanatic]

Sounds like you're playing the wrong class, you should be playing a Marauder/Warrior.

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.

[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.