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

[therpgfanatic]

Can I finally post again? Ok great. Stupid posting limits have prevented me from responding to anything since this morning.

I will update this post with response now.

First off, I want to clarify that I think tanks are capable of doing their role just fine. The problem has never been that tanks cannot tank.

The problem is that it's not very fun to be a tank for players such as myself who traditionally gravitate to the tank classes in MMO. I have been playing tanks since the mid 90s, in dozens of games, both Western and Eastern in origin. I have sampled tons of designs of what a "tank" is, so I am very adaptable.

And tanks not being very fun to a wide number of the playerbase is a problem for anyone that hates long wait times in Duty Finder, or difficulty finding a good tank for your FC. The root of the problem isn't about bad attitudes of other players or that the role is very stressful. Healers have that same issue and yet there are a lot more healers than tanks. The difference is that, as far as healers, the FF XIV healers Scholar and White Mage are actually more fun than your typical MMO healer.

And I don't need to play the class myself to see other players' YouTube commentary videos and guides; I can see for myself exactly what is going on. I'm gradually leveling up my Conjurer right now, so I know from first hand experience this low lv Conjurer is more fun to play and level than anything I've done in other MMOs as a healer.

I cannot say the same about Gladiators. I've been having flashbacks of my days leveling a vanilla World of Warcraft Protection Paladin, and I don't say that in a good way. So long as I live I will never level another Gladiator as they are today and I could not recommend it to anyone else.

Secondly, at no such time did I say Cover should replace Shield / Sword Oath. I said it should be a toggle similar to how the oaths work, with the ability to switch it on/off at will.

Thirdly, to those who are accusing me of being a bad player / not educated tank by spamming uncomboed Halone;

Read this chart, http://valk.dancing-mad.com/tables/enmity-tables/

Halone has the highest threat (enmity) multiplier of all Paladin abilities except Flash. Halone is a x7.5 multiplier on Shield Oath; by contrast Fast Blade is x1.5 and Savage Blade is x.4.5

But Flash cannot be spammed indefinitely, requiring the Riot Blade combo to recover MP. But Halone uses little TP and, Paladins have a much larger TP bar than MP bar.

This is very easy to understand. It's basic math guys.

Performing three non-comboed Halones generates much more threat than a Fast Blade + Savage Blade + Halone combo. This is a mathematical fact.

Sure, if you can do your combo and not drop aggro, congrats you have acquired good gear. But your solution is not realistic. Some of you have been playing since 1.0. Guys like me have not. We do not have top tier gear, and we will never get top tier gear unless we can tank for people who already have top tier gear.

And it's impossible for us new 50 tanks to hold aggro against DPS and Healers in full i90 if we do things like Halone combo. The progression is different and has unique sets of challenge you didn't have, as you progressed before everyone (literally, it seems like everyone) has full i90.

I have no control over who goes into the Duty Finder groups. And it's not like I can just abandon a party if everyone is decked in top tier gear and try to get into a group of people with similar item levels. Even if there was no penalty for abandoning duty finders three times in a row, I would be abandoning every Duty Finder because they all have people in top tier gear.

So yeah, I and others make adjustments to how we play so we can still tank. And for me that is spamming Halone and forsaking anything else but defensive cooldowns.

Maybe top tier tanks don't notice the threat issues new 50 tanks have. That doesn't change the fact it exists, and I am not alone in noticing it; there are many threads about the topic in the tanking forums here, as well as on third party sites like GameFAQs and such.

The point is that, because of the design of the Paladin, it is very hard to have fun with the class until you have invested a serious amount of time into it. And now that I hit 50, I feel very limited in what I can do because it is challenging to hold aggro when everyone is better geared than my character. As many have said, many others players expect the tank to just do their job. They don't care that we are doing our best to gear up to progress.

It's the developers job to address issues with game balance and ensure it is fun. And right now it's not very fun to be a Paladin trying to level up because nearly all abilities triggering GCD when they shouldn't (meaning things like Shield Bash are difficult to use, as enemy cast time is nearly always shorter than the GCD), the damage is low making soloing very, very frustrating AND adding to the challenges of maintaining aggro against Duty Finder groups that have 20 item levels on you.

Enmity / DPS needs increasing, and something has to be done about the GCD tying our hands. And I do very much believe tanks having more iconic abilities would increase their appeal, but the mechanical issues need to be solved, too. It'd actually be great to make both changes at once; the developers would be sending a very clear message to the playerbase that they want people to enjoy playing tanks.

PS: About Provoke. The ability needs to force the target to attack the tank for at least 3 seconds. Simply putting the tank to the top of the aggro chart is not good enough if the tank cannot generate enough threat fast enough. Every Provoke I do has to be accompanied by spamming shield lob, and it is a coin toss if I will actually maintain aggro. If it was a healer who pulled aggro I find it impossible to recover aggro with anything but Halone spamming that mob, but I have even had difficulty using Provoke to pull aggro off my own Chocobo(!).

Paladins just do not do enough burst threat, and it is due to a combination of things; low damage, most abilities not having high threat multipliers, Provoke not forcing the target to attack the tank for a set period and the GCD being much longer than it should.