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

[BotenAnna]

Almost forgot.

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

And as I mentioned before, the theorycrafting assumes the Paladin is standing in one place the whole time, which is not the case in actual play.

The fact of the matter is, at i70 (with relic) my character does 76 to 150 points of damage per ability, while everyone else (even the White Mage in Cleric stance) is pushing 500-900 per ability. And White Mages do have Stone II, which does a fair amount of damage, too.

I've also started leveling up a Lancer, and the first thing I noticed is that I can solo FATES that were crushing my Gladiator because he couldn't deal enough DPS to beat down the monsters. Yet another reason why DPS matters; before someone can tank at lv50 they must stick with the class until lv 50. It's pretty frustrating to level a Gladiator due to the low DPS.

If you're having your back to the enemies for more than a second when dodging aoes, you are doing things very very wrong. I've talked with the people in DM who made the charts that you're misreading regarding combo enmity about autoattack in particular and it's a huge chunk of your damage as a PLD or WAR. Sword Oath is a good DPS increase and completely viable when you're not struggling to stay alive or hold threat.

Furthermore, while you levelled a PLD in 2.0 likely so it made sense at the time, levelling PLD through FATEs is horrible now when you can just get dungeon instaqueues and also help solve the problem that you are trying to solve with your suggestions. It's a bear to get through those kill quests and such, but a DPS chocobo and sword oath helps a lot.

Speaking of, have you rolled MRD and tried it yet? I'm eagerly awaiting your trip report.

[saden]

I didn't read the original post, but I will when I have the time and post more thoughtfully on the subject. The only thing I will say right now is that I have no desire to level a tank in this game at all. I might get PLD and WAR to 50 just so I can have every class/job at 50 (for new job releases, etc), but I probably wont be gearing them up at all.

That being said I always say that I'll probably be a tank in this game if they just release more tank jobs. Almost every MMO I have played I chose tank because I just enjoyed it. When I played EQ2 (started about 2 years ago) I decided to go with a DPS for the heck of it and that carried over to FFXIV as I mainly play a BLM. I havent been playing very long (about 2 months), but I've completed about 70% of the "endgame" content and still have no desire to go tank. In fact, I've had tanks tell me it's just boring. Usually, the release of new classes in a game breathes new life into the players and the developers and those new classes (or jobs in this case) tend to be interesting.

If Ninja ends up being a tank-job then I'm going Ninja. I just hope they release at least 2-3 jobs at once. Preferably 1 tank, 1 dps/support, 1 heal/support (read: OR support either way like a BRD is or a full support healer). That way the game isn't cluttered with a majority leveling that 1 single job that they release and gearing that job up. I could just imagine the queue times even if you are playing a tank/healer.


Something about this game makes tanks so boring. I can't quite put my finger on it, but every other MMO I've played (EQ, EQ2, DaoC, WoW, Lineage, CoH, and more) the tank or tank-types were always interesting and fun. Well...okay they weren't much fun in WoW, but that's WoW...

[therpgfanatic]

Something about this game makes tanks so boring. I can't quite put my finger on it, but every other MMO I've played (EQ, EQ2, DaoC, WoW, Lineage, CoH, and more) the tank or tank-types were always interesting and fun. Well...okay they weren't much fun in WoW, but that's WoW...

In other games, it helps when the tanks' DPS feels like a meaningful contribution to the party. Off-tanking sucks completely because you do so little damage you may as well not even be there.

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. And the 25% assumption only works if you look at a specific, long time frame; auto-attack isn't 25% of the damage a Paladin does on weak trash mobs that die in a few Halone combos. There is too much theorycrafting held sacred by players that doesn't work off the spreadsheet and limits their viewpoints on how actual gameplay works.

I also hope Ninja isn't a tank job. Samurai I can understand, since they wear armor, but it doesn't make any real sense to me for Ninjas to be tanks. Ninjas should be dual-wielding DPSers as they are in most FF games. I'm pretty sure Ninjas as tanks in FF11 was an exploit that never got addressed.

In my opinion new tank jobs should be Samurai, Dark Knight and Rune Knight (Mystic Knight). Maybe a Beastmaster too, that'd be interesting to have a Coeurl pet helping an axe-wielding plate warrior tank the boss.

[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.