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

[NeroMD]

There is always a shortage on tanking and healing classes when comparing it with the DPS classes.
The party composition for this game is what's hurting it in the long end.

I love tanking in this game, trying to mitigate as much damage as possible in a fight is what I have the most fun with.

[ZephyrK]

You can't write an essay based on facts you made up.

I have a level 50 MNK, WHM, BRD, PLD, and WAR. I only play my paladin very rarely, and usually for map hunting with friends. Where do I fit into your graph?

I will give you that he sort of pulled that number out of thin air, but I do not think that graph encompasses what really matters. What matters is who actively plays (and queues) as a tank on a regular basis.

EDIT:

Also, wtf is "other?"

[LineageRazor]

You can't write an essay based on facts you made up.

I don't trust this chart. By the numbers written, folks shouldn't have to wait as long as they do for a Tank to queue up in Duty Finder - if anything, the bottleneck should be the healer. That is clearly not the case.

My guess is that these numbers are skewed by the fact that it includes folks who have leveled tanking jobs but says nothing about whether they PLAY those tanking jobs. Someone who has PLD 50 but only ever plays as DRG 50 is not a tank.

[Tiggy]

I don't trust this chart. By the numbers written, folks shouldn't have to wait as long as they do for a Tank to queue up in Duty Finder - if anything, the bottleneck should be the healer. That is clearly not the case.

My guess is that these numbers are skewed by the fact that it includes folks who have leveled tanking jobs but says nothing about whether they PLAY those tanking jobs. Someone who has PLD 50 but only ever plays as DRG 50 is not a tank.

On what grounds do you think the bottleneck should be healer? If the server is 20% tank, 21% healer, and the rest is DPS, then we would still more often than not run into a tank shortage. The gap doesn't need to be large for it to be the main shortage. You don't trust a chart, which is based on actual data SE had on their servers, yet them you throw out nothing but opinions as if it is more factual. I'm more inclined to believe a chart made up of actual data instead of your assumptions any day of the week.

[reality_check]

The chart was a snapshot view of what people on their current jobs were. It wasn't a view of what people have levelled, but what people were currently playing as. "Other" refers to DoL and DoH.

[loldrg]

Nothing of what OP suggested actually fixes what's wrong with tanks in this game. I main tank for my coil static as WAR and PLD. Tanks can DPS just fine. Outside of main tank in Garuda Extreme and Twintania or either tank in Ifrit Extreme, i90PLD and WARs can put out respectable DPS if they know how to. In fact, Yoshi's mount suggestion might actually help fix things because it would at least get people leveling it in duty roulette to 30 (where tanks are short supply). But nobody plays tanks @ 50 for a few reasons.

First, its just plain boring. PLD has 5 effective weaponskills outside of utility ones like Shield Bash/Lob. Only 3 of which get used regularly. Warrior at least has some more going on with a hate combo, and Storm's Eye/Path. PLD doesn't.
But more than that, with the exception of Turn 4, Turn 5 (if you're solo tanking) or Garuda Extreme as main tank, every endgame tank fight is just flat out boring. Your co-tank gets to 3 stacks? Swap hate. Done. That pretty much describes every fight except those I named. Then there's CT where one of the fights literally has you pushing a button and doing nothing else as off tank. The other fights are equally as uninteresting and granted CT is a snoozefest on most jobs but tank is far and away the most superfluous role in CT. There's a reason why party finder groups always fill tank roles last for CT.

But in the rare cases I mentioned where endgame tanking isn't boring? i.e. Garuda Extreme main tank, Garuda HM main tank, Twintania solo tank, Turn 4 + 5, etc? It's really hard in a way that it isn't for other roles. There is no learning curve and in a party finder/duty finder group its possible for a sub par DPS or healer to get carried and it not to be obvious to anybody but the co-healer or someone who is using a parser. Its possible for a first time DPS or healer to just skirt by unnoticed in a fight like Ifrit HM, Garuda HM by just following someone and mimicking what they do. Tanks don't have this luxury. If a tank is bad or not used to the fight? People notice and in a pick up group they get called out and receive more trash talk and hatred than any other role in game. Even in fights that are boring as tank like Ifrit HM, where you are responsible for hitting shield bash only as OT, if you can't do that on your first time you're the subject of ridicule and hatred because you caused the wipe. Tanks have an unfair burden where because of how fights have been designed, they are expected to understand the mechanics of a fight before they step foot into it the first time in a way that no other class does.

And in the specialty fights where other jobs have a harder role than normal you can see that too. Before enrage swept T2 PUGs, bards were always the hardest job to get ahold of alongside tanks. Why? Because they face the same ridicule and abuse if they mess up High Voltage silencing. Ifrit Extreme groups are most often waiting for healers over even tanks because it is the most stressful and hard fight to heal in the game and not understanding how Searing Wind works will wipe successful parties even if you can manage healing through 16 nails exploding.

Even the rare fight where tank has the easiest job (Titan HM) what happens? Jokes about how easy tanks have it with images on Reddit about how the rotation for tanks is "Just stand there" while not acknowledging that Ifrit HM as OT or Garuda HM as MT is as rough if not rougher on the tanks than anything Titan puts out. The difference is that a mistake by the tank in those 2 fights will 100% wipe the party while a mistake by healers/dps in Titan can but won't always wipe the party.

Unless they change fight mechanics to make fights interesting enough to tank to offset the pressure and ridicule you face as tank when you mess up nobody is gonna keep playing them.

[reality_check]

I have a level 50 MNK, WHM, BRD, PLD, and WAR. I only play my paladin very rarely, and usually for map hunting with friends. Where do I fit into your graph?

I will give you that he sort of pulled that number out of thin air, but I do not think that graph encompasses what really matters. What matters is who actively plays (and queues) as a tank on a regular basis.

EDIT:

Also, wtf is "other?"

You will be whatever job you were playing at the time of that snapshot. So, probably not paladin.

[LineageRazor]

On what grounds do you think the bottleneck should be healer? If the server is 20% tank, 21% healer, and the rest is DPS, then we would still more often than not run into a tank shortage. The gap doesn't need to be large for it to be the main shortage. You don't trust a chart, which is based on actual data SE had on their servers, yet them you throw out nothing but opinions as if it is more factual. I'm more inclined to believe a chart made up of actual data instead of your assumptions any day of the week.

On the grounds of THIS CHART. I'm basing my assumptions on the chart, which I clearly stated is NOT a correct representation of the actual population of jobs that people play on a regular basis. The CHART says DD 51%, Tank 23%, Healer 20% - hence, healers are the bottleneck BY THIS CHART. This is clearly not the case in-game, where healers regularly have to wait for queues, and tanks rarely do.

As for opinions, it's not hard to see from experience that yes, tanks get into queues instantly, and healers have to wait a short while, as I play both WHM and PLD. DD's do enough complaining on the forums to make it clear that the queues are worst of all for them. So, yes, this chart is clearly not usable as proof that there's no queue problem. All very tidy empirical data, accumulated through first-hand experience and second-hand reports.

[BlueMage]

Wow! So all SE needs to do is change the name of Rage of Halone to "Bladeblitz", and suddenly we'll have an abundance of tanks! Thanks for your genius development insight, OP! That was totally always the reason I almost never use my Lv50 tanks!

[Royze]

The Graph is just data. If SE is using that data alone to determine job popularity then the (sad) state of the game makes so much more sense now.

That Data should be considered, at best, as a third indicator for job popularity.

As many have recent said in this thread, having a (tank)job lvled does not mean it is being played.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that there are more than twice as many dps as there are tanks. The implications of such should be (at least I hope) well within SE's means of grasping.

What they, and no one, seems to be considering is the fact that many Tanks, be they WAR or PLD, play other jobs. That only reduces the true amount of available tanks available further.

Now, tanks might be playing other jobs because they desire a temporary change and want to mix things up a bit, or they might be playing other jobs because they are fed up of tanking - be it because it is so mundane and repetitive, or because it is too stressful for some to have to deal with the community's blunt feedback about their performance. Be it valid or invalid, many people just do not want to be in the spotlight amongst strangers and subject themselves to abuse. They're crazy. Who doesn't love being abused by total strangers and being the only one other than the healers who is accountable for every last damn mistake they make?

Never mind all that, a mount sounds like the perfect solution.