Tank and heal shortage

[Squa]

I have been thinking about this tank healer shortage for a awhile now, and it dawned on me

2 tanking class
WAR
PLD

5 DPS class
BRD DRG MNK SMN BLM

2 Healing class
WHM SCH

So it seems like a balanced group should be 9 (instead of the current 8). However, since it is 4/8, the ratio of 1-2-1 is broken (should be 1-2.5-1), which leaves a .5 DPS class without a job per 4 man dungeon.


This seems pretty small, and it is, since DPS queue times may have 5-10x tank/healer times and can't be accounted for simply on a numerical basis for the classes.

[eschaton]

The tank shortage is becoming more serious as it influences all queues. The game could benefit from making people want to tank more. Maybe give them more shiny armor pieces

[KiriA500]

The tank shortage is becoming more serious as it influences all queues. The game could benefit from making people want to tank more. Maybe give them more shiny armor pieces

Square-Enix can't magically make people not lose their minds when a tank does something wrong, so unfortunately, tanks will always be in short supply.

[Kinseykinz]

The tank shortage is becoming more serious as it influences all queues. The game could benefit from making people want to tank more. Maybe give them more shiny armor pieces

Actually, all they'd need to do is make it logical for a DD role (s) to become the 'puller' and allow tanks to position themselves to grab/aggro the mobs and hold them in position. It's not the job that turns people off as much as the job+the constant pace-setting for the group+ added responsibility. So if SE could figure out a way to make it so a DD was the logical 'puller' then all the sudden, a DD and not the tanks would be responsible for setting the group pace through trash mobs...AND lessen some of the tanks responsibility while giving the DD a little more of the group shared responsibility.

(IE, give tanks a move that + increases their DD/DEF or EMN if they pull mobs off a teammate...and maybe give select DD's (doesn't have to be every dd) a +attack/skill speed/acc or -emn bonus for holding hate/swapping their hate with another party member.

This of course, is just an idea...but the main reason many players opt to NOT tank/heal=added pressure/knowledge needed or more responsibility. If SE could figure out a way to take some of the tanks NON role-specific pressures away, then maybe, more people who enjoy the gameplay of tank...but not the pressure of being the 'leader'/'pacesetter' would play the role.

Shiny armor won't work.
Shorter Queues afterall doesn't work...all this does is allow some 'abusive' players a way to abuse the system (Spamming withdraw for the 'fast queue'), tarnishing the good name of many tanks in the process....AND turning even more people off to the role (people who think...I don't wanna be associated with those kind of players)
Better 'Player in Need' rewards don't work well either.

So basically, bribes won't work...SE needs to look at the mechanics/party responsibilitys and make adjustments there...and even then, people either like to heal or they don't...same is true with tanking. Not everyone likes giving up personal damage output for defense...just like not everyone likes to do an epic battle without throwing out a single attack spell or move, all while keeping their party alive (healing) or taking max damage to their face without falling through mitigation and sheer will (tanking).

[Duelle]

So basically, bribes won't work...SE needs to look at the mechanics/party responsibilitys and make adjustments there...and even then, people either like to heal or they don't...same is true with tanking. Not everyone likes giving up personal damage output for defense...just like not everyone likes to do an epic battle without throwing out a single attack spell or move, all while keeping their party alive (healing) or taking max damage to their face without falling through mitigation and sheer will (tanking).

The problem is a combination of responsibility and aesthetics. You can give more tank variety to fix the latter (BST and SAM as tanks would be very different from WAR and PLD), but the former will be a main deterrent from tanking for some for a while.

And making needlessly complicated mechanics won't do the trick.

[Squa]

Further elaborating on the issue, that the Arcanist class is the only class to branch out into Jobs, SMN/SCH, this also makes it more desirable for people to major in first, since it gives the most benefit for least work. The solution I think is to make a new tanking class next. Could probably make it just as a cross current class for simplicity, but having 3 tanks now would help balance the ratio I believe for a lot of dungeon queue inbalances.

(simply making a tank exclusive mount wont solve this problem!!)

[Felis]

Wouldn't it better to give a DD class a tank job?
This way the players only need to do the job quests, learn a bit the mechanic and are ready to tank.

[DannyNobuser]

even if there is more dps classes than hlr or tank regardless you could have a 100 dps to 2 hlrs and tanks they still wont tank or heal if they don't want to. So that's not a logical assumption

[jomoru]

People are complex, while its true many people don't want to deal with the bullshit that comes with Tanking and healing, there are things that can be done which might help. First and foremost giving very little diversity to tanking and healing does not really help. If you want to DPS you have ranged, melee, pets, magic. While Healing has some diversity with pets it has nowhere near the range of themes and looks DPS has. Tanks have it even worse.

Add more tanking and Healing jobs give more looks for armor, it may not make it so healing and tanking outstrip DPS(since that never will happen) but adding more options will at least make people who are bored with what we have but might be interested in the role opt in, and that's really the only thing that can be done outside maybe active bribery for tank/and or mindcontrol

[Seig345]

I do what I can about the healer shortage when I play, seeing as whm is my favorite job/role to play X)

Once I've gotten my daily roulette bonuses, I usually queue up a few extra times, and I always queue with in-progress checked. Unfortunately, when I tried to exclusively level Gld/Pld up to get it to level cap so I could help as a tank, it was just too nerve wracking and I wound up not playing at all for a week or two straight... Until people can learn to chill (especially on the non end-game dungeons, yeesh!) I'm more likely to stick with my comfort job as Healer.

At least my preferred role is one of the needed ones, I suppose? (I've never seen the role-in-need be anything but Tank though...)