Lack of tanks in the game

[Zirael_Foxfire]

So, according to the latest Live Letter there is lack of people playing tank jobs in the game. And the solution to solve this issue is adding 2 new mounts and 7x higher duty roulette bonus. Bonus for Low Level Duty Roulette will be approximately: 41860 xp, 3150 gil, 1260 seals
Do you agree this will solve the problem?

I've been leveling WAR and PLD lately as my last two jobs to 50, so have experience of all the dungeons from DD and healer perspective already. I'll do few comparisons for each role.
This is how I see it:

tl;dr what bothers tanks:
Tanks need to stay on top of gear not to lose hate and have HP pool not to die, healers and DPS are free to wear any junk armor a dozen of levels below dungeon cap. You need to invest more gil in your weapon/armor compared to healer/DPS. Tank requires constant focus, healer and DPS can Alt-Tab between pulls no problem. Tanks don't get good abilities to hold hate until very late in game, also trying to hold hate on many enemies drains MP/TP very fast and no way to recover in emergency, healers and DPS don't run out of TP/MP. Tanks are first to get blame for failures, healers next, DPS last. Tanks enjoy instant queues (no time to make coffee!).

tl;dr changes I'd like to see:
1) Shield Oath and Defiance learned at lv 15, but it probably won't happen.
2) Enmity bonus on Overpower and Flash tripled. Or TP/MP cost cut 1/3.
3) Range of Shield Lob and Tomahawk increased to 20-25y to help with pulling enemies across the battlefield. Having to control hate on multiple enemies and coordinate their placement on battlefield is currently too cumbersome and stressful.
4) Range of basic abilities doubled from 3y to 6y to help control enemies in packs without having to run around and constantly change enemy position. You get lots of grief from MNKs and DRGs for moving around.
5) Combo chance duration doubled to help maintain enmity holding when moving between enemy packs.


Some more specific comparisons (mostly my biased point of view, don't read unless you want to get bored or want to nit pick me)

Main Weapon
Healer: It doesn't really matter. In low level dungeons your basic cure heals for 1/3 of tank's HP. Noone would notice if you brought lv1 weapon. Higher level dungeons (30+) you'd have some trouble keeping up, but if the rest of the party is competent, you can bring weapon 15 levels lower than dungeon level.

DPS: Brinding weapon 15-20 levels lower than dungeon just makes fights longer, but won't cause any wipes.

Tank: Bring weapon 5 levels lower and you won't be able to hold hate on anything, and definitely not on multiple targets. Losing hate has no consequence in low level (<25 lv) as any healer or DPS can tank anything. Higher levels losing hate will start causing wipes as enemy damage output becomes too high to handle by healer or DPS HP pool.

Armor
Healer: Level and stats of your armor have little consequence until about lv35 (The Sunken Temple of Quarn). You won't run out of mp ever (well, unless playing without tank and doing massive 4+ mob pulls). I've had no issues going with armor 15-20 iLv lower than dungeons.

DPS: Stats of your armor matter very little, if it's 15-20 iLv lower, fight will just go tad slower. You don't need VIT/HP pool since there aren't many AoE damage that can't be dodged and will 1-shot you.

Tank: If your armor iLv is ~10 lower than dungeon you will be going into yellow/red from time to time. You also run risk of not being able to hold enmity on multiple enemies. This will start causing wipes from around Haukke Manor upwards.

Abilities:
Healer: SCH gets erase tad late (lv40), it comes handy for paralyze in early levels. Cure spells are gained in time to keep everyone comfortably topped up without sweat. You never run out of MP.

DPS: Just spam 123 on nearest enemy. Or just spam 1, noone will notice. Some will question if you use only ice, but you can just ignore them. You never run out of TP.

Tank: You need to spam Flash or Overpower 2-3 times at pull start. You run out of TP/MP if you try to progress dungeon too fast. If you switch to WAR, you lose Invigorate and have no way to recover TP in emergencies. Shield Oath and Defiance get unlocked insanely late, should be lv15 abilities. Enmity bonus of Overpower and Flash is too low - one use should be enough to keep all trash enemies glued to tank until they die. At the moment you need to use them ~3 times to secure hate on top of SMNs dotting everything or BLMs spamming Fire II.

Playstyle
Healer: Follow tank. If you're SCH, you don't have to cast a single cure until Haukke Manor - pet can solo heal the entirety of the run. I used to full time Cleric Stance to speed up the fights. Or, if you don't feel like it, /follow someone and read internet in between pulls (no, I'm not exaggerrating uo joking). As WHM you just follow party and top up HP bars. Occasionally have to dodge floor mechanics or click a lamp or something. If you die, it's most likely a wipe, unless one of DDs has cure/physic cross classed and feels like healing. If you're SCH, feel free to afk whenever as long as fights are near pet. As WHM you can go afk as long as one of DDs has cure spell cross classed no problem in lower level dungeons.

DPS: Follow tank. Attack some enemy. If mobs get marked, attack [1], but you don't have to. Feel free to attack whatever. No need to dodge much, you'll get healed up eventually. Feel free to afk whenever, party can carry on without you in most cases. No harsh DPS checks (except Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry). If you die, no big deal

Tank: Dictate flow of the battle. Go fast or slow depending on what people want. Know map layout, find all Photo Cells. Know how many enemies to pull depending on your party's playstyle and your healer's capabilities to keep you alive. If you go afk, usually whole party waits. If you die on low level dungeon, no big deal. In higher levels, from Haukke Manor, it's a wipe.

DF queues
Healer: Moderate 5-10min wait

DPS: Long 10-30min wait

Tank: Instant 5seconds-3min wait

[Dale]

So, according to the latest Live Letter there is lack of people playing tank jobs in the game. And the solution to solve this issue is adding 2 new mounts and 7x higher duty roulette bonus. Bonus for Low Level Duty Roulette will be approximately: 41860 xp, 3150 gil, 1260 seals
Do you agree this will solve the problem?

No because it doesn't even address the problem. The way to fix a lack of tanks is add a more interesting variety of tank jobs that more people would want to play as.

There is already plenty of incentive to play a tank. Instant queue times alone is reason enough. The problem is just not enough people enjoy playing as a paladin or warrior. To be honest I feel they should just make all melee jobs tanks.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

To be honest I feel they should just make all melee jobs tanks.

RDM, SAM, DRK tanking in FFXI used to be a lot of fun, for those that felt like going that route to have a change of pace. Hell, there was a time when even BRDs and WHMs tanked some endgame fights. And these days MNK/NIN is way more fun to play than PLD. Just saying! But that's FFXI.

Unfortunately, FFXIV job system and ability approach is too simplistic. It helps Devs keep the game balance the way they want it, but later in the road makes all jobs boring to play. Approach to skill trees like in Rift or even GW2 could've made game play more fluid.

[Dale]

RDM, SAM, DRK tanking in FFXI used to be a lot of fun, for those that felt like going that route to have a change of pace. Hell, there was a time when even BRDs and WHMs tanked some endgame fights. And these days MNK/NIN is way more fun to play than PLD. Just saying! But that's FFXI.

Unfortunately, FFXIV job system and ability approach is too simplistic. It helps Devs keep the game balance the way they want it, but later in the road makes all jobs boring to play. Approach to skill trees like in Rift or even GW2 could've made game play more fluid.

Point taken, but all they would have to do is add some kind of taunt move to monks and dragoons then beef up their defense some. That alone would help with the tank shortage on this game. Melee dps always seem to be at a disadvantage on MMORPGs anyway so it would also help alleviate that issue as well.

But I do agree with what you are saying. Over-balancing can ruin interesting gameplay. Not all of us are part of the min/max crowd and much prefer fun over being able to match everyone else exactly.

[XNihili]

To be honest I feel they should just make all melee jobs tanks.

In many many CT I went in,nobody wanted to tank Behemoth even though it's piss poor easy to tank him (the "hard" job is on the healers).
Even if all melee jobs were able to tank, most people wouldn't want to tank.

[Acala]

In many many CT I went in,nobody wanted to tank Behemoth even though it's piss poor easy to tank him (the "hard" job is on the healers).
Even if all melee jobs were able to tank, most people wouldn't want to tank.

Seriously dont want to tank in any mmo game. and paying them off to do it only hurts the role. there are so many shit tanks out there playing for the bonus that it makes lvling a dps/healer the worst experience in the game for someone that mains a tank. The thing that makes it shit is not just they are bad at it but that they dont care. They are there purely for the bonus then they are going back to dps so learning what to do doesnt matter to them. On top of that there are so many threads about how particularly newer tanks dont want to rush things, they want to "experience" it. Seriously if 3 out of 4 want to do something and the tank stops them then the tank shouldnt complain about being bitched at.

But enough of that. In response to making tanks easier. no just no this is just a terrible idea in the long term. What needs to happen is dps need to learn to take responsibility of their own enmity. Same for healers... fcking scrubs that spam medica when one person takes 40 damage. So well basically people just need to learn to play there role, but most dont care. and that is the Achilles heel of a casual game people just want to "experience" content they dont care if they are good enough or geared enough they feel they have the right to have everything handed to them.

[Citizen_Thom]

No because it doesn't even address the problem. The way to fix a lack of tanks is add a more interesting variety of tank jobs that more people would want to play as.

There is already plenty of incentive to play a tank. Instant queue times alone is reason enough. The problem is just not enough people enjoy playing as a paladin or warrior. To be honest I feel they should just make all melee jobs tanks.

Might as well, with all the aoe's that punish melee dps (I PLD or SCH, so maybe it's not as bad as it seems), and the minor mitigation they're already granted for that.

[NotTheNameIWanted]

I like the way tanking is right now, maybe *slight* improvements on enmity gains for certain skills, but something like tripling the threat on Flash would just turn this game into WoW. Believe it or not, I like having to tab-target and sometimes fight with a DPS to get aggro back. It makes it feel like a party experience, as opposed to "do this rotation and you *never* lose threat".

Something I *do* think would help is if they took the Stun off the GCD and made it a 5 sec CD or something. It feels really clunky to have to choose between building/maintaining emnity, or wasting a GCD or two by simply auto-attacking so I don't miss an interrupt because it was on GCD when the cast bar went up. Plus Interrupts already stop being effective for a while on the same target after the third, so there's really no point in locking it out for so long. It should be more of a reactionary thing, it feels better that way.

The main reason I like tanking is *because* it's more stressful than other roles (but not RL job stress, just "takes more focus because I have more responsibility"). Yes, you get crapped on more often, yes, you need to have better gear, yes, you need to know the fights better than other roles most of the time (because most of the success relies on positioning), but I like it that way. If it gets changed to be something too easy, I'll lose interest and leave. Like I did with WoW. I know it'll happen eventually, but I just got here. Please don't be begging for nerfs to the joy of the class already, eating trash for being the leader is part of the role. If tanking gets made easier, DF might as well be a single-player experience.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

I like the way tanking is right now, maybe *slight* improvements on enmity gains for certain skills, but something like tripling the threat on Flash would just turn this game into WoW. Believe it or not, I like having to tab-target and sometimes fight with a DPS to get aggro back. It makes it feel like a party experience, as opposed to "do this rotation and you *never* lose threat". [...]

Don't get me wrong, I don't have problems splitting combos to maintain hate. My only issue is, it costs too much TP/MP, especially in lv <30 dungeons to secure hate at start of the fight. So I either have to dump my TP/MP every pull or ask BLMs and SMN not to play their job correctly. That's my gripe.

[NotTheNameIWanted]

Don't get me wrong, I don't have problems splitting combos to maintain hate. My only issue is, it costs too much TP/MP, especially in lv <30 dungeons to secure hate at start of the fight. So I either have to dump my TP/MP every pull or ask BLMs and SMN not to play their job correctly. That's my gripe.

Balancing the game for <30 threat generation is a bad idea though. And even if you do lose aggro every now and then each dungeon, *most* people aren't going to get uppity about it. Those that do are either jerks that more threat generation wouldn't fix (because they'd be jerks about something else), or panicky newbies who think having a mob punch them in the face a few times while the tank gets aggro back = bad tanking (which sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't - reality is, bad tanks just don't ever get aggro back, good tanks get on the mob ASAP or maybe let the aggro slip stay because it's on low HP and dies in 1 or 2 GCDs anyway). Both are things tanks just need to learn to deal with being the leader of the groups, if you never ate trash for other people's mistakes/not operating at 100% yourself then the role would be meaningless. That isn't to say that I take the insults as hits to my self-esteem and cry myself to sleep after every DF, it's just that to me, tanking is supposed to be for people who can take punishment and not let it get to them. In gear-terms and emotional terms. There's a reason most people just go DPS, and it has nothing to do with threat generation. Even with how easy tanking is in WoW, there's still a tank shortage. There will *always* be a tank shortage. The only thing developers can do is encourage the tanks that *do* play to queue up more often, which increased rewards will do. Most people aren't going to roll tank for added bonuses because if they could handle tanking they'd have done it in the first place, and the amount of people that'll make this change for the added incentive still won't make a dent in the numbers.

Yes you'll get attitude from Monks/Dragoons for repositioning while chasing mobs to get emnity back and things like that, but melee *always* complains about movement. If they didn't have to move, the game would get boring for them quickly as well since it would just be "stand still - do rotation", but there are absolutely melee that despise constant movement (and should've played ranged) and are *really* vocal about their discontent (due to boss mechanics or tank movement), you don't have to internalize their attitude or explain anything to them, just let them vent and keep going. Good players "get it", players that don't either haven't been playing long enough or never will "get it" because they have a bad attitude. Don't let it drag you down, don't internalize it, just keep the run going. Don't pick fights, don't give in to being baited into an argument, because both usually just *end* runs, and also keep in mind that sometimes the seemingly harsh criticism is coming from someone that is actually giving you good advice, but is emotional because you're the tank, if you make a mistake and they have to give you advice it's because your mistake just made the run harder for everyone. It's going to have some attitude behind it, even if they have good intentions.

If aggro didn't ping to players aside from the tank sometimes, tanking would be boring. Don't believe me, try WoW tanking in its current form. I absolutely do *not* want that with FFXIV.

What it sounds like people are saying is they don't like complaints, and if you don't want to hear complaints from other players you shouldn't play an MMO. Tanks screw positioning or lose aggro, Healers mismanage mana or accidentally go out-of-range and can't land a crucial heal, DPS misses rotation/CD management on DPS check fights or fails to blow an LB properly. Even if you do a flawless run, someone will find reason to complain. Making roles less fun will never change that, it'll just make playing amidst the complaints less rewarding.