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.

[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]

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.

[Codek]

There is no cure to the tank shortage. It was the #1 reason in 2008-2012 that every major MMO forums were screaming that the Trinity system needs to be destroyed and done away with.


But then GW2 released and basically taught everyone why that was a bad idea as well....

[SpookyGhost]

>making tanks any easier than they already are

Nahhhhhhhhhhh.

[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.

[Bixby]

Yeah, there is no way they're going to make Defiance and Shield Oath class abilities instead of job abilities.

But anyway. Whether 7x the gil is enough to get me into low level roulettes as a tank depends on what happens with the economy overall. Right now, no, I still wouldn't care, because gil is pretty meaningless. If 2.2 makes it worthwhile to actually give a crap about gil, then maybe.

It's sort of a sticky issue. If you make the reward good enough for it to be a real motivator, you're going to get people playing tanks just for the reward, and those people tend to suck at it. But if it's not that good, it's not really going to tip the scales very much, because the reward:hassle ratio of tanking itself regulates the number of tanks for any given bit of content far more strongly than any external reward less than holy-balls-amazing ever will.

[NotTheNameIWanted]

*snip*.

Making tanking easier won't stop people from being rude, though. The *only* reason you eat the rudeness is because you're running at the front of the pack and everyone's focused on you. Most people aren't watching healers or other DPS, they're watching the boss, which way they're facing, where aggro is going. Tank is supposed to be an interactive role for the thick-skinned. My best advice to enjoy the class is to not take the rudeness personally. It's part of the fun for me, and honestly, I think if some people could realize that part of the fun of the role is doing a good job even when some people give you attitude over things that don't matter, they'd have more fun with it.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

[...]
But then GW2 released and basically taught everyone why that was a bad idea as well....

Well, it has it's ussues as well, that I agree. But I enjoyed having on aption to do tanky spec on every class if I desired to do so for whatever reason.