Why I have reluctantly become a tank

[OranKells]

I have played many MMOs in my day. I have almost always chosen a healer/mage class. I was a rejuvenation druid back in WoW(is that still a thing? I haven't touched it since burning crusade). A jedi sage Swtor for the few months before that imploded. a whm/smn in ffxi (yes, i'm one of those annoying legacy players #BringBackMaat). and the others I've dabbled in for a hot second (GW, TSW, rift) I gravitated towards the arcane and magical and curative classes. I'm spending my solidery tomes on daystar gear and currently collecting the myth for the books towards my Thyrus Animus. In short I am and have always been a squishy back row mage class; however lately I have been felt compelled to start gearing up my pld and I think I may have to stick with it.

1) The bonuses are nice
Not that healer roulette queues are very long, but on top of being instant I get an extra 4500 gil whenever I do anything. People seem to default commendations to the tank. Also I'm slowly working towards a lion. A freaking LION

2) I get to be in charge
It's always rather infuriating when the roulette decides to give me WP or brayflox and a ilvl90 pld and 2 fresh 50 dps but the tank decides to do speed run pulls nonetheless and when we wipe its somehow not his fault. I can set the pace and I don't have worry about someone over doing it and if some one else decides to run ahead and pull more than me, I don't feel particularly obligated to save them.

3) I'm good at it
That is to say, I'm not terrible at it. I do not claim to be able to solo tank t5 t9 odin, Bahamut extreme, or yoshida prime; but I hold my own. I've made mistakes, everyone has; but I know when to pop my cooldowns, what moves to stun, what to save provoke for. where to dodge and where to just take it like a man. A good tank tends to go unnoticed but a bad tank can easily wreck a party.

4) Its in some ways easier
After weeks of memorizing titan's rotation to find that I could just.... stand still without fear or weight of the land or landslide or anything (at least for 2 mountain buster stacks) was such a reprieve. In t5 I don't have to worry about conflagration. Are there challenges tanks have to worry about? of course but I find a lot of the mechanics that trip up the party are not targeted to the tank and I often feel the ones I do need to worry about are less stressful than ones the rest of the party has to deal with.

5) I make my own parties
I have discovered that blacklisted people cannot join a group you start in the party finder. Seeing as this game has one of the more toxic communities I've ever experienced my blacklist is getting extensive. Exactly why this is so could be a whole new thread but suffice to say I'm weeding out the bad players. Now nothing is stopping you from doing doing this as a DPS or healer class, but tanks are still in such high demand that tanks are often the final empty slot in the party finder, when I make my own they tend to fill up pretty fast & I can still afford to be picky.


All of this is well and good, the fringe benefits are nice but honestly the biggest problem is:

I don't find tanking that fun.

I'm doing this partially for the mount, but also because it seems to be a necessity if I don't want to sit around twiddling my thumbs all day while I wait for party finder groups to fill up

I don't think its as challenging or as entertaining personally as being a healer and I do enjoy being the healer, the challenge or keeping everyone alive. watching the combat from afar. the power of life and death in my hand. Maybe I have a messiah complex. If I had to pick just one job to run with it would probably be whm or sch but since tanks are so few and far between I guess I'm gonna step up to the plate for now.

[Warlyx]

I have discovered that blacklisted people cannot join a group you start in the party finder.

didnt know , thats awesome


the thing is... if u will keep being in 1 month

[o3o]

I dont find tanking that fun.

Then stop tanking. Some people love to tank. Its not eveyones cup of tea.

[Luxx]

ok then go back to being a healer lmao. simple as that i guess.
i mean if u arent enjoying the game because u picked a job thats not fun
time to go back to ur roots and heal...imo the mounts are ugly, and the amnt of time to get it
is silly, looks all weird n rushed , just like the unicorn from the whm quest.

[blowfin]

Then stop tanking.

Or level WAR.

[ForteXX]

1) The bonuses are nice
Not that healer roulette queues are very long, but on top of being instant I get an extra 4500 gil whenever I do anything. People seem to default commendations to the tank. Also I'm slowly working towards a lion. A freaking LION

I dont see a lion, just a chimera thats been decapitated twice.

[OranKells]

well both pld and war are 90. I will be going for the bear next

Whenever I have the chance I generally run as a healer, but if I don't have a good tank from my FC that I trust, I feel like it defaults to me.

The point is that despite all the reasons to tank it doesn't change the fact that tanking isn't that fun at least for me. which is probably part of the reason tanks are in such high demand.

[Welsper59]

2) I get to be in charge
It's always rather infuriating when the roulette decides to give me WP or brayflox and a ilvl90 pld and 2 fresh 50 dps but the tank decides to do speed run pulls nonetheless and when we wipe its somehow not his fault.

For this statement, I, by default, have an improved level of respect for you stranger.

As for your outlook towards tanking, that's how it is. Like many things we take part in inside and outside of the virtual world, we need to make decisions for ourselves. Balance out the good and bad in relation to our goals. Is the mount worth your tanking? Is your level of enjoyment when not tanking significantly higher? Is that important to you? The game is not going to change so that you don't have to think for yourself. In fact, the game/devs are not directly responsible for those lengthy queue times, the players are. That being said, we have to make choices. Maybe you just want to vent a little frustration on your part because of it. That's fine. If it becomes the very reason you dislike the game, when you would have otherwise enjoyed it, you should question your decision. It's a video game. We're free to decide for ourselves what we do in this virtual world.

[Welsper59]

well both pld and war are 90. I will be going for the bear next

Whenever I have the chance I generally run as a healer, but if I don't have a good tank from my FC that I trust, I feel like it defaults to me.

The point is that despite all the reasons to tank it doesn't change the fact that tanking isn't that fun at least for me. which is probably part of the reason tanks are in such high demand.

People like to use the "fun" aspect of something as the reason why something may not be popular or in high supply. That's not the case at all though, at least by the general population. As you pointed out, tanks are essentially the leaders of their party. They have an unwritten level of responsibility that people generally don't want to have a part in. Be it that they lead the party or that they're responsible to make sure that the party is alive. The tanks also have to survive, they're prone to death by default, which is something many people don't quite want a part of. Maybe not so much the death aspect itself, but the fact that you rely on a consistent need to be healed and risk death as a result of not just the healer but potentially your own shortcomings. There's many variables, but no matter what era we're in, people like to throw out orders but no one wants to actually lead.

[saber_alter]

-snip-

paladin as a whole has a low entertainment value. not much to do beyond the same halone rotation, keeping up blind for flash (until it resists), stunning an odd mechanic, and mitigation cooldowns (this comes from someone who has been tanking level 50 content since three weeks after launch).

entertainment value definitely has some relation to the lack of tanks, but it stems from even more than just that.
it stems from fear of responsibility, lack of trust, lack of entertainment, no "big" numbers...and some people just don't like tanking for unknown reasons.