Why not just make everyone a DPS?

[Yorumi]

The tanking in this game is painfully boring without some other element just do to the nature of the way we interact with enemies. Some people may like it tho so it's different for everyone.

The argument that tanking is boring really only says that tanks in this game are very poorly designed. It's probably too late now but to me the solution is more interesting tanking, more active mitigation rather than passive, fewer fixed rotations and something to actually think about, not just make tanks like dps. If the only way we can have fun is by becoming a dps it makes one question why we all became tanks in the first place.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Tanks wore crafted melded accessories in FCoB. DPS also wore hybrids (crafted with melds) so they have enough HP to survive the insane damage. SCH was in cleric stance for DPS for the whole first phase as well. The main tank couldn't afford to drop tanking stance on Bahamut though. But the OT dropped it after picking up the ghosts in phase 2.

I think the problem with Alexander Savage is that it is turned higher than FCoB was in terms of DPS requirement but not the raid-wide damage. Which is why tanks spend most of their time in DPS mode. Even the busters are kinda weird, like in A1S, the buster literally does twice the tank's HP but it is spread so far apart that the tank just throws all its CDs at it and survive with over 50% HP left. When you look at Revelation/Flatten which did 1k~2k more than max HP and was on a minute timer so you had to spare some CDs leaving you with barely enough HP to survive it.

[SpookyGhost]

Oh I definitely agree with ZDamned about the ilevel requirements. The issue is more that, at least in my mind, if a TANK is barely at the ilevel requirement for a super hard raid encounter, then surely they should be concerned about minmaxing to optimise their survivability above all else. If a tank can waltz into an encounter wearing strength accessories, spend half the time tanking it in Sword Oath/Deliverance, and have no more difficulty than when geared out to the hilt then something is weird about balance.

It just feels like the incentive in 3.0 raids is much more highly swung in favor of squeezing out every last teeny tiny bit of DPS from healers and tanks, rather than having healers and tanks prioritise being able to actually stay alive and have no real test on that front. I may be wrong but i certainly don't recall MTs on T13 initial clears wearing full slaying sets and spending half the time tanking Bahamut in sword oath (not that I was part of the first clears of course!)

I think the issue is mostly due to the fact that A1S and A3S have much more -hard- enrages than just harsh dps checks. It's literally X DPS in this timescale or you wipe, whereas earlier content tended to be more about low dps meaning the next cycle of mechanics might be harder to deal with, so you'd get overwhelmed but the leeway was just about there.

I agree, but I think something needs to be clarified:

To tank in Deliverance you need to compensate with CDs. Basically, you want to essentially be in Defiance but without having to... actually be in Defiance. As an example, in A1S 1st and 3rd phase I start with Thrill + Conv + Foresight + Awareness, then when that's done rolling I pop Vengeance, then I'm popping Second Wind for the cleave and Holmganging the tank buster, then rolling Raw Intuition a bit later to mitigate autos until the final cleave.

PLD is a case where you can get away more with SwO tanking sans CDs due to the shield, but compensating with CDs applies to all 3 in a general sense.

So the problem is less "you can tank for a long time out of your tank stance" and more "you can essentially be in your tank stance while in Deliverance, and not need any extra mitigation". This is due to the fact that auto attacks, in this game, are nothing but fluff damage. Fairy heals, Regen/Med2, and the occasional Cure will keep you relatively topped for all that time.

The easiest way to prevent this is make autos hit hard enough to require a tank stance (already the case unless you want to severely burden your healers, though with more gear it will start to become irrelevant again) and have frequent enough tank busters to not allow for you to just pop CDs out of tank stance gg ez. Bahamut's Flatten was actually on the perfect timer for this, so it'd be cool if they could balance more fights like that for tanks. Maybe it's because we're basing all this on the first round of Alex that we're assuming everything will be as smooth sailing in the later stages, but it's still a reasonable worry to have right now.

A3S is also pretty much the perfect playground for stance swapping, no actual tank busters, just a stacking debuff which needs to be swapped for anyway. I know in A4S you can tank the legs in Deliverance, but I'm curious about the boss himself.

[Sapphidia]

I think the problem with Alexander Savage is that it is turned higher than FCoB was in terms of DPS requirement but not the raid-wide damage. Which is why tanks spend most of their time in DPS mode. Even the busters are kinda weird, like in A1S, the buster literally does twice the tank's HP but it is spread so far apart that the tank just throws all its CDs at it and survive with over 50% HP left.

This, this exactly. The tuning is just -slightly- off right now. It's too easy to tank the damage whilst basically undergeared for the encounter, which means there's absolutely no incentive to improve your overall "tankability", if such a concept exists.

Obviously on ANY encounter when you start to overgear it then tanks will start using more dpsy gear, experimenting with single tanking or just DPS stance a lot more, that's how things go - once an encounter is beaten, you do everything you can to beat it -faster-. The problem is that there isnt really any need on the current Alex content to beat it -safer-. When that Hyper Plasma shot comes in on A1S you're going to pop the same cooldowns in i210 gear as you did in i180 and whilst you'll have more HP left it wont have made the encounter any easier really.

I'm mostly just surprised that so much of a focus is on the dps output from day 1 in crappy gear from a tank perspective. You're right about the spacing of the tankbusters. Heck, even on something as trivial as Titan Hardmode when it first came out and people were trying it in low level gear you wanted as much tank stats and health as possible because of the sheer frequency of the mountain busters comboed with the aoe stomps. The tank was always at risk of dying at any point and you really noticed the tank stats of the MT throughout the encounter. In Alex 1 you only notice the tank's toughness in the 1 second after the Hyper compressed plasma when you have a quick peer at how much health they had left before they're back to full again and probably swapping to sword oath.

The TLDR here? Tanks arent being tested in their ability to take damage in 3.0 content, so we're relegated to being tested purely in our ability to DPS as long as we can pop a cooldown every 90 seconds.

[Yorumi]

This, this exactly. The tuning is just -slightly- off right now. It's too easy to tank the damage whilst basically undergeared for the encounter, which means there's absolutely no incentive to improve your overall "tankability", if such a concept exists.

I think this highlights another problem with the game's design, there are essentially no tank stats in the game, period. Parry is a joke and vit is just more hp but not more mitigation. Really the design problem in the game is that only dps stats exist and nothing else. Although healers have mnd, given the way cleric stance works it might as well just be a dps stat. Dps stats increase heals so a healer gearing for heals is gearing for dps, tank stats do little to nothing so might as well gear dps.

[Warghoul570]

Ok this is my opinion on what a tank's jobs are so feel free to give me imput since I'm sick of dealing with a as within the dungeons. My job as a tank is to 1) keep mob numbers to a minimum to make things easier on the group. 2) to pin the boss down so it can't get to the others. Personally I love stand there banging it out with the big ugly taking all the hits. Its a great feeling. I don't care who does the mort damage as long as we win.

[Twilite]

Uhm, Tanks can worry about DPS, but above all else, establish aggro first.

[Iagainsti]

Honestly, right now tank dps is only necessary in 5 fights. If you don't like to play your class like a boss at its optimal hero like level,stick to the expert roulette and your Alex normal/bis ex duties, current gear allows those dungeons mobs to melt just from DD damage alone. You can still get your Eso gear and next patch, the upgrades will probably drop from next 24 man like the CT versions, so you'll get the 210s anyway and savage will allow you again to let the DD do all the damage dealing while you soak up the hits easily. Quit whining about current meta standards and go play something else for a month.

[Donjo]

We already don't have a trinity. We just have DPS classes that can heal and soak damage in exchange for slightly less damage.

The really sad thing here is that in 2.0, we pretty much had a proper trinity. The original Coil was exceedingly well tuned for this. Tanks had to maximize Vitality and Healers had to heal their little hearts out to get through.

Turn 1: Caduceus hit like a truck... and there were two of them! This fight had a soft enrage that could be mitigated by consistent performing of the slime mechanic.
Turn 2: Letting the stacks get too high was an utter death sentence, unlike future fights where they were unusually trivial(Titan EX, Shiva EX). This enrage was technically soft, but it was closer to hard unless you were specifically prepared to weather it.
Turn 3: Had a hard enrage of variable length, proportional to the amount of patience any given group has ;P
Turn 4: Oh god Dreadnaughts. Woe be unto the Tank who decided to tank more than 2 Knights/Soldiers at the same time. A fight that had White Mages actually struggle not to steal aggro... unless clever use of Cover made it the desired outcome. Another soft enrage.
Turn 5: Relative to the gear level at which we were expected to first encounter Twintania, Death Sentence is still the most dangerous Tank Buster in the entire game. Infirmity was supposed to be a Tank swap mechanic, but Lustrate neutered it. Regardless, two tanks were still essentially necessary until players were overgeared. Hard enrage.

All of the roles had to maximize their particular specialty in order to win, and DPS in and of itself was less important because every enrage wasn't hard. Only Twintania's enrage was instant death, and that perhaps makes sense because she's the last boss of the raid. One unique quality of the First Coil was that being full i90 or higher utterly trivialized every fight except for Turn 5 due to most of the bosses being simply tough rather than a smorgasbord of mechanics. This meant that the echo was immensely helpful for everything but Twister.

But... how do other turns stack up?

Turn 6: Stacks are dangerous, but not moreso than Turn 2's. Swarm was pretty dangerous, though. I'm actually not sure if Rafflesia has a timed enrage.
Turn 7: Tanks are rarely in any danger at all. The fight barely needs two. Soft-ish enrage, but the timer is long enough that it's rarely seen.
Turn 8: Hard and pressing enrage. Meant to be a gear check turn. The tank swap mechanic was dead on arrival and so led to the first widespread instance of solo tanking in Coil. Tanks were only ever in significant danger if they were solo. The Avatar was much more interested in hurting the party.
Turn 9: Ravensbeak is less dangerous than Death Sentence, although what was likely an intended tank swap(preventing the combination of Raven's Blight and other attacks from instakilling the current tank) was a neat although failed touch. There was thus literally no need to have a second tank here either. Hard Enrage, but on a long timer. The difficulty was mechanical, not numerical.

Second Coil still holds up pretty well. Unbearably pressing DPS checks were still not everywhere, but victory suddenly depended far more on performing high-punishment mechanics than it did on crunching the numbers. The result is some of the more interesting fights in the game... but the reliance on mechanics prevented the echo from really helping people. Due to the lack of significant checks on Tanks and Healers, the meta started shifting toward "increase DPS to shorten the fight so we do fewer mechanics". Perhaps coincidentally, this is when Xenosys Vex published his first Warrior guide. Both crafted Tank accessories and the aggressive tanking style surged in popularity. Consqeuently, the tanking community began to divide between those who have a tanking mindset and those who have a DPS mindset.

After devs saw Turn 8 and 9 get solo-tanked so easily, they wised up with Final Coil. It is, however, where our current Tanking meta fully took form.

Turn 10: The first "first turn" have a cast time Tank buster. Soft enrage, but correctly performed mechanics still did so much damage to party members that it was closer to hard. The combination of double prey while both Tanks were dealing with adds was a neat heal check. Two tanks were required; add groups tethered for unsustainable damage and defense if they were close together.
Turn 11: Required immense team coordination to manage mechanics correctly. Resonance hit hard and should be shared by two Tanks, but the real buster was Secondary + Main head, another cast time ability. Hard Enrage.
Turn 12: The only reason two tanks are required is Revelation, the cast time Tank Buster. An interesting punishment for low DPS; more Bennus to kill during the Bennyland phase. The enrages were hard(16 stacks is guaranteed death, even if 14 or 15 could do the job before that) and could be hastened by letting Bennus live too long(Bennyland enrage) or leaving party members dead(last phase enrage).
Turn 13: Two tanks are necessary because the first adds tether to the boss for massive damage to both tanks, the zoo had lots of enemies, and Akh Morn is high shared damage. Flatten and Akh Morn hit very hard but over several hits so healing can happen in between them. Their impact is thus lessened. This fight, however, was one of the final nails in Parry's coffin: Flare Breaths and Akh Morn were magical. This boss is overall far more interested in destroying the party than the tank(s) specifically.

Final Coil was kind of the bastard child of the first two coils. Bosses were tough... but only just tough enough to require that a Tank be in front. It is the raid where the auto-auto-auto-Buster-auto-auto-auto boss attack pattern became terrifingly prevalent. Mechanics were very demanding and remained the cause of wipes far more than enrages or dead Tanks. However, when enrages did become a problem they were a huge problem since Final Coil overall required more DPS in relation to iLvl range than Second Coil did. Because both Tank HP checks and overall Healing checks were so lacking(the Tank HP checks especially), this led to Tanks and Healers going far out of their way to increase DPS.

So... the expansion happened. Before release, the devs publically acknowledged Healer DPS and consciously decided to help Scholar and White Mage out through additional spells with the reasoning that it was something the highest skill level groups could use to circumvent gear checks while undergeared. They, however, mentioned nothing about the Strength/Aggressive Tank. What did happen here was that Tank Stance DPS for Paladin was improved while Warrior remained where it was, relatively speaking, and the new guy was somewhere in between. Tank DPS when not in the Tank Stance, however, was notably increased on all fronts. When not Tanking, a Tank is now able to put out about as much DPS as a BRD or MCH, essentially becoming another "Support DPS". Sufficient amounts of Strength allow Tanks to surpass BRD/MCH in many situations. SE, unfortunately, forgot to address one critical balance concern: preventing the DPS Stance from being viable to use while getting hit in the face. This is how Warriors grabbed every enemy by the balls and became the most desired tank. They have the easiest time stance dancing, Berserk generates enough burst aggro that Defiance is not actually necessary to maintain hate, and bosses deal little enough damage outside of their tank buster that it's possible to keep any Tank up outside of their Tank Stance. This is the reason that the MT Damage debacle is so loud. If our Tanking friends never left their Tank Stances, I'd suspect that the ranking would still be PLD > DRK > WAR but the results would be closer to equal... gear being equal, of course.

It's probably fine that Tanks can act as a different kind of Support DPS if they aren't getting hit in the face. However, it is a genuine Trinity Buster that they can do this while getting hit in the face and it's a serious concern that Warrior is just better at it than the other jobs.

We are at the bottom of a slippery slope that has shown high level content to shift from tough encounters that greatly challenge the relationship between Healer and Tank to encounters that emphasize punishing mechanics and DPS checks rather than Tanking checks. Healers don't get shafted much, however, because these new encounters love to deal lots of damage... just not to the Tanks. We cannot even begin to guess what SE's intents are here, but we can clearly see that where encounters once primarily challenged Tanks/Healers they now primarily challenge Healers/DPS. It's not balance of jobs in relation to other jobs that we need to be super worried about; SE has, and always will, keep this in the highest regard. What we need to be worried about is balance of jobs in relation to encounters... and Tanks are currently being allowed to run very, very amok. While changes to jobs can certainly work to fix the trinity, I believe that it may be a better solution to shift endgame encounters back toward where they were in the First Coil. But not too much. Let's get encounters that give all three roles a significant challenge in their specialty instead of just two. Basically, it may work to give Tanks a more pressing reason to use their main stat rather than outright preventing them from using anything else.

[Izsha]

If people want to be tank and feel invinc8ble, then chilax for 2 months, get your vut gear and eso gear and start savage when the dps have the gear to meet dps checks on their own with their own gear. This goes for the healers that only want to heal as well. If you don't care to push the limits of a job then you're not going to be pushing the limits of content (cutting edge, doing stuff under the designed ilvl etc). There's nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is.

As for if tanks/heals SHOULD be forced into cutting corners on their primary function in order to dps, that's a mater if taste. Some tanks/heals really thoroughly enjoy that aspect of the current meta. Some dont. I'd devs reverse that meta it will just flip flop the groups that are happy/unhappy. That's not an improvement to the game. Unless someone has a statistically valid poll with a representative sample of the entire playerbase, then we don't know if 1 group is significantly larger than the other. So completely changing the way tanks and heals work ( It's the same fight in that arena) is silly without that information.

So for now if you don't like the dps corner cutting meta for tanks and healers, just relax until it's over geared so DD jobs don't need tabk/heal dps to win fights. You can wear all the vit in tank stance all day and laugh as bosses fail to kill you. But you can't do that until dps can stand on their own.