What if Tank classes could only meatshield?

[Abbul_Stonecleaver]

I would have quit playing from boredom long ago

[Kydi]

I wouldn't say they don't need to care about personal dps, just that there should be less focus on the amount of time one can spend not being in tank stance being such a defining factor in being a good tank.

In my opinion, instead of having the tanks focus on dishing out max dps they should be focused on allowing the others to dish out max dps by mitigating as much as possible, meaning less healing required etc. In addition, and I'll admit I'm not talking about savage here, having extra tank swaps, positioning requirements etc. would become easier if there was more focus on tanks being tanks and controlling the boss than grabbing initial hate and then staying in dps stance as long as possible. I think it's a general issue with the meta, that the lines have become blurred between the trinity, and instead we look to be moving to dps, dps who can take a hit and dps who can heal.

Personally I would find tanking more enjoyable if the goal was to focus on handling large amounts of incoming damage on an ongoing basis, mitigating it (through specific gearing and through abilities) and then having a swap mechanic to enable stance switching etc. Similarly healing would, in my opinion, be more enjoyable if the dps part were simply dot if possible, but your actual role is to keep healing.

Just my 2 pennies.

Edit: I should probably add that this is coming from an experienced mmo player, but not necessarily an experienced FFXIV player.

[Alphras]

In my opinion, instead of having the tanks focus on dishing out max dps they should be focused on allowing the others to dish out max dps by mitigating as much as possible, meaning less healing required etc.

These two are not mutually exclusive. A good tank will always focus on maxmizing dps while minimizing damage taken at the same time. Finding the balance is what makes it interesting.

Personally I would find tanking more enjoyable if the goal was to focus on handling large amounts of incoming damage on an ongoing basis, mitigating it (through specific gearing and through abilities)

Well there are no real gear options (which is a problem imo), but the handling of large amounts of incoming damage is already in the game (albeit only in savage). The thing is maximizing your mitigation with cooldowns is not really a challenge for most experienced tanks and after learning a fight it is pretty much simple routine.

As I've said before, tanking outside of tank stance is unthinkable in other games between mitigation gained from the stances and enmity modifiers being tied to same.

Don't know about that. I already did that when I started with tanking in WOW 10 years ago (maybe that changed with the addons, only played vanilla) and multiple other games after that.

[Duelle]

Don't know about that. I already did that when I started with tanking in WOW 10 years ago (maybe that changed with the addons, only played vanilla) and multiple other games after that.

WAR threat coefficients were nerfed going into TBC outside of Defensive Stance. I know exactly what you're talking about too because I used to tank in battle stance as well, though that was only because I had only myself to count on to snare runners in dungeons (AKA the mobs that would run and try to run and aggro an extra pack of mobs when they got to low health) because most DPS were somehow not able to do it (hunters would derp around with auto-shot and rogues somehow forgot about all the stuns they had). This was back when Hamstring could only be used in Battle and Berserker Stance.

I don't think the DPS stance has only been made in order to off-tank DPS while not tanking anything. The majority of the time bosses hit like a wet noodle (in every content, even in raids) and only hit like a truck during specific and scripted moments. The tanking stance is only needed when you need to generate enmity and during those specific scripted moments where heavy tankiness is required (whether it's a tank buster or just a very damage-intensive phase). The rest of the time you can and should completely be using your DPS stance. And I believe it's working as intended. If the developers only made DPS stances for off-tanks when not tanking anything, everything would hit much harder and the tanking stance would be required even for regular damage. I think the developers wanted us to be able to see when and where we need more tankiness and to dish out more damage the rest of the time. Exactly the same reason why healers have Cleric Stance.

The gameplay is a result of something the devs obviously didn't count on. Just like they didn't count on healers using cleric stance to DPS in coil.

And Cleric Stance exists to make leveling a healer outside of dungeons not a complete bore (because it would take forever to kill anything). Just like Deliverance was added to give WARs something to do when not main tanking (specially since Wrath is supposed to be their main gimmick/mechanic). Which in essence is the same reason why PLD has Sword Oath to begin with. Your forcing the square peg into the round hole has nothing to do with the intent of those abilities.

Here's the main point: focusing the tank meta on DPS is a losing proposition in the long run. First because yes, PLD will always be the bottom in that relationship. Secondly because it skews the balance between the tanks. Considering the three tanks parsed relatively close to each other in Shield Oath/Grit/Defiance (WAR just being more capable of burst because of Unchained + Berserk + Inner Beast), it's pretty damn clear where the three tanks are supposed to be compared to each other. Now you're taking that part of the design and flushing it down the toilet because you want to bypass gear checks using a DPS source that should not be making or breaking encounters. That's a really bad thing from a design perspective.

[Freyyy]

Just like they didn't count on healers using cleric stance to DPS in coil.

They didn't count on it in the first place for coil. But for Alexander Savage, Yoshi himself said that they were now designing hard end-game encounters in a fashion that pushes everyone counting tanks and healers to do maximum DPS while maintaining their roles in an optimal way. That is the actual direction they want to take.
And given the fact that we're now getting abilities exclusive to our DPS stances/no tank stance for DRK (Fell Cleave, Decimate, Blood Weapon), and that healers are getting a lot of new DPS spells (Aero III, Stone III, Assize, Broil), I don't think it will change. This is how they want FFXIV to work.

[Mutemutt]

They didn't count on it in the first place for coil. But for Alexander Savage, Yoshi himself said that they were now designing hard end-game encounters in a fashion that pushes everyone counting tanks and healers to do maximum DPS while maintaining their roles in an optimal way. That is the actual direction they want to take.
And given the fact that we're now getting abilities exclusive to our DPS stances/no tank stance for DRK (Fell Cleave, Decimate, Blood Weapon), and that healers are getting a lot of new DPS spells (Aero III, Stone III, Assize, Broil), I don't think it will change. This is how they want FFXIV to work.

Actually, it's my understanding that they still don't include healer dps in the end game encounters, even though they are aware of it; just using the 4 dps and the 2 tanks. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the tank dps is tank stance numbers, or at least tank stance numbers when they expect the tank to be tanking.

[Kydi]

These two are not mutually exclusive. A good tank will always focus on maxmizing dps while minimizing damage taken at the same time. Finding the balance is what makes it interesting.

I wouldn't say mutually exclusive. Inherently a good tank at present can make healers' lives easier by mitigating more, but the real focus (or so it appears) is on them dealing more damage, as opposed to mitigating more, which brings me onto my second point below.

Well there are no real gear options, but the handling of large amounts of incoming damage is already in the game (albeit only in savage). The thing is maximizing your mitigation with cooldowns is not really a challenge for most experienced tanks and after learning a fight it is pretty much simple routine.

This is the biggest issue (in fact, 2 issues) in my opinion. The first is that there is no gearing choice. Despite there being a tank stat in the game, the benefit is so negligible (especially due to the current progression favouring magic damage) that it's not worth taking. The second issue is that damage comes in predictable spikes to mitigate, rather than consistently. The upshot of this is that experienced tanks need only use their tank stance to open the fight and then at set points in the fight for a tank buster, elsewhere they're DPS. This is probably personal preference, but I would prefer if damage had spikes, but there was consistent high pressure (this may be the case already - I've not been in savage, but as I understand that is mostly spikey) which would need tank stance to survive.

Don't know about that. I already did that when I started with tanking in WOW 10 years ago (maybe that changed with the addons, only played vanilla) and multiple other games after that.

Yep, that's also the case with SWTOR. Enmity generation is, to a large extent, locked behind abilities which can either only be used in tank stance, or which have additional effects. It also ties defence (shielding, defending/evading and generally having double the armour value (going from about ~20% to ~45% passive reduction)) to having a tank stance on, meaning if you attempted to tank without it, you could manage a couple of hits, but will die fast and lose agro unless an actual tank gets the boss back off you quickly.

[Duelle]

This is the biggest issue (in fact, 2 issues) in my opinion. The first is that there is no gearing choice. Despite there being a tank stat in the game, the benefit is so negligible (especially due to the current progression favouring magic damage) that it's not worth taking. The second issue is that damage comes in predictable spikes to mitigate, rather than consistently. The upshot of this is that experienced tanks need only use their tank stance to open the fight and then at set points in the fight for a tank buster, elsewhere they're DPS. This is probably personal preference, but I would prefer if damage had spikes, but there was consistent high pressure (this may be the case already - I've not been in savage, but as I understand that is mostly spikey) which would need tank stance to survive.

I'll agree with this. For me it's part preference, part annoyance at seeing stuff used in ways not intended.

As for stats, they'd need to disclose a lot more info in our character sheets because you start seeing more tank stats on gear. I also suspect the devs don't want players manipulating incoming damage in certain ways. I'm pretty sure Blizzard was not happy with the fact tanks could gear themselves to outright negate stuff like Crushing Blows and Critical Hits through overall mitigation (most likely why parrys and blocks in this game don't apply to critical hits).

[AriaEnia]

It will be interesting if the monsters deal only massive damage everytime, tank buster in every 4 seconds, that the healers can only heal, and tanks have to stack vit and agro generation is so small that he only has to keep agro from dps, survive with cooldowns and the dps, well just dps.

[Drakkaelus]

What if in a world where upon entering a dungeon or raid, all of the Tank classes ability to do numerical Damage was completely removed and replaced with plain threat. The numbers you see when you activate a damaging weaponskill instead was aggro numbers generated.

What if STR meant nothing and VIT instead helped scaled your aggro generation much akin to how STR scales your damage.

Naturally skills and gear would be redesigned to this new idea but the question is; Would you play a tank design like this?

In a world where Tanks can only generate aggro and mitigate hits, healers can only heal and cast debuffs or whatever it is they do, and DPS were the focus of all damage on party to boss.

Would this be fine?

Let's find out. Make a DRK and take everything off your bar except Flash and Blood Price.

I remember tanking in EQ1 and WoW. And by "tanking" I mean, "watching TV while hitting a few buttons on my keyboard without looking at the screen". Once I established aggro, there wasn't much reason for me to stay engaged.

Personally, I like playing tanks in RPGs because I enjoy the feeling of getting in the boss' face and fighting (key word there) it. Not staying as far away from it as possible or sneaking behind it and hoping it doesn't notice me. Making my moves feel limp goes against that. No, I don't think I'm DPS but I don't want to sit there and flashflashflashflashflashflashflashflashflashflashflash until the end of time either. Sure it gets the job done, but what part of that is supposed to be fun?