What if Tank classes could only meatshield?

[Giantbane]

short answer: no

long answer: no, just make fending accessories more desirable to tanks, ideally putting str+vit on them. Every other job gets stronger and more powerful with their accessories. Tanks should too.

[Duelle]

short answer: no

long answer: no, just make fending accessories more desirable to tanks, ideally putting str+vit on them. Every other job gets stronger and more powerful with their accessories. Tanks should too.

I'd be okay with fending accessories being turned into "of the Bear" (a WoW suffix for items with STR and VIT on them, greater VIT and decent STR on them, generally meant for tanks).

[Rhais]

Now I ask:

Should damage still exist but be trivial amounts in the grand scheme?

You still get your feeling of 'reward' from doing damage, but the design would shift to you completely catering to your party members and boil down to you hoping that they can beat down that pinata before you get tired.

There is no reward when you know what you are doing is inconsequential. It's rewarding and enjoyable to have the option to make meaningful contributions to the primary goal of the party (bringing enemy HP down to 0), while still carrying out the responsibilities of the tanking role.

[DSaint]

OP MALEFIC PLAN / main post

Lol, you are an evil person!

But yes, I would keep playing my Paladin, because I like to:

Be a paladin.
And protect people.
And hold my shield.
And beautiful skill animations.
And yell: YOU... SHALL NOT... PASS!
And receive blame about wipes.
And instant queue lol
And forget to turn on shield oath.
And hold a SPECIAL lovely key with HG to that moments: " OMG, I'm gonna die!!! I don't want to die! Take that bard! He have a horrible voice! Eat him first! HAAALP!"

I like all that tank/pld stuff and some more -^_^-

[RapBreon]

The 2nd suggestion

It's the exact same problem. Zero difference. Ultimately your contribution and room to delineate yourself from other tanks (damage wise) is reduced to such a tiny variable it wouldn't matter if you were attacking or not.

While clearly parse mad tanks are the minority on these forums (of which I am one), certainly so too are the ones happy to contribute zero (or essentially zero) damage to an encounter, especially when they don't get anything new to do.

[Phoenicia]

I skipped the past 3 pages because I dun wanna read! :P

For tanking to be fun and interesting to me, I need to "feel" like I'm a threat to the enemy and that's why I'm focused. Not via imaginary taunts, but through "real threatening" actions. In the end I'm not tanking because I wanna get smacked due to some masochistic tendencies! (Though let's admit in, almost everyone in here has a small masochist in them! We're tanks!) I'm tanking to "protect" my allies and form a front line.

This can be done in many ways:

1- Look threatening! Be in that heavy armored with grim colors and spikes on my armor! What's worse than a scary big dude in metal-clad suit and lots of spikes? A scary big dude in metal-clad suit and lots of spikes that calls your mom names! Lol

2- "Feel" threatening! This beast hits hard! Ignoring them would probably be very bad. (SE chose this path mainly).

3- Be disruptive! This works more in PvP based games. Instead of just filling up an imaginary threat bar, you disrupt enemies... HARD! Be it by overly protecting allies via shields/covers/heals, or by interrupting everything the enemies try to do. Stun, interrupt, slow, heal, shield! They wanna go over to your healer? Snare and root! They GOT to and wanna hit a friend? Cover. They wanna heal? Reduce healing! Cast bar? Nope.jpg.

You know the saying: "Dogs that bark don't bite"?

Any combination of various levels of the three above ends up "good" for me.

To answer the OP question: If all I do is wave a metal stick with a pointy or concave end and see numbers in aggro, but not damage, I would not tank. Heck, the lack of point three in this game is probably why I'm SMN main atm. (Also that AF is too cute!)

[FaizeD]

Just make VIT the primary damage modifier for tanks and fix parry. /done

[Takamorisan]

I'd be okay with fending accessories being turned into "of the Bear" (a WoW suffix for items with STR and VIT on them, greater VIT and decent STR on them, generally meant for tanks).

Pentamelds are for that, yeah you are going to dish 5-15 million gil, but they are worth the investment since you will be able to benefit from both attributes.



Now on thread, I rather have this double function, adds more stuff that I need to learn and things you can actually do during combat. The only thing I'd say that the gameplay needs its a way to make dps/tank stance transition more flexible for PLD, the rest the game is going in the right direction IMO.

[Ralvenom]

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.

That would be incredibly boring. It'd reminiscent of WoW back in the old days. Tanks had VERY LITTLE to do. And it sucked.

[Wizhard]

Notice how all the tanks that like doing damage are warriors and/or dark knights? We want different things out of tanks guys, my vision of a tank is an immovable wall, a great shield that protects. Not a crazy axe-waving guy, or a scary dude in spiky armor.