What if Tank classes could only meatshield?

[Ralvenom]

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.

And if you're not still trying to maximize your dps, you're doing it wrong. Just because PLD is designed to have greater mitigation doesn't mean you shouldn't try your hardest to do as much dps as possible.

[Sapphidia]

And if you're not still trying to maximize your dps, you're doing it wrong. Just because PLD is designed to have greater mitigation doesn't mean you shouldn't try your hardest to do as much dps as possible.

Agreed... but.... (incoming another long sapphrant)...

It's about the feel and focus. Different players find different things fun in MMOs - a lot of people hate healing, a lot love it. As things stand in FFXIV the tank classes are crossing over into the same feel as the DPS classes now, and there isnt much room for the things that make a lot of tank players enjoy the role. As I've said before, the problem with FFXIV is that in order to do the maximum DPS possible you have to literally sacrifice a huge amount of tankiness. You swap to your DPS stances whilst still tanking a boss, you wear zero vitality accessories, you ignore your damage-reducing debuffs and just go all out on threat moves.

This is fine for people who enjoy the -feel- of a DPS class, but this isnt the "power fantasy" a lot of tanks signed up for (or at least, not most of the ones that gravitated towards Paladin rather than the more obviously aggressive juggernauts of DRK/WAR). I enjoy feeling like a brick wall, I enjoy getting gear that makes me think I can survive huge amounts of incoming damage with barely a heal needed. I like to contribute DPS as optimally as possible but I really don't like the feel that FFXIV has right now. It's far too focused on DPS. There's literally zero reason to improve your tankiness because all you need do is pop a couple of cooldowns at the correct scripted time in a fight.

This is the only MMO i've played so far where tank players are regularly berated for being -too tanky-. For having too much HP. For playing too defensively. A tank joins a group and has 18k health and most players will -groan- that they're probably rubbish and don't understand the class, compared to one with 16k health. A tank that stays in shield oath on a 4man boss will be whined at, or at least silently judged.

I want to worry about blocking attacks manually or having realy tight cooldown rotations, or weaving in my paladin's class heals to help healers out in extreme damage situations. Nope, no point. All i need to care about is how high on the DPS meter I am. I'm literally playing a DPS class right now in terms of mechanics and focus. And tbh, Paladin is a really boring DPS class to play because the optimal DPS rotation is so simple. The fun of paladin is having so many tanky/support buttons to press at key moments whilst having a more basic rotation for threat/damage. As soon as you enter a tank meta where these support buttons are either barely any use or harm your dps to use them, you end up with a weird feeling if sparseness and inadequacy.

It's a put up or shut up thing though. I've tanked in MMOs for about 15 years now, and FFXIV is gravitating towards having my least favorite tanking meta of any MMO i've played. That's my problem I guess, there's plenty of tanks who enjoy the super aggressiveness of whacking things hard in the face and competing on DPS meters. I know LOTS of tanks enjoy the current aggressive/dps tanking meta (and most of them have gravitated to WAR/DRK as classes).

I still do as required by my raidgroup. I optimise DPS where possible, I have my pentamelds, I use sword oath where I can. But it's just not a fun tanking style for tanks who want to feel... tanky. I'm going to weather the storm and see what happens in 3.1, if they announce any buffs/changes, or whether the -next- tier of content has a different feel to the tanking. If nothing changes, and things seem like they're going to carry on as there are now, I'll likely hang up my shield.

This isnt the tanking style I expected, and not why I enjoy tanking in other games. I'll probably end up swapping to a Healer main as soon as I can if it keeps up like this, and I think a lot of tanks are in a similar boat.

It's not about doing the job wrong, it's about choosing a job based on liking a particular element, and then finding out that element doesnt exist at the endgame, by which point it's kind of too late as you're already in a raid group and trying to down hard content, so you just do your best whilst grumpily mithering away on a forum.

[Yorumi]

I find it interesting how unimaginative people are. They bring up games like EQ1 and what tanking was like there as though that's relevant today.

What makes tanking boring in this game, and in most games is a design problem. I love tanking in swtor because it's active and engaged. All 3 tanks play radically differently and must all be learned on their own. You have to actively maintain buffs and debuffs that are short duration and highly subject to fight mechanics. You trigger effects and watch for procs and all that. If your buffs fall off you could be in serious trouble as a fair amount of mitigation is tied to them. There is also a degree of skill in it, shadows for example can renew their kinetic ward on cooldown, but if they do they actually lower their mitigation because of another stacking buff. The difference on parses can be striking.

There are also quite a few more damage type which will affect what cooldowns you use. The difference between a properly timed saber reflect and a poorly timed one is big.

The skill in that game is in achieving maximum mitigation not whether you've read a script and can hit a cooldown every so often while just dpsing. That's the problem with ff14, tanks don't tank they dps. The incoming damage is no threat, and the only thing that's a threat is tank busters that are scripted and known before hand. Mitigation is largely passive, even cooldowns just require a button press and are otherwise passive. Anything you need to maintain is just built into the rotation and hardly given a passing thought.

It's not a matter of forcing tanks into their tanking stance(granted swtor does) it's a matter of making them want to be there. A tank should be contributing to the party, and having fun by tanking, not by dpsing. The difference between a skilled good tank and a bad one should be in how well they mitigate damage not in how much dps they can push out.

[Kydi]

Snip

+1

I agree with every single comment here, with the possible exception of adding more types of damage (just because that would mean the opportunity for ability bloat galore). The biggest issue with FFXIV tanking is that there is no incentive, or often need, to be in tank stance outside of the initial pull (which is debatable in some instances) and tank busters (again, N/A if you're cheesing with HG/Holm/LD). I, along with others, play tank because I like to be the person to take a hit and control the boss, and the skill in that is, in my opinion, maintaining maximum mitigation, and needing to due to there being actual danger outside of busters, not concentrating on maintaining maximum DPS with the minimum required mitigation. I'm certainly not going to say that tank DPS isn't important, but it just seems like FFXIV (and it may not be the game, possibly just the community) makes tank DPS the measure of a good tank, rather than how well they control and manage the boss (positioning, regular swapping) to enable the DPS to dish out the hurt.