Where the Meta/Paradigm Problem Applies

[Sapphidia]

I think the most detrimental trickle-down attitudes from the top end tank meta are the following opinions that I see thrown around a huge amount (even from people on this forum):

- Tanks who stack Vit are objectively "Lazy" and only want to press a few buttons.
- Vitality is purely training wheels and in all situations if you have any Vit in low content you're a crap player who hasnt learned to play.
- Pure dps strength stacking tanks -always- make a run much faster and you're slowing a run down hugely if you don't.
- Speed of a DF instance is always a LOT more important than doing it a little slower but with zero risk of wipes.

Now there's some truth in all four of those in certain situations of course - the issue is that vitriolic players are taking those situations as 100% objectively true at all times regardless of level/gearing/party composition. Thus you get a lot of antagonisation of tanks who choose to play safer/tankier in content that has basically zero DPS checks.

It's the attitude that's the problem, along with a marked misunderstanding of when the safer/tankier/vit-stacking option is actually BETTER. There's a lot of factors involved. Yes, in most cases even in casual/levelling content going mostly full strength and trying to stance dance to speed up a run is optimal play. However, this always carries a level of risk, especially when a tank is potentially underlevel and undergear for an instance (like a level 40 in level 35 gear running Stone Vigil for the first time) or even if they're downsynched might be matched with a low geared or inexperienced (or laggy) healer. There's also the factor for legitimately doing huge pull speed runs in lowbie content where the incoming damage on a tank CAN be so huge that stacking vitality (especially as a paladin who doesnt contribute as much aoe damage) is actually the best option due to how fast they can drop from 100% to 0% with 20 mobs whacking them.

The issue with the top down meta is that people see what it is, see what the optimal way to do A3S is, or maximise Faust damage, and aggressively assume this is the ONLY WAY TO PLAY and take the view that deviation from this equates to laziness, lack of skill, bad judgement or a fundamental inability to play the class. This also mixes with the opposite - a number of people in the "tanks tank, healers heal, Dps is a sin" crowd who will happily poop all over the tank if they die and have a single Slaying ring equipped. Aggressive players with a holier-than-thou attitude exist in all MMOs, thankfully less in FFXIV I feel as the community in general is nice, but the choices a tank needs to make are fluid and based on many factors.

Stance dancing is also an intriguing thing - it's great to do even in lowbie content, but you have to be careful. Not due to risk of death (20% mitigation doesnt make much of a difference if you're on easy bosses or you've killed most of a big aoe pack and are finishing off the stragglers of course), but because as soon as you swap out of tank stance into DPS there's actually a big risk of people who don't understand immediately calling you out for making the healer's life harder. Often staying in Tank Stance in easy content is "better" to avoid any kind of major conflict with players you don't know... however with the trickle down now, players are feeling obliged at times to stance dance MORE than they need to. The tank who swaps to DPS stance and dies in easy content because they felt pressured to is just as bad as the tank who stays in tank stance 100% of the time because they're scared of being called out. The psychological impact on the party of the tank going (or not going) to DPS stance is often more impactful than the actual dps boost it gives!

The issue with the trickle-down of the meta is the simple lack of understanding a lot of people (often non-tank backseat drivers) have of the reasonings for the decisions, and thus misinformation is spread around as the only way to play. There's nothing wrong with helping players play better, provided there's a single optimal way to do something and they arent doing it. Here though, the antagonisation filtering down is based mostly on misunderstanding and is responsible for a lot of duty finder aggressiveness.

Lots of players like to "backseat drive" and judge the playing of others in MMOs - this is kind of natural, and can be positive if the person can help players in a non-confrontational way. Right now though, tanks have two very disparate philosophies regarding how they play, when the truth is a sliding scale in the middle of these two. Sadly, a lot of players (tanks and non-tanks alike) don't really fully understand the extent of this sliding scale.