Strength Tanks

[SpookyGhost]

If you want to be all "look at my l33t parses" (damn, that hurt my eyes to even type that), switch to the DPS job of your choice and let a real tank do the job he/she's meant to do.

A real tank isn't so single minded that he thinks that his only job is to survive damage. If you're hitting the boss to hold aggro, whether you like it or not, you are a part of the +group DPS gang. Healing is a bit more removed, you have to go out of your way as a healer to contribute to group DPS, but as a tank you have to hit the boss. While it might not be your main priority (staying alive), it does contribute to your second priority (holding aggro), and it's by default your third priority (contributing DPS without compromising either of the others). As a real tank, you maximize all 3, not ignore one because you only feel like doing the first 2.

[Hayward]

snip

I mentioned nothing at all about not doing damage. My issue is with tanks wanting to do damage at the expense of their actual function (the mooks running through dungeons using Sword Oath/Defiance or without Grit on, for example) rather than as a part of their actual function. I genuinely hope this whole VIT/STR issue is cleared up in 3.2 along with this whole "damage first" mentality that has gone too far and really puts the whole tank & healer roles into question.

[Whiston]

I genuinely hope this whole VIT/STR issue is cleared up in 3.2 along with this whole "damage first" mentality that has gone too far and really puts the whole tank & healer roles into question.

There isn't a single change SE can implement that will alter people's desire to optimize the way they play. Whatever changes come down the line, the good players will adapt and figure out the absolute best way to play the job, and the "real tanks" will keep clinging to their notion of tanking, probably from previous games, and hoping that the devs will change the game to bend to their desires.

[fm_fenrir]

I genuinely hope this whole VIT/STR issue is cleared up in 3.2 along with this whole "damage first" mentality that has gone too far and really puts the whole tank & healer roles into question.

I can't wait for SE's fix to be "VIT affects tank DPS/AP instead of STR", so I can bottle up those tears like Poland Spring. You can't get rid of tanks trying to maximize damage without gutting the functionality entirely, which makes tanks boring to play and requires every single ability to have an enmity modifier adjustment made to it to make up the difference in damage output.

[Zojha]

You can't get rid of tanks trying to maximize damage without gutting the functionality entirely[...]

Sunder Armor used to be a thing. Pretty sure you could even include it in a combo system without changing the classes from the ground up. Heck, you could give every ability a weapon/stat-dependent enmity modifier and then purely supportive effects with no damage whatsoever. Let some inflated enmity numbers flash up on the screen so people don't "get bored" and you're set.

But then you step outside the dungeon and lack the dedicated damagedealers to kill anything. And "that" is why we have a hard time getting rid of the damage paradigm of tanks. Frankly, tanks/healers have as much business doing damage as damagedealers have healing/tanking: None. That's the trinity design. And that's totally fine, until the trinity is broken in solo play.

That's where the mess starts. You now give tanks/healers the tools to end a fight ASAP and of course they'll try to use it in a group setting as much as possible as well. Which can't be resolved without essentially designing two different classes for each type of content. Hence, do as little tanking/healing as possible while doing as much DPS as possible.


TL;DR: Trinity design is stupid.

[Sapphidia]

TL;DR: Trinity design is stupid.

I generally agree with this. Lord of the Rings Online did something interesting though with its tanking class, the Guardian (though I havent played it in years so not sure if this is still the case).

Guardians were able to equip 1h/shield or 2h weapons. They had a bunch of skills that did damage after they parried an attack, and a bunch of skills that did lots of -threat- after they blocked an attack. Obviously you could only block with a shield equipped, so if you were using a two handed weapon you naturally lost access to the vast majority of your threat moves (you had like... one move you could use without needing a block that was for getting initial threat, but not keeping it).

The idea was quite elegant - in a dungeon environment you equip a sword and shield and as you block attacks you use your reactive block moves to generate AOE threat (most did virtually no damage). In a solo environment you equipped a big two handed sword and used reactive Parry moves to do lots of solo damage. However, you couldn't effectively be a DPS class in a group because your big damage moves required you to be being hit for parries, and you couldnt hold threat well without the shield.

It worked fairly well I think. Point is: it's possible to have a situation where a class has two "modes", one for solo and one for group tanking. Doing lots of damage in a solo environment is not necessarily going to mean you always do huge damage when tanking too.

[SpookyGhost]

I mentioned nothing at all about not doing damage.

You replied to a post that said:

"If you want to turtle up and play super defensively, then that's fine, but if you do this don't be upset when other players choose not to play the way you do."

with:

"If you want to maximize DPS, switch to a DPS job, and let the real tanks play this specific turtley way."

Now... maybe you were being absurdist, or were trying to take things to a logical extreme, or maybe you misinterpreted the post - but from my PoV, that's the exchange that was had. Based on that exchange, I felt like you were wrong, in that a real tank isn't so single minded (focuses solely on DPS or focuses solely on mitigation), they take all 3 factors into account to maximize the potential that your group will kill the boss. This doesn't necessarily mean always being in DPS stance, full Slaying, etc - it varies from situation to situation, but the point is that you're doing as much DPS with what you have available.

If your gripe is, instead, with people who prioritize DPS over their ability to stay alive, then that's fair enough and I agree - there have been a surplus of STR tanks who don't understand the risks/rewards of it lately and that's lead to a mass misunderstanding of the STR meta that's been evolving since early 2.0. If the devs choose to make VIT the STR/DEX/MND/INT equivalent then that still won't actually solve the issue, however it will give the healers slightly more room for error which is probably the best result we can hope for.

[kensatsu]

since 2.0 Tank can push dps with more str, less vita.
seriously i never get a problem with it you can push dps in dps stance when you can and compensate it, and you can swap tank stance when it's needed.
the important is like spookyghost said : tank should not be single minded.
a tank can be super tanky and aslo push dps and you need to not think only about maximise dps. but also to survive and not be a hell to heal. it's obvious for a tank.
i think vita tank/ str pushing dps tank, should not judge themself also.
you play how you want to play. if you think you need your str so go for it, if you think you need all vit, go for it.
I am glad SE will certainly do something about the Tank stat because it seem many guys like to make VIT/STR warflamme, and only think to defend is way to play vit or str.
So maybe all the tank should be at the same school and have the same main stat.
That and also, nice less time to farm both vita and str accesories for every tank.
When players say you would to do it only to savage raid, you forget something, players want to speedruns content, it's a grinding game, players just wanna be fast and would even take risk to be faster. with this fact you see str tank everywhere for any content.