The only real way to solve DPS queues

[Mikhaill]

I'm afraid the only real way to reduce the queue times for DPS is for more players to choose to play tanks and healers.

Its the price people pay for playing the most saturated role. If you want shorter queues, play a different role.

"For DPS" If we wanna get technical, this is false.
You're no longer a DPS if you're a healer or tank.
I say increase the the party slots and all like OP said.
No one wants to be a healer and tank all the time, but I admit
that even I just stick with the two because of the abysmal Q times.
I am sure most of us are adults and are quite busy and can't afford to spend
30 mins or more in Q times. I do recommend people using PF to find a tank or heal
for expert runs for example. Here on Aether it takes no more than 10 minutes.

[TheMightyMollusk]

"For DPS" If we wanna get technical, this is false.
You're no longer a DPS if you're a healer or tank.

You are in this game. Try running pretty much anything as a healer and not DPSing at all. See how salty people get.

[geekgirl101]

All MMORPGs suffer terribly with long dps queues for dungeon content. Raid content it's the other way round, tanks and healers find they have long raid queues or struggle to find companies where tanks and healers aren't already accounted for. It's the way things are. Sometimes tanks and healers get bored of tanking and healing, and new tanks and healers suffer scrutiny if they're too slow or too new to it that it puts them off wanting to do it ever again, so even more dps queue and less tanks/healers queue.

[Jonnycbad]

People like playing DPS jobs and not playing tanks and healers. This is ingrained in players since the beginning of gaming. People generally do not like playing support roles. How many people want to play a goalie in football or a catcher in baseball? Defense in basketball? A military medic or radio operator? How many epic or glorious tales are there of radio operators or medics? No, films, novels, video games, anime are about wartime heroes: swordsmen, snipers, gun toters, samurai, people that kill and maim things in interesting ways. Support roles are integral to human civilization but they don't have the same limelight as more active and visible roles. Movies can't be made without cameramen and crew behind the scenes but they aren't visible. Healers and Tanks are the drummer/bass of the party, they carry and support but they aren't the lead singer/lead guitarist that get (most) of the fandom.

People (generally) want to be in a role that's visible, flashy, and visually impressive. Humans want their efforts to be be visible so they can feel validated. Gamers feel that healers, while important, aren't fun because their job is passive (to keep dps alive while dps kill the things with cool attacks). There is no way to change this mindset because it has been instilled in us. You can incentivize playing Healer or Tank with various rewards, but fewer people enjoy playing these roles because it's 1) not as flashy/cool, 2) more responsibility.

[Ghastly]

What we need is more tanks. With dps you have so many choices that you want to play them all (or a lot of them). For tanks it's the opposite, there's so few of them that eventually you're just basically on the same job all the time, maybe on an alt tank here and there. If there were 5 tanks I wouldn't mind queing as tank most of the time because there would be so many to choose from.

[Arrius]

What we need is more tanks. With dps you have so many choices that you want to play them all (or a lot of them). For tanks it's the opposite, there's so few of them that eventually you're just basically on the same job all the time, maybe on an alt tank here and there. If there were 5 tanks I wouldn't mind queing as tank most of the time because there would be so many to choose from.

Barely anything will change when throwing more thanks to choose from. You get, at best, maybe something similiar like when HW came out and have less queue times for a month or so, but then it all falls back into place again.
Once the tank players and job completionists have capped the job, it's all back into being tanks as AIN's again for regular dungeon runs.

Playing tanks, like healers, is more of a mindset thing than just 'for fun'.

[Penthea]

It's the same thing in every trinity based mmo I played regardless of party size and healer/tank classes to dps classes ratio.

It's because most players don't want to tank or heal. That's the problem. It's not the lack of choice, party slots or class design. The problem is the players. There's no cure for this. Even in table top rpgs this sort of thing happens - most people are drawn to classes that specialise in dealing damage.

[Shurrikhan]

You are in this game. Try running pretty much anything as a healer and not DPSing at all. See how salty people get.

Or, try running any job while afking for 2 out of every 3 GCDs. Same difference, in most cases.

It's not a "Healers must dps!" thing. It's a "Make use of your time, so you're not wasting ours" thing. And it's expected of every job. It's just more obvious when someone is doing literally nothing, or constantly overhealing, than performing their rotation poorly.

What we need is more tanks. With dps you have so many choices that you want to play them all (or a lot of them). For tanks it's the opposite, there's so few of them that eventually you're just basically on the same job all the time, maybe on an alt tank here and there. If there were 5 tanks I wouldn't mind queing as tank most of the time because there would be so many to choose from.

So long as we're expecting all tanks to play basically identically, though -- quick to point out any functional imbalance -- and the devs continue to have difficulty balancing in different styles, rather than from small changes on a shared template, that's going to be tall order. I think both the community and the devs are going to have to bend a bit before we can really see a satisfying tank roster.

It's the same thing in every trinity based mmo I played regardless of party size and healer/tank classes to dps classes ratio.

It's because most players don't want to tank or heal. That's the problem. It's not the lack of choice, party slots or class design. The problem is the players. There's no cure for this. Even in table top rpgs this sort of thing happens - most people are drawn to classes that specialise in dealing damage.

If the problem is that consistent, though, isn't the issue equally likely to be simply that... tanks and healers aren't attractive enough? I mean, it's one of the two: the designs are somehow perfect, but players, being foolish creatures, don't like them, or the designs aren't well suited to player desires. Which sounds more likely?

DPS toolkits can afford to be self-involved, to have their pace ebb and flow through their own mechanics. They don't have to be immediately reactive/preemptive to outside conditions. That allows them far more depth. But there's relatively little of this among tanks, especially for Warrior as of the Inner Release simplification.

And as for table-top RPGs, just consider any of the DnD style video games you've approached, or any system with ranged or first-strike mechanics; they, not a tank or healer, are the bread and butter of combat. Many enemies can be defeated by sheer range and power, or through ambush, rather than spending time unnecessarily on purposely accepting damage (even if mitigated) and replacing the lost HP.

And then there's the responsibilities. Perhaps if the responsibilities of DPS were equally visible, a bit more of the ostensible tank/healer burden taken up by DPS, then the other roles would be more attractive, at least relatively.

[Penthea]

If the problem is that consistent, though, isn't the issue equally likely to be simply that... tanks and healers aren't attractive enough?

Attraction is subjective. For some players it's not that they hate tanking and healing, it's that they enjoy dpsing far more. Others don't want the responsibility of having the well-being of other players constantly on their shoulders.

And then there's the responsibilities. Perhaps if the responsibilities of DPS were equally visible, a bit more of the ostensible tank/healer burden taken up by DPS, then the other roles would be more attractive, at least relatively.

The responsibilities of dps aren't as comparatively burdensome as tanks and healers unless you do ex and savage. As a dps a few mistakes in your rotation will rarely cause issues in normal mode, and it's true in many savage and ex fights as well. However a tank or a healer making one mistake with their class abilities can lead to a wipe in content even before lvl 50.

Also tanks and healers must learn how to fulfil their roles alone given they're the only tank/healer in the majority of pre max lvl content, whereas dps always have another dps with them. If there was three man content with one tank one healer and one dps, then the responsibility of the dps could dramatically rise.

And as for table-top RPGs, just consider any of the DnD style video games you've approached, or any system with ranged or first-strike mechanics; they, not a tank or healer, are the bread and butter of combat.

I mentioned table-top rpgs to point out that classes specialising in damage being popular is because of human behaviour, not a fault of the game. When a game gives the choice of playing support or damage, damage is almost always far more popular. Full damage teams can work in table-top rpgs because the GM can create encounters specifically for the group playing. You don't have that option in mmorpgs.

[Shurrikhan]

Attraction is subjective. For some players it's not that they hate tanking and healing, it's that they enjoy dpsing far more. Others don't want the responsibility of having the well-being of other players constantly on their shoulders.

Every like or dislike is subjective. But when you objectively have far more people seeming to like set A over B or C, isn't there quite likely to objectively be something subjectively attractive that is lesser in set B or C relative to set A? If no one likes your food, it's not that your customers are all quirky or tasteless people; it means simply that your food is bad, at least in what's important -- attracting your target customers.

The responsibilities of dps aren't as comparatively burdensome as tanks and healers unless you do ex and savage.

Yes. Agreed. That's... what I just said....

Perhaps if the responsibilities of DPS were equally visible, a bit more of the ostensible tank/healer burden taken up by DPS, then the other roles would be more attractive, at least relatively.

Also tanks and healers must learn how to fulfil their roles alone given they're the only tank/healer in the majority of pre max lvl content, whereas dps always have another dps with them. If there was three man content with one tank one healer and one dps, then the responsibility of the dps could dramatically rise.

But just what responsibilities would that 1-in-3 DPS have that he didn't already have, identically, when 1-in-4? The problem is the visibility of responsibility, the shorter-term benchmarks such as "did this die quickly enough not to wipe us?" As healers and tanks contribute to that in functional identical manners, just with additional utilities, reducing total party dps does not make the DPS's responsibilities any greater in practice. There's no functional difference, and no change in how easily his mistakes or successes are noticed by most other players.

I mentioned table-top rpgs to point out that classes specialising in damage being popular is because of human behaviour, not a fault of the game. When a game gives the choice of playing support or damage, damage is almost always far more popular. Full damage teams can work in table-top rpgs because the GM can create encounters specifically for the group playing. You don't have that option in mmorpgs.

And I mentioned it because I don't understand why it's shocking to you, save that perhaps you're too hung up on the idea of set role allotments despite varying strategies. Be it here or in a table-top game, the only throughput that ultimately wins fights is damage dealt. Tanks and healers both require damage to be taken to see any use, and the less damage you have available to deal, the more damage you will be forced to take, especially against more numerous, lower-HP targets. There are far, far more choices in damage-dealers than tanks and healers simply because those two "roles" are far more rarely relevant, and can in many cases be avoided outright.

Moreover, outside of threat tables as in MMOs, tanking isn't meter-stacking -- it's just positioning. In most cases, if the enemy has to get past you to get to more vulnerable targets, that's enough. There's no enmity; just interception and harassment.

Think of the number of managers relative to workers. The purer or more numerous the managers relative to workers, the more potential labor goes to waste. Luckily our tanks and healers aren't forced to only meat-tank or only restore health, respectively, but the proportions still follow. Damage will remain the most popular "role" not just because of the aesthetic -- there are plenty of people who love the beefy plated Fighter or Paladin aesthetic -- but largely because it's the one not wastefully specialized past a certain point.

At any rate, though, the proportions given in this game is that there should be as many DPS as tanks and healers combined. Fair enough. But, again, are we running into roughly 2.3x the DPS as tanks/healers because of their aesthetics, or because of the gameplay or responsibilities? Is it an inherent love of the "DPS role" or simply a fault of the perceived imbalances between what enjoyment one can get out of a tank or healer relative to a damage-dealer. Even the aesthetic can technically be fixed, as we often saw with HW DRK and Warrior for a time, but the latter aspects are entirely up to the developers to improve upon. It's not a fatalistic "community irredeemable" thing; it's a game design thing.