How to get people to tank!

[Shurrikhan]

(Side note: I always enjoy reading your posts, just wanted to mention that.)

*blush*

One example is the WoW Paladin's ability Holy Shield, originally it was a buff you had to maintain which drastically increased your block chance for a certain number of blocks or for a certain period of time, whichever happened first, at which point when it ended or ran out, you could usually recast it right away (it had a duration 10 seconds and a cooldown of 8 seconds) and it's overall MP cost was negligible.

I've been thinking about skills like this a lot of late within the domain of active mitigation. Since Legion, though, my favorite example has actually been closer to the Warrior's oGCD toolkit, however (especially back when Focused Rage was still available). Take their Ignore Pain, for instance. To me the ideal design concept for active mitigation should have both choices (not necessarily between other defensives) and application variance. Ignore Pain's interaction with its alternative general resource (Rage) spender, the nuke-buffing Focused Rage, gave both—with or without the (obligatory) Vengeance talent (which traded out choice play for pace play, but also allowed the player to save more rage on one choice than the other through refocusing their priorities while still trying to meet incoming and outgoing windows of play). As effortless as that key was to hit, its timing meant something. It wasn't just a buff you maintain (which is what Holy Shield typically felt like to me).

Just a side-note though, even maintenance buffs like Holy Shield can make that somewhat engaging, especially if they're not oGCDs. Now, that will sound debilitating to some, especially anyone not assuming that the class is (gasp) balanced around that very fact, and is not therefore held back by it. By it being on the GCD, it now has judgment—it needs to be weighed against other choices. Is it about to run out, making some space between this and the next GCD potentially far more painful? How much would be wasted if one were to replace it right now? Depending on how those stats are tracked by which the decision, and how the shield mechanically lasts (by damage or hit count, etc.), it can be either involved or just bothersome. I feel like that's something any MMO ought remember a bit better in regards to some abilities before their initial implementation, rather than having to patch them out later or pretend they're not held back by those small but highly gameplay-affecting details. Some minutia really matter.

I'd like to somewhat avoid concrete examples for now, especially within the combat system as it is now, largely just because I imagine these were meant to illustrative spit-balls, and any counter-suggestions I'd give would be just the same. And because—broken record here—I feel like certain parts of my suggestions will never quite click without some larger underlying revisions to combat (stagger, interception, revisions to RNG mitigation, certain new mitigation mechanics, certain new damage splitting mechanics, etc). For now I'll just leave it at this.

My entirely personal preferences lies with adding as few class or ability-specific gimmicks as possible, while still making them as involved as possible. For instance, even if a stance does something as simple as adding 15% damage, that should be felt through certain benchmarks shifting in the interactions between the attacker and the attacked just because of that damage bonus itself. Even what is simple should be capable of feeling highly involved. Where it does not, that's not a requirement to give the tooltip and extra paragraph's worth of effects—it just means there aren't enough facets of interaction in the first place, universally speaking (or because of some line-up in that interaction). And those are broad mechanics more so than anything unit- or interaction-specific (which would simply be where those marks occur and how the decisions they bring out). Take any actual fighting game for instance, especially where one of the guys has a "Minus Strike" of sorts (like Shugoki's Charge of the Oni in For Honor). It's no longer then just chunking or chipping away at enemy health. Health matters. And so timing matters. Early burst can leave you dead. And yet it's still just health, and one stupidly simple modifier to make it important. That's what I'm looking for in the changes I might recommend. As a tank (or anyone, really) I want things to look forward to beyond just my CD refreshing (something a bit more on the additive side), rather than just thinking about how long I can hold out with my buffs going on CD and their buffs dropping off two by two or so (a more... deductive model, if you will). I want to feel like I'm really "in the fray." We have now slightly through Low Blow and Blood Price, etc. But I want more... a lot more.

One of the things I've suggested to that end before was a revised TP model. That'd be a ridiculously large change, I know, but hear me out for illustrative purposes. By returning TP to a primarily generative resource, building from damage, mitigation, healing and healing dealt and perhaps even damage taken, to differing degrees between different jobs or even stances, there would naturally be an improved output when "in the fray", especially for tanks. Allow TP to then take an effect on or be spent on combo-rushing, thematic tools, extra oGCDs, cleave mechanics, empowering spells, etc., and—in this case the most important bit—defensive abilities, and you have naturally have choices asked of you. Do you accelerate your combos in order to open into your mitigating weaponskills quickly, burn down an enemy (either to undamaging, dead state or stagger him for the time being so he can't do shit to you or anyone else), build defenses, pop utilities... what? Everything has some visible benefit, but you're aiming for the mix that would most produce the outcome you need.

[Aniond]

The whole issue with Tanking is people forcing a tank to play that way they want not the way the tank wants. The first time as a tank I was told my DPS was low. I switched to summoner. If you want me to DPS then I wont tank. Same with healers. Most people don't like to DPS and Heal.. That would be like saying, " Summoners have a heal so they should be able to heal the raid, even thought its pathtically weak. All DPS should be able to heal then and maintain top DPS.

Its a double standard for tanks and healers...

[Hasrat]

That's probably the best argument for having your tank stance at an earlier level. I'm wondering what that would do for stance dancing too. Would new tanks be more willing or less willing to stance dance?

This would actually be pretty nice to see, I think. Giving the tank an opportunity to feel positive progress, I would expect to see them more comfortable with putting out some dps. Early tanking is just constant stress of holding things together, that's got to have an impact on later tanking. Give them the chance to actually feel like they have things under control, and they'll be better able to see that they can handle more.

With regards to challenge being a benefit to learning, the big problem there is that "challenge" is a big sliding scale. There's no one-size-fits-all level of challenge that players will be comfortable enough with to get a grasp on the full extent of their class. and if you're a dev trying to find a balance point, I would expect you'd err on the side of caution and low-end challenge, to keep the most players wanting to play.

Maybe as a compromise, tank stance doesn't have to be at 15. Push it back to 20. That gives the first few dungeons a chance to test new tanks, but the content isn't so difficult that it would be entirely discouraging. Giving at 20 would be a better point, a sort of immediate reward for making it through that challenge, like, "Now that you've been through some real combat, you can learn how to better control enmity generation." I would agree that tank stance at 15 is a bit overkill, if only because it might be so early that tanks might not really understand their utility. But you don't want to put it off too long, or you risk losing players that don't feel capable, when the tank stance might ease that burden enough to keep players pushing through.

[Claire_Pendragon]

The whole issue with Tanking is people forcing a tank to play that way they want not the way the tank wants. The first time as a tank I was told my DPS was low. I switched to summoner. If you want me to DPS then I wont tank. Same with healers. Most people don't like to DPS and Heal.. That would be like saying, " Summoners have a heal so they should be able to heal the raid, even thought its pathtically weak. All DPS should be able to heal then and maintain top DPS.

Its a double standard for tanks and healers...

While I dont know what you have read or not, but the main reason people started to really push for tank/healer DPS, is mainly from 2 things.
#1 Yoshida said, people were beating the hardest content quicker than expected, and BETTER than their own development team, by using a method they never expected.
The raid groups made their healers do dmg between the low damage moments.
So he designed Midas to now require DPS from healers, in order to complete. (Easier content doesnt require this, but it sure helps to get ur practice in on easier content.)

#2 While Tank DPS was already calculated into the required DPS checks, it wasnt calculated for tanks to leave tank stance and keep tanking. But even with healers healing, most DPS werent quite ready for the increase in complexity of thier DPS rotations, so groups needed every bit of extra damage they could push.

So its not BAD to try it, but it does require some failures/wipes, which tanks and healers are already tired of being B*tched at for up till this point, they dont feel like jumping into that kind of BS again. But if you take baby steps, you'll get it (and still B*tched at, since you're not DPSing hard enough as you're learning.)

[DroFrehter]

Thread title should have been, "How to Force People to Tank". I get your idea but if people wanted to be a tank they'd play a tank role.

[Inosaska]

snip

To get people into tanking they have to stop trying to mix the two things together because that puts more stress on the player to learn to balance the two while the DPS just need to know how to do more damage that's it. To pull more players into tanking then make the job more attractive for tanking. Make the mobs hit harder to make it more interesting for the tanks to survive on using abilities properly that would be a good starting point.

Edit: Another good idea is make tanking in the open world useful. Make players work together in forming parties to roam about in the open world game like FFXI used to do by making the open world a challenge for players to make tanking attractive as they would be much better at surviving mobs that hit harder. Of course though it would still be possible to solo it would just be much harder and could be made easier with a tank in the party to take the hits and even then that would make healers useful too in the open world. Everyone that hits a mob gets exp that everyone gains equally so that its fair for everyone that hit that mob. These are just some things that developers can look into for the game.

[Shurrikhan]

To get people into tanking they have to stop trying to mix the two things together because that puts more stress on the player to learn to balance the two while the DPS just need to know how to do more damage that's it. To pull more players into tanking then make the job more attractive for tanking. Make the mobs hit harder to make it more interesting for the tanks to survive on using abilities properly that would be a good starting point.

Edit: Another good idea is make tanking in the open world useful. Make players work together in forming parties to roam about in the open world game like FFXI used to do by making the open world a challenge for players to make tanking attractive as they would be much better at surviving mobs that hit harder. Of course though it would still be possible to solo it would just be much harder and could be made easier with a tank in the party to take the hits and even then that would make healers useful too in the open world. Everyone that hits a mob gets exp that everyone gains equally so that its fair for everyone that hit that mob. These are just some things that developers can look into for the game.

I wouldn't remotely enjoy tanking if it didn't also involve dps. I don't know how people take in the idea that tanks should just be damage sponges and nothing else. For them to be useful in that sense, they'd have to be made obligatory by ridiculously high (e.g. one-shot) damage to anyone else...

And what's so wrong with expecting a guy with, say, 7 defensive abilities and 10+ offensive abilities to dps vs. (just) meat-tank in about the same proportion?

[Inosaska]

I wouldn't remotely enjoy tanking if it didn't also involve dps. I don't know how people take in the idea that tanks should just be damage sponges and nothing else. For them to be useful in that sense, they'd have to be made obligatory by ridiculously high (e.g. one-shot) damage to anyone else...

And what's sp wrong with expecting a guy with 7 defensive abilities and 10+ offensive abilities to dps?

Nothing is wrong with them doing DPS but the added pressure in dungeons and raids with everything being a DPS check is bad. Make the dungeons and raids a bit more challenging and requiring more focus on tanking for those in that role. Just remove stances all together and just make the abilities better and have shorter cooldowns to make it more active tanking then what it is right now and they could increase the DPS that way too.

[Ultimatecalibur]

And what's so wrong with expecting a guy with, say, 7 defensive abilities and 10+ offensive abilities to dps vs. (just) meat-tank in about the same proportion?

Nothing, but there is a difference between Tanks dealing appreciable damage (i.e. each tank averaging about 10% of a boss' hp over a fight while each of the 4 DpS deal an average of 20%) while taking nearly all of the damage from attacks which target based on enmity and "meat-tanking" (i.e. tank does no appreciable damage while taking nearly all of the damage from attacks which target based on enmity). FFXIV is actually really good about doing the former with how the Tanks naturally play (though some players do not feel that this damage is appreciable enough).

[shao32]

I wouldn't remotely enjoy tanking if it didn't also involve dps.

i think he want being tanking get more rewarded, not removing damage or something like that, just make our jobs still doing damage but get more focus in doing what we are supose to do and less focus in being a pseudo DPS with mitigations in the party, ask for being more tanking dont mean remove our damage.