How to get people to tank!

[Ashur]

so - make people tank by.. getting someone else to do it?

[Sigmar_Heldenhammer]

How to get more people to tank? Even longer dungeon ques.

[Shurrikhan]

None of this has anything to do with why people dont tank how bout this if people just shut up , and stopped calling out tanks just because they are tanks then I think wed have more tanks. Its really bad in the 24 mans someone always has to say something always , the problem is , is that when you want to blame a run on someone you go for the tank or the healer, while those same people will level their tanks in potd are something and not even bring it into an instance. The problem with tanking is the community itself not what a tank can or can not do , its if someone is looking for enjoyment in the game its best to just play the dps with no responsibility.

Alternatively, give DPS more individual responsibility, too.

Might reduce DF population overall, but the ratios would be better balanced...

[Dzian]

In a perfect world Tanks would have more self sustain, attacks that close gaps or draw in enemies, and have attacks that cleave into multiple adjacent enemies at once. Until that time comes though Tanks will rely on boring 1-2-3 combo skill rotations, press cooldown button for defensive awesome, and overzealously pretend like their armor means something. Especially with 100% useful stats like Parry.

It's less about Tanking and more just playing a smoke and mirrors game of memory match.

I main PLD and I d somewhat agree with this. I wish my defensive mitigation was a lot more interesting than pop a cooldown here and there. I've said for a long time one of the things I miss is aegis boon in 1.23. there was a huge sense of cool when you used that skill properly and laughed off a 4k tank buster with more hp than you had before it hit you... it had a huge impact if used right. where currently defensive cooldowns don't have any real impact

shelltron is sort of ok. but simply doesn't feel powerfull enough, because you block an attack you still take ~80% of the hit. so it doesn't really feel like its made a huge difference or actually done anything at all really. cool downs are kind of the same. and I see this from the tank and healer perspective. as a healer I often don't even notice if a tank has used a cool down or not. it simply doesn't make that much difference generally speaking. a tank will need healing after a smash regardless of whether he used a cooldown or not so nothing really changes... and as a tank they're quite boring to use. 20% less damage for 20 seconds. but visually nothing really changes using it. just the numbers are a bit smaller.

making that 10k hit only do 8k damage to you doesn't really matter when my next heal is gonna heal you for 10k anyway.. what was the point??

where using shelltron for example it feels a lot more involved even as weak as it is... it is a bit more rewarding though. use it badly and you just waste it on an auto attack. and maybe mitigate a couple of hundred damage. time it right you might block a couple of thousand..... as weak as it feels it's probably one of the most interesting tank skills defensively speaking

personally in some cases using mitigation on other jobs is more satisfying than tanks for example pop a manaward / shadeshift and watch that hit smack you for a big fat zero damage. feels more substantial than rampart or something because it's changing the outcome of an event. if you use shadeshift or manaward or something and a hit hits you for zero. you've changed the result of a hit from tanking damage to taking no damage. it's had an impact... aegis boon was the same I.n 1.23 you went from taking damage to taking no damage. or in somecases actually getting healed.

compare that to tank cool downs. you pop a ramapart and you don't change the outcome. you're still taking damage. and most of the time the reduction is barely noticeable at all.

I sometimes think if they made the defensive aspects of the job more involved and interesting you'd probably have more people playing them... but many of my friends tend to agree that the defensive aspectsare very lacklustre because they don't really make a huge difference most of the time

[Claire_Pendragon]

I didn't actually think people would take this post as seriously as they have. I did however know no one would like it, and I was hoping for some discussion on tanking theories, but to be honest, I dont feel it turned out how I thought it would, but it actually turned out better. (As I like the current direction of the conversation more)

I mainly thought of this as a hypothetical, and how I'd play the job just to make BRDs into tanks (sometimes BLMs) as a sort of "revenge" for past "bad apples" I ran across.
But then thought about how I'd love to play every DPS with a friend on this job, and try to "tank" as every class, and how much id actually love quite a few jobs (mainly looking at BLM, for its current mitigation options)

But to address a few things;

None of this has anything to do with why people dont tank how bout this if people just shut up , and stopped calling out tanks just because they are tanks then I think wed have more tanks. Its really bad in the 24 mans someone always has to say something always , the problem is , is that when you want to blame a run on someone you go for the tank or the healer, while those same people will level their tanks in potd are something and not even bring it into an instance. The problem with tanking is the community itself not what a tank can or can not do , its if someone is looking for enjoyment in the game its best to just play the dps with no responsibility.

Maybe im mistaken, but the bold part makes me think you misunderstood my post, as I stated that it was NOT the reason. (Which is why it didnt work when SE tried it)
But of course, this "tank" is the "fix" to the problem you mentioned. They would complain to the DPS who is currently tanking, and not to the player who gave them the stance. (Other than to complain they shoulda picked the other DPS)

What are you thinking? not to put you down but that is an insult to people who actually tank. Think about it this way:

Some people play tank roles actually understand the hardship and importance of that role. In most cases tanks have to put up with various factors, such as DPS getting power hungry and pull in advance. Thinking they can do a better job, yes even some vets. get ahead over their heads do to power. Some of us tanks have a golden rules, such as you accidentally get agro and pull we will tank, mistakes happen, you do it on purpose you tank. There is more to tanking that you seem not to be covering. Giving an inexperience tank some type of bonus is a set up to failure in the future. Some people are great at tanking and some just aren't up to the challenge as a main. on the other hand healers, as part of a factor...were to start.

Some healers still don't understand the basic concept of not healing while pulling, or casting regen during a pull. Makes tanking job harder specially on newbies and discourages. Some still don't understand that while we appreciate them DPSing their main job is to heal. Swapping cleric stance and being cautious is understandable, yet even now some DPS still don't know how to help tanks. If your over geared and take agro from tank, temp switch target while it gets re established. It's a simple yet basic rule and DPS still don't understand that. My main is a DPS, I tank second, and heal as needed. So I understand all 3 perspectives. What your proposing is to pretty much make tanking a joke that anyone can do. Not everyone can tank, it takes patience, strategy, and understanding the potential of the group. While your intention is well placed, It would be better to just get a more tank friendly job that perhaps sacrifices dmg for agro generation. A PLD is very easy to maintain hate, at level 60 can help heal, easy combos to follow. Now if you want something easier the only way it could be balance would be to be extra weak, easy agro generation and keep healer on their toes. I doubt however anyone would want to play that.

Insult to tanks? I did say "The DPS players" so if it were an insult, it would be targeting DPS. (Though it can be taken that way, it was more so for dramtic flare, for starting off the topic.)

As for the intricacies of tanking, if anything every player benefits from walking in anothers shoes, to understand how the roles function. The argument shouldnt be "Dont let a person get experience with something they dont have experience with", it should be "Don't force something onto another person who doesnt want that something." (Which my rebuttal is then the Healer who doesnt heal, but goes cleric stance, and expects a group to bring potions. They did sign up for a teamwork based game, not synchronized soloing)

I could go on a very detail process but will keep it simple.

Lets take DRK as an example I love it for speed runs and simple fast and don't really need to stick to 1,2,3 combo, here is what I use besides the obvious buffs active, Grit / Darkside , which by the way if you can't keep up dark side up 100% of the time you may be missing some rotations, I do the following;

Sprint>gather unmend>>>Unleash>>>foresight>>>abissial Drain>>>Blood price>>>Abyssal drain, dark arts>>>dark messenger>>>shadow skin>>> (rotate syphon / soul eater) shadow wall, by then blood prince usually add depending on your skill speed, rotate soul survivor, abyssal drain spam, you can keep dark side constantly up. and can keep rotating to what you prefer carve and split on CD ect. This is a basic and simple. as an example. There are various combinations for war and pld. DRk is a tricky one but once you master it others are all about timing and CD. But hey I only DRK/PLD/ and WAR on occasion. I'm sure there are more creative ones people just need to stop wining, be well geared, and check what other jobs can do. IF your able to understand what cancels what, and what boost what tanking is fun and is all about timing and strategy. This again is a simple example I use various ones depending on types of mobs and what I'm doing. I can go through each tank Job but don't have enough time and at work.

I feel this is a bit cherry picked (while not wrong) as DRK has more AoE options than WAR, and next WAR would have more CD/AoE options than PLD in similar situations.
Id say its situational, and dependant on the tank/scenario.

PLD does rely on its flash spam, and threat combo rotated more than the others, while they get some options to choose from, to keep threat but raise DPS.
Also I think a good example can be on bosses, where you use more than your threat combo easily.

so - make people tank by.. getting someone else to do it?

Yes sir! (Yes, its a joke, but one that when thought about, stirred up interesting ideas/stories)

Alternatively, give DPS more individual responsibility, too.

Might reduce DF population overall, but the ratios would be better balanced...

I always wondered why DPS werent given more responsibility. Even in the MMOs that tried, they eventually removed their support, or made it unnecessary.

I main PLD and I d somewhat agree with this. I wish my defensive mitigation was a lot more interesting than pop a cooldown here and there. I've said for a long time one of the things I miss is aegis boon in 1.23. there was a huge sense of cool when you used that skill properly and laughed off a 4k tank buster with more hp than you had before it hit you...

shelltron is sort of ok. but simply doesn't feel powerfull enough, because you block an attack you still take ~80% of the hit. so it doesn't really feel like its made a huge difference or actually done anything. cool downs are kind of the same. and I see this from the tank and healer perspective. as a healer I often don't even notice if a tank has used a cool down or not. it simply doesn't make that much difference generally speaking. and as a tank they're quite boring to use. 20% less damage for 20 seconds. but visually nothing really changes using it. just the numbers are a bit smaller.

where using shelltron for example it feels a lot more involved even as weak as it is...

personally in some cases using mitigation on other jobs is more satisfying than tanks for example pop a manaward / shadeshift and watch that hit smack you for a big fat zero damage. feels more substantial than rampart or something like that that only reduce it by a percentage%

I sometimes think if they made the defensive aspects of the job more involved and interesting you'd probably have more people playing them... but many of my friends tend to agree that the defensive aspectsare very lacklustre because they don't really make a huge difference most of the time

I thought this way as well, though fights like A12S with tank busters that WILL kill you, even with some CDs up, Surviving with those "weak" CDs, has made me feel stronger now, than prior, when in dungeons it looks unnoticeable if I'm not the healer.

[Awful]

Speed runs.

Yeah Drk is the best for speed runs what I love to do (especially if I have a brd with foes) is gather everything > Unleash > Blood Price > Shadowskin > Drop Grit> spam DA+Abyssal Drain. If you have a Brd in your group Salted Earth and Abyssal Drains dmg goes up and i've had Asts put Balances on me and i've crit healed myself for 2.3k which is absurd. I had an Ast do that in Sohm Al and he was just laughing so hard that I can heal myself for 2k a mob, he was very happy that he could just spam Gravity and throw Balances on me 24/7, even though we had a Brd/Nin combo that'd benefit from it more, but ah well. Drks trickyness pays off once you get the hang of it and it's super fun that's for sure.

[MagiusNecros]

snippy snip

Good post. I agree 100%. If tanking had more impact and felt more involved it would be more enjoyable. But sadly it isn't. I feel like a lot of responsibility falls on the Healer role in many cases.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Good post. I agree 100%. If tanking had more impact and felt more involved it would be more enjoyable. But sadly it isn't. I feel like a lot of responsibility falls on the Healer role in many cases.

Yes, now that Im i270 for A12S, I can pretty much survive all tank busters with no CDs, and let the healers virus/spam heal me for just about everything.
Healers really do "Carry" the most of all right now. (Of course minimum HP pools, and minimum DPS needs to be met, but atm thats not much.)

[Lyth]

Players generally avoid tanking roles because they require responsibility and a thorough knowledge of the fights. Other roles allow you to focus only on the mechanics that directly affect you. So while dps often have a gcd-by-gcd understanding of their own attacks in a fight, and while healers know the timings of the incoming damage, you're the one who needs to understand when and where everything happens in the script so that you can set it up and put it all together. There are more mechanically complex roles, but none with the same knowledge requirement.

You couldn't ask for a higher impact role. But you have to have the motivation to do it. You can't convince someone who isn't already interested in the commitment. Even newer players who aspire to be tank mains sometimes opt to playing dps roles into new fights, in the hopes of bypassing the learning curve and watching how it's done first (this is a really bad idea, as the only way to learn how to tank a fight is by doing it yourself.)

If you think that tank cooldowns don't make a difference, then you are either tanking content that is pitched at a lower difficulty setting, or you're doing it well after gear and echo softens the checks. It means that it's time to tackle something harder, or at least find a group that can do it earlier in the content cycle.

Not really sure what you mean by surviving tankbusters in A12S without any cooldowns. The entire fight is doable with essentially zero Grit uptime, but a cooldown rotation is certainly required. Punishing Heat probably hits for upwards of 40k unmitigated, and Holy Scourge is 4-5 hits of 30k or so (you might just about survive the former with just Grit + Virus, but you probably want at least 30% DR for safety). Unless you're talking about A12N, of course, which was designed to be steamrolled on release day by the average player with i240 gear.

As an aside, but I would like to see physical/magical defense cooldowns (i.e. Sheltron/DM) moved off of job specific actions and on to the reworked role-based cross-class set for tanks to pick and choose on a fight-by-fight basis. I'm still not sold on them, because I feel that short duration cooldowns tend to oversimplify cooldown rotations. But if they're here to stay, I'd rather not see them be the deciding factor in raid comps (the same is true for slashing/piercing debuffs, but I suspect that's the direction that we're going in anyways).

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Having been in both roles... I think what they are referring to is that frustration when you're a tank and have a 'bad' healer (like one that dies constantly to mechanics). It can leave you feeling helpless much more often than having a bad tank as a healer does, since a good healer can usually heal through a bad tank.

Not always, though. Raid level tankbusters, and I do mean those ones that will oneshot tanks with no CDs... obviously there's a point where the healer can't do enough even with virus/shields/etc on their own. But that's much rarer; dead healers leading to a party wipe can happen even in much easier/more casual content. All that said, yeah, I think tanks are high impact as is. In fact that's probably partly why it's so intimidating; a tanks mistakes, even small ones, are very visible.

My personal thoughts echo those on the first page; I think it's more impatience among the community and the general intimidation of taking on lead role responsibility that makes a lot of people shy away.

There is no real magic bullet; you just have to try to make some part of it more appealing to try to overcome the stigmas.