Are tanks a scapegoat for performance issues?

[Tint]

I think it is because most new tanks/tanks don't have a middle ground. They either pull two or 3 mobs or a massive pack pull. If the party wipes they say ok I will pull small, then they grab 3/4 mobs at a time lol

usually the tank has blown all his cds in on the wiped pull before, so doing a big pull again is not the very best idea.

however, the tank has a big affect on everyone else in the party. the tank decides the speed of the dungeon, how much is pulled, how the enemys are placed, how much enmity he builds leads to how much dps the DDs can make (single target or aoe, have the DDs have to switch targets?), how much the healer has to heal, and how much time he can spend in cleric, how some mechanics are handled...

the tank IS the defacto leader of the party. the skill level and decisions of the tank have the biggest impact on how the whole party has to handle a dungeon. of course everyone wants to tell the tank then how THEY want him to handle things.

this is also the reason we don't have many tanks. pressing the buttons correct is not very difficult. being the leader of the party is what turns people away.

[RopeDrink]

In short, it is a group effort. Tanks & Healers keep everyone alive, fight duration depends on overall DPS - everyone has an effect on how smooth everyone elses task can be performed. There are times where things go wrong for a specific reason, but more often than not there are many factors. In said cases, everyone can usually do something to help everyone else (and themselves), but it's a lot easier to skip all that and have a good old fashioned flamefest. Unfortunately for the tank, given they have arguably the most responsibilities in whatever content they are in, they are definitely an easier target for waylaid blame. Doesn't mean it is always correct, just it's easy to do.

In terms of tanking specifically, think of your own pace then amplify that by the trust you have in your healer vs how quick everyone can kill enemies. Both you & healer should be guaging eachother to see eachothers limits, and fight duration in general is a standard DPS check. When I'm playing tank, the first pull will determine how I treat most of the dungeon (especially when in a non-communicative group). From there I go at whatever pace I believe is comfortably efficient. You will still get random Joe Soap (Healer and/or DPS) who wants you to punch the envelope, to which I'll probably agree if I think the group can get away with it. Again, goes back to 'team effort'. There is more than one person doing that same content, so everyone should be communicating when they're uncomfortable rather than waiting for a failure before exploding into a hateful tiriade.

[seekified]

I think lots of players get rightly or wrongly blamed for a lot of things, regardless of role. I also think that considering how little the game does to actually teach the roles, most notably tanking, there's an expectation that everyone will either understand exactly what to do just from reading their tooltips, or go online to look up guides. Having such an expectation of new players is unrealistic - I think that assuming that all this basic play information should be available in-game is fair, and it's weird that it isn't.

Tanking in particular also seems to be hard for some people because of the responsibility. Tanxiety is a very real thing. The whole "pulling more than you're comfortable with" scenario could easily be avoided by simply saying "no, I'm not comfortable with that yet", but I've pretty much never seen someone say that. They just try it, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's part of learning, too, but every wipe is cause for angry chat messages.

[RopeDrink]

As you said, it is something that can easily be discussed beforehand. I hit 60 on my PLD about 3 days ago, but having already levelled two others to 60 before it meant I had a good idea of what I was in for along the journey. Getting to places like Vault at 57 was the point where I'd simply wait at the start while everyone is shielding and say 'hey, look, I know this dungeon hits hard and I know my shiny Titanium gear won't be optimal for pulling massive packs so, you know, deal with it' (in less, usually more polite words). 9/10 chance is you'll get an "Ok" and everything proceeds as normal, except everyone now knows what to expect rather than just charging headfirst and testing the acid-bath.

Meanwhile, I still get BWall Expert Roulette runs with tanks pulling all three first packs and getting the group killed with DoT's while the Healer is strained trying to keep the tank alive and unable to cast a single Esuna. No communication, nobody knows what to expect, just 'CHARGE', /splat, followed by the inevitable "It's healers fault... Wait, no, it's the tanks fault... Hermagurd".

[Mejingjard]

For maining tank since 2.0, What I can tell is tanking in this game became easier and easier. No more patrolling mobs to be aware of (like giant tomberies in the first Wanderer Palace), nothing dangerous in the environment.
Just a straight corridor with almost everytime packs of 3 mobs.
The "I dont know the dungeon does not apply verywell as the same pattern is everywhere".
More of the times, bad tanks I came accros are those who don't even look at the party composition.
Simple exemple : If I get grouped with a Ninja and a Monk, that means few aoe to burn huge packs. In such a case, pulling everything is useless, because I will get hit harder for a while, preventing the Healers to dps. In such a case, simply pulling step by step while marking a short pause to allows the monk to refresh his GL stacks is way more effective.
The first huge pull in BWall, I see it often, but few tanks can actually manage it well.

[winsock]

Some common blame games:

Tank:
Tank pulls big and dies. Healer tells you you pulled too much.
Tank pulls small. Healer tells you to pull more.

Healer:
Tank pulls large, doesn't use a cooldown, and dies. Bad healer.
DPS dies, but would not have had they stepped out of the avoidable AoE.

DPS:
Tank runs out of cooldowns because stuff isn't dieing fast enough/healer runs out of mp. DPS gets blamed but no one thinks it is they are the problem. Or tank/healer gets blamed.

DPS meters would be a welcome addition to the game in some respects.... But then jerks just get a new target.

[bounddreamer]

The way most encounters are designed, a tank's failures are the most highly visible.

Ravana, even in normal - if the tanks don't know what they're doing they will cleave the party and kill people, resulting in a wipe.

Almost any fight with adds, if a tank isn't prompt about picking up adds they will aggro a healer or dd and potentially kill them.

You can be a halfway decent dd or healer and just muddle through. It's a lot harder for a tank to muddle through anything but basic dungeon content.

[dragonseth07]

When a tank or healer fails, it's often plainly visible.

When a DPS fails, you can't say anything because you get reported for using a parser.

[seekified]

When a tank or healer fails, it's often plainly visible.

When a DPS fails, you can't say anything because you get reported for using a parser.

This is so true. Unless of course there's a significant DPS check, but we can't have those in casual content now can we because that'd be mean.

[bounddreamer]

This is so true. Unless of course there's a significant DPS check, but we can't have those in casual content now can we because that'd be mean.

Every encounter with a dps check has either gotten nerfed (original steps of faith) or people get overgeared to the point some are carrying the new person.