Is Tanking Boring?

[kidalutz]

eventually you reach the point where you forget that you have stun slash AoE stoppers when you're suddenly trust into a low level dungeoun because they never seem to work when you want them in high level dungeouns.. so that's fun I guess.

[Atreides]

More often than not DPS have the easier time in most raid encounters. The complicated "rotation" is not something I take into concideration at all, nor is positioning, those things come natural... Melees for example are 95% muscle memory and 5% on the fly thinking. :/
Can't talk about ranged as I haven't played them on a serious level. Tanking is usually more involving than DPSing. If you want a harder time try healing this is imo one of the hardest roles because you have to take bad plays from others into concideration while trying to dps aswell. D:

[Hestzhyen]

The only role SQeenix seems to have an actual idea of why people would want to play is DPS. Tanks are simple DPS with some damage mitigation skills and healers are really simple DPS with some healing skills.

^ A friend of mine posted this since he no longer has forum access, and I want to elaborate since I hold the same opinion.

I don't feel like a tank or a healer in this game, I feel like a DPS that has added functionality. As a tank I am not trying to stay alive so much as I am trying to hold hate via DPS and built-in aggro tools. I have some one-off CDs that will protect me well if I use them right and lots of natural mitigation that make me better at taking hits than DPS jobs. But like OP said, I am focused on doing damage to be effective. The best tanks are the ones that can spend as much time possible in their DPS stances! (For that matter, the best healers are the ones who can heal only just enough to keep the party alive as they smash their DPS spells.) It's not the worst design decision, but I agree with OP that tanking is boring because you're playing like a DPS without the complexity that comes with actually being a DPS job. Tank combos are simplified to give them room for mitigation and support skills, but those skills are to be hoarded for busters or significant raid damage. There is no thought to defense outside of knowing when the boss will hit hard. So most of the time you are spamming your short DPS rotation as you wait for the next mechanic, which is not very high on my list of things I would call "fun".

I have nothing against people who like tanking in XIV, but for me and my friend at least, the way tanks play in this game don't mesh with how we want to play the role. I wish there was more emphasis on defending oneself than on simply holding hate without dying.

[Shurrikhan]

The only role SQeenix seems to have an actual idea of why people would want to play is DPS. Tanks are simple DPS with some damage mitigation skills and healers are really simple DPS with some healing skills.

^ A friend of mine posted this since he no longer has forum access, and I want to elaborate since I hold the same opinion.

I don't feel like a tank or a healer in this game, I feel like a DPS that has added functionality. As a tank I am not trying to stay alive so much as I am trying to hold hate via DPS and built-in aggro tools. I have some one-off CDs that will protect me well if I use them right and lots of natural mitigation that make me better at taking hits than DPS jobs. But like OP said, I am focused on doing damage to be effective. The best tanks are the ones that can spend as much time possible in their DPS stances! (For that matter, the best healers are the ones who can heal only just enough to keep the party alive as they smash their DPS spells.) It's not the worst design decision, but I agree with OP that tanking is boring because you're playing like a DPS without the complexity that comes with actually being a DPS job. Tank combos are simplified to give them room for mitigation and support skills, but those skills are to be hoarded for busters or significant raid damage. There is no thought to defense outside of knowing when the boss will hit hard. So most of the time you are spamming your short DPS rotation as you wait for the next mechanic, which is not very high on my list of things I would call "fun".

I have nothing against people who like tanking in XIV, but for me and my friend at least, the way tanks play in this game don't mesh with how we want to play the role. I wish there was more emphasis on defending oneself than on simply holding hate without dying.

While I'm in complete agreement, especially in regards to tanking in this game (though I suspect I don't find the DPS-ness to be quite such a bad thing as others may), I have to wonder: if, for example, healers could contribute to party survival through more than just shields and heals, would that, too, increase healer-ness, or would only shielding/healing/applying percentile mitigation be acceptable?

For instance, one of the things I tend to love about a support role in other games is how much I see the game through as many perspectives, checklists, and priority orders as I have teammates, rather than solely my own (plus maybe one or two I depend on for bonus damage windows, etc.). But when that role is reduced to a "healer", it tends to feel more like I'm staring at health bars, not the actual battle, and I feel far less engaged than even when on a pure and independent DPS. Compare that to being able to knock back enemies to misalign their would-be fatal blows, CC, applying speed bonuses, increasing damage to reach significant new breakpoints, and the like. I find the latter, where support is not limited to healing alone, not only allows but even requires you to feel like part of the battle.

When enmity-tanking is removed from the equation, such as in PvP and especially when healers are not intentionally overtuned (compare the HPS of Overwatch healers, which each have far less potential throughput than any DPS, for instance, to that of XIV healers, despite needing roughly only the same portion over the party), survival and damage both becomes group tasks, but I don't feel as if any specialization is lost for that added breadth (or depth, in finding the best tactic available or the nearest and final win conditions of a team fight) of processing.

I'd really love to see PvE move away from traditional trinity-based enmity stacking and move more towards the roles of tanks as in PvP, to thwart enemy offensive attempts and secure their own. I suspect that may be the single most necessary shift by which to see a tank that really feels like a tank, and a party that truly feels like it needs to work together.

[Erudito]

Quite frankly, yes. To me at least.
Paladin is clunky and slow, even if a very effective tank. Same could be said of Warrior.
Dark Knight can be engaging with it dancing around the Dark Arts ability but that only lasts like a few seconds as the MP you need to pull that off runs off ridiculously fast. DRK has some MP management abilities but near all of them have long cooldowns so you get like 15 seconds of fun then it goes flat until the cooldowns go back up again. Also, personal gripe, the way the Dark Knight holds its greatsword is horrendous. I REALLY want to be able to change that. Hold that heavy thing like Cloud or Caius do, for the love of god.
And, not a single one of the tanks projects the "powerful" vibe near almost all other jobs give off. This is what kills it for me.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

In terms of aesthetics, I feel like the three tanks are actuallu the strongest looking physical jobs in the game...

That's not the point of the thread, but Erudito had me confused x) Anyway, I think it's right that we're just glorified dps, and yeah, that's a shame. Especially when, for example, you had more mitigation skills in 2.X than in 4.X... I've recently done T9 sync with some friends, and it's actually a mess, not because the party is bad, but simply because back when I first did it, as PLD, I had many more CDs that were actually all used. The more time passes, the more we're becoming damage dealers, and that's a shame.

I think the whole game needs to take a step back in damage expectancies... In the second coil of bahamut, the dps checks were hard, but not in any way hard as Sigma savage dps checks are. Why ? Because now, everyone's expected to have 99.5% uptime. In T7, you have a kiter that's just spending most of his time kiting to make sure an add is in proper position. That guy has a low dps, but that's alright, because the focus was on mechanics, not on damage. And, guess what ? It actually took a longer time for people to beat the second coil than for them to beat SigmaSavage.

The whole damage meta is a wreck that's slowly simplifying things to the core.

[Launched]

That's not the point of the thread, but Erudito had me confused x) Anyway, I think it's right that we're just glorified dps, and yeah, that's a shame. Especially when, for example, you had more mitigation skills in 2.X than in 4.X... I've recently done T9 sync with some friends, and it's actually a mess, not because the party is bad, but simply because back when I first did it, as PLD, I had many more CDs that were actually all used. The more time passes, the more we're becoming damage dealers, and that's a shame.

I think the whole game needs to take a step back in damage expectancies... In the second coil of bahamut, the dps checks were hard, but not in any way hard as Sigma savage dps checks are. Why ? Because now, everyone's expected to have 99.5% uptime. In T7, you have a kiter that's just spending most of his time kiting to make sure an add is in proper position. That guy has a low dps, but that's alright, because the focus was on mechanics, not on damage. And, guess what ? It actually took a longer time for people to beat the second coil than for them to beat SigmaSavage.

I don't think any of this is accurate. ARR PLD didn't have better cooldowns than SB PLD, the problem is that you're comparing a tank at level cap to a tank 5/7ths to the level cap. At 52 you get Sheltron and block works in magic damage, which is so much better than Foresight and Stoneskin. It's the same on the other tanks, their mitigation at 70 is better than ARR/HW. The game just isn't balanced around old raids any more.

The reason people had low dps in some Coil fights is because they (including me) were bad at the game. Nothing about T7's design stopped a BRD or SMN from having max uptime while kiting, people were just bad and could only focus on mechanics. Coil fights were all mechanically simple compared to the third and fourth fights of most tiers in Alex/Omega, and they would be no trouble at all for groups that can clear Alex/Omega.

[DaulBan]

Personally I think tanks are fine. Their DPS rotations are kinda blah (PLD in particular) but that's fine, you usually have other things to worry about too which makes it a bit more interesting. Increasing the complexity of the DPS rotations would be A-OK by me, but since they changed zerk/irzerk WAR I'm guessing that's not really on the table lol.

I think the whole game needs to take a step back in damage expectancies... In the second coil of bahamut, the dps checks were hard, but not in any way hard as Sigma savage dps checks are. Why ? Because now, everyone's expected to have 99.5% uptime. In T7, you have a kiter that's just spending most of his time kiting to make sure an add is in proper position. That guy has a low dps, but that's alright, because the focus was on mechanics, not on damage. And, guess what ? It actually took a longer time for people to beat the second coil than for them to beat SigmaSavage.

The whole damage meta is a wreck that's slowly simplifying things to the core.

Having high uptime isn't that hard once you get used to the fight, and in no way shape or form are the Sigmascape DPS checks hard as long as people don't die. Furthermore to say the current meta is wrecking things seems a little weird given the fact that the meta has existed in its current form since Gordias. We've had more time with tanks being DPS oriented than not by now so if it was going to wreck things you'd think it would have happened by now.

[347SPECTRE]

Also, personal gripe, the way the Dark Knight holds its greatsword is horrendous. I REALLY want to be able to change that. Hold that heavy thing like Cloud or Caius do, for the love of god.
And, not a single one of the tanks projects the "powerful" vibe near almost all other jobs give off. This is what kills it for me.

The stance used on DRK is a real guard stance called Ochs (Or Ox) It's a highly defensive stance, which makes sense seeing how DRK is a tank. Though one thing I've noticed is that DRK does like to switch to other stances during attacks, but its default is Ochs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmwNyOXbiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRjncraV6ak

Cloud uses this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-UrC3-sEgE

[Otorinth]

The stance used on DRK is a real guard stance called Ochs (Or Ox) It's a highly defensive stance, which makes sense seeing how DRK is a tank. Though one thing I've noticed is that DRK does like to switch to other stances during attacks, but its default is Ochs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmwNyOXbiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRjncraV6ak

Cloud uses this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-UrC3-sEgE

The Ochs stance also allows for some pretty nasty counter attacks. Counter-attacking, being Dark Knight's old shtick (Low Blow, Reprisal, Dark Dance), further reinforcing it using that stance.