Tank entitlement vs group entitlement

[WaterShield]

its easy and boring in the micro. It would probably be a bit more interesting tactically if they had more complex dungeons. Its pretty interesting in high hoh.

however, there is a lot more pressure and its more taxing even in low level stuff. You are basically the most responsible for fails, and you need the most knowledge of the dungeon, the fights, maintaining high level gear is more important. Lives are in your hands

Everyone is responsible for their own self...

[Fyce]

Oh boy. Wall of text here we go.
Tl;dr for anyone who doesn't have the time: Sylve is wrong.

So your time is inherently more valuable that theirs then? Remember, They're part of this "time wasting run" too.

Yes, the time (and will) of 3 people has more value than the time (and will) of 1 person if we consider them equal. Which we do... except people like you who think that tanks are the superior human being for some reasons.
You know, you're like these people holding the doors in the subway, thinking that their time is worth more than the time of dozens of people waiting for the train to go. Notice how in the video link I provided, that person gets literally kicked out? Yeah, well, that's what we also do to princess tanks sometimes. And it's well deserved.

So just to make a quick comparison, a Tank has to:
-Initiate every pull. --- Correct! At least you got one!
-Memorise which mobs do which attacks and how dangerous each one of those attacks are. --- Nope. Trash mobs that require that level of memorization are extremely rare. Besides, if anyone had to remember that, it'd be the healer in order to be able to adjust the healing amount required. Also, if you statement was true, then it'd be impossible to tank a new dungeon as you don't know what's coming.
-Memorise mob layouts including the trigger mechanic and spawn location of adds. --- Nope. You just open your eyes and press one button when needed. Adaptation is far more important than memorization. Same as above.
-Dodge every bad marker. --- Just like everyone else. Also, thank you from bringing that one up, as it allows me to say that tanks standing in bad is actually the role where that has the least consequences (so called actual "tank privileges"). So, you actually bring a point showing how other roles have more responsabilities than tanks here. Good job at undermining your own arguments!
-Watch Enmity bars to ensure no one peels. --- That's 0.2s of attention needed in a boss fight, and you don't do it for trash mobs as you should generate enough enmity for it not to happen anyway.
-Ensure 100% uptime or as close to as humanly possible of Defensive cooldowns. --- Nope. Otherwise you'd ask the same for Healers and DPS regarding their own cooldowns and uptime. It's not the sole "responsability" of the tank to play perfectly (it's actually no one's responsability. It's just everyone's goal we should all strive for). I don't know where you got that from.
-Ensure mob packs are positioned perfectly to take advantage of Damage Dealer AoEs. --- Nope. You just make sure you pack mobs correctly. You don't go out of your way to put enemies in a badly placed Shadowflare. It's the DPS job to adjust in that regards, not yours. Also, positioning can be summarized as: just walk a few steps. Moving your character is not only the tank responsability, you know.

Meanwhile, the list of Damage Dealer responsibilities:
-Mash AoE.
-Don't stand in the bad.

And Healers:
-Mash AoE / ST nuke.
-Occasionally Curebomb the Tank.
-Sometimes Medica (or your regional equivalent) when AoE goes out.

You go out of your way to make a pedantic and innacurate list of everything you could think of for tanks, detailing puny stuff, but you stay at the bare minimum for Healers and DPS. Good job at making you look disingenuous and dishonest.
But Veis_Alveare already told you that, so I'm just repeating what they said here.

Also, If Healers and Damage Dealers 'forget' to use a cooldown, no one notices.
Meanwhile, If the Tank 'forgets' to use Cooldowns, they die. Healers screech. Tank gets kicked for "Being bad".
Oh, and lets not forget that one wrong step from a Tank can cause a Cleave induced party wipe. No pressure though.

I don't know what you're talking about. There are countless tanks with a very bad cooldown usage that still manage to clear dungeons. That's how easy 50/60/70 dungeons are.
Besides, saying that "no one notice" if Healers and DPS don't use their cooldowns is simply wrong. Healing output is much, much lower, putting the party at risk, and DPS becomes way slower, which is definitly noticable. If you don't notice it, then that's not really my problem.
Finally, you don't "die" because you forgot your cooldowns. You die because the healer didn't keep you alive. See the difference here? The ultimate responsability of keeping the tank alive is not the one of the tank itself, it's the responsability of the healer. Your responsability as a tank is only to make the work of the healer easier. But you don't have the responsability of keeping yourself alive. So as long as the theorical healing output required for the tank to survive can be reached, it falls in the healer's hands. Not the tank's. Which definitly makes a strong argument about the healer actually having more responsabilities than the tank.

But no, You're right. Being the Tank is no more responsibility than a Damage Dealer. That's why Tanking is just as popular as Damage Dealing. Right?

Even if what you said was true (most of it is innacurate or just plain wrong), then it still doesn't give you a free pass at acting like a jerk that decides everything in a dungeon regardless of what your teammates think.
You're a party member. A human being playing a video game with other people. You're not some kind ruler taking your slaves to do what you want.

Again, if the majority of the group asks for something and there is no objective reasons for that not to happen, being a tank doesn't give you the right to be a selfish prick that only do as you please.
Not only that's MMORPG etiquette, but that's most importantly human relations 101. Don't be a jerk to other people simply because you feel entitled to be. No one is ever entitled to that.

Kicking players for their DPS is against the ToS as a form of harassment, Yet kicking a Tank for not pulling as many trash mobs at once as you want them to is grounds for kicking?

Both of these statements are false. You can absolutly kick an Ice mage or a DPS only auto-attacking for example. There is no problem with that. It definitly falls under the "differences of playstyle" category. However, kicking someone who is just underperforming is not accepted. The line isn't quite clear, but all it comes down to is the intent behind what the player is doing. And just like you can't kick a DPS not doing a perfect rotation, you also can't kick a tank who doesn't have a perfect defensive cooldown usage (as long as it doesn't make your party wipe over and over again).
This isn't comparable to a tank refusing to pull according to the party's wishes. This one is actually crystal clear: it's "differences of playstyle". No blurry line. In fact, it doesn't matter if that person is a tank or not. It's simply a case of an individual trying to enforce what they want upon the rest of the party that asked for something else. It's literally confronting the will of 1 person to the will of 3 others, like I said in my first paragraph after the first quote. 1v3. The 1 loses. That's all there is to it.

the responsibility of holding aggro, and surviving it, in this game means;
having initial pull the majority of the time, (Initial hate = increased enmity)
positioning the group so your aoe hate tools land and so minimal enemy attacks hit the group.
and controlling your tp, and when fights end/Begin, since your cooldowns, or tp being low effects how well you can hold agro and survive multiple hits.

Its not rocket science, but the battles are definitely designed such that the tank has more responsibility for pulling, since a failure to properly do the above is more likely to lead to deaths/wipes due to loss of agro/tank death.

That's the first time I've seen someone saying that "controlling your tp" is a tank's primary responsability, implying that put them above everyone else. As if healers don't have to manage their mana and DPS also don't have to manage their own ressources. This is getting to ridiculous levels.

What's next? People saying that tanks have the extremely heavy responsability of pressing buttons while the rest of the group doesn't really have to, which is more than enough to consider tanks as special snowflakes with god-like decision making powers? Well, that's more or less what people like Sylve are arguing so it wouldn't even surprize me.

---

Edit @anyone who would want to respond: I don't think I'm gonna answer anything else at this point. Feel free to have the last word if you want, I don't really care about arguing against nonsense anymore. It's exhausting. I made my point: nothing give you the right to be selfish in a group environment in a video game. Certainly not being a tank. Even if you try to justify it with "responsabilities" that don't really exist or that are not any heavier than the "responsabilities" of anyone else.

Is it so hard to simply listen to what other people want and do it if you can? Is it so hard to just be a nice person? Gosh.

[Veis_Alveare]

wrong

I think I'm going to take a page out of Fyce's book and make this my last response to you as well since it's clear I'm basically talking to a wall.

Nothing - absolutely nothing you have said has been true or genuine. If you had a shred of intellectual integrity you wouldn't be making the arguments you are since they all are either arguing against strawmen that you've created (kicking people who need a minute to attend to something irl) or arguing from an illogical perspective.

I'll repeat it for those hard of hearing (or in some cases just hard-headed) tanking isn't hard, in fact at endgame it's significantly easier than other roles.

The only way you can come to the conclusion that tanking is more difficult is if you do a really, really bad job at everything else. A healer who has sub-17 cpm without a death isn't really equipped to evaluate the difficulty of healing since they're spending a ton of time doing absolutely nothing.

A dps that gets consistently outdpsed by tanks and healers also doesn't have a leg to stand on here because it's clear they don't understand the complexity of their job. Anything can seem easy if you do it poorly, I make great eggs and it's super easy; by the way do you mind them being a charred mess full of bits of shell?

If the shoe fits.... argue from it's misguided perspective I guess?

The one specific thing I'll touch on is this, though I'm pretty sure I've already pointed it out; the notion that if you want a 'speedrun' of a dungeon you should use PF and if not you should adapt to your group can very easily be turned around on you. If you want a 'slowrun' of something by all means set up your own PF. If you don't? Adapt to the party because 90% of the time everyone in a dungeon wants to just get it done quickly so they can move on.

[MariaArvana]

why are Tanks so rare that they need to be bribed with extra rewards like mounts .

Because people keep spouting words that makes tanking look like this highly inaccessible or extremely leader/responsible based role when it's one of the easiest things in this game.

I went into the Burn and Ghimlyt Dark the first time on WAR to help a friend, maybe the 2nd time actually tanking anything that wasn't HoH. I found it ultra easy mass pulling and tanking, just pull packs, spam overpower, spam IR -> steel cyclone for immortality on mass pulls along with pressing mitigation tools and enmity is basically impossible to lose if you're paying even the slightest simulacrum of attention to it. It felt like a cake walk in comparison to playing BLM/SMN with their proper damage rotations.

If anything, a top tier healer has the most to deal with during a dungeon, as they have to optimize their regen/OGCD usage on top of flinging as much dps spells as possible, co-coordinating their stun spell with the tank's mitigation and adjusting if they have a tank who doesn't optimize their CD usage.

[Physic]

Because people keep spouting words that makes tanking look like this highly inaccessible or extremely leader/responsible based role when it's one of the easiest things in this game.

I went into the Burn and Ghimlyt Dark the first time on WAR to help a friend, maybe the 2nd time actually tanking anything that wasn't HoH. I found it ultra easy mass pulling and tanking, just pull packs, spam overpower, spam IR -> steel cyclone for immortality on mass pulls along with pressing mitigation tools and enmity is basically impossible to lose if you're paying even the slightest simulacrum of attention to it. It felt like a cake walk in comparison to playing BLM/SMN with their proper damage rotations.

If anything, a top tier healer has the most to deal with during a dungeon, as they have to optimize their regen/OGCD usage on top of flinging as much dps spells as possible, co-coordinating their stun spell with the tank's mitigation and adjusting if they have a tank who doesn't optimize their CD usage.

tank has the most responsibility. Easyness has nothing to do with that. You lose dps, you can still beat a dungeon. You lose the healer, its highly likely you are screwed, but if you have 3 close to cap you might be ok, or a rdm. You lose the tank, the run is over. nobody else has good enimity, no one else has enough survivability.

they just have more responsibility.

[MariaArvana]

tank has the most responsibility. Easyness has nothing to do with that. You lose dps, you can still beat a dungeon. You lose the healer, its highly likely you are screwed, but if you have 3 close to cap you might be ok, or a rdm. You lose the tank, the run is over. nobody else has good enimity, no one else has enough survivability.

they just have more responsibility.

So that run I did of Shisui where we lost our tank after the first boss and went on to clear the dungeon tankless & without a RDM was totally over right?

Not having a tank means you have to be creative on handling the dungeon but is still doable with cooperation & planning. Not having a healer makes the run near impossible without it turning to an ultra slow, Clemency/Vercure spamming fest (and the run is basically stopped dead in its tracks if you don't have a RDM since tank self-heals are extremely limited outside of burst windows). You can say Tanks have more responsibility all you like, but they simply make the run more convenient, not necessary. Healers are far more important to the run than tanks are.

Also, Diversion/threat drops exist. It's quite easy to make a dps a de-facto tank by having one control enmity while the other doesn't.

[Hash_Browns]

tank has the most responsibility. Easyness has nothing to do with that. You lose dps, you can still beat a dungeon. You lose the healer, its highly likely you are screwed, but if you have 3 close to cap you might be ok, or a rdm. You lose the tank, the run is over. nobody else has good enimity, no one else has enough survivability.

they just have more responsibility.

I believe the run would suffer more if you lost the healer over the tank.
Simply put, healers can spam heal to victory in small pulls while tankless.

I'm not going to say that tanks are useless, obviously they make for a smoother run, as is the current system, but being more convenient doesn't mean necessary.

[Awha]

A tank like any player is responsible for failures caused by them.

[Xtrasweettea]

I had to pull out Microsoft Word for this response.

I will TL;DR this now:
• Tanks have extra entitlement thanks to supply and demand
• Taking away agency from tanks reduces supply of tanks
• non-tanks: BYOT (Be/Bring your own tank) or PF
• Tanks who wants full control: PF

Too Long:
After reading this thread over the past few days, consuming some pills for the headache, and laying out my thoughts on scrap paper, I am going to put my 1/50th of dollar in.

Let me start off with saying big pulls (or at least double pulls) are the norms in the 10s dungeons (50/60, 70, and Expert). The dungeons are made up in such a way non-single packs are doable. Doing big pulls is also the bottom of efficiency when it comes do handling these dungeons. Other efficient increasing skills, such as tanking out of tank stance, usually comes from being used to the risk of having more than three mobs hitting you. The tank that pulls big becomes used to being able to properly measure the risk and can then try different risky actions in other parts of the dungeon.

Now that efficient pulling method isn’t an over-night acquired skill to a point to where you can do this on the “feel” of the event.* It took me a while to get used to pulling in big dungeons. After that, it took me a few tries to get used to tanking bosses without tank stance on.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that. I think everyone who has participated in this thread (active or passive) understands that newness is a thing and getting used to increasing efficiency buy increasing risks over time is real. I think people would have no problem if the tank is new and they are still struggling but are showing that they are trying to meet efficiency.

This is what I think the argument for this thread:

Tanks do not have more entitlement than other members in the group, and therefore should be ok with either adapting to the group’s request or prepared for the consequences.

I agree with some of that argument. Tanks should at least try to adapt to the request of the group or face the repercussions for their actions or inaction.

What I do not agree with is that the tank doesn’t have any entitlement that may be extra or above other members within the group that would put some leverage within their favor. Currently, tanks do have some level of entitlement over the rest of the group.

Now, at this point, some of you will stop here and either respond without reading the rest. I implore you to read the rest and comprehend what I am saying as best as I can write it.

There is a problem somewhere where we have less tank players than DPS or healers. It might be with how we determined socially how the roles work within our groups based on the mechanics of the game.

When we group, we are not “partying” we are temporarily entering a short business agreement with you and up to X strangers. Your position within the agreement is outlined by which role you fill. When you enter a business agreement, you play to strengths to those in other roles. You do this by outsourcing your weaker strengths to them.

So:
If I am a Healer who groups up, my strength is to keep people vertical. I can initiate pulls, but I will be spending more resources to keep myself vertical than letting the tank, who is built to take hits, initiate pull. I will outsource pulling to the tank. I can DPS, but not as well as these two DDs. I will outsource some of my DPS responsibilities to them. In exchange, I will use my strength, plus adding the responsibilities I insourced by the Tank and DD to help us get to the end of this event and get our award.

This happens every group you enter. We don’t do this consciously. It is what we have been trained and condition to do over time.

Things like avoiding AOES, pre-planting yourself in a position when the enemies spawn to maximize your DPS or to avoid spawn triggered dangers, etc. fall to everyone. Not one role “avoids” AOE better then other. Even forcing an AOE into a direction falls to everyone, counting on the mechanic that triggers that AOE. For most AOEs, it’s just easier for the tank to point it at them, again playing to a strength outsourced by the DPS and Healer.

So, where do I think gets an extra level of “entitlement” than the healer and DPS? It is because there is a lack of them. Something is preventing most of the player base from tanking.
• It isn’t mechanical. I will admit that compared to other MMOs I have played, FF14 tanks have been mechanically easier to grasp and execute.
• It isn’t from too many unknowns in dungeons. There is a “familiarity” in all dungeons. They may have some weird quirk here and there, but nothing that screams I need to memorize this dungeon like the back-of-my-hand, or we will all die.

This brings me back to my point from above:

There is a problem somewhere where we have less tank players than DPS or healers. It might be with how we determined socially how the roles work within our groups based on the mechanics of the game.

What do tank receive from the DPS and Healer as in-sourced responsibilities?
• Initiating pulls
• Taking the hits and keeping the attention of the enemy on you
• Dealing damage, but not as much at the peak like a DD can
• Reducing as much damage as possible with both gear and cooldowns.

Very basic, nothing complex here.

How the tank does the above bullets is up to them. If they have the responsibility, they should have the authority to execute their responsibilities. That allows them agency.

Now, I am not saying they should be bad. If a tank cannot properly do any of the four points above, and it ends up falling onto the other two roles, who have outsourced those responsibilities to the tank, the tank is violating contract. Bad should be called out and dealt with.

The problem is when the tank is already performing the responsibilities, but the party wants to be the ones who are authoritative over those responsibilities.

In other words:

The tank has the responsibility and fault, but no authority to execute how that responsibility is handled. Which means no self-agency, but instead more akin to an NPC or slave.

In the OP, we have a premade group who has an expectation on how they want the tank to perform their duties. It is conditional outsourcing that the tank is not aware of upon joining the group. The party “requesting” that the tank pull big, is an attempt to override authority of the thank and removes some agency from the tank. Even when party added a caveat to protect the feelings of the tank player.

The removal of authority over owned responsibilities and reduction of agency is what causes people to be upset.

The tank has the right to keep authority over their responsibilities. They have agency and they are not an NPC. Just like the rest of the group has agency and are not NPCs. The tank in these types of instances are not trying to take authority from the other two roles. The tank is trying to keep their authority over their responsibilities. The rest of the group doesn’t like it, because they have expectations that are not being met, but are not required to fulfill the contract.

This reduction of agency and authority, but keeping responsibility and fault is what drives people away from tanking.** The Tank that lost their authority and agency will say something to other people within circles. That information will spread, and assumptions will be made.

This decreases supply, but the demand hasn’t really change. This will give tanks a social granted entitlement of having a little more weight when it comes to applying their agency to the group. This happens in every MMO that requires a critical role, but there is a lack of population to meet that demand.

It isn’t wrong that tanks have this entitlement.

If you don’t want tanks to have this entitlement, or believe they shouldn’t, then you need to change the supply versus the demand. Only way to do that is to allow the tanks to keep their agency.

At the same time, both Tanks and non-tanks should take some sort of responsibility here for themselves. DR is a continuous Schrodinger experiment. Until you get into your duty with a party, you will get every level of skill of each role within your party. You will get the tank that has a diet that contains glue up to the tank that will make you look like the glue eater.
• If you, non-tanks, want to control that randomness of a Tank who might fit in with your requirements: BYOT (Bring or Be Your Own Tank) or set up a PF.
• If you, the, tank wants to have a party that will be guaranteed to allow you to have 100% agency over you, PF.
• If you are ok with trying to play with the risk: DR. Be prepared for some pushback.

To close this up:
Be prepared to face the consequences of your actions when you take the authority and agency away from the Tank. The least worse thing is that they can say “no,” and the worst is them no longer being in the group. The group needs to decide if taking away authority and agency from the tank is a good idea in the long run.


* Anyone who has a mother or grandmother that cooks without any measuring, but cooks by intuition or “feels” knows what I am talking about
** This also drives people away from healing too, but not to the same degree.

[Veis_Alveare]

A lot of things

Edit: I do think your post is well thought out and good, I don't mean for this to come out too aggressive I'm just a direct person.

The first issue with your post is the premise that tanks are somehow in much shorter supply than healers. While I'll agree in PF content (so like EX+) it'll generally take longer to get a tank the only roulette I've consistently had to wait more than a second or two on lately (primarily queuing as an AST) is 50/60 which I don't do often. It's been this way for weeks now and going into 5.0 with a new tank and no new healer is likely only going to shift things further in this direction.

I play at varied times of day so I don't think I've just found some kind of sweet spot. If my normal raids/trials/experts/etc are popping instantly that means when I'm queing there is either a tank waiting already or a tank queing at more or less the same time as me. Either one points to a similar population of tanks and healers queing into casual content not some kind of large disparity that would advantage tanks in a dungeon setting.

The second issue is smaller but also more concrete - you don't need a tank for many dungeons while you need a healer or RDM for pretty much everything at cap outside of groups with really strong dps that can burn things down before the tank dies. A tank with no healer will die before a healer with no tank goes OOM from healtanking. Tankbusters in dungeons? I've taken most of them as a WHM, if you're prepared and have some kind of mitigation (DB/a dps utility) you're fine. Even without that most of them won't oneshot you.

I'd recommend you set up a pf or get some friends together and do some dungeons tankless, it's really not bad and kind if drives home the point of how unimportant they are in casual content. At the end of the day tanks are a mitigation tool for the party but with damage so undertuned... well, you know what they say about excess mitigation.