Celests opinion bout the state of tanks

[CelestaRosa]

this is my opinion. don't have share my opinion. don't have like my opinion. but know nothing you say or do is gonna make me change my opinion. if don't like that tough.


this game first start'd rolls where determined by tank. dps and healer. I for one do not like where tank jobs are going -minus warrior. cause well warrior. always been warrior. their always this primary focus on damage. rather it be magic damage or physical damage.

If I wanted to play a bloody damage dealer I would have rolled dps.. when I rolled a tank I was expecting team supportive abilities interceptions. gap closers. damage migaration. most important of them all keeping everything focus'd on me. enjoying the challange off doing so. stuns status effects. anything everything a tank can use make sure their team can do more damage, and healer having good time while parting with me

however i see more and more the tanks leaning towards damage dealers. or another form of damage. and I for one don't like it.. understand yoshi p is a damage dealer. doesn't mean that all jobs in the game have primary focus on it.

1. I for one do not like having muiti-different stances a s tank. one stance for all tanks is solid and enough. like merge shield oath and sword oath. do something for warriors i hate say this but tank stance really sucks can heal them easily without it. most important give dark night some tanky love ok. really need have some organization added to their kit

2. more team friendly uliitity support heavy skills i love see warrior dark knight with some wicked intercept and shoulder tackle like abilities allow them to carry reposition monsters by being a wrecking ball . watch force group of enemies either cluster up or to location watch you better suited for tanking, war crys for warrior maybe magic sheilds that dark knight at cost of dark knightss hp team friendly stuff or aoe stun or grab enemy pull it towards you

3. no more damage skills no please. idea of being tank is be your teams sheild tank damage over them reducing it supporting them every see bits. while contributating to small abounts of dps

we aren't monks we aren't ninjas dragons sure the hell aren't samurai so please yoshi p keep the focus on what tanks are so post to do. tired getting idiots in duty finder run full dungeons sword oath under-geared dont pop any cooldown downs pull up 10-20 monsters and expect you to heal them. this needs be punished this need to stop. this is problem i feel you created

I mean so many different ways you stop flow of damage be creative about. using battle cry reduces damage you take. or place shroud of darkness on target sheilds them from magic damage so many different things you can do can keep tanks feeling like well tanks

[Rongway]

but know nothing you say or do is gonna make me change my opinion. if don't like that tough.

If you're not open to discussing differences of opinion, you shouldn't be posting on a discussion forum.

[Lionhardt]

The problem is the way people view an MMO is changing.

That classic holy trinity of the DPS, Tank and Healer is dwindling in the main stream. FF XIV, WoW and several other more popular MMO's are keeping it alive. In order for FF XIV to stay competitive, they got to let people who play tank feel special they out DPS'ed someone.

Frankly, that is kind of the real crux of the argument. To stay alive the MMO must adapt. There are too many MMO's out there now, one can easily swipe a player or a whole FC away, in some cases thousands of players at a time.

Nowadays, it's hard to find someone, like myself, who sign up for the tank role, get in the tank stance and accept that I am there to do several things. Keep the enemies from killing the raid, keep myself from dying and keep the boss where it needs to be. Warrior and Dark Knight both feels like classes who have a tank stance but don't operate as a tank. Paladin's DPS stance feels like it was just thrown in for the sake of it.

Plus, if you're having to have your tank dish out damage, your DPS is failing you. That's just my opinion, but again it's to make everything more fun for the majority. I'll live in the past and play in the present if only because XIV is still, in my opinion, the best MMO out there.

[MyakotApelsia]

Let me guess, some tank did more damage than you, so you came here with your "brilliant" idea?
I, as a tank, love to be something more than just a striking dummy for the boss. I take damage, i reduce damage, but i DO damage as well. I have everything i need to be tank already and more, to keep me entertained.
If devs make tanks be like punching bags, I will most likely drop tanking in favour of dps.
Only thing that i agree with in your post is undergeared people. Yet its fixable by adding minimum item level to all dungeons.
You are trying to make tanks into something generic. Don't do that.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Seriously your opening line reads I don't care what you all think, I'm right and everyone else is wrong, that's just sad, pathetic and has no place in a forums post, and for the love of god can people stop giving WAR a free pass for DPS. "Oh, it's the dps tank", that crap is old af.

All your post suggestion for tanks and healers are just plain awful, of the ones I bother to read, seriously do you even play this game? lmao.
If you want some classic trinity mmo go play one else where, but the majority of tanks are happy with the meta as it currently is, and please stop over exaggerating, in no dungeon are you gonna get 20 mobs unless they are weak af.

Currently tanks can generate aggro well enough with some disparity depending on the tank and it eventually becomes pointless, might as well be pouring water into a glass until it overflows and keep pouring. Currently all tanks have enough mitigation without tank stance, to survive any encounter if they work with their co-tank. As for utility it's there but not a complete necessity although I advocate maximising utility where possible, outside of that, tanks have nothing else to do in fights. Thus tanks focus on DPS as it's the only other aspect of an encounter we have left that we can optimise.

[Greywolfamakir]

I want more DPS skills, more DPS CDs for tanks. Mitigation and agro management is easy, DPS + Mitigation + agro management is the key.

[Kalise]

The crux of the matter is thus:

Everyone should feel important in a party.

A tank who's only role is to just sit there and get slapped does not feel important.

They need to be constantly doing something that is worthwhile. There needs to be something they can work towards, that they can use skill to leverage and improve on.

Being slapped is not that thing. Especially with how encounters are designed in this game.

Thus, it comes down to damage. Damage is always useful, damage scales infinitely. Damage can be leveraged and the difference from a beginner Tank who's sat in Defensive Stance and spamming Enmity combos and the veteran Tank who's in DPS Stance and using DPS combos and rolling CD's where necessary is very noticeable.

Personally, I'm not too sold on Tanks being purely about personal damage output though... I've posited that it could be interesting to utilize a FFXIII style Stagger mechanic for tanks, where they work towards creating party DPS increases instead of focusing entirely on personal damage (It would still play a factor, but wouldn't be the only thing)

[Emiin]

Let's clear up a few things in your opinion piece that I think should be addressed. I'm not trying to change your opinion - you've obviously got a strong one and you want to hold it. I want to fix your mindset about said opinion.

this game first start'd rolls where determined by tank. dps and healer. I for one do not like where tank jobs are going -minus warrior. cause well warrior. always been warrior. their always this primary focus on damage. rather it be magic damage or physical damage.

For starters, amusingly since the design of ARR, Paladin was the first tank to get a dedicated offensive stance. Warrior's defensive stance (post 2.1 fixes) was much more tankier and optimal for main tanking in ARR. The ideal scenario in ARR tanking was Defiance Warrior MT and Sword Oath Paladin ST. The fact that other tanks are keeping up with Warrior's offensives from HW are a sign of balance, not of design shift.

Random ideas about skills, tank stance changes

The tank stance thing I agree with, and disagree with. What needs to be understood about tank stance is it's design is not one to be maintained while you are tanking. It is designed to be a fallback/crutch ability. Once you are comfortable with a fight, it is meant to be turned off.
The abilities concept of WoW Intervention-esque abilities is removing the design that Square is going with WRT Paladin, and it's abilities of Cover, and Intervention. There is a design philosophy that they may be trying to improve/dive into as they've mentioned in Stormblood.
TLDR: You have these abilities, just play the other tank.

3. no more damage skills no please. idea of being tank is be your teams sheild tank damage over them reducing it supporting them every see bits. while contributating to small abounts of dps

A few things must be understood with regards to tanks currently not using tank stance, and defensive cooldown usage, and I'll respond to this bit with a few points.

1) You are, still, the team's "Shield." You, as a tank, take the brunt of attacks. Any other class at this would be destroyed.
b) You have cooldowns available to you. You assume all tanks who mainline offensive stance do not use cooldowns. This is an incredibly false label. A majority of good tanks plan their cooldown usage which minimalizes healing, and avoids tank stance as much as possible. Here is an example of a cooldown map I have used in the past. You're confusing the design of the game with people being bad at their class.
iii) The design of the game very much facilitates the use of offensive stances after a group has learned an encounter. It should be understood that outside of very brief moments (which for the most part are ignored by invulnerabilities), tank incoming damage is not scary. Here is an example of one of the scarier moments in tank damage in recent, non ultimate history. It is two high damage multi-hit busters which baseline do around 50k and 70k respectively, followed by a 100k damage buster which, with cooldowns, is nullified. Tank damage is not scary, with proper planning. Because of this, tanks are found in offensive stance, contributing more to their team than defensive stance would. Proper utilization of defensives, along with coordination with your team, will allow you to contribute the most that you can. Which, in the current design of this game, is DPS. We do not do it because we are greedy damage goblins. We do it because in the end, it is optimal.

Again, you are confusing the concept of bad design, with bad play. You seem to have met more people who play badly, as opposed to a game that is designed poorly. Step up your game, as well as talking to others, in order to make them change how they play to be less of a detriment to their team.

P.S. For the record, if outgoing tank damage was lowered, those who enjoy tanking in this game would still be tanking. I for one, believe that tank output should be like...2/3rds of what it is now. I still find tanking fun. Searching for numbers is a bonus.

[TouchandFeel]

This is not and has never really been at its foundation an issue of "tank players just want to be blue dps".

First and foremost, the progression of experienced tank players trying to push for more and more dps output is natural.

Enmity, damage mitigation and the majority of things associated with the tank role have a pretty discernible line where pushing further performance amounts to little or nothing due to being fairly binary in the desired result. If you keep yourself at the top of the enmity list you have control of agro, having more provides nothing until you are no longer on the top of the list. Damage mitigation is fairly binary as well. Are you mitigating enough damage to keep yourself alive and not overly stressing the healer? If yes, then congratulations you are doing your basic job, which all competent tanks do.
Basically if you have met the minimum requirements of keeping agro, positioning correctly and not dying; then you are fulfilling the requirements of the tank role.

Damage on the other hand is not a binary yes/no for requirement fulfillment. You can always do more and every increase has a tangible benefit. You kill the boss and/or enemies more quickly. Also, let us not forget that damage is a factor of the enmity calculation and so while you may not get the tank stance enmity multiplier bump, you can pretty much even out by doing enough extra damage. In addition, a dead enemy does no damage, so the faster you kill things the less damage you take during a fight.

So why do you see so many tanks pushing dps? Simple, that is really the only place that doesn't have a binary succeeded/failed checkbox where they can constantly push to improve and see tangible benefits.

Now the devs could put in more tank specific mechanics such as harder hitting enemies, more adds, enmity switching or drops, etc.; but in the end those things are still binary in nature in regards to success/failure and while players may need to focus more on them than before, once they adjust and begin to regularly succeed at them, they will just start pushing damage again. Also, let's not kid ourselves, if the devs did make the tanking mechanics discernibly harder to dissuade pushing for more damage, many players would throw a fit and complain of things being "too hard".

If you see a tank focusing so much on doing damage that they fail at the basic requirements of the tank role, that is not a problem with the role, that is just someone playing poorly.

Also, taking the stance of "I have an opinion that deserves to be put out there and heard, but don't bother with your opinion because I just don't care" on a public forum is contradictory.
It's a FORUM, which by definition means a place where ideas and opinions on particular subjects can be and are exchanged.
If you want to express ideas and opinions in a closed-feedback loop with no dissenting or differing opinions, start a diary.

[kidalutz]

P.S. For the record, if outgoing tank damage was lowered, those who enjoy tanking in this game would still be tanking. I for one, believe that tank output should be like...2/3rds of what it is now. I still find tanking fun. Searching for numbers is a bonus.

They'd have to increase Enmity again if that was the case so the DPS wasnt able to RIP aggro because tank wasnt doing enough damage to keep things pissed at them.