How tanking feels post ShB patch

[Inuk9]

To be short, I mained a tank since HW and I love the change. It feels like a QoL change. I also like being in compete control of emnity along with the OT or MT in harder content.

I guess it feels like a QoL change because I would always try to dps as a tank anyway and felt emnity some times got in the way of me maximizing (ie going back into tank stance and doing emnity combo when dps got too close on the hate bar).

Also, as a PS4 pro player, I liked the changes too. Specially when I play DPS I can see in the enmity list who is the highest DPS of the party, yeah still dont have our personal parses but that is a start.

In ARR,HW and SB there was a lot of enmity manipulation skills so it was impossible to see that by looking at the list.

As a tank I feel like a QoL change too, and I play DRK since HW.

[Bobzitto]

I would agree, if it wasn't for the fact that as a tank (vs dps), I always seem to have a dozen angry mobs viciously trying to murder me, or boss skills that nearly kill me and make my healer have a heart attack if I don't prepare for them. Oh, and never mind the fact that how I position myself can get my party killed due to frontal AoEs from mobs. I mean, when I play as DPS these never seem to be common occurrences, y'know? We do have one thing in common though. We press buttons that make shiny things happen on the screen, and damage numbers pop up. Imagine that!

[Valmarus]

Tell you what, come back and tell me how DPS positioning doesn't matter and can't cause a wipe after you get all your dps to stack on top of each other right next to you as titan starts casting multiple weight of the lands or Ramuhs lighning circle thing I forget the name of. Or let the dps run across the tank or healer repeatadly while being targeted by eruption or a similar ability (there are plenty of these examples I'm just using the most well known). DPS positioning may not seem as important and more common sense but so is tank positioning for the most part, at least to me. But you've completely missed the point I'm making. That has nothing to do with skill usage or emnity building.


Forums always amaze me how people always feel the need to leave such sarcastic "you're an idiot" toned posts when everyone else is being civil and add insult to injury they've completely missed the point and made themselves look foolish instead. Yes you've got monsters beating on you but all you've had to do to achieve that is press one button at the start of the duty then attack. I'm doing the same thing I'm doing on a dps apart from looking for stuns and tank busters. Hell there's a few duties when I play BLM where if I don't manawall specifc abilities they can 1 shot crit me also, so even tank buster mechanics, while more prevelant on tanks, are by no means a tank only thing. The whole point I'm making is that now, when we tank, we're doing nbothing to earn our emnity. We press a stance at the beginning of dungeon then use DPS rotations and get a free 25% emnity over DPS. That is the point I'm making. I no longer have to do anything specific to generate the emnity I need to keep the mob's attention. As multiple people have said before, including myself, tanking has never been hard in this game but the point is there was an element of emnity building that has now gone. I never even said that should change back. What I said was, to me, it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.

The point is this:

Post patch I, me, the person typing this, feel like I'm doing something wrong when I play a tank.

I feel like I'm not doing anything to control mob hate.

It makes me feel like I'm being a bad tank, even though I'm holding hate perfectly fine.

It makes me feel like I'm being a lazy tank.

It makes me feel like I'm presenting no skill what so ever at tanking.

That is the point and I asked if anybody else felt the same. Some people have come in and said no, fair enough, I'm interested in hearing their side of it also and how it makes them feel. But you, with your unconstructive attitude, devalue yourself and your opinion when you present it in such a manner, and devalue the thread, it only takes a few people with posts like that before people will stop reading. You don't have to agree with me but don't try to make out that I'm the one who has been "stupid" when the entire point being made has completely flown over your head.

[Valmarus]

It's easy to forget but DPS positioning matters a lot, especially in newer fights were we're not 100% sure of what mechanics do what. We tend to look at certain fights where we can ignore certain mechanics because we've out-geared them but even things like titan back in the day when we were all level/ilvl appropriate for the fight that a couple of overlapping aoes pinning someone in would get them killed. I've seen more than 1 party wipe due to bad DPS positioning. It's actually the DPS that have to remember the majority of the positional mechanics along with other mechanics. Having alternated a bit between tanking and DPS I can say that I often find I'm having to remember a lot more about where to stand and what to do while being a DPS compared to tanking. Hell back in the day the DPS were even responsible for stunning the mobs more than the tank was, the tank tended to be back up stun, but now I'm the one getting off point.

The main job of the tank is to be the focus of the mob. Our main job is to build emnity. Simple fact is without enmity where we stand or what damage we mitigate is irelevant because if we don't have the attention of the mob it's off doing its own thing and ignoring us anyway. Everything is second to and comes after building emnity.

I guess the TLDR is : The current tank skillset makes me feel like I'm ignoring building emnity because I'm doing nothing to build it, which makes me feel like a lazy/bad tank, regardless of how effective I actually am at the role.

(Note: Internet outage is responsible for the 2 halves of this post being so seperated, in case you were wondering why it took me an hour to post the second half of this)

[MarvelousInRed]

It's easy to forget but DPS positioning matters a lot, especially in newer fights were we're not 100% sure of what mechanics do what. We tend to look at certain fights where we can ignore certain mechanics because we've out-geared them but even things like titan back in the day when we were all level/ilvl appropriate for the fight that a couple of overlapping aoes pinning someone in would get them killed. I've seen more than 1 party wipe due to bad DPS positioning. It's actually the DPS that have to remember the majority of the positional mechanics along with other mechanics. Having alternated a bit between tanking and DPS I can say that I often find I'm having to remember a lot more about where to stand and what to do while being a DPS compared to tanking. Hell back in the day the DPS were even responsible for stunning the mobs more than the tank was, the tank tended to be back up stun, but now I'm the one getting off point.

The main job of the tank is to be the focus of the mob. Our main job is to build emnity. Simple fact is without enmity where we stand or what damage we mitigate is irelevant because if we don't have the attention of the mob it's off doing its own thing and ignoring us anyway. Everything is second to and comes after building emnity.

I guess the TLDR is : The current tank skillset makes me feel like I'm ignoring building emnity because I'm doing nothing to build it, which makes me feel like a lazy/bad tank, regardless of how effective I actually am at the role.

(Note: Internet outage is responsible for the 2 halves of this post being so seperated, in case you were wondering why it took me an hour to post the second half of this)

I think the bigger job of tanks is to mitigate damage; with more tools than ever to mitigate damage from our teammates, it's become the tank's role to mitigate damage not only to ourselves but also to our party members. I understand you feel like you're being lazy by just being able to hold hate really easily, but honestly I think it's a QoL change that allows us to focus on our real role.

[Dualblade]

Honestly the only thing that feels different about tanking is the removal and addition of skills, otherwise it didn't seem like anything had changed that much. Course I also usually stayed in tank stance more than was strictly necessary so the changes to tank stance work in my favor.

[IntrovertAnt]

I'm not trying to be rude or funny so please don't read that sort of tone into what I am about to say:

If you want to focus on DPS more than emnity the I have to ask why not just play a DPS? Why play a role where your job should be focusing on taking/mitigating damage and holding focus? If this is the attitude of the majority of people tanking in the game then why not just do away with the idea of a tank all together? I feel like it's going to boil down to the question of - If they don't play differently then why have them at all?

Because when I've got a fight down pat, I know it and what's going to happen, what else are you going to do? Just auto attack and only do emnity enough to keep hate? Me dpsing after my tank duties are met helps out the party. Tanks dps is usually right behind a mediocre dps.

[Legion88]

Again the focus on holding hate as a central point of tanking.
Stop it.
Tanking is not holding hate.
Tanking is all that happens after you gained hate.
Holding hate is not part of tanking it is the requirement for tanking.

[Physic]

Again the focus on holding hate as a central point of tanking.
Stop it.
Tanking is not holding hate.
Tanking is all that happens after you gained hate.
Holding hate is not part of tanking it is the requirement for tanking.

tanking is holding hate that's the most important factor, If as you said something is a requirement as long as you are doing the job, that makes it the most important part. Like a book critic is a reading job

That said, they have apparently decided that just by selecting your role, you will hold hate, so emnity is no longer a consideration. That may be fine, but basically it makes the job feel like a dps, because the main goal, and focus of player input is to dps. mitigation is considered into gameplay about 15% of the time, now that's about 13% more than other classes, but it does make some one saying it doesnt feel like the purpose of my job is tanking seem like they may have a point.

[Valmarus]

tanking is holding hate that's the most important factor, If as you said something is a requirement as long as you are doing the job, that makes it the most important part. Like a book critic is a reading job

I completely agree with this. You can stand in a corner and pop damage control all you want but unless the mob is actually on you you're not contributing anything at all. EVERYTHING you do is contingent on the fact that you are the one actually taking the damage and not someone else (barring a couple of mechanics).

That said, they have apparently decided that just by selecting your role, you will hold hate, so emnity is no longer a consideration. That may be fine, but basically it makes the job feel like a dps, because the main goal, and focus of player input is to dps. mitigation is considered into gameplay about 15% of the time, now that's about 13% more than other classes, but it does make some one saying it doesnt feel like the purpose of my job is tanking seem like they may have a point.

Again I agree and I think that's what's making me feel bad. I have absolutely no control over how good or bad I am at doing the primary (as in the first, the thing all other things are contigent on) function of my role. If I want to focus on numbers I would DPS. Glad to see I haven't been completely incompetent at getting my orriginal point across.