How tanking feels post ShB patch

[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.

[Physic]

This and what you posted afterwards really makes me wonder if you actually see tanking as anything other than holding aggro. Having an easy time holding it and thinking it makes you feel lazy/bad/skilless is akin to a DPS complaining that it's easy to do good dps on a simple rotation. The difference being that generating DPS is their main job while generating aggro shouldn't be (and now isn't) our main concern. It is no measure of your tanking skill as a DPS's numbers is theirs. Perhaps it is the fact that I come from tanking on other games, but I've never played one where tanks have no trouble enmity and complain about it. It gives you the chance to focus more on mechanics and positioning and yes, your own personal DPS. Because in the end it does matter, and might as well save you from a wipe due to enrage or w/e.

As for the differences between tanking classes, even as a fairly new player I can clearly see them without having to go through the balancing hell of actually making them contribute less or more DPS. All this would make is every tank have to play the bunker, self-sustaining class on the first week of new content, and then switch to the more DPS focused one when they're better geared and don't need to worry about surviving as much. The differences are already there, in their playstyle, and some of the cooldowns and usage. Like how the GNB, unlike other tanks, is much more focused in smoothing out damage spikes instead of having big heals or CDs to recover from low HP to full.

every one has to worry about positioning and mechanics. The fact that most of your focus is on dps shows that mitigation and control is not the focus of the job. Tanking is generally focused on mitigation and control in most games. in this one, it's mostly dps. Every game can design things however they want, and most tanks here seem happy with that concept, but their argument isn't a crazy one. The measure of a tank here isn't how well they can hold hate, or how much they can mitigate, or how well they control the mobs. that's true even by your standards.

How would you define an excellent tank in this game?

[Valmarus]

A thought occurs to me that, perhaps, the whole "feel like a dps" problem is something for people who have leveled and regularly switch between DPS and Tanks because they want to be able to switch between different playstyles?

In a game where a core mechanic is that you can swap between jobs for a change of pace then surely it should be a change of pace. They should feel different.

[Bobzitto]

In THIS game? Without having reached the endgame, it's hard for me to comment. But from my experience in other games, you'll never notice a tank is doing an excellent job if you're playing a DPS. Only if you're the other tank and if you're a healer. You will, however, notice they're doing a bad job due to poor positioning or using their tools the wrong way (like the 30% DR CD after a big hit and not before, or a GNB using Superbolide when they're with over half health against trash pulls).

And I never said that tanks' focus is on DPS. I said it is a contributing factor to the group and should be paid attention to. When I tank here, my focus is still on my cooldowns and the things going on around me. Seeing what I have up and what is close to coming off cooldown so I can dictate the pace of the pulls. The thing with you and Valmarus is you're trying to apply something that is no longer true (if it ever were) to FFXIV today. Saying you have no control over how good or bad you're doing as a tank because you no longer have to struggle with enmity. There is nothing to have control over anymore. If you want to, turn your tank stance off and have fun with the hate you'll receive from your party.

[Valmarus]

You've basically just summed up what I was saying. They've got rid of what makes a tank feel like a tank to me and now makes me feel like I'm playing a dps. The only thing that changes between playing a tank and a DPS now is what specific telegraphs and abilities i'm watching for on the cast bar, which isn't really a change because that changes fight to fight anyway.

[BarretOblivion]

Tanks feel better now with the removal of stance dancing now. It always was a clunky action to stance dance with the only tank actually benefitting from it being WAR. That being said... OP clearly has no idea how tanking actually works. Yes, tanks deal damage, but we are the ones moving the boss in locations to where the DPS can actually do their jobs. We are the ones now supposed to be the brunt party wide mitigation. OTs now have to have the timing for tankbusters to assist with them now. There are plenty of mechanics requiring both tanks properly mitigating damage.

Aggro was an annoyance for everyone in ShB where tanks never ever used aggro combos and instead built just enough hate before swapping back to DPS stance where our basic kits actually worked the best. Meanwhile having to bark at DPS to use diversion on cooldown, telling the bards to tactian, and healers had to lucid at specific times while OTs had to also voke/shirk on cooldown for a few minutes into the fight. Not to mention the almost required need for Ninjas for shadewalker so tanks could have proper openers. Look, hate was just an annoyance for everyone in end game raiding, it didn't add anything to the tank role, just took away from us trying to focus on our jobs which does include DPSing. There is a reason tanks deal 22% of the total group DPS, because in end game you needed to else you just made your DPS have to work even harder.

[Physic]

In THIS game? Without having reached the endgame, it's hard for me to comment. But from my experience in other games, you'll never notice a tank is doing an excellent job if you're playing a DPS. Only if you're the other tank and if you're a healer. You will, however, notice they're doing a bad job due to poor positioning or using their tools the wrong way (like the 30% DR CD after a big hit and not before, or a GNB using Superbolide when they're with over half health against trash pulls).

And I never said that tanks' focus is on DPS. I said it is a contributing factor to the group and should be paid attention to. When I tank here, my focus is still on my cooldowns and the things going on around me. Seeing what I have up and what is close to coming off cooldown so I can dictate the pace of the pulls. The thing with you and Valmarus is you're trying to apply something that is no longer true (if it ever were) to FFXIV today. Saying you have no control over how good or bad you're doing as a tank because you no longer have to struggle with enmity. There is nothing to have control over anymore. If you want to, turn your tank stance off and have fun with the hate you'll receive from your party.

so by your definition, an excellent tank doesn't get others killed by pointing cones at them, and manages 3-5 90-120 second cool down skills. And the rest of the time they dps. I would say that means 80 % of the actions they take are about maintaining dps.

this is fine, apparently dps is more entertaining than control or mitigation, Or rather, the tanks of this game prefer to be a dps with the responsibility of leading the group, rather than a class whose gameplay focus is control/mitigation. But then its not crazy for some players to feel like a tank is basically dps who the monsters must target, and a passive mitigation tool.

think qbout how this is different than healers who literally spend 50-80% of their time actively preventing or recovering dmg. Even if a healer had the same max dps as a dps, they would still mostly press buttons that heal people.

look, i personally have no problem with tanks basically being the dps that monsters hit, it adds an extra layer to dps combat. When i played eureka on my monk, and took the logoram that increased defense, and the skill that inceased enmity per action, it was more entertaining tanking to me than my warrior. But that made me realize tanking in this game is not so much a gameplay choice/style, as much as a designation of whose going to get hit most the time.

[Bobzitto]

From what I understand (wasn't here, wouldn't know), tanks before had to switch between stances to build aggro and then switch to DPS when they had enough. Then switch back to "tank stance" when DPS was catching up. That's...not better design. That's busywork. They could make things more interesting and active for tanks if they changed things around, but threat/enmity/hate is deff not the way to do it.

[Reimmi]

Threat has never been the interesting thing for tanking in MMOs
i've always found mitigating properly to be more interesting, it's too bad outside of tank busters you take no damage so it really does feel like you're just a dps 80% of the time

[Valmarus]

From what I understand (wasn't here, wouldn't know), tanks before had to switch between stances to build aggro and then switch to DPS when they had enough. Then switch back to "tank stance" when DPS was catching up. That's...not better design. That's busywork. They could make things more interesting and active for tanks if they changed things around, but threat/enmity/hate is deff not the way to do it.

Except some people got into tanking BECAUSE they enjoy that whole hate management thing. And intially the game had hate management for tanks. And the tanks I've always known their complaint was always that holding that hate was too easy, something I've always agreed with. It hasn't always been the case that tanks focused on DPS, and in truth, tank DPSing was actually born from what people regarded at the time as pretty terrible endgame mechanics. It was the only way around those mechanics because you couldn't outgear them.

Not wanting to stance dance, not wanting to maintain emnity, that's the mindset of a lazy tank. It seems the vocal tanks on this forum want less meaningful things to do. I would argue that hate management, if it existed in a proper form, which it used to (albeit too easy) is much more meaningful to an encounter than DPS. There's 4-6 other people in the party, never mind the alliance, that can throw out DPS, but only you can control the mob. Except you don't now, the game does it for you. The key there in my opinion would have been to take focus off tank damage and more on the hate management. Rather than something born from a "kill this quickly of you automatically die" mechanic. And again so many people are missing the point.

This isn't about whather that was the correct decision or not. This isn't about what people think is the core function of a tank is (and [this isn't aimed at the quoted author] regardless of whether they agree over the core function of a tank is no grounds for people to talk down to others like they have been in this thread. Again, you know who you are, you just look foolish for missing the entire point).

The entire point of this thread was to see if anybody else felt like the removal of hate mechanics all together made playing a tank feel odd to them. And interestingly someone gave an interesting answer that said it did but for different reasons than me who feels that the new rotations make me feel like a lazy tank. Like I'm screwing up soemhow even though I'm not. I feel like I'm treating a tank as a DD and that's because I am, regardless of what skills I'm popping to mitigate damage, which is something a blm, a dps, has to do anyway.