How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Lyth]

Fair point. They should probably get Thancred to tank for all the new dps players that they're going to convert over from tanks and healers. Bring him over to raid content too, these bosses tank themselves.

[Shurrikhan]

As long as you have a trinity system people will never want to tank or heal. That is a fact and has been like that in all games that feature the trinity system. Unless you go full hybrid where every class is a damage dealer, tanks and healers will never be popular.

Even as someone who prefers the best of the "full hybrid" (or "generalist") model over the best a trinity system ("passively specialized') would have to offer, this seems rather disingenuous.

People dislike healing and tanking when the roles become merely nominal, are composed primarily of uninteresting (takes on their) responsibilities, comparatively low skill ceilings, or relatively little reward therein.

When the roles are crafted well, tanks and healers can be every bit as well-liked as damage-dealers.

[Izsha]

Even as someone who prefers the best of the "full hybrid" (or "generalist") model over the best a trinity system ("passively specialized') would have to offer, this seems rather disingenuous.

People dislike healing and tanking when the roles become merely nominal, are composed primarily of uninteresting (takes on their) responsibilities, comparatively low skill ceilings, or relatively little reward therein.

When the roles are crafted well, tanks and healers can be every bit as well-liked as damage-dealers.

I have NEVER played a game where tanks and healer/support classes ever matched the popularity of a dps class. Doesnt matter the genre. Moba, fps, ARPG, MMO, whatever. Your assertion that they are disliked purely out of poor design is false. Unless you are asserting that no game ever has actually created 'well crafted' tanks and healers.

The only time tanks have to wait for anything is when you skew the required numbers to extreme levels like 24 man raids with a 5 to 1 ratio of dps to tanks.

Tanks and support/healers are objectively never as popular as dps with the only exceptions being small windows when a game makes an extremely overpowered tank or support class that (usually) does more damage than a dps. So the only way to make a tank more popular than a dps is to make it better than a dps. Hmmm. So no, better designed trinities do not bring them to parity in popularity.

[Kabooa]

It doesn't really matter what retrospective claim the devs, or you for that matter, come up with to explain away a bad decision. They could have assigned extra dps to all jobs containing the letter 'm'. Hey look, that fits too. If you don't offer people a reason to want to tank, they won't tank.

And right back at you: why don't you wait eight weeks for gear, then, if it doesn't matter so much? Let's aim for a scenario where tanks get gear over dps then, if you're indifferent to it.

If your only reason to tank is the rainbow bar, the devs aren't the problem.

And we divide gear equally, because our team isn't a week 1 team, and thus our distribution is irrelevant. And even in week 1 teams, the moment you can kill the last boss, distribution is irrelevant.

[Nedkel]

I have NEVER played a game where tanks and healer/support classes ever matched the popularity of a dps class. Doesnt matter the genre. Moba, fps, ARPG, MMO, whatever. Your assertion that they are disliked purely out of poor design is false. Unless you are asserting that no game ever has actually created 'well crafted' tanks and healers.

The only time tanks have to wait for anything is when you skew the required numbers to extreme levels like 24 man raids with a 5 to 1 ratio of dps to tanks.

Tanks and support/healers are objectively never as popular as dps with the only exceptions being small windows when a game makes an extremely overpowered tank or support class that (usually) does more damage than a dps. So the only way to make a tank more popular than a dps is to make it better than a dps. Hmmm. So no, better designed trinities do not bring them to parity in popularity.

People play dps classes because of big numbers and powerful feeling when dealing damage, thats basically it.

Those who claim numbers doesnt matter are lying to themselves.
If tanks were close to dps numbers then a lot more people would have played tanks, they have big weapons, nice glamours and overall look great.

[Kalise]

Even as someone who prefers the best of the "full hybrid" (or "generalist") model over the best a trinity system ("passively specialized') would have to offer, this seems rather disingenuous.

People dislike healing and tanking when the roles become merely nominal, are composed primarily of uninteresting (takes on their) responsibilities, comparatively low skill ceilings, or relatively little reward therein.

When the roles are crafted well, tanks and healers can be every bit as well-liked as damage-dealers.

"People" don't dislike when healing and tanking roles become merely nominal.

Tanks and Healers dislike that.

"People" in general tend to err towards DPS roles.

Then, for reasons that are beyond my comprehension, developers then think people err towards DPS roles because Tank/Healer roles are too stressful and then make them merely nominal... Then wonder why all the Tank and Healer players they DID have, jump ship xD

Support roles in video games tend to be unfavoured. Even more so when most people play unorganized games with random matchmaking. Often due to the fact that if you're supporting completely braindead idiots, you don't get anywhere and boy are there a lot of braindead idiots in multiplayer games... Which is completely irrelevant to how well designed the roles are. Some examples of this, would be things like in MOBA's, you have Io in Dota2 and Janus in Smite whom have a large portion of their power devoted to support (Io gets lots of healing, Janus can let people walk through walls) but in random games these are absolutely horrible to play because without co-ordination and comms their amazing kits become near useless... (However, their popularity rises dramatically the more competitive the setting where people play with static teams with comms). I'm also sure a lot of people have played Tank/Initiator roles in MOBA's and had the perfect initiation, locking down all 5 enemies while their team... Stands there with a finger up their backside instead of actually engaging...

Typically, games that offer a better representation of supports are ones where the supports are fully functional DPS in their own right, whom can merely transition into a tanking/healing role with minimal effort. For example, in Anarchy Online, Enforcers, Soldiers and Doctors are all reasonably popular because they DPS decently with interesting mechanics.

Enforcers become giant and it's funny to be an Atrox Enforcer who then ends up being a 50 ft tall mass of muscle that smacks enemies around with I Beams (Yes, the steel construction girders).

Soldiers are one of the only classes in the game that can use assault rifles and so get easy access to the powerful Full Auto skill as well as nice reflect shields and potato armour.

Doctors get DoTs, 3 different lines of DoTs to be precise as well as Treatment buffs allowing ease of equipping higher level implants (Which also makes them extremely popular for their buffs, just like Traders) they also have the double edge sword of all their weapon skills being equally crap so they literally have a choice to specialize in whatever they want as well as being decent in PvP (Since the game has a thing where you can only take 1/3rd of your health in one go making high alpha damage classes like Agent, Shade and Nano-Technician less good... Well, at least until NT gets their Cyber-deck and gets Izgimmer's Triple which hits 3 times and thus can bypass this particular restriction...)

Really, the only thing these classes need to do in order to go full Tank/Healer, is start using aggro/healing skills in addition to their normal stuff (Or using other ways to generate aggro, such as sitting down in combat)... While keeping their DPS intact. With Soldiers being capable if they put in the effort to get the required gear, of being the highest DPS job in the game and Enforcers being not too bad on DPS either.

Of course, games tend to shy away from allowing Tanks and Healers to have their cake and eat it, by slapping on "Hybrid Tax" to make them arbitrarily less damaging so people actually play the "Fun" classes... I guess AO gets around that by the nature of how flexible their trinity is for most game content, with the plethora of other classes being able to provide support in lieu of Enforcer/Soldier + Doctor combo (Fixer, Adventurer and in a pinch, Agent can all provide healing. While Fixer, Adventurer, Engineer and Keeper can all fulfil a Tank role. With Bureaucrat being able to CC heavily enough to negate the need of a tank or healer in a lot of content) so it's less noticeable that the "Tank" classes are able to smack things hard.

[MerlinCross]

I have NEVER played a game where tanks and healer/support classes ever matched the popularity of a dps class. Doesnt matter the genre. Moba, fps, ARPG, MMO, whatever. Your assertion that they are disliked purely out of poor design is false. Unless you are asserting that no game ever has actually created 'well crafted' tanks and healers.

The only time tanks have to wait for anything is when you skew the required numbers to extreme levels like 24 man raids with a 5 to 1 ratio of dps to tanks.

Tanks and support/healers are objectively never as popular as dps with the only exceptions being small windows when a game makes an extremely overpowered tank or support class that (usually) does more damage than a dps. So the only way to make a tank more popular than a dps is to make it better than a dps. Hmmm. So no, better designed trinities do not bring them to parity in popularity.

You're probably never going to get Tanks and Healers to be as popular as DPS for a number of factors. But at the same time you should be doing something to try and not only keep the players you have now, but also get more players into said roles. A well crafted kit and gameplay can help with keeping players invested. Which right now is only really the faster DF times and a far better chance at "In Need" rewards. Yeah, cause those will keep someone in this role. I mean this isn't a completely unique thing to Tanks and Healers; how many DPS players move to a new one if their job starts feeling either stale, or gets changed to be 'worse'. Sure they're staying within the same role but people will move on if they aren't having fun with a job/role. We need more than just extra rewards for playing Tanks.

Personally, I'm one of those players that does like playing Tank/Healer/Support in other games, such as Mobas. Yes I realize I'm the exception, not the rule. But again, FF14 makes me feel like a Meaty DPS or a DPS with Heals. How is it that WHM feels more RDM than RDM but that's a separate issue.

I started as a DPS because I wasn't sure I could handle the responsibilities that came with either role. It was something I looked into doing later on in my time with the game(Around Heavensward). Now I DPS because I just find it more rewarding and more honest about what it is. And to me, simply adding more numbers isn't going to make either role more fun.

[Lyth]

The only reason to do anything, irrespective of role, is the rainbow bar. And that is absolutely the devs' problem.

You don't need to generate the same amount of interest in tanks and healers as you do dps. Party slots are designed with the expectation that we're merely 1 in 4. It's also not like you have to do anything particularly intelligent to 'create' these players. You just have to create the gameplay that we're looking for. The problem is that game design is being driven by how a dps player might envision tanking and healing works, rather than how a tank would envision tanking or a healer would envision healing. Tanks are not just there to take damage. Healers are not just there to cast heals. Our worlds do not revolve around dps players, nor should they. We're here to help, but we're definitely not here to serve.

And if you fail to provide that experience, we'll find it elsewhere. And you'll be left with dps players looking for their single-player game experience. Hopefully the AI serves them better.

[Ivellior]

I agree the problem lies with the game design. But increasing damage will not fix the problem. They need to make actual tanking or healing matter. It would make a tremendous amount of difference for both tanks and healers if they increased the boss auto-attack damage by 200% or more for example. It would actually force both roles in doing what they are supposed to do.

Adding damage to tanks is nothing more than a band-aid. Not to mention that if they do add more damage, people will just keep asking for more and more damage. As people will never be happy unless they do the most damage. That goes for all classes not just tanks. If they increase tank damage, healers will ask for more healer damage and then damage dealers will ask for more damage, which will end up with tanks on the bottom. And it just goes on and on in a never ending circle.

Finally, they are selling a trinity game. When a new player comes here and sees healers, dps and tanks labels he expects the healers to heal, the tanks to tank and mitigate and the dps to do damage. When a player plays GW2 and reads their class descriptions he sees a hybrid system with no dedicated tanks or healers. They should either go full hybrid or do a proper segregation of classes. Right not, neither the side that wants damage/hybrid tanks, nor the side that wants trinity style tanking is happy.

[Ivellior]

The main reason why dps jobs are popular is because there is a low amount of team responsibility. You can jump in and play it like a single player game.

The quality that attracts a specific personality type to tanks or healers is that very same sense of team responsibility. It's the idea that you can make an impact on your teammates to help them succeed. And be thanked for it.

At the moment, the only way that you can help your teammates succeed is by providing a raid dps buff. Anything else (mitigation, enmity, keeping your team alive) is an expectation. Failure to do so will irritate your team, but doing so successfully will never earn you a word of thanks.

If you don't give tanks and healers a way to feel needed and rewarded, the very personality types that would seek out those roles ordinarily will lose interest in playing them. Everyone is focused on where the sub money is, but these are the people you actually need to be winning over. Because when your queues dry up, your new players dry up.

Damage however has nothing to do with responsibility. Damage only matters in end game content. In end game raids tanks have the least responsibility of all. Besides pressing the tank buster button, an occasional add or tank swap, tanks have the least mechanics to do. They can also safely "fail" the most mechanics, as they will rarely get one shot. DPS have much more responsibilities mechanics wise and have almost no leniency of failure, as they will usually die if they get hit by a mechanic. In raids, as far as mechanics goes, tanks are easy mode. Especially in the latest raids where the bosses even auto position themselves.

In normal content (24man raids, normal raids, dungeons etc) where personal responsibility for tanks and healers matters a lot more, damage means absolutely nothing (unless the entire group is severely undergeared).

If you want to feel rewarded and believe that damage is the only way to provide that, then you should be playing a damage dealer and be the 1st or 2nd on the damage list.