Tanking feels unimportant

[MerlinCross]

You're sort of missing the point. What separates an agro combo from a dps combo at a fundamental level? Nothing at all. When halone and royal authority were separate skills all that changed was one traded a few points of potency for an agro mod. You wouldn't be doing any more managing agro because the math nuts would just figure out exactly how much a agro a dps can generate over time and create a tank rotation based on that. Even if you added complexity to agro such that it clearly separated the good tanks from the bad all you've actually done is changed the number the tank is trying to maximize. In a way you could just change the label on the tank numbers of on parses from "dps" to "agro" generated. You're still ultimately performing the same actions a dps does only changing what you call it.

What I'm trying to get at here is that you're barking up the wrong tree or perhaps you don't actually want what you think you want. Perhaps you just want something more complicated to do during fights as a tank. That's fine and I agree they could do some more with tanks. On the other hand if you really want to separate yourself from a dps we're going to have to dive down a rabbit hole.

SE is catering to the player who just wants to be an all powerful god. That's why dungeons are so easy. Most video games do this, they don't ask for much real skill but make you think you're doing amazing. When you play something competitively like a fighting game you realize just how much games have been lying to you. Unless SE were to essentially say casual players can't tank, you'd get a lot of skill bloat. There are ways to make a tank feel like their role is reducing damage and controlling the mob more than dpsing but it would require a radical redesign of the tanking mechanics of this game. Most games go with the dps with armor route because they play it safe and this game plays it safest of all.

Going for the realistic here I'd like them to do with passage of arms type skills. It would be mostly window dressing but it would feel a lot more like you're actually defending your party.

We agree this game plays it safe.

That’s why tanking feels unimportant and there. You aren’t a tank your a DPS because they keep shaving off mechanics for tanks and refuse to add anything.

Also the “Aggro” debate, short term vs long term. Long term is; Kill boss before enrage. Short term is; making sure the DPS don’t get past you and get nuked, move/turn the boss, make a mess. Right now tanks really don’t have a short term goal/worry to deal with. Sit, DPS, DDR and hit CD when the telegraphed and on a timer buster comes out. Okay I’ve said I was a bad tank before but I had more fun being bad back then than being average/good now; as in I wasn’t good enough to never worry about Aggro.

And saying “But the math will be solved” is a bad response because that applies to everything. Damage, Aggro, Healing, Placement, Gear/Materia; everything. If we can’t add in aggro back because the rotation will be solved, why add in anything else, it will be solved. May as well make raids a math equation and save time

Can we at least agree that Tanks need something else but it won’t happen.

[Yorumi]

And saying “But the math will be solved” is a bad response because that applies to everything. Damage, Aggro, Healing, Placement, Gear/Materia; everything. If we can’t add in aggro back because the rotation will be solved, why add in anything else, it will be solved. May as well make raids a math equation and save time

Can we at least agree that Tanks need something else but it won’t happen.

What I mean by the first point is that if you had say an agro combo and dps combo you'd have no more complicated rotation. You'd just maximize by doing say 1 agro, 2 dps, repeat, or 1 agro, 1 dps, repeat, etc. I mean back in HW when I was running warrior on a group pull I'd do about 2 overpowers and call it a day. For a boss it was just an agro combo and turn off tank stance, they'd never catch up. My point is just that it won't solve anything.

Yeah I agree it would be nice to give more for tanks to do. A simple solution would be to give more interrupts to tanks and make them actually interrupt the actions of a boss. I don't totally excuse the devs but they are kind of stuck in a bad position. If they make one tank more complicated people will whine that it's not more powerful as a result. If it's more powerful as a result then it becomes required or trivializes content.

[BarretOblivion]

oring and unimportant to me for the most part.

Oh, you know because Tanks don't do as much damage, we could actually throw out the aggro combo some more. Oh right, tanks only feel good if they do damage right okay my bad.

Yeah okay I was a 'bad tank' cause I threw out the Aggro combos. I couldn't generate enough aggro on pure damage alone, I was 'wrong'. But I felt more like a tank role back then, and had more enjoyment in the sudden realization of "Oh hek, I need more aggro BLM is catching up". I never blamed DPS, I blamed myself for not paying attention.

Now? I just assume I have Aggro to the point I forget to turn on stance pretty often. I just assume I will auto aggro. Heck I wouldn't be surprised next Expansion they do that, with Stance giving a aggro bonus in Boss fights so the two tanks can figure out who's MT.

No BLM should ever be on you back then when they had Lucid to dump thier hate, that was on them not on you. A one button 80% hate drop. It would be a different story if they were still at that point using lucid/diversion.
Also, no tank I know ever even touched or used aggro combo unless they didn't have a ninja, and if they did they would do one maybe the entire fight.

[Sawamura]

Actually is more fun and feel more alive for tank or healer when you party with baddy in roulette lol. Cause we has to stay much more focus dodge and using cooldowns to survive the whole run. If we are party with decent-average players we usually just hit 1 cooldown and finish everything before need to use another.

[Lammas]

To anyone saying tanks feel like they just DPS now, it's been like that for years now.
In a similar vein anyone saying enmity is a joke now: it already kind of was in Stormblood. Dungeon mob? Couple of enmity AOEs and you've got them. Any boss? 1 or 2 aggro combos and switch to DPS stance, which was also a lot more engaging stance to be in anyway. We did lose Diversion and aggrodump skills but we also lost the compulsory pre-pull diversion & dump on cooldown. When you have buttons everyone is pressing like that you might as well streamline the process and get rid of them similar to the situation we used to have with protect.
The only time aggro really needed any managing was if the tank was behind on gear or you had people who didn't use those aforementioned skills for whatever reason. The only downside to losing any of this is not being able to see shirk-trolling in NESTs videos anymore and that's really it.

The easy way to handle aggro management in anything below extremes and savages was to keep your tank stance on all the time and funnily enough that is exactly what you do now too. You just don't have to deal with situations like not being able to use blood weapon because Mr. Midare over there is limiting your possibilities by not using diversion. What you have now as a norm is what you always hoping you'd see more in SB: a situation where you can freely use all your abilities without worrying about aggrocombos or stancedancing.

I don't know if this has been talked about to death but the feel of the tank role in ff14 just feels very unimportant and I'm gonna rant. I haven't played this game as long as a lot of people but I was tanking well before ShB and you felt appreciated and were often thanked for playing the role and you wanted to perform perfectly (at least I did).

I'm not going to sit here and say I agree with all the class changes because I don't and I'm confused by overlooked issues but my biggest issue is with enmity. All the easy aoes the tanks have gotten and simplified rotations coupled with insane enmity generation just ruined the role imo. everyone and their dog is running around as a tank especially GNB and it's not nearly as common to get any player commendations even when you played perfectly because...who cares. I started leveling a healer for a bit of fun and the horrendous tanks are in no short supply but I feel like these tank changes just trivialized the role and promote bad gameplay.

pugging with other tanks? there used to be conversations about who was going to MT and OT etc and now you best just turn off your threat generator and let the GNB rush in even if they have no idea what they're doing. I'm ranting but it's sad to me for those out there who have dedicated themselves to the tank role for a long time get pushed into obscurity by the devs allowing any idiot to tank.

Healers are getting more recognizion now. New tank and no new healer + healers getting kinda shafted means that role is a lot more in demand now. You say tanking is easy and simplified and that anyone can do it now but in the very same post you say you see a lot of horrible tanks. Also, the devs have always allowed you to play whatever you wanted and it's not like a lot of jobs in other roles didn't get streamlined too.

[Maeka]

I really don't get the need to feel all-important to be honest. I really don't.

You have 4, 8, or 24 people who are all there for the same reason: to clear the content.

Some people are there to deal as much damage as they can. You have some people who are there to heal anytime healing is needed.

Other people need to make sure that enemies are attacking them, and the enemies are facing away from the rest of the group when that is relevant, and these people also need to use their defensive abilities that help them do this, to take as little damage as possible while they keep enemies on them.

Anytime Healers and Tanks are not concerned with healing, and grabbing enemies, or using defensive abilities, they are instead throwing what DPS they can, because it's everybody's job to see to the enemies dying.

It's a Team.

No one is supposed to be more important than anybody else. They are all there for the same end goal in mind.

[Casualty]

I think that the issue isn't with tanks at all. Enmity hasn't been an issue for a LONG time prior to Shadowbringers and was barely an issue in Heavensward. The problem is that for the vast majority of content - basically everything outside of savage/ultimate - there is no pressure on tanks or healers. There is danger I suppose in mass pulls, at least somewhat, but that can be mitigated by breaking up how much you grab at once. So even if you are a new tank or have underperforming DPS or healers, you can make the run virtually risk proof. On most of this boss content you can pull your cooldowns off your hot bar as it doesn't matter. It doesn't kill you as much as it inconveniences your healer.

It's not the job/role. If survival is our forte, it's that for most content nothing is really testing our job or ability.

[Makeda]

The complaints in this thread could be cross posted to every MMO I have played in the last decade.
The problem is industry wide... and it reflects the fact that back in the old days when the differences in the roles were much more extreme casual content was nearly impossible to get into because you couldn't get people to play anything but DPS even on alts because generally most of them wouldn't touch tanks or healers even on an alt and the tanks and healers generally couldn't manage the time away from the main to have an alt of another role...

Making green and blue DPS didn't start in FFXIV. Not sure where it started... but they did it to make fast lugging possible.

It sucks, but it might have been necessary...

[RinaB]

I had no idea my rant would get this many people talking. I've read every post and it's nice to see so many inputs and opinions and I agree with a lot of what I've read. I believe that if they want to keep tanks they way they are they need more tank mechanics in fights and I would really like them to take make hard modes of the current dungeons with said mechanics as well. they don't have to be purely mitigation mechanics either, like i don't know, they've come up with 1000 different aoe ideas I'm sure they could figure out some interesting things for tanks to do and deal with.

[purgatori]

I may not like where tanking is at right now, but it's not because tanking is more accessible. It needs to be more accessible, because it has been an under-subscribed role. If (at least some) DPS-ing jobs are accessible, why should tanking and healing not be on the same level? We already have tiered content for providing more skilful players with a challenge, so I don't think it really helps the game to put a higher skill premium on some roles over others.