my thoughts on how to make tank jobs more engaging

[bundythenoob]

Firstly, I want to say I am satisfied with a few of the changes to tanking in 5.0. Some of my favourite changes to tanking in general were the removal of emnity, which helps lower the barrier of entry to tanking. I also like the streamlining of the various actions, such as AOE combos and defencive cooldowns, which makes it easier to carry your fundamentals over between jobs.

I do not, however, feel that the identities of classes were preserved. It does not feel as rewarding to play the new DRK in comparison to the older gameplay, nor does it feel as impressive to dole out damage as a PLD, despite their toolkit evolving as opposed to WAR and DRK. I feel that a lot of this has to come down to the loss of both unique gameplay between the jobs, as well as the lack of decision making that helps differentiate the experienced players from the newcomers.

EDIT: Since I am almost 100% sure Square will not give us back STB DRK and WAR due to their obsession with accessibility, I have been thinking a lot about how to make the current DRK feel more rewarding to play, since I believe they are more likely to change this build. I want to mention a few general ideas that I've been thinking about first though.

1. Streamlined Abilities:
there is a distinct lack of job identity that is not present in the form of tank stances. I loved how awesome it felt to be a sturdy PLD and take less damage than the other jobs, I loved seeing a fully geared WAR walk into the instance and seeing the HUGE health pool in comparison to the others. I am sure that the feel of the older tank stances can be reintroduced with some modifications to their mitigation values, then this would help add some flavour to the tank jobs.

2. Tank damage
As stated above, I feel that Tank damage is at a low, and it's not due so much to the numbers in my opinion, but due to the lack of reward a tank gets for maxing their kit. I feel that DRK and WAR do not reward skillful gameplay choices or rotation optimization. Tanks should be able to dish out a lot of damage if they are willing to put in the work to learn their jobs, and this will give new tank players a skillset to look up to, medium level tanks some goals to work towards, and end level tanks will have a rewarding experience once more. this i think can be achieved by tweaking both WAR and DRK abilities so that they come up more often, thus giving them faster actions per minute, which would give them more resource to spend, and as a result they will deal more damage. PLD and GNB both feel that they have the speed, but they would have to have their potencies adjusted to make up for new damage threshold of WAR and DRK, as well as their sustainability buffed in terms of their defencive kits, as they are more defencive/support orientated tanks.

Ultimately, as i am not a game dev, so I am not sure if my opinions will be of any help. I only have feelings that I hope can be conveyed, and ideas which i hope can lead to better, more rewarding gameplay. I have a hunch as to how we can increase Tanking damage by increasing actions, and therefore make the jobs more engaging, but I will need a test dummy to propose my ideas with. so lets use my old favourite job, DRK!