Is anyone surprised at this point?

[Lyth]

...

Perhaps we should re-examine which game we're playing, then. Any game that is skill driven is going to have an element of competition. There's always going to be an element of failure or loss. It takes a certain amount of maturity to shrug that off and use that frustration to try and get better. I would feel genuinely mortified to be handed an easy win, and I'm surprised that you aren't. I actually find it quite odd that you were gloating about your job's supposed superiority earlier in the thread. That's nothing to do with your skill level. And if anything, it'll just make it more embarrassing to lose out to someone playing a less 'superiorly-designed' job. It's to your disadvantage.

Everyone wants more stuff. More damage, more loot, more rewards. But it's their scarcity that drives their value. If everyone has the same weapon as you, that weapon isn't all that special. If everyone does the same damage regardless of skill, effort, or performance, then the damage you do isn't meaningful. If everyone clears the same content, then being able to clear isn't that special. But that's what we're moving towards. We're afraid of letting tanks and healers fail, which is why you don't have impact any more. I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where 'raid content' becomes swarmable raid bosses that get cleared whether you live or die in the encounter. You participated? You win. Buy more glamours. All the Bravest, now for PC.

And again, unless you're willing to let your players become frustrated, unless your rewards have scarcity to them, unless you have a skill differential, and unless you have winners and losers, the rewards in the game lose value and people lose interest. A short term gain becomes a long term loss. The devs are cashing out while they can.

I think that it's reasonable to look for damage buffs, but it's to your own interest to seek it out in a way that adds depth to your job. Freebies devalue what you do, and devalue what all tanks do. If everyone can do it, there's no reason to improve.

[Hierro]

Perhaps we should re-examine which game we're playing, then. Any game that is skill driven is going to have an element of competition. There's always going to be an element of failure or loss.

At the end of the day, you need to realize this is not a competitive game. There's no winning or losing when the objective is for your party to beat the content. Either you all win, and get the clear, or you don't. Your co-tank is your partner, not your adversary. You just can't win or lose against someone who's not even competing against you.

I enjoy partaking in healthy "othering", much in the same way people will show pride in being from Los Angeles and gloat about how The Lakers beat The Celtics to someone from Boston. I love WAR, and WAR loves me. I love seeing my home team win, of course I'm going to gloat about it. But at no one point am I actually belittling or berating others for not having done as well as I, nor am I going to beat myself up because I die and end up with a terrible parse compared to my co-tank, and I'm sure as hell not going to think my value as a player with the level of experience I have has been lessened. I'll play the game I love and improve for the fun of it, and that's it!

Let's be realistic here for a moment, saying the devs are cashing out for handing out potency buffs to WAR is silly. Fact of the matter is it's just not as popular as it used to be, especially when DRK copied it's playstyle for accessibility's sake, GNB's the shiny new toy, and PLD's the known posterboy for next expac. Listen, the point is that no one ever said this game was competitive, and no one ever said you'd be "rewarded" justly for playing a "harder" class. As cheesy as it sounds, the real success is in the friends you make along the way. It'd do you some good to realize that.