Homogenization and Simplicity in Tank Roles

[MrSmiley]

I actually dropped my warrior in SHB because it got really boring to play. I kinda want to go tank in endwalker but... if they stay the way they are, I probably wont.

I also feel warrior should have kept stances because it was the only one that it felt like a proper mechanic on.

[Mikey_R]

I also feel warrior should have kept stances because it was the only one that it felt like a proper mechanic on.

And how you you do that? If you kept a defensive stance and an offensive stance, then poeple will just use the offensive stance, the whole game before ShB will attest to that. If it is more along the lines of Bard, where it is 2 stances that you have to switch between, then what are the gameplay differences going to be between the 2 and at what point would the Devs say, no, that is too much work for a tank, who is meant to have simplified rotations.

Yes, it was the stance system that worked best, but lets be honest, how often did you really take the time to swap between them after the initial enmity generation.

[AziraSyuren]

The only tank I want significant changes to is DRK, honestly. None of them need more than a few tweaks, or in WAR's case, a few more buttons to press outside their IR window.

I'm not expecting much to change either.

[Bhearil]

Problem is unless tanks have significant changes will be even more in demand on Endwalker if they just get "more of the same".

The fact that theres so few tanks (and healers) clearly shows a design faliure and no ammount of free mounts can solve it

[Mikey_R]

Is it a design failure, or is it that poeple just do not want to tank/heal in the first place, no matter what they do.

If you, hypothetically created the perfect tank, would the DPS players start to play it? or would the fact that it is a tank, the role that they do not want to play, be enough to deter them? Same with healers.

Sure, there could be some design failure there, but how much has that really contributed overall to the state of tanking/healing? Maybe it is just encounter design not being hard enough for tanks/healers to necessitate the need for a simplified rotation. Having more things for a tank to look out for will help keep you distracted from the simple rotation, making things harder to heal, forcing healers to use GCD heals to heal everyone and making the decision of, should I re-apply the DoT or delay it to get the AoE heal out.

As this has probably alluded to, I don't necessarily think the roles are bad, it is just the encounter design doesn't support it.

[AziraSyuren]

Yeah.

They aren't going to- and shouldn't- design tanks with the intention of drawing DPS players in. Tanks and healers have unique responsibilities that a lot of DPS mains simply don't resonate with. Tanking fundamentally doesn't appeal to them, and that is not a design failure whatsoever.

[Bhearil]

You cant blame your consumer for your system faliure, if you are not making tanks and healers enticing to play thats the DESIGNER FAULT, you cant blame your players for that. Its not even to drag dps to try tanking, is that tanks and healers are saying "screw this crap" and going to dps jobs instead because they are tired and bored of such jobs because those roles became a chore (someone must do it no matter how crappy they are)

If you sell a chocolate that tastes like feet, you cant say "its the consumer fault for having such a delicate palate!"

[AziraSyuren]

It's not a matter of blame. It's a matter of the fact that people have different interests and things are designed so that players can fulfill those interests. Tanking is not supposed to appeal to every player. Neither is healing or DPSing. It wouldn't be good game design if it did.

We're already seeing the results of tanking that's too similar to DPSing in a lot of ways.

[Bhearil]

Theres a difference between tanking and healing being for everyone and that many veteran tanks and healers leaving the ship because they are tired of the same crap expansion after expansion all for the sake of players that WONT PLAY them.

SE had asociated brain dead to play aka homogeneization = lower the access entry so that new players will try them which is obvious is not the case. Losing several vets and gaining 1 mediocre tank/healer in exchange is not a good trade off and we keep seeing the same tendence. Heck we have an expansion with a new tanking class and after the start tanks again were in high demand AGAIN, imagine on Endwalkers if they screw it up again how fun is gonna be waiting for Tank unless you have a premade because the numbers will be lower than now

[Mikey_R]

How many of those poeple played tank just because of fast queue times and being able to do damage on par with a DPS? You can say they have been made simpler, but I would say the previous expansions were more detrimental to a tanks gameplay than we have now.

Tanks are now tanks. They take less damage than everyone else and deal less damage than DPS. Enmity is purely on the tanks rather than being at the mercy of whether the DPS decided to pop Diversion/Lucid Dreaming. That was just unnecessary busy work and I would frequently on my Monk generate enough enmity to rip the enemy away from the tank, even using diversion, just because the buff window just didn'y line up with Diversion. You can say, well, use enmity combos/switch to tank stance, but then you are just gimping yourself not because of your play, but because of someone else. People also say homoginisation is a bad thing, however i would argue that some form of homogeneity is needed to prevent some tanks from being taken over others.

The main issue with tanks right now is not tank design, it is encouner design. With bosses auto positioning themselves, no real reason to mitigate tank busters in non extreme/savage content etc. Improve the encounter design to accomodate tanks better and people might start coming back. Tanks were 'simplified' for a reason, however, that reason hasn't amounted to much.