Homogenization and Simplicity in Tank Roles

[Absurdity]

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.

A lot of people were drawn to both tanks and healers for their carry potential, be that dps, healing or mitigation. A good tank and healer could make up for a lackluster party members while still entirely fulfilling their designated role at the same time, potentially saving a run because they went above and beyond what they were required to do. This has slowly been erroded over time and instead you're not only getting increasingly less interesting gameplay but also get told to "stay in your lane" and simply wipe when your party isn't up to the task.


Sure, this could be fixed with encounter design but right now they're simply not doing that.

[Mikey_R]

Tanks and healers can still carry bad DPS through a fight, that hasnt changed, all that has changed is the time it takes. You cannot have tanks doing DPS levels of damage, or even have them be close, otherwise you run into the grey area of, why bring a DPS over the more durable tank that is still doing about the same damage.

This goes back to, people only tanked because of short queue times and the fact they done alot of damage. If you increase a tanks DPS up to the level of s DPS, you can gauarntee alot of eopple will be back on tank for the sole purpose, but that doesn't help game balance.

Hopefully, they can focus more on encounter design in EW to make the tank role more exciting, expecially since they have added more defensive options, which sound like they unlock more offensive options, but we will have to wait and see what happens in that regard.

[Bhearil]

Tanks and healers can still carry bad DPS through a fight, that hasnt changed, all that has changed is the time it takes. You cannot have tanks doing DPS levels of damage, or even have them be close, otherwise you run into the grey area of, why bring a DPS over the more durable tank that is still doing about the same damage.

This goes back to, people only tanked because of short queue times and the fact they done alot of damage. If you increase a tanks DPS up to the level of s DPS, you can gauarntee alot of eopple will be back on tank for the sole purpose, but that doesn't help game balance.

Hopefully, they can focus more on encounter design in EW to make the tank role more exciting, expecially since they have added more defensive options, which sound like they unlock more offensive options, but we will have to wait and see what happens in that regard.

Never, even on Heavensward where tanks hit like trucks, people though to bring tanks instead dps, simply that a GOOD tank could add more to the table than a BAD dps. People liked because it had self expression and you noticed when you had a good tank.

Now unless you die it doesnt matter because in the grand scheme of things theres only keeping yourself alive what matters as a tank. You could press random keys that as long as you keep aggro and use defensive cds on points you are a "good" tank.

They are trying to "reward tanks for proper cd usage" but that creates a problem: Either is a must (aka do it or you die/penalizes harder or increases damage in some way) or it simply WONT MATTER because damage is king and extra tanking bonus probably wont save a healer from casting a single heal

[AziraSyuren]

Now unless you die it doesnt matter because in the grand scheme of things theres only keeping yourself alive what matters as a tank. You could press random keys that as long as you keep aggro and use defensive cds on points you are a "good" tank.

If you've ever done an Ultimate or gotten into high end optimization you'd know this is absolutely untrue. In that context, tanks are arguably the single most influential role. There's so much you can do there and anyone who implies otherwise is clearly showing what level they play on.

[Bhearil]

If you've ever done an Ultimate or gotten into high end optimization you'd know this is absolutely untrue. In that context, tanks are arguably the single most influential role. There's so much you can do there and anyone who implies otherwise is clearly showing what level they play on.

So basically you need to play the hardest content in game to stop headbutting your head against the keyboard? Thanks for proving the point because these days Ex and normal raids are a joke and even savage raids have become puggable on the first week so the leeway to mess it up and still succeed is extremely high.

Even on the hardest content the tank as long as they keep themselves alive and hold aggro have done their job, if they need to do their "max" dps (*chuckles*come on even healers do more than tanks) to beat an enrage means that dps jobs are underperforming or that is the first week and everyone is undergeared and will fall easily as soon as the raid gets better equip

[Lyth]

I'm a bit intrigued by the statement 'using defensive enhancements at optimal times will grant greater benefits'. If we're going in for Demon's Souls style parry windows with stagger I'm in for this. At least during my off time when I'm not playing Reaper.

[AziraSyuren]

So basically you need to play the hardest content in game to stop headbutting your head against the keyboard? Thanks for proving the point because these days Ex and normal raids are a joke and even savage raids have become puggable on the first week so the leeway to mess it up and still succeed is extremely high.

Even on the hardest content the tank as long as they keep themselves alive and hold aggro have done their job, if they need to do their "max" (*chuckles*come on even healers do more than tanks) dps is needed to beat an enrage means that dps jobs are underperforming or that is the first week and everyone is undergeared and will fall easily as soon as the raid gets better equip

Yeah no you clearly don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You’re just saying what sounds intuitively correct, but it’s obvious you’ve never been in content of that level and don’t know what it really entails.

It’s just more proof that the problem really is content design, not the design of the jobs. All jobs are equally braindead to DF expert dungeon heroes, and even to one-and-done weekly Savage green parsers. It’s just that the rewards for playing at that level aren’t felt as strongly on anything other than dps jobs because the margin of error is so high and their decisions don’t matter.

But, once more, that’s fight design. Not job design. If every fight had that margin of error tightened, it’d become rather obvious just how interesting and synergistic tanking and healing are.

People are blinding themselves to the cause because they can only see the result.

OF healers, bless their hearts, are often more correct about the true causes of these problems than most people who post in these threads.

[KatsuraJun]

I'm a bit intrigued by the statement 'using defensive enhancements at optimal times will grant greater benefits'. If we're going in for Demon's Souls style parry windows with stagger I'm in for this. At least during my off time when I'm not playing Reaper.

i don't see the functional difference between this and pre-duration buff TBN, or HW era sheltron

you had to time those pretty well or they'd fall off/get eaten by an autoattack. it's not exactly a new, imo.
just with positive reinforcement instead of negative.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I'm a bit intrigued by the statement 'using defensive enhancements at optimal times will grant greater benefits'. If we're going in for Demon's Souls style parry windows with stagger I'm in for this. At least during my off time when I'm not playing Reaper.

I suspect that several of the defensive actions will have "Grants [buff] after taking damage equal to XX% of maximum HP" and an action procced by said buff. Doing so will push said actions to be used over the invuns for tank busters.

[Absurdity]

That would atleast be an interesting change, increased dps through good use of mitigation.

I'm skeptical about that changing the use of invulns however. The dps increase would have to be significant to justify it over the ease of use, easier healing and potential to make mechanics easier that invulns currently provide.