What would make playing a tank fun?

Checkmath

Hey guys
Lately there was that discussion about tanks not liking to mainly being responsible for debuffing enemies/buffing the group. Tanks surely want to be useful in one way or another and I bet some tanks would get bored, if they only would have to taunt and hold the boss at one position. Players are differently experienced, so that one player may be very stressed by only taunting and surviving as a tank, meanwhile others play the buff ***, because there is just nothing else to do between taunting, evading damage and healing up.
So now for my question please just once forget about maximal dps of your group, about healing or the stable position of the boss. What kind of game or boss mechanics would make playing a tank exciting. Would you love to gather orbs or shards, which prevents you from being one-shotted? Would you like to have some tactical positioning of the boss, changes of fight places due to getting buffs or debuffs depending where the boss is placed? Maybe also constant change of places to even be able to do damage to the boss or preventing him from gaining additional mechanics when staying too long at one place? Or maybe some kind of task for the tanks like transporting an item from one place to another while tanking? It also could be sacrificing a lot of health for your group members by activating important synergies, which otherwise would kill your group when not activated (naturally it would kill everyone else but the tank when activating).
So what would make it more fun for YOU to play a tank?

Tavine

Well first I personally think ESO is going the right way if you compare the static fights of the past to the movement based combat we have in Cloudrest right now. As a tank or an offtank I might want some more diverse responsibilities in a raid. I know this game is quite old from an Elder Scrolls perspective, and way more static, but SWTOR offered a vast variety for tanks in their raid "Dread Palace". All of the following examples are based on the videolink as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1918&v=eR-O4IXNrk0

For instance take the first Encounter (4:00 min) basic tank swap mechanic (building of stacks) / take care of adds
Second Encounter (13:00 min) positioning at its best. Boss is never allowed to look at group while floor vanishes
Third Encounter (23:00 min) Apart from the positiong - tanks have to communicate which crystal to destroy (similar to Mazzatun final boss sight)
Fourth Encounter (32:00 min) Tanks, Healers and DPS get seperated (tanks have to survive a boss for 30 sec, Healers have to keep an innocent npc alive, dps have to kill an npc - all in 30 sec)

As a tank I like to have my responsibilities but if you take Asylum or Cloudrest from the perspective of an offtank it is always only a taunt - stack and wait for the dps to do their job. The perspective of a maintank is even more boring. Taunt - evade red circles, triangles or whatever and run.

I hope this helps that we get a more diverse tank challenge in future raids.

Ectheliontnacil

Nothing

hakan

Tanks already have those tho. like coa titan where tank pulls those spinning floating mobs instead of usual sitting in front of the boss. There are couple of examples of this. But yeah maybe more of them could help.

Also the mindset of the player. Leading the group is fun.

EvilCroc

AOE taunt.

Casul

I love playing tank on vAA, keeping all the axes while my group burns the boss makes me feel helpful. I like having that I can tank anything feeling and being able to self sustain so the healers can focus on keeping the dps alive makes me feel like a contributing role to the success of the raid. Running torugs and alkosh doesn’t let me do that on some of the other content.

Honestly I would enjoy tanking a lot more if the tanking sets felt more viable. Most of the group survivablity sets are horrible and honestly damage is put above survivability in pretty much all cases.

jaschacasadiob16_ESO

Tanking is about responsibility.
Let the small kids dressed up like Barbies play DDs.

nemvar

EvilCroc wrote: »

AOE taunt.

Terrible idea. It would make trash pull incredibly boring. Currently you have to root -> taunt heavy attackers -> chain ranged. Wih an AOE taunt this would change into AOE taunt -> chain ranged. I can't imagine anything more boring.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

There is more to tanking then just standing there you can dps at the same time, most bosses 3rd attack is the issue, so you can be on bk bar dps for a second with bar swaping, getting aoe's down like tangling webs etc, but that relys on ranged dd's proc'ing it

Checkmath

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

There is more to tanking then just standing there you can dps at the same time, most bosses 3rd attack is the issue, so you can be on bk bar dps for a second with bar swaping, getting aoe's down like tangling webs etc, but that relys on ranged dd's proc'ing it

thats why i am asking. since only taunting and standing in place is only half the work and would be boring, therefore there either needs to be more like playing buff ***, do some mediocre dps, provide synergies (kind of belongs to buffing group) or some additional tasks for tanks.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

Checkmath wrote: »

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

There is more to tanking then just standing there you can dps at the same time, most bosses 3rd attack is the issue, so you can be on bk bar dps for a second with bar swaping, getting aoe's down like tangling webs etc, but that relys on ranged dd's proc'ing it

thats why i am asking. since only taunting and standing in place is only half the work and would be boring, therefore there either needs to be more like playing buff ***, do some mediocre dps, provide synergies (kind of belongs to buffing group) or some additional tasks for tanks.

my tank can pull in 6k-15k dps on trails with aoe's etc depending on boss, i use a staff on bk bar

Pennytence

To illustrate what makes a fight "fun" for a tank, I'd like to compare two fights - Twins from MoL and Cloudrest. The latter made me regret ever rolling a tank, so this may be somewhat biased.

The first one is fun because you have to: Manage the bosses; keep them turned in a good way so that negates and other nasties doesn't fall on your group, while also keeping them close enough together to be able to reach adds/get some cleave in - and at the same time keep them far enough apart so that you don't get bombed by conversions. At the same time you have to manage the add spawns; be quick to chain them in/taunt them so that your group can cleave them down before they become a problem. During this you also have to keep track of side swaps, eventual purges if you want to run those, dodge negates and do your normal buff/debuffing. All in all you're constantly on your toes and active - and if you play it well, your group will notice. This is fun.

Compare this to the piece of gosa that is Z'maja. Your job there (beyond the standard buff/debuff) is to taunt the boss so that your group doesn't get hit by the purple orb of death, period. Oh, yes, you may also go into another realm and - taunt the boss so that your group doesn't get hit by the purple orb of death. That's it. The boss moves on its own, so you're unable to do anything about the positioning. Sure, you can handle some adds, but in general they just burn anyway. This means that in a very long fight, all you're doing is catching purple orbs and hoping everyone else does their part, because you're unable to do anything that feels like contribution.

What I'm trying to say is that just being a damage sponge is boring, boring, boring - and it doesn't make you feel like you evolve as a player, nor does it make it feel like you're doing much but holding rmb (and at times watching Netflix). Give us more to manage - movement, adds, angles, you name it - so we can feel like we too get better at the fight and we can grow.

Another problem with these new fake trials and what makes them even less interesting as a tank is; the lack of trash. While I understand that some people detest trash and want to skip as much of is as possible, lethal and scary trash is where a good tank really shines, and as such can get their fun. The hallmark of a good tank is after all to be able to manipulate these trashpacks into something that the dps safely and efficiently can turn into a bonfire. Without these moments, and with sponge-like fights like ZM, there's not much fun to be had, and as such, I can understand why people wouldn't want to tank.

EvilCroc

nemvar wrote: »

EvilCroc wrote: »

AOE taunt.

Terrible idea. It would make trash pull incredibly boring. Currently you have to root -> taunt heavy attackers -> chain ranged. Wih an AOE taunt this would change into AOE taunt -> chain ranged. I can't imagine anything more boring.

Why do everyone want things to be fun?
Mechanics should be effective, even if they are "boring".
Just do your job. No fun allowed.

Lucky for you, ZOS is against AOE taunts in this game.

ZeroXFF

1. Enough damage to do solo content without dying of old age (~10k DPS with a full tank setup would be enough, buff Low Slash by adding a DoT and the Power Slam morph of Power Bash, since nobody would use it in PvP anyways, for example by scaling it with max. HP and making it proc similarly to Crystal Frags when blocking, resulting in the next cast of it being free), because expecting just this one role to carry around an additional set of gear just to be able to do the easiest content in the game is unreasonable. And if anyone thinks it's unbalanced, I can link you a video from WOW from back in MOP days when I used to play it, where both of our tanks do 1/2 the damage of the top DD in a progression run. Then you can also take a look at the Brawler or Warrior classes in Tera, both of whom do considerable amounts of damage while being fully capable tanks.

2. Tanking is the more fun the less I have to rely on the healer to do my job. I like surviving big (or many) hits without shouting for shards or heals. That's why I like to build for survival and sustain. I loved it when we did vHRC hm with our guild, and after I was told by the guy who had done it before to equip selfish survival gear, the OT asked whether I even need Guard, because I could survive for quite a while even when we were about to wipe and the healers were dead. Another example is off-tanking adds in vSO on Ozara. While that fight by itself has quite annoying mechanics (the damn troll doesn't want to move), it is rewarding when I can last through it without healers even so much as looking in my direction in my cozy corner. In other words, I like it when I can allow the group to focus on something other than keeping me alive.

3. Bonus point: Being able to bar swap without dropping block. Sometimes I have utility on my back bar that I would like to use, but I can't because I have 7 axes in vAA beating on me.

Also, I don't find it boring if I don't have to smash buttons all the time like a mad man, there is more to a fight than that. But I would welcome it if tanks could also do non-negligible amounts of damage while tanking. It could be that one thing to do for those who do find it boring when they aren't smashing buttons all the time.

TL;DR:
1. More DPS to be able to do solo content, and possibly as that "something" to do between taunting bosses/adds, healing and holding block.
2. Mechanics or design that makes groups welcome tanks with "selfish" builds, for example ones that send us on mini solo missions that test our survival, and make the job for the rest of the group the easier the longer we can keep it up.

Huyen

ZeroXFF wrote: »

1. Enough damage to do solo content without dying of old age (~10k DPS with a full tank setup would be enough, buff the Low Slash by adding a DoT and the Power Slam morph of Power Bash, since nobody would use it in PvP anyways, for example by scaling it with max. HP and making it proc similarly to Crystal Frags when blocking, resulting in the next cast of it being free), because expecting just this one role to carry around an additional set of gear just to be able to do the easiest content in the game is unreasonable. And if anyone thinks it's unbalanced, I can link you a video from WOW from back in MOP days when I used to play it, where both of our tanks do 1/2 the damage of the top DD in a progression run. Then you can also take a look at the Brawler or Warrior classes in Tera, both of whom do considerable amounts of damage while being fully capable tanks.

2. Tanking is the more fun the less I have to rely on the healer to do my job. I like surviving big (or many) hits without shouting for shards or heals. That's why I like to build for survival and sustain. I loved it when we did vHRC hm with our guild, and after I was told by the guy who had done it before to equip selfish survival gear, the OT asked whether I even need Guard, because I could survive for quite a while even when we were about to wipe and the healers were dead. Another example is off-tanking adds in vSO on Ozara. While that fight by itself has quite annoying mechanics (the damn troll doesn't want to move), it is rewarding when I can last through it without healers even so much as looking in my direction in my cozy corner. In other words, I like it when I can allow the group to focus on something other than keeping me alive.

3. Bonus point: Being able to bar swap without dropping block. Sometimes I have utility on my back bar that I would like to use, but I can't because I have 7 axes in vAA beating on me.

Also, I don't find it boring if I don't have to smash buttons all the time like a mad man, there is more to a fight than that. But I would welcome it if tanks could also do non-negligible amounts of damage while tanking. It could be that one thing to do for those who do find it boring when they aren't smashing buttons all the time.

TL;DR:
1. More DPS to be able to do solo content, and possibly as that "something" to do between taunting bosses/adds, healing and holding block.
2. Mechanics or design that makes groups welcome tanks with "selfish" builds, for example ones that send us on mini solo missions that test our survival, and make the job for the rest of the group the easier the longer we can keep it up.

Couldnt agree more about the dps part. I do love my warden tank (finally something Im good at) but solo questing is so horrible I actually started leveling a stamplar for solo purposes only....

Guppet

Tanks in this game are actually far more involved and fun that other MMO’s. The whole block and dodge mechanics are great.

The issue is feeling like a slave to dps players. Your primary role should be hold aggro, stay alive & clump mobs.

Buffing others dps should not be a tanks job. Sunder aside.

Dps buffs should come from dps skills not others gear. Gear should only effect you. But that’s a big change to fix that.

Additionally survivabity needs removing from dps players, they should need the tank to take the damage and the healer to heal (healers are even less fun because of this currently).

Currently healers and tanks exist to enable dps, the devs need to pander less to dps players. Make them need healers and tanks to stay alive and you’ll find more people will fill those roles.

Also on the concept of tanks dps when solo, are you guys kidding? You trying to solo in tank gear or something? If your Stam equip Hundings and spriggans if your magic equip spinners and Julianos. It’s not hard to do. Your dps will be well over 10k. Just use one or two dps skills. This game allows flexibility use it!

Sophocles1

ZeroXFF wrote: »

1. Enough damage to do solo content without dying of old age (~10k DPS with a full tank setup would be enough, buff Low Slash by adding a DoT and the Power Slam morph of Power Bash, since nobody would use it in PvP anyways, for example by scaling it with max. HP and making it proc similarly to Crystal Frags when blocking, resulting in the next cast of it being free), because expecting just this one role to carry around an additional set of gear just to be able to do the easiest content in the game is unreasonable. And if anyone thinks it's unbalanced, I can link you a video from WOW from back in MOP days when I used to play it, where both of our tanks do 1/2 the damage of the top DD in a progression run. Then you can also take a look at the Brawler or Warrior classes in Tera, both of whom do considerable amounts of damage while being fully capable tanks.

2. Tanking is the more fun the less I have to rely on the healer to do my job. I like surviving big (or many) hits without shouting for shards or heals. That's why I like to build for survival and sustain. I loved it when we did vHRC hm with our guild, and after I was told by the guy who had done it before to equip selfish survival gear, the OT asked whether I even need Guard, because I could survive for quite a while even when we were about to wipe and the healers were dead. Another example is off-tanking adds in vSO on Ozara. While that fight by itself has quite annoying mechanics (the damn troll doesn't want to move), it is rewarding when I can last through it without healers even so much as looking in my direction in my cozy corner. In other words, I like it when I can allow the group to focus on something other than keeping me alive.

3. Bonus point: Being able to bar swap without dropping block. Sometimes I have utility on my back bar that I would like to use, but I can't because I have 7 axes in vAA beating on me.

Also, I don't find it boring if I don't have to smash buttons all the time like a mad man, there is more to a fight than that. But I would welcome it if tanks could also do non-negligible amounts of damage while tanking. It could be that one thing to do for those who do find it boring when they aren't smashing buttons all the time.

TL;DR:
1. More DPS to be able to do solo content, and possibly as that "something" to do between taunting bosses/adds, healing and holding block.
2. Mechanics or design that makes groups welcome tanks with "selfish" builds, for example ones that send us on mini solo missions that test our survival, and make the job for the rest of the group the easier the longer we can keep it up.

I totally agree with the point here About button mashing. I hate games like that. I could just play sonic the hedgehog if I want to smash buttons. My ideal game is more like XCOM Where I need to do some thinking. So I actually love being a tank because I have made myself able to survive massive hits, which makes me feel helpful to my group, and allows me to calmly look around And make some deliberate choices about who or what to grab, where to position, thinking more than speed mashing a rotation. The people who have nimble fingers and rotation expertise do DPS And God bless them. That just isn’t for me. So I wouldn’t want things to be turned into just a version of DPS light. Let the games Classes be different.

ZeroXFF

As I had longer to think, how about mechanics like this...

There are multiple (say 3 for the sake of explanation) pressure plates. The person who stands on a pressure plate has aggro from the boss. They also take 100/200/300% more damage depending on what pressure plate they stand on, but the damage of everyone in the group is increased by the same amount. The boss also has some kind of DPS check mechanic that would be very easy with the 300% boost (but next to impossible to survive even for the very best tanks who are also being healed by the very best healers), and impossible without any of the pressure plates, and only doable by the very best of the best with the 100% boost.

This way the better the tank(s) and healers, the easier the fight for everyone, and both tanks and healers can focus on their primary role. Maybe even some crazy setups with 3-4 healers would be conceivable just to get those higher boosts for the remaining DDs.

Another example would be...

Something fancy has to be done to open a portal to a different room. One person can take that portal where hard hitting adds that cannot reasonably be killed will spawn (more and more of them on a timer, like axes in vAA). The main boss is only attackable when somebody is in that room. If the person in the room dies or leaves the room, the adds disappear, but the procedure for opening the portal has to be repeated (some mechanics obviously have to be involved to make it non-trivial to do). Every time the portal is opened, the main boss gains an additional mechanic and/or does more unavoidable damage to everyone.

Again, the better the tank, the fewer mechanics the rest of the group has to deal with or the less damage they take. And on the flip side, the higher the DPS, the easier the job for the tank and the healers.

In both of these examples the group would be better off with the tank(s) focusing on their primary role instead of buffing/debuffing, and that's what's fun IMO.

ZeroXFF

Guppet wrote: »

Tanks in this game are actually far more involved and fun that other MMO’s. The whole block and dodge mechanics are great.

The issue is feeling like a slave to dps players. Your primary role should be hold aggro, stay alive & clump mobs.

Buffing others dps should not be a tanks job. Sunder aside.

Dps buffs should come from dps skills not others gear. Gear should only effect you. But that’s a big change to fix that.

Additionally survivabity needs removing from dps players, they should need the tank to take the damage and the healer to heal (healers are even less fun because of this currently).

Currently healers and tanks exist to enable dps, the devs need to pander less to dps players. Make them need healers and tanks to stay alive and you’ll find more people will fill those roles.

Also on the concept of tanks dps when solo, are you guys kidding? You trying to solo in tank gear or something? If your Stam equip Hundings and spriggans if your magic equip spinners and Julianos. It’s not hard to do. Your dps will be well over 10k. Just use one or two dps skills. This game allows flexibility use it!

I agree with everything except the last paragraph. As I already said, considering that tanks are the only role that actually has to switch gear to be able to do solo content, I find this proposition unreasonable and unfair, not to mention quite an imposition on players who are just leveling a tank. Overland content should be accessible to everyone regardless of the build. Hundings+Spriggans is exactly what I'm using for that, but at that point I'm no longer a tank.

Guppet

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

Tanks in this game are actually far more involved and fun that other MMO’s. The whole block and dodge mechanics are great.

The issue is feeling like a slave to dps players. Your primary role should be hold aggro, stay alive & clump mobs.

Buffing others dps should not be a tanks job. Sunder aside.

Dps buffs should come from dps skills not others gear. Gear should only effect you. But that’s a big change to fix that.

Additionally survivabity needs removing from dps players, they should need the tank to take the damage and the healer to heal (healers are even less fun because of this currently).

Currently healers and tanks exist to enable dps, the devs need to pander less to dps players. Make them need healers and tanks to stay alive and you’ll find more people will fill those roles.

Also on the concept of tanks dps when solo, are you guys kidding? You trying to solo in tank gear or something? If your Stam equip Hundings and spriggans if your magic equip spinners and Julianos. It’s not hard to do. Your dps will be well over 10k. Just use one or two dps skills. This game allows flexibility use it!

I agree with everything except the last paragraph. As I already said, considering that tanks are the only role that actually has to switch gear to be able to do solo content, I find this proposition unreasonable and unfair, not to mention quite an imposition on players who are just leveling a tank. Overland content should be accessible to everyone regardless of the build. Hundings+Spriggans is exactly what I'm using for that, but at that point I'm no longer a tank.

No one is thier group role when solo. Healers are also not healers.

You can get decent actual tank sets that help soloing, Baharas, thunderbug, gravdars etc. But this is all end game. At end game, having extra gear is no problem.

When levelling if you want to tank why are you doing solo? You can ding level 10 and then not even need to leave an inn till level 50. Just queue dungeons and they pop in 5 seconds.

In no mmo game can a tank ever do decent single target dps while still being hard to kill. Any game that has any PvP has to follow this rule or they become kings in PvP.

Even the sets I mention above only do decent dps because that’s aoe. Single target has to remain low or PvP god situation happens.

pod88kk

Better dds

AcadianPaladin

I play a DK main tank and, though I love the role, it is not very fun compared to my healer and dds. What would make playing my tank fun?

1. Mechanics that do not thwart my taunt. When a boss ignores my taunt I might as well go make a sandwich or log off because I feel useless at that point.

2. A ranged pull (like chains) that somehow does not hit the melee foe already held in my face but somehow cuts through and out to the ranged threat 20 meters away.

3. I would love taunts to last just a bit longer, say bump from 15 to 25 seconds.

4. I root that lasts more than a few seconds. Once I get mobs around me let me root them for 10+ seconds before I have to reapply.

I don't care about killing things, I just want to be happily standing in the dead center of a huge and tightly piled mass of corpses that my dd's killed because I kept the foes gathered up and focused on me.

Checkmath

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I play a DK main tank and, though I love the role, it is not very fun compared to my healer and dds. What would make playing my tank fun?

1. Mechanics that do not thwart my taunt. When a boss ignores my taunt I might as well go make a sandwich or log off because I feel useless at that point.

2. A ranged taunt or pull (like chains) that somehow does not hit the melee foe already held in my face but somehow cuts through and out to the ranged threat 20 meters away.

3. I would love taunts to last just a bit longer, say bump from 15 to 25 seconds.

4. I root that lasts more than a few seconds. Once I get mobs around me let me root them for 10+ seconds before I have to reapply.

I don't care about killing things, I just want to be happily standing in the dead center of a huge and tightly piled mass of corpses that my dd's killed because I kept the foes gathered up and focused on me.

sounds a bit grim and macabre.....

Guppet

Checkmath wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I play a DK main tank and, though I love the role, it is not very fun compared to my healer and dds. What would make playing my tank fun?

1. Mechanics that do not thwart my taunt. When a boss ignores my taunt I might as well go make a sandwich or log off because I feel useless at that point.

2. A ranged taunt or pull (like chains) that somehow does not hit the melee foe already held in my face but somehow cuts through and out to the ranged threat 20 meters away.

3. I would love taunts to last just a bit longer, say bump from 15 to 25 seconds.

4. I root that lasts more than a few seconds. Once I get mobs around me let me root them for 10+ seconds before I have to reapply.

I don't care about killing things, I just want to be happily standing in the dead center of a huge and tightly piled mass of corpses that my dd's killed because I kept the foes gathered up and focused on me.

sounds a bit grim and macabre.....

You dont tickle them with Daisy’s. Tanks should be covered in blood after a dungeon.

profundidob16_ESO

BuildMan wrote: »

I love playing tank on vAA, keeping all the axes while my group burns the boss makes me feel helpful. I like having that I can tank anything feeling and being able to self sustain so the healers can focus on keeping the dps alive makes me feel like a contributing role to the success of the raid. Running torugs and alkosh doesn’t let me do that on some of the other content.

Honestly I would enjoy tanking a lot more if the tanking sets felt more viable. Most of the group survivablity sets are horrible and honestly damage is put above survivability in pretty much all cases.

I agree here. I have so many useful sets but because of the meta the raid group 'requires' me to wear ebon and alkosh

The group functionality bonuses from sets like ebon and alkosh/torugs should be moved into tanking skills or mechanics (maybe even into heavy armor passive skills) and removed from item sets alltogether so that tanks become free again to wear their favorite set.

Moonsorrow

Tanking was more fun before Morrowind sustain nerfs. I mean that then had more flexibility on setups and DK tanking felt fun when its class defining skills were not nerfed to the ground. Now Argonian is almost a must-have thingy because of the Potion passive. Yeah can do without and yeah can do nowadays all things that could before, but somehow its not just as much fun, feel more pigeonholed to certain setups than ever before. Well, same goes for dps too.. but yeah.

"But hey, reactive blocking bruh no need to block all the time so who needs resources and then heavy attack!" Says now someone while reading that.

I suggest you do reactive blocking with current laggy performance on something like Vet Bloodroot end boss haha, 1 second not blocking and swinging that slow SnB heavy attack and you are immediately then reading your death recap when it hits you with 50k damage with 1 hit.

The whole "heavy attack more for resources" Morrowind changes were just bad imo, can and have adapted to it and i know they were meant to make the game feel more challenging instead of "endless sustain", but its not more challenging, can do all the same things as before but its less fun and less options on how to do it. Its like we used to eat soup with a spoon, handy and works. Then they gave us a fork for the Morrowind soup, yeah can still eat with it but it feels awkward after a spoon.


To not get totally sidetracked.. I guess i can wish that the Ice Staff taunt was at the Frost Reach instead of the heavy attack.

Also.. please add in more boss mechanics that a tank can reflect to boss for big damage with Wings and Spell Wall with good timing, or make the reflect Stun the boss for a bit if no damage even if they are normally immune to stuns of course, or make it vulnerable after reflect to some other mechanic that dps can use against it. Something like that would be cool.

NevoX

Stop playing with Elitists, and tanking is tons of fun. But no class or role is fun, if someone else dictates what you have to wear or do all the time.
Yes tanks need a bit more solo dps.

Still I stick to the statement, that tanking is fun as long as your not dictated into being ebon/alcosh/ warhorn -bot.
You can be the selfsustain tank, in Leeching Plate/Defending Warror/Engine Guardian
Or the Shield Tank, in Lunar Bastion/ Brands of the Imperium/Lord Warden or Infernal Guardian

Peekachu99

Leave it as is. The only other tried and tested formulas are: full trinity, wild ping-pong dps pretending to be tanks (GW2), and an actual soft trinity, which ESO has. All other formulas have quite simply failed, full stop. Tanks can already heal/tank, dps/tank so there’s enough versatility existing with the current mechanics.

You don’t even need traditional Trials tanks anymore, given that the damage ceiling has exploded.

Edit: Oh I will say that the ability to fully swap sets/ roles on the fly (with a cooldown to prevent abuse) would be a truly dynamic game changer. A few games have don’t this, but ESO has a solid foundation for it.

ZeroXFF

Guppet wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

Tanks in this game are actually far more involved and fun that other MMO’s. The whole block and dodge mechanics are great.

The issue is feeling like a slave to dps players. Your primary role should be hold aggro, stay alive & clump mobs.

Buffing others dps should not be a tanks job. Sunder aside.

Dps buffs should come from dps skills not others gear. Gear should only effect you. But that’s a big change to fix that.

Additionally survivabity needs removing from dps players, they should need the tank to take the damage and the healer to heal (healers are even less fun because of this currently).

Currently healers and tanks exist to enable dps, the devs need to pander less to dps players. Make them need healers and tanks to stay alive and you’ll find more people will fill those roles.

Also on the concept of tanks dps when solo, are you guys kidding? You trying to solo in tank gear or something? If your Stam equip Hundings and spriggans if your magic equip spinners and Julianos. It’s not hard to do. Your dps will be well over 10k. Just use one or two dps skills. This game allows flexibility use it!

I agree with everything except the last paragraph. As I already said, considering that tanks are the only role that actually has to switch gear to be able to do solo content, I find this proposition unreasonable and unfair, not to mention quite an imposition on players who are just leveling a tank. Overland content should be accessible to everyone regardless of the build. Hundings+Spriggans is exactly what I'm using for that, but at that point I'm no longer a tank.

No one is thier group role when solo. Healers are also not healers.

You can get decent actual tank sets that help soloing, Baharas, thunderbug, gravdars etc. But this is all end game. At end game, having extra gear is no problem.

When levelling if you want to tank why are you doing solo? You can ding level 10 and then not even need to leave an inn till level 50. Just queue dungeons and they pop in 5 seconds.

In no mmo game can a tank ever do decent single target dps while still being hard to kill. Any game that has any PvP has to follow this rule or they become kings in PvP.

Even the sets I mention above only do decent dps because that’s aoe. Single target has to remain low or PvP god situation happens.

But "healers who are not healers" can still do 20k single target DPS without switching gear.

I haven't played WOW for a while, but back in MOP they weren't particularly dominant (more like almost entirely absent) in PvP, while still doing about 1/2 of the damage of top DDs in typical raids, and they were hard to kill, pretty much like a blocking tank in ESO, but without the blocking costing any resources (armor cap was at 75%, if I remember correctly). The DPS scaled with unmitigated incoming damage and max. HP though, that's why leveling as a tank meant pulling half the zone with quest mobs and AoEing them down, resulting in about the same questing speed on average as a DD who could only take a few mobs without being overwhelmed. But tanks in ESO can't even do that, they have no AoE, no single target DPS, no scaling with incoming damage or HP, and even without all the buffs WOW single target damage of tanks was higher than the ESO equivalent. Tank DPS in ESO is simply pathetic.

And as I was suggesting before, buff PvE DPS by tying it to morphs that are currently undesirable for PvP. That way the "worst" case scenario (actually the best case scenario imo, because it would bring build diversity) would be that some people will start using morphs in PvP that were wholly absent before (like Power Slam).

And those tanking sets you're suggesting are not sets one would run to do any real tanking. I had a hybrid-y setup on my magplar (Vampire Cloak, Bloodthorn's Touch), the DPS was still laughable (~5k), and I couldn't do vFL hm with that setup.

Moonsorrow

Well, i was just ranting a bit because i like the "good old times" memories. And i also like the trinity style more than the "no need tank or healz lets go 4dps" what is now happening often. When people did good on their role you did hear the "nice tanking" or "good heals" or "awesome damage" and people felt good about their roles. Now only thing on chat is people saying their combat metrix dps and asking someone to slot Rapids so can go faster through the dungeon lol.

Maybe i`m just old..

jaws343

profundidob16_ESO wrote: »

BuildMan wrote: »

I love playing tank on vAA, keeping all the axes while my group burns the boss makes me feel helpful. I like having that I can tank anything feeling and being able to self sustain so the healers can focus on keeping the dps alive makes me feel like a contributing role to the success of the raid. Running torugs and alkosh doesn’t let me do that on some of the other content.

Honestly I would enjoy tanking a lot more if the tanking sets felt more viable. Most of the group survivablity sets are horrible and honestly damage is put above survivability in pretty much all cases.

I agree here. I have so many useful sets but because of the meta the raid group 'requires' me to wear ebon and alkosh

The group functionality bonuses from sets like ebon and alkosh/torugs should be moved into tanking skills or mechanics (maybe even into heavy armor passive skills) and removed from item sets alltogether so that tanks become free again to wear their favorite set.

i think this is a pretty solid point. Being required to wear specific gear only to provide group buffs is dull and takes the creativity out of tank builds (and non tank builds for that matter). I think a chance to add role specific passives would be pretty valuable, maybe to existing passives in the heavy armor or sword and shield trees. Passives like this could also help with some of the solo DPS complaints. Add a passive in that scales certain abilities, maybe AOE only, off of max health on taunted enemies.

I also think rewarding/punishing positioning in a fight could add an element of fun and provide a more challenging experience. A fight that has various spots to hold the boss, but each spot increases in difficulty or the mechanics change, or the group receives different buffs, and for each spot, the reward in gear gets better but the fight becomes harder from a tanking perspective. Maybe a location that allows the boss to crit, making impen useful in pve, or a spot that reduces healing on the tank but also reduces the numbers of adds in the fight, etc.

And the biggest change I could see increasing the enjoyment on tanking is removing straight one-shot mechanics from fights. Instead, have these mechanics deal 90% of your max health in damage, and maybe scale that up to 98% as the difficulty of content increases, so that in vet hardmode content, one shots are taking 98% of your health if you don't block. That way, if you are below the 90%-98% health threshold and don't block, it will still kill you, but if you are at full health and miss a block, you at least have a chance. And the % based one shot change would scale with the DPS and the healers too.