I feel like Tanking needs to be revamped in a major way.

TiberSeptim

There is a serious lack of tanks in ESO. According to all the feedback I have received, its predominantly because people find it to be boring.

I get there is no AOE taunt and that works for this style of MMO where the battles are focused more on which groups and NPCs to attack first. However, even if you have no interest in adding an AOE taunt, could you at least consider a taunt spammable that doesn't become ineffective the more you use it?

Also, tanking in other MMOs always seems so much more rewarding. I don't have too many solutions for this problem, I just know it is one. I loved tanking in every MMO I ever played and I cant stand doing it in ESO. Standing there for 10 minutes bashing one opponent while doing no damage is not fun. And yes, in a PUG you will often have DPS so bad that it will be ten minutes of taunting and bashing.

I just feel like at some point the devs have got to find a way to make tanking more enjoyable. It's to the point now where players don't even run with one anymore. They use three DPS and a healer and just have one of the DPS que as a tank. Don't let an entire piece of the MMO triad become obsolete. That's not good.

If anybody has any suggestions on what you think would help please feel free to post them. I'd be interested in hearing your ideas.

Starlock

As someone who pretty much exclusively tanks when doing group content, I don't find it boring in the least. Not sure what people you are talking to. You won't see me much in dungeons because I don't do a lot of group content. And the reason I don't do a lot of group content doesn't have anything to do with me not enjoying the tanking role. The only things the developers that could do to incentivize me to run dungeons more would be to make it... well... more worthwhile to run dungeons just in general.

TiberSeptim

Starlock wrote: »

As someone who pretty much exclusively tanks when doing group content, I don't find it boring in the least. Not sure what people you are talking to. You won't see me much in dungeons because I don't do a lot of group content. And the reason I don't do a lot of group content doesn't have anything to do with me not enjoying the tanking role. The only things the developers that could do to incentivize me to run dungeons more would be to make it... well... more worthwhile to run dungeons just in general.

That's an interesting response. Most of the people I was talking to were several players on Youtube. So basically what you are saying is that you primarily don't run dungeons because once you've collected anything you may need from them, you have little to no reason to keep running them? I'm assuming you mostly just run trials?

alewis478b14_ESO

Yes, they should make changes but I don't even have any suggestions. Normal dungeons and half of Vet dungeons, I could just hit taunt and be done. Passive resistances with CP's allow you to ignore most mechanics, missing a block is only an inconvenience because you get knocked down.

When most dungeons can be ran without a true tank or even a dedicated healer, you end up with shortages of both. DPS don't even wait for a tank to pull, they just run into a group of mobs with no care as to where the tank or healer is because they are only needed for 2-3 fights in the zone.

Even trials that used to need 2 tanks are mostly solo'd tanked now.

I still play my tank because it's the fastest way to get transmute stones for my characters that I actually want to play.

xaraan

I mostly tank end game HMs in trials and dungeons and I don't know that tanking is boring outside of a few certain fights. But I am mostly bored with the role because I don't like feeling like a buff monkey. What I enjoy about tanking is being tanky and really wished the group buffs I provided were about making the group more tanky and not just do more damage. Of course there are sets that do this, but as long as there are sets that give offensive buffs, that will always be the job. It's too late to fix because every top team will run offensive buffs and everyone wants to do it like so-and-so whether they have the dps or not and want support running the same offensive sets.

ZoS screwed up the way they designed support and DD long ago (started going downhill with Alkosh) and instead of getting the dps to split up and wear different team sets, it's become the job of healers and tanks to provide offensive buffs. It's not just that they buff, but it's all about offense, so every set they put out that offers good defense, good healing bonuses, good regen bonuses, etc. are not used. Maybe players keep them in the back pocket for a certain niche use here and there, but for the most part all tanks and healers are wearing offensive buff sets and maybe a healer throws on one regen type set to mix it up. As long as those sets exist, that will be the best option.

ZoS' attempt to correct this, or maybe just a lazy attempt to make dungeons/trials more challenging (or both) is to just up the amount of one-shots. All this does is put more pressure on support while still wearing the same sets, which in turn has made the job even more annoying at times. It's already a thankless role and combine it with the fact that when you screw up everyone is in danger, when a DD screws up, it's like, meh, rez 'em and keep going (outside of a few group wipe mechanics they've added that again, bad design imo). And on top of that, in old vet dungeons you pretty much feel worthless, so that tank you have, we don't need you, we'll let you know when we do.

Edit to add: You aren't wrong in that it's hard to find good tanks. I wanted to 'retire' from the role last year and have been essentially forced back into it by our raid team because of the fact we can't find anyone else to do the job and most that have tried either left the game or were not great at the role. But anytime you have threads like these, you'll get people coming in "I like it, so you must be wrong" or "we don't have this problem, so you must be wrong" despite the fact that you can look across the game and see that good players in the role are rare and really, players at all in the role are as well.

essi2

Youtubers and Twitch streamers don't tank because their viewers don't want to watch tanking @alewis478b14_ESO
Whether they themselves enjoy it is irrelevant to their output.


Tanking in vDungeons and Trials in ESO is fun if you are in a good group of friends who also want to do challenging content, is it perfect.. ofc not.

Major revamp is taking it too far.

Danksta

I'm not sure adding an AoE taunt is going to make tanking more fun. It sounds like there would be even less to do and make things even easier.

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun

Yeah, MMOs have a tradition of making tanking as dry as they possibly can. Take hits for the DPS, buff the DPS, wear gear that supports the DPS, sit there with your sword-poke and shield-bash while the DPS is summoning Godzilla and dropping meteors on people's heads, etc...

I've seen very few MMOs even attempt to address this and as someone who almost always tanks in MMOs, it can get discouraging after a while. ESO's saving grace is that you've got a lot more flexibility in 4-man dungeons, so I just stick to those.

I will say that ESO seems to really like one-shots though. Stand here or you instantly die. Block this or you instantly die. Bash that or you instantly die. etc etc.

A lot of times, I don't even feel like an actual tank because I can't take a hit worth a damn. You're just reduced to a taunt-bot.

Danksta wrote: »

I'm not sure adding an AoE taunt is going to make tanking more fun. It sounds like there would be even less to do and make things even easier.

Don't know if it'd be more fun but it'd certainly be less annoying. Fights that involve keeping multiple mobs taunted are just aggravating because it feels like I'm fighting the targeting system more than the bosses. At least make it a cone-AoE.

AlnilamE

OK, unless I missed a patch note and they put over-taunting back in the game, you can only over-taunt now if two separate people taunt the same mob. Otherwise, throw your taunts at the mobs to your heart's content.

I find tanking fun, I'm just not particularly good at it, so I'll PUG as healer more often than tank, and mostly tank with guildies.

But I see plenty of people wearing tank gear around town, so I have no idea who those people run with.

kaisernick

I think its just a lot of the tank abilties are not fun, granted i made only two that got to lvl 50, a DK and Temp but i found their playstyles boring so i deleted the temp and barly use the DK.

sure some will enjoy it but for me i have yet to find a build that i have enjoyed.

thedavidventer

AOE Taunt please ZOS. And put it in a guild or world skill tree so anyone can get it.

the1andonlyskwex

I feel like one of the biggest problems with tanking in ESO is the expectation that the tank will be the person who knows all the dungeon mechanics in a group. There are a lot of mechanics in ESO that you can sort of fake your way through as a healer or DPS (just stay out of red), but the same doesn't seem to apply for tanks.

Additionally, the expectation that the "support" roles focus a huge portion of their effort on buffing DPS isn't great from a fun/power fantasy perspective. As a healer, it's super-disheartening that I'm expected to always run SPC or Olorime instead of something that might be fun/interesting/powerful for my own gameplay.

One "solution" to this problem would be to rebalance the game so that healers have to focus more on healing and tanks have to focus more on mitigation, so that DPS are forced to pick up more of the slack in terms of buffs and mechanics.

Taleof2Cities

TiberSeptim wrote: »

I just feel like at some point the devs have got to find a way to make tanking more enjoyable.

Making tanking more enjoyable is way different than making tanking mindless by introducing a spammable or AOE taunt.

Atherakhia

I haven't done any real tanking. It's been mostly limited to normals on my DPS 'fake' tank or on my actual tank in vet dungeons. I really don't aspire to do more because its as others said here and very boring. What makes tanking fun in other games is the tank does reasonable damage and the process of tanking is engaging and fluid. None of that applies here. It's entirely taunt driven, the majority of content doesn't require much effort beyond that, and any real benefit the tank provides outside of that isn't visible to the tank, only the other players. It's much the same for healing since so much of the healing in this game is group, ground AE, and auto targeted. Like I said, I don't tank or heal on trials and such but I am sorry, I wouldn't believe anyone who tried to tell me it fundamentally changes in harder content and it's amazingly fun and different there.

Unfortunately the whole game is designed around these dumbed down straight forward mechanics and there will never be a change to tanking or healing without a complete overhaul of the combat system. Good luck with that considering all the mass hysteria ZOS caused with the light attack and heavy attack changes and the little acronym "APM" that they used in their very justified, and quite frankly necessary changes.

BlueRaven

Tanks have taken a hit because their damage has been severely nerfed.

Basically, when not in a group, their ability to get things done is just incredibly slow and painful. Why play the role of tank if dps gets the same rewards and dps have an easier time doing dailies and such?

Buff tank damage in pve overland gameplay, and there will be a rise in tank population.

Major_Lag

IMO there is nothing wrong with tanking in ESO, in the mechanical sense.

There aren't any non-ultimate AoE taunts and there aren't supposed to be any, which is fair enough. AoE taunting would be boring as hell, considering ESO's content design.

About the only valid complaint would be that there are too many lazily designed "tank buster" oneshot mechanics in group content, but that's a problem with the content itself and not with how tanking works.

What is wrong with tanking in ESO, however, has nothing to do with the actual tanking - it's that the group finder's random "damage dealers" tend to suck at dealing damage, which wastes everyone's time and makes some content unduly hard or even outright impossible (due to failing DPS checks).

And yeah, this problem mostly affects the group finder - and, to a somewhat lesser degree, random groups assembled from zonechat LFG.
However, it's a non-issue if you have a solid PvE guild or (experienced) friends to run with, though.

kichwas

I've watched videos of trial tanks and they seem to just stand there and hold down block, then refresh a buff here and there.

I go into FFXIV or WoW and tank and I am all over the map doing active mechanics, positioning things, grabbing up adds, attacking, blocking, intervening, leaping across the battle-map, putting up huge shields for my group to move into for some 'group-buster' mechanic, and so on... In other words I am insanely active.

The whole reason I have not bothered to take my tank into vets or trials is it just looks like they're not an active role there. Your job is to be a buff bot than stands in place. Reminds me of the 'classic WoW' role of the shaman and paladin - only invited to spam buffs.

Maybe that's vastly untrue... but I look at my tanks here and I don't see the tools that would indicate it's not true.


YouTube some raid fights in these 3 MMOs (ESO, FFXIV, WoW), and watch the tanks... yes other MMOs make holding threat way too easy - but they did this over time precisely so they could instead focus on a huge array of active tasks that tanks could do that often make them more 'hectic and mobile' than the DPS.



.

LadyNalcarya

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

TiberSeptim wrote: »

I just feel like at some point the devs have got to find a way to make tanking more enjoyable.

Making tanking more enjoyable is way different than making tanking mindless by introducing a spammable or AOE taunt.

Pretty much.
Honestly, there's a lot of things that contribute to the shortage of tanks. First of all, it's really annoying to play a tank outside of group content. Even quest mobs take forever to kill unless you have a secondary build.
Secondly, there's really no incentive to queue for dungeons if you're a tank simply because average dd in eso is not that great to put it mildly. Not everyone can afford spending 3 hours on pledges. It's also annoying for healers, but at least healers can change their skills to help with dps. Tanks can't.
It's also quite difficult for a tank to progress to endgame, or at least it seems like it. After all, there's 8 spots for dds in every trial group and it's easier to prove yourself as a new dd.

richo262

I don't think it is possible to revamp tanking without revamping content.

The primary reason tanks are so few is you cannot farm skillpoints and do overworld content as a tank easily. It is so painful and slow and boring.

If ZOS wanted to really improve the quantity of tanks in the game (and therefore que times) they would allow for more versatile character creation.

An idea would be, given we are in a civil war, people are going to die, so you could, for RP purposes I guess, have one of your characters die and merge in with another and have multiple loadouts from that.

For instance, if I have a Nord DK (Tank) and an Orc DK (Stamdps). If I was to merge my Orc DK into my Nord DK, I'd then have the capacity of switching between multple loadouts of Stam DPS or Tank on the fly.

Offering two different sets of
Racials (Vamp/WW infects the racial)
CP
Attributes

Furthermore, allowing the swapping of morphs on the fly (in case you merge tank + magdps) and an increased inventory capacity. Could even have multiple loadouts.

At that point the burden of creating a tank is trivial, overworld is not painful to do.

VaranisArano

I enjoy tanking because its about battlefield control. Between taunting, crowd control, following boss mechanics, and buffing/debuffing, I'm never bored. I can't imagine just sitting there taunting and bashing, even in PUGs. Even running the same content over and over is fun because I make it a challenge to control the fights as efficiently as possible.

And I dunno about others' experiences, but the 4 DD or 3DD+healer runs I've done turn out badly with the boss is running around out of the AOEs or focusing one group member who can't quite stand and take it. Tank+3DD runs go much, much smoother, IMO.

Personal opinion: I don't mind low DPS from newer players or in normal dungeons, but Damage Dealer players should figure out their DPS on a training dummy before they start doing vet dungeons because those turn into a slog for everyone in low DPS groups. I'm built to tank. I'll slog through the dungeon as long as we aren't outright failing DPS checks, but if my 4 to 6k DPS is any significant portion of the group's DPS in a vet dungeon, it's going to be painfully slow for everyone.

zvavi

One huge problem is that active tanking happens only at higher end content, dlc dungeons+dlc trials, and then when you finally get to that, if the dds are bad, it is so annoying...

gatekeeper13

I am tanking 80% of the time I do group content and I agree with the op. Tanking in ESO is the least rewarding role and the one with the most pressure, thus not very enjoyable.

1) Tank has to take care of everything, from choosing right positions to controlling everything in every area e.g taunt/bash all Stone Watchers in DoM or Minotaurs in Falkreath or they will 1-shot the birdy DDs/healer.

2) As you said, mistakes made by DDs are ok. Mistakes made by tank can wipe group.

3) Taunting is boring, DPS is fun.

4) In vet dungeons, tank is almost useless. In vet DLC dungeons, only a masochist would ever tank them in a pug cause he will either get DDs that can't stay out of aoe or toxic trash that will start calling him names for the first monster he failed to control. I am personally doing DLC dungeons only with guildmates.

5) Dungeon mechanics are not cleverly designed at all. Instead of requiring strategic thinking, they rely on you doing well-timed reactions to avoid getting 1-shot as if you are playing a platform game or just taunting the boss and spamming buffs/debuffs.

Still, I chose to tank because that's the role I learned to do best and right now I am doing it "with my eyes closed". But can't say it's very enjoyable. It bores me to hell and I rarely do pledges any more.

ZeroXFF

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

the expectation that the "support" roles focus a huge portion of their effort on buffing DPS isn't great from a fun/power fantasy perspective.

This.

Twilanthe

For me, I enjoy tanking when I am actually doing it, but HATE trying to do quests or anything else in a tanking spec.

You don't need a full on tank spec to tank normal dungeons, maybe even Vet dungeons, some kind of hybrid DPS/Tank build should be fine, especially if you've got a decent healer. But a lot of people probably use regular dungeons as training grounds for trials, I know I would.

I can understand why they may not be able to boost Tank DPS, it would likely require tweaking all combat to not just be steamrolled with the DPS boost. But I would personally really like the ability to swap specs.

Let me assign gear, skills, attributes, and CP to at least 2 slots and swap between them for free. Still charge costs at shrines and stuff to change those 2 specs the same as you do now, but just let us have a second spec. I think we would see a boost of people with if nothing else an off tank or off heal spec they can swap to.

But while that would help it wouldn't completely solve things. MMOs like WoW make it very easy to swap specs, you can do it standing in the dungeon in front of bosses. And they still have a tank shortage. But it would help some I think.

Starlock

TiberSeptim wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

As someone who pretty much exclusively tanks when doing group content, I don't find it boring in the least. Not sure what people you are talking to. You won't see me much in dungeons because I don't do a lot of group content. And the reason I don't do a lot of group content doesn't have anything to do with me not enjoying the tanking role. The only things the developers that could do to incentivize me to run dungeons more would be to make it... well... more worthwhile to run dungeons just in general.

That's an interesting response. Most of the people I was talking to were several players on Youtube. So basically what you are saying is that you primarily don't run dungeons because once you've collected anything you may need from them, you have little to no reason to keep running them? I'm assuming you mostly just run trials?

Quite the contrary, actually.

I very rarely use any sets from group content on my characters, even though many of them would be really great. The gear is too much of a pain in the butt to get. The developers probably did this on purpose, believing that all the restrictions would incentivize running the content more often.

For me it does exactly the opposite. I don't play games to do chores, I play games to have fun and do what I like doing. If I use a set, it's because I collected it naturally as I was doing what I like doing or bought on a guild trader. But that doesn't work for dungeon sets or trial sets. They're bind-on-pickup, so it's not like I can just keep a few pieces and buy the rest on a trader. And with the draconian inventory limits in this game, I can't really be hanging on to a bunch of sets anyway. Sets from group content basically don't exist in my Elder Scrolls Online. I never even look at them when designing my characters.

I run trials even more rarely. I never keep any of the gear from them, not even the purple jewelry. Trial sets are my trash sets.

That shouldn't be so. If the developers fixed their stupid inventory restrictions, I'd run dungeons more. I could actually collect the gear slowly, over time, as I run dungeons for fun. But as it is now? Decon trash, mostly.

Starlock

BlueRaven wrote: »

Tanks have taken a hit because their damage has been severely nerfed.

Basically, when not in a group, their ability to get things done is just incredibly slow and painful. Why play the role of tank if dps gets the same rewards and dps have an easier time doing dailies and such?

Buff tank damage in pve overland gameplay, and there will be a rise in tank population.

It's not really that bad. Throw on a medium armor set, and you're done. The way CP are done in this game you can have damage boosts from CP on top of defensive boots. You don't actually have to pick one or the other, so swap out a gear set and it's fine. I do this all the time on my character who is specced more as a tank. Hey, sometimes I don't... and I still don't find it slow and painful. I don't care if it takes more than two active abilities to kill an overland mob, though.... what's three or four versus two button presses anyway? Shrug.

Major_Lag

ZeroXFF wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

the expectation that the "support" roles focus a huge portion of their effort on buffing DPS isn't great from a fun/power fantasy perspective.

This.

No, it is really great from a fun/power fantasy perspective.

The problem is, that falls flat on its face when the group you are in is quite bad.
It's even worse since most buffs are % values instead of flat increases, that's fine in good groups - but in bad groups it means that instead of 20k group DPS you can expect 25k (for example), which is a waste of the buffs and your bar slots and GCDs.

AlnilamE

richo262 wrote: »

I don't think it is possible to revamp tanking without revamping content.

The primary reason tanks are so few is you cannot farm skillpoints and do overworld content as a tank easily. It is so painful and slow and boring.

If ZOS wanted to really improve the quantity of tanks in the game (and therefore que times) they would allow for more versatile character creation.

An idea would be, given we are in a civil war, people are going to die, so you could, for RP purposes I guess, have one of your characters die and merge in with another and have multiple loadouts from that.

For instance, if I have a Nord DK (Tank) and an Orc DK (Stamdps). If I was to merge my Orc DK into my Nord DK, I'd then have the capacity of switching between multple loadouts of Stam DPS or Tank on the fly.

Offering two different sets of
Racials (Vamp/WW infects the racial)
CP
Attributes

Furthermore, allowing the swapping of morphs on the fly (in case you merge tank + magdps) and an increased inventory capacity. Could even have multiple loadouts.

At that point the burden of creating a tank is trivial, overworld is not painful to do.

Or your tank could have a DPS set they switch to when they are doing overland content...

GlorphNoldorin

I enjoy tanking. However the game does become stale. I havent done all hm trials (except vCR and VSS) but I have everything else including trifectas on all hm dungeons.

I swapped to tank from dps a few years ago due to just not being able to dps well enough on Oceanic ping. (I know there are those that can but I just couldnt get my numbers up)

I only do HM dlc usually helping for trifectas and some trials these days. The content is easy with good players. Pledges bore me to tank and as has been said the lack of rewards is a major drawback for dungeons.....and Kynes Aegis

If the other tanking classes could be given similar functionality as DK's then I a lot more fun tanking classes could be used. Any class can be used for normal and vet and some HM but chains and a solid burst heal really sets DK's apart imo.

If a generic ranged magicka chain could be added to fighter's guild (eg silver leash - became magicka) then I know I would use my other classes to tank harder content (where add control is imperative)

Mauin

I primarily main tank these days because of a bad wrist/hand and I find the role perfectly fine. For the most part, it's not boring; I find it enjoyable in most dungeons and most trials. There are the odd few where there's less to do (mainly old base game dungeons) where I tend to zone out, but I still enjoy it. I'm there to keep my group safe and support them. Most of the time that means taunting and (de)buffing, but sometimes I run heal tanks as well.

I think my biggest issues with the role aren't because of tanking itself. It's mainly because of some issue with the group: the DPS not doing enough damage and making things a slog or otherwise failing DPS checks, healers who can't heal (resulting in dead DPS), or off tanks who can't handle their part of things. Add any of those in and dungeons/trials can often become frustrating. Granted, there are some times where I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out ways around what a group is lacking, but the vast majority of time it's just frustrating.

The general lack of group DPS in PUGs was the main reason I stopped doing dungeon finder PUGs. Back before the dungeons were locked by level, I kept getting groups with the DPS both doing less damage than I was doing as a tank (5k, on average) and it took a long time to get through dungeons (especially the IIs). Trash pulls should not be lasting longer on normal than a boss fight on vet. Nowadays I just group with friends I know and trust if I happen to be in the mood for running a random dungeon.

That being said, I'm not a high end meta end game raid tank type of player. I try to do what I can for my groups, but I also like playing with each of the classes and see what I can do with them while still being effective. That's probably one of my sources of enjoyment with the role. It was fun taking my Templar tank through everything from the Craglorn HMs through the vDLCs. Only thing he's missing is vKA.

ZeroXFF

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

TiberSeptim wrote: »

I just feel like at some point the devs have got to find a way to make tanking more enjoyable.

Making tanking more enjoyable is way different than making tanking mindless by introducing a spammable or AOE taunt.

Having more buttons to press isn't always fun. Making your button presses more meaningful and having the effect be noticeable is however always fun.

Also, allowing you to do what you want rather than forcing you into doing only one specific thing is fun too.

Even though my Templar is the worst tank I have, he is the most fun to play, because he has enough AoE damage effects that he can keep aggro without actually taunting most of the time. This allows me to focus on performing meaningful things that have an immediately obvious effect to me and the group. I can heal group members who are in danger, and failing that, I can often get rid of some adds by myself and then pick up the people who died. This is fun, because what I do has a profound effect on the outcome of a fight. Pressing X every 10 seconds to proc Alkosh for a 3% DPS increase in someone else's combat metrics window and staring at the list in the Untaunted addon to make sure I don't lose aggro on anything important is not fun.

In trials on the other hand I rarely run with my Templar, because he is too squishy to fulfill the power fantasy of a tank. But in trials there is generally a lot more to do for a tank to just survive, and that is fun too, because me picking the right timing for the GDB cast could mean the difference between having enough sustain to last through a tight spot when the healer is down or distracted is immediately obvious to me, and it is very rewarding when I can survive stuff I shouldn't have been able to.

But what are we expected to do instead? Taunt and press X every 10 seconds, then blame healer if we die while attempting to tank with 35k HP, 25k buffed resistances and the healing debuff of Balance because somebody told you that having 500 mag recovery is a good idea on a tank.