Other MMO's have better incentives for being a tank using the LFG tool, why doesn't this one?

Tsar_Gekkou

I leveled a tank and planned to learn, but lost the will to continue when I kept getting matched up with absolute abysmal dps. At least when i'm on a healer and the damage is terrible, I can just spam rapid regen while watching youtube, but a tank has to pay attention the whole time and be bored out of their skull.

matterandstuff

I don't think it's a matter of incentives so much as removing disincentives - I love ESO and running dungeons as DPS and healer, but tanking in this game is less fun than going to work.

1) As others have said, taunt-ignoring mechanics suck. It negates the role of the tank in the fight and makes many people think the tank is hopeless if they don't know the mechanics.

2) The overuse of instadeath mechanics is similar - in a fight that's mostly about the whole party avoiding instadeath mechanics than the boss doing damage that the tank can draw - the tank is being drawn into more of a leader role than a take-damage role that's not necessarily what I signed up for.

3) The cultural expectations this playerbase has around tanks in PUG are unreal. DPS damages enemies effectively. Healer heals/buffs other players effectively. But for tanks, people have a laundry list of "must-perform" tasks as long as their arm, and wonder why very few people actually want to do that in their spare time.

This means that you get two things: an abundance of fake tanks because most people can't be stuffed with the laundry list and plenty of guilds just run with whoever they've got, and a very specific type of person who actually finds what the role is today (especially in PUG runs) fun, of which there just isn't very many.

jle30303

jssriot wrote: »

If tank builds weren't so expensive, fussy and precise in terms of specs in this game, I'm sure more people would tank. At the end of the day, the actual role of tanking isn't that hard for most content. It's just...well, here's an example: you're a new player. You got your starter DPS build. You're learning it. You got 1 or 2 weapon skill lines levelled up and you know how to do a decent rotation. Then you want to getting into tanking. But oh hold on there! Do you have the right sets? Do you have other sets to be flexible as an offtank? Do you have all taunts unlocked? Do you have warhorn and barrier? Do you have sword and board levelled up? Can you also backbar a destro? How much health do you have? How's your mag and stam recovery? Do you know what you need if you don't have good resource management? Do you know what glyphs, traits and mundus you should use? Do you know about overtaunting? Do you which bosses can't be taunted and know what to do there? Do you have this and that addon? And so on...it's too much for most players. And honestly part of that isn't even the game design--it's what other players expect from tanks now at this point in the game's evolution.

Maybe lower your expectations for what is a tank. This community could start with not calling every tank people think is subpar a "fake tank."

Indeed. I was told that to be considered a proper tank you pretty much have to be able to survive solo against veteran-hard-mode St Olms *without a healer*.

Now, I've seen it demonstrated that it's technically possible. But when I tried it... I could survive ONE hit, when blocking, and his big melee hit is classed as a "Light Attack" so it has no warning other than watching his backswing (which is fortunately slow). It took about 60% of my health, and I could not restore enough health fast enough to survive a second hit - or if I drank a big health restore potion, I could just about do that, but that left me at about 5% HP, with no hope of surviving a third. And holding Block up all the time killed my stamina and mobility making it that much harder to get out of his area attacks, especially if one had to dodge-roll to do it.

So, some tanks can do that, but not all of them. The obvious solution, to me, is not to expect the tank to be his own healer: i.e. that the healer should *heal the tank* who is taking the big hits, rather than concentrating on the DDs whose main problem is avoiding AOEs that they can run out of. The whole point of tanking is that you take big hits that would kill anyone else, and the most important thing that a healer can do is keep the tank alive so that he can survive two, or three, or four or more in a row. DDs stay out of trouble: Tanks have to *survive* trouble, and healers are for healing people whose job is to stand in trouble and attract it so that the DDs don't get targetted.

By contrast: You don't need that kind of level of tanking for most dungeons, of course. That's kind of Veteran HM Trial level tanking. You can tank original-content dungeons, even veteran, much more easily...

However. It is my belief that things should be designed, so a tank in heavy armour should NEVER have to roll-dodge. Walking out of area effects is okay, but everything else should be specced so that a heavily-armoured tank should be able to *block*. There should be no one-hits that kill through block. Roll-dodging should be for lightly-armoured people with half a proper tank's health. (Yes, MHK and UG, I'm looking at *you*, with "Heavy Attacks" - as distinguished by yellow sparks shooting out of the monster - that are autokill unless you roll-dodge, when the game's tutorial actually teaches you to Block them instead.)

Norith_Gilheart_Flail

Tanking is just not as fun in this game as it is in others.

Aertew

Don't WoW and FF14 have some sort of threat rate that makes mobs attracted to the tank? I don't know why the devs don't do something like that.

Anonx31st

Fake tanks in veteran dlc hm content is non-existent in pugs, no way you can do veteran hm dlc content with strangers without a tank. This is what I was mostly aiming the once a day reward for tanking using the LFG tool like what other MMO's offer. So just like how you get a random dungeon daily reward, you would get a random daily reward for tanking veteran content using the LFG to help fix the que issue.

kargen27

Anonx31st wrote: »

I am not sure why people would be against encouraging others to play as a tank by giving an incentive like other MMO's do to help fix the que times. The tanking incentive could just be a once a day reward for choosing to tank using the LFG tool as well. It's not asking for much. Everyone complains about the que times and the tank shortage, why not find ways to fix it.

Because there is a good chance providing incentives would not cause there to be more tanks but would cause more people to queue with a fake tank.

Agenericname

Anonx31st wrote: »

Fake tanks in veteran dlc hm content is non-existent in pugs, no way you can do veteran hm dlc content with strangers without a tank. This is what I was mostly aiming the once a day reward for tanking using the LFG tool like what other MMO's offer. So just like how you get a random dungeon daily reward, you would get a random daily reward for tanking veteran content using the LFG to help fix the que issue.

So they could just make everything as difficult as the vet DLCs and solve the issue as well?

Not everyone has an issue with queue times. DDs do. Tanks don't and for the most part neither do healers.

The issue with adding incentives, which has been pointed out several times, is without a way for the game to differntiate between a real and fake tank, it doesnt solve anything. Its add more incentive across the board, to fake tanks as well. It could even increase the number.

The only way for the game to differntiate real from fake is to define them, essentially telling people how to play. Thats fine, but if you're going to do that for one role it needs to happen for all roles. So what is the standard going to be for DDs? If your intent is to only add a standard for tanks and no other role, fewer real tanks will queue as its much easier to avoid the additional scrutiny in premades. If you add a standard for DDs, then they need to add some metrics in the game so players can see where they are instead of running a dungeon only to find out that they arent doing enough damage.

Tanks still tank now. We see fewer in the queue, but they are still there. They would still get the incentives and still not be in the queue. Since I do in fact tank, what incentive is there for me to leave my group (where DPS is both good and constant) and PUG rather than just collect my new rewards with the same group? How does that help queue times?

BXR_Lonestar

Fennwitty wrote: »

Honestly if there was better class and race parity, that would go a long way to adding diversity.

How many Templar Tanks are there? How many Sorc and Nightblades?

They exist but the incredible class imbalance makes it almost as if they didn't exist. I don't want them to be identical but those classes need more in their toolkits.

I have a DK tank and a Templar tank. 9/10, when I play tank, I usually play on my templar tank because he does better in 3/1 groupings than my DK tank, which runs two support sets and is much more healer dependent.

Iceman_mat

The incentives are you que faster and can level toons quickly.

As for playing tank, as someone who does a lot of pug tanking, being a tank (like in wow) is lost on the general population and any one who actually plays a tank is usually snatched up by guilds or trial runners.

The man issue I fins on almost every pub group is almost the same issues you find in any and every game.

1) No one is rezzing.
This is eso, funny enough it is on the dps to rez because the tank is holding aggro and the healer is keeping people alive. The number of dps I have seen rezzing people? 3. Total.

2) Running from the tank.
Oh you got aggro? Ok time to go back to the entrance. Oh btw the person taunting and healing me need to follow me because reasons

3) interupt.
Oh that boss is cc'ing the tank? Well he should interupt that cc that's disabling them, not me.

Those 3 things are why you get the problems you are listing, why you get fake tanks and why no one tanks.

If you want an easier example, run blackheart haven and see who shoots the archers. Those archers where nerfed because people ignore them.

If you want people playing actual roles, do the mechanics that keep them from being stun locked. Why are they playing to watch you dps on their screen and then die soon after?


-cheers