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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.



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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.

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.

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)