[FOR PEOPLE THAT DON'T PLAY TANKS] Would tanks being able to do more damage entice you to play them?

PrimusTiberius · January 2023

No

It's not the tanks"job" to damage, he takes the damage so the rest of the crew can damage. Why this is such a hard concept to understand I'll never know.

Sarannah · January 2023

Other (comment below)

As I play tank, I voted other. Personally with the armory in place, I have absolutely no issues with switching between tank and DPS. For the record, I only ever queue as tank.

The only thing that would make switching armory role easier, is if jewelry mats weren't this impossible to get. I'm in the process of making all my characters have three specs(tank/staDPS/magDPS). Due to the jewerly mat shortage I'm not even halfway there, and stopped making armory specs because I ran out of jewelry upgrade materials. This is most likely holding other players back as well. (Keep in mind, I did dailies for two entire years on 18 characters, and ran out of jewelry mats real fast. For players with less time, they would be even more short on jewelry mats.)

But besides that, I don't think many players even want to play tank. Right now most queue as tank while in DPS spec, when they could just have easily made a tank armory spec and used that. They don't want to tank, even when they are easily able to. Tank is a heavy role: having to take the lead in dungeons, controlling everything inside, and most of the times the one blamed for when someone dies or the group falls short. Even when a dungeon is going great, you can get yelled at.

Playing tank is just not for everyone.

PS: People purposely choosing DPS role shouldn't be able to reap the benefits from queueing as tank, only real tanks should be able to. Therefor ZOS should enforce roles. This may even get more players to be real tanks.
PPS: Tanks doing damage in dungeons would in my opinion create more issues, as tanks would then focus on a dps rotation, instead of tanking.

Billium813 · January 2023

No

Jaustink wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Jaustink wrote: »

Playing a tank in overland content is pretty miserable for most players - it takes forever to kill anything. WBs take forever, you can't realistically do solo arenas, etc. What would it take for you to play a tank in ESO and to enjoy it? What is keeping you from playing a tank if it's not due to damage? Just looking for thoughts on what would solve the tank shortage in this game from a tank-centric theory.

What do you mean by "playing tank in overland"? ESO only defines the classic role of DPS, Tank, and Healer within the context of group content. That's it. Why would you play a classic tank build solo in overland content? Of course your damage is gonna be low and it's gonna be annoying!

You really need to differentiate instanced, grouped content like Dungeons and Trials from solo content like some Arenas and overland content. You are stuck in the "I'm a 'Tank' so I must tank at all times" mindset. This isn't WoW! You aren't set in your role all the time, you can be way more dynamic! Try using the Armory and swapping skills/sets more.

I'm not stuck on a mindset - I'm implying that if you do create a tank character and keep that identity throughout the game including in questing, killing overland mobs, overland events, daily quests, what have you, killing things will take a much longer period of time where in other MMOs, this doesn't happen because they do more damage. I use the armory system to exhaustion and have tons and tons of builds and hours in the game. What I AM saying is for people that come into this game, from other MMOs, thinking they want to tank and don't enjoy it. What makes them not enjoy it and what WOULD make them enjoy it. It'd be nice if I didn't have to use DPS builds while leveling/questing and I could do a decent bit of damage in my opinion as a tank. This is coming from someone with a couple thousand hours at least of playing every role and type of content in ESO. Thanks for your reply! Cheers

> if you do create a tank character and keep that identity throughout the game

Why are you creating a Tank character and not creating a character that can Tank? It's a subtle difference that explains exactly why ESO is trying to be different than the cookie-cutter MMOs that force roles. Your character can do more than 1 thing.

Personally, I have DPS, Tank, and Healer builds for my 3 characters (templar, dk, necro). This way I can change to fit whatever the group needs, or I can just run whatever I want to when solo (mostly dps builds of course, with more healing slotted)

master_vanargand · January 2023

No

long time ago, I beating vMA on tank.
At that time, I was a beginner and CP300 (old CP system).
Tank is very easy of solo play.
It's not the game's fault that you can't complete the solo veteran arena.

FeedbackOnly · January 2023

No

I would play them more if we had 6 man dungeons so weaker dps is less of a problem

On point, I prefer traditional tank for my immersion. I take blows for allies

Necrotech_Master · January 2023

Other (comment below)

Heartrage wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Heartrage wrote: »

As a tank, I would like to see a taunt that increase my damage against non-player characters depending on the number of heavy armor pieces I’m wearing. I think that this would be the best solution to making tanks do more dps in pve while not buffing them in pvp and not making dps use competing taunts in group content.

one of the morphs of the undaunted taunt does give a dmg bonus against the taunted target, but the bonus is either 5 or 15% (i dont remember off hand)

the only problem with making that higher is that then you would get more dps trying to use it as a dmg buff, which is going to mess up taunts (and ive seen it happen occasionally with the undaunted taunt)

It’s 10%, I just looked it up. As for not making it used by dps, that’s why I would make the bonus % scale with how many heavy armor pieces you are wearing. This way, it’s harder for a dps to make it work.

i think the value of that buff has changed a couple of times, thats why i didnt remember the exact value lol

Destai · February 2023

Other (comment below)

Jaustink wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

I'd be more enticed with more damage but it's not the main reason I don't tank often. For me, it's due to how hard it is to manage resources. Stamina characters have stamina pools, magicka characters have magicka pools, tank characters have...both...but I have to spec into health? It just seems odd to me. Sure I enjoy it at times, and many of my tanks are 20/20/24 m/h/s attributes, and I just can't seem to find one that feels entirely natural to me.

What I've always done is put as many points into health as it requires for me to reach roughly 40k hp and then the rest & my enchants are put into stamina and magicka

Yeah, I switched to tri-stat glyphs and it helps a little. Thanks!

gronoxvx · February 2023

No

From a pvp perspective, since zos wont separate pvp from pve balance wise the idea of tanks doing more damage is insane and wouldnt solve the tank shortage.

Honestly from a PVE perspective tanking is ridiculously boring and the lack of in game help/guides on tanking makes it worse.

Edit: adding to this, it feels like zos uses their "play how you like" mantra as an excuse for not creating any role specific guides (tanking and healing) in the game.

kargen27 · February 2023

Other (comment below)

The Armorer solved this problem for you. A quick click and you go from your thank build to your DPS build.

And on an aside because it kind of went there. An AoE taunt would make tanking boring and take away from a lot of what makes doing group content fun for the rest of the group.
Stack and burn every room would turn dungeons and trials into something about as fun as killing frogs for fish bait.

MAOofDC · February 2023

Other (comment below)

If I need to do DPS with my tank I change the skills, maybe even my gear. That's the best thing about ESO you can change your build on the fly. Hell on PC there are add-ons that I use to make build changes even faster just the click of a few buttons.

Billium813 · February 2023

No

gronoxvx wrote: »

Honestly from a PVE perspective tanking is ridiculously boring and the lack of in game help/guides on tanking makes it worse.

kargen27 wrote: »

An AoE taunt would make tanking boring and take away from a lot of what makes doing group content fun for the rest of the group.

Totally agree. I think the biggest issue for tanking, and support in general really, is that it's

Not always necessary
BORING

I think sets like Void Bash and chains make tanking fun! I think more boss mechanics like Keeper of the Kiln from Unhallowed Grave are the answer. Make boss positioning more important and incentivized! Give the tank something to do rather than simply standing there, holding block, and debuffing the boss. Giving the Tank more dps, as something to do, is not the answer.

flizomica · February 2023

Yes

The main reason I don't PUG on a tank - despite enjoying the role - is because I have little to no control over group success damage-wise. All the buffs and debuffs in the world can't help a group where the two DPS are doing single-digit numbers each. Situations like that make dungeons range from an incredibly boring drag to straight-up impossible.

On the flip side, it's super easy for me to do 20-30K DPS in healer set ups and either make up for bad DPS or speed up the run a ton. It's not really possible to do that on a tank unless you specifically spec as a hybrid, which isn't suitable for most hard content (with some exceptions). I PUG as a healer 99% of the time because it's a good compromise between fast queues and my ability to carry the group.

Soraka · February 2023

No

Too much responsibility. I'll stick with healer.

Danikat · February 2023

Other (comment below)

My tank is already a hybrid tank/DD.

It took me an absurdly long time to understand roles in RPGs and especially to accept that a lot of games use the "trinity" concept and you're supposed to have characters in your party who don't do a lot of damage and kind of just stand there and get hit. Although it doesn't help that for a long time I mainly played DnD games which don't necessarily use that system and TES games and others where you don't have a party, so it didn't come up that much for me. But it means when I was playing games with tanks I always assumed they were supposed to do more than simply hold aggro and get hit and so always made them hybrids. (It was Dragon Quest which finally got me to understand the idea.)

In ESO my tank is also my event character, so a lot of the time I'm doing overworld stuff where she's not tanking. Even when I am tanking it's only in guild groups in normal dungeons where we often don't really need a tank (or a dedicated healer) so again I double up as a damage dealer because otherwise I'd be wasting everyone's time.

The main reason I don't do PUG dungeons as a tank is because I still feel like I don't really understand the role so I don't want to annoy people by doing it wrong, or get blamed when they do something wrong but have decided it must be my fault anyway. I already get that with my healer, but at least then I feel confident saying "of course I didn't heal you, you're not even in the same room as the rest of the group!"

wolfie1.0. · February 2023

Other (comment below)

We have an armory system for a reason. If you want more damage change your build. You want to be tank change your build. You want to heal change your build. You want content to be hard. Change your build....

AcadianPaladin · February 2023

Yes

I have a DK full tank and don't play the character hardly due to low damage. More damage without playing armory/extra gear games would certainly draw me back to playing tank. An AoE taunt would be welcome also. I play PvE and think it is ludicrous to try and balance PvP and PvE together.

the1andonlyskwex · February 2023

No

Tank DPS is somewhere between a non-issue and already too high for good PvP.

The armory system exists so you don't have to do overland or solo content with a tank build, and it's already too easy to have an extremely tanky build with good DPS in PvP.

The biggest problem with tanking is that you're always going to be dependent on your group to complete content in a timely fashion, while also being expected to know dungeon mechanics better than anyone else in the group, and taking disproportionate blame whenever things go wrong.

I suppose it would help if you could queue into a PuG vet dungeon as a tank with 100k DPS, but that would also be insanely broken for PvP and solo arena content, so it's not happening.

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

Other (comment below)

TLDR: yes, higher damage should be an option. But allowing me to make a viable "magicka controller" concept for my sorcerer is really what would encourage me to switch to serious tanking as my main role.

Regarding damage, already in some high-end pve, off-tanks can contribute damage. In PvP things are a lot more fluid.

I'd like it if they moved in that direction, capitalising on meaningful tradeoffs between survivability and damage, so that you can build to situation and experience.

What would encourage me is if "tanking" could be broader than the staid old sword-and-board idea. I think the mechanical role of tanking could be conceptualised more broadly. A magicka-based "controller" could cast wards for protection, illusion and enchantment for control (cc, pulls). Traditional alteration spells like Barkskin, Ironskin, etc could handle mitigation.

I think we're moving in this way. This community has always been very creative in what a class or role means, since day one. On top of that, the devs are clearly thinking in this way, and have been for a long time. Ice-staff tanking, Warden skills. It really looks like to me that Arcanist will have a LOT of this sort of thing in its tool kit.

Because I focus on my main, and not interested in playing a new class, I'd REALLY love to see more available as skill lines, so that other classes can benefit in the conceptual shift. Skill line-based Spellcrafting (as demonstrated in 2014) could handle this. Someone here a couple months ago also suggested "alteration" staves, to complement destro and resto staves, which is also not a terrible idea.

I tried a magicka-based tanking loadout for my sorcerer, and while it can actually handle some stuff, as you can imagine, I'd have to build in a more traditional way before it was capable of REAL challenging stuff.

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

Other (comment below)

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

I don't think I've ever played a game where tanking was my favorite role. I think tanking has an excessive presence in games because developers like them and the vocal forum posters in many games include a disproportionate amount of tanks which creates an impression people like them more than they do. For example back when I played Overwatch, you would have polls with more responses from tanks than from DPS despite the fact that the game had a massive DPS surplus and a tank shortage.

The general tanking aesthetic/style has never really appealed to me as much as other options.

Tanking in general also rams into the issue that it's really easy to mess up and can be hard to stand out.

I do have tanks in ESO but, I use them for soloing PvE content or for PvP and only on very rare occasions for PvE group content.

ESO's damage dealt by npcs wildly bounces between this will tickle even the squishiest character and this is going to kill you if you don't do x.

As a result, the tank who is responsible for dealing with npc damage is generally stuck reading about the content in question before doing it in detail and then basically playing Simon Says for the duration of the encounter if the encounter has any difficulty to avoid death/allied deaths. This kind of puts a damper on doing randoms as you can get tossed into something you aren't totally ready for doing.

A fair portion of ESO's content is easy enough that it feels awkward to be tanking it on a full tank build as it isn't really necessary and it's a hassle to carry around multiple sets when you have inventory space issues.

Perceived player expectations can also put a damper on the tank role as it can feel your item/skill selection is pushed towards being a buffer/debuffer when that isn't necessarily appealing. (Additionally, depending on the group it may be ineffective.)

Players will frequently also act in ways that step on the role of tank as they will run ahead and agro things.

Many of the item sets for tanking that I run into feel like they are more functional than fun in ESO which also puts a damper on appeal.

Very good post. This touches on a lot of the real issues and barriers.

DreamyLu · February 2023

No

Tank is simply a way to play that I don't like. To do more or less damages doesn't make any difference.

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

Other (comment below)

PrimusTiberius wrote: »

Why this is such a hard concept to understand I'll never know.

I don't think you give yourself enough credit.

The concept of what a tank happens to be right now is not the "hard concept to understand".

Its a question of whether it could ever move anywhere else. Is that easier to ever know?

You may not agree that it should ever change, which is fine. Things staying as they are because that's all they ever were is a valid argument. That doesn't make it wrong to question whether things could change.

Paramedicus · February 2023

Yes

oops im someone who plays tank and I voted. Sorry for being rebel.

Anyway, I think it could be done quite easly. Tanks could get buff or even passive aoe damage BUT only when they are in 4-man content (if people can get buff/debuff in cyro, then why not in other places - rite?). Buff would have to be based on:

HP+all defense combined (players who can tank on DD chars don't need help and we don't want to help fake tankers)
number of players in team, something liek, 0% if solo, 33% if two person, 100% if four (we don't want more tanks going solo, because we want to fix long que problem)

OFC this buff shouldn't be too massive (so it wouldn't add more than 15-20k dps if you full tank build?) and maybe you should get weaker version of it in normal content. That boost should make difference in those teams where DDs are bad (far too many of them in PUGs) and it wouldn't break the game.