Simply because I feel its a terrible role in its current iteration doesn't change what I know about them or that I can't laugh. As far as what I play, Im not sure how that concerns you. Or why you felt the need to jump up my rear about it.
I resent tanking in its current format and have detested the shape it took since the last part of ToT when deity potency buff exploded on to the scene. That said, I still tank and probably will continue to do so after doing it close to 18 years now in this game but that does not take away from the fact that tanking mechanics have been completely neglected for years and people who were ignorant before are even more now on how it worked years ago and how it works now. We have so many backseat drivers talking about tanking and how it should be done (not specific to this thread only) with little to no experience in doing it themselves. Gearing a tank alt with a full set of gear and then be asked to tank through heroics and an occasional raid in stacked groups does not make anybody remotely close to understanding how the tanking works in this game compared to someone who has geared up with the content, led groups and raids for a significant amount of time covering years of content with group setups that are fine tuned to perfection with best players to worst setups with equally bad players. There is 0 zero flexibility in how tanks can play right now. All of us wear the same armor, go after the same stats in order to do our primary function and that is to tank. You cannot go full mit/block gear because a) the content does not warrant it and b) you will most likely lose out on other key stats that are needed to generate enough dps to hold aggro and that is true of all tank classes, except monks may be. Factor in the tank class balance (or lack thereof) and then you have some classes that offer a much vastly superior overall package to the group/raid that you really need to question your desire to opt for other tank classes which can easily be dead weight unless played properly. Most of the main tanks in top 5 raid guilds here on Thurgadin are tanking for years like myself and they can all easily relate to all of this and so too in all probability tanks on the US servers. Very few players would even dare to step into the tanking ring right now because they simply do not have the patience for it (or even afraid of) but yet I see/hear them flaunt around with "yeah, you need to aggro better" or "my guild tank had no issues with this" nonsense all day long. Not a single tank worth his/her salt would outright say that nerf x,y,z class to make tanking easier, what we want is simple and I am just not going to repeat myself again. If the Devs bothered enough then you have access to years of feedback, go look it up.
Seems to me like there's not really a whole lot to tanking currently outside of Bulwark, positioning, and the specifics for each class on how to answer the question "How do I make the boss smack me and not the scouts?" Am I wrong about that? Leading groups is not exactly something specific to tanks. Gearing up from the beginning doesn't make you a better tank. Playing for many years doesn't make you a better tank. Designing group/raid compositions is not a tank-specific skill. What exactly is it about tanking that you think people would be lacking if they swapped to tanking without having done it for many years prior? If a player knows when to use Bulwark, where to stand, and what buttons to press on their bars, what is it they're missing? My philosophy, in this game and in others, has always been that playing every role will give you a much better perspective on what each role should be doing. If you play as a DPS, you know what you want from your tanks, which means as a tank, you know what to do for the DPS. The people "backseat driving" in regards to tanking are, perhaps through ignorance, telling you to do something that will help them. I don't think I've seen anything in this thread that even remotely resembles backseat driving talking about tanking and how it should be done, so I don't really know what you're talking about specifically, but if it's things like "hold aggro better," I can understand how you feel when largely your ability to do that is out of your control. I suspect that will always be the case at the higher end, unless something changed with how stats work. The players who are good at what they do will do what is best for achieving success, and the players who aren't will copy the good players. And since there's no variety in what the stats do for each class, there's going to be similar gearing choices. Even if something were to change, the best players of each class would all gear and play the same way for the same reason I already stated. All the stats are universal, which is why every tank gears the same, and no class is reliant on a particular stat to be successful that the other classes aren't also reliant on.
I am curious if you've tanked since you quit in AoD or DoV or w/e? Or tanked ever? Raids, heroics are pretty much a joke now after the plethora of nerfs.
Okay? What does the difficulty of the content have to do with anything I said? What point are you trying to make?
If you think tanking is equal or less responsibility than every other role in game, youve answered the question. No, you havent tanked.
I never said anything of the sort. Focus less on trying to one-up and demean the people you're talking to and try having an actual conversation for once.
Not trying to one up, just establishing whether or not you have any credible experience related to tanking. Based on the above comment, you dont. Especially as you chose to completely ignore the relavant question of "have you tanked?". Take that however you will, but it speaks volumes.
Perhaps what I was saying was unclear. I'm saying that there isn't a lot to tanking -- that it isn't a particularly engaging role. That doesn't mean that there is less to do than other roles. And I asked if I was wrong because, no, I don't have "credible experience" tanking in VoV. I started playing a couple weeks ago. I'm doing solos exclusively until I unlock the Shadowed Ethereal Trackers that unlock AA upgrades that make me worth inviting to groups and my mount and familiar is leveled up because none of that existed last I played. The comment about what tanking is now days is derived from comments on the forums... primarily from you, actually:
There was, in fact, a miscommunication then. I do feel tanking is unengaging, i do not feel its without responsibility or plenty of "busy work". For an experienced tank, its very simple, mindless, work. Its not fun. For a new tank, it can be, and often is, overwhelming, because its parts of the game theyve never been exposed to before. Juggling agro, staying alive, positioning, bulwark, script elements. And typically, the tank is expected to lead the group, define strats when necessary, and fix issues as they arise. Thats why most folks will never make the jump from a dps/utility to a tank. I see far more folks with healers doing it because theyre at least moderately aware of where and what the tank should be doing for each fight. Just my personal view on tanking. It used to be fun, though. : (
What do you think would make tanking more engaging for you personally? I don't want to derail a thread about nerfing tanks with general talk of what would make tanking better, so to tie it back to the original post, it seems to me that doing more damage wouldn't really make the role any more exciting than it already is when the issue seems to be the tediousness of the tasks you endure. Or maybe it would be worth enduring if the difference in damage wasn't so great? 1/20th the DPS of a scout is quite a bit of a difference.
Less 1 shot mechanics, remove uncurable "no hostile" detriments, put more of the onus for script execution on dps/utility. Im not a huge fan of constantly having some silly mechanic that precludes me, exclusively, from doing anything such as cages/ports/removal from the fight. Redo the mitigation mechanic so tanks have a viable reason to want to gear for those stats, removing the need for every person in every group/raid from needing the same items to do their job, and in conjunction with that, redo threat to reward more defensive, less offensively focused tanks, for focusing on their role rather than strictly dps to hold agro. All long shots as the mechanics dev doesnt appear to have any real desire to differentiate tanks from one another and at this point, forcing dps players who want zero responsibility to have it forced on them would be a massive shock to most players enjoyment.
looking at it, it would seem that removing Bulwark and applying fervor to taunts would go a long way to bringing them into intended design. I think bulwark was added to force every group into carrying one instead of running 6 wizards through the content, if thats the case they should probably stop trying to force people to play a certain way and let the players do what they want to with their class.
There is content where players are able to play their way. However, if that was a viable option for all content, it would effectively remove any challenge from higher tier content. Not a great thing for game retention, imo. Thats a pretty significant portion of the player base that prefers to progress their character through increasingly difficult content. Itd be fantastic for super casuals that want to just "see" content i guess.
I pretty much agree with all of that. In lieu of one shot mechanics, I'd favor healing being more difficult and causing a failure to stoneskin or otherwise mitigate a large hit to result in a damage spike that is difficult to recover from rather than instant death. From my brief experience, every heal, regardless of base value, instantly heals everyone to maximum HP. Is that different in raids? Sharing responsibility for mechanics just sounds like all around improvements to engagement. Encourages proper usage of abilities for DPS and supports since they might need to move, stand in a certain position, and so on. Heaven forbid we have adds that need to be CC'd again. Totally agree with redoing mitigation. Best I can tell, those stats do nothing. Gearing is incredibly boring (not just for tanks) when it's basically the same four stats to do better regardless of role. I think they could just consolidate fervor, potency, crit bonus, and ability double cast into a single stat called "Do Better" and nothing about gearing would have changed. I was messing around on the new L&L beta server, and made a Guardian to try something new. Noticed that blocks dealt threat, and it looked like a significant amount. Differences like that, and an emphasis on them, would probably make gearing more interesting. Give each tank their own form of mitigating and/or surviving damage, and give them a reason to focus on that over potency gains. I'd like to see Reuse Speed and Casting Speed work above 100%. 100% is half the reuse/cast speed. 200% is 1/4. 300% is 1/8, and so on. Ability Doublecast should work on spells with triggers (just double the amount of triggers) and work above 100% (not just to avoid ADC mitigation). DPS, Melee Mult, and WDB should be merged into a single stat. Multi-attack and Flurry should similarly be merged, and should work linearly (100 MA is an extra attack, 200 MA is two extra attacks). I'd love to see abilities proc on autos again (or maybe they still do and the tooltip is bad? Most read "on ability hit" or something similar), and the internal cooldown on abilities removed in favor of proc chances again (so percentage based increases actually do something). Haste should affect the tick rate of DoTs and HoTs, as well. All of those things combined would definitely make gearing for each tank unique. Even in the event they forgo defensive gearing options, they'd at least gear for threat differently. Where a Shadow Knight might want Haste and Potency for stronger spell DoTs, a Berserker might want more DPS and MA for auto attack damage, and a Monk might want more Reuse Speed to trigger Combination more often. Alas... feedback does not seem to be listened to. When a developer has a vision of what they want their game to be, no amount of complaints will persuade them to change it.
When the devs refuse to acknowledge bugs mentioning class spells and AAs not even working in the first place, the game is broken. Any experiences and the stats representing them are invalid off the jump. How can anyone properly assess threat, DPS, and healing when many abilities and buffs used don't even work? That's just the beginning. For the abilities that do work, many AAs in particular still have values that don't even register with the modern inflated stats they're supposed to affect. Perhaps if the devs actually fixed the broken stuff our experiences would be different and closer to something acceptable. Then minor tweaks to achieve a sense of balance or meaningful roles across all classes wouldn't seem like a daunting task with wild swings of the nerf bat or crazy overcompensating with buffing specific classes to FOTM. This isn't just a MMO problem, it's a basic software engineering problem where several components of a greater system are broken so the system isn't reaching its full potential. How awesome would your cell phone be if the volume never actually went over 1, the GPS didn't update, bluetooth only supported connecting to 1 device, the graphics never rendered anything higher than old VGA numbers, and the dialer wouldn't allow entry of odd numbers because of programming errors despite all the modern hardware and its capabilities that keep getting introduced every year? Are bugs actually features in EQ2? It's to the point I want to bug things that are working right because it's becoming unexpected.
Fact of the matter is: Tanks are just there for Bulwark most days now, snaps don't work like they should, hate is not generated enough to get back off other classes and as for positioning ...well how can they really position mobs when mobs are getting aggroed non stop by other classes I'm not a tank by any means, if I take either of my tanks I'm just there for the bulwark and that's wat i tell them cause I know no matter wat i do I cant hold hate anymore...but I am a healer and I am always watching and listening to my tanks from groups or raids going off about the fact they have trouble getting the aggro back because they're not able to generate the hate enough Something needs to be done so once again tanks can actually be the meatshield they are supposed to be and hold hate off their grps so Im not healing thru the damn ranger/wizard all the time since they're the ones actually tanking nowadays PS Bulwark is a PoS and needs to be freaking removed, useless crap
