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Where have the tanks gone?


Anysao

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From what I've heard, tanks are just disappearing, and oddly, healers are populating quickly.

I'm a tank (always have been, even if I didn't want to at first), so I don't see the problem on my part. Are twy all leveling alts like i did? (My operative is a proud rakata/columi DPS now) did they quit?

 

We miss you tanks! Please come home!

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I have had the opposite experience. It's hard for me to find healers when grouping, which really sucks. However, I have an alt Vanguard, but I haven't played him much yet. So don't despair. There are tanks out there. I guess it really just depends on your server and the planet you are on at the time.
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I have had the opposite experience. It's hard for me to find healers when grouping, which really sucks. However, I have an alt Vanguard, but I haven't played him much yet. So don't despair. There are tanks out there. I guess it really just depends on your server and the planet you are on at the time.

 

I'm usually on the fleet. Dang, you got a nice server then. Thing is, a DPS can just respec to heals, and not need to change gear, while a DPS to tank needs a whole new set.

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Well, it doesn't help that (using empire ACs) the best spec for Sorc, Op and Merc is the heal spec, and their dps specs are regarded as sub-par.

 

Meanwhile, for Jugg and PT, you have the lolSmash spec and the wtfpwn Pyro spec.

 

That's why you see a lot of healers and very few tanks.

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Well, are we talking about using the group finder or just trying to get a group together on the fleet? Also, are we talking about low level flashpoints, HM flashpoints, or Operations?

 

From my personal experience leveling my Jugg and now my Shadow as a tank, until you get more abilities to hold the aggro beyond just Taunt, it can be a little frustrating not having the right tools for the job.

 

For HM Flashpoints, personally I only need to do 1/day. I'm not going to que in by myself if I can help it, since it will pretty much be an instant que, I'm going to take my friends. I would wager that most tanks think along the same line here.

 

For Operations, chances any half decent is in a guild and that is who they are going to run their operations with most of the time.

 

So in summary, beyond being one of the least appealing roles to play for most people in PvE, there are a lot other factors which make us more scarce than DPS.

 

Another piece of advice though, if you are DPS and if you want to stay off a tanks ignore lists, don't touch the mobs before we do.

Edited by Loquille
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I dont know, I have yet to be out tanked by a dps on my shield/absorb stacking vanguard.

 

But tankin is a thankless job, just like healing. Some people grow tired of it an roll DPS to have it the easy way and run around in cruise control with close to no responsibility within the group. Cause when something fails, its never the DPS who gets blamed, its obviously the tank or the healer's fault. When it succeeds, those two just go unnoticed.

 

It seems to be a pattern in many MMOs now.

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As a Vanguard AND Powertech tank, I actually enjoy tanking. I'm on Canderous Ordo-(cough)AHEM, um, Jedi Covenant, the longest I've ever had to wait for the Group Finder to pop is five minutes. If you want to join me, I'm usually on late at night until early morning.

 

Hadriel Caradhras, the Mantellian

Aredhel Caradhras, Grand Champion of the Great Hunt

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My guess is that other players either scared or frustrated them out of tanking.

 

That dps that you get every couple flashpoints that thinks he's the tank, breaks every cc as soon as it's applied, or refuses to participate in mechanics that the dps need to handle like clicking buttons. That guy frustrates new tanks out of continuing with their chosen role. Some players get around this by grouping with guild members and queuing for their random HM with a fully premade group.

 

The other big frustration is PuG groups that insist that their tanks be overgeared for the content. EV doesn't require full rakata, but half or more of the PuG groups that I see LFM are requiring it. Same with EC and full campaign, you don't need it to successfully complete the operation. Prospective tanks that got past the bad players in group finder get frustrated because they aren't allowed to tank for content that they're at the appropriate gear level for. Healers and dps that aren't fully geared or haven't done the fights before people are willing to work with, but tanks they almost always seem to want overgeared for the content.

 

There are also tanks that got tired of PuGging because the guild that's making up most of the operation insists on drops going to guild members first, and the PuG tank can have the scraps. It doesn't seem to matter that nobody would get any loot if the PuG tank wasn't there.

 

Then there are the tanks that made it past all of these obstacles. They're in guilds that run operations, and are either saved to the content you're trying to run or are overgeared and don't want to go back to progressing through content that they've had on farm for months.

 

That pretty much covers most of the tanks in the game. Personally I'm in the fourth group. I've been in fully optimized Campaign gear for months now, and stopped PuGging operations that I'm overgeared for because I can't use anything for my main set and groups have an aversion to giving tanks or healers gear for a dps set, but never seem to have a problem with the other way around. I run my daily HM with guild members to speed up their queue times and to avoid the players that make the game not fun for me.

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Random groups can be terrifing , I hate it the most when dps starts the fight and/or they don't care about cc. I have played powertech and jugg to 50 now I m lvling a shadow reached 30 all tanks its just my favorite role, its my way of looking after the team. And not just us tanks have issues with dps 2 days ago just queued for my daily and I had the luck to ran into the most rude dps yet, he wasn't waiting for us between fights and he was talking trash to the healer who was a girl because she was low on force(sage) but the di*khead wouldn't let her recover between fights, we kicked him ofc but the sh*t that guy wrote to the poor girl who was just there to enjoy the game disgusted me, she was actually good after we replaced that dps we never wiped seems some ppl turn off their brain when they play dps, then they'll start talking how their hardcore raiders....every dps you meet they will tell you that they are top dmg Edited by iDraxter
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when dps starts the fight

 

Argh! Let them burn in hell. I think it annoys all tanks.

I also hate the dps which rushes after a fight to another with half health, leaving his recovering group behind and dies in process. Dumb questions like 'why didn't you follow", "where's the tank/ healer" don't help :rolleyes:

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Random groups can be terrifing

 

Pretty much this for me and my tank, I took a break from the game to do other things and when I came back my guild was dead and I have forgotten just how good of a tank I was (I am geared black hole/rakata) so I am pretty much scared ****tless to pug ec raids on my tank.

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Like someone said earlier, being a tank or a healer is a relatively thankless job. If somebody besides the Tank dies, then clearly it's the Tanks fault, if the Tank dies then clearly it's the healers fault, while the DPS's get to be the heroes of the story. Doesn't matter if the DPS keeps stealing agro or the Tank runs off away from the healer, it's clearly their job to be right beside them protecting them. :rolleyes: You can only take so much before you wander off. The only GOOD thing about being a tank is usually there's a short wait time for GF because no one else wants to tank for it.
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As it has been mentioned here by multiple people and I agree with this as a tank myself, the DPS players who don't pay attention/reckless/hasty/etc is one of the most frustrating things for us.

 

As a side discussion what is the DPS class that when you get matched with that makes you cringe the most when you see it the group finder? Perhaps we can share some advice on how we should deal with these problem classes.

 

For me it is without a shadow of a doubt, Marauders. I lost count of how many Marauders I put on my ignore list after some horrid experiences with them. Granted I am a Jugg sitting 25K and at/near the soft caps for my defensive stats, so I can weather a lot of punishment even if the healer is having to heal the stupid Marauder, but the tendency for those guys to charge in before everyone else is recovering their health/resource after the pull that puts me over the edge.

 

My method of dealing with them is to:

1. Not Guard them.

2. If the healer is a friend/Guildmate, advise him/her to just let the Marauder die when they pull that crap

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For me it is without a shadow of a doubt, Marauders.

 

My general facepalm class is Assault VGs: almost every single one I happen to get into a group with is an FotM PvPer with no clue how to play the spec effectively for anything other than burst. After the first 6 seconds of any fight, I can almost guarantee that they're completely out of ammo and they've largely ignored everything but the elite they decided to blow their load on. After that, they're really just dead weight that eat up heals I'd like to have after eating the alpha strike because they decided to explode with burst DPS on a hard target when I'm busy trying to establish aggro on everything else.

 

Beyond that, a lot of it comes down to specs as opposed to classes themselves. When I see a Focus Guard or Sent, I'm gonna be a bit wary: they have a strong tendency to behave stupidly and break CC because they weren't paying attention and decided to drop Force Sweep on top of as many targets as possible even though both of the CCd elites are among those targets. If I see a Vigi Guard or a Combat/Watchman Sent, I don't worry any more than I do for any other class (I watch my random groupmates and what they're doing a lot to make sure they're playing properly; I can't count the number of times I've had to tell a DPS Shadow to stop spamming TkT or Shadow Strike or ask a Trooper or Smuggler why he has decided to spend all of his time with an empty resource bar even though it demolishes their resource regen).

 

In my experience, the worrisome specs are the ones that are popular and focused around PvP: many players jump into the FotM spec for PvP, see that they're dealing a lot of damage at the end of WZs and assume that the same playstyle and spec are going to be simply *amazing* for PvE content (I actually met someone that thought that the Shadow hybrid tank spec for PvP was a legitimate PvE DPS spec because, and I'm not kidding, he got better results on the damage charts in WZs compared to pure Inf or pure Balance which meant, to his addled mind, that it was the best PvE DPS spec). PvPers that come into PvE have no clue what they're doing and assume that whatever it is that they are doing is *entirely* appropriate, even if it's getting the group killed or pissing off everyone else.

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First, if I get in a pug with some idiot dps who thinks they can tank, I let them. I sit back and lob ranged attacks waiting for those short-term defensive abilities to go on CD. Shortly afterwards, they die. This can go on until a) they learn b) another grp member schools them c) they quit.

 

I think one of the biggest reasons you see fluctuations in tank populations is that, except for assassin tanks that can put on dps gear, tank classes are BS in PvP. My passive migrations don't mean crap in PvP since most player attacks are tech / force damage that bypasses all my defenses. So, unless I want to throw dps gear on and play as a gimped second rate dps'er (as I'm not spec'ed for damage) playing a tank eliminates 50% of the game.

 

Of course while I think the PvP mechanics as it concerns tanks is BS, my solutions was just to roll a mara so I could PvP as desired. But not everyone wants or has the time to level multiple toons.

 

Just my thoughts

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true story. Rolled a healer as my first toon. Had great fun running with a tight group of people. They transfered to a different server than I wanted to go to. I couldn't find a good tank for a while. I couldn't understand why good tanking seemed to be too hard for players. So...I rolled my own tank. Leveled all the way ot 50, did some Hard Modes. Aaaaanddd...

 

Half the stuff I was blaming on bad tanks was actually being caused by bad dps players... So I leveled a dps to 50... Yep, it was confirmed... bad DPSers are what wrecks it for both tanks and healers.

 

If you are doing any of the following....

1) constantly running ahead, because you already know this FP like a pro

2) making pulls intentionally, even if it's just trash

3) trying to be a ranged dps by shooting the boss in it's face from melee range

4) trying to be a melee dps by ignoring AoE boss attacks, or by face dpsing

5) trying to help the tank down an elite while there are strongs & weaks everywhere

6) constantly breaking cc, because you don't think it's needed

7) constantly running your ammo below 50%, when your resource conservation rotation will work better in most cases.

8) openning with the biggest burst rotation you can dish out - the one you use while doing solo dailies with a companion

9) not using your threat dump, cause you don't think it matters.

10) not using your interrupts, cause you don't think it matters.

 

....guess what... you are not an Uber 7331 DPS. It doesn't matter how good your gear is, or what content you've cleared. Because you've demonstrated that you don't play well as part of a team, or don't understand your roll as a part of that team. Almost all DPS underestimate the difficulty of playing dps, because they don't worry about NOT doing any of the above things. And as a consequence almost all of them do at least some of those things on a regular basis.

 

Your rotations can be sloppy joes loose, and if you don't do those things, your groups will still clear on level content. But even if your rotations are perfect, if you do the things on that list, you will contribute to full party wipes. Because you're messing up both the healer and the tank.

 

If either the tank or the healer ever order/ask/request/beg you to attack, ignore, or cc a specific target ~ THEY HAVE A REASON TO. If they have a disagreement about it ~ stay out of it.

 

If want to be an Uber DPS who has no trouble finding groups - you learn not to do ANY of the stuff on that list. I can guarantee you that if you do that, you will be on the friend lists of both tanks and healers, and you will get invites to groups on a regular basis.

 

Otherwise the geared tanks & healers will just 2 man Hardmodes with dps companions for the daily.....

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I have a lvl50 defense guardian, lvl 50 seer sage, lvl 50 cm commando and now working on my jedi shadow.

When I was tanking with a random group, I always tell the dps my way of doing hm fps, ie, you pull it, u tank it.

When I was healing with a random group, I also tell the dps that "u pull it, u tank it; I focus on keeping the tank and myself alive in the choas."

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We ...erm I have gone Pyro. Dps is so much more rewarding to enjoy both aspects of this game, pve and pvp, with throwing away stupid amounts of cash on respecs. What do you mean? Cash is easy to get! Sure thing, unless you are respeccing 5 times a day and each time costs you 50k.

 

Thats one of the reasons I stopped tanking.

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true story. Rolled a healer as my first toon. Had great fun running with a tight group of people. They transfered to a different server than I wanted to go to. I couldn't find a good tank for a while. I couldn't understand why good tanking seemed to be too hard for players. So...I rolled my own tank. Leveled all the way ot 50, did some Hard Modes. Aaaaanddd...

 

Half the stuff I was blaming on bad tanks was actually being caused by bad dps players... So I leveled a dps to 50... Yep, it was confirmed... bad DPSers are what wrecks it for both tanks and healers.

 

If you are doing any of the following....

1) constantly running ahead, because you already know this FP like a pro

2) making pulls intentionally, even if it's just trash

3) trying to be a ranged dps by shooting the boss in it's face from melee range

4) trying to be a melee dps by ignoring AoE boss attacks, or by face dpsing

5) trying to help the tank down an elite while there are strongs & weaks everywhere

6) constantly breaking cc, because you don't think it's needed

7) constantly running your ammo below 50%, when your resource conservation rotation will work better in most cases.

8) openning with the biggest burst rotation you can dish out - the one you use while doing solo dailies with a companion

9) not using your threat dump, cause you don't think it matters.

10) not using your interrupts, cause you don't think it matters.

 

....guess what... you are not an Uber 7331 DPS. It doesn't matter how good your gear is, or what content you've cleared. Because you've demonstrated that you don't play well as part of a team, or don't understand your roll as a part of that team. Almost all DPS underestimate the difficulty of playing dps, because they don't worry about NOT doing any of the above things. And as a consequence almost all of them do at least some of those things on a regular basis.

 

Your rotations can be sloppy joes loose, and if you don't do those things, your groups will still clear on level content. But even if your rotations are perfect, if you do the things on that list, you will contribute to full party wipes. Because you're messing up both the healer and the tank.

 

If either the tank or the healer ever order/ask/request/beg you to attack, ignore, or cc a specific target ~ THEY HAVE A REASON TO. If they have a disagreement about it ~ stay out of it.

 

If want to be an Uber DPS who has no trouble finding groups - you learn not to do ANY of the stuff on that list. I can guarantee you that if you do that, you will be on the friend lists of both tanks and healers, and you will get invites to groups on a regular basis.

 

Otherwise the geared tanks & healers will just 2 man Hardmodes with dps companions for the daily.....

 

this exactly. On my healer I've lost count of the number of times I've died because the dps all want to focus on the Elite the tank is holding, leaving 5-7 Normal/Strong mobs to murder me as I build healing threat. I Stealth to try to CC something and hey look, the idiot Sentinel has already pulled the group. I go for days at a time without completing my daily HM because of this kind of idiocy, and simple unwillingness to change their play style.

Edited by NRVNQSR
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there seems to be lots of low lvl tanks we get like 2 tank sper group in Hammer station and Athiss(frequently), actually in Athiss just last night i ran twice in a group of 3 tanks and 1 healer:D, as for the 50`s they probably (like me) log just for guild ops or they just go dps route for pvp alternatively lvling new toons, sooner or later we all kick the bucket at 50, this game was made for multiple toons just look at Legacy Edited by iDraxter
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