Are Tanks Obsolete Outside of Operations?

I'll take the bribe... :-)

So what exactly is it besides being criticized in groups that people don't like about tanking? I understand that they don't want to do it, but ... why? You have the power to help the group recover from mistakes that dps just can't cope with but you still get to shoot things instead of spraypainting your teammates green the whole time. I'm just confused.

Is the gear a problem because healers and dps use the same gear? That makes tank gear the odd-armor out?

The lead/organize/position thing... that makes it sound like everyone who isn't a tank is either a no-skill lemming that doesn't understand the most rudimentary elements of teamwork or just lazy. That surely can't be the case...

The first and number one thing is the same reason very few people lead IRL — responsibility is scary, being blamed for things is scary, being asked to go first is scary, being expected to do everything right and control things is scary, being severely abused/punished (sometimes justifiably) if you do things wrong is scary... etc.

You're never going to solve that issue because it's human nature. Healing has a responsibility, but that responsibility is to follow everyone else around and clean up after them. ie, it's their fault for doing stupid things you can't heal. DPS has a responsibility, but if DPS doesn't do their responsibility very well, you can usually still squeeze through.

That makes people like Healing more (stand back / follow / support) and DPS much more (focus on doing your thing and let the other roles take care of the rest).

So no matter what you do to Tanking, you're already starting from a disadvantage when your goal as developer is to balance the population of all 3 roles. Without removing Tanking (which would make me a sad Juggernaut), the best you can do is try to make it as appealing as possible within those limits.

That means weeding out as much hassle-factor as possible, so that more people are willing to do it. Compare these 2 examples:

• You wear the same gear as your DPS spec. When you Tank, you Field Respec and activate Ion Cell.
• You wear a different set of gear as your DPS spec. Showing up in DPS gear will get you kicked from Tanking. Showing up in Tank gear will get you kicked from DPSing. You need two sets of gear. Your Tank gear kills slower while solo to no significant benefit except maybe for tediously whittling down Champions. Gearing your Tank set is as slow and expensive as your DPS set, except instead of seeing bigger more frequent Crits and bigger numbers, you become intangibly more 'survivable' ... sometimes... when you're being attacked... and it doesn't always matter.

OK, look. Personally? I love option 2, because I'm insane, and being a walking wall of durasteel just appeals to me. I'm okay with relying on everyone else to get the serious killing done.

Most people? They see a giant wall of hassle in Option 2. It's nothing like what they geared while leveling. It doesn't help their "fun" spec. It's not cool and appealing like more Power and Surge. It's subtle and thoughtful.

If you tell them, "Hey actually, just gear for DPS and then you can also try Tanking." Chances are at least some of them will go: "Hmm... okay."

It goes like that for any area of Tanking that's more hassle than the inherent baseline hassle of:

• Leading
• Organizing
• Positioning
• Spec'ing for lower DPS (if you don't have Field Respec)

In a way, by making Tank requirements less stringest, you're "bribing" the playerbase into trying it and learning how to do it.

Risks include:

• Not enough are willing, still, to make any difference (possible, but eg WoW shows it does actually improve Tank numbers)
• You get even more Tank Heroes™ that fly in and think they can Tank without understanding how to Tank and make Baby GF cry
• probably many colorful other disasters and consequences

But I guess, IMO, it's better to work through this issues than just do nothing. Because Tanking in its "classic" MMO state — while I personally love it — is not working. It's just a nuisance crippling the gameplay of most players, which is why devs keep inching towards removing it completely from MMO play.

I'd rather not lose Tank gameplay, it feels really good. But some compromises have got to start being made to open up the Role to more players and spread out queue compositions.

That's why I'm so passionate about this topic, BTW — I see the very real likelihood that if Tanking design doesn't change radically in MMOs, it's going to go extinct, because majority rules and the majority doesn't like dealing with or being affected by the shortage of willing participants.

Tanking is my favorite role. It's what I do. I don't want to see it die, but I also understand why it's dying.

This is an interesting thread for me since I find tanking in SWTOR more appealing than WOW, EQ or other MMOs that I have played. Leveling a tank in most MMOs is painful. I did level a bear tank in WOW but I was kitty-cat during leveling. In EQ leveling a tank basically required guild support or a LOT of patience.

In SWTOR I can go tank stance and spec with DPS mods and a healer/dps companion. This allows me to do FPs, KDY, and Heroics at will. I haven't got to endgame yet with a tank but with a dps companion I don't expect Oricon , CZ or Section X to take me very long.

As far as interesting game play I find that the extra attention and situational awareness needed makes it much more interesting. A tank also makes Tacticals such as Czerka Meltdown much easier to complete. In any case I play a shadow tank which has higher dps and more complex abilities than a Vanguard.

That hasn't been my experience. I run tanks and dps (no heal alts yet), and for the most part, I find that one tank really helps in Kuat. Grab aggro on the Elites or Champ and the dps burn them down fast. The final boss fights definitely are still oriented around the trinity. That is, in that last fight some one has to take the role of a tank and be willing to absorb a great deal of damage to allow the rest of the group to burn down the boss.

But hey, that has been my experience and I'm sure it varies among players. One thing that is definitely true is that a tactical group with more than 2 tanks is a baaaaaad thing. Lol.

That makes the solution sound simple - leave existing itemization as it is, change the effect of the tank stances to modify things a bit differently so that new tiers of gear with only DPS stats will still work for a tanking role. That would make levelling a tank stupidly easy from that point out though.

Still, over my dead body am I field-respeccing all the time no matter what they do with itemization and skills... setting up new hot bars all the time would be a titanic pain. I would consider it if they implemented mechanics that would allow me to save and recall my setup each time I changed.

I have never understood the field-respec thing, though. A skill tree is, to me, a static thing, inseparable from the identity of a character. Maybe that's my inner RPer talking.

I think this means I'm an old-school player. I'm just getting the idea that most people under the age of 20 would think I was nuts...

Yup. Totally agree with you. I love tanking in SWTOR. It is more tactical and more challenging because of the way the game handles threat which is much more than just a spam of a few abilities. Situational awareness is key. But, I run a Shadow Tank as well which is definitely higher dps and great AOE threat gen as tanks go, but you really have to know your skill set to manage mitigation. It is a blast.

The first thing I bought before leaving Korriban on my first character was 500 CC and then Field Respec.

Changed spec like... every level-up because I was so excited to try different builds. Over time I learned to use Darkness for soloing Heroics and then Madness for clearing out Normal missions, and then flip around as needed when FP queues popped.

Field Respec is one of my favorite things in SWTOR — I like it much better than Dual Spec in WoW, because with FR I can try a million different configurations in no time until I find the one I like best. But I've got that nutter OCD personality so.

You're not nuts, but there's a few points:

• We are in an era where rigid spec restrictions and role restrictions are dying out. It's just less fun for most people to be told "No." when they want to do something.
• Dedicated Tanks are always a minority, and even more so moving forward, partially as the genre of coop PvE becomes more universal and popular (ie, the Tank population is not increasing proportionally to the overall population, because Tank is still a minority role)

It's a very tough design decision. Everyone loves a good Tank, and when a good Tank shows up, everyone has fun in a Tank-supported PvE system.

But nobody enjoys a PvE system designed with Tanks required, where they get either a bad Tank, or even worse, no Tank at all so they log out without even playing.

That is what the devs are struggling to work out and adjust, not just in SWTOR but all MMOs right now. For Tanks to feel useful, you have to punish people when a Tank is missing. But when it's too punishing to miss a Tank, no one is having fun.

That's why I favor focusing on Tanking as the choice to Lead / Organize / Position... basically the PvE tactical coordinator. IMO that's the heart of soul of tanking (not everyone will agree!), and as long as that's preserved, any other change is acceptable.

Lack of cool animations for important abilities, like the animation for a smashmonkey's Smash, the Sorc's Lighning Storm, or the Operative's shiv, or Orbital Strike (WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!).

Seriously, playing a video game is a visceral experience driven by the sights and sounds. Part of why I find playing a smashmonkey (jug or mara) so much fun is because of the sights and sounds I get rewarded with when I do a leap, smash, force choke, or dual-saber throw.

Sure some tanking stuff has fun animations (IMO carbonize) but most of what you use is not very exciting. For example, look at the PT's oil slick, it looks more like a really bad case of diarrhea than like anything cool.

The devs could and IMO should give tanks better animations for their main tanking abilities. Put a voice over of "GET OVER HERE!" on Force Pull, and "WHO WANTS SOME?" on the taunts, and there are probably better ideas for it than that; sights and sounds that demonstrate what a bad mudder sucker your tank is. It will make being a tank more fun.

So what you're say is most players are lazy wimps who are afraid of decisions and challenges.

*sigh* Well, all I can say is I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make that decision, because it doesn't seem that there is a right answer. I hope if they do decide to change the itemization they don't water the content down too much also.

QFT.

Another thing WoW has also been doing with tanking worth mentioning is moving towards a more active mitigation model, which when coupled with a good encounter design, can make tanking more interesting.

That is to say tanks are given more tools to deal with damage that require thought, timing, and usage to gain maximum benefit while relying less on passive stats, which is to say tanking looks more like the Shadow / Assassin playstye than Vanguard / PT playstyle.

On topic, I feel that removing the separate gearing path for tanks along with adding a way to save multiple spec set ups (e.g. talent choice + quickbars + keybinds) such that swapping specs is as simple as swapping UI settings would go a long way to removing some of the barriers to player participation with tanking.

The alternative to not making changes I'm afraid is more mindless tactical content that can be zerged down easily, especially by a group of competent players who grew up with the trinity system, as developers concede the point that without tanks to fill the queues, it is pointless to make challenging trinity style encounters.