Are Tanks Obsolete Outside of Operations?

First off. This is a great discussion.

I am a 100% tank (Sithhuntress is my in game tank). I have done other toons to just understand their play.

I love to tank. I have had my share of wipes when I was learning. I have been yelled at. I have had the unenviable role of reading the minds of dps players when they want something a certain way. Guess what ? Not everyone plays the same way.

That said most players have been really helpful. I did a full run SnV a couple days ago with and a more vet tank just whispered role to me and we cleaned house. Tanks have responsibilities to the group that put pressure on them. I have gotten lots of nice thanks from people for tanking competently but I still have work to do and gear to get.

How to fix it? I don't think you can without diluting the experience. It is our fundamental skill to get and hold agro. To kite when needed etc... Making that easier will make it boring. Access to better mitigation gear could be nice but does not increase tankers.

The only way to make tanking better would to be to allow us to practice our mechanics without other players hating on us if we mess up. Guilds help. Dulfy helps the most but you have to sit their and study it until it sticks in game.

The problem is, again, this immediately separates you out from the vast majority of players and makes your perspective less relevant. I struggled for years to realize this in my own arguments about "socializing" Tanking skills.

If you have learned to love Tanking as it is right now, you are a unique and minority personality and what would or would not attract you to the role is not what will attract more players in general.

This is correct, but every change ever made to MMO design ever to make gameplay more accessible to more people has "diluted the experience".

Grognard eyepatch-wearing Ultima Online or EverQuest veterans don't consider anything we do in WoW or SWTOR or GW2 an "MMO" because it's pampered with baby powder from level 1 to 55/60/90. Meanwhile the population of interested MMO players has healthily increased in parallel to this dilution.

Again, the trick isn't to say "We must make more Tanks without diluting the Tanking experience". Flat-out — That is not going to happen.

Instead, your goal is to selectively dilute the Tank experience on the low end, where inconvenience to other players (Queue times) is driving them toward an attitude of gleefully discarding the Tank role (Tacticals).

Alternative #2 is to accept the OP's hypothesis — that, basically, Tanking is going to gradually become obsolete in Queued content. Allow that to happen, and leave Tanking for PUG+ where it can be properly coordinated and indulged as a role.

Again — you have to realize the slope this role is on. Once you begin deleting Tanking from one area of gameplay, people become more comfortable with lacking it.

That spiral will obsolete Tanking in general, because if people don't want to play the role already, even fewer will want to play it when it's a hyper-specialized set of gear, spec, and skills used only in an ultra-minority of hand-picked content.

Look at what happened to the classic MMO "Crowd Control" and "Party Support" jobs when WoW made queued content requires 3 roles: Tank, DPS, Healer.

They evaporated — "support" classes like Paladin & Shaman were converted to "Heal", "Tank", or "DPS" in absolute terms, their support tools diluted/deleted, and they were repositioned to provide competitive performance in those roles.

"CC" gradually expired as a tool in dungeon design because the queue couldn't guarantee you'd have CC-capable classes. Essentially, those roles went extinct because they became redundant/nonexistent in one huge area of content.

There is an absolute log-jam going on here and complacency because you "like it how it is", is going to result in Tanking withering away, maybe not "tomorrow", but sooner or later.

WoW proved it doesn't on the important caveat that you shift that interest into something else.

First of all, you can make Tanking extremely forgiving in low-end content without making it brainless or trivial in high-end content. There are hundreds of switches and levers to play with to achieve that.

Second, you can reduce the pressure on Aggro by focusing the player on something else. WoW chose to refocus your energy on your Rotation instead, where attention and awareness determine your survivability as much, or more than, your gear choices.

Again Sin is a good example here. Even if Dark Charge automatically made all enemies within 40 meters attack you at all times (ie, you're a walking Taunt button), Sin would still be engaging because you won't survive that attention without constantly engaging your rotation every GCD and maintaining your defense abilities.

You don't need to make it that crude, but you do need to bring things way down in terms of the gap between an experienced & skilled Tank and a newbie or mediocre Tank in low-end content (which is where most mediocre players will stop anyway).

People keep saying this and I am going to keep stressing that it is so, so incredibly wrong.

You are thinking from the perspective of a dedicated player that logs in and thinks things like "I will spend 30 minutes adjusting my mods to maximize my mitigation" or "I will take 1 hour to practice this patch's rotation changes, so I don't mess up in Group Finder".

You're projecting that dedication onto a general populace that doesn't have it. Like it or not, spit on them, deride them all you like — these players make up the vast horde of population supporting your game and filling your queues. They are the army of gerbils that make this entire factory work by running on their wheels.

Most players are extremely discouraged by embarassing or epic failure, to the point they won't try again or will avoid the role permanently because epic failure as Tank is extraordinarily extra-epic.

DPS and Healer are much less intimidating roles in Matchmade content because they can see great success even with mediocre play. A Tank cannot, because Aggro going all over will expose their mediocrity brutally and swiftly.

If Group Finder consisted solely of simplistic Tank + Spank bosses where your only requirement was to walk forward and hit it, and Tanks had no separate gear requirement to be effective, Tank populations would skyrocket because anyone queuing as Tank would succeed at Tanking.

Ironically then, it's very likely not Bosses that discourage Tanking — it's the trash leading to them. On Bosses all roles are about equal in tactics-pressure, need for explanations, etc. On trash, Tanks have a disproportionately massive pressure to know exactly what's going on.

I am very confident that most players give up on Tanking because of sour and terrifying experiences with Trash pulls going wild and infuriating their group members, since even a clumsy Tank tunneling most bosses will be merely an annoyance, and is much more easily corrected — "Move to blue spot when he turns green".

Basically you need to simplify down matchmade content without necessarily diluting "harder" content. What are the jobs in matchmade right now?

• DPS kills things. This is simple and easy to understand for any player of any skill level.
• Healer makes bars go back up. This is simple and easy to understand for any player of any skill level.
• Tank... initiates pull, attacks all mobs several times to generate initial Threat before falling back on tauntboosting, kites problem mobs (like exploding zombies) away, positions back to wall in case of KB mobs, uses defensive buttons (but only sometimes, it depends), doesn't really "kill" things just kind of hits everything in even amounts, sometimes hides behind corners, sometimes moves stuff around, sometimes doesn't so

Are we seeing the issue yet? One of these roles is not like the other. It has no obvious purpose to a player following a simple ruleset.


You can say the Tank role should be "Holds enemy attention while DPS kill things and Healers heal things".

The problem is that, in practice, it actually becomes the paragraph listed above, because "hold enemy attention" is actually not an obvious task and requires a massive sub-division of minor details with no clear or hard rules.

So, yes, I'm not shy about saying this: Tanking currently requires way too much from an average player compared to DPS & Healing.

Until you address that, Tanking will always be an annoying queue-killer role for most players. As long as it remains that way, Tacticals and similar will proliferate. This isn't going to just magically "stop" at Tacticals.

If nothing changes to make Tanking more palatable to more players (and thus an acceptable queue requirement), don't be shocked if 12 months from now we're introduced to Tactical Operations in Group Finder.

Practicing wouldn't help you because of one very important point no one realizes:

Tank strategy changes in every single location and every single pull based on content-specific concerns.

People can get Gold or Endless 30 in WoW Tank Proving Grounds (solo practice zones) and then absolutely fail in real content because they haven't been trained in how specific pulls gimmick-affect them, how to interact with certain classes, etc etc etc.

With no other changes made, even if people do the Practice (most won't without heavy and extreme bribery, and then to bare-minimum needed), they still won't be prepared for actual varying content and will still flop hard and will decide "I'm bad at Tanking" and un-tick the box.

The only way to address this is to give people the same confidence about succeeding that they have when they queue as DPS or Healer. And yes, that means "dumbing-down" matchmade Tanking pressure and requirements.

That's okay — the role is too "smart" already. It can stand to be lobotomized in low-end content.

Preserving the role's existence is much, much more important than stubbornly trying to have 50 cakes and also consume them in every possible area of the game.

For the sake of discussion — what exactly are you imagining "going wrong" in Group Finder if you show up as Tank? What possible outcomes are discouraging you from trying?

That's because (as you eventually point out somewhere inside those archaeologically-deep paragraphs ):

• Tanking requires a very unique personality, mindset, and skillset
• Is "hard"
• Is much more heavily affected and penalized by other player actions than the other 2 Roles since your entire job is equivalent to herding cats 24/7

It's not because of Group Finder or PUGs, it's because the role is overly-reliant on total group cooperation to function correctly, unlike DPS & Heals which can soldier through and do their own thing fairly effectively in almost all circumstances.

I do not believe this is actually correct, for many reasons:

• Impatience with Tanks, pressure on Tanks, and 'sabotage' of Tanks are all signs that in matchmade content, the role is too reliant on total cooperation from other players to function correctly.
• In other words — the social repercussions are a direct extension of the over-burden the role currently places on the player doing it
• We only remember the "evil" players, but most players actually aren't that evil. I am very sceptical that most people choose not to Tank because other players were mean to them once, vs. feeling genuinely incompetent or disinterested in the role's pressures and requirements.
• Extending from this, new Healers and new DPS are also abused heavily sometimes. Don't forget this — all roles get brutalized by impatient players when they're new. In fact there's many Tanks (!) that are quite cruel or impatient with newbie or "slow" Healers or DPS.

Yes, yes, damn rapscallions, get off my matchmade lawn, etc etc etc.

This is irrelevant. You have two choices:

• Keep matchmade content in-game that you Tank for, even if it means Tanking for upstart punk ingrate rapscallion brats that don't respect the intense rainbow comraderie of love and bonding that killing robots together should bring us.
• Stop Tanking matchmade content. As in, literally, because the Queue doesn't need you any more, because it's balanced for DPS + Healers and their upstart selfish lack of concern for group harmony and intimacy, and they have successfully achieved content designed without needing you to exist.

Pardon the tongue in my cheek on some of that, but I'm serious: That social dynamics have changed with the introduction of anonymous matchmade content is obvious and accurate, but also completely irrelevant because that's how it is and it's not going away.

Ah-ha! I found the problem. This is not 10 years ago.

Look, I genuinely sympathize with you that Matchmade content is a little hollow and soul-less much of the time due to its very nature.

But let's remember something else: 10 years ago you didn't have matchmade content so the comparison is much less relevant.

You can still do all of the following cozy things:

• Play with Friends of like mind
• Play with Guildies of like mind
• Get a high % of good queue pops with nice people who are happy to cooperate (bonus! not available 10 years ago!)
• Get a good % of sane PUGs that cooperate and work together

But life moves on, tech moves on, innovation moves on, and gaming moves on and we're in an era where you also have to deal with the reality of a queue filled with anonymous random people who just want to kill robots, get loot/comms/etc, see the story (or spacebar it), etc etc etc.

It's really becoming very clear that the situation for Tanks is: Compromise or Die.

I think there are enough tactical fps for the time being. I really don't want to see more. They aren't a bad thing in that on some servers, perhaps most, there's a lack of tanks (and healers), but I much prefer regular fps, especially the older fps with better story content. When you compare Black Talon or The Foundry to the new fps, the new ones don't shine.

So I didn't read everything, but interesting thread, a few thoughts :

RE: gearing tanks
Well, the alacrity/accuracy bullsith never gets old, still don't see much point (if you want to extend the grind for the sake of extending the grind, you can just give some subpar enhancements, not downright useless ones).
With that said,there are 2 things to consider,
-if you make it too hard to gear up tanks, that's discouraging, so some people don't bother or give up. Maybe.
-if you make it easier to gear up tanks, they're done with it faster and stop queueing in the group finder (or they have less incentive to do it multiple times in a row).
With that said it seems a little conter-intuitive to purposely treat like sith the role with the most scarce population... would it help reduce the dps population if all the comms dps gear was absolute garbage ?


About having one set of stats that change based on your stance. Well, that's an interesting idea, I like it, but I doubt Bioware would consider it, seems like a huge paradigm shift. Anyway, based on the stats that can go in certain places and not others, a better translation table would be this :
Power <-> Defense
Crit <-> Absorb
Surge/Alacrity/Accuracy <-> Shield (always present on enhancements and never on mods)



On making tanking braindead easy on the low-end :
I'm not sure how I feel about that. I agree with your reasoning, but I guess it depends what you call the low-end. Does it start when you hit the level cap and consider gearing up, or during the leveling process ? Taking up tanking at the level cap is probably a pretty bad idea in the current state of the game because you're going to have to climb a huge wall of skill, gear, and unforgiving content and groupmates... So I guess making the gearing up easier would help here.
On the other hand, low-level tanking is mostly really easy. Low-level flashpoints (let's say up to and including cademimu) can already be completed with 3 dps and a healer no problem, and in that level range, a tank is basically just a dps with slightly subpar damage, slightly more durability, and 100% extra threat. So holding aggro is really easy at low levels in my experience. And even if you fail, well, the healer can actually tank...
There is some disparity between the tank classes though. Shadows have force breach, which is like being a walking aoe taunt at low level. Vanguards have a handul of aoes, and the benefit of hitting multiple targets with ion cell, but that should probably be a passive effect of ion cell (like for the npcs that get it) rather than a HIB proc. And then you have guardians (probably the tank class that attracts most new players, because lightsaber, action! and heavy armor), who get absolutely nothing except force sweep. There's plenty of good tools in the guardian tank arsenal, but they're all locked behind absurdely high level requirements. Low-level guardian tanks are extremely frustrating to play, terrible aoe, terrible ressource generation, very boring bottom skill tree.


Another thing, about role-enforced group content in the levelling range. Respecing is a mess.
Now, ideally, you would not need to respec, but it's just more practical to solo as dps than tank or especially healer. As you put it, it's like the 'default' role, and apparently what the solo game was built around.
So then if you want to respec at will you have to : buy the field respec legacy perk, which is very expensive for a levelling character (less so for an endgame character), and be a subscriber or face astronomical costs if you do it more than twice a week.
New players ? they're probably have neither of these.
Well, and that's not to mention, no way to record preset specs and quickbars.
So, yeah, if you're leveling and dont have field respec+subscriber benefits, you must choose between having a bad time in solo play, or being yet another dps in the flashpoint queues (or kuat drive yards, which is problematic in its own way)
I think it should be easier to respec between one role and another. In fact I'd say it should be free and instant for everyone. It's either that or all solo content should be redesigned to be more easily completed by tanks and healers, and that's not gonna happen...
Maybe Bioware could make it so that, if we queue for group content in a role you are not currently speced for (spec role determined with the same method as for warzones), you get a free (mandatory?) respec when the match is made, and another one when you leave the group. That would not completely remove the value of the subscriber bonus and legacy perk, while removing the existing barrier to the group finder and keeping things simple.

OP is probably not taking PvP into account but current top Jug is in fact a tank.

I think it's irrational to expect players who can and do tank well under the current system to contemplate the changes we're looking without bitterness - after all, we're talking about dumbing down a major gameplay system because players can't handle it or don't want to handle it. To those of us who like tanking, that is simply inexplicable.

However, confronted with the unfortunate fact that the same people who enable reality TV to stay on the air are the people who comprise a significant chunk of of the target player base, we have to accept that things must change. We don't have to like it, we can moan and complain like a Calamari Cruiser full of C3PO copies, but we do have to accept and deal with that reality if we want the game to maintain a good income and stay afloat.

Is it frustrating that this new wave of young whippersnappers are too lazy, programmed for very simple gameplay by other titles, or otherwise unable or unwilling to actually do anything that requires more thought than MOB + Lightsaber = Smash? Of course it is! Suck it up, big boy, and face the facts. You can either give up playing or you can try to make the transition as painless as possible while helping maintain as much complexity and interest in the role as viable.

This is actually a huge issue with any Tank changes, btw.

PvE & PvP are different universes / dimensions / whatever is more separate than dimensions. Tanks are in an interesting place in PvP IMO because they're not necessary but they're also not useless if present,* which is a boffo spot for Tanks to be in but very hard to duplicate in PvE.

So yeah, a lot of the stuff being discussed / proposed here could have serious and potentially dire washover effects in PvP content. Unfortunately I don't PvP, so my perspective on this is near-zero and it's going to fall to someone else (preferably someone paid to do it ) to sort out how to reconcile PvE solutions with PvP balance needs.

* Warning — Hearsay — May be wrong

Remember that I'm exaggerating the degree of changes necessary in order to make a point, because it's just easier to get overall concepts across with hamfisted examples.

Tanking does not have to be absolutely ravaged and destroyed top to bottom in order to bolster its standing in player populations, and you absolutely can (must, in fact) leave plenty of room open for optimal Tanks to still shine.

As a random example, imagine if there was a significant (ludicrous, even) +Threat Bolster in Matchmade content.

• Good Tanks still shine and have a server rep because in HM Op+ / PUG+ content Threat still matters and requires planning and awareness. However, this environment also supports the level of cooperation needed for this to be a reasonable gameplay mechanism.
• Bad Tanks can now keep Aggro off their group in fluff / spam content, therefore, Bad Tanks keep queuing (which is good, because now Queues that require a Tank pop faster).
• Good Tanks in fluff / spam content now have a new hobby — exploiting the Threat bonus to do ludicrous stunts and gimmicks they couldn't pull off before.

etc. If you just walk in with a baseball bat and start smashing Tanking on the brain, you won't accomplish what you want — DPS & Heal are compelling because they're forgiving at the low end, but also extremely rewarding at the high end. That gives people something to work toward and feel proud of, without punishing them disproportionately when newer or unconfident or tired or... etc.

That's the sticky balance we're trying to work toward. It is non-trivial when dealing with a role as complex as Tank.