Do tanks need a dps buff to keep up with the current state of dps?

Great post in my opinion. My main is a Jugg Tank on the dark side and I'm working up a Guardian Tank on the light side. I've been tanking from the first days of playing MMOs. I do not believe the answer is to make tanking easier regarding taunts or threat generation. Tanking is not an easy job to do either in PvE or PvP. Like anything, it is a learning process. Making things easier won't help.

However, I do agree that the DPS generated by a Tank is far behind the DPS generated by the damage dealers. The damage we as tanks generate is directly tied into our aggro generation. As you've shown, when DPS generated at such high levels by the damage dealers on the team constantly pull aggro from you, something is wrong. Even if you are a high caliber Tanker having to constantly spam your taunts is a problem.

Therefore, they (BW) really needs to buff the damage of tanks to help compensate. And before someone says, "A tank is not there to do damage," I'm not focused on the damage aspect per se, but the ability to do more damage per attack to generate higher aggro.

Maybe they could tie a damage buff 15% to 20% in with the taunts that last for 10 to 15 seconds that would help keep aggro. This would not make a tank OP because it is only involved when a taunt is made. I dunno, it seems like a simple fix without making huge changes, a minor tweak of a buff if you ask me.

I think that tanks could use a reasonable damage mitigation boost and a strong agro management buff. Right now tanks, IMO, simply do not mitigate damage as well as they should.

My tanks run might and reflex armorings, barrels, and hilts. High main stat = more DPS. The minor HP loss is ok with me and my play style. I do not have the Agro issues others speak of, just as a couple of you mentioned already. High main stat will Improve DPS and any boost there is a Boone for the group as a whole.

Look at the big picture and not at yourself when tanking. There are those DPS that blow their load early and blame the tank. They don't understand what they are doing and deserve that death. As a healer I will not keep them topped off forcing them to adjust their rotation to in effect drop threat even if it's a death for that DPS. The groups and raids I run with support this because we do pug a lot. We have only so much patients at times.

I mean really get your 4 piece set bonus and what's 1 hilt/barrel and 4 armorings? It's not a big HP hit but a nice boost to DPS for the good of the group

I decided a long time ago to roll a tank, purely so I could learn from that how to be a better DPS player. I don't think the issue is with the tanks, in all honesty. It's seems more down to a lot of players being average or below average DPS players and not understanding threat mechanics.

That's my take on it.

Tanks have to learn how to tank OP. I don't get what you mean by "average". The average tank, can be a good tank or a bad tank. It takes experience and a little skill to become a good tank. A good tank doesn't have to be a hardcore player.

So, with that said, I think tanks are fine over all. I play a Shadow and a Vanguard tank, and they play differently but the fundamentals are the same. In this game, you have to work to keep aggro which is as it should be. Knowing what generates threat and how to keep threat is part of learning your class and is quite easy with some experience. Sure, there will be times a well geared dps may pull the boss off, but you have the capability to easily pull him back and keep him. It isn't a big deal at all.

I'm always amazed at the indignant tank who complains about not being able to keep aggro 100 percent of the time. There is no easy button. If you lose aggro, you get it back. If you are having trouble maintaining it, you need to look at what you are doing and the skills you are using. And btw, you have to learn WHEN to use your taunts. It is as simple as that.

The problem is not the class but stupid DPS. Sadly there are a lot of those.

Now I know that the word "stupid" makes a lot of people jump up and feel insulted but let's be honest here. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand things like avoiding damage, using aggro drops, not breaking cc's and kill orders of mobs and what an interrupt is for.

Truly these are basic things. So if they are not stupid, then please feel free to explain to me what to call people who consistently fail at learning these things. I don't mean the occasional mess up. We all have our moments. I mean the completely clueless, unwilling to learn type of DPS that MMOs are riddled with these days.

Now I understand the OPs idea but I also don't think making the tank class easier will fix all of that and it will also have repercussions in pvp for example. I do think that they should stop sticking alacrity on tank gear though. That's something that's just taking the piss and there are actually new players out there who think it's ok to run around with that gear because hey, it's what the vendor sells so it must be good.

End game gearing really is something that could take a good look at. The current situation allows for easy 180 gear which I think was a bad decision. It completely bypassed basic and elite comms for gearing up. That should never have happened.

To make it even easier to maintain threat? Sure, why not.

I think their whole approach is wrong. It should be far more about team versus objective, not players versus their own class versus their own team versus the objective.

If feels cheap and shoddy to me that they lean so heavily on making various classes a pita to play well. It's like in those games where bad camera controls are deliberately put in to 'enhance the difficulty'.

Just blank the screen out every other second, that'd make it harder as well. Have bosses with attacks that delete random abilities from your action bars perhaps!

Wait, that'd be really stupid? And it's not stupid to make fights seem harder because you need to be able to play piano in order to have the correct level of manual dexterity just to utilize all your necessary hotkeys?

Right. Yeahno, its stupid, but merely the accepted face of stupid.

Maybe someday they'll take the emphasis off player versus unnecessary inefficiency and we might get to do something crazy, like do more than frantically glance to the action on the screen between babysitting cd's and watching to make sure an ability has fired and so on.

Someday, I might get to see a fight as a tank. But not in this game.

I've long since learned that if I actuality want to watch more than snippets and momentary snapshots of a fight, I have to watch it on YouTube. And that's with a 17 button mouse, hotkeys everywhere in efficient reaching distance around wasd and a few ctrl+ keys to go with it all.

I have them memorized, but that's not enough. I often have to stare at my bars to make absolutely sure X fired when I hit it, because sometimes, things just don't fire, or they seem to amd them go on cd, but didnt actually fire. One has to react as best one is able when their crappy engine just decides your cd fired but didn't, I'd at all one can.

One has to babysit some of those cd's vigilantly, and watch stacks.

Dunno about the rest of you, but when I'm tanking on my shadow, my juggernaut or my powertech, is all the same - I don't get to see the fight.

I might as well be playing whack a mole with spreadsheet entries.

And I think that's a hilariously stupid way to make any class, not just tank, be.

Yet, I find its only a bit better as dps. If I'm watching the fight, I'm effing up, not hitting things as fast as I should be, wasting gcd 's beyond acceptable performance.

Babysit Dat bar. Watching the fights is for youtube. Why we have graphics at all, I sometimes don't know.

I agree with your comments about dps but it all comes down to being able to adjust IMO. If I am PUG'ing I take it as a given that there will be dps that don't manage there dps. Lol. So, I use guard and my taunts to compensate. It works as long as they at a minimum know the fight mechanics for the more difficult bosses.

I'm not sure about end game gearing. I don't care how players got their gear tbh as long as they follow instructions.

This generated a bunch of interesting responses. Most of which, quite honestly, are not going to be of benefit to the AVERAGE tank, when it comes to controlling aggro.

For example, of course I have main stat armorings in 3 of my armor pieces and my hilt. I know that's going to help me put out more dps, which equates to more threat (and FYI, gives me higher defensive mitigation as well). But more importantly, what AVERAGE tank would know that. And HOW would they know that, if they aren't deep, deep into the numbers. It's quite honestly counter-intuitive to think you should put DPS stuff on your tank to make you a better tank.

Further, the responses here were not from average players, or better yet, below average players. (little known fact: more than 90% of the driving public thinks they are a better than average driver) Judging from the information most of you have shared, you either want a more challenging game, or you already known all the "tricks of the trade" and thus don't need this change. Good for you. But what do you propose to help the AVERAGE tank? Are you HAPPY with more and more tactical flashpoints? Because they are making me absolutely sick. And I don't think BW is anywhere near done rolling them out. Will we ever again see something like pre-nerf Lost Island? Sadly, I think the answer looks more and more like no...

As I wrote: I know the tricks of the trade as well. But I've pugged with enough average tanks (and sadly, the below average), to know unquestionably, that these tricks of the trade are not common knowledge.

Further, I do not believe that "taunt and threat drop on cooldown" should NEED be part of EVERY SINGLE player's rotation. But that's essentially the state of the game today. And thus, I think the game is actually broken. I was indirect in saying so, but I believe the best among us have all learned how to deal with this broken game, but it doesn't change my belief that it is, in fact, broken. Sure, broken games are more challenging to work around. But broken is still broken.