OK this is getting rather silly regarding hard mode Flashpoint GF

Well, if you want to promote tanking you got to promote tanking. Promoting everything doesn't promote anything.
Same goes for healing: If you want to promote it, you need to figure out what's the reason for people playing it now and reward that. Exactly that.

I know it's so unfair for classes who can't do it. But well... that's basically the point. It's something you can not do, unless you tank or heal. The point is to create something NOT everyone is entitled to. Yes, it makes tanks a bit elitist. But ... yes, that's the kind of stuff the job needs, I think. A birthright to special-snowflake a little. And by a little I mean "enough to offset doing the most sh*t job in an mmo and still feel awesome."

I'm not sure how else to explain it. If you made it available to all, the purpose would be void. Actually the result would be just... more stuff not chaning anything.

I'll throw another possible reason why there are more dps in any mmo than tanks.

The ONLY place to learn the job is in a group with other people. You learn to dps the moment you wander into the game, and if you have heals, you can see to throw them on to yourself as you take damage (ok, not quite that simple, apologies healers, but you get the idea). But nothing teaches you the tank role, nothing lets you experience the job in any way until you put yourself in a group.

Now the OP seems to think that the group finder should do this job. I can't be bothered to find the quote, he yelled something about it not being in the EULA, but I wonder how many people did their first EVER tank role with a group of complete strangers instead of with friends or their guild. My first tanking took place in WoW, in the original 20 man ZG raid of all places, on my paladin that I had been healing IN MY GUILD for months when patch 2.0 hit and a paladin finally had things like taunts. Almost everyone changed role or toon, and we did something we knew inside out but from a new perspective. So I learned to tank with people I had known for a long time, and when I made a fool of myself, everyone laughed.

But thats not what a GF run will do. It will often result in abuse and mistreatment of players lacking in confidence in their role, not through stupidity or lack of enthusiasm, but through a total lack of experience. They cannot learn any other way. I met a new tank in an LI HM run during the double xp week while on my operative healer. He had done just a single 50+ HM fp, seemed keen, but also seemed a bit lost. So I offered advice on kill order for a tank etc, and although we died to almost everything, eventually we cleared it. But he was lucky in that I like to help, and neither dps had ever been there before. If he had met the more typical dps player, I could have seen a rage-fest at the first wipe.

There's nothing wrong with the tank classes themselves, although I liked the idea about making them the flashiest classes to attract the egos. We can either benefit from more tanks or break the arrogant fools when they fail! But there is just no opportunity to learn without risking the abuse of the bads for a new player, and few will risk it.

So a random suggestion would be solo tanking missions, perhaps where you have to defend npcs, taunt mobs off them, maintain threat on small groups to protect the vulnerable, something where you can get the chance to learn the basics of tanking. Because right now, regardless of the few here claiming to the contrary, the problem remains the people. When you find a low geared tank, nurture them, teach them, explain politely, because every time you chase one off, your queue gets longer

It's not because tanking is hard... It's actually the easiest role if you think about it... in competent group.
Followed by heals. DPS is actually the most difficult role to play correctly.

I have nothing against promoting tanking, just stating that it would be unfair to certain classes. Hypothetically, I would not be opposed to play tank with my Sage, but I cannot. And playing an archetype I do not like as much because of bonuses seems like an odd design choice that would probably turn a lot of people away.
Promoting is all great and good, but it has to be done sensitively.

I think that the underlying problem is not that people do not want to play tanks, but that they do not want to PUG with them, because some DPS can truly be DerPS blaming everyone but themselves.

Your suggestions were not bad, adding extra active companion slot might be interesting (although it could seriously mess up whatever remains of OW PvP) and fancier animations might draw some people as well. But in the end, even if people were drawn to the idea of tanking and found out that they get crapped on their heads by DerPS, they will not do it, or people would just pretend they are tanks to get the rewards...

That might actually be nice for all classes. Some sort of "training rooms" with mini challenges like on Raptus in Dread Palace.

I'm sorry buddy, but I'm going to need video or I just flat out don't believe it. The bosses at the end of KDY hit fairly hard with just their normal attacks. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have killed them in a 4 dps group while leveling an alt, but I have never seen a 4 dps group walk through one without having to use the healing stations a few times.

Unfortunately that's not really the case. There are only so many development man hours that we are all vying for. If they are building tactical flash points, then that's time that they take away from more regular FP's, HM FP's & Ops.

I really don't think something similar to Raptus would be helpful ...majority of the problem I see in flashpoint isn't HPS or DPS, it is awareness. At least from the healing challenge, it teaches nothing that will make someone a good healer.

Content that teaches people to prioritize, cleanse, use defensive cooldowns, interrupt, follow kill order and not stand in fire would be way more helpful, and guess what that all those can be learned in game leveling. Problem is the content is so easy now that you can level without learning any of that. Set challenge level back to the way it was during beta and launch and many of these issues would be fixed because people would have to learn to playing there class and role or beg for help in every boss fight.

This depends entirely on the fight. In some, healing is the hardest job.

If you have to keep track of debuffs and deal with random spike damage, healing can be really hard.
If you have to look out for random AoE constantly and juggle buffs and debuffs doing good dps is hard.
If you have multiple tanking targets or random tank switches in addition to having to deal with AoE, or you have to move the boss around, tanking is hard.

These aren't role specific, but fight specific. However, by playing that role you are subject to them.

I used Raptus challenges as an example, they would have to be expanded upon, of course.
The DPS one teaches rotation to pump out as much DPS as possible, and to interrupt.
The Healer one is pure max HPS rotation
The tank one is about knowing how to soak up damage
Adding a fourth, Universal, with mechanics like "circles=bad", kill order, etc. would be needed.

And to be honest, leveling content was always easy. I played since launch, and i never needed any help with solo missions (I did die one them few times before learning what to do (like interrupt), but I never needed extra damage output from people or overlevel the content)

I saw GW2 which doesn't have the traditional trinity and it's boring as ****. All classes are basically the same so there is no point really in having diversity.

The only reason why we have tacticals is not to make things easier or more accessible for casuals. That by itself is a false assumption. The reason we have them is because there are too many DPS that sit in the q for hours waiting for a tank and a healer. The reason that they are not playing tanks or healers isn't just dificulty but appeal. Most of people tend to be simpletons that just want to shoot stuff. And there's your problem right away, because DPS is not just about shooting (or whacking) stuff.

FPs and SM Ops are not too difficult. They are easy when people actually take a little bit of interest in learning how to play. I refuse to accept that stupidity is the common denominator amongst casuals. The reality is though that people want to do endgame without putting any effort into it...and in SWTOR not that much effort is required to have a clue about your role. That's the worst part of it.

I get that some people just wanna charge in and kill everything, but that's not how a game like this is set up. There are plenty of casual players who do have an idea or are willing to learn one or two things. The problem I have as someone who plays all roles that I can easily see mistakes done by any role. Sure, everybody makes mistakes, but those who consistenly are clueless and refuse to listen...they don't even answer in chat when you talk to them...well, that's what makes it really annoying.

If someone is in a group and says, sorry guys I haven't done this before or please give me tips if I make mistakes are just fine for me. I'll gladly help and explain. But those are few and far between.

I understand the game needs to cater to casuals but it already does so more than a lot of other games. The only group that hasn't been totally addressed are the completely stupid and unwilling to learn category. Not sure if we want to open up too much content for that group.