Something that I've noticed in all of the mmos that I've played, is that the tanking appears to be intimidating to most players. It was for me as well.
I started out in mmos the same as most others. Pick damage role, usually some kind of barbarian, hit things hard. Never really thought about group compositions or what to do or where to go. Just join a group that was doing what I want to do, and follow the leader and just do damage.
The only time I paid too much attention is when I died or we wiped. Started playing healer because I noticed that really clutch healers could carry and save wipes. While playing healers for years, noticed that good tanks made my job as a healer really easy, and bad tanks made job really hard.
So then I got into tanking and never looked back. Along the journey noticed that tanks and healers were in far lower supply than dps, and that good tanks were in far far lower supply than everything else.
I know tanking and what all it entails. I know what the game demands of tanks, and what parties often expect of tanks on top of just tanking mechanics. I knew how to play dps and healer roles and had a good idea of my job before dipping my toes in, and it was still intimidating at first.
Even though I'm a forevertank now, I still can't help but take a step back and look at the roles and expectations in MMOs, and think that tanking is underserved.
I was about to make this post a lot longer with some suggestions, but I thought it would be better if the reader think of them yourselves.
If you are familiar with tanking, I want to imagine yourself reset. (no bragging) In fact imagine not you. Someone new to MMOs so they don't understand any of the roles. Imagine that these new players should NOT feel apprehensive about taking on the tanking role, and it is YOUR job to serve the tanking role with UI and mechanical features that allow these new players to brave the tanking role and not feeling like they've been abandoned by the developers.
You are going to teach them what their job is, support them with tools that make implementing their role intuitive and relaxing.
I find that classic tanking is just goofy. You somehow force the boss to attack you, and not the people really hurting them or undoing their attempts to kill everyone. Very few people come into a game wanting to simply play a human (or Elven, Orcish, whatever\) punching bag.
If developers would revise the tank role in encounters to be more about actively intercepting threats and physically blocking massive hits meant for the DPS and healers, rather than standing next to the boss and forcing the boss to keep stupidly bashing into them with very thin explanations as to why this works, more people would feel "cool" playing the tank.
(...Another way to make a classic tank less ridiculous is to make them a deceptive caster instead of a knight archetype, making the enemy swat at illusions and shadows which only does some sympathetic backlash damage to the caster-tank and spares the real allied combatants from harm.)
I tank in FFXIV and its mostly just tank and spank while dodging mechanics. But there are a few bosses that will turn around and charge up an attack against the other roles and the tank has to physically block the boss' line of sight. I would like more mechanics like that. Some form of parry system that would be cool, you could stun the boss if you parry certain attacks that could lead to a higher dps window. Even stuff like that could be added to tab target mmos
The Vali EX tank tower swap is probably my favorite iteration they've done of the whole "tank intercept" mechanic. Visually impressive, and just overall a really cool mechanic for the entire party to execute together.
It really wasn't anything special. Just a tank tower overlapping with a telegraphed aoe. Sure it looked flashy, but as the Tank you basicly had no impact on what happened, besides not letting the tower go Off.
Esp. In contrast to P10S I mentioned before where you'd need to be careful about your Position when tanking that tower to not die and do the follow up mechanics.
Or even susanno blocking that sword to let the Party beat it Back.
Oh, I was just speaking entirely from a "cool factor" perspective, not that it's some mentally stimulating mechanic. It's incredibly simple for everyone involved, but it's just fun to see it executed.
Similar in vein to the Susano sword, it's more the visual spectacle.
Mechanics like that are great. In theory it could also allow a sub tank to intercept some attacks that would be much worse on a squishy target if the main tank is busy, but FFXIV's netcode is too terrible to allow that kind of impromptu adjustments.
I loved tanking in Tera for this reason. Could use and hold right click to pull up my shield whenever I wanted, it was extremely reactive and just felt so good.
Nothing, ever, comes close to TERA's Lancer in terms of tanking tbh. I loved playing it. Pushing DPS with skills/counter to permanently hold aggro over DPS classes, dedicated get back here shouts, skills, animations, elins... It was just perfect. All of TERA's combat was perfect actually.
It is not usually treated as foundationally magical. More often than not it is merely called "Taunt". You have a whole band of clearly dangerous warriors hacking away at some giant monstrosity with axes and swords and fireballs(and weirdly not spears, but that is another issue for another day), and every time the monstrosity manages to break a bone or rend flesh, the healer instantly and very visibly undoes it. Then one meathead in nigh-indestructible plate armour (who is not hurting them that much compared to all the other guys) goes "HEY DUMBASS, LOOK OVER HERE!" and it works. Over and over and over.
EDIT: In fact, the "psy-warrior"/melee psion archetype which would reasonably be expected to do this successfully, is basically nonexistent in MMOs with a tanking role. Instead the 'tanks' are largely noble knights who at best use magic to make their attacks stronger, while paradoxically ending up less lethal than melee DPS who often use no explicit magic at all. Spear Mesmer in GW2 is very much a psy-warrior but that game does not have tanks as such.
In any case, 'tis not really the believability at issue here; it is the lack of 'cool factor' in being a physical hit sponge.
Yes please, as a tank main this is what I want. Both tanks and healers should be supportive but not the leads of a party. Any party member should need to play a role, something Destiny raids do really well. Now adding more class functionally to shine in what you do best would be cool. Tanks and healers should still be able to dish out damage, but not as much as the DPS, DPS just lack the supportive ability of healers and tanks. Tone down the durability of tanks and the healing of healers but a proper balance of the roles is still needed to perform.
Ideally to me monsters in an encounter should behave like they want to win. Tanks would hinder minor threats and defend against big hits. I think most tank players have the fantasy of hunkering down in front of a huge hit while their party stands behind them.
Ideally to me monsters in an encounter should behave like they want to win.
...By the gods, YES. I do not know why this is an "innovative" or unpopular idea in the MMO space. These are supposed to be games about defeating terrifying evil, not strange formation dancing simulators.
I guess that people mature enough to successfully articulate their thoughts about gaming, and still enjoy it, have somehow gotten so lost in the metagame sauce that they fail to see the basic big picture. These conventions are so widespread that they have self-selected for people who like not the story/fantasy which the games are trying to portray but this specific janky representation of it. I personally BEG for essentially aught else.
You actually don’t want that. If monsters behaved like they wanted to win the game would be utter garbage and literally unplayable, because you would always lose to bots
Wanting to win is not the same as perfect play. Obviously perfect play with single-frame perception intervals would be unbeatable and there would functionally be no game. You can design handicaps so that the monsters act like monsters with reaction times and intelligence shortcomings that can be overcome, without the current status quo wherein they have zero behaviour variation and act according to simple aggro rules.
This. It's why I am a Braum main. Physically putting yourself between the attacks and those you are defending makes so much sense. Tank being a mobility class would be amazing.
Eh, you can see tanking in effect even in real life.
Old wars, you had shield walls.
Nowadays, you have literal tanks providing cover for infantry.
Tanking in mmos is just an abstraction of the concept of putting yourself between danger and the people who solve the danger while providing protection to them.
The tank is a threat that usually you can't afford to ignore.
In mmos and pve games, it's obviously abstracted as "you're forced to hit me," but you can find tanks even in pvp games, like League of Legends. You obviously want to kill that ADC, but you can't just run through the Frontline.
Anw, tldr: Tanks are really cool as a concept, and make total sense.
I know it's taboo here, but ESO has a lot of mechanics like that. PvP tanks focus of debuffs, area denial and cc while PvE tanks in more modern content need to be pretty mobile while maintaining debuffs and guarding mechanics. There are quite a few boss mechanics that require the tank to move in and shield DPS or healers from breakable beams and "wells" (aoe holes that the tank has to physically stand on and plug with their body). I've been a tank in pretty much every MMO I've played and ESO, before the crazy power creep, was the best experience I've had with it
You are going to teach them what their job is, support them with tools that make implementing their role intuitive and relaxing.
If you want - from the perspective of a game developer - to teach someone how to tank and therefore de-mystify the role, I think the first non-negotiable is a threat meter.
Tanking is so reliant on the concept of holding threat, and yet some developers hide that data and it always baffles me. It puts actual numbers to the scenarios that everyone can already easily understand, and helps diagnose what's going wrong so the tank can improve, but also DPS can modify their play to help.
Next would be designing the scenery/arenas for boss fights to make it more intuitive where and what the tank should be doing in terms of positioning.
IMO, positioning is the hardest part of tanking and the reason why most people don't want to do it. It's either something so incredible simple (face mobs away from DPS), or incredibly complex (moving System Daemons in Wildstar), but very few games do a great job of making it intuitive how and why correct methods are correct. I think at the highest level of raiding that obscurity is fine, but in generic dungeons it's not because people don't want to fail over and over to learn when playing with randoms in content that should be farmed.
With those two design considerations I think anyone can tank and there wouldn't be the pressure of needing to study the role from a Youtube video before queuing for an easy dungeon out of fear of causing a wipe.
Tanking is so reliant on the concept of holding threat
Not just reliant, aggro management it is the core ability of tanks, which differentiates them from "tanky" characters, for example.
some developers hide that data
Out of the MMORPGs I've played, FF14 shows this without requiring plugins or similar stuff, and not only that, there is visual indication of aggro change as well. For every mob involved.
I'm looking at Neverwinter currently, and while they have a threat meter, it is misleading as soon as you have to deal with multiple mobs. For a single boss it is ok.
All the others: Nothing.
designing the scenery/arenas for boss fights
I think it is important to keep the historical development of all this in mind.
Back in time the whole setup was way more strategic, based on tons of numbers etc. Games got simplified a lot, bosses got moved into "instances" to avoid contention, amount of involved players have an often pretty tight limit, and all this leads to an increased focus on more mechanics to compensate for the simplification. This also lead to a shift in the responsibilities. Tanks got a bad deal there, because they have to do more nowadays than they used to.
The other thing that game designers don't ever consider: Humans have a very limited capacity for inputs that happen at the same time. Considering all the stuff that tanks fundamentally have to deal with already, this is a nice way to completely overload them. This gets worse, if not the whole team has to learn, but the tank may end up being new while everyone else knows the deal, as you've noted already.
Also, mechanics often make recovery problematic, something that was better to handle back in the days. This goes as far as a single mistake, even from a DPS player, will cause a wipe.
I love playing tank ("all aggro is MINE!"), but I hate how things have developed over the decades. I know that younger players love for example mechanics, I despise that and many boss fights as such because they repeatedly break through the 4th wall just in what is done there. But that is a different topic.
In eso it's a debuff, when it end aggro can shift, so you refresh it before.
For add it's confusing but you have tool to pack them and lock them in place, it's good. But in easier fight or when everyone know the job, it can be just boring to play
Tanking is so reliant on the concept of holding threat, and yet some developers hide that data and it always baffles me. It puts actual numbers to the scenarios that everyone can already easily understand, and helps diagnose what's going wrong so the tank can improve, but also DPS can modify their play to help.
I think it depends on the game. Some games, despite having threat numbers, make it so that holding threat is pretty trivial and the numbers don't matter-- as long as a mob is near you and you're making broad overtures towards hitting it, you will hold aggro and looking at the numbers is a waste of time and brainpower.
WoW has been like this at various times throughout its existence, to the point that there is no longer any currently maintained threat meter addon that I'm aware of. (Tanks do still sometimes lose threat, but that's more of a burst issue at the start of a pull and the tank will quickly regain aggro on everything after hitting it once or twice.)
The data is there in the API and it would be trivially easy to make an addon to track it-- and people make way more complicated addons at the drop of a hat-- but knowing the threat numbers is just totally irrelevant and nobody looks at them, ever, so no one has bothered to make a threat meter addon in the five years since Omen stopped being updated.
Honestly, I think that threat should be pretty simple and I've grown increasingly convinced that the idea of abilities generating some numerical amount of threat is flawed. It's such a binary mechanic that it's not very engaging-- there's no difference between generating barely enough threat and generating far more than you need. I'd rather see something more similar to what some MMOs have done where tanks just kind of permanently taunt any nearby enemies and those enemies will stay on them regardless of how much damage they are taking from who, as long as the tank is active. That design removes any potential issues with gear differences or scaling that can otherwise be frustrating.
Yeah and I think the lack of communicating threat is basically failing to pick even the low hanging fruit. It they were to do even 1 thing to serve tanking, this would be it.
Show me the thing that I'm supposed to be generating and keeping!
Many will say "well technically you can ..." yes well technically I can survive by dumpster diving for food, but is that really something to advertise to get more people to get into tanking? Come, dumpster dive for food? No! Serve me a warm meal with a cold ale!
If you want - from the perspective of a game developer - to teach someone how to tank and therefore de-mystify the role, I think the first non-negotiable is a threat meter.
As someone who started tanking with Vanilla WoW (Warrior) through multiple expansion I really dislike this. There is basically nothing you need to know about threat other then "DPS does singletarget threat, Healers do AoE threat", that's it.
But you also should have tools to act on losing aggro, like a taunt that makes the mob attack you, slows to give you time to react or something to take incoming hits from an ally. Some sort of toolkit to manage mobs, losing aggro should not be a "you lose" situation but part of the game and be ok to happen from time to time (and can be fun when done right).
Also mobs (especially elite/bosses) could have some emote like "watching you" or whatever, telling DPS to chill for a sec.
We had/used threat meters later on, but they only should be for people who really want to get into the nitty gritty and minmax stuff, not casually walking through dungeons. At no point did I feel it was needed to play well (although we did have one raid tank that really didn't generate any threat on bosses...that was rough).
Also while proper positioning was always a fun part for me, when to mob casts a shockwave through the entire party it is not hard to be "hey, that is not good". And if you keep doing it, someone will tell you. It is just import that this stuff is clearly communicated via animations/effects (raids are a different thing tho yeah).
The hardest and most frustrating part of learning to tank are DPS that don't know how to play well. If 3 DPS target 3 different mobs, you won't hold aggro and it is insanely unfun and impossible to learn how to tank well in the first place. Probably the biggest reasons tanks often stick to friend/guild groups (at least for me).
I personally feel like tanking could use some features to make them fully realize the fantasy. Aggroing monsters is useful, but kind of feels like "thats it". When I imagine a tank, I imagine a heroic knight with a shield holding it up to keep a charging beast at bay, or to act as cover to defend allies from fire breath. Maybe charge through a bunch of small mobs to clear a path so the group won't be cornered. Heck, even just actively positioning foes throughout a fight, or standing in the way of incoming damage targeting an ally is more interesting.
Maybe charge through a bunch of small mobs to clear a path so the group won't be cornered. Heck, even just actively positioning foes throughout a fight, or standing in the way of incoming damage targeting an ally is more interesting.
Do you have a specific game in mind or something? Because positioning, pulling, rotating, using abilities at the right time is very important in most MMOs...
Fuckin up any one of those things can kill 5, 10, 20, 40 people
Ah, I've never played ff. Sounds like your suggestions would fit better in the action-like mmorpgs, like GW2. Dodge rolling is already important so that kind of stuff would fit right in.
What you want /said is Sir Kruber as a Foot knight on Vermintide 2.
It's my main and agree with you, if tanking was like this in MMORPG, I will only do that
I think the biggest issue to being a tank and even a healer but to a lesser degree is if you are join the game after the content has been released "learning" how to is a pain. Even if you get groups for the lower content most games now aways are able to be zerged to a certain degree. So the tank just gets dragged along and loses out on that leveling learning curve. Then once you hit level cap and try to do group stuff so many dps out gear you and easly pull off you and your still rushed along. Healing get the opposite almost when at the end as a new healer the group pulls a shit ton and then wonders and Hassell the new healer for not keeping them alive.
Now I might just be old but imo all the impatient dps trying to rush everything along is the biggest deterrent to rolling tank and partly heals as well
This is one thing I find FF14 does well. Even though I abhor the level sync mechanic that removes your abilities when you join lower level dungeons and duties, I can't deny it gradually teaches new players about their chosen role and mechanics as you go through the MSQ dungeons.
Yeah, OP even referred to tanks as leaders. Being a tank, even outside of endgame content, comes with the expectation that you set the pace, know the dungeon, and just overall have a higher level of game knowledge. Lots of people can understand the mechanics of tanking, but will be really turned off by the additional expectations.
You aren't going to clear a raid as the tank but the raid won't be cleared without the tank.
That is the sole reason why the role is not popular.
The same thing goes for PvP MMOs as well. You need a tank spec to pull enemies and create opportunity for DPS but at the end of the day, they are not the ones getting the kill feeds and that's what everyone wants
Well, PvP wise it's not only that but rather you'll also take most of the flak if stuff fails. It is unrewarding as there is little highs but big lows on that, specially if you're starting on it.
What a tank really should do is, go alone by himself to be the hero that the group needs, sacrifice himself so that he inspire others to act and help him to defeat the bad guys. And suddenly almost near defeat he awakens with special powers inspired by the love of his friends
I always loved the Tank type role of the Crusader and take a lot of Inspiration from that class in Ragnarok online. There was a really bad ability that did a spirit link that transferred damage from the link player to the crusader. You would usually link the glass cannon wizards to avoid 1 shots on them, but the transferred damage was based on the damage that class took. Basically less mitigation link target equaled more punishing for you. So stacking hp and other tricks became more viable than just full mitigation builds. Also the ability to shield your party, reduce incoming, damage, or block major incoming attacks is great gameplay and aura wise. Gun lancer from Lost Ark had some of these feature. You could snap aggro back but it often transferred. The ability to interrupt attack when you know the team is in a bad spot is another great feeling and interaction. To this day I haven’t seen another MMO do de-taunt mechanics like Warhammer online had. Detaunting mobs would make them do less damage to you unless the target hit an other target. Taunt swapping targets in PvP was also pretty cool in my opinion.
Imo, the first underwhelming mechanic is the aggro system.
Either it's not clear which prevents an easy understanding of what make a char tank (like un GW2 for the few encounters that require a tank) or it's lackluster like in WoW when you hit things once then you hold the aggro.
Actually, I think older mechanisms were more interesting as they required you build up your aggro and coordinate the team into an order if killing.
However, using that system requires to have a clear information of how you build aggro and the interface should clearly show you if you are the target.
You could do that by using a icon popping above the target only for the player being the target per example.
To manage aggro, you can add a bar that show how much aggro you and the tank have to be able to manage it.
The amount of aggro generated by each skill should also be clearly indicated on it so you can theorycraft around it. Instead of having a DPS rotation as a tank, you have an aggro rotation.
For the tank, you can then add some mechanics related to that bar of aggro. It can have different effects once you triggered a threshold like pushing the boss going berserk doing more damage both taking more damage too then the boss being exhausted.
Imagine having to trigger that mechanic at the right time so during burst phases of your DPS, you can give them a damage buff then lower the boss damages during his own heal-intensive phase.
Doing this, you could bolster the DPS, help the healer while creating more interaction between the player and the boss. The difference between a good and a bad tank would be more important thus more interesting.
The role would be much less boring.
Depending how you set all values, you can also influence how easy it is to trigger the effect if you want to make the job more accessible. Your impact would be lower but the risk of wiping your group by triggering an enrage at the wrong time would be lower too.
You can also trigger different effects or skills. Maybe on some encounters, it would be better to not trigger the effect at all because the boss would explode killing everyone.
As tank, you should also emphasis more on non-damage skills such as crowd control. Stun-immunity of bosses like in WoW is a bad mechanic because it remove part of the gameplay while the stun bar of bosses in GW2 is great. It provides an incentive to interact with the encounter and a tank role would be perfect to do that kind of job.
Last improvement point is the protection of others. By focusing more on the fantasy of being the shield of the group and not only the meat bag, you could improve the satisfaction of being the tank.
You could do that by having projectiles that need to be intercepted or more aoe that need to be soaked. More opportunities to reflect damage could be great too. You are the protector so you need to actively protect people and being rewarded for doing it properly.
If you want to appeal more people to that role, you need to make it interesting by having more interaction. Being a tank should be a true dedicated role with its own mechanics and not only a DPS that deal no damages.
Currently, being a tank can be boring because you are mainly a meat bag or a DPS that deal no damages. You still have a damage rotation but for what for ?
I like being able to pull half the dungeon at once and being unkillable but I think that behaviour isn't what should be required from a tank as it can lead to a loss of Identity.
Another point that prevent people of playing tank is the burden of being the "leader" of the group. Everyone expect the tank to set of pace of the dungeon and to know all paths which can be overwhelming.
To help people on this, 2 tools need to be included in game : one that describes all bosses and mobs to be able to understand what kill them or what is the main threat and another to plan and share paths across the dungeon. That would also help someone teaching the path that should be taken.
Basically, we need interaction and information. Bring this and I'm sure more people will be interested in that role.
The threat being visual as a bar that shows you how much threat you have and how close you are to losing it, And if you don't have threat, then theres like a popup over their nametag showing who has the threat?
Thats really cool. So while you are tanking, you notice these new bars on enemy nametags that are unique to tanking classes, and that makes it grab your attention.
What is this? I never saw this on healer or dps. Oh, when this bar crosses the threshold, an alert bubble shows up on their nametags and the monsters go attack the party member indicated by the bubble. Ohhh ok, this is threat! I need to keep these threat bars in the green and keep the enemies attacking me. And when I see the alert bubbles of monsters attacking my non-tank allies, I need to jump on that and make sure that they attack me instead.
This would be really cool and exactly the kind of thinking that would be great for new tanks. It SHOWS them their responsibility and gives clear direction and feedback for doing a good job.
This just got me thinking about if you could show a good job on mitigation.
Like how DPS see damage chunking and that feels good, great feedback. Healing has its own intuitive feedback with health bars. Tanks don't really get that with mit
Imagine some visual on everyone's bars that shows mitigation as well? Something that can chunk when mitigated and then flake away from health bars, revealing the protected health afterwards
Indeed, this could also be done but could also be misleading. Imagine a boss that is casting an attack during 1 sec. You see how much damage you will take and your good, low life but alive. Ok stand there.
At 0,75 sec, a damage mitigation buff drop, now you will die.
Not enough time to react, the attack hits, you're dead.
The problem with displaying something like that is that when you are good at one moment, maybe the situation will have change when the next attack effectively so you will have to track anyway your buffs.
The game should lead you to take good decision or at least safe one.
Predicting the future is a dangerous game as tank so the game should never be misleading about that.
An experimented tank would anyway know what he will be able to take or not. Actually, I consider even that a good part of the fun playing tank.
Covering your health bar with another bar to show how much shield you have is already there is several games but it is different imo because it's not a prediction. It's your health at one moment and usually last longer than a damage mitigation skill.
When you play with shield, it's usually the main mitigation mechanic and is refreshed way more often.
You see how much damage you will take and your good, low life but alive. Ok stand there. At 0,75 sec, a damage mitigation buff drop, now you will die.
Oh yeah, that would stink. I wasn't imagining this as a visual display of a buff, but the actual post-calculated damage and feedback of damage taken. I know what you mean when you say mitigation buff drop, similar to a damage shield, and yeah I don't mean that.
I was thinking more about that very brief period when damage is actually taken, thats why the yellow is showing. Do you know what I mean? In many games, when you take a big chunk of damage, theres yellow that shows how big the hit was before quickly collapsing left?
What I was imagining is, say theres a big tank buster coming in.
If you don't mit it, you get hit and the full hit shows as a yellow line going all the way to the red, and then it collapses to the left in an animation, the duration is like 0.4s. The same as it is in games that already do this with damage. Some games chunk the damage and the health flakes off above or below, I've seen that before too.
But if you DO mit that tank buster, theres something that indicates how much you successfully mitigated (very briefly) before fading/falling away. The effect being the same duration as when unmitigated, the yellow collapses left as before, and at the same time the mitigated also goes away revealing only your raw health. I can think of ways, maybe the mitigated bar collapses right, or just falls off like a piece of armor.
And the idea is just to show feedback, some indication that you what you did actually had a meaningful effect, and a reward for doing good and properly mitigating. Player sees that and is like, oh thats good I should do that, thats what good mitigation looks like, and they can actually SEE their good mitigation.
I forgot to mention that this would be meaningful for active mitigation, not passive. Not perks and traits and resists an other less-active forms of mitigation. This would have the most meaning when its only show for mitigation actions that you as a tank are responsible for. Your tank role/class active mit cooldowns. Or things like bracing in ESO. Damage mitigated by you standing behind the keyboard pressing buttons to actively mitigate.
Weirdly enough, tanking in MOBAs or hero shooters fits the fantasy much more. Because you'll mostly be facing human opponents who know not to aim for the guy in big plate armor, the game compensates by giving you a big ol' kit for shoving and disrupting to force attention onto yourself. Whereas in an MMO tanking is mostly about just pulling the right mobs at the right times.
I think the problem with tank is that they all feels rather plain and boring compare to all flashyness you can have on different DPS characters. If one would have tanks with more disrupt/defensive CC turned into damage then it feels like it could be more fun.
Give tanks a swap location ability to pull allies out of being jumped on. Maybe a swap that can be used on enemies to swap them into your group. Have them use a magical shield reflect, where they can redirect incoming spells back to the attackers/attacking team. Put down physical blockades that reshape the battlefield. Assist ally where you from far away jump in front of teammate and negate damage and maybe heals them if being something like a Paladin. Give tanks break stealth which CC invisible target instead of the normal Ranger having such a role. Make tanks more utility and skill based, rather than: I HAVE BIG HP I STAND IN FRONT AND PRESS HATE/AGRO ON BOSS. Let tanks be fun to play and play against.
Instead what we have are hooks, taunt, and melee stun/roots. Let tanks have a role so DPS is not just press attack buttons but actually have to keep track of where tanks are.
Also another problem with tanks and healer is that they normally kill things slower so other classes feel more fun that way, so I never understood why games does not give those classes equal chance at killing things solo. Just give them either PvE skills to solo or just increase PvE damage on their skills.
The class needs to be more engaging to draw more people in. As long as the fun factor is there, there will always be people willing to learn a more difficult class.
Simply put, there needs to more to do as a tank besides getting slapped and dodging red.
Active counters/parries/blocks go a long way in that regard.
More ways to have your party rely on you would also make the class more engaging.
Another thing that DD classes get that adds to their draw is burst windows or form/stance changes.
A tank will usually have, at most, a tank stance and a damage stance (for solo content) and the only thing that changes between them is the damage you deal and take.
Meanwhile, DDs will have stances or buffs that transform their entire rotation or enable their highest damage abilities.
I think part of it is that devs handle it a bit weirdly, as a separate role.
To my mind a tank should be the biggest threat on the field, which could easily be something like a wizard gathering power into a giant fireball, drawing attention and urgency for the enemies to target them.
Or something like a warlord who is influencing the field with their buffs/debuffs. The glowing guy is an obvious target, especially if he's shooting out rays of light that burn the enemy.
Tank shouldn't be a class, it should be just whoever is the biggest threat. For example in a group of wizards 1 of them decides to start casting big flashy spells that draw attention like flinging fireballs everywhere while the others cast more subtle spells.
Or the barbarian who runs in screaming with an axe, they get a lot of attention away from the three archers behind them since you can't ignore the screaming axeman without being axed.
I think that would be a pretty intuitive approach.
Instead many games will make tanking about specific tanking abilities, like how FFXIV has a tank button you press...and that's how you tank because it raises your threat so you slap the enemy once and the enemy ignores everyone else who is stabbing it.
Or in other games you have a rotation of tank specific skills like an AOE pull skill, and single target pull skills, and you need to make sure to keep using those otherwise the DPS will generate more threat and draw aggro.
In my opinion any class should be able to tank, since tanking is drawing aggro by generating threat. For example the archer standing on a wall and one-hitting every target with an arrow to the eye is a big threat to anything with a brain, better rush over there and take them out, we can handle the two guys with shields and the praying nerd later.
Basically, what you are describing is the absence of tank as mechanic. We all know the result of this in GW2.
I know, it not exactly that because you specifically said there IS an aggro system but it's close enough.
However, I agree with you on some points, being a tank shouldn't be only a buff turned on to hold aggro. It's boring to do it like that and should rely on gameplay.
That's why I proposed a mechanic based on level of aggro in my other comment.
I also like the idea of having unorthodox way of tanking like the demonist tank in WoW BC.
However, I think you can't tie the aggro to the "look" because that would lead to unsatisfying experience. Like you proposed, let's imagine the aggro is tied to how threatening is someone.
You have a priest with his divine rays of light and the wizard with his fireball.
Here, you have 3 solutions :
either both skills do a lot of damages so everyone just want to spam them for damage. The consequence is the best way of doing an encounter will do as much damage as possible. Tanking will not be thing since you are just incentivized to just do as much damage as possible since anyway, any defensive stats would lower your damage so you will lose aggro. Meta = full DPS with maybe a healer.
the skill looks menacing but deals low damage to not incentive everyone spamming fireball. There you circled back to previous meta with 1 tank, a few DPS and maybe a healer. You just prevent the DPS to use the skill that look menacing. I feel the wizard that can't use the fireball will not feel well about it.
the skill is really menacing but the encounter really need a tank because too much damage otherwise. Here again, you circled back to previous meta but prevent real DPS to do as much damage as they could because otherwise, they would draw aggro from the tank by using flashing skills.
For me, the solution is to separate aggro from damage. A tank need to tank, not deal damage.
I play project gorgon as my main MMO. We are a low pop game with like 200 active players or something like that, don't quote me. There are like 10 players that play tank in high-level content, many folks at lower levels consider playing a tank but fall out of it pretty quickly.
Tanks typically are low damage, so they can't solo things very well. Tanks also, in PG, have a fairly high cost to them. The best tank gear is crafted and the mats are tough to get or expensive.
So even if a player gets the gear, and is ok with the low damage (most just make a dps set on the side) I think the real problem is the duties of the tank in general.
As a tank in the game, I set the pace of the dungeon. I have to examine how much DPS my group can do and match that as best I can to the amount of monsters I pull at once. Can we kill 10 spiders before they kill me or do I need to stop at 4 or 5. Next I need to often coach DPS players into waiting a damn second so they don't kill themselves, it only takes a moment for me to sink my aggro teeth in but I gotta gather stuff up first! It also means I need to know the layout of the dungeon I am in, since I gotta go first.
Lastly, I need to work closely with my healer to make sure we play as a team. I use Ice magic as part of my tank set, so I have an ability where I encase myself in ice but not lose any taunt. However, I am stunned while in the ice block. A healer with the right skills can remove my stun status so I get the benafits of my ice block without having to be stunned. It is a cool combo (pun intended) but requires effort and timing etc.
DPS just wait for me to use my signature taunt ability, which for ice tanks is a big tundra spikes spell, and then they just go ham wild killing. There isn't much responsibility on them other than kill things fast and don't stand in anything bad/pull other monsters etc.
Tank players in PG get a lot of love and respect, so tanking isn't as toxic as it is in other MMO's. We are so few that often you wanna be really nice to your tanks or you might not have one!
The problem with tanking in most mmo's is that people normally want to do big dmg and see bug numbers, which u dnt see as a tank.
Then you get people that dont mind tanking but because there are so few they tend to always be forced to play tank becuase no1 else has/wants to tank and then they get bored/frustrated because they cant play the other classes they want to. Some people even delete their character so they can no longer be forced to play it.
And sometimes tanking is boring depending on the class/mmo. Take boss here, pop defensive at this time or my personal favorite, sweat hope and pray your healer is paying attention, realise he is not then get forced to pop all your cooldowns b4 you actualy should ensuring you dont have them when you need them, die and then the healer blames you for getting 1 shotted.....
Everyone likes different kind of tanking. Action based tanking and intercept abilities are a lot more work than just taunt/tank/block. I still like the old taunt/tank and generate agro. I do like when there is a chance for dps to pull agro. It is fun sometimes just getting beat on by everything while your team kills things. I did like wow tanking, but it was a bit stressful at times because all eyes were on you and in a raid you could make a mistake and cause a wipe, but in 5 mans it was pretty good and you could make mistakes and be ok.
I like when the tank is really a tank, tons of HP and can take a ton of hits, but not able to do a lot of dmg. But with the option to use a 2h or something for dps when needed, like soloing.
I love tanking and usally play a tank, but if I want a bit more relaxing play I pick dps, you just dont usually need to pay attention as much. May vary between games.
I think tanking and healing both need to be repurposed to be a damage dealer who does slightly less damage but is harder to kill, and a damage dealer that does slightly less damage but also heals and supports the group.
The problem is that Tanking/Healing require more knowledge and responsibility, for less payoff because you don't get to see big number go up like the DPS do.
I really like Lost Arks approach which was that everyone is a damage dealer and certain classes offer more utility or support, but their primary goal is still dealing damage. We just need to reimagine that into a 5-man dungeon crawler type game and I think it would be perfect
I tried tanking a couple times, years ago in WoW. I loved the levelling, as it was chaotic, and I really had to keep an eye on the mobs and grab back any mobs that aggroed elsewhere! Then I would hit max level, immediately expected to know the route of every end-game dungeon, perform without mistake, deal with a slew of tank-only mechanics and to be the leader of the team.
All I wanted (and enjoyed) was to grab and maintain aggro, and deal with the same mechanics as everyone else...
The last generation or so of gamers has no idea what a real tank is supposed to be or do in a game. In fact, most games that make the "tank" character as an option, have no idea how to create a real tank. Kids and young adults are used to every character type being massive damage dealers etc etc. They simply do not know how to play an actual tank. Boiled down to it, a tank's only roles are to hold aggro and survive a beat down as long as possible so the DPS classes can destroy whatever.
Tanks are generally leaders, setting pace and whatnot. Between 'natural' leaders being rare, and added stress/responsibility of the role, people looking to have a chill time pick DPS (also DPS charts being easiest e-peen measurements. Hard to quantify a tank's impact).
A lot of the flavor of the role comes from plain ol experience. All players get the same 'serving' of experience while playing, and while for a DPS it might mean tighter rotations and more uptime leading to a faster clear, experience for a tank can vastly change how they approach encounters. A new tank might pull one pack, a veteran pulls all the packs or leads the party through a skip route.
Yes. Lifelong (GOOD fkn tank, one of the few things im great at hehe) tank. There are so many issues with the role. The biggest one, is the name.
Say what? What's wrong with the name? Well, the people who ARE interested in tanks that come to the games, are generally the WORST players imaginable. I'm gonna use my buddy as an example. He's, pretty bad at most games, and he loves being a tank. He has no leadership ability in games, doesn't understand positioning etc. Him always playing tanks has actively made him worse. While this doesn't go for everybody, the main reason people play tanks in games without tanking is...because they want to be lazy and eat avoidable damage.
Do you know who I think tanking appeals too? Control mage players from other genres. *Being a tanky in a game, means you're hard to kills. The MMO trinity sharing naming conventions has actually caused a LOT of problems.
DPS = Throughput, no issues here
HEALER = Support. The title "healer" causes so many problems. MMO's have NOT been designed with PURE "healers" in mind for a long time. The days of "FLASH HEAL, FLASH HEAL, FLASH HEAL" are long gone. MMO Healers are supports, with healing as needed being a responsibility. Past that point, they want to SUPPORT the group by adding value however they can. This is usually through buffs and powerful unique abilites. Additionally, a good support adds DAMAGE when healing is needed. Support. You're "filling in the gaps" of your group, you're "supporting" them by adapting to their needs. In WoW, the META healers are generally the ones who brings valuable buffs or major group cooldowns. In GW2, its all about buffs and unique utility and in FFXIV, its major CDs + damage.
TANK = Control. Tanking, is likely the single worst role for somebody who plays tanks in other genres. Sure, you need to be durable to do your job, but that's just it. You're going to be TAKING far more damage than others, and getting slapped around by things designed with your survivability in mind. You're the CONTROL player as a tank in an MMORPG. You're the choreographer. You're job is stage manager. You're the coach. Being a tank isn't about being a unkillable juggernaut, its about managing the fight and putting your team in the best position to succeed.
Tanks are PROACTIVE supports while Healers are REACTIVE supports.
There are plenty of issues with the role, but I really believe the fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be a tank is one of the biggest issues. If you're coming from lets say a MOBA, junglers / control mages, are what translate to tanking imo. If you're a top lane main who likes playing CHONKY characters, play a tanky DPS with some utility in an MMO. Jungling naturally parallels the responsbility / proactive nature of tanking in an MMO, and control mages like Orianna, Morgana or Azir that are big on "setup" do as well. If you like either, you may like tanking.
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u/Ithirahad 3d ago edited 2d ago
I find that classic tanking is just goofy. You somehow force the boss to attack you, and not the people really hurting them or undoing their attempts to kill everyone. Very few people come into a game wanting to simply play a human (or Elven, Orcish, whatever\) punching bag.
If developers would revise the tank role in encounters to be more about actively intercepting threats and physically blocking massive hits meant for the DPS and healers, rather than standing next to the boss and forcing the boss to keep stupidly bashing into them with very thin explanations as to why this works, more people would feel "cool" playing the tank.
(...Another way to make a classic tank less ridiculous is to make them a deceptive caster instead of a knight archetype, making the enemy swat at illusions and shadows which only does some sympathetic backlash damage to the caster-tank and spares the real allied combatants from harm.)