More tanks are required.

[Drox]

Personally as a Tank, I pug when I really need to. Usually when my guildmates aren't on and I need a weekly done quick. Other than that, I rarely leave pugging to chance. So I choose to run with guildmates, or not at all. It can be very stressful being in a team that you have no experience with, while at the same time knowing they all rely on you to know what to do all the time. So a lot of people prefer being in a safer non-blamable role, where if something goes wrong they won't be the instant scapegoat. Thus why you see more DPS than support/tank roles.

 

I don't think bioware can do much about human nature, and making support/tank classes less important in FP's isn't the answer. Games like STO are like that (Last time I played it, months ago), and it's horrible to those who play those classes. Since it's now just a DPS race, leaving them as useless player classes who have to completely change their playstyle to DPS to stay relevant to the main DPS class in missions. It can pretty much make a game less fun, than more.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Drox

[Laris_Rai]

The simple fact of the matter is that tanking is a thankless, thankless JOB. I enjoy it, and while GOGOGONOOB dps don't bother me in the least, they are a huge reason you don't see more tanks. Job + ungrateful selfish douchebags = few tanks in the queue.

 

And god help you if you're trying to branch out into tanking if you're normally PvE.

[Mowermanx]

and there is nothing any developer can do (including tanking changes) that will change this.

 

Riôt

 

While I agree with everything else in your post, this passage I disagree, the devs could make tanking easier to gear up and play, a trinity system its unfair by its very nature, so gearing and skillsets need not be fair either, but someone forgot to think about this and insisted on using same skills in pve as pvp, and what we have is a result of this lack of forethought.

[MSpectre]

Who wants to be staring at crotch all the time?

Who wants to have to learn all the strats beforehand?

Who wants to take all the pressure and lead a group?

Who would find it fun?

 

Tanking is for leaders and just like in real life there are less of them.

Edited November 17, 2013 by MSpectre

[Neverfar]

Who wants to be staring at crotch all the time?

Who wants to have to learn all the strats beforehand?

Who wants to take all the pressure and lead a group?

Who would find it fun?

 

Tanking is for leaders and just like in real life there are less of them.

 

There are plenty of "leaders" in real life who disrupt group cohesion, steal credit, hog the spotlight, leech rewards and are parasites upon society. They often excel in the corporate world and get very rich.

 

Thing is in Old Republic, these very same "leaders" often play DPS instead because tanking actually gets hard.

[Mallorik]

The simple fact of the matter is that tanking is a thankless, thankless JOB. I enjoy it, and while GOGOGONOOB dps don't bother me in the least, they are a huge reason you don't see more tanks. Job + ungrateful selfish douchebags = few tanks in the queue.

 

That is one thing I miss about wow, and eq1. well I don't think wow is like that anymore but when I went back to wow when cata first came out the heroics were really tough and dps were screaming, if they jumped in early or got aggro at all it was one or two hits from trash and they were dead.

 

It made pugs painful but put the blame on the offenders(the dps) instead of the people trying to do their jobs (the tanks.) Back in eq1 holding agro was an art, as was dpsing without getting agro, modern mmo devs thought that was too much personal responsibility for too many people and decided to put it all on one person in the group.

[MSpectre]

Give all tanks an automatic piece of loot for each HM OP/FP boss kill and see the tank population explode.

[Marmerus]

Give all tanks an automatic piece of loot for each HM OP/FP boss kill and see the tank population explode.

All that is needed is class specific loot.

[Loc_n_lol]

Give all tanks an automatic piece of loot for each HM OP/FP boss kill and see the tank population explode.

As pointed out many times, most of the loot is completely useless anyway, underlevel gear with alacrity and accuracy. That's not much of an incentive.

[lordofdamornin]

While I agree with everything else in your post, this passage I disagree, the devs could make tanking easier to gear up and play, a trinity system its unfair by its very nature, so gearing and skillsets need not be fair either, but someone forgot to think about this and insisted on using same skills in pve as pvp, and what we have is a result of this lack of forethought.

a

 

This has been done in WoW, and other games - the problem(s) persist there, too. No matter what they put in the *enticements,* for tanks, most people in these games just want to pew pew.

 

Tanking, and to a lesser degree, healing, have a responsibility and accountability that most people just don't want to shoulder, and I stand by what I said - there is nothing a game developer can do to change this, and quite frankly, I am happy that this game still retains some modicum of skill for both tanking and healing, whereas those things just don't really exist any more in WoW.

 

No, they don't.

 

Riôt

[Vego_Mohenjo]

It's a peculiarity. One night it took about 2 hours for my Juggernaut to get a group. Just the other night, I logged on at about 9:30pm, and by bedtime at 2am, my queue had not launched, and I was playing my healer. About 4 hours waiting for it.

 

The queues are nice and all, but the classes that do the real work (healer and tank) need to have their pot sweetened a bit. The simple fact is, tanking is very difficult in this game, because the threat generating tools are limited, and tanks are remarkably squishy. This makes life harder on the healer, because he has to pretty well be continuously healing the tank. He stops healing to do ANYTHING else, and the tank will die. Make the work a little easier, and people won't find the roles such a chore.

 

Make tanks a bit tougher. That will make them more fun to play, and it will take some of the pressure off the healers, and allow them to actually use some of the other tools they have.

[LordArtemis]

If they gave tanks better damage mitigation and agro control I would bet it would be more appealing to folks.

 

The solution is allowing multiple saved GUI/QB/spec setups so folks could change over to tank as needed IMO.

[Khaleijo]

I would rather go another route.

There is no reason to easen up the game for tanks, as tanking with the right group is already quite easy.

On the contrary, better change the role of DPS so that they do have real and obvious impact on the success in flashpoints. That the group will fail if a players of this role fails and that you clearly see when they fail. Give them special things to do that the other roles can't do for them.

 

That will maybe raise difficulty playing DPS for the average player, but will als divide responsibility among the three roles better, that everyone in the group has some.

 

The game mechanics don't work like, tank holds aggro from everything, does everything important like interrupts and stuff. There is meant to be a group working together and coordinate weak/strong targets, interupts, everyone in the group should know what to do when and that damage done is the least important thing most of the time.

But as it is DPS can just neglect their responsibilty and the group still succeeds rather easily, because the others can and do take over the neglected duties.

 

At the moment good dps players who take their part of responsibility are a gift and with them tanking is easy because they support the tank. Healing is easy because both tank and dps supporting each other make life a lot easier. Hopefully the tank recognizes this also and supports his dps by not dancing around and doing his part properly to make life easy for the dps too

 

But in pugs you rarely get those gifts as a tank/healer. Usually you have players with you who are used to the "group play" of other mmos where the tank and healer have to know exactly what to do when and the dps just do damage. If something goes wrong there is rarely another blamed than healer or tank, because just doing damage, what could to be wrong with that? So i(the DPS) can't have done something wrong, it's the others fault !!

 

Sadly no developper these days has the balls to force dps players into a group supporting playstyle by strong mechanics, so if they don't do more than damage the tank/healer has the choice to die or do things the dps could easily do while still doing their damage in addition to his own job. Most of the time the choice is in favor to "damn, just get this through with so that i can leave these guys behind"

 

But the addition grows bigger and bigger in the same rate the pug dps group play gets worse, until more and more tanks don't want to do that anymore, especially if they know how easy and with how much fun things could flow if everyone feels responsible for the groups success and supports his groupmates where ever he can, like in guild groups or with friends.

 

Why would someone expect tanks, who know how it could be, to run with these bad groups? Would be a little bit masochistic, wouldn't it? Especially if you have a guild and ingame friend to run with smoothly.

 

So a way to increase the number of tanks in the GF in the long term is to have better group play there.

The question is, is a developper taking the risk to loose derp players who don't want any responsibilty by implementing mechanics only the dps can solve? Or maybe the random community recognizes again that MMO are group based and restart playing as a team instead of lone wolfs who only happen to be at the same place at the same time by chance.

Sadly both is unlikely, so the group oriented players, who often play tanks or healers, will withdraw even more and stay with their guild and friends only, rising waiting times for the lonewolf type players.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Khaleijo

[darkov]

There are plenty of tanks, myself included, that play this game. The problem isn't the number of people playing tanks, it is the number of people willing to PUG as a tank.

 

Personally, the second I'm sufficiently geared on a new character to join my guild in FP/OPS, I stop PUGing, cause PUGs are horrible.

 

Bad players are too common in group finder and I'm not sure there is anything you could give me to make me play my tank with these bad players. Even if you gave me the best gear in the game for running PUGs, I still wouldn't, because these bad players make it NOT fun.

[Tsillah]

I did , I rolled a juggernaut, an assassin , a powertech and a guardian to learn tanking from a variety of perspectives , I also have a sorcerer healer and a operative healer , It is largely because of doing this that I became so aware of the large difference in the queue times, and it doesn't help me gear up as a DPS , the way it stands now my mercenary was geared from running S&V & TFB SM and my sniper is getting her gear from stuff I buy off the GTN or shuttle over to her on legacy gear from the excess of elite and ultimate comms my other characters earn.

 

I made this topic because it occurred to me that a new player who only has a single character that is a DPS faces an uphill battle to get geared up and learn how to play their class in a group environment (which is vastly different to the style of play used for soloing).

 

Well, you can get geared up easily now without doing flash points at all. The real problem still isn't that there aren't enough tanks but that there are too many idiot dps out there that make pugging fp's not fun for them. That's the source of the problem. You are just looking at a symptom and misinterpreting it.

 

Again the problem is not that there aren't enough tanks, but that they refuse to expose themselves to people who leveled to 55 and still don't have clue what they're doing. That's the problem that needs to be addressed.

[morfius]

Derping hit again...

 

Cross server queues - you are welcome, but only if they come with account wide friend/ignore system and following change:

Queuing to put friends on top of queue.... at the moment 1st of them hit 1st place (tank shortage in queue, 1 tank enter, first chosen are not first in queue by roles but 1st friends in queue by roles).

Ignore to mean, any char ignored = no grouping or seeing of this player again.

Then maybe community will start to behave sometimes better...

Otherwise cross server will lead to what we had in WoW - me & my wife simply don't participated in it after seeing large boom in ninjas, trolls and jerks.

 

DPS ... if I had options of DAO strategies for my companions ... my HK (purple 66s) would perform better than many DPS I have seen in PUGs ... we have tried on HM FPs already - most of time kill is faster and clear with HK, my wife as healer and friend DPS.

When DPSs start to use their skills properly (priority, healer assist, interrupts, cleanse, positioning, buff/debuff system) ... DPS role is not less engaging than tank or healer ones, till then stupid AI with some rules from DAO (stay out of AOE, attack priority, ability priority) would at least perform at same level.

No AI in this game (DAO rules or not) could replace healer or tank in HM FPs - already tried - tank & heal companions are gimped too much for such encounters.

Sad...

 

Gear grind as motivation ... worst idea ever - punishing player because decided to play less wanted role with at least twice (if not counting DPS set for dailies run/role swap) more gear grind than pew pew ones is simply removing all fun of it, therefore - no queues.

 

Commendation caps - again favoring of pew pew derps - to be able to get same quality items I had to grind twice long (of top of twice more) than any DPS - then my answer is - let them dust in queues ... some revenge is good even if it lead to the dark side

 

On those above - either remove those alacrity and accuracy for tanking gear or put shield/absorption on half of DPS ones ... at the end we all pay equally!

 

Better DPS output for tanks/healers and PvP - sorry but this is lazy work and explanation - we have some abilities as tanks (taunt and guard for example) that behave differently in PvE & PvP ... so why not have different stance output in PvP & PvE - increase damage on tank & healer from stats that are recuired for role to add 50% more DPS than change let say ion cell so those percentage up to be provided only in this stance and to have 5% reduction in PvE but 55% in PvP = same balance as now in PvP but faster dailies as tank.

(percentage are only for example).

At least may drag some big digits lowers to role ... but not the major issue here, DPS companion and clever play solve it when leveling... or doing dailies.

[BlackflameSeven]

Just read through this and once more a sense of deja vu sweeps over me.

 

The main problem really is the community. I currently have at 55 an assassin tank, a shadow tank, and two guardian tanks (yes two, I like the class that much). I run perhaps 1 or 2 full pugs a week on those, there just is too much chance of getting unsociable dps. If I see the group form and the dps is two sentinels or a sentinel and a guardian, I know it's going to be a mess. They rarely wait, they often don't understand the idea of going after weak mobs first, and as for helping if the healer gets attacked, that's almost unheard of. And god forbid you offer advice, the usual response is swearing or vote kicks. Maybe I'm just unlucky, or perhaps it's just I only remember the bad runs, but that's what it feels like.

 

So I run groups with my guild. Might not be a full group, but usually a healer and one dps at least, so that's of little help to the group finder queues. I can get cc if chose, I know the pace that suits the healer, and I know that if the dps does something daft, I can let them die and we'll laugh about it. Why should I inflict the unknowns of the group finder on my evenings?

 

Other comments here ring true as well. Gear that you can buy with group finder comms is just wrong so often, if you are going to put accuracy on it, make it necessary, WoW tanks needed it at one point as taunts could miss, but don't just stuff it there randomly. So why would I care about queueing? Make the consequences worse for dps errors. I want the tanks to have much higher mitigation, and make the mobs hit harder. Let a dps who pulls a gold mob die in 2 hits, and rack up the repair bills. Sorry healers, you might get that too, but just make errors hurt. Pain is a wonderful teacher.

 

I learned an appropriate rhyme in WoW very early on.

If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault

If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault

If the dps die, it's their own fault.

 

It may not be 100%, but it's close. The problem is that the dps often don't die from making the tank and healer's lives harder. Perhaps they should.

 

Back on topic, if you want more tanks, make the experience better.

 

Tolerate the low geared ones. I had a healer apologise to me after my first 55HM on my 2nd guardian for criticising my health total at the start, and saying at the end how much easier I was to heal than most tanks he had been grouped with recently. I had gone for defensive stats, largely ignored endurance, and had already tanked ops on a guardian. If I had been new to the role and class, I might have been driven away from tanking by his attitude.

 

Offer advice, tell people what the tactics are, don't charge off alone. There's nothing less fun for me on a tank than not being allowed to tank. I don't care if it works, I don't care if it's easy, I'm there as a tank, let me pull it, let me position it, let me control it. Another WoW rhyme learned early on from a priest who had this macro'd into his shackle spell - You spank it, you tank it. Don't expect me to cover for your errors if you don't let me do my job on my terms.

 

As a tank in far too many random groups, the game is no longer PvE. It's PvE&P - you spend more time fighting the players than you do the environment. It's a group effort, please let it be that. And get rid of all rewards for running FPs beyond the gear in them. It doesn't attract tanks to run them, it attracts overgeared and even overlevelled players who just want to nuke their way through instead of enjoying the game. You would end up with fewer people in total, but perhaps a better ratio of the three roles. Find some other way to let people get comms gear, perhaps even by playing content that suits their toons. Strange thought that one...

 

I've seen lots of comments and threads about cross server too. If it ever appears, please make it optional. Regardless of queue times, it ended any pugging for me in WoW, the abusive language, need rolling on everything and just total disregard of the others in the group destroyed any lingering interest I had left. It would do the same here if I can't click it off and just queue for people on my server.

[DarthTHC]

Just read through this and once more a sense of deja vu sweeps over me.

... not quoting wall of text, just saying:.

 

Brilliant stuff there. Should be required reading for every single DPS who complains that queues are too long.

Edited November 18, 2013 by DarthTHC

[Mallorik]

People being a-holes is probably a huge reason for tanks not quing, but I don't think its a fixable problem. Atleast nothing bioware can do will fix it. New tanks just need to practice more in easier fps and grow some thicker skin.

 

People being a-holes doesn't really effect me, ive been tanking for a very long time, and im well geared, ive never been kicked from an fp, and if someone is a jerk I will kick them. If you gave tanks an extra incentive to que when they have no other reason to be in a flash point everyone would win. Dps would get faster ques and dps aspiring to be tanks would get the extra gear they need to start.

[Lexhorn]

I am ready to play Tank, the issue is that I have no time to grind the stuff to be effective... Or I am not aware of a method to obtain fastly the stuff to start Hero Mode? If anyone has a good patch 2.3+ guide for this, I will thank him alot, and my server also will thank him as there will be a new Tank around

[Mallorik]

I am ready to play Tank, the issue is that I have no time to grind the stuff to be effective... Or I am not aware of a method to obtain fastly the stuff to start Hero Mode? If anyone has a good patch 2.3+ guide for this, I will thank him alot, and my server also will thank him as there will be a new Tank around

 

Get the best gear you can, then start in level 50 normal mode fps, move up to 50 hm then to 55's as you feel comfortable doing so.

 

At 55 you can do normal lvl 50 fps with dps gear, just make sure you have a shield generator equipped. Build your gear as you go and it will get better as you learn how to tank better.

[Mazikeen]

Give all tanks an automatic piece of loot for each HM OP/FP boss kill and see the tank population explode.

 

No, DPS queuing as tanks will increase

[anwg]

Dare I mention cross server queues in a PVE thread

 

That won't change a thing since all servers have basically the same ratio of tank/healer/dps in group finder.

[DarthTHC]

I play tanks and healers exclusively. What would it take to incentivise me to chain-run random flash points?

 

• Everyone queue for the role that you are geared and specced for, and be specced for and properly geared for the role you queue into.
  
• Everyone use crowd control and let only the tank break it.
  
• The tank pulls. No exceptions.
  
• If you're new to the flash point, let people know when you arrive and listen to the instructions on the mechanics. I promise I won't kick you for being new to a flash point. But I will kick you for being new, not knowing a fight, not speaking up, and messing up.
  
• Everyone spacebars every conversation unless it's your first or second time in the instance.
  
• Rolling NEED means it is an upgrade for you and you can equip it right now.
  

 

I think we all know that's never going to happen.

 

Notice that there's nothing in there about bribes from the game. I don't need more loot. I don't need more comms. I don't need credits. The game can't give me sufficient gear or commendations or credits to deal with bad behavior and bad players over and over and over again. It could offer me a million credits per completed flash point and I wouldn't do it.

 

It's all player behavior.

[Bilirubin]

I play tanks and healers exclusively. What would it take to incentivise me to chain-run random flash points?

 

• Everyone queue for the role that you are geared and specced for, and be specced for and properly geared for the role you queue into.
  
• Everyone use crowd control and let only the tank break it.
  
• The tank pulls. No exceptions.
  
• If you're new to the flash point, let people know when you arrive and listen to the instructions on the mechanics. I promise I won't kick you for being new to a flash point. But I will kick you for being new, not knowing a fight, not speaking up, and messing up.
  
• Everyone spacebars every conversation unless it's your first or second time in the instance.
  
• Rolling NEED means it is an upgrade for you and you can equip it right now.
  

 

I think we all know that's never going to happen.

 

Notice that there's nothing in there about bribes from the game. I don't need more loot. I don't need more comms. I don't need credits. The game can't give me sufficient gear or commendations or credits to deal with bad behavior and bad players over and over and over again. It could offer me a million credits per completed flash point and I wouldn't do it.

 

It's all player behavior.

For me, as a tank, I'm a little put off queueing because I have not yet run many of the newer HM55s. Mind, I have a brain, pick up mechanics fast, have cleared current HM (and NiM back in the day) OPs content, but its often not worth the hassle you get when you as tank say "im new to this, plz give mechanic rundown before boss pulls" (in addition to the usual headaches). Plus, being geared well beyond these, the comms just aren't a huge motivator.