More tanks are required.

[gorstram]

how can you fix this? certainly not with cross server queues. you cannot fix it systematically, becasue you cannot fix people. what you CAN do is fix your own personal situation. make friends, find a good guild that plays at the same time as you play. dps in my guild, don't have to wait for queue at all, becasue they just grab a tank/healer from in guild and run immediately. I had several people that i originally pugged with on my friend's list, so that we could just whisper each other when online and get started.

.

 

The issue here was for PuGs. It's universally understood that we can grab people from our guilds to run flashpoints. The OP was concerned because he runs pugs. Other puggers jumped in to share their concerns about this too. While your solution may work for people that don't mind guilding up, there is still a huge cross section of players that want to use GF to get a group together to run FP's. I have indicated in my previous posts that I avoid queing for PuGs with my tank because after completing the weekly, there are no tangible rewards for me to run them any further.

 

Incentivizing roles within GF is the easiest way to draw the required classes into pugging. While this may reward tanks more often, DPS will get rewards every now and then as well (I actually had a 10 minute wait as a tank because there were no DPS in queue.)

[Jeweledleah]

The issue here was for PuGs. It's universally understood that we can grab people from our guilds to run flashpoints. The OP was concerned because he runs pugs. Other puggers jumped in to share their concerns about this too. While your solution may work for people that don't mind guilding up, there is still a huge cross section of players that want to use GF to get a group together to run FP's. I have indicated in my previous posts that I avoid queing for PuGs with my tank because after completing the weekly, there are no tangible rewards for me to run them any further.

 

Incentivizing roles within GF is the easiest way to draw the required classes into pugging. While this may reward tanks more often, DPS will get rewards every now and then as well (I actually had a 10 minute wait as a tank because there were no DPS in queue.)

 

maybe i didn't explain clearly enough.

 

you START as pug. you make connections THROUGH pugging. make friends. even eventually find a guild. and then you don't have to pug anymore.

of course it requires a bit of effort and to be a decent person. becasue this only works if people like playing with you.

edited to add - that said, I wouldn't mind some sort of incentive for most needed role (hell, make it cartel only pack items with low chance possibility of something very rare and I'm sooo there (bound on legacy so, not character). I just don't think it will fix much long term, becasue real problem is people.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Jeweledleah

[gorstram]

maybe i didn't explain clearly enough.

 

you START as pug. you make connections THROUGH pugging. make friends. even eventually find a guild. and then you don't have to pug anymore.

of course it requires a bit of effort and to be a decent person. becasue this only works if people like playing with you.

edited to add - that said, I wouldn't mind some sort of incentive for most needed role (hell, make it cartel only pack items with low chance possibility of something very rare and I'm sooo there (bound on legacy so, not character). I just don't think it will fix much long term, becasue real problem is people.

 

You're right, the problem is the player base. But getting people to friend-up in an MMO is like herding cats. The best analogy I can think of is the Fight Club line, "Single serving friends." Getting people to interact beyond the immediate flashpoint transaction is pretty rare. The biggest cross section of flashpointers will be pugs, and that's the way the playerbase will act. The devs have to find the most pragmatic way to boost role participation, and I don't think they'll rely on the playerbase to fix it themselves, because it's not working.

[slafko]

The biggest problem with tanks is Raids. You only need two tanks for a raid and the main tank is a bit of rock star role. There's a lot of politics and jockeying within guilds for this position.

 

I must be in a wrong guild, then.

 

Although I was the "first tank" of my raid group until I quit the game, we never ever assigned tanking duty based on who's "first" or "second". We're all guildmates. It was, and still is, along the lines who wants to tank what. Raid leader lets us tanks work it out between ourselves and we've never had any problems or ego battles.

Edited November 20, 2013 by slafko

[Starglitter]

Mmm...

 

I seen several posts where the contention that the tank is the group leader and the "go to" person for what to do, and thus tank players have a greater responsibility than the otehr ocupational choices.

 

While the nature of tanking may lead to the above, I do not see it as the norm or a mandate. It could very well be that male-alpha personalities tend to go tank and as a result dominate the team, I suspect they could be playing the Healer's assistant and still would dominate the team :<)

 

As a woman playing this game and have experienced all three professions, I can tell you while tanking, I have simply told my PUG team mates that I am not familiar with the adventure, and there has always been one to walk me through it and in all cases we have completed the adventure without grief, so my need to be a walking SWTOR encyclopedia is not there, but the need to be humble and tell others of my lack of knowledge is of course true, also you may not I was not the leader either; and frankly was perfectly happy with the arrangement.

 

I do find tanking very challenging and at times annoying; and possibly these annoyances could persuade players not to take on the occupation:

 

1) Crowd Control on MOBS works on me 100% of the time, can't resist one, not even by mistake, even by a mob 50 levels below me: nails me 100% of the time

2) Knock Back is unresistable, and goes off too quick, takes precedence on all other actions, I may have pressed the area AOE button and before it goes off, I am thrown half a room away and then when its pointless the AOE goes off.

3) Not enough taunts, or cool downs are way too long; as scenarious have waves of monsters coming, my AOE taunt should recharge fast enough to let me greet the new threats as the new wave spawns.

4) I only have 1 reliable taunt, the others are sheer chance if they work (and a bad one at that)

5) Taunts don't last long enough or too short, or too easy to be overwhelmed by players doing their job

6) Everything slows me down, I get thrown around like a volleyball at the beach, but also I get a slowed effect on me, so getting back to the mob fest is slow and not much I can do about it, also add the taunt issue to this.

7) Chain Stun, Paralyse, etc; hard to tank when mobs are just slipping mickeys to you on and on.

8) Too many bosses with "un-interuptable" AOE powers, that is bad enough on its own accord, but also as they are readying to deploy you get "unresistable" slow downed; thus making your attempt to get out of the AOE next to pointless; and if you do, they will lazo you back or your healer despite you have very recently taunted them. I can tell you all the HM CZ one, the one with the electrocution pool robot, as soon as it starts its BS field, I taunt it, and begin to walk very slowly, since I am arbitrarely slowed, to get out of the water to see the robot snag the healer, really? What happened to the taunt? Ignored, arbitrary developer coding?

 

As I wrote about the issues above, it occurred to me, perhaps players do not play tanks because:

 

"They don't feel like tanks"

 

Sue

[slafko]

Sue speaks the truth.

[DarthTHC]

Sue speaks the truth.

 

Not really. I've tanked on Shadow, Guardian, and Vanguard and while the things Sue talks about make the fights interesting, they don't make any fight unmanageable.

 

If tanking were "target mob, press 1, repeat", how much would that suck?

[Fungo]

I can only agree with Sue too. The amount of CC that mobs have is just stupid, and for me that just make the tanking experience frustrating as hell. I recall that there was certain Groups in mandelorian raiders, which just made ragequit my assassin tank. Getting bounced around like a ping pong ball is, while amusing to watch, not fun.

[Never_Hesitate]

I have to agree that the amount of stuns/kbs the mobs have, even worse are the stuns they use directly at the start of the fight they don't even give you a chance to get the aggro, is very annoying, but it isn't too hard to get the aggro once the first stun is gone

[DarthTHC]

I can only agree with Sue too. The amount of CC that mobs have is just stupid, and for me that just make the tanking experience frustrating as hell. I recall that there was certain Groups in mandelorian raiders, which just made ragequit my assassin tank. Getting bounced around like a ping pong ball is, while amusing to watch, not fun.

 

Mando bosses, made simple, because that is the one instance in which most tanks stink:

 

1) Boss with the 2 dogs.

- Tank grabs BOSS ONLY and drags him straight back on the stage he's on. Save your taunt for the moment he freezes you. When you un-freeze, taunt immediately. Keep him away from the dogs.

- Healer stands mid-room

- DPS focus-fire one dog, then the other, but make sure you keep the dogs on you (as opposed to on the healer or tank). Keep the dogs away from the boss.

 

2) 4 Bosses

- Everyone bunches up for a LOS pull

- Focus fire the Marauder/Sent first - he has no aggro table and bounces around a lot

- Focus fire the Shadow/Assassin next

- Try to kill the BH/Trooper and Smuggler/Operative at about the same time

 

3) Final Boss

- Everyone including the tank focus fires turrets if they're up

 

4) Bonus: Two droids on the bridge

- They knock-back. Position yourself wisely.

- Kill the one on the left first.

- When the tank attacks the one on the right, WAIT UNTIL THE ADDS LAND AND MAKE THEIR FIRST MOVE before blowing the barrel. This is a good strategy for every add near an explosive barrel. So much premature explosination. Your girlfriends must be terribly disappointed.

Edited November 20, 2013 by DarthTHC

[LordArtemis]

The amount that mobs have in general is silly IMO...especially considering many of them seem to have abilities that were either removed from players or have never existed.

 

But I think the major barrier to encouraging folks to play tanks is the lack of an ability to save a GUI/QB/Spec setup (dual spec of sorts) AND the lack of good damage mitigation and agro control...both of which I consider poor in this game compared to other games.

 

When even DPS can break agro control with only a slight damage increase over the tank something is wrong IMO. Agro is broken off of a tank FAR too easily IMO.

[DarthTHC]

The amount that mobs have in general is silly IMO...especially considering many of them seem to have abilities that were either removed from players or have never existed.

 

But I think the major barrier to encouraging folks to play tanks is the lack of an ability to save a GUI/QB/Spec setup (dual spec of sorts) AND the lack of good damage mitigation and agro control...both of which I consider poor in this game compared to other games.

 

When even DPS can break agro control with only a slight damage increase over the tank something is wrong IMO. Agro is broken off of a tank FAR too easily IMO.

 

The only times I ever recall having a DPS (who was attacking the right mob) pull aggro off me as a tank were when I was the lowest possible level for a flashpoint and they were the highest. And even then I got it back quickly enough (or they killed it quickly enough).

 

It might happen in ops, I guess, on fights that are complicated to manage for tanks. But that's not what we're talking about in this thread. We're talking about Group Finder Flash Points.

[Fungo]

I wasn't refering to the boss fight, just the trash Groups.

 

But I do appriciate the explenation of the boss fight too.

 

Another example could be the champs on Oricon. They have quite their share of CC as well. I for one am not really feeling like a mighty sith lord, when I am pushed around, frozen, smacked into the ground stunned etc repeatedly.

[DarthTHC]

I wasn't refering to the boss fight, just the trash Groups.

 

But I do appriciate the explenation of the boss fight too.

 

Another example could be the champs on Oricon. They have quite their share of CC as well. I for one am not really feeling like a mighty sith lord, when I am pushed around, frozen, smacked into the ground stunned etc repeatedly.

 

Watch any fight scene in any Star Wars movie. The mighty Force-users rarely breeze their way through fights.

[Andryah]

Watch any fight scene in any Star Wars movie. The mighty Force-users rarely breeze their way through fights.

 

Unless they are fighting droids. Droids is butter to force using light stick wielders.

 

One thing about the movies though....how come we never see a force user slip on a pile of bantha poop and accidentally cut their off their beans and franks?

[PlasmaJohn]

But I think the major barrier to encouraging folks to play tanks is the lack of an ability to save a GUI/QB/Spec setup ...

I'm going to disagree here. IMO some sort of multispec capability would score major points with the playerbase (assuming it doesn't cost CC per use... then it'll be 2.1 all over again). I just don't see it as any sort of major barrier preventing people from trying tank or heal spec.

 

We already have field respec. Sure it's a little irritating to deal with but not bad enough to be considered a root cause why more people don't switch to tank or heal spec. Respecing (manual or fully automatic) cannot build multiple sets of gear for you. Switch a couple pieces around and heals and dps are good to go. Tanks need two full sets. Putting together a dps set of gear is painful enough, building a tank set is even worse.

 

The addle-brained itemization of tank comms gear is just a big turn off. If that would be raised to the sub-optimal level that other specs enjoy(?) I think that would mitigate that disincentive somewhat.

 

My tanks are tanks and my healer is heals only. I've been meaning to buy field respec for my sage and try out heal spec with her but I've never done sage healing before. That inexperience is what keeps me from using her as heals. I'll eventually bite that bullet but there's not much incentive for me to do so at this time.

[Mazikeen]

When even DPS can break agro control with only a slight damage increase over the tank something is wrong IMO. Agro is broken off of a tank FAR too easily IMO.

 

There's a concept called 'aggro throttling' that the old-school tanks have known about for ages. For this concept to work, however, DPS has to actually pay attention to their threat and scale back as needed. Sadly, all most DPS seems to care about is bigger and faster numbers.

[Jeweledleah]

Unless they are fighting droids. Droids is butter to force using light stick wielders.

 

One thing about the movies though....how come we never see a force user slip on a pile of bantha poop and accidentally cut their off their beans and franks?

 

but... they have the force guiding them away from bananas and poop. its like

 

you know how Luke didn't even need his computerized aiming? same with jedi and sith, they just know exactly where to step

[Mazikeen]

I seen several posts where the contention that the tank is the group leader and the "go to" person for what to do, and thus tank players have a greater responsibility than the otehr ocupational choices.

 

While the nature of tanking may lead to the above, I do not see it as the norm or a mandate. It could very well be that male-alpha personalities tend to go tank and as a result dominate the team, I suspect they could be playing the Healer's assistant and still would dominate the team :<)

 

Tanks leading groups and raids has been the norm for well over a decade. I'm not sure what rock you've been under but unless you happen across the occasional person who takes charge regardless of role (and you'll usually find out they have a tank main/alt) that's the way it has been.

 

I do find tanking very challenging and at times annoying; and possibly these annoyances could persuade players not to take on the occupation:

 

1) Crowd Control on MOBS works on me 100% of the time, can't resist one, not even by mistake, even by a mob 50 levels below me: nails me 100% of the time

2) Knock Back is unresistable, and goes off too quick, takes precedence on all other actions, I may have pressed the area AOE button and before it goes off, I am thrown half a room away and then when its pointless the AOE goes off.

3) Not enough taunts, or cool downs are way too long; as scenarious have waves of monsters coming, my AOE taunt should recharge fast enough to let me greet the new threats as the new wave spawns.

4) I only have 1 reliable taunt, the others are sheer chance if they work (and a bad one at that)

5) Taunts don't last long enough or too short, or too easy to be overwhelmed by players doing their job

6) Everything slows me down, I get thrown around like a volleyball at the beach, but also I get a slowed effect on me, so getting back to the mob fest is slow and not much I can do about it, also add the taunt issue to this.

7) Chain Stun, Paralyse, etc; hard to tank when mobs are just slipping mickeys to you on and on.

8) Too many bosses with "un-interuptable" AOE powers, that is bad enough on its own accord, but also as they are readying to deploy you get "unresistable" slow downed; thus making your attempt to get out of the AOE next to pointless; and if you do, they will lazo you back or your healer despite you have very recently taunted them. I can tell you all the HM CZ one, the one with the electrocution pool robot, as soon as it starts its BS field, I taunt it, and begin to walk very slowly, since I am arbitrarely slowed, to get out of the water to see the robot snag the healer, really? What happened to the taunt? Ignored, arbitrary developer coding?

 

1) Interrupts and stun-breakers are your friends

2) Learn to position yourself. There's a reason raid tanks fight with their backs (literally) against the wall

3) You have 2 taunts, regardless of the tank class: 1 single-target and 1 AoE. If your DPS can't wait for you to establish threat or the repeatedly pull aggro off you then let them die. It's as much their job to throttle their DPS as it is yours to maintain aggro as best you can.

4) See #3

5) See #3

6) See #2

7) Learn to kite mobs who do this, pull smaller groups where possible and teach your stupid DPS to interrupt. Very, very few packs of mobs all have interrupts/etc, this is by design. CC is also good and your group/raid should know this

8) The CZ bot is an annoyance and the only real way I know of to deal with it is to learn timing. Before he starts to electrify the pool, everyone needs to bail. If you do it right you can actually be out of the water before he finishes the cast. All mobs have their own tank quirks and that's your job to learn them.

[intheolddayz]

I find it satisfying to survive hits that would one shot anyone else, even weaker tanks.

I like the challenge of keeping aggro on 10 mobs while dps are aoeing crazy.

I like being the one in front of that 50 foot tall rancor.

I like to be the 1st one that goes all out in ops mob groups.

I also like to hear people say : HOLY S...! BEAST TANK! when i join pugs.

 

Thats my reasons to play a tank.

 

Vankman on Jedi covenant

[DorkTrooper]

Tanking is my main chosen role when I group-play. I haven't queued for many ops or flashpoints, though, since the level cap was increased to 55. I take my time leveling because I enjoy questing. Grinding for gear beyond that (suiting up for SM flashpoints, initially) takes a long time because I'm not in a huge guild and have maybe 3-4 hours/day max to play and run dailies most days.

 

The biggest reason my couple of lv 55 tanks aren't queuing is because tanks are expected to have expert knowledge of the mob and boss fights the first time and every time. This requires watching vids or reading walkthroughs and memorizing everything. This is the aspect of tanking PUGs I least enjoy, and frankly find difficult. I'd much rather learn to play the game by actually playing the game than by learning it all from Youtube. I respect that no one wants to wipe, but I can't just walk into endgame scenarios and nail every tanking/timing/puzzle/positioning mechanic the first time (and sometimes the second time!) without doing research.

 

I had just gotten to a place where I felt confident running all of the previous high-tier fps and ops when all of the fps and ops in the groupfinder were replaced with new ones. Not ready to go through all of the trouble of pre-memorizing a whole new slew of boss fights for now, and I'm not willing to join a hardcore, regimented end-game guild with mandatory website check-ins, schedules around which you have to plan your life, etc.

 

I tank on my schedule, not a guild's, not Bioware's or anyone else's. I bet I'm not the only one.

[Kaymac]

 

,,,The biggest reason my couple of lv 55 tanks aren't queuing is because tanks are expected to have expert knowledge of the mob and boss fights the first time and every time. This requires watching vids or reading walkthroughs and memorizing everything. This is the aspect of tanking PUGs I least enjoy, and frankly find difficult. I'd much rather learn to play the game by actually playing the game than by learning it all from Youtube. I respect that no one wants to wipe, but I can't just walk into endgame scenarios and nail every tanking/timing/puzzle/positioning mechanic the first time (and sometimes the second time!) without doing research.

 

I had just gotten to a place where I felt confident running all of the previous high-tier fps and ops when all of the fps and ops in the groupfinder were replaced with new ones. Not ready to go through all of the trouble of pre-memorizing a whole new slew of boss fights for now, and I'm not willing to join a hardcore, regimented end-game guild with mandatory website check-ins, schedules around which you have to plan your life, etc. ...

 

 

Exactly the same boat as you. I didn't mind tanking flashpoints up to the level cap because I could queue for a random and reasonably guess which one Id end up doing so reading up on it before hand wasn't an issue (although didnt like having to do it). Hit level 55 and now I need to memorize the hard mode equivalent for every flashpoint in the game because the tank is expected to know that. And of course, most people have 0 patience level at that stage of the game if you don't, they just want their tokens and move on. No thanks...

Edited November 21, 2013 by Kaymac

[slafko]

Not really. I've tanked on Shadow, Guardian, and Vanguard and while the things Sue talks about make the fights interesting, they don't make any fight unmanageable.

 

If tanking were "target mob, press 1, repeat", how much would that suck?

 

Constant pushbacks and uninterruptable skills do not make fights interesting, they make them frustrating after a while and are a clear indicator of lack of imagination by the devs.

[slafko]

Mando bosses, made simple, because that is the one instance in which most tanks stink:

 

1) Boss with the 2 dogs.

- Tank grabs BOSS ONLY and drags him straight back on the stage he's on. Save your taunt for the moment he freezes you. When you un-freeze, taunt immediately. Keep him away from the dogs.

- Healer stands mid-room

- DPS focus-fire one dog, then the other, but make sure you keep the dogs on you (as opposed to on the healer or tank). Keep the dogs away from the boss.

What you get in this fight is a rdps standing in one spot killing dog 1. Sentinel started on dog 2 but decided to switch to 1 which he now has to chase around because the healer is standing 20m away from the rdps. All calls for the healer and the rdps to ball up in one spot are ignored and the sent is basically useless.

 

2) 4 Bosses

- Everyone bunches up for a LOS pull

I would like to take this opportunity to politely ask the community to stop doing this if they're geared. While the fight is problematic in storymode when you're barely equipped, it's a breeze for a team that's just running it for comms and the weekly reward.

 

4) Bonus: Two droids on the bridge

- They knock-back. Position yourself wisely.

- Kill the one on the left first.

- When the tank attacks the one on the right, WAIT UNTIL THE ADDS LAND AND MAKE THEIR FIRST MOVE before blowing the barrel. This is a good strategy for every add near an explosive barrel. So much premature explosination. Your girlfriends must be terribly disappointed.

Here's a better one: Follow the gosh darned tank's footsteps and avoid the droids completely.

Edited November 21, 2013 by slafko

[Lord_of_Mu]

I would like to take this opportunity to politely ask the community to stop doing this if they're geared. While the fight is problematic in storymode when you're barely equipped, it's a breeze for a team that's just running it for comms and the weekly reward.

 

I've never used gear as the reasoning to use LOS on the pull for that fight. It's more about getting the four bosses in one pile so they're easier to control. The fact of the mater is, you can only effectively tank three of them and use taunts to get the sentinel / mara's attention before he uses force push and switches targets.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Lord_of_Mu