Post by JustVine on 2022-08-16 22:18:01
To me a tank's tasks are positioning and mitigation, how exactly they achieve the mitigation is variable.
If a Tank can just 'do basic rotation and not lose threat against most DPS', I don't usually like the game. If coordination (not necessarily about holding back overall but at least in terms of timing your damage with the Tank's abilities to spike their own threat or absorb yours or Cover you or whatever) isn't necessary, then what's the point?
If Tanks are very CC heavy and their CC is reliable, even if only on mobs, I don't like this generally either. I see Tanks as those cool people who stand in front of the mob and take MOST of its hits and control 'when it finally hits someone else'.
If it never hits anyone else at all, don't like it, even if the tank is a badass, it should just mean DPS can be more badass. If it tries but can always be forced to fail by tank CC, same issue, except that now the added problem is that both 'Multi-enemy PvE' and 'certain PvP' is either unbalanced or braindead (for me).
There should be ways to make Tanking 'easy enough for those who want to do it but aren't top-tier gamers' without 'making it so they hit a rotation and never lose the mob' or 'can just always CC everything'.
I also greatly like abilities that allow the tank to positionally block either the advance of the enemy, or actual attacks from the enemy, on allies positioned a certain way relative to them, and prefer these in PvP/PvX games even without the 'my Taunt forces you to detarget/target me' dynamic (which I also like).
Also I don't like when Tanks do terrible damage consistently (i.e. when not as a tradeoff for mitigation).
Thanks as always for listening, Intrepid.
I second this completely.
As for the original question 'do prefer tank and off tank vs multiple tanks' I feel like it's pretty obviously 'both'. A tank has two jobs. Damage mitigation and hate mitigation. An off tank can provide either of these to allow for more dps and cc from the tank or to provide even more mitigation that outpaces one tanks timers. Multiple tanks on the other hand allow for more complex encounters with multiple primary targets, damage types and a stronger positional threat element. An off tank can handle another primary targets kind of but not nearly as effectively in terms of maintaining a position just by the very nature of what an off tank is.
Off tanks in my opinion is more about taking one of those two parts of what a tank does and doing it very well while working with the AoE specialist to keep adds off relevant party members to maintain overall dps on whatever the primary target is.
This also is why I think Summoner/Tank would be better off being able to be a full tank rather than just an off tank as it's a natural way of allowing that sort of smaller party to take on multiple threats.