#Tanking is unpopular due to Tank-unfriendly dungeon design (for new players)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

cinder valve
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As a tank, you're in the driver's seat of a 4-person vehicle. If you go at a snail's pace, or if you repeatedly crash the vehicle, people will not have a good time.

When I started tanking in WoW, I focused on one dungeon at a time. This helped me learn routes and how to not die. Also, I could play my character in DPS spec and see other Tanks play / learn from them.

None of this is possible in Fellowship. With 8 random dungeons, new tanks will spend hours being clueless and a burden. A newbie DPS or Heal can perform adequately, but a newbie tank can't. This is not the "Leader" fantasy that people play tank for.

I think first-time tanks should be able to wing an "ok" route. This is almost possible in Fellowship, but it's harder than it needs to be.

  • Problem 1 Most enemies look identical, it's hard to know if an enemy is a 1-count small mob or a 3-count caster/lieutenant mob.
  • Solution Visually unique enemies. Sorry, but all Godfall Quarry mobs look identical to me. The yellow exploders in Silken Hollow however is a good example of a distinct enemy, more of that please.
  • Problem 2 Most packs are scattered across open-ended areas with no obvious "hold W route". Also, most packs are 2-4 mobs rather than 5-7 mobs. You gotta pull multiple packs or your DPS players will hate you, all while praying that your semi-random pull isn't accidentally 4 casters or overwhelming tank damage.
  • Solution Put big packs on the "main path", but let good players skip / walk around them. Put smaller packs near the edge such that good tanks can do big and creative pulls.
  • Problem 3 Patrols with ridiculously long patrol paths.
  • Solution Put em' in capstone dungeons only.

Other suggestions:

  • Let newbie tanks queue up for a specific dungeon.
  • Somehow don't make dungeon routing a tank-only responsibility (lmao good luck with that).
  • Brainstorm a "Most Common Route" tool, i.e. "86% of players play this pack / walk this way".
steady yew
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i've honeslty thought about them needing to have different nameplays for different mobs

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important ones are bigger, and real trash mobs can be smaller

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it'd be a good steal from ARPGs

floral ice
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I do play tank and I can say there is NO main route in this game. Your route is dependent on what affixes you have. If you have empowered minion affix, avoid them at all cost. The buff is not worth the time you spend killing it.

Every tank in this game, has his own route. This is a principle I stick with in this game. I don't nose in and give advice on route. Every tanks have to figure it out themselves.

raw lynx
ocean jackal
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I like this thought. I think for routing, there should be "easy-but-slow" and "hard-but-fast" routes. And others inbetween, sure. And then maybe have some indicator on the map which of these routes it is.

All routes should be viable for timing, of course, it's just a question of how much buffer you want. The easy route, you'll have no buffer for wipes, the hard route, you do. Something along those lines.

buoyant ore
raw lynx
buoyant ore
# raw lynx but thats half the fun, learning what to kick because you were 1 shot is very im...

For me I know what I need to kick it's just finding the healthbar in the sea of health bars at times is frustrating. Having them bigger makes it easier for me to click on them.

I totally understand what you're saying though and it is the downside to what I suggested.

I'm also very against add-ons and would rather anything like this br built into the game.

Logs and recording being the exception imo is fine.

A good halfway point (though likely not easy to implement) would be to allow us to customise the health bars of the minions we want but it's something we need to do so we then need to learn which are important mobs first.

ocean jackal
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Your party members will see your image next to them, marking that you will interrupt them, as well as the cooldown of your interrupt if it's on cooldown

buoyant ore
velvet spoke
amber laurel
velvet spoke
amber laurel
teal kettle
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I started the game as tank and then role swapped to healer/dps because you reach a point where you understand what a tank needs to do which is just use his cooldowns properly as well as avoid abilities that that destroy your charges of earth shield or toughness, and the real problem becomes the incompetence of your other roles, and you are sitting there almost out dpsing your horrific dps on a single target fight, and things take forever to die, so you just think "ok well tanking is pretty easy so if i cover these other roles that are clearly really difficult then this should be easier"

potent jacinth
potent jacinth
teal kettle
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@potent jacinth well im 12.6k now and id say that was the experience

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tanks still dont know routes at this point either yikes

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it also doesnt end in champion

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it continued until paragon, then things got better, but that might be different now since most casual players might be reaching paragon now

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paragon might also be a zoo now

rustic pine
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I havent read everything, but just a personal opinion from experiencing other games. I think tank in the MMO gameplay sense is just generally unfun for large swathes of players compared to tanks of other games.
For instance in other games that have class based systems (MOBAs, Hero Shooters), Tanks not only have high health pool, they also have a bit of crowd control since threat isn't a mechanic in pvp games.
MMO gameplay is about damage mitigation through rotational cooldowns rather than keeping enemies from attacking your squishy vulnerable teammates through crowd control.

light dew
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the are dungeon routes.. where every enemy is marked ... so u dont pull anything by accident .. so at any given point u can know its 2 casters and 2 enemys that can be ccd...