Rift: The only MMO where people are forced to DPS.

[Tufelhunden]

All I am reading is someone who wants everyone else to be flexible for them but isn't willing to be flexible for the group. Sorry it doesn't work that way. In any group you may have to play a role you do not wish to. So the group can succeeded. If this is hard for some to understand then perhaps single player games are more your style.

[Afyael]

I'll give you a different bit of advice, OP. Don't quit the game, and also don't succumb to the pressures of what other people are telling you to do. Have your cake and eat it too. You're not paying $15 a month to follow other people's commands.

If someone tells you that you can't tank, find someone who will let you tank.

If you're trying for plaques, and people in LFG or guild members on dungeon runs are telling you to DPS or get out, then get out. Find a buddy to do Chronicles with.

Almost everyone in this thread is telling you that even though you don't like to DPS, you should suck it up and do it anyways. In other words, be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing. If you want to continue to be a great tank, keep tanking, and don't let other people tell you not to, even if it means jumping ship to a different guild or leaving a narrow-minded dungeon group to do Chronicles for plaques.

This is what I've done on my Warrior, and I'm better off for it. I'm having fun doing exactly what I want to do, and am getting (slowly but surely) geared up. There's nothing selfish about wanting to only tank. What's selfish is when guild leaders are so full of themselves that they think they have free reign to command everyone else to play in a very precise way, when what they want isn't necessary to successfully complete the objective. You want to see 9-19 people conforming to the will of one guy? Perfect description of a guild leader.

Yes, there are a lot of jerks, but there are some people who are more open-minded and not so stubbornly set in their way of arranging groups, who realize that the world doesn't end just because you have 1 extra tank, 1 less DPS, 1 extra healer, or whatever.

Start culling the people who do nothing but bellyache, and sooner or later you'll enjoy playing with people who are interested in having fun.

Good luck!

Hahah yeah maybe if you enjoy tanking DH/GP all week. Good luck getting enough gear to tank hammerknell bosses that way. Also leaders in the guild are there to coordinate and work for the benefit of their members. Nearly all the raiding guilds i've been in have an officer core that works on theorycrafting, strategizing, learning people's strengths and weaknesses to best tackle the content. The undergeared tank that refuses to play anything else is the selfish person, not the raid leader trying to make the raid go as smoothly as possible

[Medawky]

in the 8+ pages here I haven't seen anyone post the obvious answer to this problem, (and if someone did and I missed it then I apologize) start your own group/PUG. If you have the lure, then you pick the other players. Put together pug slivers for better tanking gear. I would suggest making friends with a good healer or two and a solid off-tank. Tanks and healers are in a power position if they allow themselves to be, it just takes some initiative.

[Thoon]

Invincible Bard, lets take a look at the recent 10-man RoTP:

Boss 2, Beruhast: 10-man encounter, Raid-damage heavy Single-target + 1 add encounter.

Party composition*: 1 Healer, 2 Hybrid Healers, 2 Tanks, 1 Support, 4 Dps


Boss 3, General Silgen: 10-man encounter, 12k dps (roughly) needed to make the soft enrage.

Party composition*: 1 Cleanser, 1 healer, 1 Tank, 1 support, 6 dps.


As a raid leader, you want to go through this 10-man Sliver with a constant party of 10 people, without having to stop to swap people out, which would lock people to the Sliver without them getting full marks or a shot at gear.

Between the first listed fight and the second, you are losing 1 tank, 2 potential hybrids, and requiring one person to switch to a healing spec for Cleansing.

If everyone had the "one-class" idea, this instance would be impossible to finish without a potential swap of 4 people between boss 2 and boss 3. Luckily, Rift is a game designed to give you up to 6 different specs you can prepare to handle these different roles.

Does any of this make sense to you, Bard?

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* : These compositions are just one way to do the fights. With certain gear levels, strategies, or class combinations some roles will change.

[Torvaldr]

The beauty of Rift... all the choice in the world to make the character you want to play... only to be completely undone by guilds that demand you be "flexible" or in other words.. play the way they want. In my opinion Rift's biggest challenge is how do you create a game with so much choice and variety and still accommodate players who just enjoy one role? It's indeed a difficult challenge I think. There is a ton of irony in the idea that you're forced to be flexible... it's putting a gun to someone's head and screaming "You're free now!"

If two people want to tank then who gets to tank? Who should be flexible? If someone has more toughness and better gear should they have to give up that spot just so you can because you don't want to dps?

How about how the selfishness affects other people in the group? Have you considered that a player new to healing and not as well geared might not be able to keep up a lesser geared tank? Should the lesser geared tank get their way just so they won't be oppressed by the masses of the guild? Or should the rest of the group have to struggle through a dungeon or raid so that one person can get their way?

I often would rather bard on my rogue when a healer is struggling with a boss because I get bored with doing dps and bard is a fun change up. The problem is I'm usually in the top dps and that would be an even bigger detriment to the group. So a lesser geared weaker dps rogue gets to hit the buffs and off-healing.

I agree that each player should be able to do what they want, but then they shouldn't expect equal spots or opportunities in a group either. They should expect that more flexible, team oriented players, will get their spots.

Does it really seem fair that everyone else needs to adjust their game play for one person?

[Eleazaros]

If two people want to tank then who gets to tank? Who should be flexible? If someone has more toughness and better gear should they have to give up that spot just so you can because you don't want to dps?

How about how the selfishness affects other people in the group? Have you considered that a player new to healing and not as well geared might not be able to keep up a lesser geared tank? Should the lesser geared tank get their way just so they won't be oppressed by the masses of the guild? Or should the rest of the group have to struggle through a dungeon or raid so that one person can get their way?

I often would rather bard on my rogue when a healer is struggling with a boss because I get bored with doing dps and bard is a fun change up. The problem is I'm usually in the top dps and that would be an even bigger detriment to the group. So a lesser geared weaker dps rogue gets to hit the buffs and off-healing.

I agree that each player should be able to do what they want, but then they shouldn't expect equal spots or opportunities in a group either. They should expect that more flexible, team oriented players, will get their spots.

Does it really seem fair that everyone else needs to adjust their game play for one person?

Just FYI - toughness caps. It only takes away the bonus damage a boss does. Once that bonus is done away with it makes no difference. Example: A T1 dungeon boss will crit a char for 100% whether they have 50 toughness or 350 toughness -- just not hitting them for 200% and the like. It removes the bonus if it's at or above the correct threshold.

Outside of that, there are only 2 roles a warrior can do - tank and melee DPS. Ranged DPS is a joke. Support - lame. Healing... Cheerleader for the cleric or mage; maybe but not as a healer.

As such, if there are any anti-melee fights in a run, your other classes are going to cripple up the groups ability to run quickly and efficiently by "tanking" because that warrior is pretty much tossing junk in any anti-melee fights as "DPS".

The OP is a bit extreme with their "won't DPS" stance but having been in a guild that insisted we build to T2 "fast" then, without T1 background, wanting folks to run T2's? Yeah things didn't work out so well and that guild folded.

Not all guilds are equal. Some are run decently, others not so well and some do things "differently".

[Ancient]

I guess I must be one of the lucky ones. I was a tank gearing up at 50 and fell in with a guild that would let me tank Raids from the start. I ran with them as DPS to get a feel for the runs then they handed me the reigns and said go for it. There's a certain trust level involved in letting a complete stranger tank your raids, you have to be willing to work with people (guilds) to earn the right to make or break a raid for 9/19 other people.

If you want to tank lower raids or DRR then start the groups. On my server I personally run at least 1 DRR a day sometimes up to 3, with my own plat for the ones I don't have the rep with, no reserves and none expected. Same goes for DH If we are not running it that week or I wasn't able to do the guild run I will run a pug raid.