This is just my philosophy. If you don't agree then that's ok, I'm sure our experience all depends on our campaigns. So if I sound like I'm saying "This is the truth" then please take it as meaning "my truth based on my gaming experience" rather than a universal truth.
The role of a tank will depend on the way that the DM builds encounters to a large extent. If you have a bunch of basic minions who generally just take the attack action, then imposing yourself between the party and the enemies is a good way to flat out stop them getting there. With the threat of opportunity attacks, the character's base damage potential (excluding on your turn only abilities) increases to 200% from levels 1-4, 150% from level 5+ when Extra Attack is available, and lessens for Fighters after 11th level. This of course reduces for things like two weapon fighting, PAM, Flurry of Blows etc but the increase is still massive. I would say that these types of encounters with a number of creatures are the bread and butter of D&D and combats against 5 spellcasters are generally rarer.
Therefore, what is often missed in tanking discussions:
A tank in 5th edition must be able to deal strong damage
The threat of that damage must force the enemy not to ignore the tank
The tank's threat potential should increase when the tank is ignored
The tank should therefore not stack nothing but defensive capabilities, but...
The tank's abilities should force the enemy attacking them to be less effective than attacking the rest of the party
For this reason, Druids make lousy tanks, except at the lowest levels. Their Wildshape may give them a great pool of hit points, but it generally also makes them much less effective in combat than a pure combat class. They also typically have poor AC, meaning the wildshape gets knocked off them fast. Moreover though, the wildshaped form can be ignored in order to attack other more potent damage dealers.
The best tank in the game is: anything other than the caster that has been polymorphed into a Giant Ape or T-Rex. You occupy 9 squares and can body block, as well as having insane hit points, and it's not your concentration.
Barbarians are the best example of hard hitting tanks in the game. Rage, all on its own, simply gives them a huge defence, but Reckless Attack is the best example of what happens if you ignore the tank. And the best feat for a Barbarian tank? Great Weapon Master. If you attack the barbarian, this lessens the likelihood of them swinging wildly with GWM. If you ignore the barbarian, they will go hell-for-leather on you with +10 to their damage as one of (if not the) highest sustained dps modes in the game before level 11. Of course, they might want to draw attacks onto their rage, and that Advantage on attacking them given by Reckless Attack performs that function brilliantly. For these reasons, offensively built barbarians outclass almost every other class as a tank. The barbarian is the only class for whom Sentinel is not a must-have ability, because if the enemy does ignore the barbarian, they die. (obviously Sentinel is just really awesome anyway).
The second best tank in the game does these things in a very different way. Eldritch Knights packing shield, protection from evil and good, booming blade and later on hold person and warding wind (for both disadvantage on ranged if you cover the party, or movement disruption if you're close), again taking Sentinel and either Warcaster (if you use a shield) or Great Weapon Master (if you don't use a shield), is the next best tank. The EK has to choose whether they're going for plate and a shield with defence fighting style (AC26 with shield, and disadvantage from Prot Evil and Good/Blur) or take Protection or Interception, or whether they want to go for AC19 (24 with Shield) and use GWM to smash faces. The EK is a weaker damage dealer than the barbarian, but doesn't consume healing resources like a barbarian does, since he doesn't get hit as much and absorb elements is nifty in a pinch. Oddly, Savage Attacker becomes a much stronger feat for an EK tank using a one hander like a longsword or battleaxe than for most classes; it isn't going to rocket damage to the sky, but it significantly increases average damage (when rolling a d8, always reroll a 1-4, as there's a 5/8 chance you get the same or better). This makes the EK a machine that consistently pumps out damage with Booming Blade and Warcaster, until 3rd attack at level 11, when you're dealing a lot of damage anyway. One of the most effective things about the class is that if you don't focus the EK, they get to use their spells on things like Prot Good and Evil on an ally instead of themselves, further protecting the party, and they don't have to blow spell slots on Shield, freeing them up for Hold Person (again, locking down the enemy). A lot of people criticise the EK, but mostly because they don't see it as a tanking subclass and want to play it as a battlemage blaster (which it isn't).
Adamantine Armour is more or less a must for a tank, and the more attacks you draw, the more important that becomes. You don't want to boost your AC to insane levels without comparative damage, though, or the DM will just start ignoring you.
Why wizards aren't the best tank? The chance to save on immobilising spells gets higher and higher as time goes by. Hold Person, Dominate Monster, Grease and Web - all these kinds of spells tend to fail against bosses, especially once they have legendary resistances, leading to nil damage outputs. They're also effects that tend to need Concentration, and can often end before the monster even takes its turn in a busy fight. The Barbarian and the EK get up their in the opponent's face ASAP and start controlling the fight through positioning and damage output.
Anyway this has got far too long.
TLDR: Damage dealing is an equal priority for the tank compared to survival ability.
This is a very reasonable philosophy. It's been my experience, however, that a single opportunity attack isn't enough to adequately keep enemies off the squishies. Even ignoring the scenarios where monsters can go around you without getting close, you have evasive enemies that can Disengage or teleport, then you have tough enemies who simply don't die to your attacks. And if there's more than one enemy, they can slip past you after you use your reaction. Tactically minded monsters might even do what our Fighter does, and Dodge before moving away just to take that opportunity attack so the rest of the party doesn't have to. And all of this does nothing against ranged attacks or spells.
Last session our tank (an Eldritch Knight) was unable to keep two oozes off our Wizard. He hits pretty hard, but the monsters had a lot of HP and they just kept pressing forward. The Wizard died, and the EK and I both ended the fight unconscious.
And yes, legendary resistances and high saving throw numbers can make it harder, but then you can just pivot to "save for half" types of effects. Web still makes difficult terrain even if they succeed.
A single opp attack definitely isn't enough to control an entire fight, but I don't think that any class can fulfil the MMORPG tanking role (draws attention of, and takes the hits from, all monsters in the fight) in D&D. The tank's job is to choose the biggest and most dangerous target and occupy it, or occupy as many enemy as possible. But it wouldn't be reasonable to expect one character to be able to handle the damage output of every creature in the fight, or to occupy all of them (and would make the fighting less fun for the other players). And as an EK you get web anyway if that's your preference, further cementing them as better than wizards as tanks as they're more versatile.
For the EK not managing to keep the Oozes off, that sounds like it was already a very high CR encounter for your party if they managed to take down 3 characters. I'm guessing you are not high enough level for warding wind which is a great way for an EK to slow down enemy creatures. Given that oozes are generally Intelligence 1, it sounds like either your DM was metagaming by running them past the obvious targets in front of them to attack the squishy, or otherwise there was no way to avoid them anyway. I'd personally have oozes attack whatever was directly in front of them most of the time.
Therefore, what is often missed in tanking discussions:
A tank in 5th edition must be able to deal strong damage
The threat of that damage must force the enemy not to ignore the tank
The tank's threat potential should increase when the tank is ignored
The tank should therefore not stack nothing but defensive capabilities, but...
The tank's abilities should force the enemy attacking them to be less effective than attacking the rest of the party
The essential purpose of tanking is that you're trying to get your enemy to use their attacks inefficiently (by attacking high durability/low offense targets) rather than efficiently (by attacking high offense/low durability targets). Turning yourself into a high offense/low durability target is not tanking (and being both high offense/high durability is just trying to make yourself OP, which is useful enough but not actually tanking). What this means is that the fundamental tanking feature is the combination of durability and the ability to interfere with enemy attacks, either by direct attack reduction or via movement prevention (e.g. grappling builds). It turns out that the usual suspects work very well at this:
Artificer (Armorer): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Thunder Gauntlets, Defensive Field.
Artificer (Artillerist): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Protector Cannon
Artificer (Battle Smith): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Steel Defender
Barbarian (Ancestral Guardian): good durability, good at grappling, ancestral protectors, spirit shield
Druid (Moon): large pool of disposable hit points, good at body blocking, access to forms that apply restrained.
Fighter (Cavalier): good durability, can splurge on feats, unwavering mark, warding maneuver, hold the line.
Fighter (Rune Knight): good durability, really good at grappling, all of the runes are useful.
The prevalence of grappling on that list makes my heart warm, grappling is so viable in 5E to protect your team, and its a shame that more players don't lean into it. Without sidetracking this thread into a grapple build thread, any character with a good strength value that doesn't rely on 2-handed weapon attacks (and even a few that don't meet those criteria) can find ways to fulfill great "tank" functions and hard control over 1-2 (or for some races or classes, even more!) enemies, even more effective than conventional Sentinel-PAM stuff.
Therefore, what is often missed in tanking discussions:
A tank in 5th edition must be able to deal strong damage
The threat of that damage must force the enemy not to ignore the tank
The tank's threat potential should increase when the tank is ignored
The tank should therefore not stack nothing but defensive capabilities, but...
The tank's abilities should force the enemy attacking them to be less effective than attacking the rest of the party
The essential purpose of tanking is that you're trying to get your enemy to use their attacks inefficiently (by attacking high durability/low offense targets) rather than efficiently (by attacking high offense/low durability targets). Turning yourself into a high offense/low durability target is not tanking (and being both high offense/high durability is just trying to make yourself OP, which is useful enough but not actually tanking). What this means is that the fundamental tanking feature is the combination of durability and the ability to interfere with enemy attacks, either by direct attack reduction or via movement prevention (e.g. grappling builds). It turns out that the usual suspects work very well at this:
Artificer (Armorer): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Thunder Gauntlets, Defensive Field.
Artificer (Artillerist): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Protector Cannon
Artificer (Battle Smith): good AC, Booming Blade, access to Enlarge/Reduce, decent for grapple builds, Steel Defender
Barbarian (Ancestral Guardian): good durability, good at grappling, ancestral protectors, spirit shield
Druid (Moon): large pool of disposable hit points, good at body blocking, access to forms that apply restrained.
Fighter (Cavalier): good durability, can splurge on feats, unwavering mark, warding maneuver, hold the line.
Fighter (Rune Knight): good durability, really good at grappling, all of the runes are useful.
Except that in the examples I demonstrated in the post directly after the above quote, I showed two builds that have high offence, high defence and immobilising abilities. Forcing the enemy to attack you or be destroyed is often more effective than grappling them, and the two aren't mutually exclusive anyway.
Except that in the examples I demonstrated in the post directly after the above quote, I showed two builds that have high offence, high defence and immobilising abilities. Forcing the enemy to attack you or be destroyed is often more effective than grappling them, and the two aren't mutually exclusive anyway.
Forcing an enemy to attack you or be destroyed is not tanking. It's dps, and gets resolved the way all dps does: start with the highest ratio of offense to defense and work your way down. Reckless attack is an excellent dps power, because it lets you change that ratio on a round-by-round basis, but that doesn't make it tanking.
I mean, to some extent these are all arbitrary labels, not metaphysical truths, so if you want to call "doing so much damage that you can't be ignored, and welcome the attention" tanking, sure, that can fit a reasonable definition, I have no problem with that.
I think "wants be attacked, and actually reliably is attacked" is a good enough working definition for "tank". There's usually a few ways to satisfy "want to be attacked" (high hit points, high armor, special abilities that trigger when attacked, ways to efficiently heal yourself, ways to generate THP), and a few ways to satisfy "and reliably are attacked" (limit who the enemy can reach, punish the enemy for choosing someone else, present yourself as a more attractive target, etc.).
A single opp attack definitely isn't enough to control an entire fight, but I don't think that any class can fulfil the MMORPG tanking role (draws attention of, and takes the hits from, all monsters in the fight) in D&D. The tank's job is to choose the biggest and most dangerous target and occupy it, or occupy as many enemy as possible. But it wouldn't be reasonable to expect one character to be able to handle the damage output of every creature in the fight, or to occupy all of them (and would make the fighting less fun for the other players). And as an EK you get web anyway if that's your preference, further cementing them as better than wizards as tanks as they're more versatile.
For the EK not managing to keep the Oozes off, that sounds like it was already a very high CR encounter for your party if they managed to take down 3 characters. I'm guessing you are not high enough level for warding wind which is a great way for an EK to slow down enemy creatures. Given that oozes are generally Intelligence 1, it sounds like either your DM was metagaming by running them past the obvious targets in front of them to attack the squishy, or otherwise there was no way to avoid them anyway. I'd personally have oozes attack whatever was directly in front of them most of the time.
The essential purpose of tanking is that you're trying to get your enemy to use their attacks inefficiently (by attacking high durability/low offense targets) rather than efficiently (by attacking high offense/low durability targets). Turning yourself into a high offense/low durability target is not tanking (and being both high offense/high durability is just trying to make yourself OP, which is useful enough but not actually tanking). What this means is that the fundamental tanking feature is the combination of durability and the ability to interfere with enemy attacks, either by direct attack reduction or via movement prevention (e.g. grappling builds). It turns out that the usual suspects work very well at this:
The prevalence of grappling on that list makes my heart warm, grappling is so viable in 5E to protect your team, and its a shame that more players don't lean into it. Without sidetracking this thread into a grapple build thread, any character with a good strength value that doesn't rely on 2-handed weapon attacks (and even a few that don't meet those criteria) can find ways to fulfill great "tank" functions and hard control over 1-2 (or for some races or classes, even more!) enemies, even more effective than conventional Sentinel-PAM stuff.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Except that in the examples I demonstrated in the post directly after the above quote, I showed two builds that have high offence, high defence and immobilising abilities. Forcing the enemy to attack you or be destroyed is often more effective than grappling them, and the two aren't mutually exclusive anyway.
Forcing an enemy to attack you or be destroyed is not tanking. It's dps, and gets resolved the way all dps does: start with the highest ratio of offense to defense and work your way down. Reckless attack is an excellent dps power, because it lets you change that ratio on a round-by-round basis, but that doesn't make it tanking.
I mean, to some extent these are all arbitrary labels, not metaphysical truths, so if you want to call "doing so much damage that you can't be ignored, and welcome the attention" tanking, sure, that can fit a reasonable definition, I have no problem with that.
I think "wants be attacked, and actually reliably is attacked" is a good enough working definition for "tank". There's usually a few ways to satisfy "want to be attacked" (high hit points, high armor, special abilities that trigger when attacked, ways to efficiently heal yourself, ways to generate THP), and a few ways to satisfy "and reliably are attacked" (limit who the enemy can reach, punish the enemy for choosing someone else, present yourself as a more attractive target, etc.).
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.