hate cap raise.

[Francisco]

Currently there is Cumulative Enmity (CE) and Volatile Enmity (VE). CE typically builds up and stays with you, and is pretty much only lost by taking damage (or using JAs that effect enmity, THF has some... and Enmity Douse). VE rapidly decays, and generally serves as a hate spike. Kaeko has done a lot of testing on this.

My knee-jerk suggestion is to change the way enmity is accumulated and deteriorated across the board for all jobs, actions, spells and abilities.


The first step would be to define a list of tanking actions in battle (what is the behavior of a tank?). These do not necessarily need to be current tanking actions. A quick, incomplete list of my suggestions would be Provoke, Flash, Shield Bash, Ninjutsu Enfeebles, Chi Blast, Sneak Attack and Animated Flourish. These abilities should have a significantly slower VE deterioration rate compared to a melee attack. In conjunction with this, I would make the following adjustments to these abilities:

Shield Bash: Recast time significantly lowered to 60 seconds. Creates a huge spike of VE, deteriorates very slowly. Merits will lower the recast by three seconds each down to 45 seconds.

Chi Blast: Recast time significantly lowered to 60 seconds. Creates a moderately large spike of VE, deteriorates somewhat slowly. Penance merits will now effect the potency of the TP down effect, and lower recast by three seconds each down to 45 seconds.

Sneak Attack: Recast stays at 60 seconds, but merits adjusted to possibly lower recast to 30 seconds (each merit would shave 6 seconds off the timer). VE generated by a critical hit under Sneak Attack will be multiplied by 5. If used in conjunction with Trick Attack, the 5x hate multiplier will apply to the person the THF chose to Trick Attack off of.

Counterattacks: These will generate extra enmity.

The second step would be to determine how enmity deteriorates. I think as a general rule, enmity for non-tanking actions (melee damage) should deteriorate somewhat faster - but in tiers. The higher your VE, the slower it deteriorates. If a melee player is somewhat reserved and only attacks an enemy occasionally, their VE should be somewhat minimal. If a MNK has been going full blast on a NM for 15 minutes, he shouldn't lose hate so easily. If we break it down into four tiers, it could work as follows.

Tier 1: Low VE - VE is rapidly gained and lost over time.

Tier 2: Moderate VE - VE is rapidly gained, and steadily lost over time.

Tier 3: High VE - VE is steadily gained and steadily lost over time.

Tier 4: Extremely High VE - VE is slowly gained, and somewhat steadily lost over time.

This keeps the pressure on tanks to keep using their hate tools, and gives melee jobs the option to either tank, or rotate with another.

Finally, CE serves as a somewhat balancing factor. I would adjust CE so it serves as a floor for VE. Sure, those cures might not spike hate so easily, but each one slightly pushes up your CE, thus meaning your VE will never deteriorate below that level (until the mob knocks you silly). This would add some necessity towards using reliable tanks, competent mages and effective damage dealers. If a tank requires too much healing, or the fight drags on too long, then the fight will get somewhat chaotic.

This is by no means a complete system - but just a few ideas to change up the dynamic of battles and tanking.

[Atomic_Skull]

We brought up the topic of hate issues with the development team and they shed some light on their current direction. They mentioned that if they were to simply increase the hate cap in general, there would be a high possibility that it would cause the balance to become worse than it is currently. If they went another route and increased the hate cap only for specific jobs, it would also be a large contributor to a collapse of game balance, so they do not have any plans of doing this.

Unfortunately, raising the hate cap is really not a proper means of solving this hard to solve problem. As a general direction, the development team will be focused on making adjustments so that each job can properly play their role. Ex: tanks can tank, healers can heal, etc.

PLD is currently a useless job, without some way to hold hate against hate capped melees it may as well just be deleted from the game because no situation currently exists where you should ever bring a PLD over something else. Having a PLD in your party is quite literally a waste of a party slot.

[Unleashhell]

Well I have to say, Almace sure helps PLD's with hate control. Either way in August, when there is a level cap increase and people actually will have to learn to play their jobs instead of just using Abyssea to level them from 30 to 90. They will have to learn hate control like it was pre-abyssea, being mages wont have infinite MP to cure bomb entire party / alliances.

Also if they don't adjust the enmity on certain spells like Cure spells, there is going to be an issue come level 99 for PLD using a messily cure 4. They will either need to give PLD Cure 5 and adjust the enmity from cure 4 to cure 5 or give PLD a merited Cure Potency that is a pretty substantial percent per merit imo.

[kaht]

The only other solution, as far as I can figure, is to then do a big reduction in the enmity gain rate. Nerf down all enmity generating actions across the board. If you can't raise the cap, make it harder and more time consuming to get there.

Exactly, how is this different than just raising the hate cap? For example, if all actions generate half as much enmity, that's no different than just doubling the hate cap.

edit: spelling

[Alukat]

or adjust "hide" for thf.
recast 1 min, well either it removes 50% enmity of the thf who uses it or give an piece that augments "hide" and gives the "removes 50% enmity"-function.
another way could be a neckpiece as example which could like this:
str+5 dex+ agi+5 (allround necklace ^^)
"augments trick attack"

"augments trick attack" means: 25% of your actual enmity is added (and removed from the thf) to the enmity natural created on tank (or w/e) by using trick attack.

well both ways could help to fix the enmity issue at least on thf.

[Malamasala]

The problem is that you are all stuck looking at enmity. The problem is rather that you can pick an awesome DD and just spam heal it and it will tank. This is what needs changing. You shouldn't be able to deal best damage in the game and live just because you got a healer in the party.

Best damage = death. Should be the rule rather than the exception. DDs should be forced to wear "survival" gear if they want to go all out, instead of just wear full DD gear. Basically you have to dress like a PLD if you want to live, else you'll die.

Easiest way to fix this would be HP adjustments. Lets say a PLD has 2k HP, and a WAR 1k HP. The WAR is much more likely to die than the PLD. But of course WARs should be able to tank also, so they could have Defender give like 500 extra HP for 20 minutes or something, making you better at tanking, at the cost of attack.

[Francisco]

You really need to think outside Abyssea for this - since this is where the game is going to be headed anyway.

Thinking "stacking -damage gear" should be the only way someone is able to tank is kind of backwards 2005 thinking.

As of right now, there's three main methods of tanking: shield/-damage (PLD), evasion/shadows (NIN, THF), counter (MNK). Outside Abyssea, MNK, NIN and THF lose a good deal of their defensive capabilites (largely from Gnarled Horn). PLD loses complete control of the fight inside Abyssea. Outside Abyssea, PLD can mitigate damage much better than a MNK, NIN or THF (especially if they have an Aegis).

Maybe inside Abyssea a DRK can freely tank due WHM having a near infinite MP pool... and most things die in under 5 minutes anyway. But take away the absurd refresh from WHM, and make it a 20-30 minute fight (like on par with Nidhogg in 2005), that DRK is going to be absolutely destroyed if he's getting hit for 300-500 per swing... compared with a PLD taking 150-200 per swing on non-shield blocks, a MNK countering ~65-75% of attacks, or a NIN blinking/evading 80-95% of attacks.

[Darka]

Thinking "stacking -damage gear" should be the only way someone is able to tank is kind of backwards 2005 thinking.

As of right now, there's three main methods of tanking: shield/-damage (PLD), evasion/shadows (NIN, THF), counter (MNK). Outside Abyssea, MNK, NIN and THF lose a good deal of their defensive capabilites (largely from Gnarled Horn). PLD loses complete control of the fight inside Abyssea. Outside Abyssea, PLD can mitigate damage much better than a MNK, NIN or THF (especially if they have an Aegis).

No it doesn't. DD tanks were used long before Abyssea, you just needed people who knew what they were doing, now with infinite MP it's easy. Aside from shield blocks (averaging around 60% of the time, Ochain being the exception) they have the same general defensive abilities other jobs do. Shadows, MDT, PDT.
Also how would a PLD take 200/hit if a DRK is getting hit for 500? You don't understand pdif, or seem to think defense has high returns.

Enmity isn't the problem for PLD, it's the durability of other jobs that are killing it. Why bring a PLD when other jobs won't die, and do more damage at the same time? That's the problem, nothing to do with holding hate. And no, you can't just kill the other jobs' defensive abilities, that would kill lowman and the playerbase probably wouldn't take it. "Fixing" PLD is more complicated that people think.

[Mirage]

Maybe they should make defence actually do something at high def levels?

[Darka]

Unfortunately that would just be the same thing, regardless of PLDs defense, other jobs can still tank safely.