The State of Tanking in FFXI

[Carth]

I'm doing TotM at the moment, so I have a lot of time on my hands. After participating in this thread, I feel it's time to lay down the nitty gritty and discuss what exactly is wrong with Paladin and the role of tanking as a whole in this game.

A lot of players feel that SE fixing enmity will solve Paladin's problems with being undesired in the current state of the game. This is 100% false for a number of reasons. One of the most obvious is, if content can be completed without the use of a tank (Zerg strats), then it will be done that way regardless. The other reasons will require some explanation.

In FFXI, we have went through a number of jobs/subjob combinations that went through a phase of tanking.

These were on HNMs:

RDM/NIN (guide)
NIN/DRK (guide)
DRK/NIN (essentialy the same as NIN/DRK for the most part)

I added on the guides to avoid further exposition.

This was essentially on lesser content such as Nyzul:

WAR/SAM
SAM/WAR
MNK/WAR

The HNM list was essentially nerfed to the ground by SE, especially in RDM/NIN's case where they ripped apart every aspect of RDM/NIN tanking through an update. NIN, while still a viable tank, lost value through the use of excessive AoE and Double/Triple attack. The lesser tanks remain unchanged, and in fact have gotten better with time.

The obvious reason why SE nerfed the HNM job combinations is not only because it seemed like an exploit of the VE system, but also because it overtook PLD's role significantly. This was also the case when NIN was originally the dominant tank during the early years of FFXI when PLD's Sentinel didn't have -PDT(it simply increased defense) and Rampart didn't have the Magic Shield effect, and most of all there wasn't Shield Mastery and Atonement to spam.

Anyway, while SE realized that these HNM jobs were used more than PLD, I don't exactly think they understood why.

-RDM/NIN was a magic tank. It could survive magic AoEs with Shell, -MDT gear, and barspells. It also had a superior amount of MP in comparison to other tank jobs which allowed it to stay in battles for extreme amounts of time.

-NIN/DRK and DRK/NIN simply dealt much more damage than PLD, and neither job had to sacrifice shadows to use it, unlike PLD which was stuck to /NIN, rendering it unable to apply other subjobs to increase it's damage.

In other words, it's all about versatility. While PLD is overall the best at mitigating damage, it's terrible at just about anything else. It can hardly DD, it can hardly heal, and it hardly has any useful utility that helps the party as a whole. This is true even in today's metagame.

We have to keep in mind that damage is currently the #1 way to go against mobs, and it's not just because it overwhelms the hate system. A lot of it also has to deal with AoE spam(which makes a tank useless), hate resets(which makes a tank useless), and most of all time limits. More damage to the mob means less damage to the party overall. More damage to the mob means less time spent killing something. This is why Embrava and Perfect Defense are such gamebreakingly good buffs even though they can only be used in conjuction with SPs.

With the coming of Rune Fencer, SE has shown that they realize this issue as it is, as they have given the job a DD stance along with a tank stance. Whether the DD stance is good enough or not will be unanswered until April when there'll be lvl 99 Rune Fencers to test it, but they continue to either ignore or be woefully optimistic with this problem with Paladin, and I'm left wondering why since they also have to know how dreadfully weak the job is as a whole.

Even with the enmity system, Paladin will need one of two things:

-A damage buff. Say what you will about how tanks should act, but this would be PLD's only saving grace if things remain how they are now. PLD is in sore need of a damage buff anyway since they require the best weapon/shields in the game to be considered.

-A powerful utility ability on the level of Embrava and Perfect Defense. I really dislike this method as it does nothing but give PLD a niche, but SE has shown that they've been willing to do this with SCH, SMN, and in the early years RDM.

Personally, I feel PLD should get a total revamp and be remade from the ground-up, but obviously that's too extreme. Either way, SE should take a hard look at PLD and what it brings to the table, and adjust it accordingly. Just fixing enmity won't solve PLD's problems. Any content that can be done without PLD, will be done without PLD.

[Jaall]

I agree 100%. I love PLD, was my first 75 back in the day and love the mechanics of it... but it's not used for anything! There are maybe 1 or 2 situations where a PLD might be more useful than most jobs but the only 1 that springs to mind immediately is Suzaku and it's chainspell as PLD can take very little damage from it. But PLD as a job is forever waiting on these uncommon events where it's needed, because most tactics these days involve zergs. I think another solution that I for one would welcome in would be to develop some new end game events that need strategy over anything else.

By this it could be an event where the faster you kill it, the worse the drops will be. It could for example be a boss that levels up over time and by getting it to the highest lvl, it'll drop better loot. The only way to survive for this period of time would be to have a super tank - bring in PLD. This would also open the game up to a lot of other jobs that don't get included in todays content due to damage and would bring back strategy to a game that used to have plenty, but has now lost it and is slowly becoming "just another mmo".

There are probably a lot of activities they could create like this idea that would remove a fair amount of biased invites and zerg-only jobs. You can always keep the old events that need zerging (It is fun doing an insane amount of damage over a small amount of time), but at least open the game up a little more and give us back what some people really love about the final fantasy series - strategy.

[Caketime]

Up PLD's Greatsword rating, lower Shield to E, replace Shield Mastery with Attack bonus, call it a day. Seriously, shield tanking is so derp now, why even bother?

[Demon6324236]

Up PLD's Greatsword rating, lower Shield to E, replace Shield Mastery with Attack bonus, call it a day. Seriously, shield tanking is so derp now, why even bother?

I don't think the point of the thread was to make PLD into DRK. Rather to make tanking, actually a possibility.

[Kincard]

A bigger problem is monster design, IMO. The idea behind tanks in most games is that you would hold hate as a tank because you take less damage, and thus other people are free to let loose and deal damage. That way things are a lot safer, and the battle flows more smoothly. The problem is that you taking less damage doesn't matter when monsters spam AoE abilities, so even if you are taking way less damage (Which PLDs do, PLDs are actually more hardy than ever), it doesn't matter because your teammates are still vulnerable.

That isn't to say that monsters in other games don't AoE, but the difference is that in other games, the AoE being readied is apparent through monster behavior, whether its a timed ability or an obviously signaled one. Here, monsters just AoE whenever they feel like it.

Thus, battle where enemies do so much damage that you literally only want the PLD only in AoE range would result in the PLD standing there taking hits while every DPS slot would be filled by RNGs, CORs, and BLMs. SE needs to fix this by adding more monsters that signal their attacks either through chat log taunts, monster movements, or HP% triggers. This way SE can make AoEs powerful enough to one-shot non-tank jobs but still allow players to strategize ways around them. It takes a lot more thought and active participation to do that than to just make it so that AoEs barely one-shot DPS jobs with no warning so people just end up throwing DPS jobs at everything.

Let me give a really simplified example. Let's say tank job A has 2000 HP, DPS jobs B have 1500 HP.

Currently their design is that at any given moment, monsters will just randomly do a 1400 damage move. (They have monsters that can one-shot basically everyone in range too, but these are dealt with by stunlocking, so obviously we're talking about monsters that can't be stunned) Because DPS jobs have no warning to get out of the way, the tank's main function ends up serving no purpose because everyone ends up taking damage anyway.

I propose that they instead think of more monsters that deal 1800 damage AoEs, but with obvious signals they're going to use them. That way, DPS jobs that pay attention know to run away, and the tank can take the full damage without dying, everyone runs back in, tank actually has a purpose. An example of a signal would be paired WSs. They could, for example, make a Harpeia monster that always follows up Rending Talons with Wings of Agony.

tl;dr it's not a problem to have a job that focuses on tanking and can do jack shit for damage, the problem is that none of the monsters they design actually call for such a job to actually be present.

[Caketime]

I don't think the point of the thread was to make PLD into DRK. Rather to make tanking, actually a possibility.

I agree with the thread's point, but the devs have shown us consistently that they don't give a crap about our suggestions and won't do anything to address the viability of tanking. As OP's pointed out already it's mostly due to mob design, with so much AoE skills the sword and board is rendered useless. Maybe I should stop being such a Negative Nancy, but PLD has been languishing for almost as long as RDM.

[Edyth]

Sentinels in FFXIII are incredibly sturdy tanks with some abilities that I think should make their FFXI debut.

Challenge: In FFXIII, this is an upgraded Provoke. In FFXI, Challenge would essentially be Paladin's version of the Warrior's Provoke. Challenge should put the user at the absolute top of the hate list and substantially reduce enmity for other players on the monster's hate list. It should also cause the user's enmity to decay at a slower rate.

Fringeward: In FFXIII, this trait reduces AoE damage dealt to other party members when the Sentinel is the primary target of the attack. It should have the same function in FFXI, although I'd prefer it to be a job ability rather than a trait in exchange for higher potency. Or, if you really don't mind PLD being useful, you could make it a potent job trait, to the point that simply having a Paladin in the party is a boon because it reduces the ridiculousness of NM's AoE attacks. Fringeward could even be PLD's selling point; the ability that defines the job. Paladin protects others by reducing damage taken by the party, like Sentinel in FFXIII.

Or you could go the classic FF route, where Paladins/Knights are the strongest (or close to it) simply because of swords' significance in our culture. Give Paladin a job trait that doubles damage dealt with every attack when wielding swords and it will be relevant again, and sadly, not even overpowered. And honestly, swords are among the most useful melee weapons. Scythes, greatswords, and greataxes all have major issues with simply wielding the weapon. The katana used by ninja in videogames (the ones wielded with the blades backwards or upside-down) are fictional and impractical. Spears have too much recoil on impact and are ineffective in close combat. Great katana (decorative katana in real life) have the same recoil issue on impact, as well as issues with durability due to thinness and length. Small- to medium-length swords and knives are where it's at in real life for melee weapons.

[Keyln]

I have three suggestions to improve general tanking in FFXI.

1) Heavily modify the enmity system - I say heavily modify as opposed to completely ditch because enmity or hate is a very common staple in just about every MMO. However, where FFXI splits off is that hate is a secondary issue in most other MMOs, and in FFXI, it's why most tanks have issues. In most other MMO's, the sign of a good tank isn't if the tank managed to keep the enemy from munching on the other players, but if the tank minimized the damage he took while tanking.

For this reason, I'd suggest giving PLDs (and other tanks) an "Enmity bonus" trait. This trait raises the enmity cap for the job, and as a result, makes it more likely for the tank to never lose hate, even if the other DD jobs are going full on damage.

2) Modify the defense value contribution - While I won't go into the whole damage formula, but I do think that SE should take a second look at the contribution defense makes in the damage formula. In short, jobs that can have a high defense should barely take any damage from an enemy attack as opposed to jobs with a low defense should die (or almost die) from the same attack.

3) Have better fight mechanics - It's understandable why the enmity system in the game was designed as such. If a monster had no AoE to speak of, a straight sword 'n board would be boring, and not very dangerous for the rest of the party. One of the ways to make the fights dangerous is to introduce AoE attacks that wipe entire parties.

However, in other MMO's, they get around this by having fight mechanics which people need to pay attention to, or they die. Some of the varieties include stunning certain moves, killing things in a certain order, standing and moving away from certain spot because a move will hit there, and other things.

While I do realize that there are limitations on the engine that SE is using for FFXI, I'd be willing to bet that there can be innovative and interesting fights that can get away from the old "AoE" mechanic.

[Alhanelem]

I don't need 20 paragraphs to tell you what's wrong with tanking in this game.

Two Words; Enmity Cap.

[Demon6324236]

I don't need 20 paragraphs to tell you what's wrong with tanking in this game.

Two Words; Enmity Cap.

Two more for you, AoE spam. Simply change the enmity cap, tell me how that will change tanking against most current endgame mobs. I would love to know how a stable tank would help against the army of recently released mobs that AoE to no end, so please inform us. Sorry to inform you, however the enmity cap is not the only problem, or even the biggest in my opinion, because even if they fix it, it will not change most current mobs you would even want a real tank to handle.