March update and enmity

[Alhanelem]

Tanks can tank.

No they can't. Offense is irrelevant. Tanks can't tank when everyone can cap their hate and the only way to control it is to either die or nearly die or stand around and do nothing (for some unknown period of time, because the only way to accurately gauge your enmity is to have a scholar in the party). Tanks can cap their hate, so this issue has nothing to do with tanks doing enough damage or flashing or provoking or doing whatever to get hate enough.

Enmity caps aren't the problem and raising them wouldn't stop what you are referring to from happening.

Enmity cap is PART of the problem, not the whole problem. There really shouldn't be a (hard) cap at all, and the enmity generation system should be designed such that the only cap is what is maximially obtianable by your actions (and enmity falloff would put an effective, rather than hard, limit on it- have enmity loss increase as hate gets higher). In such a system, only an unusually threatening action (e.g. a huge hit or skillchain) would swing the monster unless the tank is undergeared and/or doing a poor job, which is how it should be. Tanks will keep hate by consistently performing threatening actions, and having appropriate gear to mitigate their enmity loss (thereby attaining a higher enmity level). The only thing DDs need to do to avoid taking hate is to time their biggest actions to coincide with a tank performing a large enmity gain.

In this system, hate control is determined primarily by the skill and gear of the tank and secondarily by DPS jobs coordnating their attacks to coincide with the tank's actions, rather than having to stop entirely or taking a ton of damage.