hate cap raise.

[Alhanelem]

[QUOTEUnfortunately, 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. ][/QUOTE]The hate cap is never a problem before level 75 or so. So what you're saying is that balance should be different at high levels and that everyone that does damage should be forced to restrain themselves? Also, certain jobs, such as PLD, having a small advantage in this area would do nothing to game balance other than make that job more viable as a tank, WHICH IS WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE and currently IS NOT AS GOOD at it as it should be.

Hate really shouldn't have a cap in the first place.

[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.

[Alderin]

Hate really shouldn't have a cap in the first place.

It most certainly should. Especially with the very large number of hate-reset mobs there are.

Tank on a mob with a lot of HP > WHM cure after cure after cure > Hate reset > WHM has a ridiculous amount of hate generated from the healing > No cap means it will take a lonnnng time for the tank to generate enough hate - meanwhile your healer is dead.

*edit* I do realise that they have modified hate generated from healing etc and it has definitely improved, however without a cap - when fighting the higher tier nm's you would run into this issue, especially if the reset hate TP has been used on the tank multiple times after getting hate back. The NM would then have to reset hate on the healer in order for the tank to pull hate back off them.

I believe the best solution to this would be slight job adjustments modifying hate gain on particular actions. Perhaps (as mentioned) changed the way Provoke works and instead of just increasing hate for yourself - it would reduce a bit of enmity of players within a certain AOE range upto 20' yalms (or something similar).

I think one of the original ideas of giving THF a reverse Accomplice ability to transfer an amount of hate from them and dump it on the tank is a great idea.

Perhaps for PLD - the use of cover reduces the enmity from the player that they are covering instead of themselves. The damage dealt to the PLD while covering comes off the covered player's enmity.

For NIN - Perhaps an AOE ninjutsu spell that grants the effect of Pax to party members in an AOE radius.

MNK - Give Chi blast similar properties to Provoke and lowering the timer considerably.

WAR - Provoke as mentioned above.

WHM - A JA that annuls all enmity gained from the next curing spell. Or simply give them a "Pax" spell (similar to that found in gnostics drink).

Just a few ideas at least...