How tanking feels post ShB patch

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Originally Posted by Valmarus

I'm not trying to be rude or funny so please don't read that sort of tone into what I am about to say:

If you want to focus on DPS more than emnity the I have to ask why not just play a DPS? Why play a role where your job should be focusing on taking/mitigating damage and holding focus? If this is the attitude of the majority of people tanking in the game then why not just do away with the idea of a tank all together? I feel like it's going to boil down to the question of - If they don't play differently then why have them at all?

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Because that aspect of the tanking role still exists. If you're asleep at the wheel you'll still lose hate on mob groups, and you're still the hardiest of all the classes. The only difference now is that there's no stance dancing, leaving you more wiggle room for your defensive cooldowns. I personally enjoy it. Stance dancing was fun, but ultimately it was unneeded.

It's easy to forget but DPS positioning matters a lot, especially in newer fights were we're not 100% sure of what mechanics do what. We tend to look at certain fights where we can ignore certain mechanics because we've out-geared them but even things like titan back in the day when we were all level/ilvl appropriate for the fight that a couple of overlapping aoes pinning someone in would get them killed. I've seen more than 1 party wipe due to bad DPS positioning. It's actually the DPS that have to remember the majority of the positional mechanics along with other mechanics. Having alternated a bit between tanking and DPS I can say that I often find I'm having to remember a lot more about where to stand and what to do while being a DPS compared to tanking. Hell back in the day the DPS were even responsible for stunning the mobs more than the tank was, the tank tended to be back up stun, but now I'm the one getting off point.

The main job of the tank is to be the focus of the mob. Our main job is to build emnity. Simple fact is without enmity where we stand or what damage we mitigate is irelevant because if we don't have the attention of the mob it's off doing its own thing and ignoring us anyway. Everything is second to and comes after building emnity.

I guess the TLDR is : The current tank skillset makes me feel like I'm ignoring building emnity because I'm doing nothing to build it, which makes me feel like a lazy/bad tank, regardless of how effective I actually am at the role.

(Note: Internet outage is responsible for the 2 halves of this post being so seperated, in case you were wondering why it took me an hour to post the second half of this)

Honestly the only thing that feels different about tanking is the removal and addition of skills, otherwise it didn't seem like anything had changed that much. Course I also usually stayed in tank stance more than was strictly necessary so the changes to tank stance work in my favor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valmarus

It's easy to forget but DPS positioning matters a lot, especially in newer fights were we're not 100% sure of what mechanics do what. We tend to look at certain fights where we can ignore certain mechanics because we've out-geared them but even things like titan back in the day when we were all level/ilvl appropriate for the fight that a couple of overlapping aoes pinning someone in would get them killed. I've seen more than 1 party wipe due to bad DPS positioning. It's actually the DPS that have to remember the majority of the positional mechanics along with other mechanics. Having alternated a bit between tanking and DPS I can say that I often find I'm having to remember a lot more about where to stand and what to do while being a DPS compared to tanking. Hell back in the day the DPS were even responsible for stunning the mobs more than the tank was, the tank tended to be back up stun, but now I'm the one getting off point.

The main job of the tank is to be the focus of the mob. Our main job is to build emnity. Simple fact is without enmity where we stand or what damage we mitigate is irelevant because if we don't have the attention of the mob it's off doing its own thing and ignoring us anyway. Everything is second to and comes after building emnity.

I guess the TLDR is : The current tank skillset makes me feel like I'm ignoring building emnity because I'm doing nothing to build it, which makes me feel like a lazy/bad tank, regardless of how effective I actually am at the role.

(Note: Internet outage is responsible for the 2 halves of this post being so seperated, in case you were wondering why it took me an hour to post the second half of this)

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I think the bigger job of tanks is to mitigate damage; with more tools than ever to mitigate damage from our teammates, it's become the tank's role to mitigate damage not only to ourselves but also to our party members. I understand you feel like you're being lazy by just being able to hold hate really easily, but honestly I think it's a QoL change that allows us to focus on our real role.

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Originally Posted by MarvelousInRed

Because that aspect of the tanking role still exists. If you're asleep at the wheel you'll still lose hate on mob groups, and you're still the hardiest of all the classes. The only difference now is that there's no stance dancing, leaving you more wiggle room for your defensive cooldowns. I personally enjoy it. Stance dancing was fun, but ultimately it was unneeded.

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I can understand that. But really it's not the stance changing that is bugging me I think. From my perspective I wouldn't mind if tanks did next to no DPS what so ever, I guess when I hop between roles what I need to feel is a shift in focus that comes with it, and as things stand that's not what I, personally, feel. There's no real paradigm shift in my head anymore. It wouldn't even really bother me if the different tanks held hate through diferent methods, if for example GND lacked pure emnity abilities and had to keep up fairly high dps to hold hate while pld did less damage but had more high emnity only skills while relieving healing burden through cures and mitigation spells. Actually I think I'd prefer to have that variance because then you could go in with diferent strategies with the tank to suit it, gunbreaker for a quick burn but high risk and pld for slower but lower risk. I guess it's just that almost complete move away from emnity focus for all tanks (even though as we've said it really wasn't that hard but to build and keep it anyway but that's another matter) that's making it feel wrong to me. And that's the thing, it's not about whether this is good or bad and maybe I'll get used to it but right now it doesn't feel right when I switch.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valmarus

I'm not trying to be rude or funny so please don't read that sort of tone into what I am about to say:

If you want to focus on DPS more than emnity the I have to ask why not just play a DPS? Why play a role where your job should be focusing on taking/mitigating damage and holding focus? If this is the attitude of the majority of people tanking in the game then why not just do away with the idea of a tank all together? I feel like it's going to boil down to the question of - If they don't play differently then why have them at all?

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Because when I've got a fight down pat, I know it and what's going to happen, what else are you going to do? Just auto attack and only do emnity enough to keep hate? Me dpsing after my tank duties are met helps out the party. Tanks dps is usually right behind a mediocre dps.

Again the focus on holding hate as a central point of tanking.
Stop it.
Tanking is not holding hate.
Tanking is all that happens after you gained hate.
Holding hate is not part of tanking it is the requirement for tanking.

Enmity has become less of a focal point in tanking because it tended to be intimidating for newer tanks, without actually having any impact on the skill ceiling.

Don't worry, though. There's another number out there that you can optimise. It's kind of like enmity, but instead of being an artificial, imaginary number, it actually has an impact on everyone's gameplay. It's called dps.

Hopefully we'll see a focus on more of the meaningful elements of tanking in the coming raid tiers, namely positioning, movement, and mitigation.

I played a Blue DPS since I switched from MNK to WAR in HW. I don't feel any different now, I played a Blue DPS in HW, SB and now in ShB. Still feels right to me.
Enmity was only an issue for undergeared tanks and bad players. I haven't used used aggro combos for years.

Can't say I feel that way OP, if anything I like the oversimplified threat "management" now because I can finally not have to worry about losing aggro when I get a low level dungeon in leveling roulette because the tank stance isn't unlocked yet.

For bosses, aggro wasn't really an issue even before outside of very specific mechanics (Neo Exdeath) so I don't really feel a difference either. I'm glad as a paladin I can actually pull and not have to do rage of halone which delays my entire rotation, instead of hoping my cotank is a WAR so that they can do that sick tomahawk > equilibrium pull.

I'm also glad all the tanks have a proper aoe rotations now, it actually gives me something to do in dungeons and keeping up my dps while mitigating properly, positioning mobs properly and avoiding aoes makes it more exciting and interesting. I'm happy I don't have to do Flash then bang my head on the Total Eclipse button anymore.