What if Tank classes could only meatshield?

short answer: no

long answer: no, just make fending accessories more desirable to tanks, ideally putting str+vit on them. Every other job gets stronger and more powerful with their accessories. Tanks should too.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

short answer: no

long answer: no, just make fending accessories more desirable to tanks, ideally putting str+vit on them. Every other job gets stronger and more powerful with their accessories. Tanks should too.

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I'd be okay with fending accessories being turned into "of the Bear" (a WoW suffix for items with STR and VIT on them, greater VIT and decent STR on them, generally meant for tanks).

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Now I ask:

Should damage still exist but be trivial amounts in the grand scheme?

You still get your feeling of 'reward' from doing damage, but the design would shift to you completely catering to your party members and boil down to you hoping that they can beat down that pinata before you get tired.

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There is no reward when you know what you are doing is inconsequential. It's rewarding and enjoyable to have the option to make meaningful contributions to the primary goal of the party (bringing enemy HP down to 0), while still carrying out the responsibilities of the tanking role.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

OP MALEFIC PLAN / main post

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Lol, you are an evil person!

But yes, I would keep playing my Paladin, because I like to:

Be a paladin. :D
And protect people.
And hold my shield.
And beautiful skill animations.
And yell: YOU... SHALL NOT... PASS!
And receive blame about wipes.
And instant queue lol
And forget to turn on shield oath.
And hold a SPECIAL lovely key with HG to that moments: " OMG, I'm gonna die!!! I don't want to die! Take that bard! He have a horrible voice! Eat him first! HAAALP!"

I like all that tank/pld stuff and some more -^_^-

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

The 2nd suggestion

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It's the exact same problem. Zero difference. Ultimately your contribution and room to delineate yourself from other tanks (damage wise) is reduced to such a tiny variable it wouldn't matter if you were attacking or not.

While clearly parse mad tanks are the minority on these forums (of which I am one), certainly so too are the ones happy to contribute zero (or essentially zero) damage to an encounter, especially when they don't get anything new to do.

I skipped the past 3 pages because I dun wanna read! :P

For tanking to be fun and interesting to me, I need to "feel" like I'm a threat to the enemy and that's why I'm focused. Not via imaginary taunts, but through "real threatening" actions. In the end I'm not tanking because I wanna get smacked due to some masochistic tendencies! (Though let's admit in, almost everyone in here has a small masochist in them! We're tanks!) I'm tanking to "protect" my allies and form a front line.

This can be done in many ways:

1- Look threatening! Be in that heavy armored with grim colors and spikes on my armor! What's worse than a scary big dude in metal-clad suit and lots of spikes? A scary big dude in metal-clad suit and lots of spikes that calls your mom names! Lol

2- "Feel" threatening! This beast hits hard! Ignoring them would probably be very bad. (SE chose this path mainly).

3- Be disruptive! This works more in PvP based games. Instead of just filling up an imaginary threat bar, you disrupt enemies... HARD! Be it by overly protecting allies via shields/covers/heals, or by interrupting everything the enemies try to do. Stun, interrupt, slow, heal, shield! They wanna go over to your healer? Snare and root! They GOT to and wanna hit a friend? Cover. They wanna heal? Reduce healing! Cast bar? Nope.jpg.

You know the saying: "Dogs that bark don't bite"? :p

Any combination of various levels of the three above ends up "good" for me.

To answer the OP question: If all I do is wave a metal stick with a pointy or concave end and see numbers in aggro, but not damage, I would not tank. Heck, the lack of point three in this game is probably why I'm SMN main atm. (Also that AF is too cute!) :p

Just make VIT the primary damage modifier for tanks and fix parry. /done

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I'd be okay with fending accessories being turned into "of the Bear" (a WoW suffix for items with STR and VIT on them, greater VIT and decent STR on them, generally meant for tanks).

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Pentamelds are for that, yeah you are going to dish 5-15 million gil, but they are worth the investment since you will be able to benefit from both attributes.



Now on thread, I rather have this double function, adds more stuff that I need to learn and things you can actually do during combat. The only thing I'd say that the gameplay needs its a way to make dps/tank stance transition more flexible for PLD, the rest the game is going in the right direction IMO.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

What if in a world where upon entering a dungeon or raid, all of the Tank classes ability to do numerical Damage was completely removed and replaced with plain threat. The numbers you see when you activate a damaging weaponskill instead was aggro numbers generated.

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That would be incredibly boring. It'd reminiscent of WoW back in the old days. Tanks had VERY LITTLE to do. And it sucked.

Notice how all the tanks that like doing damage are warriors and/or dark knights? We want different things out of tanks guys, my vision of a tank is an immovable wall, a great shield that protects. Not a crazy axe-waving guy, or a scary dude in spiky armor.

I don't know. Could come in handy. In a boss fight, I notice no one's aggro is over half. Be like "BRB gotta grab a beer, don't worry I'll pop a CD" maybe grab a pizza while I'm at it.

This sounds insanely boring

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Originally Posted by Wizhard

Notice how all the tanks that like doing damage are warriors and/or dark knights? We want different things out of tanks guys, my vision of a tank is an immovable wall, a great shield that protects. Not a crazy axe-waving guy, or a scary dude in spiky armor.

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And if you're not still trying to maximize your dps, you're doing it wrong. Just because PLD is designed to have greater mitigation doesn't mean you shouldn't try your hardest to do as much dps as possible.

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Originally Posted by Wizhard

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I did a lot of PLD raiding during the SCoB days, and I personally always loved to get big numbers while tanking. Did a lot of SwO tanking with hybrid jewelry. Since i90 pentamelded ruby set I haven't touched any full VIT build at all. If I can't afford pentamelds (like now for instance) I run with 3 STR and 2 VIT. Even now when I play my PLD I have the same STR/hybrid jewelry as on my DRK and WAR and I love switching to SwO after establishing agro just to get some nice Royal Authority crits and outparse bad duty finder DPS. It's not because YOU, as a super carrier Paladin, do not want to see big numbers, that every PLD has the same philosophy. For me it's the same with all 3 tanks. I love pushing my jobs to the limits. Love doing that as SCH too btw, which is not a DPS job either.

Now in all honesty. Even as a tank, isn't it pleasing to see some high hardcore crits ? Don't you love doing over 3k damage with a Royal Authority ? Even if it's not your primary purpose, even if it's not your primary role, don't lie to me. It's always pleasing to see big numbers. And it's a lot of fun to maximize DPS while tanking perfectly. Much funnier than just focusing on pure tanking (which is the easiest thing to do in FFXIV). I find it even more satisfying and gratifying to have a high DPS as a tank than as a DPS. It's much more satisfying to be over 1000 DPS as a DRK than over 1400 as a MNK. Maybe you're too afraid to push your job to the limits ?

Would I still tank? Probably.

Would I only do it in raid groups? yes.

I really think you'd see a sharp decline in tanks if this was the case. The reason this game has the amount of tanks it does is that tanking is the closest thing to a hybrid role in the game. Being able to perform both sides of your job at a high level takes practice and understanding of fights. The challenge of doing both these things at the same time is what lures a lot of us to the job role.

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Originally Posted by Ralvenom

And if you're not still trying to maximize your dps, you're doing it wrong. Just because PLD is designed to have greater mitigation doesn't mean you shouldn't try your hardest to do as much dps as possible.

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Agreed... but.... (incoming another long sapphrant)...

It's about the feel and focus. Different players find different things fun in MMOs - a lot of people hate healing, a lot love it. As things stand in FFXIV the tank classes are crossing over into the same feel as the DPS classes now, and there isnt much room for the things that make a lot of tank players enjoy the role. As I've said before, the problem with FFXIV is that in order to do the maximum DPS possible you have to literally sacrifice a huge amount of tankiness. You swap to your DPS stances whilst still tanking a boss, you wear zero vitality accessories, you ignore your damage-reducing debuffs and just go all out on threat moves.

This is fine for people who enjoy the -feel- of a DPS class, but this isnt the "power fantasy" a lot of tanks signed up for (or at least, not most of the ones that gravitated towards Paladin rather than the more obviously aggressive juggernauts of DRK/WAR). I enjoy feeling like a brick wall, I enjoy getting gear that makes me think I can survive huge amounts of incoming damage with barely a heal needed. I like to contribute DPS as optimally as possible but I really don't like the feel that FFXIV has right now. It's far too focused on DPS. There's literally zero reason to improve your tankiness because all you need do is pop a couple of cooldowns at the correct scripted time in a fight.

This is the only MMO i've played so far where tank players are regularly berated for being -too tanky-. For having too much HP. For playing too defensively. A tank joins a group and has 18k health and most players will -groan- that they're probably rubbish and don't understand the class, compared to one with 16k health. A tank that stays in shield oath on a 4man boss will be whined at, or at least silently judged.

I want to worry about blocking attacks manually or having realy tight cooldown rotations, or weaving in my paladin's class heals to help healers out in extreme damage situations. Nope, no point. All i need to care about is how high on the DPS meter I am. I'm literally playing a DPS class right now in terms of mechanics and focus. And tbh, Paladin is a really boring DPS class to play because the optimal DPS rotation is so simple. The fun of paladin is having so many tanky/support buttons to press at key moments whilst having a more basic rotation for threat/damage. As soon as you enter a tank meta where these support buttons are either barely any use or harm your dps to use them, you end up with a weird feeling if sparseness and inadequacy.

It's a put up or shut up thing though. I've tanked in MMOs for about 15 years now, and FFXIV is gravitating towards having my least favorite tanking meta of any MMO i've played. That's my problem I guess, there's plenty of tanks who enjoy the super aggressiveness of whacking things hard in the face and competing on DPS meters. I know LOTS of tanks enjoy the current aggressive/dps tanking meta (and most of them have gravitated to WAR/DRK as classes).

I still do as required by my raidgroup. I optimise DPS where possible, I have my pentamelds, I use sword oath where I can. But it's just not a fun tanking style for tanks who want to feel... tanky. I'm going to weather the storm and see what happens in 3.1, if they announce any buffs/changes, or whether the -next- tier of content has a different feel to the tanking. If nothing changes, and things seem like they're going to carry on as there are now, I'll likely hang up my shield.

This isnt the tanking style I expected, and not why I enjoy tanking in other games. I'll probably end up swapping to a Healer main as soon as I can if it keeps up like this, and I think a lot of tanks are in a similar boat.

It's not about doing the job wrong, it's about choosing a job based on liking a particular element, and then finding out that element doesnt exist at the endgame, by which point it's kind of too late as you're already in a raid group and trying to down hard content, so you just do your best whilst grumpily mithering away on a forum.

I find it interesting how unimaginative people are. They bring up games like EQ1 and what tanking was like there as though that's relevant today.

What makes tanking boring in this game, and in most games is a design problem. I love tanking in swtor because it's active and engaged. All 3 tanks play radically differently and must all be learned on their own. You have to actively maintain buffs and debuffs that are short duration and highly subject to fight mechanics. You trigger effects and watch for procs and all that. If your buffs fall off you could be in serious trouble as a fair amount of mitigation is tied to them. There is also a degree of skill in it, shadows for example can renew their kinetic ward on cooldown, but if they do they actually lower their mitigation because of another stacking buff. The difference on parses can be striking.

There are also quite a few more damage type which will affect what cooldowns you use. The difference between a properly timed saber reflect and a poorly timed one is big.

The skill in that game is in achieving maximum mitigation not whether you've read a script and can hit a cooldown every so often while just dpsing. That's the problem with ff14, tanks don't tank they dps. The incoming damage is no threat, and the only thing that's a threat is tank busters that are scripted and known before hand. Mitigation is largely passive, even cooldowns just require a button press and are otherwise passive. Anything you need to maintain is just built into the rotation and hardly given a passing thought.

It's not a matter of forcing tanks into their tanking stance(granted swtor does) it's a matter of making them want to be there. A tank should be contributing to the party, and having fun by tanking, not by dpsing. The difference between a skilled good tank and a bad one should be in how well they mitigate damage not in how much dps they can push out.

What about not changing the current system, since it's actually enjoyable for a lot of tanks?

I really don't understand the problem with stancedancing, or why it ruins the 'feel' of being a tank. Do people just think heavily armored fighters never go on the offensive or something?

If anything, FFXIV's tanks are closer to the actual namesake - not only does it have the armored bit down, but now it has that lovely cannon as well.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

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+1

I agree with every single comment here, with the possible exception of adding more types of damage (just because that would mean the opportunity for ability bloat galore). The biggest issue with FFXIV tanking is that there is no incentive, or often need, to be in tank stance outside of the initial pull (which is debatable in some instances) and tank busters (again, N/A if you're cheesing with HG/Holm/LD). I, along with others, play tank because I like to be the person to take a hit and control the boss, and the skill in that is, in my opinion, maintaining maximum mitigation, and needing to due to there being actual danger outside of busters, not concentrating on maintaining maximum DPS with the minimum required mitigation. I'm certainly not going to say that tank DPS isn't important, but it just seems like FFXIV (and it may not be the game, possibly just the community) makes tank DPS the measure of a good tank, rather than how well they control and manage the boss (positioning, regular swapping) to enable the DPS to dish out the hurt.

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Originally Posted by Takamorisan

Pentamelds are for that, yeah you are going to dish 5-15 million gil

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Thanks for reaffirming why I would want fending accessories to be changed. >.>

On an item that is supposed to have 100 STR or 100 VIT (this is for simplicity's sake, since I know VIT and STR are weighed differently and most likely have different costs in the item budget), "of the Bear" would go for something like 30 STR and 70 VIT. Crafted accessories would still be better (since in theory they'd be closer to a 50-50 split) while the adjusted fending accessories would place you at less of a disadvantage.

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Originally Posted by Walluh

What about not changing the current system, since it's actually enjoyable for a lot of tanks?

I really don't understand the problem with stancedancing, or why it ruins the 'feel' of being a tank. Do people just think heavily armored fighters never go on the offensive or something?

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Generally the tank stays defensive while the guys the mob is not paying attention to go stabby stab stab until it falls dead. That's how it works.

I don't have a problem with stance dancing; I did play a warrior in WoW since vanilla (back when you had to stance dance for lots of things). The thing is designing a tank around stance-dancing, balancing its DPS and mitigation with the other tanks and let people go nuts with it. Maybe add a combo action that changes your stance, making it fluid rather than pressing extra buttons.

The problem is that people want to force every tank to do it, and when we play tanks to be defensive so that the DPS can go stabby stab stab, we have an issue.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

You still get your feeling of 'reward' from doing damage, but the design would shift to you completely catering to your party members and boil down to you hoping that they can beat down that pinata before you get tired.

(Once again; design only effective in Raid/Dungeon content where players are more or less forced to rely on other people)

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A problem now arises with the other classes of the trinity, and no longer a problem with Tanks.

See, according to the original proposition you mentioned, all damage to a boss or mob would be completely dependent upon the DPS. In which case two perfect tanks, two perfect healers, and three perfect DPS-es would be undone by one suboptimal DPS (because the damage required by 4 DPS may not be enough with 3 good/1bad DPS)

The fact that the tanks and healers can bring something to the table allows for flexibility in a party to have subpar members.
If a healer is terrific at their job, they dont have to sit there casting cure over and over..... which is what I see all too often in dungeons. Rather, the healer can help out a DPS who decides to get face-lasered by the boss, or attacking adds that spawn in a fight.
If a tank is terrific at their job (which is not hard at all in the least. A tank who strictly only uses the butcher's block combo should never, under any circumstances, ever lose hate), they should be able to do something else other than tank. Which includes using their own buffs to help the healer, or putting in their DPS to help the party overall.


If Im doing Bismarck EX, and the party is standing on its back shaking violently about to be thrown off, I as a tank would want to be able to use Fell Cleave in a pinch to push in that last bit of DPS to win.
Not solely rely on my four DPS, hoping they mastered their rotations.

All the people you see tanking in Deliverance stance are the ones who have mastered their job. They have learned how to push their job to the limit by keeping hate and contributing to the overall party DPS.

I would have quit playing from boredom long ago

Know what would happen? A mass exodus of tanks in the game. They'd all roll DPS or possibly healer, or just straight up quit the game. In my opinion, the reason why we see tank dmg (DRK and War in particular) increasing is the same reason why Tank damage increased in WoW (a prime inspiration for FFXIV) and other MMO's, Doing damage is "fun". Granted, it's not the main job of the tank to focus "solely" on damage, but knowing you're contributing actual damage while being a tank makes the role more fun more *most* players (there are those weirdos (j/k) that don't care about dmg). I think people are still stuck in the early to mid 2000's when tanks were low damage meatshields. Times have changed since 2004/2005, tank classes were always hard to fill in groups, increasing dps/dmg helped alleviate that.

Now, as for the str v vit thing. Until SE gives encounters that actually *REQUIRE* full vit, you're going to see more str based tanks. It's quite possible that this is the design all along (with vit stacking for the "progression" encounters like savage).

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Originally Posted by Shyle

Know what would happen? A mass exodus of tanks in the game. They'd all roll DPS or possibly healer, or just straight up quit the game. In my opinion, the reason why we see tank dmg (DRK and War in particular) increasing is the same reason why Tank damage increased in WoW (a prime inspiration for FFXIV) and other MMO's, Doing damage is "fun". Granted, it's not the main job of the tank to focus "solely" on damage, but knowing you're contributing actual damage while being a tank makes the role more fun more *most* players (there are those weirdos (j/k) that don't care about dmg). I think people are still stuck in the early to mid 2000's when tanks were low damage meatshields. Times have changed since 2004/2005, tank classes were always hard to fill in groups, increasing dps/dmg helped alleviate that.

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I have to say I find it interesting that "tanks" would rather have a boring rotation but see damage numbers, over an interesting rotation based on keeping mitigation up and fights that are designed to challenge a tank's skill in reducing damage. Btw if anyone is stuck in the early 2000's it's the "I only want to be a dps" tank players. In EQ the way warriors held hate just damage and weapon procs. I suppose it's also funny that the main reason I quit tanking in this game is because it's so boring and you're not actually tanking. The dps in this game at least slightly more interesting rotations and if you're going to just be another dps, might as well be the best at it.

There'd have to be another angle to it. It could not be pure aggro, as pretty much everyone else has mentioned that'd be extremely boring even if it was harder to do somehow, because the game wouldn't reward you as it does a good tank now (faster fight clears/DPS checks met easier/allowing you to meet enrages undergeared). There'd have to be some survival edge to even consider something like that, something like all your aggro has permanent Bloodbath attached to it, or your debuffs on the enemy are based on stats or something ... I don't know, hard to see how it would work, or why a dev would even go that route when everyone's DPS crazy these days.

It'd also complicate solo play tremendously.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

I did a lot of PLD raiding during the SCoB days, and I personally always loved to get big numbers while tanking. Did a lot of SwO tanking with hybrid jewelry. Since i90 pentamelded ruby set I haven't touched any full VIT build at all. If I can't afford pentamelds (like now for instance) I run with 3 STR and 2 VIT. Even now when I play my PLD I have the same STR/hybrid jewelry as on my DRK and WAR and I love switching to SwO after establishing agro just to get some nice Royal Authority crits and outparse bad duty finder DPS. It's not because YOU, as a super carrier Paladin, do not want to see big numbers, that every PLD has the same philosophy. For me it's the same with all 3 tanks. I love pushing my jobs to the limits. Love doing that as SCH too btw, which is not a DPS job either.

Now in all honesty. Even as a tank, isn't it pleasing to see some high hardcore crits ? Don't you love doing over 3k damage with a Royal Authority ? Even if it's not your primary purpose, even if it's not your primary role, don't lie to me. It's always pleasing to see big numbers. And it's a lot of fun to maximize DPS while tanking perfectly. Much funnier than just focusing on pure tanking (which is the easiest thing to do in FFXIV). I find it even more satisfying and gratifying to have a high DPS as a tank than as a DPS. It's much more satisfying to be over 1000 DPS as a DRK than over 1400 as a MNK. Maybe you're too afraid to push your job to the limits ?

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My group was pushing 3 bennus long before echo was a thing, with me staying in sword oath 100%. I did not exactly enjoy it, but i did it because pushing 3 bennus was making the fight easier.
Right now i am progressing through A4S and i HATE the tank meta atm. i do not *gasp* find big dps on a tank fun. What i find fun on a tank is mitigatigating more and more but sadly this games design is going away from turtle tanks and we now have 2 dps with mitigation cooldowns and a paladin thats neither here nor there.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

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Rotating CD's and mitigation skills are definitely still in the game. I know stance dancing makes things interesting and challenging, when to use the CD"s at the right time, etc. The rotation for warrior at least is more engaging than the DPS roles I've played to 60 so far since I have to not only do damage rotations, but use mitigation CD's and Self heals at the right moment, all while stance dancing (or at least as close as I can get to Stance dancing). Now, I can't say it's the same for Plds or even DRK, but warriors can have pretty interesting gameplay challenges.

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Originally Posted by Shyle

The rotation for warrior at least is more engaging than the DPS roles I've played to 60 so far since I have to not only do damage rotations, but use mitigation CD's and Self heals at the right moment, all while stance dancing (or at least as close as I can get to Stance dancing). Now, I can't say it's the same for Plds or even DRK, but warriors can have pretty interesting gameplay challenges.

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You really should use more objective words to describe WAR gameplay. You call it interesting, I call it "too many buttons to push". Partly why I'm not fond of how WAR plays and prefer PLD. *shrug*

Though if you want to look at it a certain way, the reason WAR's gameplay feels more enganging to you is most likely because keeping Storm's Path up along with Maim and managing Wrath stacks feels more direct (in terms of benefits and what it does for you as a whole) and not "complex for the sake of complexity", which is something you see in DPS jobs at 60. Also helps that you don't have positional requirements to worry about.

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Originally Posted by Shyle

Rotating CD's and mitigation skills are definitely still in the game. I know stance dancing makes things interesting and challenging, when to use the CD"s at the right time, etc. The rotation for warrior at least is more engaging than the DPS roles I've played to 60 so far since I have to not only do damage rotations, but use mitigation CD's and Self heals at the right moment, all while stance dancing (or at least as close as I can get to Stance dancing). Now, I can't say it's the same for Plds or even DRK, but warriors can have pretty interesting gameplay challenges.

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And I made my comments from playing the tanks. War rotates through 3 combos without thought and hits typically the same skill every time they get 5 stacks. You don't have to manage stacks, consider the timing of a recast, adjust the rotation based on procs or the availability of certain resources or even really care about what damage type is incoming. Granted no class is particularly interesting and engaging but tanks really don't have much to think about. Heck most of the time the tank doesn't even need to be concerned with the fight mechanics, they just sit there beating on it. I think it's most indicative of a design flaw that so many are saying they don't care one bit about tanking and just want to dps on their tank.