A former WAR's Paradigm Shift

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

That "largely casual majority" just won't play their job at the fullest...which won't be an issue since they also won't tackle any content that requires them to play their role at the fullest, or they'll do it when the content is old with far higher gear to help them.

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It's like people don't read at all before posting.

The largely casual majority will never play their job to the fullest. That's fine now when playing your job to the fullest means pushing DPS which is optional outside of 2 fights. It's not fine when playing your job to the fullest is required to just hold aggro over your healers and DPS in even casual content.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

It's like people don't read at all before posting.

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Or it's only like people actually think about what would be the content if the meta was different...

Now, pushing our job means doing more DPS because the high tier raid requires that. If the focus was surviving and holding aggro, then the content would reflect that too. More targets to keep away from party members, more tricky aggro management...
And casual content would still be easier, not on the "pushing DPS" part but on the "surviving and holding enmity".

You forgot to factor in that the usual dps is lame anyway and is highly unlikely to shine suddenly if the tanks were to fight for their enmity. A bad tank with a bad dps would just do the same as now.

The only real problem would be bad healers with 70% overheal

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Or it's only like people actually think about what would be the content if the meta was different...

Now, pushing our job means doing more DPS because the high tier raid requires that. If the focus was surviving and holding aggro, then the content would reflect that too. More targets to keep away from party members, more tricky aggro management...
And casual content would still be easier, not on the "pushing DPS" part but on the "surviving and holding enmity".

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I already addressed the content based point. That's why I said you didn't read.

If you make aggro management trickier, any group without current top tier tank DPS would not be able to progress. So instead of having a lot of mid-core groups who can get by without good tank DPS or healer DPS due to their DPS being over-geared or over-qualified, they would instead all be gated behind the quality of their tanks.

The same goes for survivability. Instead of being able to progress through content through a combined raid DPS effort, progression would instead be gated behind whether or not your tanks know how to actively mitigate lethal damage. Since if we're talking about damage intake mechanics on par with Savage DPS checks during progression, we're dealing with razor thin margins.

I'm all for giving tanks that responsibility. I would be just fine in that meta because I come from that meta. The issue is it's proven to breed a very unhealthy environment where competent tanks are very rare. That is my point.

As for how that would scale down to casual content...

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

You forgot to factor in that the usual dps is lame anyway and is highly unlikely to shine suddenly if the tanks were to fight for their enmity. A bad tank with a bad dps would just do the same as now.

The only real problem would be bad healers with 70% overheal

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Currently, even bad tanks can hold enmity over good DPS unless there is a significant gear gap. The proposed meta shift would change it so bad tanks have no hope of holding enmity over good DPS and would even be challenged by bad DPS.

Basically, just imagine if every tank in the game was a level 29 Gladiator without flash playing with higher leveled DPS with better gear.

Yea, you could adjust content around that and maybe force less up-time from DPS to give tanks time to build aggro. But, TBH, I don't think anyone wants to go back to the days of DPS and healers waiting for tanks to establish aggro before starting to DPS or just afking at times because they're too close to pulling aggro. It doesn't fit a game with such tight timings on DoT, debuff, and buff upkeep and such rigid rotations.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

The same goes for survivability. Instead of being able to progress through content through a combined raid DPS effort, progression would instead be gated behind whether or not your tanks know how to actively mitigate lethal damage.

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No, just no.
First, because surviving is not the sole tank responsibility. Unless you make a tank so sturdy that he doesn't need a healer, the most competent tank will still die if he's not heal properly. And second, because even the most competent tank will eventually burn all its mitigation, and even the most competent healer will eventually burn all of its MP...if the fight is too long. So, you'd still need good DPS to make the fight as fast as possible.

So, instead of gating content behind a DPS effort from the DPS, healers and tank, you'd gate content behind a DPS effort from DPS, a mitigation/aggro management effort from tank and a healing effort from healers. What a shock !

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Originally Posted by Brian_

The proposed meta shift would change it so bad tanks have no hope of holding enmity over good DPS and would even be challenged by bad DPS.

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Or, you could say that the proposed meta would makes enmity management part of the DPS skill. And that the better the tank, the more the DPS could go medieval on their target.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

It doesn't fit a game with such tight timings on DoT, debuff, and buff upkeep and such rigid rotations.

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On the contrary, it would exactly fit the game that having a really good team (all jobs combined) would allow you to attain such perfect timings and rotationn while having a lesser one would force you to adjust and hold your fire.

As the game is now, DPS technically do their thing regardless of other jobs. The only thing that can screw their rotation is their own skill and how the fight is designed.
If enmity was more of an issue, you'd have a real dynamic between the three roles.
Healers helping the tank surviving.
Tanks controling enmity to let DPS dish the most damage.
DPS shortening the fight to lessen the stress on healers.


A little example from FFXI (Don't know if you've played it):
Around level 30, one pair was extremely powerful to have in a party : SAM + THF.
They had a very powerful skiilchain, and the THF could increase its damage with Sneak Atack (Critical damage from behind the target) and Trick Attack (Increased damage from behind a party member - with enmity given to that party member). Without a really good tank it was very tricky to do the full skillchain, as Sneak Attack + Trick Attack would give a LOT of enmity to the SAM. So, some people tend to only do the skillchain with Sneak Attack 'Denying it the additionnal damage from TA) and saving Trick Attack for another hit (Denying it the critical damage multiplier from SA).
In this simple situation, you could already tell good tanks aparts from bad tanks, just looking at how they could keep aggro from such massive damage.

For the Nth time...

We've seen this story before.

DPS is gated behind how much enmity your tank can generate in that context. So, it doesn't matter how good your DPS players are as long as they're good enough to push the tank. In a meta where enmity matters, the DPS will be pushing the tank. If they don't, then it goes back to the meta where enmity is trivial. So, if you're dying to healers going OOM, it's the tank's fault for not generating enough enmity to allow the DPS to DPS.

And as for the damage intake, if you are trying to retain the difficulty of Savage's DPS checks in the new meta, the margins for tank survivability will be razor thin. In other words, the healers will be expected to keep them at a safe health range and shield appropriately but if you want activated mitigation to matter, if the tank fails to mitigate something, it should mean death regardless of what the healers do. It doesn't matter how good your healers are when your tank is taking more damage than healer HPS. While, like I said multiple times, good players will adapt to whatever happens, the bad players who still fail to mitigate key mechanic damage with their existing activated mitigation will do even worse in the new meta.

So, again, back to the points that I keep repeating --

The issue is it's proven to breed a very unhealthy environment where competent tanks are very rare. That is my point.

It's not more balanced. It just shifts from a DPS meta to a tank-dependent meta. It is not the middle-ground. DPS players are dependent on tanks to generate enmity. Healers are dependent on tanks to properly mitigate the damage and generate enough enmity to allow the DPS to kill before they're OOM. Tanks decide whether or not you can clear content so a good tank will be mandatory and good tanks are rare. Healers can't bail a tank out if they forget to use activated mitigation. DPS can't carry a fight through their DPS contribution if the tank can't hold aggro. It's not a balanced responsibility dynamic.

Ok, in the current meta, do you realize that if your tank dies then it doesn't matter how skilled your DPS are ?
Content is already gated by the tank skill.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

So, if you're dying to healers going OOM, it's the tank's fault for not generating enough enmity to allow the DPS to DPS.

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Only if they were close to rip tank's enmity. If they're just doing bad DPS, then it's their fault. And if the tank generates enough enmity and the DPS do good damage, but the healers don't know how to manage their MP, then it's their fault if they're OOM. So, in fact, you just chose the only one answer that proves your point when there are multiples ones.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

In other words, the healers will be expected to keep them at a safe health range and shield appropriately but if you want activated mitigation to matter, if the tank fails to mitigate something, it should mean death regardless of what the healers do.While, like I said multiple times, good players will adapt to whatever happens, the bad players who still fail to mitigate key mechanic damage with their existing activated mitigation will do even worse in the new meta.

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But it's already like that...if you screw your cooldown rotation (and if you're not higly overgeared), you will be killed by Hypercompressed Plasma, Holy Bladedance or Discoid. And those players who don't tank properly already stay out of content like Alex Savage of Thordan. It's no different.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

It's not more balanced. It just shifts from a DPS meta to a tank-dependent meta.

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Again, in the current meta, if your tank dies because he's bad, DPS don't matter at all. You're overdramatizing the shift.
And still, if your DPS are bad you can't kill the boss in time, and if the healers are bad, people will die, regardless of that tank's skill.
It's already a combined responsibility. The problem is that the responsibility puts more emphasis on everybody doing damage.
If your tank is really good at surviving but deals crap damage, then he's "bad" (Hello, PLD !), if your healer is really good at healing but deals crap damage, then he's bad. That's not right.

And again, we're talking about high end content, content that "bad" players can't clear in the current meta anyway. Like there's several ways of dealing with DPS checks at different difficulties, there are also ways of doing mitigation checks and enmity checks. Those checks would only have a lower difficulty in dungeons than in high end raid.

Brian_, it would appear that your argument has been reduced to you repeating your points in every single post in slightly different or dumbed down ways in the hopes that your intended target(s) will finally understand what you're really getting at. I've fallen into this trap too. Keep in mind that this situation means that your target(s) likely will never understand your point, either because they cannot comprehend logic or because they otherwise refuse to attempt to understand yours.

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To the OP(Since we have to get back on topic at some point, right?), I'm happy to see that you find Paladin fun. Your story, however, exemplifies what is perhaps the oddest aspect of Paladins: the worse a fight is going, the more engaging and fun the job becomes... provided one is actually attempting to use all of the tools at their disposal. On one hand, this makes Paladin kind of the perfect Duty Finder Tank. On the other, it is rather un-Tanklike to actively hope that your party screws up so that you'll have more to do.

Regardless, I cannot agree more with just how satisfying it is to save a fight with Paladin Utility. When I was leveling Paladin myself, I had a similar experience to yours; I had a ton of fun in the Vault saving lives with Clemency. But that's not the only place Paladin has shined for me, and hopefully it isn't for you either. For example, I was recently in a Void Ark I ran as Paladin, we were in a situation where one of the Parties was severely challenged in heals, so the Scholar from my Party decided to full time heal that specific alliance while fighting the Great Jiggily One after this lack of healing got the entire Alliance killed. The healing team for my Party this became the White Mage doing the AOE healing while I handled spot heals for unexpected damage. And then we won!

Here's to hoping that your continued Paladin career is filled with more opportunities to, shall I say, Palawin ;)

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Brian_, it would appear that your argument has been reduced to you repeating your points in every single post in slightly different or dumbed down ways in the hopes that your intended target(s) will finally understand what you're really getting at. I've fallen into this trap too. Keep in mind that this situation means that your target(s) likely will never understand your point, either because they cannot comprehend logic or because they otherwise refuse to attempt to understand yours.

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Or simply that repeating the same point doesn't make it more valid, when it's just overreacting.

Little flashback on your first post and why I think your point is wrong :

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Originally Posted by Brian_

you are making it so that instead of being able to carry mediocre tanks that can't DPS

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If your tank is "mediocre", then he will surely die from the higher difficulty. And if he dies, you can't carry him through DPS. On the other hand, if he can survive that content, then your tank is not mediocre, and shouldn't be considered like that just because he's not pushing top DPS.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Currently, even bad tanks can hold enmity over good DPS unless there is a significant gear gap. The proposed meta shift would change it so bad tanks have no hope of holding enmity over good DPS and would even be challenged by bad DPS.

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I understand your point, but you have to understand mine : bads will remain bads. And while that would suck in high-end game content, bad players happen not to go there, so the problem is non existent to begin with.

As for the few dps who would encounter a bad tank out of end game raids or Ex primals, there is absolutely no need to do mad deeps there anyway. Chill out and relax, do lower dps to adapt to the situation, even maybe try to teach (with respect !) Your tank so that you can press dps a bit more...

Yeah, this might not be as fun as "burn burn burn", and it is undoubtely not as efficient ("but muh eso farm ! D: " ) but what you lose in time played, you may gain in social interaction (hopefully).


Tl;dr : no matter how the meta changes, the way good players and bad players behave will remain the same. All that might change is the time spent on meaningless (difficulty wise) instances

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Or simply that repeating the same point doesn't make it more valid, when it's just overreacting.

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Well, actually it has shown that my bait has caught the primary target hook, line, and sinker. Thank you for your cooperation in proving my point, and have a nice day.

Post character limit is pretty dumb IMO. If I want to make long in depth posts about a discussion I am unable to. Is this a new user stipulation or is it a thing for everyone. 1000 characters is too short.

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Gonna agree with the guy that says bads will be bad. Run into them all the time. Running into a fresh Drk with 25 gear and only using Grit and nothing else was the most horrible experience I ever had. Did not know what Darkside was.

We were in Darkhold a 45 dungeon. He was in 25 gear at lvl 45. Can you believe that?

And another idea...since Parry is the only tank stat, and it's garbage, replace it with Enmity.
This way, "bad tanks" will have their training wheels...and even good ones, if they face über-DPS

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

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Content is gated by tank skill but my point through all of this is that the gate point is very low in current content. Outside of early progression, elite tank DPS is not required in the current meta, and even in early progression, it's only required in 2 fights in the entire game. The skill gate is the skill floor of the class -- hold enmity over your DPS, press a few buttons for the tank buster. You could get past A1S and A2S week 1 with tanks doing very mediocre DPS. In fact, that is why you saw world first A1S go to a PLD group and the same group barely lose out on world first A2S. However, in switching the current focus on DPS to holding enmity / survivability, you are flipping the skill dynamic and making enmity / survivability, two basic functions of the tank that should be their skill floor, into what defines their skill ceiling. You are taking the easiest but most vital part of playing a tank and making it the hardest and most vital part of playing a tank.

If you mess up your CD rotation, you will not be killed by Hypercompressed Plasma, Holy Bladedance, or Discoid because your healers can still bail you out. Week 1 logic was that you needed stacked dCDs to survive Hypercompressed Plasma. But, if a tank messed up their CD rotation and didn't have key dCDs to stack, an AST could bole them, a SCH could Adlo them, a BLM could Apocatastatis them, and / or a WHM could SS them and they would live. With proper care, healers / DPS could bail a tank out of Hypercompressed Plasma. Same goes for Holy Bladedance and Discoid. You can get away with some disgusting mistakes in terms of survivability in the current content. If you increase the damage intake to put more emphasis on survivability, that will no longer be possible.

And like I said, a tank with garbage tank DPS and a healer with horrible healer DPS could've cleared A1S, A2S, and Thordan EX on day 1 if the rest of their DPS was on point. It was only in A3S and beyond that tank DPS and healer DPS became necessary.

Now, flip the meta from DPS to enmity / survivability and try to clear an A1S, A2S, and Thordan EX difficulty raid with a tank that can't hold aggro or stay alive. It's not going to happen. This is my point.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

You are taking the easiest but most vital part of playing a tank and making it the hardest and most vital part of playing a tank.

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I'm taking their most vital mechanic and expand on it with proper management.
Exactly how DPS need to manage their rotation to properly do their most vital part...doing damage.

Staying alive would be the same in the current meta or an enmity-meta, so it's not relevant. As for holding aggro, yes, it would require some practice.
But it's not like the meta whould shift all at once. All tanks would have 60 levels and numerous dungeons to practice...and to practice something that really belongs to tanks.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Post character limit is pretty dumb IMO. If I want to make long in depth posts about a discussion I am unable to. Is this a new user stipulation or is it a thing for everyone. 1000 characters is too short.

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It's the same for everyone. The only thing limited from person to person is the actual number of posts and threads you can create which is restricted by the current level of your character (so you should always log out on a lvl 60 character to get the maximum). The only way around the character restriction is to edit your post after the fact.

How, exactly, would you implement this while staying within the current skillsets of the tank jobs? What I'm hearing is that you want bad tanks to die and lose aggro, and good tanks to stay alive and keep aggro; but that's not exactly something that doesn't already happen. You want to make enmity management trickier - not something I agree with, considering all the tanks that I see never learned it in its current iteration - explain further. You want to emphasize survivability over damage - how? Be specific. This conversation is far too vague as it is.

This may sound stupid, but currently, with all the abilities classes have, wouldn't adding abilities for more active mitigation cause button bloat? That or you would have to replace existing effects on abilities (or abilities themselves) with more defensive ones, narrowing down any offensive options that you have...

Anyone care to elaborate? Sounds pretty lame to me, so I'm looking for a different point of view.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Content is gated by tank skill but my point through all of this is that the gate point is very low in current content...
...Now, flip the meta from DPS to enmity / survivability and try to clear an A1S, A2S, and Thordan EX difficulty raid with a tank that can't hold aggro or stay alive.

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I agree with your point of view, however remember that part of the current complexity of doing high dps as a tank is stance dancing. A switch to a enmity meta would require us to stay on the tanking stance since its the once that creates more of it. Removing stance dancing removes the risk of losing mitigation/hp buffer and the attention and memory of when to do so.

While a tank that doesn't know how to push buttons would indeed gate your DPS the reality is that removing stance dance and requiring them to do only a 1-2-3 combo for large enmity in the way the game is currently designed is in my opinion a lower skill floor, not a higher one.

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Originally Posted by AI_wass

How, exactly, would you implement this while staying within the current skillsets of the tank jobs?

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It is not doable without revamping several things in the game.
First, you'd need to make DPS do far more significant damage. Their optimal rotation should be a HUGE deal on monsters.
Second, tanks CD should not be directly tied to damage but to enmity, to the point where you would be able to theorycraft the most enmity you could do with your rotation (Exactly like you can do now with DPS rotation and priorities). You could also have enmity decay, and buffs to temporarily stop that decay. Buffs that you'd need to keep on, exactly like you would with DoTs.

As for balancing content, it's not really a problem. In "easy" content, you wouldn't need many burst of aggro, so you'd be fine by only building strong enmity over time. In higher content, you'd have to take mobs on the fly, deal with aggro reset or transfer, etc...
Excuse me for making another comparison FFXI (I know this is not FFXI, because if it were I wouldn't play it anymore :p), but as a DPS, it was an awesome feeling to you end with a tank that could keep up with me where I could unleash all my offensive skills at once. It felt more like we were a team, not that there was a tank doing his stuff, and me doing my stuff.

As things stand currently in progression content, tanks establish aggro quickly then maintain that enmity through brute-force DPS rotations, riding just above the line of aggro for as long as possible, while hitting cooldowns to survive incoming damage. Aggro management here consists of when and how often you have to return to stance or use your enmity combo; particularly in the case of DRKs and PLDs, because their enmity combo is also their lowest potency combo. WAR doesn't really worry about aggro because their highest potency combo /is/ their enmity combo.

WAR notwithstanding, I don't see what's so different about what you desire compared to what's currently implemented, other than the presence of cooldowns used purely to maintain enmity and maybe some fancy aggro tricks in raids; though I can make an argument that those cooldowns already exist in the form of the tanks' defensive stances.

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Originally Posted by Talith

I agree with your point of view, however remember that part of the current complexity of doing high dps as a tank is stance dancing. A switch to a enmity meta would require us to stay on the tanking stance since its the once that creates more of it. Removing stance dancing removes the risk of losing mitigation/hp buffer and the attention and memory of when to do so.

While a tank that doesn't know how to push buttons would indeed gate your DPS the reality is that removing stance dance and requiring them to do only a 1-2-3 combo for large enmity in the way the game is currently designed is in my opinion a lower skill floor, not a higher one.

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It's not a lower skill floor because that's basically already the bare minimum tanks have to do. You stay in tank stance and 1,2,3 for enmity or press 1 button for AoE enmity. You climb the skill ladder by pumping out more and more DPS on top of that. But, if you change the meta to enmity / survivability, the equivalent bare minimum of tanks staying in tank stance and only spamming 1,2,3 or pressing 1 button for AoE enmity would not be enough to hold aggro. They would need to jump through the same hoops of fire that currents tanks do to push DPS except it would only be to meet the bare minimum functionality of a tank and hold aggro.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I'm taking their most vital mechanic and expand on it with proper management.
Exactly how DPS need to manage their rotation to properly do their most vital part...doing damage.

Staying alive would be the same in the current meta or an enmity-meta, so it's not relevant. As for holding aggro, yes, it would require some practice.
But it's not like the meta whould shift all at once. All tanks would have 60 levels and numerous dungeons to practice...and to practice something that really belongs to tanks.

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At this point, I've had to re-iterate my argument specifically for you. Wouldn't it be easier just to read?

Good DPS output from DPS players is not vital in all content. Being able to hold mob aggro and stay alive is vital in every fight in the game. Queue for an EX-roulette and just refuse to hold aggro. See how far you get. Queue for an EX-roulette and ask your DPS to pump out a pathetic 500 DPS. You will still clear.

Staying alive would not be the same in the current meta or an enmity-meta because part of the shift would be to make activated mitigation much more demanding. Hence my repeated use of the enmity / survivability terms. So, it's very relevant. But, you wouldn't understand the basic concepts of this discussion because you never bothered to read.

Yea, tanks would obviously adjust. But again, you could say the same thing for the current meta. How long have we been in this meta? 6 months? How long has tank DPS been a thing? 2 years? It's not like players lacked for a means of practice or external resources and yet tanks that pull good DPS are a tiny, tiny minority. I'm done replying because I'm tired of repeating the same points over and over again only to have you fail in basic comprehension. For the last time --

It is fine when the tiny, tiny minority is doing something that is optional in the majority of content.

It is not fine when the tiny, tiny minority is doing something that is mandatory in the majority of content.

It's the same logic with healing in this game. Healers that contribute really good DPS on top of comfortably keeping a group alive are a minority. But, if your only concern is healing, the role is very easy to play outside of some circumstances outside of their control (party is incredibly under-geared / standing in the fire / massive pulls). The result? Dungeon runs are generally pretty smooth from a healing perspective because the healer's basic job is easy. If you made that job significantly harder, then you would see a sharp decrease in effective healers. Is there any argument otherwise?

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Originally Posted by Brian_

At this point, I've had to re-iterate my argument specifically for you.

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And at this point, I still don't understand why you think that holding aggro is always the same, so that a tank who can't hold aggro in some content wouldn't hold aggro in any content.
The same is true for active mitigation.

Again, you're just overdramatizing.

Here's a little example : Tank Swapping.
In Coil, that was a vital skill than every tank should know (Regardless of how difficult we think it is). If you end with a "bad" tank, that don't know how to properly do it, you're screwed (Until you overgear the content, of course). BUT, if you end up with that same tank in any dungeon, 24 man raid or during a Trial Roulette, you wouldn't care if he knows how to do it, because you wouldn't need it. In fact, he could even not have Provoked available, you wouldn't care.
That's one enmity "trick", and I'm sure you could have plenty of others.