Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

I can think of a ton of things that could be done done to make the tank jobs more interesting, but at the end of the day, if your encounter design is boring then everything is boring. Tanks in FFXIV have potential. They could bring back aggro combos and ditch stances entirely.

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Aggro combos impose limitations on job depth. It's like a less extreme version of the problem with healers; It's difficult to give them a proper rotation because they need to be able to potentially interrupt that 'rotation' at any time to heal without incurring major penalties, ergo they've always had the least amount of interesting options in terms of dealing damage. Tanks suffered from this to a lesser extent previously, and some jobs still haven't fully recovered from it.

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

Throw in aggro decay and aggro resets.

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The game had these when "aggro management" was a thing, and they weren't very exciting in practice. You just ended up voke/shirking at a scripted time, or asking your party to save their aggro dumps for that scripted time. It was still just a matter of pressing a button at a timestamp, it didn't really add the kind of dynamism people in this thread seem to be after.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Hate Resets/Decays would be more annoying than being fun and innovative. Tanking is only boring if you do nothing than push buttons to clear a fight.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

-snip-.

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Yes, because my point was clearly that we should implement those two specific things and not what I said shaped my comment around and stated immediately after that. /s

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

It won't making tanking interesting though if the encounter design remains the same. Encounter design is the single biggest issue in FFXIV's combat design.

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Reading comprehension check failed. Please level up your reading skill and try again.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

If you make running out impossible, why have the system? If you want to make a system that gives you more damage the higher your TP is (from a certain value) then just doing your normal rotation would neccessarily need to force you to be negative, which would then require the implementation of an action that cost less TP to make up the deficit.

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No. If you build around a particular rate of consumption (which is GCD scaled anyways, in this case), then that rate of consumption does not force you to go negative. You can weave in more burst skills than you typically would, such that, much as the case with enmity, you end the fight with minimum excess TP if the value of those higher-TP-cost skills over the normal rotation is greater than the value of the %TP potency modifier, or likely just anywhere just short of or barely dipping into the penalized range if not, unless the fight's situations give cause to burst further.

You can, of course, build short of that particular rate of consumption, as to oblige the use of Support skills after X minutes, but that's an externality. All a ubiquitously-tied resource system fundamentally does is allow you to trade long-term gains that are greater on paper for short-term gains that may be greater, or at least vital/necessary, in certain contexts.

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In AoE, as I stated, your actions cost between 2 and 3 times as much TP

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This, too, is externality. You can tune them to whatever you damn well please; it's merely a matter of balancing higher tuning against lesser available resource. For instance, if potency is decreased by 1% for each %TP below 75, to a minimum 50% potency at 25% TP, but TP costs decrease over that same span to a minimum of a quarter, the AoE penalty of using (stronger) AoEs would begin to right itself after the first 4-5 GCDs of burst, as their (and other) potencies decrease; similarly, your TP would quickly right itself to over 80% with time not spent on using those burstier skills.

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The issue here is that the games UI does not support such a system [as managing enmity].

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XIV UI has been sufficient for that purpose. That's why we have the bars. The Enmity percentile bars weren't hard to use.

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With low enmity values, like at the start of a fight, you have a good idea of how far ahead of the pack you are. As the fight progresses and enmmity increases, the same space on the enmity bar is eqivalent to a much higher value.

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Yes, because that's how percentiles work. Again, it wasn't difficult to understand or work with. ...Do you want bars that traverse your whole screen? Unlike HP, precisely because of Enmity modifiers, there is no maximum to enmity that wouldn't make the UI worthless early in a fight if were linearly representative rather than percentile.

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As for Enmity, the important thing to note is that it is a Binary system, you either have it or you do not. If the old system was so bad, what could replace it?

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Short version: You include more than a single mob script (what we sometimes call "AI") and make further factors available to those scripts. At present, there is only one in the whole game (attack top threat regardless of other conditions), which at most adds the feature of also attacking 2nd threat with a second, dedicated periodic attack.

Longer version: You differentiate, under the game's hood, between latent and active enmity, mob script and mob mode (a different behavioral set procedurally called upon by conditions set in the script, such as being frenzied, wary, cocky, etc.), and generate undermechanics for affecting enmity that interact with mob behavior.

I mean, dps optimizations are a lot of fun, but they're even more exciting on an actual melee job without training wheels and tank privilege. I think if you want the dps work that tanks do to have equivalent value, you have to seriously step up the mechanics game for tanks. It's the same complaint healers are making with regards to caster dps. Big fish in small pond and all that.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I mean, dps optimizations are a lot of fun, but they're even more exciting on an actual melee job without training wheels and tank privilege. I think if you want the dps work that tanks do to have equivalent value, you have to seriously step up the mechanics game for tanks. It's the same complaint healers are making with regards to caster dps. Big fish in small pond and all that.

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This. It's not that we say... want Aggro itself back. Maybe some of us, myself included but... we just want MORE to do.

I can't speak for others but what I would want is; the ability to fail and have to fix it without causing an entire wipe, dying, or dooming the run due to a 5% damage loss from damage down.

Aggro, old aggro, to me did this. Let me be clear, I know it was just a band aid to the bigger issue but when the BLM started to pull hate or the MCH suddenly shot up from Wildfire my thought was "OH GOD I need Aggro combo/bonus" not "OH STUPID DPS didn't hit their anti aggro button". Maybe at the casual level I played at I never expected DPS to do that, or Ninja's to use their own. Much like I still don't expect DPS to use Feint like ever. And usually, if the boss swapped aggro, it wasn't a full on loss if fixed fast enough.

That's just how I remember it, suddenly there's a problem and I need to fix it. Aggro returning would be a band aid fix again but I just want something to get that feeling of "I've messed up but can fix it". I don't get that with Tanks these days, and I barely get that with Healers too.

Side question; is there anything from Shadowbringers onward that takes advantage of Two Tanks that couldn't just be done with a DPS? Like the only thing that comes to mind was Eden Titan but I haven't played the new content.

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

Yes, because my point was clearly that we should implement those two specific things and not what I said shaped my comment around and stated immediately after that. /s



Reading comprehension check failed. Please level up your reading skill and try again.

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Why on earth are you so angry randomly? I just responded to some of the ideas you were talking about and you're acting like you're under personal attack.

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Side question; is there anything from Shadowbringers onward that takes advantage of Two Tanks that couldn't just be done with a DPS? Like the only thing that comes to mind was Eden Titan but I haven't played the new content.

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The E5S bird

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Why on earth are you so angry randomly? I just responded to some of the ideas you were talking about and you're acting like you're under personal attack.

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

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You took two ideas I listed as examples and proceeded to bash on them without mentioning my main point at all. In my experience that only happens when someone is taking something out of context to win internet points by beating up a scarecrow.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

The E5S bird

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I've seen the normal fight so if it's what I'm thinking of, wouldn't that just be picking up adds? Riveting gameplay. I mean if there's more, fair enough but I'm trying to think of Tank swaps, or placed double tank buster like O1's Twinbolt that nuked the person closest to MT, I hope the OT is awake enough to be there.

It's still not steller gripping stuff but... look I'll take what they give me these days.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

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Also by people that think the solution is clearly to just play the last bit of the game and clear it before they're allowed to talk. Don't forget them.

I admit I'm not an Extreme or Savage raider, not unless I'm doing it with friends cause people seem way too bitter in PFs. But it doesn't seem to fix the problem of tanking for me which is; I'd like smaller things to pay attention to or care about without causing a wipe or mass panic if I mess up. Most the time Extreme just hits harder, faster or more "Don't touch the bad stuff" like juggling buffs/debuffs and placement. I'm sorry given this is old, but did anyone actually find Light Rampant fun?

I hit stance, Rotation, Dance around as needed. If I'm OT, I don't even hit stance. I just do rotation which is the same thing I do as DPS.

I don't know, what do you find fun about tanking in Extremes? Because once you realize the order you need to hit your defenses, all that's left is to push your damage as hard as you can and..., I mean I guess that's fun for enough people but just not for me.

Should Aggro and TP come back? Don't know. Anything they would provide would be a short band-aid solution before the community cracks the new number on "THIS is how you should be hitting your buttons" and we're just back where we started save for maybe a new button press every so often. And when people are always about Uptime, rDPS and the boss designs seemingly based around pushing damage as much as possible; I think any big in depth changes to boss design or tanking gameplay would lead to a riot.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I've seen the normal fight so if it's what I'm thinking of, wouldn't that just be picking up adds? Riveting gameplay. I mean if there's more, fair enough but I'm trying to think of Tank swaps, or placed double tank buster like O1's Twinbolt that nuked the person closest to MT, I hope the OT is awake enough to be there.

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The add in E5S attacked whoever had the most Lightning stacks, and did a buster each round, consisting 3x total rounds, at the same time if it reach melee range you're instantly killed. It's the tank version of SCOB Turn 7.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

The add in E5S attacked whoever had the most Lightning stacks, and did a buster each round, consisting 3x total rounds, at the same time if it reach melee range you're instantly killed. It's the tank version of SCOB Turn 7.

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...Eden. Eden 5 Savage.

Why the heck did I think it was Asphodelos 3(What are we calling that). I think I'm dumb. I think I'm really dumb and gonna go lie down.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

...Eden. Eden 5 Savage.

Why the heck did I think it was Asphodelos 3(What are we calling that). I think I'm dumb. I think I'm really dumb and gonna go lie down.

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P1S/P2S/P3S/P4S

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No. If you build around a particular rate of consumption (which is GCD scaled anyways, in this case), then that rate of consumption does not force you to go negative. You can weave in more burst skills than you typically would, such that, much as the case with enmity, you end the fight with minimum excess TP if the value of those higher-TP-cost skills over the normal rotation is greater than the value of the %TP potency modifier, or likely just anywhere just short of or barely dipping into the penalized range if not, unless the fight's situations give cause to burst further.

You can, of course, build short of that particular rate of consumption, as to oblige the use of Support skills after X minutes, but that's an externality. All a ubiquitously-tied resource system fundamentally does is allow you to trade long-term gains that are greater on paper for short-term gains that may be greater, or at least vital/necessary, in certain contexts.

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So basically, take what I said and flip it on its head, so your main combo builds it up and you spend it on burst damage, whilst keeping above a certain threshold. This is just another gauge and personally, I would say it was better suited as a main mechanic for a job rather than something all TP users should have. Infact, we even had a job similar in the form of original SB Machinist. You wanted you build up heat to get above 50 Heat to get access to the heated shots, then used the stronger Heat Blast to bring it back down before you capped at 100 (Overheating was a DPS loss on the original MCH), so you had to strike a balance between 50 and 95 for maximum damage.

As for the enmity comments, I don't think you quite understood where I was going. To give simplistic examples, tanks have 2 attacks, one that does enmity, one that does damage, and DPS just damage consistently. This means you want to use the enmity combo to keep above the DPS, but not so much that you could potentially lose out on a damage hit. This means you need to keep your enmity higher than the DPS by some amount. This amount would remain consistent throughout the fight as enmity gain is essentially linear.

For this, I am only going to say, you get 1000 enmity per second. This enmity is tracked by a bar which has a certain resolution, to make life easier, lets just give it 100 units of resolution. After 1 second, each unit represents 10 enmity. After 10 seconds, you have 10,000 enmity, each unit now represents 100 enmity. We have already lost a whole order of magnitude to the resolution, but lets continue. 5 mins, which is 300 seconds, or 300,000 enmity, each block is now worth 3000 enmity. 10 minute fight, each one is worth 6000. The size of the bar itself has not changed, but how much each unit represents has. If you know you need to stay, say, 500 enmity above the dps to be safe, after 1 second, the 500 enmity is equivalent to 50 units. After 10 seconds, the dps would be at 9500 to your 10,000, each block represents 100, so your have 5 units to show that you are still just above the dps. After 5 minutes, you at 300,000 enmity, staying 500 above the dps, 299,500 enmity. Each block is 3000, so the DPS have filled 99/100 units. The DPS could be 500 behind you, they could be 3000 behind you, which would allow more damage on your end, you just do not know. After 10 minutes, the DPS is still at 99/100 units, but the range they could be in has increased from 500 behind you to 6000 behind you, you just do not know. The longer the fight goes on for, the less accurate you would be, and so the more likely you are to use your enmity combo, just to be safe and bear in mind, this is a very very static example simplified to get the point across. In reality, it is going to be much more dynamic with different jobs catching you at different rates, it is going to depend on how lucky the got with direct/crit hits, how much self healing have they done etc. It would make the whole enmity thing a complete guessing game the later in a fight you go.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Short version: You include more than a single mob script (what we sometimes call "AI") and make further factors available to those scripts. At present, there is only one in the whole game (attack top threat regardless of other conditions), which at most adds the feature of also attacking 2nd threat with a second, dedicated periodic attack.

Longer version: You differentiate, under the game's hood, between latent and active enmity, mob script and mob mode (a different behavioral set procedurally called upon by conditions set in the script, such as being frenzied, wary, cocky, etc.), and generate undermechanics for affecting enmity that interact with mob behavior.

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And I fail to see how this would make things fun. Ok, a mob decides it wants to smack the healer, fine, I am now forced to use the enmity combo to get it back, or, more likely, just provoke it, if provoke is down, shield lob/tomahawk etc. to get it back. This isn't going to make tanking more engaging, it is just going to be annoying. If it is just, the mobs hits the healer/dps for a hit, well, we already have that, so that is nothing new. I suspect there is something else you had in mind, however, I fail to see what you are trying to get at with your vague explanation.

If you want to make things more interesting, you need to make use of the tanks full kit, things that are currently woefully underused are Low Blow and Interject. Apart from the odd scenario here and there, you have no reason to think about them. Provide some interesting things that go with them, the big thing I have always said was changing a moves properties rather than just outright stopping it. As a tank, you should be there to control the enemies, both in positioning for easier DPS uptime and mitigating damage to help the healers keep you and the party alive.

Agro management was terrible. With all the things I have to manage now as a main tank....I should NOT have to worry about a BLM that is about to overtake me because they are spitting nuclear hot death.

I'm so glad this isn't WoW agro style management. In FFXIV you either have it....or you don't.

The tank busters in this savage tier ALONE have given me a moment of pause to think about agro management. The tank busters in P1S are fun and make you actually work with your OT.

Agro management sucked....and it was outdated. I'm glad it's moving towards new and interesting tank mechanics that require the tanks to basically be in tune with each other. At least I am with my static OT.

Plus this allows the DPS to balls out on without having to hold back.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

So basically, take what I said and flip it on its head, so your main combo builds it up and you spend it on burst damage, whilst keeping above a certain threshold. This is just another gauge and personally, I would say it was better suited as a main mechanic for a job rather than something all TP users should have.

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Sure, you can flip what you said on your head all you like... but it still won't have anything more to do with my position or what I described to you.

A resource which starts at maximum and is regenerated over time is the exact opposite of a resource which starts at 0 at is generated by actions. How did you quote the prior and arrive at the latter?

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Infact, we even had a job similar in the form of original SB Machinist. You wanted you build up heat to get above 50 Heat to get access to the heated shots, then used the stronger Heat Blast to bring it back down before you capped at 100 (Overheating was a DPS loss on the original MCH), so you had to strike a balance between 50 and 95 for maximum damage.

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I am aware of how StB MCH played. (Though, no, Overheating was not always a dps loss. Its potential damage gain was frustratingly minimal for how much effort was involved in order to exploit it at all, but those opportunities did exist.)

It's still the exact opposite of what I'm talking about here. You're describing a from-zero resource built by actions and which must on occasion make use of a weaker action in order not to be penalized, as opposed to a from-max resource regenerated over time and which allows some n actions per minute and, further, per fight (as per the time the time it'd take to drop initially to the effective minimum resource).
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As for the enmity comments, I don't think you quite understood where I was going. To give simplistic examples, tanks have 2 attacks, one that does enmity, one that does damage, and DPS just damage consistently. This means you want to use the enmity combo to keep above the DPS, but not so much that you could potentially lose out on a damage hit.

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No, I understood completely. I'm asking, if the default UI is so useless as to make enmity management impossible, what "better" UI solution you'd propose. I had little to no trouble minimizing excess enmity with the default UI.

I'd be fine with seeing a "+<value>k" descriptor added beside the lead enmity, or a + or - value added for ones, to better show that exact difference, but that's something that took a modder an scant afternoon to add to the game. If the devs wanted to actually bring back aggro management into the game's modern climate, they could provide something equivalent.

Again, as per my very first post here, I have no interest in readding enmity management if it remains a mere matter of remaining the lead entry on a damage-times-modifier table by a margin that ought to be minimized by the fight's end. But to say assume absolutely that the effective removal of enmity management, as per the past two expansions, would be reversed without any chance of accordant UI improvements or surrounding changes by which to situate it to the current game... is not sensible.

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And I fail to see how this would make things fun. Ok, a mob decides it wants to smack the healer, fine, I am now forced to use the enmity combo to get it back, or, more likely, just provoke it, if provoke is down, shield lob/tomahawk etc. to get it back. This isn't going to make tanking more engaging, it is just going to be annoying.

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You're strawmanning again. I've not asked for the return of Enmity skills.

I have, multiple times in this thread alone, pointed out that I think they're bloated -- inefficient ways of handling things that should instead be covered by more involved undermechanics, rather than GCD choices limited to a single role's kits.

I merely don't think that Enmity skills competing with damage skills makes them non-mechanics any more than buffing GCDs like Twin Snakes or Heavy Thrust would compete with the damage skills that benefit them. Minimizing excess margin, in either case, is the mechanic -- however shallow it may be in the case of Enmity-enhanced skills.

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If you want to make things more interesting, you need to make use of the tanks full kit, things that are currently woefully underused are Low Blow and Interject.

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Mob AI and stuns/interrupts are not mutually exclusive.

What's next? Mobs can't have more than a single AI script because we couldn't then have active mitigation? We can't have involved rotations because then we couldn't make use of Interject? None of these things conflict with each other.

with how the game works Idk about this one chief.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

What's next? Mobs can't have more than a single AI script because we couldn't then have active mitigation? We can't have involved rotations because then we couldn't make use of Interject? None of these things conflict with each other.

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Considering how they handle multi-targeting attacks, it likely actually is impossible within their framework.

In its real case, any attack a boss launches that targets more than 1 player simultaneously, is actually the boss + a bunch of invisible entity copies of the boss that copy its buffs/debuffs hiding under the map all targeting different players, since FF14's enemy framework can only have a single valid target for an enemy for any one attack. So for your idea, the boss wouldn't be able to track more than one target as far as latent and active aggro unless it was physically 2 bosses on the field and one of them ran a different script from the main boss.

You can actually see an instance of this in EX2 where the boss aggro name physically changes to whoever they're targeting for the shared raid AOE hit on the sword attack, since its launched by them directly and not one of the copies that are responsible for other attacks in the fight, like the 2x water stack.

Some other fun examples include:

-Garuda, Ifrit & titan all cast a jail on a different player during uwu, even though Garuda & ifrit are off the field and hidden.
-E12s's boss has a second copy that targets the #2 in hate specifically for both hits, while the main boss only ever targets #1 for both hits.
-E8s boss has the same deal with ahk morn as E12s's boss does.
-Every instance of Limit cut is actually 4 instances of Cruise Chasers with different targets set for their mechanic
-Photon in TEA is casted by two to eight hidden Cruise Chasers in the Brute/Cruise phase at a set time. This results in an interesting situation where if you kill BJ/CC too quickly, the Photon meant to drop the tank's HP to 1 in the later half of the phase will instead happen during the lead-up to timestop: https://www.twitch.tv/ffxivmomo/clip...4L5HyFi7gz3rvy

TL : DR, boss AI has a ton of jank hidden under the hood, likely making a lot of complex interactions effectively impossible.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

TL : DR, boss AI has a ton of jank hidden under the hood, likely making a lot of complex interactions effectively impossible.

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What I'm asking for, though, doesn't require multiple simultaneous targets any more than is presently the case. It merely requires a greater variety in who is targeted and what tanks can do about it such that being merely at the top of the Enmity table isn't the be-all and end-all of target selection prior to separate "raid mechanics" (or "double-tank busters" alone), and that space gives tanks more to do.

Mobs should at least have an illusion of some small degree of intelligence, and thereby allow for more to be involved in tanking than merely having their stance on and sometimes leading about a cylinder as mechanics fall or, at best, emanate from said cylinder.


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Now, to get the extent of gameplay mentioned before for if I had as much resource as I wanted (i.e., under that pipe-dream heading of "ideally"), that boss/mob/NPC script would also have to be susceptible to change given particular conditions -- able to be manipulated. That's a very separate story from how many enemies a single attack can target, however.

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Originally Dps could pull aggro off a bad tank, not all moves gave enmity and if I remember correctly most of those moves only gave enmity while in tank stance. This added consequences to the game, DPS and healers had to use moves to lower their aggro.

Tanks stance wasn't perfect, and at high-end ARR the meta was to tank without it. However removing it was a terrible plan IMO. Instead they should have made aggro gain more difficult if you weren't stance switching, made tank stance OGCD and then in each expansion they could have focused each tank classes mechanics around their stance and subsequently TP which I'll get onto next.

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This is a lie. Everyone who tanked in SB knows that agro management wasn't a thing for the MT, it was the OT to voke shirk on cooldown and everyone else managing their own hate with diversion or lucid. Get your head out of the clouds and remember the truth. It was not tank mechanic, it was the party mechanic that they hated to do.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

1. A resource which starts at maximum and is regenerated over time is the exact opposite of a resource which starts at 0 at is generated by actions. How did you quote the prior and arrive at the latter?
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2. No, I understood completely. I'm asking, if the default UI is so useless as to make enmity management impossible, what "better" UI solution you'd propose. I had little to no trouble minimizing excess enmity with the default UI.

3. You're strawmanning again. I've not asked for the return of Enmity skills.

4. Mob AI and stuns/interrupts are not mutually exclusive.

What's next? Mobs can't have more than a single AI script because we couldn't then have active mitigation? We can't have involved rotations because then we couldn't make use of Interject? None of these things conflict with each other.

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1. Whether it start at max or 0, whether it regens over time or not, whether it is gained via GCDs or not, at the end of the day, the mechanic is, keep it between 2 values with things that manipulate the value. If you are forced out of the ideal range, you get back in as quick as possible. Trying to adopt this into the existing jobs is not going to work, it has enough complexity to warrant a whole job based around it.

2. Yes, that is my point. There is no way to do it without numerical values, but I guarantee SE will not put numbers onto enmity that we can see by default, which then means you cannot have a mechanic that requires you to stay a bit ahead of the DPS.

3. Going back and re-reading past posts, it seems I did misunderstand/miss a detail. Neither of us want the old enmity system back, you just want something different to replace it, which then goes into the next points.

4. I never said they were, however, I fail to see what adding different mob scripts would actually do? You say they could be frenzied, wary, cocky, etc. but how does that translate into what I have to do differently as a tank to deal with it. What different scenarios could be made? I have already gone with a randomly attacking healer/dps, easy to deal with and if done too much, would get annoying. You could have a mob run away, that would get tiring fast having to chase it down. If you want a boss to have different 'moods' that is just different phases of a fight that might come in a random order (which could be a good thing to have more of). I suspect you have some ideas, I just want to know what they are.

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

This is a lie. Everyone who tanked in SB knows that agro management wasn't a thing for the MT, it was the OT to voke shirk on cooldown and everyone else managing their own hate with diversion or lucid. Get your head out of the clouds and remember the truth. It was not tank mechanic, it was the party mechanic that they hated to do.

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Maybe in extreme content. Oh but I was a bad tank that used my aggro combo so my opinion is already discarded anyway what was I thinking.

What is even truth anyway when people seem to have their own version of it across different modes?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

1. Whether it start at max or 0, whether it regens over time or not, whether it is gained via GCDs or not, at the end of the day, the mechanic is, keep it between 2 values with things that manipulate the value. If you are forced out of the ideal range, you get back in as quick as possible. Trying to adopt this into the existing jobs is not going to work, it has enough complexity to warrant a whole job based around it.

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I disagree, but only very mildly. I feel that as long as MP is to be a universal component, we may as well make use of it (though such does mean getting rid of Lucid Dream, scaling MP ticks to GCD speed, and so on). It'd also help balance out the rDPS value of having access to rez / greatly diminish any need for a rez tax, as getting someone back up means that much less burst potential over time available for the rezzer. It's not where I'd choose to use developer resources, unless they were damn near boundless, but any necessarily universal UI component (for the space for an MP bar must always be made, even if the bar need not always be shown) that is not also made a universal mechanic will at the very least be an eyesore.

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2. Yes, that is my point. There is no way to do it without numerical values, but I guarantee SE will not put numbers onto enmity that we can see by default, which then means you cannot have a mechanic that requires you to stay a bit ahead of the DPS.

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You know what, I probably am overestimating the devs here, given the amount of rather important QoL changes that, despite being desired since ARR, have seen no adjustment outside of modder communities. I concede this point. Sorry for being a bother.

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3. Going back and re-reading past posts, it seems I did misunderstand/miss a detail. Neither of us want the old enmity system back, you just want something different to replace it, which then goes into the next points.

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Any my apologies for thinking you were purposely strawmanning. Looking back on it, that detail hadn't been repeated for a couple posts.

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4. I never said they were, however, I fail to see what adding different mob scripts would actually do? You say they could be frenzied, wary, cocky, etc. but how does that translate into what I have to do differently as a tank to deal with it. What different scenarios could be made? I have already gone with a randomly attacking healer/dps, easy to deal with and if done too much, would get annoying. You could have a mob run away, that would get tiring fast having to chase it down. If you want a boss to have different 'moods' that is just different phases of a fight that might come in a random order (which could be a good thing to have more of). I suspect you have some ideas, I just want to know what they are.

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I don't have much time at the moment --I had a long convo with Shougun, I think, and a couple others about this back in the day, but I couldn't seem to locate the old threads. I'll try to give the short of it, but I'll need to situate it within some context first.

Namely, we wouldn't be able to drag-and-drop this upon our current tanks, given current undermechanics. For more shit happening that isn't controlled by tanks' merely existing (and being dps with occasional mitigation skills to press according to schedule) to be fun... tanks would need to be able to skillfully deal with that.

So how do we make tanks able to deal with shit, especially without relying on enmity tools? Well, primarily by making everyone able to perform a degree of tanking at a moment's notice, without need for enmity, which is best done by changing the way attacks work. Consider, for instance, if nearly all attacks were among four types:

• Split-damage/soakables,
• Smart-damage soakables (damage is distributed according to remaining eHP)
• Degradable cleaves (damage is decreased cumulatively by mitigation, and perhaps a further amount per hit, as it moves through its victims), or
• First-intercepted skillshots (it hits whoever's first in its path or emanation)

At that point, you don't actually need to be a Tank to 'tank' (in the sense of defending others); instead, being a Tank would simply give some obvious synergies, such as having a larger hidden/secondary hitbox that'd be supersede other interceptees' if and only if another is hit or reducing the total damage dealt by any soak in which it contributes by its mitigation (probably OP, and should instead work akin to smart-damage soakables, but w/e).

Further, you perhaps give more some Tanks (Paladin, at the very least) to-ally gap-closers, a bit more abundant ability to suppress enemy damage directly (rather than only via diverting attacks to you and then mitigating them), more integral and frequent use of job-thematic ability by which to protect or replenish the party (think Dark Missionary revisions, like Passage of Arms being way more available, Warrior getting a more versatile War Cry mechanic in place of just a dull raid barrier, etc.).

Okay, now we're finally on a trajectory that, at least from the Tank perspective, could deal with more varied mob behaviors.

Now, why would I even want that, though, in general? Primarily, because I see Tanks as a role whose purpose is to increase the ratio of party damage done to party damage taken through leveraging (at least momentarily) above-average eHP and/or threat to manipulate enemies, and I want to do more with that. Secondly, because I want there to be content that isn't a set DDR experience. I want variety not just in fights, but within a given fight, at least across certain content types. That means there need to be factors by which to generate alternate events. I'm not looking for "smarter AI" (which just leads to us getting the absolute poorest showing out of our on-paper capacities as they kick our asses with a given set of stats and abilities finally well utilized), but simply at least a pretense of our fighting an enemy, rather than striking dummy, and the variance that ought to contain.

The (bareness of the) current enmity system basically forbids that, which is why I want to revise it. Let's put it this way: no matter what changes we might imagine have, in the enemy's mind, occurred over the fight, the enmity calculations will remain exactly the same. Even if, after a whole few lines of monologuing, two ASTs instantly heal the whole party back from 1 HP to full in just over a GCD's time, nothing would change. Even if the healers, repeatedly, leave all but the tanks at just enough HP to survive the next raid-wide, nothing would change. There are no thresholds under which a fight can differ based on player behavior. Now, while I'd be as pissed as anyone if the boss left the nearly dead party to slowly regen the first time around only to, without any warning, decide simply to finish them off the next time, but that's where you utilize those kind of clues and make use of your tanks not just as people who go 123 while aiming the enemy out, but actually have to thwart the enemy's offenses. If there are times when the boss will go for the most wounded target, or attempt to just maximize damage across all your squishies, that introduces new considerations to tanking -- especially regarding positioning and use of defensive CDs.

Now, the far end of that pipedream even involves actually turning the enemy into something like a player, with a given body of characteristics, skills and resources and certain thresholds (unknown to it) that may unlock further buffs, skills, and resources such that you'd want to have a Paladin especially earn its hatred for a time until it attempts to unleash a party-wipe skill focused solely on that PLD (who Hallows it) while your Warrior soaks lighter cleaves for a flanking group, sharing lifesteal buffs based on proximity before taking the higher part of the mob's attention when it realizes it may die --putting it into a panic so it burns defensive resources when you're actually overextended anyways-- etc., etc. But, for the start it's just a matter of giving tanks more to do and shaking up fights a bit, giving us some further reason for our actions beyond just "heal everyone to at least Y amount by time X:XX" or "hold at least one point of Enmity above any non-tank".

Aside from HP, modern-day resources have largely become specific to the job you are playing. In general, this is because each job wants to use resources in different ways making it hard to maintain a statically typed resource. MP is also effectively trending its way out of the battle system too.

Considering that in it's peak MP was used by: PLD, DRK, BRD, SMN, BLM, and healers. It lost BRD with the changes to its songs but gained RDM. However, BLM effectively doesn't use MP since it innately levels itself out. PLD barely used (and uses) it, and DRK just siphons it and innately levels it like BLM. RDM for most of its lifespan hardly worried about MP unless it became a raise turret. In its DoT peak, SMN was left as the only damage dealing job that made thoughtful and careful use of MP over a long period. Healers (mostly to this day) are much like BLM in that their job auto levels their MP using their job mechanics (there are outliers, yes).

In the modern game, PLD really doesn't need to worry about MP at all unless for some reason it needs to become a holy healer turret. DRK and BLM auto-level their MP usage. Healers, in general, have MP management tools in place that sustain them (again, some outliers). This leaves RDM and SMN, but as long as Lucid Dreaming is used frequently their MP usage is much like BLM. On death, only healers will majorly struggle coming back to full usefulness for their role solely due to MP. Even when RDM and SMN become raise turrets that will not cut them off from doing damage due to low MP, they simply can no longer continue as a raise turret.

I may be oversimplifying and stretching some points, but the main takeaway is that jobs are moving away from statically typed resources to dynamically typed resources that are specific to their job. This is very evident based on the continued explosion of job gauges and resources. So, instead of bringing back the staticness of TP and aggro, perhaps suggest ideas that are more specific to the jobs these resources used to affect and make them rewarding for that job's system.

No one really cares for the TP system because it worked the same way for all tanks, melee DPS, and ranged physical DPS. It restricted them all equally too. Aggro was a function of specific combos but also relied on other party members doing something that only benefited the performance of a tank (which also included melee DPS and ranged physical DPS casting "aggro shrouds" on others). Instead, maybe a PLD has to use various oaths for future attacks (alongside sword oaths). Or maybe increased aggro is a result of using a Fell Cleave on WAR. For resource management in general, Square Enix could easily keep developing the specific job resources already in place and expand them to more actions with increased benefits and rewards for that specific job.

I can easily see MP removed in a future X.0 release replacing it with more burden on job-specific resources.

Honestly, most tanks are too bad to handle that.
Its still not uncommon to die as a healer because the tanks can't do agro. Lets not even get into their inability to manage their damage pulling half the damage and then just afking hoping the healer fixes everything.

Aggro management is an outdated and annoying mechanic, no thanks.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Aggro management is an outdated and annoying mechanic, no thanks.

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I’ll take it over feeling like a target dummy could do my work. Just program in it to do defense CD at these points and let it go.

Like you don’t need to give me aggro just give me something to worry about that doesn’t ruin the run. Savage isn’t the answer here anymore than it is over on the healers being bored.

I asked this before; what enjoyment do people get out of tanking these days, I’m curious cause it seems I’m just missing something here.

I started playing in 4.2 so that’s my point of reference. I still prefer pretty much everything about how gameplay/jobs worked in SB.

I remember when they announced they were removing TP I was like, well, okay… but why aren’t they removing MP too then? It’s literally the exact same thing? And I still feel that way. If they’re going to remove and/or decrease resource management across the board like they did with ShB, then why not just get rid of MP as well? It’s a pointless resource now.

Literally the only two jobs in the game now that actually have to at least sort of manage their MP are DRK and BLM, both of which could easily have their own custom job gauges to maintain.

PLD just uses it to do a combo that never conflicts with anything, this has nothing to manage. Or to spam a heal that should only ever be used if all healers and raisers are dead in dungeon content. Again, if it was really important they could have their own custom joh gauge, like a Spirit Energy or something.

Everyone else just pushes Lucid Dreaming if they get to half MP. That’s not difficult. It requires no thought, and no consequence, it’s just a single fix-all button you press sometimes. It’s not compelling in any way, it’s just boring. Why have a resource bar that only 3 out of 19 jobs even have to think about?

Tanking was certainly much more fun back then as well. I really liked the tank stances. It was a good way to make tanking accessible but still allow players to improve themselves. Newer or less skilled players could simply stay in defensive stance. While damage stance would allow more experienced players to be rewarded with a higher damage output for being able to better manage their aggro. On top of all that, the removal of tank stance is what gutted WAR to be the in the miserable state it is in now. Tanking was just better back then. I found everything about the game more fun back then. :(

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Maybe in extreme content. Oh but I was a bad tank that used my aggro combo so my opinion is already discarded anyway what was I thinking.

What is even truth anyway when people seem to have their own version of it across different modes?

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That's the issue though. Using your aggro combo usually meant you were noticeably undergeared relative to your DPS, the party wasn't using their aggro tools or you lacked a Ninja. It was almost never a tank specific mechanic they thought about. Even if you did have to aggro combo, I don't see how that radically changes anything. You use the combo once, maybe twice in the entire fight and never think about it again.

More often than not, it caused many DPS deaths as they refused to press Diversion as "aggro is a tank's job!!!!!" I don't miss that whining for a second.

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Originally Posted by Haventale

Tanking was certainly much more fun back then as well. I really liked the tank stances. It was a good way to make tanking accessible but still allow players to improve themselves. Newer or less skilled players could simply stay in defensive stance. While damage stance would allow more experienced players to be rewarded with a higher damage output for being able to better manage their aggro. On top of all that, the removal of tank stance is what gutted WAR to be the in the miserable state it is in now. Tanking was just better back then. I found everything about the game more fun back then. :(

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The problem was it never actually functioned like a reward but rather a punishment due to FF being a damage centric game above all else. There was never any tangible benefit to sitting in tank stance throughout the fight but there was a massive detriment. You were throwing away upwards 1,000+ damage for basically nothing. For perspective sake, tank stance was the equivalent of permanent Weakness. Now the trade off was supposed to be that taking less damage meant things were easier but that isn't how encounters are designed. None of the Stormblood fights did remotely enough damage to warrant using it outside of a very brief aggro grab—if that. Even Ultimate didn't require it, though UCoB certain made a more convincing argument than Savage ever did.

Put simply, tank stance only punished inexperienced players with a massive damage penalty.

Furthermore, Warrior wasn't gutted because tank stances were removed. You never touched Inner Beast outside one day prog. Warrior has essentially been the same job since the 4.2 rework introduced Inner Release.

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Originally Posted by Superskull85

I can easily see MP removed in a future X.0 release replacing it with more burden on job-specific resources.

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If it does, I'd hardly mind outside of the simply fact that yet more information will likely be excluded from our party UI.

With Stormblood release: Does my SCH have AF left? No idea.

Following this: Can my other healer even hard-rez? No idea.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I’ll take it over feeling like a target dummy could do my work. Just program in it to do defense CD at these points and let it go.

Like you don’t need to give me aggro just give me something to worry about that doesn’t ruin the run. Savage isn’t the answer here anymore than it is over on the healers being bored.

I asked this before; what enjoyment do people get out of tanking these days, I’m curious cause it seems I’m just missing something here.

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I just like being a tank. It's not that complicated. I don't need mechanics that vanish at higher levels of play to have fun. Being able to maintain control of a situation is fun enough on its own.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

I think the game moved past the point of 2.0-4.2 tank design. At this point I would just like to see auto cleaves from bosses again to teach dps to respect the front of the boss and to teach tanks how to face the boss away from the party.

Multiple things are to blame with how easy and simple tanking has become at the cost of accessibility but I think better tool tips would help as the first step. An instance at like lvl 30 that "tests" you current job role would go a long way in acclimating newer players. Nothing crazy just a simple game of hold aggro and keep mobs away from a target.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

I think the game moved past the point of 2.0-4.2 tank design. At this point I would just like to see auto cleaves from bosses again to teach dps to respect the front of the boss and to teach tanks how to face the boss away from the party.

Multiple things are to blame with how easy and simple tanking has become at the cost of accessibility but I think better tool tips would help as the first step. An instance at like lvl 30 that "tests" you current job role would go a long way in acclimating newer players. Nothing crazy just a simple game of hold aggro and keep mobs away from a target.

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I think I would prefer them to do that than actually bring back old enmity management, and in hindsight, would've been a much better way to go about it imo. I'll take back dps stance back with open arms. We have shirk and provoke if we need to pass it to another tank (bearing that in mind, would be nice if we could use shirk on other tanks in alliance raids...)

I agree on bringing back auto cleaves too, I've started to see dps stand with me more often now and get erased in certain dungeons/raids and not others...it would be a welcome return to let dps know as far as I'm concerned.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

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Tell that to cure 1 spammers who still insist Freecure is good.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Tell that to cure 1 spammers who still insist Freecure is good.

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Gives me conniptions.

Do they even have a reason they keep Freecure in the game instead of just evolving Cure I to Cure II?

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I think the game moved past the point of 2.0-4.2 tank design. At this point I would just like to see auto cleaves from bosses again to teach dps to respect the front of the boss and to teach tanks how to face the boss away from the party.

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Indeed it moved "past" that.. or regressed. But semantics.

Onto the 2nd thing you mention here.. I actually would like to see more non floor marked bosses like pre-nerf coincounter from Aurum vale but the fact they implemented a "nerf" to him like like 8 years later tells me it's "cool" to blow engaging content that makes you desire to pay to attention out the window for the sake of people who are going to play the game for a month and unsubscribe because random "asian mmo grinder" came out and MMORPG.com said it's the greatest thing they ever got a chance to play because screenshots. With double thumbs up editor approval.

I'd like to see more bizarro "boss" encounter design. Don't be afraid to get a little weird. And when I'm saying weird, imagine having to fight a kraken style boss underwater, and people that are sufficiently leveled as monk get the ability to use specific actions to restrain tentacles, so the dps have an easier time dps'ing.. or things like that.

Instead what we get is extremely telegraphed hur durr yawnfest for 7-12 mins per "queue". yeah occasionally I derp step into yellow markers in the floor after drinking like 9 beers or something on the weekend but, they willingly show they gut content that's been there for nearly a decade just totally randomly and out of the blue, while going forward and making everything in a dungeon as extremely boring as humanly possible. This trend will continue, and people like me will continue to bitch. Nothing will change except some new tier of making this the most mind numblingly dumb ass experience possible will come to fruition. And people will continue to praise the 'accessibilty" of the game. I mean if I wanted mind numbing non-interactivity I'd watch CSI or something dumbassness on the tele. I want to be mentally stimulated and engage in "content" if i'm gonna play a video game. Not laugh because I didn't move out of an aoe and took like 7% overall health damage from the main boss of a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

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I mean, I'd go for that anyways. One less button-press of bloat outside of multi-tank content in which I'll have more burst than the other tank but don't actually want to tank for... reasons? (And even that could just be handled with Provoke leaving a persisting enmity modifier, with only one instance of the debuff possible per target. Voila.)

Generally, we'd less often have reason to have our enmity mods off than on, so making the more commonly useful state the passive and the more situational the choice seems plenty reasonable.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I mean, I'd go for that anyways. One less button-press of bloat outside of multi-tank content in which I'll have more burst than the other tank but don't actually want to tank for... reasons? (And even that could just be handled with Provoke leaving a persisting enmity modifier, with only one instance of the debuff possible per target. Voila.)

Generally, we'd less often have reason to have our enmity mods off than on, so making the more commonly useful state the passive and the more situational the choice seems plenty reasonable.

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I don’t agree with the sentiment, but I agree currently there’s no point anymore. Just put the fork in it and call it.

I mean at this point we only have this pseudo aggro because “oh we need to make sure the tank is the one eating damage, cause trinity”.

Through if they make the stance give increased DPS like what Marxam suggested, haven’t we just Gone in a circle somewhat? Both tanks are going to slam that DPS gain MT or OT so why have the stance at all?

Why is this in the tank forums? Aggro management belongs into the DPS forums because it was hardly our responsibility in endgame content. By removing that they made it easier on the DPS and tanks don't suffer from bad DPS not knowing how to use it anymore.

This is coming from someone that has played Ninja in ARR/HW and MT since end of HW until today. I had more responsibility on Aggro when I played NIN than I had ever on tank.

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Originally Posted by Atreides

Why is this in the tank forums? Aggro management belongs into the DPS forums because it was hardly our responsibility in endgame content. By removing that they made it easier on the DPS and tanks don't suffer from bad DPS not knowing how to use it anymore.

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I could give you reasons but I’m just done.

If people hate aggro, care only for DPS, the bosses do most the tank work by themselves now, and DRK is still held up as best tank but weakest at it; why does the tank role exist?

Because DPS can’t? Weeeee. Riveting experience for all.

I’ve brought this up before; remove Trinity, make it a free for all rocket tag dodge style system. They won’t of course, if for no other reason than Healers must heal it seems.

But Tanks must tank? Show me how we do so, please. I’m missing where the tanks are.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

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I don't know what kind of content you've been doing but tanking has it's own responsibility, position bosses, tankbusters aswell as mitigating AoE damage, FFXIV has plenty of mechanic heavy fights that keep you busy, granted aggro management is not a big concern unless you bork a tankswap somehow...

But this thread is named "bring back..." there is nothing to bring back outside of ressource management, because other than that aggro was a group efford not a tank efford, we had aggro combos yes but we did it maybe once in our opener and thats it. DPS had to use Diversion, Shadewalker etc... to funnel us with enmity. So bringing back aggro management implies to bring back DPS responsibility for aggro. That would require a huge rework yet again.

Other than that, yes I couldn't care less about aggro management, if it's there I deal with it, if it's not then I have no issues either. I can adapt, the reason they made aggro so easy is mostly because others tried to mimic the good tanks and tried to deal more damage but failed. SE doesn't want to cater to the few good players but casuals.