Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I think I said this in another thread before but I would return stances back to tanks, just with a different approach.

Make the DPS stances provide a stacking benefit the longer you can stay in the stance (obviously with a cap) and the tank stance provide mitigation benefits.
Then cut down on tanks' mitigation cooldowns so you can't simply 30%+30% or 20%+10%+30% every buster, make tank stances a necessity to survive mechanics at some point.

Then it becomes about deciding when to use your defensive stance to survive and when to use your defensive cooldowns so you can stay in DPS stance.
Enmity doesn't even factor in here, because the most interesting part of old stances were the job mechanics attached to them.

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What this will look like in practice is the tank stance will only be used when busters are completely unsurvivable without the mitigation provided by the tank stance and ignored the remainder of the fight. The stacking damage cap will be the baseline damage and the tank stance will be in effect a toggle-able mitigation cooldown with a damage down debuff baked into it. It will be worse than the old tank stances that reduced damage dealt, because it will take time to ramp back up again.
There were no significant mechanics with the old stances, as virtually no one used them outside of the first few GCDs of the fight, and that was only to secure initial enmity.



Speaking in general regarding the thread - I don't want enmity management back, no. It was never a significant part of content, even with aggro resets like in Neo Ex-Death. It only served as a checklist of skills for the MT to use at the beginning of the fight that sat there unused, cluttering hotbars after that. I would rather be more responsible for shielding/covering allies, picking up adds/controlling the layout of the arena through positioning, while still contributing meaningfully to actually defeating the boss/fight. I think that the boss teleporting to the middle for the party to do dance mechanics is overdone. However, if they are going to change it, they also need to address bosses pausing during each auto-attack. It makes movement janky and unfun.

So this thread got completely off topic due to what I assume is people starting a fight for no reason, and never actually giving a detailed opinion on why they don't want enmity management to come back/be meaningful, and then decided to throw in gearing up problems because they play tank to gear up their DPS/Healer which raises the question; Why aren't you gearing up tank first if you're playing tank...? It makes no sense to NOT gear up your tank first if you're playing tank...

I gave a detailed explanation of not only why I want it to come back and gave detailed explanation of how enmity combos can co-exist with the current tank stance system, but also made sure to that enmity combos were going to be hypothetically DPS neutral in case enmity combos did come back because there is no other way to balance enmity combos in both single target and AoE other than outright remove them...

And then someone commented on how Yoshi-P wanted to a avoid a toxic environment, and that toxic environment already happened REGARDLESS if Yoshi-P and team removed enmity management or not, ASSUMING this information is true, a damned if you/damned if you don't scenario, because the exact same people who don't want enmity management to come back are probably the same people who wanted it gone in the first place and don't want to have the entertain the possibility of why people want this to come back or even entertain the idea of enmity management coming back in a meaningful way, all because they didn't want to be responsible for for their own bad behavior...

It would also help if the devs balanced bosses properly instead of being "do this thing right or you/the whole party dies and you have to start over from the beginning" for their boss fight designs... players are gonna get hit one way or another, this is a fact, sometimes it's a skill issue, sometimes it's just someone having a bad day and need to have some fun to try and make the day better but it doesn't always go according to plan...

Holding threat doesn't create better gameplay somehow, currently I like how in Raids you can pass the threat around with your co tank its like a "high Five Bro" moment. I've been a tank in various games for around 20 yrs I enjoy FF14s take on threat.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

So this thread got completely off topic due to what I assume is people starting a fight for no reason, and never actually giving a detailed opinion on why they don't want enmity management to come back/be meaningful, and then decided to throw in gearing up problems because they play tank to gear up their DPS/Healer which raises the question; Why aren't you gearing up tank first if you're playing tank...? It makes no sense to NOT gear up your tank first if you're playing tank...

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I mean, talking about gear and how that will affect the tanks ability to hold enmity is crucial when deciding if the system should be worth coming back, but only AFTER a baseline of an enmity system has been established.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

I gave a detailed explanation of not only why I want it to come back and gave detailed explanation of how enmity combos can co-exist with the current tank stance system, but also made sure to that enmity combos were going to be hypothetically DPS neutral in case enmity combos did come back because there is no other way to balance enmity combos in both single target and AoE other than outright remove them...

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If you have 2 combos, one that is just made for damage and the other that builds enmity, but they are DPS neutral with each other, what is the point of the damage combo if the enmity combo does that, and more, which is something I addressed in post #10.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

I want enmity management to come back, but at this point I think Dark Knight and Warrior should be the only tanks with enmity combos, even if it is just lip service and the enmity combos are DPS neutral.

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Reasoning for this?

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Gunbreaker was clearly not designed with enmity combos and I'm okay with at least 2 tanks not having enmity combos, but I'm also okay with enmity toggles existing for all tanks so long as tanks that are the main tank know how to use Shirk on the off tank in case main tank dies... and therein lies the problem, most tanks don't know how to do that, and instead wait for the off tank to turn on tank stance once the main tank has established enough aggro, which usually means A.) never, B.) until the main tank dies, and by that point all the raisers are dead or C.) both...

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This took a little while to parse in my head, but to lay it out clearer, you want all tanks to have an enmity toggle (what is what we have now), however, you also want to give DRK/WAR an enmity combo that is DPS neutral with their damage combo, making the damage combo redundant, but you also want them both to be responsible for keeping the off tank second in enmity, despite the fact they have enmity toggles to keep their enmity high. Does that sound about right?

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

And it's clear that most players don't know how to use Shirk as main tank when in a group with a second tank, and off tanks are afraid of hitting provoke without tank stance out of fear for either A.) cleaving someone(usually an off tank positioning problem but still) or B.)the healers or DPS yell at them for using Provoke(again, usually an off tank positioning problem) and with close friends this not too much of an issue since they're just messing around having fun, but anything outside of that is a recipe for disaster...

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In the current climate, all it takes is the off tank to turn on tank stance after the main tank has established an enmity lead.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Dark Knight and Warrior can still have Provoke for forced tank swaps, Shirk for enmity dump while main tanking in case off tank doesn't have enmity combo AND forced tank swaps, and tank stance for just main tanking, while having enmity combos that are DPS neutral for off tanking...

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So, what happens when you have both a PLD/GNB? or are you forcing a paradigm where the group will have WAR/DRK and PLD/GNB?

Sorry, you claimed that this is a 'detailed explanation', but it is far from it. You firstly haven't provided a clear explanation as to what your goal is for each tank, I had to read between the lines to get out what I did. You also haven't said why you want to limit Provoke and Shirk to only DRK/WAR and why only they get enmity combos. From there, how does the enmity combo behave with the enmity toggle? Can they hold enmity without it? Do they still need it? I already addressed what the point of the 2 combos are if they are the same, but nothing here seems to make sense.

As for PLD/GNB, why do they NOT get enmity combos in your theoretical example? Why do they not get enmity manipulation in Provoke and Shirk? Is their only way to control enmity via the enmity toggle?

Speaking of enmity toggle, that is exactly what we have now. Does your proposed idea change it in any way (except for maybe a reduced multiplier on the enmity)? If not, does it then not seem redundant having both enmity control via combos AND the toggle?

Again, I fail to see how this was a 'detailed explanation' when there are so many basic holes that need to be filled. It just seems like you want to take current enmity and change it up for no reason, whilst ignoring the reason why people want the old enmity system back in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

What this will look like in practice is the tank stance will only be used when busters are completely unsurvivable without the mitigation provided by the tank stance and ignored the remainder of the fight. The stacking damage cap will be the baseline damage and the tank stance will be in effect a toggle-able mitigation cooldown with a damage down debuff baked into it. It will be worse than the old tank stances that reduced damage dealt, because it will take time to ramp back up again.
There were no significant mechanics with the old stances, as virtually no one used them outside of the first few GCDs of the fight, and that was only to secure initial enmity.

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Yes you will only need the tank stance if you don't have cooldowns to survive but this still involves decision making on when to use said stance specific to the fight you're doing.

And if you think trying to maximize the %crit increase from Deliverance through proper gauge management or dealing with the MP drain from Darkside weren't mechanics then idk what to tell you.

The problem is if you envison the combat system as a lovely bowl of delicious stew. then what the devs have basically done over the years is take all the ingrediants out.

emnity may have been the potatoes,
TP the carrots,
MP the leaks,
Debuffs, the beans,
old ast cards the lentils,
cleric stance the onion.
etc etc. All added together made a fairly nice tasty stew.

what the combat sytem has become in recent XIV is nothing more than a bowl of water.. and if all they did was add emnity back then it becomes just a rather boring bowl of boiled potatoes and still lacking all the other ingrediants that made it tasty and flavoursome.

any one ingrediant on its own doesnt make or break a combat system it's how they all work together. and you can't make a delicous bowl of stew without a delicious mix of ingrediants.

I wouldn't mind having it back, since I do miss it, sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

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I play on the Crystal Data Center and... let's just say that the players there are "special" and that's the nicest way I can put it...

And I think you have to play on Crystal Data Center for long enough to even understand why I would want enmity management to come back...

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The problem is if you envision the combat system as a lovely bowl of delicious stew. then what the devs have basically done over the years is take all the ingredients out.

enmity may have been the potatoes,
TP the carrots,
MP the leaks,
Debuffs, the beans,
old ast cards the lentils,
cleric stance the onion.
etc., etc.
All added together made a fairly nice tasty stew.

what the combat system has become in recent XIV is nothing more than a bowl of water.. and if all they did was add emnity back then it becomes just a rather boring bowl of boiled potatoes and still lacking all the other ingredients that made it tasty and flavorful.

any one ingredient on its own doesn't make or break a combat system it's how they all work together. and you can't make a delicious bowl of stew without a delicious mix of ingredients.

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In regards to the food analogy, I would have gone with the "you ask for the chef to make grilled cheese sandwich and they make a culinary monstrosity instead" but the Stew analogy works too... though old AST cards coming back would need their own separate thread(if one doesn't exist already) on the healer forums, same with Cleric stance, which then raise the question; what part of the game is the meat and what kind of meat...?

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

And if you think trying to maximize the %crit increase from Deliverance through proper gauge management or dealing with the MP drain from Darkside weren't mechanics then idk what to tell you.

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Neither of those were the tank stance, and no, there was not a giant interplay. You were not holding max stacks of deliverance and overcapping to benefit from the crit rate. Darkside, although requiring management, was not like Deliverance. It was not the opposite stance of grit, it was a self buff.

If we are talking about the tank stances, Grit and Defiance, again, I am going to say there was no management. You turned them on before the pull, used a combo (WAR wasn't even penalized for this because they had unchained) and then turned it off for the remainder of the fight. They had mitigation attached to them, and no one used them for that.

The part you are doubling down on (the reduced damage) was one of the biggest complaints from this entire forum from DRK/PLD players. You could achieve a higher level of decision-making by keeping current skills and giving more things outside of ultimate to mitigate, whether that be more busters, or overall higher damage.
Tying X% damage to not using an ability, an ability that you really probably won't have to use outside of savage/ult, would likely make it a dead skill for people who don't do that content as they adjust to having just one less tank cooldown. To me, it makes more sense with a powerful cooldown to not make people actively avoid using it until they can't get away with it, but rather give multiple reasons to use it and you have to pick and choose which is the best situation to do so.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

In regards to the food analogy, I would have gone with the "you ask for the chef to make grilled cheese sandwich and they make a culinary monstrosity instead" but the Stew analogy works too... though old AST cards coming back would need their own separate thread(if one doesn't exist already) on the healer forums, same with Cleric stance, which then raise the question; what part of the game is the meat and what kind of meat...?

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The Meat of the combat system would obviously be the rotations and stuff, that we still have in game but the meat on its own isn't as good with the ingredients added in, also the meat is left overs from shadowbringers a bit stale... and did i find a fly in the meat??? aka the 120 raid buff system and burst meta.

But what we need is fresh food, a new take on combat is strongly needed, not just tank aggro management but in general we need those ingredients that make the combat actually enjoyable, Tanks need more Varity and just more to do other then being defensive DPS, healers also need varity but in the opposite direction more buttons to press! old astro or at least something similar...

Personally I hope we don't get more leftovers from shadow bringers, SHB was fun! But a watered down version of the same thing gets stale and boring really quickly, Right now i See they either double down on the SHB "leftovers" or actually make us something fresh and new.

...Man do I love when the forums are bugging out and won't actually let me edit a post properly.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

Neither of those were the tank stance, and no, there was not a giant interplay. You were not holding max stacks of deliverance and overcapping to benefit from the crit rate. Darkside, although requiring management, was not like Deliverance. It was not the opposite stance of grit, it was a self buff.

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I probably should've mentioned that I was specifically talking about 4.2 Deliverance because despite the rework making warrior significantly easier it was pretty much the only time where it had some resource management, due to several limiting factors.

-Every 10 points of gauge gave you 1% crit so you wanted to keep it as high as possible without overcapping.

-You want to Upheaval on cooldown which will cost you 20 gauge every 30 seconds.

-Onslaught allows you to spend 20 gauge at minimal dps cost because it wasn't far behind Fell Cleave on PPG, allowing you to not only manipulate your gauge but also manipulate how many Fell Cleaves you do in X amount of time and therefore manipulate Infuriate and your GCDs

-Storm's Eye only lasted 30 seconds, you rarely ever wanted to drop the buff but you also wanted to use it as few times as possible. At the same time you needed at least 17 seconds left on Eye when you went into Inner Release.

-Every Fell Cleave reduces the cooldown of Infuriate by 5 seconds, you have only a single stack of the ability which meant you wanted to use it on cooldown. Inner Release shaved 25 seconds off of Infuriate which meant it could come up during your IR burst but you also couldn't spend any gauge during those 10 seconds.


All of these were restrictions that needed to be kept track of and managed to maximize dps by not wasting resources. Granted only the %crit increase actually had anything to do with stances and most of it was managing your Eye buff, Infuriate cooldown, Inner Release and your gauge, but they certainly made for more nuanced gameplay than spam 1-2-3, dump gauge whenever and IR every 60 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

If we are talking about the tank stances, Grit and Defiance, again, I am going to say there was no management. You turned them on before the pull, used a combo (WAR wasn't even penalized for this because they had unchained) and then turned it off for the remainder of the fight. They had mitigation attached to them, and no one used them for that.

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Correct, tank stances in 4.X were simply a case of "Use them during the opener to establish snap aggro and then forget about them for the rest of the fight" because you didn't actually need the mitigation they provided. Which is why I want to make them a necessity to survive certain mechanics, you just decide when it happens.

It then becomes about learning the fight and figuring out when you should drop your DPS stance buff to mitigate a mechanic in exchange for being able to keep the damage buff for longer later down the line.
Let's say in an 8:30 fight you would be forced to use your tank stance 3-4 times because other mechanics have forced you to use your active mitigation, but you get to decide when to use your tank stance and save your mitigation cooldowns for points in the fight where there are long stretches of full uptime to maximize the damage bonus from your DPS stance.

It doesn't even need to be a direct dps buff, it could be something like increased MP regeneration while in Darkside. The stacking dps buff was simply the first thing that came to mind to make maximizing your time in DPS stance relevant while not outright slapping a damage down on the tank stance.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

The part you are doubling down on (the reduced damage) was one of the biggest complaints from this entire forum from DRK/PLD players. You could achieve a higher level of decision-making by keeping current skills and giving more things outside of ultimate to mitigate, whether that be more busters, or overall higher damage.

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Would it technically be a damage nerf? I would call it being rewarded for using your tank stance at the optimal time to maximize your dps bonus but yes, technically you would lose damage from dropping your DPS stance.

I guess I just don't see having to sacrifice damage at certain points in a fight as this unspeakable horror.
I certainly wouldn't make the dps buff the ridiculous 20% that you lost by staying in tank stance previously.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

Tying X% damage to not using an ability, an ability that you really probably won't have to use outside of savage/ult, would likely make it a dead skill for people who don't do that content as they adjust to having just one less tank cooldown. To me, it makes more sense with a powerful cooldown to not make people actively avoid using it until they can't get away with it, but rather give multiple reasons to use it and you have to pick and choose which is the best situation to do so.

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True, it probably wouldn't see too much use in casual content but that's because the content is brain dead easy already. I don't need half of my defensive kit on current tanks in most content.

Our current mitigation is completely stale, the big decision boils down to "do I use my 120s+short mit here or my 90s+short mit, and then proceed to spam 1-2-3?" Adding another mitigation cooldown would do nothing to change that, especially not in content that already doesn't require our full 6.0 mitigation kits.

Alternatively you could also make it a necessity in casual content, but we all know how the current playerbase feels about being able to actually fail at something.

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

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Originally Posted by kuroashi_sanji

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

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But the old enmity system wouldn't change that at all. You just established enmity at the start, then swapped for the rest of the fight. You now have your enmity combo which is taking up button space which could be used for something else.

However, the question should be, why do you think enmity is the only thing that could be added that would make tanks interesting? Especially when, looking back on it, it done no such thing.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I personally want it back, but I don't think they'll ever revert it or try to think of a way to implement it better than it was (which would honestly just be buffing the enmity generation from tank stance so that the dps wouldn't need to use diversion/old lucid). They perhaps thought of that is my guess, but they ultimately decided on just making it impossible to fall off after a few GCD's.

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This would only reinforce the exact system that existed before: pull with Defiance, press Unchained and swap to Deliverance either after Main/Storm's Eye. Tanks proceed to voke/shirk periodically so they never have to turn on tank stance again.

Too many people have revisionist history when it comes to aggro. Tanks weren't stance dancing or really considering aggro whatsoever unless a DPS didn't press Division. In which case, they'd often let said DPS eat autos until Unchained or Shirk were off CD. If that system existed nowadays, tanks would sooner toss Nascent/HoC/TBN/Intervention on a DPS than switch to tank stance. The whole reason we have the system we do now is because tanks weren't ever going into tank stance anyway. So what's the point?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

But the old enmity system wouldn't change that at all. You just established enmity at the start, then swapped for the rest of the fight. You now have your enmity combo which is taking up button space which could be used for something else.

However, the question should be, why do you think enmity is the only thing that could be added that would make tanks interesting? Especially when, looking back on it, it done no such thing.

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Well, I don't like enmity management so much tbh, I think is a okay mechanic, but I only want more GCD for tanks, you know, doing 1-2-3 the entire fight is boring as hell, so that's why I want it back.
If SE don't bring back enmity management, but add more GCD to tanks, complexity and identity for them, I would be happy in either situation. I just want have fun with XIV like before ShB.

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Originally Posted by kuroashi_sanji

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

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They were already except the tank stance had a 20% damage down.
So people tried their best to avoid putting the tank stance on. Except it needed the other players to press their buttons and guess what, they didn't and still won't.
So SQEX removed the damage down. And this is where we are.

I don't want ARR/HW/SB Enmity management back, I just wish Shirk had a lower cooldown and would also transfer your enmity to the target for a few seconds.

Emnity is a joke now since a lone WAR can early pull a S-rank and easily stay aggroed over 100 other tanks

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Originally Posted by primarisgoazrr

Yo fellow tanks, it’s as the title says do we want enmity management back? If so how should we go about it? Would we still keep Tank stance? Or are things better the way they are now? Personally I think things are okay the way they are, but I would certainly be open to the idea of putting more enmity responsibility on the tank, it would just have to be better balanced than in StB(that’s when I started, maybe I was just new and it was a skill issue, not sure tbh). Maybe Provoke could have a shorter cooldown, Flash(and other tanks equivalent) could have a bigger radius and maybe be oGCD, and maybe other select skills could have increased enmity generation. Anyways what do you guys think?

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Take away provoke. Too many bad tanks think they have to hit it every time it's off cooldown, the worst one being last night when the other tank kept dying and provoking Shiva to cleave the rest of the raid. Shirk works just fine for tank swap mechanics.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

This is stupid, overall group damage output is still lower because the tank has to sacrifice damage to keep aggro

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Howso?

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

It's the same argument for a Healer using a GCD on healing to keep a DPS alive. One lost Glare will NEVER be equal to the lost DPS of the DPSer dying. Sometimes, it's so lopsided the WHM casting Cure 2 instead of Glare on the BLM so the BLM can stand there and finish that Flare cast is enough of a DPS gain that it makes it worth doing. If your DPSer getting gear is doing enough damage to rip agro off the Tank, it SHOULD be enough damage that it's a party DPS increase even with the Tank switching to a lower damage agro rotation.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

I think it's quite unneeded most of the time - not to mention most DPS would have to use quelling strikes again and healers use lucid to cut hate.

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To be fair, Healers basically use Lucid on CD at this point anyway, so nothing would really change as far as Healers are concerned. :)

I think the problem with SB enmity was that it was pretty much pointless. Even for PLD. Turn on agro stance. 1-2-Rage of Halone. Congratulations, you're now a mile ahead of even that overgeared BLM in enmity on the boss. Worst case scenario, you can flash it on later for a Rage of Halone or a Shield Lob if you're desperate...or just use that Provoke button you have sitting there feeling lonely. Yes, the tank stances reduced damage. You would THINK this would translate into "Tanks stay in them to reduce damage or 'flash' them for mitigation", right? Well, you would be wrong. In practice, it just meant Tanks would use some CD or another, or the healers would adjust.

The problem is, enmity Tank stance in ShB/EW is also worthless. You turn it on and that's it. Why not just have it be on all the time? "Because you may not be the main tank?" Shirk exists. Just give it a 30 sec CD. Problem solved. There's no reason for tank stances, as they presently exist, to exist. They could just make them passive like MNK's Greased Lightning and lower Shirk's CD to match Provoke's 30 sec. They're borderline obsolete as it is.

I think the IDEA of having tank stances has merit. The problem is the execution doesn't work that way now, and didn't in SB, which is why they made it into the ShB/EW version.

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I don't think that means we shouldn't try it, but the really haven't managed to get it right yet, either. I DO think having an enmity system should be a thing, I'm just not sure the how...

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Howso?

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

It's the same argument for a Healer using a GCD on healing to keep a DPS alive. One lost Glare will NEVER be equal to the lost DPS of the DPSer dying. Sometimes, it's so lopsided the WHM casting Cure 2 instead of Glare on the BLM so the BLM can stand there and finish that Flare cast is enough of a DPS gain that it makes it worth doing. If your DPSer getting gear is doing enough damage to rip agro off the Tank, it SHOULD be enough damage that it's a party DPS increase even with the Tank switching to a lower damage agro rotation.

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You ask how, so but you did the maths to show a lesser overall DPS output the moment you used a minus lmao

My point which is apparently oblivious to you is if MT has to be in a stance that sacrifices damage to generate more enmity, and use a lesser damage combo in the beginning of the fight where everyone bursts and pots, you're 3 GCD behind in your rotation for pretty much the rest of the fight. But the OT doesn't have to sacrifice damage, and is sync'd up with raid buffs seems pretty unfair.

And using healers as an example is poor as one GCD here or there doesn't disrupt an entire rotation, and more often than not healers, overloaded oGCD suit will cover most fights if used correctly to mitigate potential damage loss, the MT and the beginning of the fight does not have that option it's an arbitrary loss for no valuable gameplay added.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Howso?

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

It's the same argument for a Healer using a GCD on healing to keep a DPS alive. One lost Glare will NEVER be equal to the lost DPS of the DPSer dying. Sometimes, it's so lopsided the WHM casting Cure 2 instead of Glare on the BLM so the BLM can stand there and finish that Flare cast is enough of a DPS gain that it makes it worth doing. If your DPSer getting gear is doing enough damage to rip agro off the Tank, it SHOULD be enough damage that it's a party DPS increase even with the Tank switching to a lower damage agro rotation.

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This. What Ren said.

When looking at any job producing sustain, Enmity, or any other secondary output (i.e., anything that doesn't, in itself, cause the fight to eventually end -- which in XIV's case is only ever damage), you need to consider the intended difficulty of the content and, given that, what additional primary output (in XIV's case, damage -- though it'd be net HP generated in a heal-boss-to-X% HP fight, etc. if XIV every had any) that can be produced because of those secondary outputs.

If the devs decide that they want the fight to, even at 100% hyperoptimal play, take at least 7 minutes to clear at minimum ilvl... it hasn't taken longer because tanks deal less damage while DPS deal more, but simply because that's the amount of HP they decided to give the fight relative to what DPS any party, as a whole, can theoretically produce.

All that will have happened is that they've given tanks deeper swing in how much offense they can trade to Enmity or sustain (damage nullification + effective healing done)... or have pigeon-holed their total contribution more towards sustain or Enmity.


By all means, insist on tanks and healers not being pigeonholed too deeply into secondary outputs so they aren't eye-tearingly painful to level solo, but tanks and healers not doing nearly DPS-level damage atop their secondary outputs is an indicator of at least decent role-balance, rather than a reason content would have been made harder.

Said content is, again, tuned around the whole party's damage anyways. Those dynamics just affect the relationship between roles and the balance of secondary to primary outputs normal in their gameplay. They do not affect the total output; only tuning changes ultimately do that.

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All that being said, Enmity (or "threat", "aggro", etc.) is just a ridiculously shallow and bloated concept insofar as we've seen it used in XIV. It's literally just been a "Price is Right" mechanic wherein one guesses how much damage your top Damage-Dealer will produce over the fight and how badly they'll fail to use their aggro-reducing abilities (if they have any), and you ride out tank stance until you've exceeded that guessed-at amount by as little as possible, and then drop it for the rest of the fight.

And then it took up to 7 buttons (Savage Blade, Rage of Halone, Shield Oath, Sword Oath [to get back from Shield Oath], Provoke, Shirk, and Flash [though at least that one doubled as mitigation with diminishing returns]) just to support that shallow crap? Hard pass.


I'd be interested in a return to Enmity management only if it were replaced with something with actual available nuance, like mob script manipulation, Focus (like Enmity, but determining only the next special attack and built up more or less independently in just the brief time prior to the attack, such that a tank could force formerly "random-target" attacks to itself instead of a DPS or healer), etc., and wasn't just a simple tabled value that sees no interaction outside of being halved by certain actions.

Even then, I'd spend only one discrete button on it: either Provoke revamped to carry additional effects, or the tanks' respective <Tank Stance> keys, revamped to be capable of instant or near-instant aggro that would quickly fade unless sufficiently followed up on. Let positioning and timing handle the rest.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

You ask how, so but you did the maths to show a lesser overall DPS output the moment you used a minus lmao

My point which is apparently oblivious to you is if MT has to be in a stance that sacrifices damage to generate more enmity, and use a lesser damage combo in the beginning of the fight where everyone bursts and pots, you're 3 GCD behind in your rotation for pretty much the rest of the fight. But the OT doesn't have to sacrifice damage, and is sync'd up with raid buffs seems pretty unfair.

And using healers as an example is poor as one GCD here or there doesn't disrupt an entire rotation, and more often than not healers, overloaded oGCD suit will cover most fights if used correctly to mitigate potential damage loss, the MT and the beginning of the fight does not have that option it's an arbitrary loss for no valuable gameplay added.

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Okay, look, if you aren't going to be serious, then there's no point continuing the conversation.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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Okay, look, if you aren't going to be serious, then there's no point continuing the conversation.

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I was being serious though, do not assume for one second, after I pointed out a flaw in your argument.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

You ask how, so but you did the maths to show a lesser overall DPS output the moment you used a minus lmao

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The clear point there was that Job A losing some damage to provide some buff or secondary output instead doesn't necessarily (or even likely) equate to party DPS going down. See Dragoon vs. Samurai, for instance. Battle Litany existing, in place of greater direct DRG damage, does not fundamentally decrease the party's DPS. There's no reason to assume that content wouldn't be tuned to lower HP or DPS tuned to higher output in exchange for tanks being expected to use damage-sacrificing enmity actions.

I don't even want Enmity actions back, and it still makes plenty of sense.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

My point which is apparently oblivious to you is if MT has to be in a stance that sacrifices damage to generate more enmity, and use a lesser damage combo in the beginning of the fight where everyone bursts and pots, you're 3 GCD behind in your rotation for pretty much the rest of the fight. But the OT doesn't have to sacrifice damage, and is sync'd up with raid buffs seems pretty unfair.

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You don't delay your pot just because you're using your Enmity skills. They're Enmity have multipliers, not flat Enmity bonuses; the more damage you're doing, via the pot, the more Enmity you put out. So unless you'd overcap Enmity within the minimum amount of time for which you could increase your Enmity done (e.g., a single GCD or a single Enmity combo), it'd make zero difference to your pacing. Having +20% damage via pot/raidbuffs affecting an Enmity skill means you'll need that % appgcd less of an Enmity skill later on.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

And using healers as an example is poor as one GCD here or there doesn't disrupt an entire rotation, and more often than not healers, overloaded oGCD suit will cover most fights if used correctly to mitigate potential damage loss, the MT and the beginning of the fight does not have that option it's an arbitrary loss for no valuable gameplay added.

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Neither did Enmity skills disrupt rotation. There was always room aplenty around them and/or they literally shared roots with the other combo actions.

I disliked them because they were button bloat, providing very little gameplay compared to their button cost, but what you're suggesting would be an issue... was never an issue, even in the incredibly far from polished version we had previously.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Neither did Enmity skills disrupt rotation. There was always room aplenty around them and/or they literally shared roots with the other combo actions.

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Yes and no. They could potentially disrupt Paladin's rotation since the enmity combo did not regenerate any MP and if we go with aodhan's example of having to use your enmity combo at the start of the fight (which wasn't really the case historically) they would disrupt your opener.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Yes and no. They could potentially disrupt Paladin's rotation since the enmity combo did not regenerate any MP and if we go with aodhan's example of having to use your enmity combo at the start of the fight (which wasn't really the case historically) they would disrupt your opener.

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Even then, you started the fight with full MP, so even if you opened with Flash, using 1 or 2 RoHs in place of all RAs between GBs could not delay your Req phase (which wasn't used until after your entire FoF phase anyways, especially if MT).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Even then, you started the fight with full MP, so it could not delay your Req phase (which wasn't used until after your entire FoF phase anyways, especially if MT).

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I probably should've made it clearer that I was talking about two different scenarios here, scenario one being the use of your Enmity combo back in the day and scenario two being a theoretical with our current 6.0 kits.
1. Your Rage of Halone combo could disrupt your rotation later into the fight when you aren't sitting on full MP (back when Req needed 80% MP to function properly).

2. Using your enmity combo in the opener would mostly disrupt Dark Knight and Warrior nowadays and that is assuming we would bring those combos back as they were in Stormblood, where Butcher's Block would leave you 10 gauge short of a Fell Cleave and consequently unable to do a 3rd Inner Chaos under your pot and Power Slash would leave Dark Knight lacking in MP and Blood.

It would be even more nonsensical if you had to immediately do an enmity combo since that would mean warrior would have to delay Eye of the Storm and Inner Release by 3 GCDs.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I probably should've made it clearer that I was talking about two different scenarios here. Your Rage of Halone combo could disrupt your rotation later into the fight when you aren't sitting on full MP (back when Req needed 80% MP to function properly).

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Ahh, so not what Aodhan was worried about (the opener). Okay, I see your point, then.

Though, if I recall correctly, you only needed 4 Riot Blades per minute to reach 80% MP (alternating 4 and 5 RBs/min to maintain 80+%)?... Which meant you could still spend the majority of the time between Goring Blades on Savage-Halone and your MP still would be fine?

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Using your enmity combo in the opener would mostly disrupt Dark Knight and Warrior nowadays and that is assuming we would bring those combos back as they were in Stormblood, where Butcher's Block would leave you 10 gauge short of a Fell Cleave and consequently unable to do a 3rd Inner Chaos under your pot and Power Slash would leave Dark Knight lacking in MP and Blood.

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This seems a more valid concern, but at the same time...

...Does it really hurt WAR's gameplay experience for it to possibly then have more important things to worry about than generating its 50th point of gauge by 31.8 seconds into the fight (assuming Tincture at p+4.8)?

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It would be even more nonsensical if you had to immediately do an enmity combo since that would mean warrior would have to delay Eye of the Storm and Inner Release by 3 GCDs.

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On this, I'd absolutely agree, though I imagine in this hypothetical scenario of Enmity returning to XIV that Provoke would provide some significant amount of temporary Enmity atop (temporarily/amount granted fading linearly over time) matching top-threat OR that Tomahawk would have a hell of a buff (at least one unengaged enemies). Else there's almost no way it'd be able to handle things in an efficient manner.

Again, to be clear, I'm not a fan of bringing back Enmity skills if that gameplay is going to be as shallow as before. I just don't mind the idea of replacing some DPS-centric min-maxing on tanks with far greater nuance, risk-reward, fight-knowledge-rewards, etc., if that were possible.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The clear point there was that Job A losing some damage to provide some buff or secondary output instead doesn't necessarily (or even likely) equate to party DPS going down. See Dragoon vs. Samurai, for instance. Battle Litany existing, in place of greater direct DRG damage, does not fundamentally decrease the party's DPS. There's no reason to assume that content wouldn't be tuned to lower HP or DPS tuned to higher output in exchange for tanks being expected to use damage-sacrificing enmity actions.

I don't even want Enmity actions back, and it still makes plenty of sense.


You don't delay your pot just because you're using your Enmity skills. They're Enmity have multipliers, not flat Enmity bonuses; the more damage you're doing, via the pot, the more Enmity you put out. So unless you'd overcap Enmity within the minimum amount of time for which you could increase your Enmity done (e.g., a single GCD or a single Enmity combo), it'd make zero difference to your pacing. Having +20% damage via pot/raidbuffs affecting an Enmity skill means you'll need that % appgcd less of an Enmity skill later on.


Neither did Enmity skills disrupt rotation. There was always room aplenty around them and/or they literally shared roots with the other combo actions.

I disliked them because they were button bloat, providing very little gameplay compared to their button cost, but what you're suggesting would be an issue... was never an issue, even in the incredibly far from polished version we had previously.

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I mean a loss is a loss as soon as you add a minus to the equation, while Ren's example is nowhere near as extreme in reality, I personally, on a fundamental level do not like the appeal of punishing in an arbitrary way, especially as a Paladin main all the way through HW and SB knew how painful it was being saddled as MT at the start of a fight, and next to no way to mitigate the loss of damage.

I am the same the enmity combos can stay dead and buried, but been sadly too much comment regarding them but they never added any value and were a detriment to use. In Paladin's situation, you would forced to aggro combo if pulling especially with no ninja and push everything out of alignment from raid buffs in the opener, not to mention the loss of a GCD just swapping to DPS stance and 500mp just to shed the damage loss. The exception of course as per usual being WAR back in HW and SB where it was actually a gain to use aggro combo and there was no penalty swapping stances bar a 10 second recast.

I wasn't saying to delay the pot, I'm saying it's just yet another feels bad to use a pot when you are knowingly and actively gimping your damage output by using tank stance, because apparently it adds something of value sacrificing damage.

The current system is leagues better even if it invalidates aggro for the most part compared to the old system.

Hey everyone! I appreciate all the discussion and feedback, It’s been interesting to hear everyone’s perspective on the matter. My observation so far is that most don’t want it back, some would be open to it as long as it’s not the same as StB, but majority would much rather focus on defending allies, boss positioning and the like. Anyway just wanted to chime with that observation and a little appreciation, please feel free to continue :)

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Originally Posted by Renathras

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

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The issue here is you are using arbitrary numbers to prove a point, whereas in reality, this isn't even close. Now, whilst I do not have numbers, upgrading your gear is going to be closer to ~1% damage increase, which is all you needed to theoretically bump your damage high enough to pull enmity.

To put some numbers to the potency loss for PLD to do their enmity combo, here are the numbers:

RoH = 640 total potency
RA = 760 total potency

This means, for every RoH combo you do, you reduce your damage by 26% for that one combo. Obviously, this isn't realistic, so, add in the good old GB + 2 combos from back in SB, and the nubmers change as follows (as a reference GB is 1090 total potency):

GB + 2*RA = 2610
GB + RA + RoH = 2390 (5% reduction)
GB + 2*RoH = 2370 (10% reduction)

So, increasing a DPS's damage by a few % can have lasting detrimental effects. This is before we then start taking other things into consideration, like the lack of recourses, the fact it took PLD 1 GCD to swap to tank stance and another to go back to DPS stance, which also both took MP in a time where PLD's MP was so finely tuned, you had to rely on the passive MP regen over a minute to ensure you had 10000 MP for Req. And then, to top it all off, being in tank stance cost you 20% of your damage and you pretty much had to be in tank stance if you needed to build up any reasonable amount of enmity, as your enmity combo in DPS stance did not build up much at all. It was a very similar situation on the other tanks, with Warrior being one of the better ones due to oGCD tank stance swapping and access to Unchained to mitigate the damage loss (though they still lost access to Fell Cleave).

However, irregardless of this all, it still felt bad for you to be actively punished because the DPS was playing well. It could have theoretically been a DPS gain for the party in some circumstances, however, it doesn't change the fact it felt bad to do and THIS is the core reasoning why the tank stances were bad, especially in SB.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Though, if I recall correctly, you only needed 4 Riot Blades per minute to reach 80% MP (alternating 4 and 5 RBs/min to maintain 80+%)?... Which meant you could still spend the majority of the time between Goring Blades on Savage-Halone and your MP still would be fine?

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Your aim was getting back to 10000 MP every minute (since HS cost 2000 MP then), in order to get that MP, you had to Riot Blade every time, so, with 3 GB and 4 total RA combos, that is 7 total Riot Blades per minute and even then, you had to rely on the natural MP regen on PLD in order to only just get back to 10000MP before Req came off of cooldown. This could be supplemented by Sheltron giving back some MP when hit, but by doing that you also 'wasted' a defensive cooldown. Things were tight back then.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Your aim was getting back to 10000 MP every minute (since HS cost 2000 MP then), in order to get that MP, you had to Riot Blade every time, so, with 3 GB and 4 total RA combos, that is 7 total Riot Blades per minute and even then, you had to rely on the natural MP regen on PLD in order to only just get back to 10000MP before Req came off of cooldown. This could be supplemented by Sheltron giving back some MP when hit, but by doing that you also 'wasted' a defensive cooldown. Things were tight back then.

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At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. Holy Shock cost 1440 MP. Riot Blade generated 600 MP and Shelltron generated 960. Under Sword Oath, each Holy Shock and auto-attack generated 5 Oath, together granting enough for almost 3 ~2.5 Shelltrons per minute. Passively, you generate 40% of max MP per minute. If you never used Shelltron, even just to "waste" it for the free MP from OT position, you needed to actively generate 3288 MP, alternating 5 and 6 Riot Blades per minute. If you didn't perpetually overcap your Oath Gauge, however, you needed only actively generate 1368 MP, barely over 2 Riot Blades per minute. The 4 Riot Blade value before was assuming you, for whatever reason, were only able/willing to use Shelltron once per minute.

Things were not particularly tight back then. If not overcapping your Oath Gauge in any fight with even just 3 raidwides per minute (or if you just... at least occasionally used actually tanked), you could refill your MP completely off 2.28 just Riot Blades per minute, which you did anyways just from maintaining Goring Blade.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

However, irregardless of this all, it still felt bad for you to be actively punished because the DPS was playing well. It could have theoretically been a DPS gain for the party in some circumstances, however, it doesn't change the fact it felt bad to do and THIS is the core reasoning why the tank stances were bad, especially in SB.

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I'm not sure why Tank Stances as they were would even play into this conversation. They're not at all mentioned in what you're quoting, and Ren, too, said that SB Tank Stances were bad. No one's been advocating for the thing you're now critiquing. He said only that the general "IDEA" of them "has merit" -- something clearly very different from pre-ShB Tank Stances.

Which then can only leave us with the High-Enmity Skills themselves... and nor do I know why you'd consider using Enmity skills --at least up until the portion one can no longer maintain their less frequently available effects (Storm's Eye, Goring Blade, etc.)-- as being "punished".

Like GCD heals, those high-Enmity weaponskills would only ever be used in the first place they were a net gain to be used, which then means that your "punishment" is just to have a higher cap on that more-efficient resource whose limitation is just that it has a cap to its usefulness. This would be like complaining that a fight has damage enough that it's finally worth it to GCD heal because it "punishes" the healer's own DPS (despite that the fight is tuned accordingly).

If so much of the role's gameplay is spent on the role-specific stuff that there's no room to, say, maintain DoTs or other added complicators, sure, that'd be an issue. But a tank or healer losing some direct damage of their own to generate greater net damage for the party... is neither a problem nor "punishment", I would think?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. Holy Shock cost 1440 MP. Riot Blade generated 600 MP and Shelltron generated 960. Under Sword Oath, each Holy Shock and auto-attack generated 5 Oath, together granting enough for almost 3 Shelltrons per minute. Passively, you generate 40% of max MP per minute. This meant that, if not overcapping Oath Gauge. If you never used Shelltron, even just to "waste" it for the free MP from OT position, you needed to actively generate 3288 MP, alternating 5 and 6 Riot Blades per minute. If you didn't perpetually overcap your Oath Gauge, however, you needed only actively generate 1368 MP, barely over 2 Riot Blades per minute. The 4 Riot Blade value before was assuming you, for whatever reason, were only able/willing to use Shelltron once per minute.

Things were not tight back then. You could manage off 2.28 Riot Blades per minute, which you did anyways just from maintaining Goring Blade.

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Holy Spirit generated 10 guage in Shield Oath, only Auto Attacks generated 5 guage in Sword Oath.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. ...

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Yup, definitely misremembered, however, doing a bit of research, there are still some things you got wrong.

Natural MP regen is 141 per tick (I verified this with a video), over a minute, that is 2820 MP regened naturally, or just under 40%. No issues there. However, this means you need to build up 4260 MP in order to get back to max MP. With 7 Riot Blades at 600 MP each, that is 4200 MP restored, which technically leaves you with a 60 MP deficit. But that isn't quite true either, as PLD's rotation was closer to 63 seconds (26 GCDs in total with a GCD of ~ 2.45), which meant another MP tick, which does indeed build up enough MP for PLD's rotation....just about. MP from Sheltron shouldn't be considered as, if you are an OT, you cannot guarantee you can proc it.

Though, an interesting thing I did note, since it takes 1440 MP to cast Holy Spirit, you cast it 5 times for a total of 7200 MP, and your max was 7080 MP, it did mean you relied on the MP ticks to complete your Req phase.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

So... I'm not sure why Tank Stances as they were would even play into this conversation. Ren, too, said that SB Tank Stances were bad. He said only that the general "IDEA" of them "has merit" -- something clearly very different from pre-ShB Tank Stances.

Which then can only leave us with the High-Enmity Skills themselves... and I'm not at all sure why you'd consider using Enmity skills, at least up until the portion one can no longer maintain their less frequently available effects (Storm's Eye, Goring Blade, etc.) as being "punished".

Like GCD heals, those high-Enmity weaponskills would only ever be used in the first place they were a net gain to be used, which then means that your "punishment" is just to have a higher cap on that more-efficient resource whose limitation is just that it has a cap to its usefulness. This would be like complaining that a fight has damage enough that it's finally worth it to GCD heal because it "punishes" the healer's own DPS (despite that the fight is tuned accordingly).

If so much of the role's gameplay is spent on the role-specific stuff that there's no room to, say, maintain DoTs or other added complicators, sure, that'd be an issue. But a tank or healer losing some direct damage of their own to generate greater net damage for the party... is neither a problem nor "punishment", I would think?

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To be honest, I think I just see too many people mention tank stance, with the implication of the old ones I just jumped to an assumption, however, in regards to enmity skills, they would have to be exactly the same as your main rotation, just less damage and more enmity. That is just a button for the sake of being a button, especially when you have to press it just because a DPS happens to be better geared than you. Yes, it is a net gain for the party, but would it really feel good to use something that is weaker just because of an arbitrary value.

As for comparing it to a healer using a GCD heal, whilst it is similar, there is a very distinct difference. In the tank case, you use your enmity combo when the party is doing well. You get punished with weaker damage because everyone else is doing better, however, in the healer's case, the healer gets punished because of the mistake of the other player. This is also a sliding scale. You don't necessarily just straight to the GCD heal, you use other resources you might have at hand such as oGCDs to bring them back up. So, they are similar, yet opposing issues.

Again, I don't think discrete Enmity skills are a good idea. I'd much rather just have positioning and timing fill those functions, likely to greater available complexity. I'd remove Shirk as is and combine Provoke and current <Tank Stance>. I just don't think your particular critique earlier made sense.

As for PLD, I don't think it makes sense, either, to exclude significant resources just because they could require taking a physical hit. That'd be like saying Third Eye is never worth considering as a source of damage. Worse, if one is refusing to tank for more than a minute at a time, they and their cotank are actively wasting rDPS by leaving one's defensives to overcharge.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Though, an interesting thing I did note, since it takes 1440 MP to cast Holy Spirit, you cast it 5 times for a total of 7200 MP, and your max was 7080 MP, it did mean you relied on the MP ticks to complete your Req phase.

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I'm not actually sure about that one because Divine Magic Mastery reduced the MP cost of your spells by 50%. Although I can't quite remember if that cost reduction was already applied to Holy Spirit's cost of 1440, but I also remember not needing MP ticks during Req when I played Paladin, provided I had full uptime.


*edit* Nevermind, the 1440 MP already include the 50% cost reduction, you were correct.

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Originally Posted by primarisgoazrr

Hey everyone! I appreciate all the discussion and feedback, It’s been interesting to hear everyone’s perspective on the matter. My observation so far is that most don’t want it back, some would be open to it as long as it’s not the same as StB, but majority would much rather focus on defending allies, boss positioning and the like. Anyway just wanted to chime with that observation and a little appreciation, please feel free to continue :)

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I think this is a pretty good summary.

Many don't want enmity back at all, some want it back the way it was before, others want it back but not as it was before (they don't think the way it was before was really the best way the mechanic could be implemented);

...but pretty much everyone wants there to be more to do for Tanks. Most who don't want enmity want positioning and defending allies to be more important. But most who want enmity ALSO want this. So there's an overlap of the Venn Diagram circles there.

It's like 45/20/35 on no enmity/exact as before enmity/new version of enmity, but also 90/10 (so lots of overlap) want more to do defending, positioning, etc.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Again, I don't think discrete Enmity skills are a good idea.

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The way I would think is most likely/functional if we WERE going to implement it would be to have either a side ability (e.g. Shield Lob already does this) or a branching combo, like Fast Blade -> Riot Blade -> Royal Authority (damage) OR Rage of Halone (agro). This way, it makes enmity relatively straightforward and doesn't require a huge change to the rotation. The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone. In effect, agro becomes an "upkeep buff". We already have this same system in the game for WAR with Storm's Path/Storm's Eye where they use the latter in an upkeep capacity. They could also do something like have Halone generate a small potency heal to be a rotational sustain tool (right now, PLD doesn't have one until level 84 when Holy Spirit starts healing them) if they wanted, but it's really not too complicated with a system like this.

Whether it would be engaging or not is an exercise for the reader, but there's no reason such a system HAS to be as clunky as SB's stance swap and separate rotation where the -2 and -3 steps were both different. All of the Tanks had branching combos at the -2 step (like SAM) and that ended with ShB. Even when PLD had Goring as a rotational DoT, they removed the -2 step to get there (I think there was a third one...maybe it was just for Halone?) to where it's also unified to Riot, just like WAR's "branching" combo is.

If only the third step branches, then it doesn't require a massive disruption to the rotation, you just swap the finisher if you need to pull ahead in the agro race. Or, again, spam Shield Lob, but that's less interesting. Still a backup, considering I think it generates more agro than Halone did while doing still less damage.

I don't miss enmity management at all. That said, I do miss having something else to occupy my brain while tanking. As bad as enmity was, it was still something to think of from time to time and they didn't add anything in its place. Slightly more focus on mitigation or something like that? Deeper rotations would always be nice.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone. In effect, agro becomes an "upkeep buff".

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Can't say I see the appeal, if that's all its going to be? I wouldn't outright hate it, but it'd have no optimal timing, virtually no optimization beyond maintenance, no way to waste it so long as you minimize excess Enmity by the time it dies. And you wouldn't even have an AoE means of controlling aggro without it costing yet another button.

For context, here are some examples of fairly simple things (typically outright reverts) that would, imo, add more engagement than a return of the earlier enmity system (even if in far less bloated form)....

For now I'll stick to just Warrior for those examples, since these days it would usually seem the most oonga boonga of all tanks:

• Old Storm's Eye / Mythril Tempest / Surging Tempest (non-stacking).
• Old Overpower, so that one actually has to target and may even need to move a bit in AoE situations.
• Inner Release not adding excessive duration of Surging Tempest.
• Old Nascent Flash (%dmg-to-healing instead of flat healing per hit).
• Raw Intuition again only mitigating to the front.
• Having defensive options like Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone opposite Fell Cleave and Decimate, with low enough other sources of sustain relative to incoming damage that they'd be worth using at least occasionally.
• Upheaval and Onslaught consuming gauge.
• Old Inner Release (split from Berserk for separate mini and full burst windows, and maybe with gauge generation also doubled).
• A revision to Equilibrium imitating its old balance.
• Berserk incurring periods of downtime in which one cannot use GCDs for sustain, increasing its risk, but perhaps with Berserk being extendable (with proportionate downtime after).
• Gauge spenders generate stat resource (e.g., Crit and Speed or Tenacity and Leech, depending on type), which fades over time and generates increased effect via Determination and per the multipliers of Direct Hits and Crits. These are set up to offer synergy between each other.

That said, again, a reinvigorated Enmity system that offers far more gameplay opportunities, considerations, and nuances, and pushes us away from the "Whatever maximizes overall DPS (while scarcely even needing to think contextually)"? I'd be all for that. I just doubt it'd be, then, a system that'd vibe with the simplifications everywhere else, so it'd probably need a lot of less jarring stepping-stone/surrounding changes first.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone.

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Problem, the enmity gains you get, relative to the enmity meter, vary throughout a fight, which makes it difficult to judge when you can effectively just keep up the damage or you need to swap to the enmity combo.

To keep things simple, imagine enmity combo is 100 enmity and DPS combo is 50 enmity. Early on in a fight, if you have, say, 1000 enmity, your enmity combo is 10% of the enmity bar and your DPS combo is 5% of your enmity bar. Get later into the fight, where your enmity is closer to 10,000, that 100 enmity is now only 1% of your enmity bare with the DPS combo being 0.5%. This makes the margin for being able to know when you can enmity and when you can DPS much smaller to the point where you cannot effectively judge whether you can risk it, or you absolutely have to build more enmity.

A potential claim would be that it takes a skilful player to know what they can get away with. However, with the vast amount of variables coupled with the relative enmity issue, chances are you aren't choosing to use your enmity combo based on any rational thought process and more using it 'just to make sure', which, in my opinion, isn't a sign of skill. Skilful play would be being able to hover that line between keeping enmity and losing it based on the information you have, we just do not have the information to make that decision (and I believe there is no effective way to easily visualise that data to allow snap decision making).