Can we remove Tank Stance?

So... I have been playing tank for the last few days since they announced Gunbreaker to try and get use to tanking. I've been doing it on PLD since Gunbreaker looked like PLD without a shield. I also haven't done any high end raiding, nor do I plan to, so take this current opinion with a grain of... salt is considered a bad term now-a-days so.. Sugar?

I don't think they should remove Tank Stance.

I do however agree with an earlier poster that your DPS stance should just be tuned into your regular stance when you are not in tank stance. I also think the tank stance should be OGCD but have a cool down timer of maybe 10 - 30 seconds so you can't just pop it for an attack and then turn it back off immediately.

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

After NA's Fan fest, I doubt they will remove tank stance, but make it more interesting/involving to use and useful. Giving it a semi warrior treatment possibly. Shelltron being tank stance only and spirits within dps stance only, that kind of stuff. As well as I kinda feel they will remove diversion or just some threat drop from DPS in general to make enmity more of a tank job in general since they don't like the DPS focus tanks have. I feel they may nerf tank damage over all, then only reduce tank stance damage from 20% down to 15% or 10% to sorta balance it out and make tank stance not seem as bad to use.

When asked about tank accessories lacking STR and that BIS rings are crafted etc, he said he didn't like it and will be addressing tank DPS later.

Just a guess though. I don't think they will be reduced down to healer damage, but I think they want tank stance to be more appealing and useful because currently, it's barely needed. And not just simply making bosses hit tanks harder when not in tank stance, they gotta make some tank stance only stuff and utility tank stance only.

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Originally Posted by Dralonis

After NA's Fan fest, I doubt they will remove tank stance, but make it more interesting/involving to use and useful. Giving it a semi warrior treatment possibly. Shelltron being tank stance only and spirits within dps stance only, that kind of stuff. As well as I kinda feel they will remove diversion or just some threat drop from DPS in general to make enmity more of a tank job in general since they don't like the DPS focus tanks have. When asked about tank accessories lacking STR and that BIS rings are crafted etc, he said he didn't like it and will be addressing tank DPS later.

Just a guess though. I don't think they will be reduced down to healer damage, but I think they want tank stance to be more appealing and useful because currently, it's barely needed. And not just simply making bosses hit tanks harder when not in tank stance.

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Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

So... I have been playing tank for the last few days since they announced Gunbreaker to try and get use to tanking. I've been doing it on PLD since Gunbreaker looked like PLD without a shield. I also haven't done any high end raiding, nor do I plan to, so take this current opinion with a grain of... salt is considered a bad term now-a-days so.. Sugar?

I don't think they should remove Tank Stance.

I do however agree with an earlier poster that your DPS stance should just be tuned into your regular stance when you are not in tank stance. I also think the tank stance should be OGCD but have a cool down timer of maybe 10 - 30 seconds so you can't just pop it for an attack and then turn it back off immediately.

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

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One of the main reasons I still defend tank stance. There are actually still moments when it's needed, or at least useful, especially for people who don't main tank.

The damage penalty really only makes sense if you think of it as cost/benefit. You are trading offense for defense (and threat) or vice-versa. Beyond that it doesn't really make a lot of sense, though.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

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Getting rid of the damage penalty for tank stance is essentially the same as not having reduced enmity generation in DPS stance. Either one basically eliminates the need for any stance at all. Enmity generators multiply the potencies to the skills that qualify. They don't multiply the actual damage that comes out, but they do in terms of the hate they generate. Right now tanks can maintain enmity easily in DPS stance after acquiring it in tank stance. It's not a bad concept, but it's the min/maxing that tries to reduce the time in tank stance to next to nothing.

Devs are going to have to make a decision. They can eliminate tank stance, or reduce the enmity generated in DPS stance so it will force them to spend more time on the defensive. If they want tanks to be tanks, they need to do the latter. Otherwise they're just DPS with an inflated HP pool that trade not having to be in the spotlight for tank privileges such as survivability.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

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I get the mindset, but the crux of the tank design is: You don't need the stance to continue generating threat. For tanks, when you do your opening threat combination and slip into DPS you're generating enmity from the initial few moves you do, while generating bonus threat that assists the entire party's overall DPS when you take advantage of the damage output a tank can do in the opener of a fight (which, again, generates threat). Mitigation isn't really useful if you don't need it, there's other buttons all tanks can utilize to mitigate incoming auto-attack damage, raid-wide damage, and large cooldowns (that can in a lot of fights be preemptively popped in a boss's rotation to mitigate other things) for tankbusters.

If you sit in tank stance, on a fight with DPS checks and enrage checks, and everyone around is maybe slightly below average in their damage output -- your choice in not assisting the damage output could kill your entire party, as the game is literally designed around DPS checks. (It's not about "I wanna PARSE" it's often "I want to beat enrage.")

That said, you can still manage threat -- You *can* do enmity combos in DPS stance, even if they're not optimal, if you realize someone is catching up to you. Your OT also manages threat with you with the provoke + shirk. And, if a bad moment happens (as fights in this tier can have wonky timings for some things that might need higher mitigation) you can dip into the stance for the mitigation, treating it like a Rampart. (And some tanks, like PLD, can generate threat just doing more DPS -- more shield swipe procs = more damage = more threat, since it's not only more damage but also increases threat. Same with Circle of Scorn).

When I tank? I'm there to tank, too. If I mess up my opener and a DPS dies for it? That's on me, and it happens sometimes -- fat fingering the wrong button, or just forgetting everything in a moment of blank-mindedness. If I'm with a PUG, I'll do enmity combos if I see it as necessary, while watching threat (which is, imo, more interesting than just turning on tank stance, spamming Halone Bologna and never having to manage it from that point onward since it manages it for you). If I know my OT isn't shirking me, or I'm aware DPS aren't using Diversion/Lucid/Tactician/Merciful Eyes/Elusive Jump/etc... I'll adjust around it in most cases since in Normal, or 24 mans, it's not worth the trouble of asking them to use a freebie button to help you because they all complain about it.

I like that threat management is an actual thing. Just keeping on tank-stance removes that entire responsibility, and removes the necessity to learn how it works, since it'll never be an issue if all you do is sit in Grit, Shield Oath, or Defiance the entire time spamming threat combos. It also burdens your DPS and Healers to output *more* DPS in to make up for the lack of damage output *you're* doing, since the lower DPS is more likely to kill a party than auto attacks to kill a tank.

You have CD's for a reason, they're there for you to map out appropriately and utilize for the biggest mitigation benefit (and if I can CD a Tail End appropriately, my health barely moves, if I use weaker CD's, I might be chunked to 1/3rd of my HP, but Defiance isn't going to change that from happening on its own since it's a stance that doesn't innately mitigate damage, just gives you HP -- which *can* save you in a pinch, and Equilibrium and a Inner Beast *can* save you in a spaghetti moment, but spaghetti moments aren't supposed to be the norm. But being able to know what to do and how to execute, as a tank, in a spaghetti moment? That's more interesting to me than not needing to do *anything*).

I'm going to compare it, again, since I feel like it's a decent comparison:

In a game like World of Warcraft, as a tank, you can pretty much turn off your brain and do just fine. You rarely have to manage hate, you usually have a passive or passive-ish defensive running, and your defensive CD's tend to come up fairly fast (Specifically thinking of Blood Death Knight's Vampiric Blood). Outside of optimizing your damage... there's nothing left to improve on. There's no real direction to *get* better after you get the basics down. You kinda exist, and in that existential boredom, you work on damage since it's all that's left. (and in a 20+ person raid, a tank's damage output is a lot less impactful due to the gap between tanks and DPS in said game).

In XIV, the damage is a lot more important to your group. It's also important to your threat generation, and you have to use more active abilities (so, understanding what they do -- Raw Intuition Parries and only works on Physical damage, is one example. Dark Mind is a *really* strong CD, but it only works on magical damage, so if you pop it for a tail-end and nothing else you kinda just explode). With the tanks in this game there's often a lot of room for improvement, there's more awareness required, there's looking at how boss rotations actually go to map things out to make life easier for your healers, there's a lot more to threat than just "I sit in tank stance" and it's more engaging and interesting to work with (IMO), and the way enmity works teaches everyone else how it works (and before you say they shouldn't have to, that's like saying if a DPS is in a fight with raid-wides, they shouldn't *ever* use *any* of their personal mitigation since "Healing is the Healer's Job". And that Red Mages should *never* rez, because that's the healer's job.)

And I know that the dev's, or at least Yoshida, mentioned wanting to make them more tank-oriented than DPS-oriented. But if they do that, they're going to need an entirely new philosophy to how they approach fight design.



That all said, I'm not the best tank player. I'm average at best. But this is all coming from the amount of information I learned from people who *really* know what they're doing when I approached them, or information haphazardly re-worded from guides and general tips (along with personal experience in terms of just... remembering when I learned bosses actually had physical or magical differentiations on attacks)

(If it's not clear, I like having the other stance. If they removed it, I'd prefer them make enmity as a whole a more interesting resource to manage which'd require a bigger rework)

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

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See the thing that helps the healers the most is things dying faster so they deal less damage to the party/you.
A lot of people don't realize that, or at least the weight of that.

As for keeping hate, which is indeed the tanks primary job, you don't need to stay in tank stance for. Not only do you start off with a tank stance enmity boost but it's not like you DON'T generate any while in DPS stance. On top of that, everyone else has enmity reduction abilities. It's not your fault if they don't press Diversion here and there.

But all of this is more reasons to keep it as it is. It gives players the crutch they need before spreading their tank wings.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Getting rid of the damage penalty for tank stance is essentially the same as not having reduced enmity generation in DPS stance. Either one basically eliminates the need for any stance at all. Enmity generators multiply the potencies to the skills that qualify. They don't multiply the actual damage that comes out, but they do in terms of the hate they generate. Right now tanks can maintain enmity easily in DPS stance after acquiring it in tank stance. It's not a bad concept, but it's the min/maxing that tries to reduce the time in tank stance to next to nothing.

Devs are going to have to make a decision. They can eliminate tank stance, or reduce the enmity generated in DPS stance so it will force them to spend more time on the defensive. If they want tanks to be tanks, they need to do the latter. Otherwise they're just DPS with an inflated HP pool that trade not having to be in the spotlight for tank privileges such as survivability.

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kinda why i get the feeling they will make DPS rotation and tank rotation reflect then add a button or 2 somewhere into that for maybe some variety, so tanks can't generate aggro outside of tank stance to that of normal tank levels and DPS stance is effectively like DPS and Offtank focus. Making MT be in Tank stance, but OT being in DPS. They also need to give OT's more of a job to do rather than just rotating tanks. They could make it to where tanks just take too much damage not in tank stance though that it would be better on healers mana if they were in tank stance but i'm not sure if they need to do that nor is that entirely fun.

Either way, I feel like the tank changes may be controversial to a lot of people, especially the ones that want to be those high dps tanks. Could be why they are holding off on info for changes until mid-may. I Just hope the changes over all will be better than current tank and how they are. Maybe more people would be willing to play them and less intimated by them/more fun to play.

Removing diversion and a lot of DPSers threat drop would be nice and get rid of buttons like they are wanting.

I dont see them removing it. They would have to further increase enmity gains or once again reduce dps enmity reductions tools cooldown timers.

You have to look at tank stance not just from a endgame standpoint but from a leveling standpoint as well.

I think tank stance needs to stay as it is training wheels that are there for support, especially for people learning tanking. Plus you still have more than half the dps population who dont use diversion or other enmity reduction tools. Plus the gear difference in some dungeons between the tank and the rest of the party is also a factor.

Many still don't realize that killing things faster means less to heal/mitigate, as everything is based on damage. Every job is DPS, the only difference is the color role behind the job icon. Green is DPS when not having to heal.

Tank stance can be useful for learning fights and damage patterns, and open up more cool downs (Inner Beast). As skill goes up, you know timelines, how to optimize such as using Hallowed, Holmgang, LD as much as possible and not as "oh crap" buttons.

I say just combine both DPS and Tank Stance into 1 skill.

If players want to be in DPS Stance then just click that skill to switch to DPS stance (with the icon change to represent DPS stance) and when they want to Tank Stance then they just click on that skill again to switch to Tank Stance.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

I say just combine both DPS and Tank Stance into 1 skill.

If players want to be in DPS Stance then just click that skill to switch to DPS stance (with the icon change to represent DPS stance) and when they want to Tank Stance then they just click on that skill again to switch to Tank Stance.

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I think many classes could use the system of PvP combos. Not for all main skills, but there are several skills that could become "Modal".

Nobody here thinking about the tank stance being here to help the casual not good as you on tanking, have the chance to still hold aggro when playing tank?

Normally I would be against the idea but...

At this point raid tanks whine like crazy if you ask them to turn on tank stance even for a single mechanic and they can always do current savage content without ever using it at all. While at the same time actively mixing there sets to remove tank stats and wearing underlevel accessories for the purposes of stacking more damage stats
So it's kind of like... what's the point of it even existing. Mine as well do away with it for the sake of fighting skill bloat

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Nobody here thinking about the tank stance being here to help the casual not good as you on tanking, have the chance to still hold aggro when playing tank?

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Yeah tank stance is for helping newbies and casual players play tank. The defensive mitigation and easy enmity generation of tank stance makes the basics of tanking a lot easier. There was not tank stance before patch 2.0.

Current WAR main here.

I'd hate for them to remove tank stances. Currently tanking is quite brain dead in dungeons in my opinion, especially when you are decently geared.
During the pull I'm in Defiance, pop up a few overpowers during the initial pull, once pull is finished; Vengeance + Anticipation+ Convalescence then follow it up with IR and spam that Decimate.
Usually for a WHM an Asylum and regen keeps me up with the very occasional Cure I.

Why would you take my DPS stance away to give the WHM in this example a longer fight, thus losing more mana, thus having to heal more intensively, removing their own option to DPS?

Yes my first and foremost job as a tank is to mitigate damage and hold threat, but when a healer is pressing 2 maybe 3 buttons to keep me alive for 15+ seconds (in which 1 of these is ogcd...) why the hell would you even want to think about taking my damage option away? I for one don't want to be stuck in a dungeon for 30+ minutes, especially not when I've ran it 50+ times.

Hell I've not even stepped into savage this tier and can do this fine with average gear level (385).

Bossfights in normal content? I have approx 75k Health in deliverance, a tankbuster will hit me for about 15-25k when i mitigate it, that's a single cure I or Cure II. That's not even accounting for party mitigation, shields and regens.
The moment I see my healer struggling, low on mana or has any other issue? Yea thats the time to swap into Defiance and start doing some self healing to make life easier.

I'm hearing arguments from people about holding enmity, I rarely lose any mobs and even then you simply respond appropriately. (I lost one yesterday when a friend was trying to tease me by single targeting a mob to pull it off me, a provoke and tomahawk before it even reached him secured it back onto me, straight back into the decimate spam).
What does it matter if you have 1000 enmity more than the #2 in the party or 1 gazillion more enmity? The mobs are still on the tank regardless as long as it remains +1.

A good tank does what they should, mitigate, keep mobs on them, sets the pace and when everything is taken care of? Yea we deal some extra damage.
No it's not our priority, but every little bit helps.

You will always have good and bad tanks, just like you will always have good and bad players. Don't take useful tools away from the good ones.
Just like a good DPS will pop Diversion/Lucid when necessary.

Paladin main here. Have cleared nearly all the savage tiers on content save for current progging through the last phase of o12s and let me say I’m all for removing tank stance for my job so long as it’s replaced with something more interesting and intuitive. The tank stances for Paladin are really boring compared to the other two.

War has unique attacks in each stance while Drk has access to cool moves like blood weapon meanwhile Pld gets a ~25 potency boost to auto attacks. If they absolutely have to keep shield oath/sword oath then I hope they do something to make them more interesting otherwise I’d rather just see them be scrapped.

Edit: For further clarification, I’m not exactly a fan of the mere act of going in to sword oath being a dps boost via basic auto attacks. While I’m not asking for some big attack like fel cleave I want to actually have to do *something* in sword oath to get the full potential of my dps stance. Not just stand in melee range and mindlessly auto attack.

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Originally Posted by lulunami

Yeah tank stance is for helping newbies and casual players play tank. The defensive mitigation and easy enmity generation of tank stance makes the basics of tanking a lot easier. There was not tank stance before patch 2.0.

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There was barely a game before 2.0 >.>

But seriously.. they don't need to remove tank stance.. what they need to do is make tanking engaging so it's not just a race for DPS, because even if they get rid of tank stance.. then it's still just going to be the same thing it is now; pretending to be dps.

Give tanks unique reactions and abilities to use while in the tank form in the stance of procs and reactions (resetting some ability cooldowns when you block/parry/dodge, depending on the tank), and more active mitigation tools outside of 3min cool downs.
And they don't need to buff up the attack of creatures to do this so it's a death sentence to everyone not the tank.. they just need to reduce the tank's base armour a little so it promotes being tanky if you're the MT; and then that allows for non tank stance damage to be a little higher to allow OTs to go ham with the dps abilities on the boss (Or other tanking focused mechanics for the OT to focus on). Give both OT and MT something engaging to do.
Or maybe they could ease up on the scripting of the fights where you can plot out when to use a cooldown because ability X just happened, so you pop a cooldown at 18sec to be ready for the ability that will launch 20sec after X.

Right now, it doesn't feel like you're really a tank.. it kind of feels like you're just a dps that has the most aggro right now.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Been in a few parties over the last few days where tanks weren't using their tank stance, were loosing hate, and dying without the damage resistance.

Could we just remove the stance and give them the damage resistance and enmity generation innately?

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You had bad tanks who were following strategies they didnt know how to play with.

Pretty much when it comes to raiding and hte like, you drop tank stance after a part of the opener cause you should be able to maintain aggro along with your co tank. Furthermore, mitigation for all the tank busters doesnt require tank stance. Meaning, I can Shadow-Wall and TBN a tank buster and survive it usually (depending content and party composition), or use LD to soak it and get heals from healers who pre-plan their heals. These are all strats used at higher levels of playing (and I use higher a touch loosely here), but they also work at lower levels. I almost always drop grit on bosses unless I run into DPS who refuse to use aggro droppers.

The thing is when you have inexperienced tanks see this, theyre not doing what they need to do to make it work. Not using enough cooldowns, not enough threat generation on the opener, not geared enough so they cant maintain aggro against a fully geared BiS DPS, etc. So they fail at it.

Theres nothing wrong with tank stance from that perspective. Its clunky as a skill and honestly might be better served as an ogcd rather than a stance, but the issue you describe is one where inexperienced tanks are doing something wrong, rather than the skill being bad.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

Normally I would be against the idea but...

At this point raid tanks whine like crazy if you ask them to turn on tank stance even for a single mechanic and they can always do current savage content without ever using it at all. While at the same time actively mixing there sets to remove tank stats and wearing underlevel accessories for the purposes of stacking more damage stats
So it's kind of like... what's the point of it even existing. Mine as well do away with it for the sake of fighting skill bloat

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Honestly, I feel like this stems from 1) It's not any fun or currently useful to use MOST of the time. it has it's uses. 2) It's not OPTIMAL. people want to optimize and will hate on anything that is not optimal or not fun. also because tanks simply don't need those stats. That's on their end for poor balancing. People can over gear it quite quickly that they can easily tank in DPS stance with nearly no setbacks, most of the time. Unless you die or something or healers need mana and not too worried about hitting enrage but more living to see the fight. I feel they may address this in 5.0 and sorta require tank stance a bit more or some form of it. 3) Theres fundamental issues with tanking. Simply increasing damage taken to them isn't fun. I mean, when I'm a dps and do a 24 man raid, I've had several times where tanks lost aggro and it just murders a few dps because tanks barely want to tank, just want to dps as a tank.

They very clearly have stated they want tanks to deal less damage since damage should not be their focus, but they make tanks rely a bit more on DPS for aggro so they don't need the stance as well as once you have enough gear, which you can kinda even do that just from crafted gear, it's really not that bad to tank it at certain parts. Especially since it's just scripted with little to no random damage so they can time the cool downs. There's very little need for Active mitigation.

so, if they want to fix tanks in a way they'd like, and talked about liking tanks, and tried especially with tank accessories at the beginning of SB, They'd need to make Tank stance more useful. With tank stance only skills that would be used for MT, decreasing the damage reduction of tank stance from 20% to 10%, reducing over all damage by a small amount so it evens out also so tanks needing the increased threat generation would be more beneficial so they can't stay in DPS stance the whole time and still be above DPS in aggro. They'd also have to lower aggro gained a bit from their dps rotation when they lower their damage. Currently, it's just shirk and switch. So aggro, on the MT, really isn't an issue at all with good tanks. In a raid situation. That's why they need something else to do. What they may do is reduce shirk down to 20% or 15% aggro shift to keep aggro building a bit more necessary.

If what they said about they want 2 MT classes and 2 OT classes, that would be gunbreaker+dark being the OT ones. Then possibly, their aim is for DPS tanks to be around.. 80% of what it currently is and MT's being a bit lower if they were to also be DPS tanks. Since that's kinda the appeal of a DPS tank. Currently, DRKs are supposed to be DPS tanks but.. they kinda messed up with it in 4.x

Now, these are all just my personal opinions on tanking and some suggestions as a whole that I'd be interested in seeing.

Get rid diversion or change it. Getting rid of it would fight skill bloat and it is really just a band aid fix skill since a ton of mediocre dps don't use it anyways and in fact, even have fun not using it so they can have a chance at pulling aggro off a tank. Easier to let them die from a players perspective, but from a game/developer perspective, to just reduce the chance of it happening by other fixes.

Increase aggro generation from tanks ranged attacks/charges. Give paladin a charge. Make that charge free of cost. What they may also do is have the DPS and tank rotations flip based on what stance you are in to reduce skill bloat.(How often do you see tanks even use threat rotation in a lot of content anyways? If they had some sorta synergy with tank stance skills, it could be made useful.) They also need to sorta change how openers work and have more classes better at it for tanks. Currently, warrior is just the defacto puller. Then again, Warriors are just great all around.

Merge a few defensive CD's that barely do much. Some they could even reduce it's effectiveness but reduce it's CD time.

Put spirits within and shelltron on the same button depending on your stance, Merge total eclipse with flash. Maybe roll reprisal into another new skill for all tanks. Then they could add a few more in 5.0 for something new. Like make fight or flight DPS stance only but in tank stance, give it a useful effect. Increase damage dealt maybe still, but not as much, also increase aggro generation.With the MT being in tank stance and these changes, threat really wouldn't ever be an issue or making anyone slightly worry like they do now. ESPECIALLY with pug groups.

Just with a lot of those changes I mentioned, that would get rid of 6+ buttons.

It would also make it more new tank friendly since there's probably people that want to tank, but aren't as well polished at tanking as others (Or even remotely decent) and it's really easy to see their mistakes and we all feel it quite heavily. Tanking can be quite intimidating to new people to it. I've had to teach several people and they are just scared to do it and are very sloppy at it, for quite awhile. Often why there's more DPS in general. It's easier to get the fundamentals of it and a lot of it is just positions and playing your rotation optimally.

They also need something more fun to work towards. Making the Gauge more useful. Currently, as a paladin, it's quite boring. Have the gauge maybe use a spender that's OGCD. Maybe give tank stance some utility as well.

On a fight standpoint, they need to make OT's have more unique jobs rather than just Co tank and dps when you aren't a tank imo. I like add fights Tbh and gives me a reason, when I dps, to use AOE combos. There's very few add fights that we get. I sorta liked that in binding coil of bahamut turn 4. I also enjoy split tank fights and splitting DPS. Omega M and F with resonance and is something I like to see every now and then. Something dynamic.

Then maybe have fights be a bit less scripted in damage. Random bursts of AoE damage, more random auto attacks that hurt, etc. Then reduce the damage needed for enrage timers since your healers may be healing a bit more and tanks would be doing less damage, but that's a given.

This probably could've been it's own thread.

What if they made it so that your Enmity combos and your Enmity generating skills did more damage while in tank stance or only generated enmity while in tank stance? What would that do to the way tanks are played?

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

What if they made it so that your Enmity combos and your Enmity generating skills did more damage while in tank stance or only generated enmity while in tank stance? What would that do to the way tanks are played?

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It doesn't do a lot considering high end groups won't need the tank to do any aggro combos anyways. You just need initial threat and then you shirk/lucid/diversion your way through the fight.

Not dogging on you or anything, but it just strikes me as funny that enmity is even really a talking point. My buddy posted an update earlier where spelltimers has a feature for threat now, with specific values and stuff, and I just wonder why anybody would actually waste time on that. Like it doesn't matter if I have 1372 aggro points. You either have enough or you don't, aggro bars in game tell me all I need to know. IDK just kinda funny to me

This whole thread sounds like people who don't play tanks at a high level trying to fix tanks...

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

What if they made it so that your Enmity combos and your Enmity generating skills did more damage while in tank stance or only generated enmity while in tank stance? What would that do to the way tanks are played?

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Literally nothing because the enmity combos aren’t used once swapped, or in WARs case, never at all.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

This whole thread sounds like people who don't play tanks at a high level trying to fix tanks...

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Pretty much. I made a post once regarding the romanticizing of tanks and healers, and it brings people to make strange accusations or concerns about the jobs where there shouldn’t be.

There's no real reason to keep tank stances. Make the mitigation always on, remove the damage penalty, apply the bonus threat to their threat combo/other enmity generating moves. The only job even vaguely hurt would be warriors since they have the split stance actions, but that isn't exactly the hardest nut to crack for the balance team. Encounter design team would need to balance around it but they already have to balance around the current status quo anyway so that's whatever.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Pretty much. I made a post once regarding the romanticizing of tanks and healers, and it brings people to make strange accusations or concerns about the jobs where there shouldn’t be.

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Like if they are complaining tanks deal too much damage compared to DPS... Maybe the DPS need to learn which buttons to press in which order. Maybe then they won't be ridiculed by tank damage.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

This whole thread sounds like people who don't play tanks at a high level trying to fix tanks...

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Might also depend on what tank you play, warrior's feels smoother than Paladin's which just feels clunky and imo usually unnecessary. I still want to see each tank have more unique tank systems (rather than all be stance on, stance off) but I feel like the wiggle room for tank balance (and healer) is very low.. so good luck lol.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Might also depend on what tank you play, warrior's feels smoother than Paladin's which just feels clunky and imo usually unnecessary. I still want to see each tank have more unique tank systems (rather than all be stance on, stance off) but I feel like the wiggle room for tank balance (and healer) is very low.. so good luck lol.

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Theres a lot of 'issues' with tank stances in general. I think thats a topic worth discussing that even high level of play tanks can agree on to some extent. I wouldnt say any of it is gamebreaking, but rather there is a bit of clunkiness to how stances operate between the three tanks. Clunkiness that can be addressed and cleaned up I think for QoL purposes. But thats a different topic from this one.

Removing tank stance would increase tank dps, in turn devs would have to innately increase their defense and enmity generation. This would require rework of all 3 tanks alongside of all the other reworks they are doing.

I highly doubt they will remove tank stance, but I do think they will go the WAR direction to where there is 0 cost associated with switching stances for all of the tanks.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

Like if they are complaining tanks deal too much damage compared to DPS... Maybe the DPS need to learn which buttons to press in which order. Maybe then they won't be ridiculed by tank damage.

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I can only really speak for the healer angle, but to me, I signed up to primarily make health bars go up, not make enemy health bars go down. It wouldn't surprise me that tanks feel the same, except maybe about "preventing my health bar from going down instead of my allies' health bars" or something similar. Like, nowhere do I advocate just lazily clicking only half of your abilities while watching Netflix and not playing your best, but as a healer at least I spent over 55% of my casts in Savage raid tiers casting damage spells instead of healing spells. That's not really the sort of healer gameplay I'm looking for. But I could link my logs from Delta and Sigmascape if I sound like "someone who doesn't play at a high level", I guess (I quit raiding before Alphascape came out but I doubt healer gameplay has improved dramatically in a single raid tier).

To expound a bit, I think both roles have pretty fundamental issues at the design level that leaves them frankly feeling like less interesting DPS jobs, in a lot of ways. I wish there were other ways to showcase your ability as a tank or healer other than...dealing a tuckfon of damage all the time. When Method downed Mythic Jaina yesterday their Resto Shaman's damage logs were nowhere in the orbit of their actual DPS players, because he had to heal so much. I get that tanking is a bit more nuanced than the healer situation, because dealing damage is HOW tanks generate and manage enmity a lot of the time, but I can respect the viewpoints of people who just don't feel like the plodding, sturdy meat shield they might want to be in this game.

First off, in a competent group, tank damage will never rival DPS damage. You'll always be 2K-3K behind the 4th DPS unless mistakes or padding for a parse run happened. Also comparing WoW and FFXIV philosphy on tanking/healing is comparing apples to oranges. WoW has more frequent, smaller amount of damages coming to tanks at all times and less potent heals that healers need to stay on top of while Yoshi and team decided to go with more predictable, slower and bigger hits of damage. It makes these roles more accessible in my opinion as there is less panic healing going on. Now we're just talking about making tank stance actually worth something and it is honestly. When the run goes south, people drop like flies and healers attempt a recovery, tank stance needs to be used to lessen the stress of healers so they can not focus entirely on keeping the MT alive. Although for most of the fights most of the playerbase runs, these chaotic runs leading to these situations almost do not exist. It's not that they don't have a use, it's that you don't need to use them when a run goes well, which is always good. It's not indicative of tank stance being useless.

I feel like enmity combo can prolly get axed, tbh they only get used in lower levels. Take them out and a chunk of enmity to the other combos and it would be perfectly fine to stay in those dps stances.

Um no thats the only part that the tank has to use brain cells for there completely overall brain dead game play as it is yet they get tank mounts just for being beat up lol

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

I feel like enmity combo can prolly get axed, tbh they only get used in lower levels. Take them out and a chunk of enmity to the other combos and it would be perfectly fine to stay in those dps stances.

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You will need the combo once you discover you dont have to be in tank-stance all the time.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

There's no real reason to keep tank stances. Make the mitigation always on, remove the damage penalty, apply the bonus threat to their threat combo/other enmity generating moves. The only job even vaguely hurt would be warriors since they have the split stance actions, but that isn't exactly the hardest nut to crack for the balance team. Encounter design team would need to balance around it but they already have to balance around the current status quo anyway so that's whatever.

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No stop it.
Dont dump down the jobs, tank doesnt need a WoW treatment, they should remove stances but dont make it easier than it already is. Instead they should be given few skills that will generate enmity, or CD buff that will increase enmity generation for X amount of time. Enmity should be a thing which tank could work on, and make it so bad ones will fail to keep it.

How about get rid of the damage stance so bad tanks don't go for it.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

How about get rid of the damage stance so bad tanks don't go for it.

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Back in 2.0 PLD would drop Shield oath as it lowered their damage by 20% for more defense and threat generation.
True they only had Rage of Halone combo so aggro never was an issue, but it was still done to up the DPS. (+20% dmg)
Warriors didnt have to; as Defiance didn't lower their damage, but the point is still valid. You either need to remove both stances or none at all.

I am all for being a meat shield for my party, but if the damage I'm taking is negligible? You can bet that I'm going to be pushing my damage as hard as I can.

There is currently already a shortage of tanks, taking away the only little bit of fun we have will push more of us into other roles.
I don't mind dealing less damage than a DPS, it's not my job after all, but if you are just gonna tell me to soak damage and nothing else? I'll stop tanking in a heartbeat and I'm sure many others will follow as well.

You will always have bad tanks, just as you will always have bad DPS and healers. You can't balance around the worst players nor the best, you need average Joe.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

How about get rid of the damage stance so bad tanks don't go for it.

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Or they could be like most reasonable mmo companys and let ppl choice the role they play even in wows badness they are reasonable.


Their is no reason warrior,drk shouldn't get 2 pick dps 4 q.
The same goes 2 acn up to 30 they should get healer option

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

No stop it.
Dont dump down the jobs, tank doesnt need a WoW treatment, they should remove stances but dont make it easier than it already is. Instead they should be given few skills that will generate enmity, or CD buff that will increase enmity generation for X amount of time. Enmity should be a thing which tank could work on, and make it so bad ones will fail to keep it.

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That is the opposite of this dev team's design philosophy, which is to make the roles that have more responsibility basically impossible to fail at unless you misplay horribly or are afk. If you squat in tank stance doing single pulls, spam your AOE threat ability, and push some of your completely overpowered frankly CD buttons when you drop below half, you are already "succeeding" at playing at tank in this game. Don't forget, base enmity was already buffed in this game because tanks were struggling too hard in DF before acquiring their tank stances at 30/40/whenever. This development team doesn't want your grandmama struggling with tanking any more than Blizzard wants her struggling with it.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Eh. Just give them the damage. Everyone wants to be a DPS now a days anyway.

Me myself I don't like to play tanks not because of the damage but because of the "lead" of the party thing.

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Speak for yourself. I started as DPS then quickly fell in love with Tank and healing as well. Tanking I love most of all.

Tank stance is useful for:

Big dungeon pulls.
Safety when learning new fights.
When someone messes up and healers need to focus attention elsewhere.
For enabling new or slightly undergeared tanks to adequately perform their role.

Removing tank stance is useful for:

Putting an end to 'get rid of tank stance' threads.
Turning 100 ways for bad players to be bad into merely 99 ways.