Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

However, only the initial damage from applying Fracture is affected by SE, the actual DoT ticks aren't.

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Awwwww, that's unfortunate...

This is really all SE's fault. In ARR there was a huge tank shortage so they started giving bonuses and mounts to encourage players to play the tank class. Naturally those players came from the dps class. This (IMO, I don't have proof) lead the devs to create tanks that look and feel like a dps. War already had the framework that was built on into HW. Drk was a job that appealed to dps, and was made a tank. Sam and Rdm are two of the most wanted new jobs and it wouldn't surprise me if one or both was made a tank. They are still going to appeal to dps classes and are going to be designed for a dps to step into. Instead of making the tank class more enjoyable to play we instead get dps playing a tank class with a dps mentality.

I hope to god we get a red mage tank! <3 There's literally nothing else I could want~

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Originally Posted by Gravton

This is really all SE's fault. In ARR there was a huge tank shortage so they started giving bonuses and mounts to encourage players to play the tank class. Naturally those players came from the dps class. This (IMO, I don't have proof) lead the devs to create tanks that look and feel like a dps. War already had the framework that was built on into HW. Drk was a job that appealed to dps, and was made a tank. Sam and Rdm are two of the most wanted new jobs and it wouldn't surprise me if one or both was made a tank. They are still going to appeal to dps classes and are going to be designed for a dps to step into. Instead of making the tank class more enjoyable to play we instead get dps playing a tank class with a dps mentality.

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I think that may speak more to how tanking can just be.... boring. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather DPS an instance than tank one.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

I hope to god we get a red mage tank! <3 There's literally nothing else I could want~

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Ditto, seriously. It hits all the high points with me

-looks neat
-might have fun mechanics
-causes endless butthurt on the forums

What more could you want?

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

I hope to god we get a red mage tank! <3 There's literally nothing else I could want~

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Can I have Samurai Healer then?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

3 years and one expansion later is a long time for a "mistake" to go unnoticed, though.

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Considering these are the same developers that rarely deal with unintended developments unless they involve very recent content and enough complaints surface (Ramuh EX with Titan-egi comes to mind), it wouldn't surprise me. Also consider their aversion for outright nerfing things.

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I'm a bit baffled with this part. If damage output is irrelevant to a tank, then why are you using RA or GB? RoH maximises enmity and mitigation. You're actually losing enmity and mitigation by using these other combos.

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Since you didn't read or ignored parts of my prior posts, I'll reiterate: I'm okay with tanks having abilities that let them deal some damage. Rage of Halone's debuff lasts 20 seconds, and combined with Shield Oath's enmity bonuses you can afford to rotate Halone, Goring Blade and Royal Authority. As I said in an earlier post, you can rotate all three to the point Halone's debuff only drops for 1 or 2 seconds between applications (assuming you want to prioritize Royal Authority over RoH). You're still generating aggro while in Shield Oath; more than if you were trying to tank a mob in Sword Oath and while taking less damage, to boot.

And all I said was that damage to a tank is a means to an end, not that it's irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Tank stance will always be dropped by tanks in order to do more damage if they so wish. Unless you wholesale nerf the base to terribad DPS you will still have people dropping stance to do more damage. I'd say that the choice to drop your tank stance is about as ingrained into tanking now as the shield stance itself.

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There's other ways to bring change without nerfing damage from abilities. One would be a mechanical punishment (maybe the equivalent of WoW crushing blows or insta-crits). Another would be increasing tank damage to the point it's more beneficial overall to full-time your defensive stance when tanking the boss. Lastly, and healers won't like this, but set the pace of battle and damage taken by the raid to the point anyone taking extra damage creates the risk of the healer going OOM (and that would include tanks making themselves take more damage than they should).

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DPSing as tanks is some of the most braindead activities in the game. You should at least try in difficult content to be better than the bare minimum. Again, doesn't matter in casual content but in savage content it does.

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Ignoring the issue of stances, the means to maximize DPS are there. At 60 PLD can and should work Goring Blade and Royal Authority into the rotation in addition to the other tank duties, and not exclusively use Rage of Halone. DRK, as I've said before, has a similar ability flow and priorities, so that also works for them.

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I can't imagine the frustration of being in a static where the tanks did ~500 DPS and said that because they were holding aggro everything was fine on the 5% enrages.

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And instead of reaching the logical conclusion of "let's gear our DPS", you're trying to blame the tank for not meeting a DPS check. That's bizarro world logic in almost every possible way.

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Finally, if trickles down because it's the best way to do it.

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"Best", "balanced" and "intended" are not always the same. Reckoning Bomb could have been the "best" way to kill a boss, but it was a broken as hell way of doing that. Utsusemi was considered by some the "best" way to mitigate things, but it was still a broken ability that screwed with the rest of FFXI's design. The grenade trick on the platforms during progression on Heroic Lich king was for a short time the "best" way of doing things, but it was still broken as hell (to the point Blizzard stripped the guild that got world first of their clear because of it). Sitting around in turn 2 for 9 minutes so that you could power heal through the enrage instead of actually doing the mechanics was the "best" way of doing it, but it was still broken as hell.

Simply saying "it's the best" is not, well, the best reasoning.

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Originally Posted by Frowny

I think that may speak more to how tanking can just be boring. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather DPS an instance than tank one.

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Tanking does require a specific mindset, just like healing does (and I'll be the first one to say I do NOT have the mindset for healing, which is why I generally avoid it). A person is allowed to lean towards what they find fun, and if tanking is not your bag, that's okay.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

And instead of reaching the logical conclusion of "let's gear our DPS", you're trying to blame the tank for not meeting a DPS check. That's bizarro world logic in almost every possible way.

"Best", "balanced" and "intended" are not always the same. Reckoning Bomb could have been the "best" way to kill a boss, but it was a broken as hell way of doing that.

Simply saying "it's the best" is not, well, the best reasoning.

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1) like I said, bare minimums, if you do the bare minimum criticism from better players is gonna come. Also, it's not unreasonable to expect a tank to do some damage. My own static has healers doing about 600 DPS and the tanks around 1400. So yeah, I could say that blaming the tank doing 500 DPS for a failed dps check is completely reasonable.


2) Doesn't matter, because you just need to clear. I don't need to respect the mechanics that the devs put in, I just need to bbeat them. Any other route of greater resistance is a detriment to my own chances of beating the content, as well as my fellow static members. You're supposed to not sack a person in Sophia EX yet everyone and their pet cat albert has agreed that it's the best way. You don't owe the devs you doing something as intended. If they can't make you do something, then it's within your power to not do it, and it's your prerogative to make use of those things.

3) It's not the best reasoning for everything, but when I want something done I don't care about whether or not it's good for balance.

I by and large agree with the rest of what you say though.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

So yeah, I could say that blaming the tank doing 500 DPS for a failed dps check is completely reasonable.

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Precisely why I went from War main for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd coils to being a dragoon main for alex and beyond. Expectations for end-game tanking changed drastically, and there wasn't any part of me that wanted to be a paper-thin tank getting my face smashed in alex savage, competing with dps for rolls. Now, in fairness, I did have fun with str builds in trials and dungeons after I had accumulated the str gear while on drg, but I never raided on war since. So, maybe that's a good thing since I'm probably not "cut out" for that role, or maybe it's a loss for the community since 1 less tank out there available. Granted, they at least fixed the gearing issues since then, but the mindset of the community hasn't changed at all. Max DPS or gtfo

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

However, only the initial damage from applying Fracture is affected by SE, the actual DoT ticks aren't.

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I was under the impression that DoTs snapshotted any buffs and debuffs up at the time of application (i.e. Trick, Hypercharge, etc.) Is the DoT tick not recognised as slashing damage or something?

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Originally Posted by Gravton

This is really all SE's fault. In ARR there was a huge tank shortage so they started giving bonuses and mounts to encourage players to play the tank class. Naturally those players came from the dps class. This (IMO, I don't have proof) lead the devs to create tanks that look and feel like a dps. War already had the framework that was built on into HW. Drk was a job that appealed to dps, and was made a tank. Sam and Rdm are two of the most wanted new jobs and it wouldn't surprise me if one or both was made a tank. They are still going to appeal to dps classes and are going to be designed for a dps to step into. Instead of making the tank class more enjoyable to play we instead get dps playing a tank class with a dps mentality.

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Hm. I don't know if this was really the case. Although there was an initial surge of interest in DRK at the time of its release (just like with NIN), a lot of people wandered off into other jobs after hitting 60. If you look at the Eorzea Census from a year ago (post-HW), tanks still were relatively rare compared to dps. The numbers fit with the queue times; the ratio of tanks to total players is probably lower than 1:4 (instant queues for 4-mans) and higher than 1:8 (longer queues for 24-mans after they changed from 2/2/4 to 1/2/5). DRK is the least played tank (which makes sense, because it's gated behind HW), and PLD is the most played (which is unchanged before and after HW).

The bigger impact of DRK was probably in luring players away from other tank jobs. You suddenly had long time WAR players coming into the job, bringing their combat prowess with them. This is probably why the MT dps levels started to climb, and player expectations with it. The techniques became mainstream.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I'm okay with tanks having abilities that let them deal some damage. Rage of Halone's debuff lasts 20 seconds, and combined with Shield Oath's enmity bonuses you can afford to rotate Halone, Goring Blade and Royal Authority. As I said in an earlier post, you can rotate all three to the point Halone's debuff only drops for 1 or 2 seconds between applications (assuming you want to prioritize Royal Authority over RoH). You're still generating aggro while in Shield Oath; more than if you were trying to tank a mob in Sword Oath and while taking less damage, to boot.

And all I said was that damage to a tank is a means to an end, not that it's irrelevant.

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Here. These are the parts in particular that I'm referring to:

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Originally Posted by Duelle

To me, judging tanks by how much damage they deal is the wrong way to approach raid comps and player dynamics. It's like judging a construction worker by how much they know about the business accounts of the company they work for. It's unreasonable and irrelevant to the duties of that person.

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From this post, I inferred that you felt that 'how much damage [a tank] deals ... [is] irrelevant to [their] duties', although what you're saying now seems to contradict this. I may have misunderstood, or you may have had a change of heart in the interim; not that it matters either way. If you can agree that dealing damage is one of the responsibilities of a tank, then this discussion becomes significantly more straightforward.

Now for the next part:

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Originally Posted by Duelle

That being said, damage to a tank is a means of holding aggro, and as such a tank should use the skills in their arsenal when possible.

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If doing damage is just a means to hold aggro, then why are you talking about rotating in RA and GB? RoH is your highest aggro generation combo by far. The other two combos sacrifice enmity for more damage.

You also talk about dropping the Strength Down debuff from RoH to fit in an extra application of RA, and explain that there may be times where you want to prioritise RA over RoH. You're sacrificing mitigation to do more damage.

I'm trying to get a sense of your priority system in all this. You downplay the role of tank dps, but it seems like there are clearly situations where you feel it appropriate to trade off enmity and mitigation to do more damage. So when is it appropriate? I presume this would be when you have more than satisfied the enmity and mitigation requirements of the encounter. Which gets back to what I was saying earlier: tanking is about knowing when to trade-off offense for defense and vice versa.

You could certainly try to design a fight with tight mitigation checks, requiring 100% Shield Oath uptime. It's not going to stay that way, though. Initially, only the teams with the best tanks would clear. Then more gear gets released, and the playerbase gets more practice. The check gets softer, and more teams start to clear. Those best players who cleared at a lower gear level no longer need the extra mitigation, and their Shield Oath uptime starts to drop, while their dps goes up.

Actually, this is a bit of an oversimplification. When you work on the later phases of a fight, your Shield Oath uptime in the earlier phases is going to start to drop off fairly quickly. Only the part that you're presently working on may actually ever require 100% ShO uptime, even in a very difficult fight.

Either way, tank dps comes mainly from how effectively you use your mitigation tool kit to stay out of Shield Oath and on how good your positioning/melee uptime is. Your rotation is a distant third; dps jobs are really the ones who spend the most time worrying about optimising complex rotations. Ours are fairly trivial. The tanks most capable of clearing a tight mitigation check are also the ones who do the highest dps.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I was under the impression that DoTs snapshotted any buffs and debuffs up at the time of application (i.e. Trick, Hypercharge, etc.) Is the DoT tick not recognised as slashing damage or something?

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I believe all physical DoTs are considered 'unaspected' physical. At any rate, none benefit from Dragon Kick, Dancing Edge, Storm's Eye, or Disembowel.

With the bizarre exception of DRK's two DoTs, Salted Earth (which apparently counts as Slashing), and Scourge (which apparently counts as magic). I had hoped that those were a bug, or the info was sourced by multiple jokes, but went ahead and tested the latter myself... Foe Scourge was ticking for more, consistently, in a three minutes without vs. three minutes with test. (Maybe that's been hotfixed by now? It's been a while.)

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

I don't know if there's really any point to this thread. We don't know what the devs consider to be "rotationally easier", why the consider that tanks need to be this, or how they're going to go about it.

Things that I'd like to see?

"Storm's Eye gains potency when used on a target already suffering Storm's Eye or Dancing Edge" (just enough to match Butcher's Block, so that Warrior offtanks don't push enmity like I see it complained in other threads)
"Delirium now inflicts Blunt resistance -10% and can overwrite Dragon Kick. Dragon Kick now lasts 20 seconds" (I am fed up with seeing Monks letting this fall off, just timed wrong so I can't Delirium to get that int down effect.)
"Cover is now a cross-class skill." (Maybe we'd see it being used more intelligently if it was a standard part of the Tank kit, rather than just a situational gimmick. I certainly didn't like seeing a Dragoon go running off, resulting in me eating Holy Shield Bash's stun but him still taking all the damage)

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Originally Posted by Falar

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

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why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

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Maybe he wants to contribute to the goal of the fight rather than be there solely to enable it?

Maybe people want to be a shining master swordsman/raging berserker/deathly black knight instead of a worthless punching bag with pool noodle weapons?

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

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They technically can design encounters that focuses more on tank checks, but admitedly the skillgap between players is too much. If you introduces so much damage to tanks more often, it becomes really frustrating for new tanks to get into raids, see t13 in ARR. Good tanks will simply adjust their playstyle but not so for the rest. It'd be boring to just stand still and take damage too. SE hasn't changed this part for tanks and healers to stop doing DPS for patches now. You also do need to understand that you only need to do enough damage to clear raids (that number is still high enough for most tanks to achieve), pushing damage is an extra. Enrages for Creator fights is also lenient enough, a12s has enrage timer of 13:30 iirc and most groups can clear it within 12mins. So you don't absolutely need huge dps tanks do clear current raid, just have competent tanks to deal respectable damage to enable clearing raids.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Maybe he wants to contribute to the goal of the fight rather than be there solely to enable it?

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So, keeping the boss on him is not "contributing" to the fight ?
And actually greatly depleting the boss HP is not "solely enabling" it ?

Drop the time degrading of enochian upon each use of Blizzard IV and I'll be good.

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Originally Posted by Frowny

I think that may speak more to how tanking can just be.... boring.

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It's a problem most MMOs have had since the beginning. Simply standing there, getting punched in the face and not feeling like you're contributing beyond taking a bullet for someone playing a class with all the, "cool" spells isn't going to sound all that appealing to a lot of players. I think MMOs have painted themselves into a corner by reserving all the fun, flashy stuff exclusively for DPS classes for so long while tanks get...shield bash. Now they're at the point where they have to practically bribe people to play tanks.

I actually like what SE does with tanks here. It's not that I want to play a DPS class, but I'm glad that we're breaking away from the mentality that tanks have to be as dry and vanilla as possible

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

So, keeping the boss on him is not "contributing" to the fight ?
And actually greatly depleting the boss HP is not "solely enabling" it ?

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So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp. Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

Even worse, when said opportunity is not even being utilized by the DPS.

So what now?

In a world that once existed where a Tank is but as I've said, a punching bag with flashing lights.

You've become exceptionally skilled at generating massive amounts of hate to allow the maximum potential from the damage dealers and beyond.

You've mitigated exceptionally well to the point that your healers need only press one basic heal button every 20 seconds.

The progression of the fight has not changed since you've only barely kept your hate above the DPS's max potential, or when you've managed to survive the rate of incoming damage.

Your huge aggro lead is worthless.

Your excessive mitigation does nothing but flaunt the iron wall perception.

Now, you sit there, and hope to be carried by the DPS.

At the end of the day, if you're in a good group or a bad group. What you do means nothing, because you cannot in any shape or form change the outcome of the bad group away from failure.

Not to mention a large part of a game's enjoyment is also the theme and visual style.

Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

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Originally Posted by Drakkaelus

I think MMOs have painted themselves into a corner by reserving all the fun, flashy stuff exclusively for DPS classes for so long while tanks get...shield bash. Now they're at the point where they have to practically bribe people to play tanks.

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Maybe they should make it so that tank LBs are a requisite for most savage content?

I dunno. I'm quite happy to play tank, even if I my skill level is competent instead of brilliant. I think I prefer tanks because it's a lot easier to tell if I'm doing something wrong (i.e. the boss is hitting someone else or I'm dead). With DPS, you can't really tell if you're playing competently or not unless you go into SSS. I suppose healers have the same benefit, but I struggle a lot more with juggling "job role" and "bonus damage" because they have different targets between them.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.
Then what?
So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?
What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

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I'd be really happy to answer these questions if every instance of "I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS" wasn't brushed away by the community with a "Doing DPS is a tank's job"

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I'd be really happy to answer these questions if every instance of "I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS" wasn't brushed away by the community with a "Doing DPS is a tank's job"

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And the broad alternative was given last page. With a single difficulty level, basing a tank's job much higher on mitigation events would mean that the difference between a good tank and a mediocre one isn't just dps, but primarily whether they're still living.

Now, I do really like a desperate fight to survive, but if every 20th second is a "do this or die", how is the average or under player going to feel when tanking? Rather than "I think you can do more dps than that, yah?" or "Where's mah stance-dancing, tank?" where most current fights don't need that much from the tanks anymore, you have death, repeatedly, from any under-performing tank.
Not to mention that there then becomes virtually no chance, under that added boss damage (only alternative being less combined mitigation/restoration/damage/utility from tanks, mostly from the mitigation side), of a dps being able to hold on for a moment of tanking when the real tanks go down.

Even then I do think it's a decent point for debate, as I think our goal constantly should be finding community and—better yet—ingame means to try to bring up our struggling players rather than dumbing down content for them (typically to their disbenefit, however more broadly inclusive we intended for the game to be in doing so), but just keep in mind that SE probably has a decent, if overly cautious, reason for what they've done with tanks lately—they're playing it safe.
Should they not? If so, what all should they change (in this one regard)?

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids. Even if SE designs raids around much higher tank checks requirement, you can't have tanks doing something like 500dps like most tanks will do realistically. Not to mention that hard tank checks mean that most tanks are still going to fail. Pros and cons weigh each other. I welcome a much harder tank busters like T13 or even harsher actually. If you like to be a turtle so much, you should prove how good you are at mapping enough CDs for harder tank busters. That's however still within the scope of raid tanks to do just as well as current meta, so nothing much will be changed anyway.

Basically it still comes down to how skilled you are, that's universal.

Most people here probably didn't even clear T13 before 3.0, much less before 2.5 ended. So you pretty much have the demographic supporting how most tanks couldn't cope with the hard hitting tank busters.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids.

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Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names :p). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names :p). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.

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Conflict in discussions always sparks more discussion, that is what a forum is for no? I insist that you put forth more ideas of the turtle tank concept. This being my first take on a trinity based MMO, I've only really tasted FFXIV's style of tanking so I'm quite curious as to the differences of this and the "traditional" meat wall style and it's boons over this.

While I wouldn't mind if there was a tank that focused solely on personal and party mitigation, I want there to be acknowledgement that this has to be considered in balance of the other tanks.

By your example, we have the Mystic Knight, who when played at an exceptional level is KING of mitigation. Potentially capable of solo tanking even (double tank mechanics aside).

What SE wants to do however, despite the current balance, is makes ALL tanks work together in ALL tank setups and ALL content.

Because of the nature of DF and the now upcoming RF, the weakest of tanks mitigation wise must be able to MT and meet the required mitigation check. Yes?

So if we introduce this ultra tank, what benefits can it bring to offset the major DPS loss? What makes it viable in correlation to the other setups?

And before you begin, we cannot consider solo-tanking because that not only breaks the idea of ALL tanks in ALL compositions, but also breaks the DF matching system.
And no, no content designed strictly for Mystic Knight, because as I said, all tanks must be able to participate.

When new raid contents are released, the minority (top players) of the community will dictate what's good and what's optimal to bring. As developers, SE also can't just make a job strictly better that leaves the rest to dust. WAR is way too preferred as OT, while you have PLD/DRK taking a huge chunk of the tanking duty, so you can't use this base as "WAR is best tank" because WAR has IB tied to Defiance which happens to the the best tanking CD in the game but too wasted in contents that don't need that sort of mitigation. PLD/DRK comp can still clear any contents just fine (back in A4S era, there was this static with PLD/DRK comp and they cleared just fine), same deal in Creator Savage due to the lenient DPS checks so far.

Any 4.0 changes to tanks haven't been discussed deeply by the developers, so you are free to speculate all you want BUT the point is skilled players can adjust easily and that's the bottomline. Savage raiding is also not for everyone, that's something you have to understand, if Creator Savage rustles your jimmies, I am sure 4.0++ will too, because the difficulty should ramp up based on what was told in the livestream so far and you bet it will be as close as Midas/Gordias by end of the next expansion.

Ultimately every game is different, if you like your "OH I AM SO TANKY I DONT DIE FROM ANYTHING" tank, this is probably not your game to showcase that. We base the DPS meta on the effectiveness and efficiency, if you aren't into minmax, that's your problem.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

So if we introduce this ultra tank, what benefits can it bring to offset the major DPS loss? What makes it viable in correlation to the other setups?

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The major part of higher mitigation is requiring less healing thus giving more room for healers to DPS. The current problem we have is that even the lowest mitigation already allows healer too much DPS uptime...so much that it's becoming a standard. I suppose the Mystic stances shouldn't totally negate the damage though, as it's really hard to compensate a party member actually doing 0 damage :p Besides it wouln't change the idea that mastering its rotation would fit a surviving goal and not a killing one.

As for solo tanking, yes, it's a viable answer. Consider a fight were tankbusters appears very often. With a "usual" two tanks setup, you'd have to swap during the fight to let CD timers refresh. With this tank, you wouldn't need to. It's a different strat for a different job, but it doesn't prevent "any tanks setup to work on any content". For example, even if the Mystic Knight could solo tank the current Sophia EX, it wouldn't make other tanks suddenly unable to clear it in a usual setup.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

Ultimately every game is different, if you like your "OH I AM SO TANKY I DONT DIE FROM ANYTHING" tank, this is probably not your game to showcase that. We base the DPS meta on the effectiveness and efficiency, if you aren't into minmax, that's your problem.

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The question is still "Why ?". Why do all tanks automatically have to follow the exact same meta ?

PLD Give PLD bit shorter cooldown dmg AOE. Remove GCD on stances.
DRK Give DRK 1 addion manna regen in DPS stance, Remove GCD on Grit, Give some tought on LD because hp pool size increas make that skill less smart by patch.
WAR Give war 1 more Tanking Cooldown (Dont give wrath on it or it will be eaten by greed for dps)

Solo tanking doesn't make tank dps less useful. If you designed a tank that could solo a fight, you're going to prefer players who offer more dps while solo tanking. You could design a solo tank job who main heals while singing songs and baking cakes, but the instant groups saw a player who knew do all those things while maximising their dps, that player would be preferred to tank content.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

"I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS"

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This is a nice sentiment. If you want a challenge, though, you have to seek it out.

Groups like Lucrezia used to do below minimum ilvl clears of older fights between raid tiers, such as i55/AF T5 and i90 T9. To facilitate this, the game now includes a minimum ilvl option. This can provide some fairly stringent mitigation checks. You can't really say "I want to be challenged" unless you've already exhausted the existing challenges in the game, as well as imposed some of your own. You can always find ways to push yourself.

When I think of mitigation challenges, I think of fights in which the tanks take more damage and survival becomes more dependent on cooldown use. This means less access to "tanky" gear and less passive damage reduction. I don't think you can request "tankier tanks" and "mitigation challenges" in the same breath.

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Originally Posted by Falar

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

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MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low (which in turn makes less people want to level a tank, which means if your game has a group finder option, you're going to have that much harder a time finding one). The problem here is that raids measure tanks not by their mitigation (like in every other game) but by how much damage they deal, and that's incredibly lopsided logic. That leads to other things (tanks making themselves take more damage for more DPS, belittling of those who take issue with that) that, to me, are causes for concern.

Barring making soloing unbearable, low damage didn't really bother me; then again, I've played tanks for almost a decade, most of which were designed to deal a lot less damage than the DPS (try playing a tank built mostly around 0-damage enmity generators; weep as you barely register on the DPS meters <,<).

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Originally Posted by Drakkaelus

It's a problem most MMOs have had since the beginning. Simply standing there, getting punched in the face and not feeling like you're contributing beyond taking a bullet for someone playing a class with all the, "cool" spells isn't going to sound all that appealing to a lot of players.

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That sort of depends on the person. I used to have the ability to slam my weapon to the ground to create a cone of damage that stunned everything in front of me, and if I stomped the ground thunder would crash down and a 5-foot crater would appear at the point I stomped that would slow the attack speed of everyone around me. Tanks can have cool abilities, and they don't have to be focused on just damage.

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I think MMOs have painted themselves into a corner by reserving all the fun, flashy stuff exclusively for DPS classes for so long while tanks get...shield bash. Now they're at the point where they have to practically bribe people to play tanks.

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You still have the people that don't want the responsibility of wanting to play a tank. It takes colossal amounts of bribery to get those people to take up the role. And the results would be dubious.

Non-sequitur

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

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Then everyone else does their thing, while the tank continues doing theirs.

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So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

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You continue holding aggro and trying to stay alive.

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What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

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Does there need to be a separation? Tanks generally don't stroke themselves over claims of skill.

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How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

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Depends on how the tank is designed. There's also mechanics to take into account. A tank doesn't just sit in a corner doing nothing while they take hits.

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Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp.

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Not "all", but that's a part of the tank role. The rest is filled by whatever incidental damage you dealt while generating aggro (Shield Oath+Goring Blade/Royal Authority in between Rage of Halone applications) and if you have any group utility (Reprisal, Divine Veil, Aegis of Light, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout, Anti-Magic Zone back when that could be used in PvE, etc).

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Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

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See my above mention of utility if the tank has access to it.

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Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

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If you want it in one word, balance. And I wouldn't say they bounce off; they just don't cut as deep. And it's fine, because likewise that moogle can smash the kitchen knife-wielder into paste while the greatsword/greataxe/sword&board guy simply takes the hit and asks for someone to close whatever window is open because they just felt a draft.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Solo tanking doesn't make tank dps less useful. If you designed a tank that could solo a fight, you're going to prefer players who offer more dps while solo tanking.

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Problem is, offering more DPS is always done by sacrificing mitigation. It's how tank stances work. Fights actually allow you to do that because they're all designed around predictable flow of damage, so a knowledgeable tank knows when he can afford to sacrifice mitigation and when the healer can compensate.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Groups like Lucrezia used to do below minimum ilvl clears of older fights between raid tiers, such as i55/AF T5 and i90 T9.

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Problem is, theses restrictions don't actually change how you play your job. The CD rotation is still the same, the strategy is the same and the flow of combat is the same. The only thing that changes is that you have a smaller cushion for mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

When I think of mitigation challenges, I think of fights in which the tanks take more damage and survival becomes more dependent on cooldown use. This means less access to "tanky" gear and less passive damage reduction. I don't think you can request "tankier tanks" and "mitigation challenges" in the same breath.

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Actually, you can, it just have to work on active mitigation, and challenging enmity control. As with my Mystic example, having to constantly keep a barrier is more challenging that popping a CD on a predicted timer. As for enmity, it would require a great overall, but to sum up, I'd say that DPS should do much more damage, and I mean really much more damage, to the point that keeping enmity on them would be hard, and that they could have to hold back a little if their tank fails to gain enough enmity.
But, with a really good tank, they would have enough room to go full power and wreck everyhting.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low

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That's what DPS stances are for. But when actually tanking, allowing tanks to stay in DPS stance is pretty...weird. But it can easily be fixed. Give tanks the same HP as DPS, and make tank stances having a far higher mitigation. 20% damage reduction is clearly not enough when you already have around 50% more HP than most DPS.

Yes, knowledgeable tanks know how to trade off mitigation for dps.

Yes, minimum ilvl challenges offer a smaller margin of error. That is what makes them mitigation challenges. Is your cooldown rotation and strategy the essentially same as if you were overgeared and unsynced with Echo? Try it out and let me know. Playing the piano is just about pressing the buttons in the correct order, right? Okay, then play.

If you want tanks which take less damage, then it makes the mitigation requirements easier. So this is the same as looking for easier mitigation checks. Enmity is just damage with a multiplier attached to it. A rose by any other name...

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Playing the piano is just about pressing the buttons in the correct order, right? Okay, then play.

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Are you really comparing playing an instrument with clicking on one button every 30-60 seconds ?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you want tanks which take less damage, then it makes the mitigation requirements easier.

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You're mistaking the effect of mitigation and the way to achieve this mitigation. Just look at Rampart and Inner Beast, and tell me they're exactly the same in combat.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Enmity is just damage with a multiplier attached to it. A rose by any other name...

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Actually, this couldn't be further from the truth, with the existence of pure enmity oriented skills like Flash and Provoke, and more importantly, that tanks achieve highest enmity and highest damage very differently, mainly with stance dancing.

If you're clicking, that would explain how you arrived at the figure of 1-2 APM.

Enmity generation is different from dps when you are obligated to do both and there's a trade-off involved. If you're taking the stance of "I don't want to maximize my dps, I want to maximise my aggros!" then you're just substituting dps maximisation for enmity.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you're clicking, that would explain how you arrived at the figure of 1-2 APM.

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It would have been better if I said "pushing a button" or "activating a skill" ? Would it have changed the fact that Twintania does only one Death Sentence every 30 seconds ? Or that Nael uses Ravensbeak at precise timing whatever your ilvl is ?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Enmity generation is different from dps when you are obligated to do both and there's a trade-off involved.If you're taking the stance of "I don't want to maximize my dps, I want to maximise my aggros!" then you're just substituting dps maximisation for enmity.

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Yes, the difference is that one of those is exactly what a tank is supposed to do (To the point that it's the only role that have built-in bonuses), yet they keep designing fights where you want to avoid it as much as possible.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Yes, the difference is that one of those is exactly what a tank is supposed to do (To the point that it's the only role that have built-in bonuses), yet they keep designing fights where you want to avoid it as much as possible.

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Is it wrong then that SE designs encounters that way? You are just sore for no reason, don't like it then don't play. Simple. It's already a fact that DPS meta is prevalent and is a requirement to clear raids. It's same as complaining about unable to get a job because you aren't up to the skill you need to be. I really just don't get it, if you aren't raiding, why does this bother you that much? Adaptation is a scary word and not everyone likes to be outside of their bubbles but if you want to raid, minmaxing is what you have to do or you will be left behind. Nothing personal there.

So really, this whole discussion about roles and what a tank is vs. what it should be is really murky. I don't think anyone is denying the fact that in how things are currently formatted, tanks do have ample opportunity to contribute to group damage--what's at question is a matter of preference and philosophy as to whether or not that's something that should be as heavy a focus for tanks.

It helps in this context to consider what makes a successful encounter as a whole, and what the goals of the group are as a whole. In order to successfully challenge an encounter, a group needs to mitigate enough of the damage being put out to survive, while also dealing enough damage to kill the boss. So we have two goals that are shared by all party members: party survival and party damage output. In modern MMOs, most encounters are designed around the idea that if you can survive, you can finish the fight, and so really, the challenge comes to party survival.

Now, party survival is all about mitigating damage, either by (1) avoiding avoidable damage, (2) soaking unavoidable damage, and (3) healing the damage that is taken. If these three items are done right by all party members, no one will die, and the raid will very likely meet with success. And this is where the trinity system comes into play.

Most bosses these days will only attack a single target with unavoidable damage. This makes sense, because in combat, in most cases, you can't really fight eight people at once. So tanks exist to fill the role of the person who takes the most damage. They specialize in abilities that minimize the amount of damage they take personally, and so are typically very hard to kill, and bring a lot of personal mitigation to the fore (usually by 2 and 3 above). This is their primary responsibility, and allows other members in the group to focus on their damage output--unless they cannot fully mitigate the unavoidable damage they take. If they cannot (and most encounters are designed such that they cannot), this is why we have healers.

Healers are party members whose abilities focus around ensuring that tanks and other party members stay alive, reversing the damage they take. Healers do have some ability to do damage, but they take on the primary responsibility of making sure everyone stays alive. This, again, allows other members of the group to focus on maximizing their damage output, so they don't have to worry about mitigation.

So tanks and healers both have primary responsibilities that contribute to the success of damage dealers. Tanks' primary responsibilities are holding enemies' attention and doing what they can to minimize damage taken (in many ways, they control enemy damage output), while healers' primary responsibility is to make sure party members don't die, so that everyone else can focus on their own tasks--killing the boss. And in a puritanical trinitarian MMO world, this would be all that these roles do: tanks control damage, healers heal damage, and DDs kill the thing doing damage.

But what if there's downtime in an encounter? What if there is a period where a tank doesn't have much outgoing damage to control, or where a healer doesn't have much to heal? Then they fall back to the second group goal of killing the boss. Encounters in FFXIV are designed this way; they have a lot of downtime, and a lot of opportunities where outgoing damage is low enough to allow healers and tanks to fall back on that second goal of killing the boss.

For career tanks and healers from other games, this might seem counterintuitive. "It's not my job to kill the boss!" Well, actually, since that's the goal of the group, that's your goal as well. Anything you can do to afford yourself to maximize your own damage output is in fact part of your job description--so long as it doesn't compromise your primary responsibility. So tanks, when there isn't a lot of incoming damage for you to control, or when you can control it very easily, your goal is then to maximize your output. Healers, when there isn't a lot of incoming damage for you to mitigate and reverse, your goal is then to maximize your damage output. Sure, when there's heightened incoming damage, both will need to fall back on their primary responsibilities, but if not? That's when you pop your offensive CDs, switch stances, and go to town.

Many tanks and healers don't like that idea, because they have this notion that incoming damage is spiky and unpredictable; and in some games, that's true. In some games, tanks do need to spend every waking moment in their tank stance with their cooldowns active, because they have no way of knowing when the boss is going to throw a nuke in their face. In some games, healers do need to focus primarily on healing, because the incoming damage would wipe the raid if they let up even for a second. But those games are not FFXIV. Here, if you focus exclusively on healing, even if you're trying to keep everyone topped off, you're very likely to have periods of time where you're just standing there. Here, there are periods of time in almost every boss fight where you won't be taking enough damage to justify staying in your tank stance. Here, the challenge of most encounters comes in the form of predictable, scripted, often-avoidable mechanics.

In those other games, counting a tank's ability to deal damage or a healer's ability to deal damage doesn't make sense. The encounters in those games don't afford them the opportunity to focus on other things. But in FFXIV, unless the encounter design paradigm is changed, it absolutely does make sense to include their ability to deal damage into the equation. I agree that it would be nice if the damage control aspect of tanking was more engaging/challenging, but that's not how the game is currently designed.

As a corollary to this, though, it is by no means acceptable to judge another person's skill based upon your own experiences. If a turtle tank and a non-damaging healer are part of a group that regularly meets with success, and they enjoy their gameplay, then who are you to judge them? Yes, your way of playing may make encounters faster, but at the end of the day, what matters is whether or not they have fun, and whether they KO'd the boss to rifle through their pockets. All a group needs to do in most cases is survive long enough to kill the boss, and if they can do that, then they're doing it right.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

Is it wrong then that SE designs encounters that way?

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Yes, it is, because is makes void most of what a tank is supposed to be.
Enmity ? Never an issue.
Mitigation ? Far too much situations where you don't need it.

The fact that Vit was mostly useless before the AP change (Remind that Vit accessories were the only one where tank could actually roll need) and that Parry has absolutely no noticeable effect is a clear hint that they don't know how to properly manage tank jobs. It could be expected though, it already was a big mess in FFXI...

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

Snip too long

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The thing is some posters here don't advocate doing DPS even when their primary responsibility is met. Now that's the issue. Most tanks don't know how to maximize damage output is also another one. You can have tanks doing as low as 400dps and on the extreme side, some tanks can do 1.5k dps, both are doing the same fight. How does that happen actually? Is it just a coincidence that most tanks that advocate pure tanking do as low as 500dps (pls check if anyone here gets that number btw), when optimally you can do 800dps in full tank stance? For tanks to have as high as 60% difference in DPS despite both in the same tank stance uptime is sketchy. People aren't readily going to admit they do low DPS either nor they will say they can't press buttons in a logical way. One word I can say: skill. This is why the discussions always end up in a huge mess because it represents 2 sides that dont want to talk it out. A good discussion can only happen when common issues and understanding match.

How do you feel yourself when you see OTs in 24mans doing way less DPS than you especially when you are main tank, and even worse you are on 100% tank stance? That's a huge red flag people need to look into. And this is not even looking at those DPS at 200dps in Weeping, for goodness sake.