Lets stop fighting SE and work with them. What are your ideas?

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Originally Posted by _Pigzig

No, it was still boosted around Wrath of the Lich King. People used to require aggro mods for endgame raids and DPS had to hold off. You should've seen Warrior in Burning Crusade, they used to take gear off in outgeared content so that they would take more damage on purpose, that way they generated more rage from damage taken, allowing them to do more aggro. I distinctly remember at the pre-Wrath patch all tanks got a massive buff and you could just yolo instances after, because most of Burning Crusade dungeon challenge revolved around the trash mobs which were now easy to hold aggro on.

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Rogues using a GCD on Feint to do no damage and decrease threat? Hunters doing Feign Death on cooldown? Boss starting the fight with AoE damage and a healer getting aggro and dying for healing it? Half of the bosses having a skill that did nothing but decrease the threat on current target? Good times.

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Originally Posted by Ragology

I think it was a reference to this post

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...change-stances

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Doesn't WoW do this or at least used to? Tanks are crit immune in their tank stances or otherwise they'd die to pretty much the first crit. Everything can crit in that game and had a damage 2x multiplier.

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Originally Posted by Ragology

I think it was a reference to this post

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I see. Well, this has still nothing in common with what i suggest at all, so I'll keep my conclusion.

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Originally Posted by _Pigzig

No, it was still boosted around Wrath of the Lich King. People used to require aggro mods for endgame raids and DPS had to hold off. You should've seen Warrior in Burning Crusade, they used to take gear off in outgeared content so that they would take more damage on purpose, that way they generated more rage from damage taken, allowing them to do more aggro.

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The change I'm talking about was halfway through wrath. I know because I was there when the big thing was nerfing the threat coefficient to Revenge and buffing its damage to keep threat generation the same. That's also when we saw a temporary stint with Arms warriors tanking heroics due to the Revenge buff combined with the Unrelenting Assault talent (which removed Revenge's cooldown).

The removing gear thing (pantsless tanking) was because rage generation scaled with damage taken, and the better your gear was, the harder it was to generate rage in content you had outgeared. Your aggro mods were Sunder Armor (which dealt no damage, generated a good chunk of threat, stacked and increased damage taken from your attacks) and anything you got from Defensive Stance. There were some passive boosts that people came up with talents (Deep Wounds) and skills you used as filler (Concussive Blow, Shockwave, Thunderclap).

I read your post as aggro generation not being a thing anymore, when it most certainly is. While Wrath did bring up everyone's numbers, tanks were subject to aggro mechanics and still are, even now in Legion (which got rid of stances entirely).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Let me ask you a question. Imagine that, after the constant complain of having reduced the skill ceiling too much, every DPS get an updated and very complex rotation for very skilled players that allow them to do 50% more damage. But, the aftermath of that boost is that is would be almost impossible to not lose aggro without a really high tank stance uptime. Would you embrace using your tank stance more or would you come here asking for them to be nerfed back so you can retain your full personal DPS?

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I would ask that the gap between tank and DPS direct contribution be reduced as not to bar double-tanking from most fights, and that SE find means by which the majority of the playerbase has the training to mostly pull off these rotations as to come within an range of optimal performance that would not frustrate skilled players or that the learning curve is re-tapered to decrease the output variance due to skill. (Personally, I haven't argued that skill ceiling has been reduced too greatly with Stormblood. I've simply argued that certain jobs now feel gutted until level 70—if not even after—or otherwise clunky, subtly to obviously afflicted by design flaw, or uncharacteristic of their formerly held identities. This is altogether a very different complaint, and not necessarily or even likely solved through more complex, especially if equally linear, rotations.)

In your scenario, no amount of DPS sacrifice for enmity on the tank's side would warrant their (doubled) presence, largely because of that amount of DPS to be sacrificed. "Sac strats" would be more optimal. Perhaps this disparity was given to show how rhetorical the question was, but I can only reiterate — tanks are DPS, a portion of the contribution of which comes with the ease by which they allow others to DPS. As strategies to provide that ease (in terms of actual GCD or uptime availability, not just difficulty) without the loss of dps that comes with a specialist class come out, often by means of the added damage of avoiding the specialist, that indirect portion shrinks. You can either maintain a base contribution that lets them remain, then, or they're replaced like any other specialist without enough work.

I've never "not embraced" tank stance, in so far as it is actually useful, which, I'm sorry to say, is only for the portion of time in which enmity combos alone will not suffice to hold enmity, or the use of a damage-reducing but enmity-enhancing multiplier over some portion of a fight actually allows for increased raid DPS. But until tank stance is more than just a safety CD paired with enmity conversion, that's all it can be. Even if players were grudgingly forced to use it for 80% of a given fight, the point would remain — as soon as it's not necessary, and ditching it would cost less (such as through reactivation cost in time, gauge, and mana) than maintaining it, drop it.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

The change I'm talking about was halfway through wrath. I know because I was there when the big thing was nerfing the threat coefficient to Revenge and buffing its damage to keep threat generation the same. That's also when we saw a temporary stint with Arms warriors tanking heroics due to the Revenge buff combined with the Unrelenting Assault talent (which removed Revenge's cooldown).

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I remember making use of my dual-spec for that... Protection tanking for big pulls, Arms tanking for single-target shits and giggles. Or just being able to pretty effectively off-tank mobs as a DPS Arms build. Good times.

I was one of those who originally went for Tactical Mastery in Vanilla because I really enjoyed the stance-dancing that came along with it (and weapon-swapping, often enough). I couldn't do the DPS of a pure Fury in PvP, but my harassment, mobility, sustainability, and shut-downs were top-line. Almost made me regret Warbringer when it came out, as compared to the potential removal of Rage penalties altogether when stance-dancing... It's not like it needed to be stances, in themselves, but I wanted to see more done with both the momentum and decisiveness (preferably still without any significant lock-in period) of the old Warrior...

Warrior and other "heavy" DPS classes that are able and optimal in sacrificing just a bit of DPS for the versatility of enmity and battlefield control will always have my heart. It's what made 1.2 Monk so great to me, even if I prefer the gameplay of... well, a sub-1.95 GCD Heavenward Monk, to be specific, I suppose.

No idea why some people are so fixated on the idea that tanks and healers should do considerably less dps than actual dps jobs. They have their raid dps buffs and utilities as well. Even if warriors do as much dps as a brd/mch you won't swap a brd/mch out for a third tank since you'd lose on their utilities, both defensive (mp/tp refresh, palisade) and offensive (songs, hypercharge). If warriors do as much dps as the jobs with little to no utility outside their personal dps like sam/blm then yes it's a problem.

If tanks do too little dps then one of the two tanks in static groups would feel obligated to swap to a dps job for floors that don't require two tanks, otherwise they'll just be a burden to the group. You can't build a static with 1 tank 2 healers and 5 dps either since you never know if solo tank is even possible before seeing the fights after release.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

No idea why some people are so fixated on the idea that tanks and healers should do considerably less dps than actual dps jobs. They have their raid dps buffs and utilities as well. Even if warriors do as much dps as a brd/mch you won't swap a brd/mch out for a third tank since you'd lose on their utilities, both defensive (mp/tp refresh, palisade) and offensive (songs, hypercharge). If warriors do as much dps as the jobs with little to no utility outside their personal dps like sam/blm then yes it's a problem.

If tanks do too little dps then one of the two tanks in static groups would feel obligated to swap to a dps job for floors that don't require two tanks, otherwise they'll just be a burden to the group. You can't build a static with 1 tank 2 healers and 5 dps either since you never know if solo tank is even possible before seeing the fights after release.

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I agree with this, maybe trade offs like old cleric stance wasnt so bad of an idea, where the trade offs are maximized and comparable dps, which could keep them relevant outside of power creep from gear...but considering how it got changed for healers, im not sure how they intend to balance this all.

Dunno how the JP community is reacting to all of this, its just sad when you have the full on debate, healers that dont dps,healers that rather dps than heal, tanks that dont dps, tanks that would rather dps than tank

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

If tanks do too little dps then one of the two tanks in static groups would feel obligated to swap to a dps job for floors that don't require two tanks, otherwise they'll just be a burden to the group.

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This already exists. The second tank bring no utility to justify its presence outside of forced dual-tank content, and all tanks do less DPS than actual DPS, even if the difference is "small". Increasing that difference wouldn't change anything.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

This already exists. The second tank bring no utility to justify its presence outside of forced dual-tank content, and all tanks do less DPS than actual DPS, even if the difference is "small". Increasing that difference wouldn't change anything.

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The only relevant recent fights where you can solo tank were a9s and a10s, and it was only possible with super high dps (killing faust z in 30-40s, killing refurbisher before faust drops, pushing lamebrix to phase change right after the first tank tether), so it's irrelevant unless you're in a 99th percentile group. It's pretty much impossible in other fights, a1s had two bosses, a2s had the 4 jagd dolls, a3s and a4s had resistance down debuffs, a5s had concussion and tank buster combo, a6s and a7s had vuln stacks, a8s had multiple adds, a11s had multiple shared tank busters. Maybe a12s could be solo tanked but it requires some weird cheesing strat which ended up with lower group dps compared to standard compositions. If you can solo tank without weird strats then removing a tank and adding in a fifth dps would be a really big raid dps boost, thanks to raid dps buffs being multiplicative.

If the devs want to stick with 2/2/4 composition then there should absolutely be no fight that can be solo tanked in the raid tier, at least pre-echo. If they want to put fights that can be solo tanked then all the other relevant raid tier fights must be possible to be solo tanked as well, so people can do progression with 1/2/5 composition instead of making a tank guilty for not being able to gear up a dps job during progression.

tl;dr solo tankable fight is bad, unless every other fight is also solo tankable as well.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

tl;dr solo tankable fight is bad, unless every other fight is also solo tankable as well.

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Ok, sure. But then, if fights are designed to require two tanks, what's the issue with tanks doing significantly less damage than DPS ? Especially of the reason for that is because high damage output would result in high enmity generation that couldn't be covered with too much DPS stance. Frankly, I hope SAM will go more and more in that direction as ilvl increases.

Because even in most fights that require two tanks at any given time it's just one of them tanking the boss, while the other is dpsing?

As for sam as long as potencies are unchanged it will keep the gap size relative to other dps even as ilv increases, though at the moment some of the other dps jobs are quite lacking so I think we can expect some of the lower dps jobs being brought up closer to sam, especially the ones with less dps utilities like blm.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Because even in most fights that require two tanks at any given time it's just one of them tanking the boss, while the other is dpsing?

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Considering I try to advocate more tank stance uptime, which would be the cause of tanks offering less overall DPS than current contribution, I dare say that the tank not tanking is pretty much not concerned :p

And there's still a possibility that our right side won't increase our damage output anymore, so DPS might scale better than tanks.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Considering I try to advocate more tank stance uptime, which would be the cause of tanks offering less overall DPS than actuall contribution, I dare say, that the tank not taking the boss is pretty much not concerned :p

And there's still a possibility that our right side won't increase our damage output anymore, so DPS might scale better than tanks.

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Well maybe I misunderstood you but I thought you were advocating for turtle tanking viability by allowing for a fifth dps to replace the second tank. If you're trying to push for even more penalizing tank stance penalties, I don't think that'll happen since that'll just push the skill gap wider between good players and bad players, since generally the key difference between good tanks (in good groups) and average tanks lie in their ability to minimize tank stance uptime. Tank stance is the only mitigation that comes at a huge cost of dps so it's always the first thing you remove when you have a surplus of mitigation.

I don't think they'll keep the current system with str scaling and 0 str right side for long, it's stupid for tanks to be the only one to benefit the least from gearing up, and it'll make fending accs worthless drops (or at the very least they have the least worth, compared to dps/heal accs). It's not fun when during early progression your group has to pray for the chests to NOT drop fending accs since they offer the least benefit to the group.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Well maybe I misunderstood you but I thought you were advocating for turtle tanking viability by allowing for a fifth dps to replace the second tank.

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This is one option, but not the one I suggested here. What I suggested is for enmity management to be rewarding, either by linking it to a type of debuff that would benefit other members, or by increasing the damage of DPS so that perfect rotation would inevitably ripp aggro from tank that don't know how to properly generate enmity (Which would have a higher skill ceiling). So, the more skilled your DPS are, the more uptime you'd need on your tank stance, and the more skilled you would be at generating enmity , the more leeway you'd give your DPS to go full powered.

As for VIT acc being useless, we still need to see how tight the HP checks will be on Omega Savage.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

As for VIT acc being useless, we still need to see how tight the HP checks will be on Omega Savage.

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VIT accessory drops will always be useless compared to the DPS/Healer acc drops if they still provide no damage. They won't ever make the later turns have a tank HP check beyond the best you can get at week 1 otherwise it becomes an issue if you're lucky enough to get tank drops to even progress.

Nah they will never tune hp checks that tight in savage. As long as you have access to good healers and co-tank who's fine with doing multiple tank swaps for mitigation you won't need as much hp as those who don't (i.e. pugs). If tanks in good statics need 5 fending accs to live then pug tanks will die lol. Based on the clear rate the devs are happy with (creator savage clear rate) they'd tune savage raids to be within the reach of pugs.

I'll still go in with 5 fending accs at the start for the extra safety net, but after optimizing I would start switching them with slaying accs unless they patch 270 accs to be role locked (the most obvious choice for them, since allowing a 12k hp loss would just widen the skill gaps between good tanks and bad tanks just like in gordias).

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

VIT accessory drops will always be useless

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Thank you, Nostradamus. Glad to know someone can see the future.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Nah they will never tune hp checks that tight in savage. As long as you have access to good healers and co-tank who's fine with doing multiple tank swaps for mitigation you won't need as much hp as those who don't (i.e. pugs). If tanks in good statics need 5 fending accs to live then pug tanks will die lol. Based on the clear rate the devs are happy with (creator savage clear rate) they'd tune savage raids to be within the reach of pugs.

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This is Savage content, it's not supposed to be tuned down for people that can't properly work as a team.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

This is Savage content, it's not supposed to be tuned down for people that can't properly work as a team.

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Can you say that with a straight face after seeing creator savage, lol. Heck even in creator savage most of the NA/EU servers don't even come close to JP servers' clear rates (and at least in Tonberry, the "outsider" JP server, most of the clears are from pugs). If they tune it harder than what the pugs here can handle (and mind you, pug strats here revolve around one turtle MT and one MH pretty much healing all the time, so that's definitely not even close to proper teamwork), clear rates will plummet.

Also fallenwings has a point, if you tune hp checks to require more than what you can get with full crafted gear, your progress would rely on luck since if you don't get fending gear drops you can't pass the hp checks. That'll require multiple weeks of world class progression like gordias, and who knows how long average raiders would take.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Also fallenwings has a point, if you tune hp checks to require more than what you can get with full crafted gear, your progress would rely on luck since if you don't get fending gear drops you can't pass the hp checks. That'll require multiple weeks of world class progression like gordias, and who knows how long average raiders would take.

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Considering people advocate slaying acc, I'm pretty sure it will give less HP than crafted VIT acc. Besides, do we know how much HP we'll miss by using crafted VIT accessories ? And considering that they'll still be weaker than what you can buy with tomestone, then having the best gear before savage is not based on luck at all.

It depends on how long the devs want the world racer groups take to clear the raid tier. Considering creator was cleared in the first week I'd assume that full crafted accs would at least be enough to pass the hp checks. On the other hand midas was cleared near the start of third week, when people got their tomestone weapons, so I guess it was intentional that the dps/heal/hp checks in creator was passable in full crafted gear.

Also slaying accs would only be considered after making sure you have enough hp/mitigation without the fending accs, which may actually only be possible after gearing up a bit, if the hp checks are tight in full crafted fending gear. We don't know yet how low our hp can go to survive in savage, but at the very least I'm pretty sure we won't need more than full 320 fending gear give us.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Considering creator was cleared in the first week I'd assume that full crafted accs would at least be enough to pass the hp checks.

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If we look at Creator's release, crafted accessories had the same main stat as Creator normal, so you'll have probably the same HP by wearing Lakshmi/Omega gear.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

We don't know yet how low our hp can go to survive in savage, but at the very least I'm pretty sure we won't need more than full 320 fending gear give us.

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Of course we won't need more than that. If the ilvl required is 320, then a full i320 set will be enough to pass all types of checks. It'll still prevent i270 STR acc to be "BiS"

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If we look at Creator's release, crafted accessories had the same main stat as Creator normal, so you'll have probably the same HP by wearing Lakshmi/Omega gear.

Of course we won't need more than that. If the ilvl required is 320, then a full i320 set will be enough to pass all types of checks. It'll still prevent i270 STR acc to be "BiS"

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Err, which is the point fallen and I was making? If i320 set gives enough vit for hp checks then additional vit would have little value until they allow for a different cd usage and lower tank stance uptime, which is very unlikely until you get a decent amount of higher hp. That means vit accs will be pretty much worthless due to the low dps boost they offer compared to healer/dps accs.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Err, which is the point fallen and I was making? If i320 set gives enough vit for hp checks then additional vit would have little value until they allow for a different cd usage and lower tank stance uptime, which is very unlikely until you get a decent amount of higher hp. That means vit accs will be pretty much worthless due to the low dps boost they offer compared to healer/dps accs.

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The problem is not the additionnal vitaly above i320. The problem is that, for now, i320 VIT is considered worthless against i270 STR acc. And that's even before knowing if the HP checks will be designed for full i320 VIT acc+Tank stance or just i320 gear.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

The problem is not the additionnal vitaly above i320. The problem is that, for now, i320 VIT is considered worthless against i270 STR acc. And that's even knowing if the HP checks are designed for full i320 VIT acc+Tank stance or just i320 gear.

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That wasn't the point I was making though. The problem (at least what I consider a problem) is that the lack of dps scaling on the right side makes vit acc drops worthless compared to dps/healing accs, and that's just bad design since everyone would be hoping that they don't get fending accs from the first floor everytime they do their weekly clears.

i320 fending is worthless compared to i270 slaying in susano ex and lakshmi ex due to the low tuning in all aspects of the fight. It's not just easy for tanks, it's easy for everyone. Easy mechanic checks, easy hp checks (with proper mitigation and tank swaps), easy healing checks, and also easy dps checks. We don't know if that'll still be the case for savage later, though I'm quite certain I won't need full fending right side with my current co-tank and healers.

And before you say str tanks are being carried/catered by the healers, no, we aren't being carried at the expense of the healers. If the healers have to cater to the tanks so much that the healers' dps losses add up to more than what the tanks gain from using str accs then the tanks are bad. One of my recent susano ex runs had 2961 pld dps, 2738 drk dps, 1706 sch dps, and 1462 ast dps. I wouldn't say I was being catered by my healers unless you can show me parses with vit tanks where the combined dps of all tanks and healers surpass the sum of those numbers my group got. As long as total group dps goes up, even if healers' dps go down, it's optimal, not catering.