Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

Enmity management didn't really exist in this game, even historically. What we did have was snap aggro checks.

As a tank, the point when you're most at risk of losing enmity is when you grab aggro. We've seen a move away from mid-fight adds, likely because it simplifies the dps balance and allows for tight numbers which the community is demanding. There is no Shadow of Meracydia spawn waiting to oneshot your healers. And even when they did exist, the primary challenge was in accurately remembering the spawn points.

Enmity itself exists only because we don't want tanks doing as much damage as DPS. Additions like tank stance and even enmity combos were just traps for newer players who didn't know any better. It also meant that tanking was more of a knowledge check than an execution check, because you were rewarded for things like knowing to keep stance off and knowing to use strength melds/accessories. And while there are surely some players who would benefit from a return to such a system (big fish, small pond), it's not actually a satisfying one in the long run.

If you're looking to introduce more skill checks on tanks, you might as well make the dps rotations more complex and involved, as well as giving tanks more potential to contribute to total raid DPS. The more you do this, the less a supplementary system around enmity is required.

I get concerned when I see threads like this pop up, because they're usually a mix of rose-colored glasses and straight up misinformation. There was even someone extolling the virtues of TP, of all things, earlier on. The problem with simply tuning these things out is that bad ideas like this accidentally get implemented on occasion if you ignore them. You have to actively speak out and put a stop to it.

I don't recall ever swapping back to tank stance after my opening burst unless it was to grab some adds or give myself a little extra mitigation for particularly nasty tankbusters. Enmity was a joke. Stance dancing was never a really thing, not even for WAR.

Leave things alone on this front. It's fine as it currently is. The only thing bringing ye olde enmity back will accomplish is further incentivizing morons to engage in random aggro pissing contests.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Leave things alone on this front. It's fine as it currently is. The only thing bringing ye olde enmity back will accomplish is further incentivizing morons to engage in random aggro pissing contests.

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You do realize it still happens right? The only difference is instead of actually doing a rotation since enmity was heavily tied to damage output, you just spam your ranged and you have instant aggro. S ranks are the worst for this.

It's why threads like these pop up, because when you can effectively maintain aggro by just spamming one button, what is the point of enmity?

I've stated before, I wouldn't be surprised if enmity is just baked into the tank mastery trait so they can avoid the whole "tanks stance on" That would officially be the day that tanking truly died in this game and you are just a dps with higher defense.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

You do realize it still happens right? The only difference is instead of actually doing a rotation since enmity was heavily tied to damage output, you just spam your ranged and you have instant aggro. S ranks are the worst for this.

It's why threads like these pop up, because when you can effectively maintain aggro by just spamming one button, what is the point of enmity?

I've stated before, I wouldn't be surprised if enmity is just baked into the tank mastery trait so they can avoid the whole "tanks stance on" That would officially be the day that tanking truly died in this game and you are just a dps with higher defense.

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Seriously why do people get so fixated on aggro on hunts lmao

Why does it matter, just do your rotation and get your contribution and leave the idiots spam their ranged attack, you don't need to be the Main Tank on a hunt.

And honestly I'm pretty sure people done ranged attack spamming when aggro combos were a thing back when we had them, albeit not as much due to TP, thankfully that nonsense is gone also.

What we need is just an agro-rework. in it current state I find it hard to make any meaningful change around it

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Originally Posted by Marxam

That would officially be the day that tanking truly died in this game and you are just a dps with higher defense.

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That's already all we really are. Except we're a gimped dps because the tank damage calculation has a built-in nerf, can't have the budget dps step on the toes of the real protagonists after all.


https://i.imgur.com/blUcNHj.png


From Akhmorning back in Shadowbringers, I assume CBU3 did not change the fact that Tank Mastery actually nerfs our attack power.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

What we need is just an agro-rework. in it current state I find it hard to make any meaningful change around it

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And what would this look like?

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

Seriously why do people get so fixated on aggro on hunts lmao

Why does it matter, just do your rotation and get your contribution and leave the idiots spam their ranged attack, you don't need to be the Main Tank on a hunt.

And honestly I'm pretty sure people done ranged attack spamming when aggro combos were a thing back when we had them, albeit not as much due to TP, thankfully that nonsense is gone also.

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That's not why people do it.

On hunts, you want to kill the mark RELATIVELY slowly so that all participants can get full credit. Especially in prime-time trains where you can have 150-300 (yes, I've seen that many; you can tell when doing instanced zones how many are in the zones as you go between instances), the marks can vaporize quickly. Like, within 15-20 seconds quickly.

But party contribution (and thus reward for all party members on the boss agro table; having tagged the boss with at least one attack or I think having used a heal on someone who has) is based on reaching some agro threshold.

The result is trying to figure out how to generate lots of boss threat while intentionally NOT maximizing damage. This goes double for doing some of the older hunt trains, like ShB or especially SB A Ranks. The result is that Tanks put on agro stance and spam their ranged attack, and Healers tag the boss then start spamming AOE heals. Especially for prime-time trains, people will swap away from DPS Jobs so that the boss doesn't instantly vaporize. When you have 300 people hitting a mark, it doesn't last long.

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So the Tanks there aren't fighting "to be the Main Tank". They're using a low damage high agro generating button (along with party member Healers spamming AOE heals) to generate maximum payout for their party while keeping the boss alive as long as possible so more people can get credit.

This also goes for S ranks, which will sometimes get even MORE people to them since people try to beat the rush to world travel over to get another S rank on their achievement progress for those rare mounts.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

And what would this look like?

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Honestly? It depends a lot on how you look at what "aggro" even is / what function it can hold. (By one view, you need to extend its functionality to the point it includes other things as well, while by another, it's just allowing it to influence the targeting of more of a mob's actions.)

Aggro, at minimum, tends to be a value table that assigns a target for auto-attacks. Everything else is potentially already independent of that. Heck, sometimes even the "second auto" on some bosses is independent of the aggro-table, and instead just looks for tanks.

But let's say you make two seemingly tiny tweaks: (A) You replace certain "random-target" attacks/abilities with aggro-influenced attacks (be they of the main or a separate "aggro" table), and (B) you allow the relevant "aggro" this works off of to be reset at particular times, only to count contribution over particular spans of time (e.g., right before the ability) or weight them far higher, etc.

Now, suddenly, a tank may have use for timely intervention to bait mechanics, rather than simply having a maintenance task that uses a fight-long cumulative value. At which point it can at least have potential to become something interesting.

I don't miss it at all. I was a warrior main until late Stormblood. I always found it more confusing and annoying than anything. I don't think aggro is a super interesting mechanic in really any game. That said, it was one more thing to keep in mind and they didn't add anything to occupy tanks when they removed it. I would like something to make tanks feel more like tanks than invincible melee DPS. Maybe more interactivity with defensive kits or something.