A few ideas about the current tank meta, Hard enrages, stacking str gear, etc.

Hello all, I had a few ideas pop into my head, and I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Currently as we all know, tanks are expected to stack STR accessories for the harder fights, and push DPS, otherwise run the risk of running into a hard enrage, and not meeting dps checks.

What I would like to see, is far less hard enrages, and more soft enrages in raid encounters if you will. For some reason, I have always detested the hard enrage mechanic. It really seems like a lame way to say "sorry, you've played perfectly up until this point, but you've failed the gear/dps check, and not beaten this fight the exact way we've intended."

This especially puts the hurt on the Paladin, as they currently have no real way of matching the dps of the other two tanks.

Rather than a hard enrage mechanic, if at say, 12 minutes, the boss begins gaining a 10% stacking damage buff every 30 seconds, or every minute after that, you may well see a case where a raid that has optimized for survivability, with a bit less dps, may still be able to complete the encounter. On the flipside, your tanks could still gear for dps, and beat the encounter before the soft enrage begins. This just offers more options on how to play.

I know the developers have indicated they want to change the damage formula in some way, many of us theorize that it will somehow base your damage partially on your Vitality. Thematically this doesn't really make sense to me, and seems like a bandaid fix.

Instead of that, how about the following:

War: Fell cleave potency reduced slightly. However, additional potency is added based on the amount of health you are currently missing. Perhaps up to a cap of 50%. So fell cleave would hit the hardest when you are at 50% health. Thematically this just seems to fall in line with the overall vision for the warrior, as a facetanking berserker, who just takes the hits and keeps dishing out the pain.

This would mean that a warrior with 16,000 base hps, who is missing half of their health would do less damage with fell cleave than a 24,000 hp warrior also missing half of their health.

Keep in mind, these are just rough ideas, the actual formula would need to be worked out based on what theoretical max health is achievable with current gear.

DRK: I'd love to see their high damage ability also cost them their own health. In this vein, you would not want to avoid vitality, as you need enough to safely use this ability without dying. It would need to do enough damage to be worth stacking up the VIT to safely use it.

PLD: keep them as the lowest damage, but make them the highest mitigation, hardest to kill tank. When this is paired with the idea of a soft enrage, rather than a hard enrage, a paladin becomes a perfectly viable option, as he would likely be the only tank able to survive several minutes into a soft enrage mechanic, and complete the fight.

Thoughts?

Heres the problem...if PLD's become the highest mitigation then the other two tanks aren't tanks anymore. Why take a Warrior or Dark Knight if the Paladin is "The Tankiest"?

The tanks have to tank equally well, and the balance be around their "Other" stuff...

Warriors make great offtanks BECAUSE their DPS is so high...

Dark Knights are slightly behind that but their damage WHILE tanking is also about the same as when not...they're also the best at handling magic damage

Paladins have things like Clemency and Divine Veil and Cover, and...well...personal opinion but they're clunky as hell...

The devs need to balance all of THOSE really.

That and make Parry and vitality worthwhile for tanks to want more than just "The bare minimum" of...

If you fail a hard enrage you *haven't* been playing perfectly. It's often far more about knowing your rotation and how to modify them for the phases of the fight than it is about gear. Gear just makes it easier over time.

I don't think I speak for the majority of tank payers,(many of whom have all but admitted they just want to stack vit and sit in front of the boss until the other players bring it down) but I actually far prefer knowing my class inside and out to just knowing what sort of goofy dance routine each particular fight demands to survive.

Also paladins are already the hardest to kill in primarily physical fights. they definitely feel way too reliant of physical damage to shine though since their shield and thus both of their shield cd's are completely physical reliant.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

I don't think I speak for the majority of tank payers,(many of whom have all but admitted they just want to stack vit and sit in front of the boss until the other players bring it down) but I actually far prefer knowing my class inside and out to just knowing what sort of goofy dance routine each particular fight demands to survive.

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I'm not advocating that, however I would prefer if the tank meta focused more on trying to survive and hold aggro, rather than being a DPS in plate as much as possible. I mean right now it's so easy to hold aggro it's not even a challenge.

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Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

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So tired of seeing people say this. Can you provide exact citations of people demanding to sit in front of the boss and do nothing?

Also PLD is not tankiest even necessarily in physical fights. There has been testing that suggests war and even moreso drk parry as much if not more than PLD blocks+parries combined, and that passive mitigation is really the only area where PLD has an advantage, by like, 1%, to be generous.

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Originally Posted by Bashum

War: Fell cleave potency reduced slightly. However, additional potency is added based on the amount of health you are currently missing. Perhaps up to a cap of 50%. So fell cleave would hit the hardest when you are at 50% health.

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No. Just no.

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DRK: I'd love to see their high damage ability also cost them their own health. In this vein, you would not want to avoid vitality, as you need enough to safely use this ability without dying. It would need to do enough damage to be worth stacking up the VIT to safely use it.

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Yeah, except...that sounds terrible. I can just imagine getting smacked with a 12k hit (boss crit) after you did this attack and dying.

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PLD: keep them as the lowest damage, but make them the highest mitigation, hardest to kill tank.

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They basically are this already. No one uses PLD because their MT dmg is awful right now, even with the 3.1 improvements. Also, since there's very little physical dmg on Alex Savage.

Even on the super early clears usually at least one tank is wearing melded accessories rather than raw STR. This was the case for my group and most of the first videos I remember seeing.

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Rather than a hard enrage mechanic, if at say, 12 minutes, the boss begins gaining a 10% stacking damage buff every 30 seconds

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Boss uses Cascade, kills everyone but the tank.

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They basically are this already.

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Please stop spreading the myth of paladins having the best mitigation :)

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Originally Posted by Ralvenom

Yeah, except...that sounds terrible. I can just imagine getting smacked with a 12k hit (boss crit) after you did this attack and dying.

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Well that's sort of the point isn't it? If you're using all STR gear, and use this before a tank buster, you probably deserve to die.
Look, I get that perhaps my ideas aren't exactly in line with what your vision is for the future of the tanking meta in this game. All I would really like to see is some compelling reasons to go for vit, other than an incredibly unimaginative change to the damage formula which would factor in your vit stat.

I would actually appreciate the meta to change from "everyone is a DPS" back to the traditional roles. I want tanks to be focusing on tanking and healers to be focusing on healing. For those tanks and healers that want and can pull off extra DPS during a fight, feel free! I just don't like how it's forced upon us in the current meta, with DPS checks being as tight as they are. Why do we even have fending accessories...?

I'm aware that with some gear upgrades for your entire party, it's possible for your tanks or healers to drop the priority on doing damage, but by that point it'll probably also be easier to tank/heal, which ironically gives you more space to deal damage... So I don't see this as a good argument.

I'm just hoping that they introduce content where tanks and healers are challenged further in ways that apply to their role, instead of how things are currently focused around finding where and how to deal as much damage as you can. Thordan HM is definitely a step in the right direction for me.

I originally started wearing str accessories because I intended to be my FC's second string tank to do already farmed content that we outgeared. I never imagined it would become the progression meta.

See, I like CHOICES in my games. This is not a game with many choices, granted. Hopefully 3.2 with meldable gear changes that.

Personally I think gear is one of the big big things that is screwing this game up. How healers have no accuracy, how vitality and parry are useless, and how determination, skill speed, and critical hit rate can be expressed in terms of how many strength points they're worth. I think the effect of all the secondaries needs to be increased. By a lot. Piety should be at least twice as strong as it is now. Imagine if piety was so strong paladins took it to get a third clemency in. Now imagine if all the other stats are just as strong. Suddenly you'd have build choices. You'd have crit specced monks that did less damage overall than speed monks but did ungodly burst damage during IR. In general dps could choose between higher sustain, higher burst, or a faster opener. Now imagine all accessories had two primary stats, and that they didn't take dex out of the parry/block equation. Just a random two. Do tanks get vit/dex for maximum defense, str/vit to ignore parries entirely, str/dex to maximize RI/DD/Bulwark effectiveness, str/pie for maximum clemency? Giving ALL classes a use for MP would make things even more ambiguous. And even if your class didn't get to use both stats, you only have one damage stat so that would mean you'd just get to use it on TWO classes. This is the beginning of horizontal progression.

As far as the need for all classes to dps, this is a game where the only win condition is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. When we start having endurance fights where you simply have to outlast the enemy or races, or some other win condition, then you'll see situations where you won't be expected to put out maximum dps. But right now, with current encounter design, your raid's dps = how good you are at the game.

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Originally Posted by Ishkar

Thordan HM is definitely a step in the right direction for me.

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I agree, this is great fight design where you actually need to TANK.

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Originally Posted by Immut

As far as the need for all classes to dps, this is a game where the only win condition is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. When we start having endurance fights where you simply have to outlast the enemy or races, or some other win condition, then you'll see situations where you won't be expected to put out maximum dps. But right now, with current encounter design, your raid's dps = how good you are at the game.

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The general goal of these types of games is to bring the enemy's HP to zero. Similarly to many other MMOs, Squenix has opted for the trinity of class roles: tanks, healers, and damage dealers. The goal is to work together as a party for your common goal of bringing the enemy's HP to zero, and maybe it's silly of me but I assumed that the damage dealers would be the ones responsible for dealing the damage...

It's very simple in theory to up the consistent amount of healing an encounter requires and reduce the amount of damage needed to kill the enemy. That would immediately solve the healers-have-to-DPS issue that many healers are complaining about. As for tanks, again I have to refer to Thordan HM where we are challenged in other ways than our DPS output, effectively gaining a different criteria to be considered a good player other than bringing (relatively) high DPS.

Well, I may be in the minority but, the only reason I find tanking interesting again to level drk and war is because tanks can actually do damage, and not just stand there getting their faces torn apart. It's the main reason I stopped playing a tank in 2.1, was because most people just... tried not to die. Which to me was incredibly bland and boring. From what I've seen of the higher tier tanks, it's now about riding a "fine line", which appeals to me.

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Originally Posted by Immut

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This guy gets it. Very well written and I agree 100% The current meta is what is fucking tanks as well. If we had more variety in fights you would see multiple party comps being used and various tanking methods.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE aggressive tanking but I would really like to see some varity.

In essence I hate that BiS is a thing. There should be multiple routes one could take with their gear that could drastically effect their playstyle.

I personnally like aggressive tanking it is indeed more fun. We can complain all day long but SE actually managed to make the tank appealing in a mmo which Is quite rare.
Aggressive Is also harder to play than a turtle tank.

The main problem in this game is itemization and it sucks.

And btw early progression use melded acc. You cant go full slaying if you dońt have enough gear on the left side.

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Originally Posted by Exodus_Kenpachi

In essence I hate that BiS is a thing. There should be multiple routes one could take with their gear that could drastically effect their playstyle.

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You could argue that it isn't, particularly for tanks. You're constantly changing gear on a fight by fight basis (sometimes even pull-by-pull if a particular strat isn't working) depending on required accuracy/vit caps in conjunction with whatever gear you have available at the time. By the time you are "BiS" it doesn't matter cause you've cleared everything and then there's what, the next raid tier? Once that shows up, its no longer BiS...

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Originally Posted by Sandamar

Aggressive Is also harder to play than a turtle tank.

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A friend of mine had a nice response to this, something along the lines of "Its very... strange that people accuse people that are tanking in such a way as to render enmity management a challenge, of being 'lazy'."

Basically that is to say when you aren't in full slaying gear you actually have to manage the hate part of your job whereas when you are it actually becomes an irrelevant part of your job and has next-to-no consideration in your rotation (if you're not a WAR, anyway). Interesting.

Another thing I'd like to add to that sentiment is that if you full-vit tank, just as people say you aren't any easier to heal, the flip side of that is that you don't necessarily have to work any less to stay alive, you just might have 1 or 2 fewer sphincter-clenching moments during progression pulls.

Even Xeno has said that on truly onerous fights he stacks considerably more vitality than otherwise because as he puts it his goal in those scenarios is not to "be 1337 and top FFLogs" but to "not die, get in there and 1-shot and be done with it" (referring to how much he hates A4S, specifically, if you're curious).