Yoshi P's Stance on Pld

[Sapphidia]

And this is why overmelded accessories always come out ahead (and the wallet always ends up crying in a corner).

Even now that's not really true sadly. I bought full pentamelds before my static entered A1S but now we're chunking down A3S I'm finding myself feeling obliged to dump several of my pentamelds in favor of gordian 210 slaying accessories.

It's really reaching the point where vitality is viewed as having near to zero value when comparing item budgets. I roll with it, but I don't like it. I want to do A1S and take a hit from a Hyper Compressed Plasma and see my health bar move 2 pixels, taking pride in my huge tankiness gains. Instead, i do a lot more DPS now but that tankbuster hits just as hard on me as it did on week one.

[Sapphidia]

The poster doesn't seem to jive with the idea that damage is a party responsibility. There are no exceptions just because one's job icon is blue or green.

This is another person I've found stating this kind of view, and I feel people arent grasping the major reason a lot of tanks don't like the current meta. It's not that tanks are required to do dps to contribute. That's fine.

It's the fact that tanks who chose to play the tank role out of a desire to master the concept of "tankiness" arent being tested on the element of the role they wanted to play. Tanks have to contribute to DPS by minmaxing their Job, wearing damage accessories, learning the best rotations and finding loads of ways to swap into dps stance. That's good, and fun.

The problem is that actual "tankiness" has virtually no value. Pop a cooldown at specific scripted points to survive a tankbuster. If a tank can kill a Savage boss by wearing almost zero vitality accessories and spending half the time in a DPS stance, then where's the incentive for a tank to gear up their mitigation and health pool and feel tanky? Tanks are being tested as good players on an element of their job that's generally viewed as secondary.

Sure, any good tank will minmax it, but where's the fights where tanks NEED to gear up with huge vitality and have perfect cooldown rotations, casting Stoneskins between boss autoattacks just to alleviate healer mana strain on them. That's the issue. The actual "tanking" element of the current raids is minimal and it's really annoying to not be able to feel like you excel at that element of your job.

[DGladius]

Me personally I enjoy how tanking is in this game. Being able to tank and deal a lot of damage with good use of cooldowns makes it more fun for me.

[technole]

Sure, any good tank will minmax it, but where's the fights where tanks NEED to gear up with huge vitality and have perfect cooldown rotations, casting Stoneskins between boss autoattacks just to alleviate healer mana strain on them. That's the issue. The actual "tanking" element of the current raids is minimal and it's really annoying to not be able to feel like you excel at that element of your job.

Yep, blame the current raid tier with the stringent dps checks because aside from Hypercontrolled Plasma for a tank buster, which even that is pretty tame for the amount of VIT you even need. Other things as well this cycle like the WHM stoneskin nerf down to 10%. I guess they don't want to "Flatten" our expectations with perfect cooldown rotations.

[Dante_V]

Both are equally annoying to use but the funny thing with DRK is that stance you are supposed to "dance" is the one with GCD, why Darkside is oGCD when you dont want to drop that shit ever in the firstplace?

The reason for this is likely what you stated. If the intended mechanic is to switch or they are expecting people to do that then they want to have a penalty associated with that so you cannot just use grit as a "cooldown" and then switch out immediately without incurring a dps loss. The reason that darkside is OGCD is because people won't be stance dancing it and therefore a penalty associated with it would be pointless.

[Sapphidia]

Me personally I enjoy how tanking is in this game. Being able to tank and deal a lot of damage with good use of cooldowns makes it more fun for me.

Yeah I think a lot of players do really enjoy it. You're never going to be able to please everyone though - I'd probably guess maybe 20% of dedicated tanks are kind of meh about the DPS focus over the tanking one.

I'd wager the -vast- majority of the tanks that arent enjoying the current meta are Paladins though - not because of the perceived weakness of the class, but because players that value the feeling of tankiness and immovability will gravitate more to the sword/shield archetype than the raging berserker or two handed swordmage thing.

[Freyyy]

Yeah I think a lot of players do really enjoy it. You're never going to be able to please everyone though - I'd probably guess maybe 20% of dedicated tanks are kind of meh about the DPS focus over the tanking one.

I personally am a dedicated tank in every MMORPG, and I love the direction tanking is taking in FFXIV. I love the sensation of being more of a "hybrid" tank-DPS instead of just being a pure meatshield. I've been a meatshield for years and discovered tank-DPSing with Tera (as a Warrior there, awesome class) which I played a lot before FFXIV. Now I don't really want to become a meatshield again. Let me wreck the face of the one horrible big monster who is wrecking my face too. I don't carry a greatsword or an axe to just generate aggro and defend myself. I carry them to kill, to destroy. It increases the feeling of "dueling" with the boss that tanking always brings. It's awesome. The amount of manliness in this is just insane.

[Ashkendor]

Even now that's not really true sadly. I bought full pentamelds before my static entered A1S but now we're chunking down A3S I'm finding myself feeling obliged to dump several of my pentamelds in favor of gordian 210 slaying accessories.

It's really reaching the point where vitality is viewed as having near to zero value when comparing item budgets. I roll with it, but I don't like it. I want to do A1S and take a hit from a Hyper Compressed Plasma and see my health bar move 2 pixels, taking pride in my huge tankiness gains. Instead, i do a lot more DPS now but that tankbuster hits just as hard on me as it did on week one.

Oh definitely, now that we have weeks worth of Esoterics gear under our belts there's a lot more room for the Slaying gear. I'm getting a set myself (slow going since tanks can't Need on it but meh that's what pages are for I guess, and hopefully I can get some drops once our melee has them), but still default to my melded accessories for progression. I don't really feel bad about making the pentamelds (even though I ended up doing it super late as compared to others) because it cost me almost nothing to make them (did it myself) and only about 3mil to meld them. My static's healers like the extra HP it gives me. We'll have to see how things go in A3 when we actually buckle down to progressing in it rather than just screwing off to learn first phase mechanics.

I'd wager the -vast- majority of the tanks that arent enjoying the current meta are Paladins though - not because of the perceived weakness of the class, but because players that value the feeling of tankiness and immovability will gravitate more to the sword/shield archetype than the raging berserker or two handed swordmage thing.

I honestly enjoy the meta. I just wish Paladin wasn't so bad at it. Hopefully that gets a look-see in 3.1.

I personally am a dedicated tank in every MMORPG, and I love the direction tanking is taking in FFXIV. I love the sensation of being more of a "hybrid" tank-DPS instead of just being a pure meatshield. I've been a meatshield for years and discovered tank-DPSing with Tera (as a Warrior there, awesome class) which I played a lot before FFXIV. Now I don't really want to become a meatshield again. Let me wreck the face of the one horrible big monster who is wrecking my face too. I don't carry a greatsword or an axe to just generate aggro and defend myself. I carry them to kill, to destroy. It increases the feeling of "dueling" with the boss that tanking always brings. It's awesome. The amount of manliness in this is just insane.

Right? I enjoy the aspect of feeling like I'm actually hurting the boss instead of annoying it with a wet noodle.

[NFaelivrin]

Frankly I enjoy being more than a meat wall in this game and being able to put out decent numbers while tanking. After all you should expect even one handed swords to be able to, you know, kill people. It does however feel kind of weird that defense is the least involved part of tanking, you usually just have your fixed cooldown rotation per encounter and that's it. The most involved defensive ability in the game is probably Inner Beast, but even then a lot of WAR's defensive toolkit is just press-and-forget skills off the global cooldown.

[Synestra]

As you know, on DRK, having good MP management generally translates into more damage output. Any time that you are unable to attack a target (because of an invulnerable boss, unspawned adds, or travelling between pulls) for a series of MP ticks greater than the activation cost of Darkside, you turn it off until you have an available target.

Yeah and thats why it would be better that Darkside was GCD and Grit was oGCD, not the other way around.