If the Meta Feels Off, How Do We Actually Change It? A response to "Four Ways to Die"

[PotatoWafflez]

* Stance swaps: Since this is an unintended style of gameplay that contributes to the DPS disparity between the tanks, this also needs to go. WAR would be easy; simply make swapping from Defiance/Deliverance lose all Wrath/Abandon stacks. To compensate, change Infuriate to work with both stances.

I don't understand what you are saying here because Infuriate already works in both stances?

[Duelle]

I don't understand what you are saying here because Infuriate already works in both stances?

I thought it only worked in Defiance. At least that's how I was using it while leveling WAR. >.>;;;

[eagledorf]

✂

Pacification did work on HM primals (ex. you can avoid Ifrit's breaths with Pacification and Radiant Plumes with Silence, but Eruption can only be Stunned). So did Blind, Silence, Bind, and Stun. This is part of the problem with having all the tank and party damage in certain mechanics that are too important to be interrupted, you can't let interruptions work most of the time.

I really hate the 4x stun in A3 Savage, but I suppose it's not really bad as long as Silence potions work so you can work around weird party comps or mistakes like you could in BCoB, but I prefer if each person has a few CC skills and they all get used instead of just forcing half the party to have a certain interruption all at once. In general though, it would be much better if crowd control provided some relief when used like the name implies instead of it being worthless 99% of the fight, then a wipe if even one person misses theirs during a certain 2s window. I didn't really think BCoB was a shining beacon of CC, the Chimera and Ifrit HM would both be far better examples.

As for my comment on keeping OT busy, I was imaging something like a PLD MTs and burns their cooldowns, then the OT provokes and uses Holmgang for the tank buster or something. That said, as long as they tune the fight properly it's fine and maybe even fun if the two tanks spread their cooldowns however they want.

[SpookyGhost]

I thought it only worked in Defiance. At least that's how I was using it while leveling WAR. >.>;;;

It works for both Defiance and Deliverance - it's the reason a 3x FC opener is possible.

Pacification did work on HM primals (you can avoid Ifrit's breaths, but not big mechanics like Plumes). So did Blind, Bind, and Stun. I'd also like if Silence worked some on casts like it does in old dungeons and just increase the frequency. This is part of the problem with having all the tank and party damage in certain mechanics that are too important to be interrupted.

I actually forgot Pacification could work on Ifrit... mainly because back in 2.0 I opted to be the OT stunbot. But regardless, it was Ifrit, and I don't remember anyone intentionally saving Shield Swipe to stop breaths. The problem with using that now would be that only 1 job in the entire game uses Pacification and removing certain abilities from boss fights (like cleaves) would be ppppretty powerful. Silence for casts would be alright as you'd have a lot of options, but to give bosses relatively frequent attacks that can be Silenced you'd have to increase it's combat table and that could be a lot to juggle for XIV's playerbase.

Blinding Titan's MB when you didn't have any CDs or you goofed up was pretty cool, though now I wonder if people would even do it since it would cost them a precious GCD of damage lmao.

I really hate the 4x stun in A3 Savage, but I suppose it's not really bad as long as Silence potions work so you can work around weird party comps or mistakes like you could in BCoB, but I prefer if each person has a few CC skills and they all get used instead of just forcing half the party to have a certain interruption all at once. In general though, it would be much better if crowd control provided some relief when used like the name implies instead of it being worthless 99% of the fight, then a wipe if even one person misses theirs during a certain 2s window. I didn't really think BCoB was a shining beacon of CC, the Chimera and Ifrit HM would both be far better examples.

I think spreading out when what needs to be CC'd with X, Y, and Z is a good idea rather than lumping them all into one phase where everyone has to stun something, but I think that those phases do need to exist as they're a test of your group's coordination. Like T9 golems, but with CC instead of... feeding.... meteors... yeah. I also don't think Chimera or Ifrit work as great examples of CC - Chimera you watched for a cast bar depending on your party comp and silenced/stunned it (I think stun worked idk) and Ifrit you had your PLD have a very good trigger finger for when he saw the letter E on a castbar. Those were great uses of those two effects, but those were the only effects used in those fights. I think A3S is actually the most CC related stuff you have to do, but I wouldn't really put that as a great example of CC (though A3S is still a great fight none the less).

As for my comment on keeping OT busy, I was imaging something like a PLD MTs and burns their cooldowns, then the OT provokes and uses Holmgang for the tank buster or something. That said, as long as they tune the fight properly it's fine and maybe even fun if the two tanks spread their cooldowns however they want.

I think T12, as I mentioned, is a good example of achieving this - the OT always has something to do and so does the MT, thus blurring the line between who is what. I don't really have a problem with both tanks being able to blow immunities or all the cooldowns on certain tank busters simply because... immunities and CD timers are there for basically that reason, you've got an OT for a reason, etc. etc. but I do see your point. It would be good to have the OT be an actual tank (like tank adds or tank a 2nd boss ala A1S) than to be another DPS.

[eagledorf]

Chimera was good because you could choose what to stun. For example, if you used the stack up on the left leg strategy, you could ignore interrupting Dragon Voice or if you had two silencers you could silence both Ram and Dragon and use your stuns to eliminate other mechanics (like Keeper, the ground AoE that caused Slow and Frostbite could be stunned) and allow ranged to spread out, making mechanics that dropped AoE (Cacophony) easier to handle. Of course you could also choose to blow either stun or silence on cooldown and only use the other for interruption if you wanted that potency instead of crowd control or use your stun to freeze the Chimera so you can get positionals safely by making the mob turning predictable.

That was extremely fun. Good interruptions made a huge difference in how easy it was for DPS and you could prioritize positioning for melee or letting ranged turret. And yes, there was an advantage to having more interruptions, but you could actually make do even with none.

Ifrit was great because you could choose when to use Blind and Pacification to drastically reduce tank damage for certain phases or even safely move Ifrit (nails, for example, when you don't really want DPS on Ifrit) on top of cooldowns. You could also stun Eruptions, or stun other mechanics, stun or shield the knockback, and you could silence the hard Radiant Plume to let ranged DPS stand still. And failing any of these interruptions meant more damage and less DPS, but none of them was a wipe. It was just one way for tanks to increase party DPS and ease healing difficulty other than just pushing their own DPS or popping a cooldown.

Now you have interruptions that must not fail under any circumstances or no interruptions at all. There's no thought like "well, we have lots of melee, so why don't the healers stack on the Chimera and we'll stun Keeper and let the PLD silence Ram" or "We have lots of ranged, so we'll interrupt both Ram and Dragon so that you can spread out so Cacophany requires minimal movement. We'll pull out if Keeper gets both rear corners" or "I'm going to use Spirits Within on cooldown, which means you should macro Aetherial Manipulation to a melee because Radiant Plumes will go off". It's just you miss a stun and everybody dies, gg.

[Brian_]

A lot of people will make the suggestion that if they return damage to the meta and force tanks to dedicate more to survivability, that the meta would change. People go about this in different ways but the result is all the same -- failure. The amount of damage in the meta is not the issue. It is the design of the role.

If tanks are not pushed to optimize DPS, then they are not forced to min max their GCD usage down to the specifics of whether or not it's worth it to stance dance. They're not forced to calculate down to the specifics whether or not they can use dCDs outside of tank buster mitigation to reduce general damage or push stacks.

Without the DPS focus, the role lacks depth. Why? The actual strategic and mechanic skill related to tanking suvivability is very minimal. You plan your dCD usage which you have set in stone after a handful of progression attempts and that's it. You keep ahead in enmity which is pretty brain dead.

So if we are to see the meta change, the tanks must change. Even if they change the encounters to include more healer / tank mechanics that restrict their DPS, it's still just another gimmick.

[Faeon]

The encounters will have to change from static to more of a dynamic. In favour of reworking tanks, you will need to provide all tanks with skills that benefit the raid, and WAR does that out of the three currently.

So in order to keep WAR where he is, you will need to change encounters I think.

[Deezee]

A lot of people will make the suggestion that if they return damage to the meta and force tanks to dedicate more to survivability, that the meta would change. People go about this in different ways but the result is all the same -- failure. The amount of damage in the meta is not the issue. It is the design of the role.

If tanks are not pushed to optimize DPS, then they are not forced to min max their GCD usage down to the specifics of whether or not it's worth it to stance dance. They're not forced to calculate down to the specifics whether or not they can use dCDs outside of tank buster mitigation to reduce general damage or push stacks.

Without the DPS focus, the role lacks depth. Why? The actual strategic and mechanic skill related to tanking suvivability is very minimal. You plan your dCD usage which you have set in stone after a handful of progression attempts and that's it. You keep ahead in enmity which is pretty brain dead.

So if we are to see the meta change, the tanks must change. Even if they change the encounters to include more healer / tank mechanics that restrict their DPS, it's still just another gimmick.

Exactly, this is basically a tl;dr of my OP and very little of the other discussion going on in this or other threads are addressing these basic realities.

[Ralvenom]

Without the DPS focus, the role lacks depth. Why? The actual strategic and mechanic skill related to tanking suvivability is very minimal. You plan your dCD usage which you have set in stone after a handful of progression attempts and that's it. You keep ahead in enmity which is pretty brain dead.

This was basically always the issue that WoW had. (As of, August last year; haven't played since. Doubt it's changed much.) Because tanking was more about being a SHIELDWALL in WoW back before active mitigation, they decided to force tanks to dps well in order to tank well. ("Active mitigation" in a nutshell.) Unfortunately, it still isn't engaging enough for many folks.
The reality is, a tank should ALWAYS be pushing the envelope. Easiest way to do that is...you guessed it: to dps. A good tank balances when to be in dps stance with when to be in tank stance. Why? SE gave us these tools that allow tanking gameplay to be engaging. Help your group; use said tools.

[AbandonedPaladin]

One way I think you could effectively change the meta so that mitigation tank strategies become viable (but you could still ALSO have the choice to run DPS tank strategies) would be if you changed the way tank GCDs worked. If they were more like healer GCDs, where you were making impactful choices (healers have to decide on each GCD whether that GCD will be used to cleanse, heal, or DPS), then the meta would be entirely different. Right now every tank GCD does damage AND generates enmity, and some even go one step further and additionally provide mitigation (storm's path, rage of halone, delirium). What if, instead, a tank had to choose whether they were going to deal damage, generate enmity, or mitigate on each GCD, but doing one excluded the other two until the next GCD (or even several GCDs down the line due to combo effects)? You could have fights where it might make sense for tanks to maintain maximum mitigation and healers to maintain maximum healing because the DPS gained by tanks and healers DPSing has to be weighted against the risk of the raid wide damage killing actual DPS players.

I shall agree with the OP that Tank GCD can be fixed and will result in better gameplay experience overall. In fact, I believe that only by simply reducing Rage of Halone/Delirium/Storm's Path's effective timing from 20s to 10s, while doubling their effectivesness (RoH now reduces roughly 20% of boss' physical damage, Delirium 20% of boss' magical damage and SP just plainly reduces 20% overall damage dealt). Plus, making Sheltron/Reprisal some sort of a 10-seconds cooldown isntead of 30 ish but reducing their effectiveness will go a giant step towards achieving the aforementioned goal of better gameplay experience.