Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Lyth]

So, harkening back to an old thread from a little over a year ago, SE might not be satisfied with the fact that progression-level tanks "need" to stance dance to be successful. But the problem isn't tank design here so much as encounter design.

I'm yet to see an official statement made to this effect. I'm guessing that you're referring to this thread:

Four ways to die - why the tank meta feels "off"

Bear in mind that this was written a few months after Gordias was released, at a time where tanking was undergoing a lot of changes. PLD was no longer the de facto MT for every encounter, as it had been for nearly two years. It was no longer enough to simply to gear up with indestructible armor and go afk as a glorified striking dummy while the rest of your raid learned mechanics. Your team now had expectations, and you had to meet them. MT became fun again.

The post points out that the main group who objected to this were "career tanks" from previous MMOs who came into FFXIV with preconceived ideas that tanks were supposed to be nothing more than damage sponges. Problem is, their "careers" weren't long enough.

Tanking gets its origin from MUDs, where our forebears were originally melee damage dealers who could "rescue" their squishier allies from danger (not all that different from "Cover" when you think about it - we've come full circle). The foam sword/indestructable shield ideal only showed up much later, and threat systems were artificially strapped on top make it all work. It was an abstraction that made little sense: swords and axes are lethal weapons that can do devastating damage. You don't merely tickle your opponent with them to keep them distracted. The fact that doing serious damage with a bladed weapon could be construed as a "meta" or as a radical new innovation, is bizarre.

As far as I can tell, it was more wishful thinking from a subset of the community, rather than any official word from the devs.

What bothers me, though, is that tank optimization doesn't have to focus solely on "how long can you avoid tank stance ?". Stance dancing is the most blatant way of increasing personal DPS, but personal DPS doesn't really matter. If you have to lose 10% of your DPS to increase everyone else's by 5%, it's a legit trade. That's why I'd like to see tanks' tools adjusted to offer a different contribution to raidwide DPS.

Personal dps does matter when it bolsters raid dps. Using the numbers you suggested, sure. But that's almost never the case.

If the mob that you're tanking stops attacking you and starts to chain cast raid or avoidable AoEs, what's the point of giving yourself a 15-25% damage penalty? The mitigation serves no purpose, your healers gain no additional dps uptime, and your raid loses your dps. This seems like common sense; if you stop attacking an armored knight in order to cast a spell, they are going to stop defending and will proceed to beat the tar out of you. There are times where playing aggressively is bad for your group, and there are times when it is essential. Tanks need to be able to judge when it is appropriate to defend and when they need to counterattack.

There are already many ways in this game in which a tank can help the performance of their team outside of stance dancing. Some of these, such as efficient positioning and movement, are difficult to learn, assess, or teach, which is why groups recruiting and trialling tanks have often had to depend on videos of past performances when doing initial screening. But they all come out in the wash in both your personal and raid group's dps. The objection to dps metrics isn't about "aggressive tanking" vs. "defensive tanking". It's about being held accountable in a role where traditionally, there was none.

[Jpec07]

You don't merely tickle your opponent with them to keep them distracted.

I about died laughing at this. Thank you. XD

I'll concede your points. That thread was the one I was referring to, as it captured (and still does capture) why tanking has felt so strange to me in FFXIV. To me, the ultimate tank design meta was WoW patch 4.3, where tanks did a good chunk of damage, but also had a lot of reason to be tanky (where "good tanking" meant holding aggro, positioning bosses/mobs well, navigating mechanics, mitigating tankbusters, and gearing for CTC). Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part to hope SE will move closer to that. Mind, that's just my opinion, so if we don't move that way, I may be sad, but I probably won't complain.

[Reynhart]

Personal dps does matter when it bolsters raid dps. Using the numbers you suggested, sure. But that's almost never the case.

IIRC correctly, that's how MNK, DRG and NIN are balanced, right ?

This seems like common sense; if you stop attacking an armored knight in order to cast a spell, they are going to stop defending and will proceed to beat the tar out of you.

Not necessarily. If PLD's spells were meaningful, it could be a great time to cast a really powerful defensive spell, without fearing interruption, to anticipate the next set of attacks.

[Sarcatica]

IIRC correctly, that's how MNK, DRG and NIN are balanced, right ?

The thing about raid DPS is both NIN and DRG have all the good utilities and they can output comparable damage. MNK becomes the selfish DPS that doesn't offer anything else other than the huge damage that matters way less than the 2 counterparts buffing the group raid DPS. No DRG means no Litany and your BRD/MCH will QQ. No NIN means no TA and that your MT will QQ. Both DRG and NIN give additional DPS that the raid enjoys which outweighs heavily the personal DPS that MNK brings. This is why you don't see any serious speedrun taking MNK, PLD (Faust Z parse has a 0:57 timing with PLD but the fight is short enough that PLD can still be used). Off calculation (i know its wrong to just compare 1 skill but whatever), FoF has more than 1/2 uptime VS Darkside at full uptime which means that you can "say" that FoF at face value wins by about 50% damage (overall 15% dmg from FoF for 1/2 uptime vs 10% dmg from Darkside for full uptime). Brain cancer-ed myself. Normally you have 1/3 uptime for FoF (that's 10%), but for this fight you enjoy about >>15% because it ends faster (0:57 timing), compare that to the flat 15% for full uptime for Darkside.

[Reynhart]

The thing about raid DPS is both NIN and DRG have all the good utilities and they can output comparable damage.

I think we can agree than reducing the time you stay in tank stance only increases your personal DPS. We could have utility skills for PLD and/or DRK (Since stance dancing is more clunky for them) not tied to stance dancing that would still increase raid DPS.
For example, PLD could have a Block skill on GCD. Meaning that it would take significantly less physical damage than WAR or DRK by blocking constantly (and would automatically sacrifice DPS), thus would require a lot less healing, increasing healer's room for DPS. As an OT, PLD could use its mitigation skills on the MT (adding it to the MT's own mitigation), allowing it to stay out of tank stance even for tankbusters, etc...

Off calculation (i know its wrong to just compare 1 skill but whatever), FoF has more than 1/2 uptime VS Darkside at full uptime which means that you can "say" that FoF at face value wins by about 50% damage (overall 15% dmg from FoF for 1/2 uptime vs 10% dmg from Darkside for full uptime).

Sorry, perhaps I don't understand your point exactly, but FoF has 1/3 uptime so 10% on average, and Darkside increases damage by 15%.

[Sarcatica]

I think we can agree than reducing the time you stay in tank stance only increases your personal DPS. We could have utility skills for PLD and/or DRK (Since stance dancing is more clunky for them) not tied to stance dancing that would still increase raid DPS.

That only applies to the DRG/NIN to the full 8 people benefiting from the buffs. It doesn't apply to tanks because that affects (kinda) how your healers heal you (even then, your tank stance uptime should be as long as you can take when you are speedrunning). When your mitigation is enough, anything else can be easily tunneled to DPS. PLD doesn't do anything too special either, block is not going to do anything much and again in speedrun, you are aiming to kill bosses ASAP and I can say for sure, DRK is better at this, you just have more CDs to use in a shorter fight. So no, I don't agree with "staying in tank stance" increases your raid dps. RUSHERS cleared A12s in less than 10mins. What do you think the tanks DPS at? Yep, at 1.5k++. I did almost 1.4k as DRK without AST, got 10:24 timing for A12S.

Alexander Speedrun tab: https://www.fflogs.com/rankings/13#boss=37&metric=speed

We have been at this for so long, IDK what to say anymore. There is no point to stay in tank stance because this topic is the skill gap you are witnessing, not because "tanks should be in tank stance to enable healers to dps more". It doesn't work that way if your healers are not good in the first place.

OPEN your eyes and see why these healers can still DPS and most of the healers you meet can't even heal properly. Same as most tanks and DPS. This is the skill gap between top raiders and majority of players.

[Reynhart]

So no, I don't agree with "staying in tank stance" increases your raid dps. RUSHERS cleared A12s in less than 10mins. What do you think the tanks DPS at? Yep, at 1.5k++. I did almost 1.4k as DRK without AST, got 10:24 timing for A12S.

So, basically, you're saying "Tanks can never increase raid DPS apart from stance dancing because staying in tank stance doesn't increase raid DPS now"...well, yes, it doesn't now, because the fights are only designed around this meta...that's the problem.

That's why I use, you know, words like "could" or "would"...

We could have utility skills for PLD and/or DRK not tied to stance dancing that would still increase raid DPS.

The game already has issues keeping three tanks and three healers balanced with this meta, what do you think will happen if we have a 4th one of each in Stormblood ?

Besides, speerunning is a totally different concept.

[Sarcatica]

The game already has issues keeping three tanks and three healers balanced with this meta, what do you think will happen if we have a 4th one of each in Stormblood ?

It's nothing new, there is always going to be the best jobs to bring to raid no matter what game you are in, top raiders just have to prepare themselves to be in that position to milk the future OPs.

EDIT: to elaborate, in all games anything near to perfect balance will never be achieved hence why you see defined metas, this applies heavily to the minority (top players) that affects the majority. When everything is balanced, game becomes stale and ofc no one wants that. When game introduces more fun things like utilities to whatever classes, guess what? There will still be no balance. People just tend to do whatever optimal and if you have been in games that top players have high influences, you will see the trend in that fashion.

[Reynhart]

It's nothing new, there is always going to be the best jobs to bring to raid no matter what game you are in, top raiders just have to prepare themselves to be in that position to milk the future OPs.

On paper, yes. But in reality, the less metrics you use, the easier it will be to point what setup is the best, especially since tanks have fairly low synergy with other jobs. That's why I'm suggesting to change/add some skills to include different ways of contributing to DPS.

Maybe I'm repeating myself too much, but I really like the idea of an OT PLD using Rampart or Sentinel on someone else, which would allow the MT to stay out of tank stance even for tankbusters.

People just tend to do whatever optimal and if you have been in games that top players have high influences, you will see the trend in that fashion.

Even that can be avoided in a way, by creating more synergies with different jobs. For now, NIN loves WAR because they bring the slashing debuff. You could create a synergy between PLD/DRK and some DPS (or healers). This way, unless everybody start to play the same job, you could have different equal setup. "If you have that job, it's better to bring this tank, if you have that other job, it's better to bring this healer, etc..."
Is it difficult to balance ? Yes, it is. But it's the only way you can continue adding more and more jobs without some of them being thrown out of the elite loop.

[Duelle]

I'm yet to see an official statement made to this effect.

This is because no one has bothered to ask the devs about that. Maybe whoever here is going to the London Fanfest should grab a mic and ask Yoshida about this during the Q&A.

PLD was no longer the de facto MT for every encounter, as it had been for nearly two years.

There's a difference between PLD not being instant MT and PLD not being wanted at all. So that part is built on a false premise. And I say that as someone who wants all three tanks to stand on equal ground instead of playing musical chairs.

It was no longer enough to simply to gear up with indestructible armor and go afk as a glorified striking dummy while the rest of your raid learned mechanics. Your team now had expectations, and you had to meet them.

This assumes tanks never have to watch out for things on their side, in addition to focusing on staying alive. I'd throw in things like being part of interrupt rotations and grabbing adds, but the first was never used after Coil and the second is rarely ever used.

Survival, aggro, positioning and spatial awareness are all crucial to the tank role. Not sure why you neglect to mention them.

The post points out that the main group who objected to this were "career tanks" from previous MMOs who came into FFXIV with preconceived ideas that tanks were supposed to be nothing more than damage sponges. Problem is, their "careers" weren't long enough.

Here you aim to belittle those who have played tanks before.

The people you're trying to insult are those drawn to the role of tank because they like the idea of holding a mob's attention while their allies stab the mob to death. Those people also know what comes with the role and the trade-off that comes with being a tank.

Stuff about MUDs

From a mechanics perspective, the whole point of a tank is that you trade offense for superior defense. Otherwise you could have any class doing the tanking as long as the healers are able to keep that person alive (basically the problem FFXI ran into once everyone could get -DT gear sets, causing people to mostly toss tanks to the wayside once a fight was learned).

Also keep in mind no one who understands gameplay designs would be against tanks dealing some damage. Otherwise we'd have people calling for the Lineage II Aggression spells (spells that dealt no damage but generated aggro equal to powerful nukes) as a means for all tanks to hold a mob. That's clearly not the case, especially since tanks need to deal some damage to do things out in the world (instead of taking forever to kill anything because your attack scaling is low, which I've seen first-hand) and it gives value to offensive stats since your enmity generated is tied to damage dealt.

We can start with removing the damage penalty on the tank stances, WoW did this because they realized (correctly I might add) that it's not necessary as long as the DPS stance provides enough of a buff that it's still more damage to be in said dps stance.

WoW had the benefit of mechanics that encouraged tanks to stay in their respective stances, though. Stances had been changed to act as the equivalent of gearing to defense cap by providing enough mitigation to make it desirable to not want to leave Defensive Stance/Blood Presence/Stance of the Sturdy Ox/Bear form as long as you were taking hits to the face (specially since in some cases your key tank mechanics were attached to the stances themselves). You were free to switch after a tank swap, which is fine.