Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Lyth]

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.

In ARR, most players automatically assumed that PLD was the only possible MT, even though WAR was actually a better choice for many fights. We went through nearly the entirety of FCOB with people insisting that PLD was a superior MT for the first two phases of T13, only for six and seven-man carry groups to discover much much later that WAR was actually a pretty good choice. The problem wasn't the tank design, but player preconceptions. Even really skilled groups had them.

There were some fights in ARR in which the player base felt that a PLD solo tank was "optimal" and your OT would be required to swap to a 5th dps. That's really not cool. Hallowed's ability to bypass and reset stack mechanics played a role in this.

One of the reasons DRK was struggling to find a place in early HW was because players automatically assumed that two-handed weapons were less defensive than a shield. So they were trying to force it into a pure OT role which it wasn't really designed for.

Gordias had its share of problems, but actually seeing two out of four world-first clears on a non-PLD MT did wonders to change people's perceptions of tanks (half of the world-first clears in Gordias were still done on PLD, so it's not like there wasn't any demand). If you wanted to be MT, you no longer had to play PLD. This opened up the doors to not just DRK MTs, but WAR MTs as well. The responsibilities are more balanced as well, and we slowly moved away from the draconian MT/OT system to a more equitable way of divvying up the fights.

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.

Sure. I've worked with some very skilled MTs in ARR who knew to do all those things while stance dancing and taking advantage of strength gear. But survival and aggro are fairly simple when you have 100% Shield Oath uptime and your only combo maximises damage, enmity, and provides a mitigation buff. It was very easy to get by on the bare minimum. It was only later in HW, when the skill set was expanded, you were forced to make trade-offs to make your dps count, that it became more blatantly obvious to non-tanks which tanks were genuinely talented and which tanks were simply coasting. You no longer had the luxury of Halone Shield Oathing your way to victory.

The reason why mandatory interrupts aren't as common is because PLD has a clear-cut advantage over the other two tanks, both in its ability to chain stun and in its ability to silence. These have also historically given rise to situations in which the player-base has considered PLD to be mandatory. There are still fights where these come up, and there were three fights in Midas where these were beneficial, although there were ways to work around the absence of a PLD because the interval between silences can be handled by a single player. Interrupts are not hard to do; it's just a question of whether the player has access to the right skills.

Movement-orientated fights are only recently becoming more common. Skill in this area shows up in both your personal and raid dps. You can easily tell the player who manages to gently guide the boss to a new position without costing autos from both themselves and their melee (you can usually tell the players who have spent some time raiding on a melee dps apart from the ones who have only ever played a tank). This was less obvious in a lot of earlier fights, were you legitimately were a target dummy.

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.

I'm sorry if I offended you. If you like getting compliments from your circle of friends on how indestructible you are, then feel free to play that way. But what I object vehemently to is when players want to remove performance metrics simply because they aren't able to make them. If my dps is terrible, then it's on me to fix it if I want to improve. I'm not going to try to pressure the devs to have dps removed from tanking simply so that I can feel better about myself.

From a mechanics perspective, the whole point of a tank is that you trade offense for superior defense.

Actually, the point of a tank is to know when to trade offense for superior defense. We're frontline combat specialists versed in both. Tanks may have armor, but they also come with a giant cannon.

On my example above, if PLD could transfer Rampart and Sentinel to someone else, it's pretty clear what utility it could bring.
Suppose you have a WAR MT. For each tankbuster, it will probably use Defiance and (at least) one of its "increased eHP" skill. Considering that the effect of tank stance is around the same as Rampart, your WAR MT could stay in Deliverance, use its mitigation skills (Except Inner Beast, which seems to be avoided as much as possible anyway...) as he should have, and stack at least Rampart on top of that. And of course the PLD would stay in Sword Oath during all that.

Thus, having a PLD OT would increase the DPS of the WAR, without needed a personal DPS increase of the PLD of requiring the PLD to stance dance.

This would be pretty cool, and you can kind of do this with Cover. One gripe that I have is that when you're OT, you typically aren't involved with tankbuster mechanics until it's your turn to swap in. I much prefer seeing things like Laser X Sword and Ahk Morn where you're forced to team up with your co-tank to fend off the attack.

Another alternative would be to give the OT a special move to perform a timed counter-attack to debuff the tank buster.

[Ahrniel]

Actually, the point of a tank is to know when to trade offense for superior defense. We're frontline combat specialists.

That is what I find laughable about the Holy Trinity: The Melee Dps. I main melee dps and I cannot understand why taking hits and going on defensive is so outrageous for a melee fighter, it is in the basics of combat! I can understand a ranged class being unable to tank, but a melee, any melee should be able to at least off-tank. I had that experience with Dragoon a few times in lower level dungeons, had with ninja once, and never had with monk, because it is pretty much impossible. Monk being, btw, another laughable design. A martial artist that cannot take targets head-on without suffering a deep decrease in its own efficiency? Just stop.

I see absolutelly no issues to tanks dpsing, it is in the basics. You are a melee fighter, you wanna grab attention? Gotta cause enough pain and fear for that, that means damage. The only reason tanks grab attention is thanks to cheap artificial fear called enmity, if you wanna know what is true fear, talk to my fellow Black Mages, they know what is true solid fear.

[Cabalabob]

I see absolutelly no issues to tanks dpsing, it is in the basics. You are a melee fighter, you wanna grab attention? Gotta cause enough pain and fear for that, that means damage. The only reason tanks grab attention is thanks to cheap artificial fear called enmity, if you wanna know what is true fear, talk to my fellow Black Mages, they know what is true solid fear.

Enmity isn't about fear it's about anger. Which is why people calling it "Threat" is misleading. "Hate" is the better term. In a way it makes sense. If you were having a duel and a guy was there constantly flashing a light in your eyes (PLD) you'd kill him first cause he's annoying you and you can't see or focus on the fight while he's doing that. WAR is basically screaming in your ear and DRK is just generally intimidating.

[Ahrniel]

Enmity isn't about fear it's about anger. Which is why people calling it "Threat" is misleading. "Hate" is the better term. In a way it makes sense. If you were having a duel and a guy was there constantly flashing a light in your eyes (PLD) you'd kill him first cause he's annoying you and you can't see or focus on the fight while he's doing that. WAR is basically screaming in your ear and DRK is just generally intimidating.

You know how lame that sounds don't you?
You call their attention by being annoying? Rogues should be MT GG no RE.

[Cabalabob]

You know how lame that sounds don't you?
You call their attention by being annoying? Rogues should be MT GG no RE.

Doesn't really matter how it sounds, it's basically fact. One of our hate tools is literally called provoke. What do you think that means? What pain and fear are you causing when you taunt them? Except maybe hurting their feelings.

As for ninja they have enmity control skills. Shadewalker makes it seem like the tank is the one performing their enmity gain and smoke bombs to hide the other people who are building enmity. Hate control by making it seem like someone else is doing it is a common thing with thief or scout type classes (thief's trick attack in ffxi)

[Instrumentality]

You know how lame that sounds don't you?
You call their attention by being annoying? Rogues should be MT GG no RE.

What do you hate more, the guy standing in front of you wrecking you with a huge weapon, screaming at you, shrugging off your biggest hits like it's a joke and generally being all up in your face every waking second, or the guy that's trying to punch you (really hard) in the side?

Enmity, hate, whatever you want to call it. That's exactly what you're doing as a tank. The monster or whatever isn't afraid of you. It wants to beat you to death because you're the most obvious and annoying.

[whiskeybravo]

I see absolutelly no issues to tanks dpsing, it is in the basics. You are a melee fighter, you wanna grab attention? Gotta cause enough pain and fear for that, that means damage. The only reason tanks grab attention is thanks to cheap artificial fear called enmity, if you wanna know what is true fear, talk to my fellow Black Mages, they know what is true solid fear.

What the.. Have you heard of balance?

If a tank did as much damage as regular dps, what would be the point of bringing any actual dps? You can just have tanks wrecking whatever you're up against and never die due to their superior defense. Probably wouldn't even need healers with a couple PLD for Clemency.

So, your point is rather invalid. DPS and healers need the tank to be a damage sponge. Tanks need healers to stay alive and need dps to clear content.. Without that balance you'd have basically one class with which everything could be done. Way to make it interesting..

Respectfully, I disagree with this blanket statement.

Warrior being harder to play than the other tanks doesn't mean they aren't superior. Granted, I personally find DRK a bit more difficult to master than War. But they have everything. Good damage mitigation, increased base HP, increased healing rec'd, self heals, debuffs to improve raid dps and decrease raid damage taken, interesting stack management mechanics, and the highest damage output of the 3. Hallowed ground is practically the only thing better than what the other 2 tanks have. It's true each has their own advantage and disadvantage per encounter, but nearly every group raids with at least 1 war and doesn't care which tank the other is. That should be a slight indication of their superiority if nothing else.

[Gravton]

What the.. Have you heard of balance?

If a tank did as much damage as regular dps, what would be the point of bringing any actual dps? You can just have tanks wrecking whatever you're up against and never die due to their superior defense. Probably wouldn't even need healers with a couple PLD for Clemency.

So, your point is rather invalid. DPS and healers need the tank to be a damage sponge. Tanks need healers to stay alive and need dps to clear content.. Without that balance you'd have basically one class with which everything could be done. Way to make it interesting..

She said she had no issue with tanks dpsing, she didn't say tanks should put up numbers the dps manage. A tank should be dpsing other wise the OT would just sit there and wait for instructions.

[Ahrniel]

She said she had no issue with tanks dpsing, she didn't say tanks should put up numbers the dps manage. A tank should be dpsing other wise the OT would just sit there and wait for instructions.

Thanks for clarifying for me. People are so salty it is hilarious, they can't help but commit mistakes and morally judge people while doing it.
It is like this isn't even a forum about a game.

[Shurrikhan]

What the.. Have you heard of balance?

If a tank did as much damage as regular dps, what would be the point of bringing any actual dps?

• Better control over that damage dealt and its dynamics, likely with greater burst.
• The damage not coming at cost of potential mitigation.
• Auxiliary capabilities, such as mobility and offensive and/or defensive support. (Essentially, whatever the toolkit didn't spend on mitigation.)

I'm not saying tanks should have the same attack power and potencies, so to speak, as dps—merely that even if an OT were to deal similar damage over time, events could still bring out the need for a DPS through what parts of their toolkits aren't being spent on additional mitigation. Your tanks could be tanks in the mechanized, mobile, armored artilery sense of the word and the DPS "specialists" would still have use. This only increases as fights allow for greater player manipulation through their arsenals, and with Heavensward CC and such being about as bare-bones as possible that's pretty much the only direction of change possible.

Toolkits, not the trinity in and of itself, make things interesting. How much more damage are the damage-dealers doing because the tank is present, and why? In the tank's own toolkit, how does he maximize combined personal and (others') raid damage, both simultaneously and in trade?

Edit: to put it another way, unless the fight is specifically crafted to require a Tank's level of survivability (in a way that can't be countered through additional swaps, absorbs, or whatever else), DPS don't "need the Tank to be a damage sponge." Rather, the Tank being there facilitates DPS enough to be worth the trade of an extra DPS for that Tank. Now, depending on the shape of composition SE wants to push, the inclusion of a tank might almost always be a raid dps increase, regardless of their skill. Or, they might provide enough weight to the DPSs' auxiliary toolkits that there's actually some thought to that decision, and skill DPS can actually do viably well without a tank, say, on a typical dungeon or normal raid run. That's SE's balance to choose.

And with that, a sidenote: Would it really be so bad for something other than the 1/2/1 composition to be used once in a while, optimally?