Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[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?

[Ahrniel]

This has been done before. Who knows? Perhaps you could use elusive jump to tank swap.

I did tank some content as Dragoon before, but gotta tell you, it requires some special circunstances.
First you must go nuts on the rotation.
Second your gears must be better than the party overall.
Third, remember to have defensive cooldowns around.
That's it.

Last content I remember tanking as dragoon was... I think Diablos?
Tank left so we had no choice. White Mage got the doors, Summoner got the slow dots in, I got in jumping and stunning just for the extra damage to get the enmity in, totally doable. We got it done, easy. And honestly, it makes me think DPS is the most wothless role in the Holy Trinity. I enjoy tanking as a dragoon a lot, to the point I would pray the Tank would dc or something. I even started a thread somewhere saying "Are tanks an impairment to fun?". Now I realize I got it backwards, it is DPS that are an impairment to fun. If all melee dps were tanks and all ranged dps were supports (including healers) we could enjoy dividing the mobs between all the melee and have a blast, like when the tank is gone and I so have to find a way to survive and divide those mobs with my Monk brother in arms, and protect the holy healer back there.

Holy Trinity sucks, but hey, that's what we have, so I gotta deal with it.

[Gravton]

Guild Wars 2 got rid of the trinity. At launch dungeons were almost impossible to run. The dps would take turns face tank until they died, port back to the start of the dungeon and wait in line to do it again. Maybe they changed it since then but it was a horrible experience.

[Shurrikhan]

Guild Wars 2 got rid of the trinity. At launch dungeons were almost impossible to run. The dps would take turns face tank until they died, port back to the start of the dungeon and wait in line to do it again. Maybe they changed it since then but it was a horrible experience.

That's not an issue of a lack of a role trinity in itself, though. That's a lack in toolkit, and players not yet being experienced enough to reliably do otherwise.

[Ahrniel]

I did play Guild Wars 2, and my problem with it was that basically you would act like some cheesy action movie protagonist 85% of the time, by dodging every single thing like it were some explosion. Eventually I got sick of that... "dancing", whatever I can call that.

I don't mind characters having roles, It is better if they do, we can know what they are capable of, and we can divide the burden and responsibilities, something Guild Wars 2 was too loose about.

But even with their roles if they cannot use their full toolkit, I feel like the experience, as a team, becomes weaker than when soloing, and that is pretty much a failure for a MMO. If all melees divided the tanking role, and all ranged had supportive capabilities, everyone would use everything to full potential and I think it would be amazing. If FF14 were to adopt this Front/Back Line system, which interestingly enough it did use in most if not all the games in the main series in the turn-based RPGs, I would be truly glad. Could be worth experimenting honestly. But hey, that is wishing for miracles to happen, like hell they would do that.

[Frowny]

all ranged had supportive capabilities

We have that now with MCH/BRD. And most bards won't even play Foes.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

We have that now with MCH/BRD. And most bards won't even play Foes.

And SMN with E4E/Virus... BLM with Lethargy/apocastasis/E4E...

Honestly, with the 'DPS comes first' meta that's so prevalent within the community, no one cares about support, just stopping power.

[Sarcatica]

And SMN with E4E/Virus... BLM with Lethargy/apocastasis/E4E...

Honestly, with the 'DPS comes first' meta that's so prevalent within the community, no one cares about support, just stopping power.

I disagree. It's not even the meta that is wrong. It's the players' skill and mentality. And it's the majority of the community that is at fault. They don't even take the time to read tooltips, like what, Foes reduce your damage as BRD? The DPS meta is not to be blamed when most of these players do 3 digits DPS which is so horrible and to think that now all DPS is capable of doing 2k+dps in Savage. I was in this Sophia EX clear party and we got 2 tank busters before add phase, all 4 DPS are well below my damage by a huge margin. That's a huge problem that is inherently from the player's skills, and not the meta. How do you blame the DPS meta when most of these players trying to clear contents do abysmal damage? It doesn't add up. Is pressing buttons really that hard?

I don't even know how these people get as low as 3digit DPS, DPS and OT alike . It's as if they aren't even using their combos, it's just appalling at this point. Or using macro which is terribad?

EDIT: nice DPS there.

[Frowny]

Foes reduce your damage as BRD?

Not to nitpick, but Foes doesn't; only Army's and Mage's do and Foes is a pure DPS gain in most cases at the expense of your MP. Hence my extreme dislike of bards....

[Sarcatica]

Not to nitpick, but Foes doesn't; only Army's and Mage's do and Foes is a pure DPS gain in most cases at the expense of your MP. Hence my extreme dislike of bards....

I know it doesn't, I was poking at players who didn't read tooltips and claimed Foes reduced their damage and thus didn't want to use it. All these has happened a lot in the game so far, nothing much you can do when most players aren't improving themselves and a huge chunk of these players don't want to be pointed out for doing low DPS which actually makes runs significantly slower and even worse in harder contents, DPS check seems to be a common theme that most people aren't too fond of.