Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Duelle]

When MTs were suddenly forced to change because dps checks got tighter and people finally caught on, they lashed out against it, which is really what that thread was about.

Between design and pacing, the devs largely expected raids to basically grind out tomes and kill what they could while the DPS geared up to do meet the checks of A3S and beyond. Instead, what happened was that raids decided to use tank DPS to circumvent that (basically taking a shortcut) using something the devs didn't really foresee. Much like they didn't foresee raids using healer DPS to get clears faster than intended during ARR.

People tried to make DRK into a lot of things that it wasn't, based on whatever preconceptions they came in with. I'm personally delighted with how it turned out. Weapons are generally either one-handed or two-handed, so outside of a three-handed weapon user, it sounds like you were against the idea of another tank.

Not really. See: BST, SAM, MTK, DNC.

As far as "what DRK wasn't", we can go back to the old discussions after the job was announced. A job known for sacrificing HP to deal high damage (FFIV, FFVIII, FFX-2) and having built in drains (FFTactics, FFXI) was turned into a tank. The precedent for a darkness-themed tank does exist (Everquest, WoW, Lineage II to name three games), but let's at least recognize that some expected the job to be a DPS because they wanted to be the guy with the huge sword dealing high DPS. And frankly speaking, I can't blame anyone who felt disappointed at how DRK has been implemented. And yes, I can admit I'm a little worried that SE might try to pull this again with RDM, since much like DRK it is a highly requested job.

I find MT interesting, but outside of very specific fights, PLD's gameplay generally doesn't cut it for me.

Which is fine. I don't expect everyone to fall in love with PLD or to find it appealing enough to make it their main. We'd all play the same job if that were the case.

You talk about tanks "pretending to be dps" disparagingly, as if they're sacrificing their ability to tank by outputting more damage.

If you're dropping Shield Oath/Grit/Defiance while still taking hits to the face, you are sacrificing the mitigation that comes with your primary role (to badly paraphrase the legendary Alamo, "sheild oeth iz 4 tank, swoard oeth iz 4 fite"). As I've said, I'd have no problem with this if it were exclusive to one job in the guise of "unique gameplay". It's when it starts spilling over to the other tanks and leads to belittling others as a result that I feel I have to voice my concerns and opinions on the matter.

To me, judging tanks by how much damage they deal is the wrong way to approach raid comps and player dynamics. It's like judging a construction worker by how much they know about the business accounts of the company they work for. It's unreasonable and irrelevant to the duties of that person.

That being said, damage to a tank is a means of holding aggro, and as such a tank should use the skills in their arsenal when possible. As a PLD, as I said before, it's rotating and prioritizing Rage of Halone, Goring Blade and Royal Authority while doing the rest of the things expected of the tank; in short, we already have a gameplay model that encourages maximizing damage output without engaging in unintended behaviors that we aren't even designed for.

It's only fair that raids account for the total DPS everyone can bring, it shows how capable you are as a tank at understanding how to time your CDs properly and effectively do damage while tanking, with or without tank stance alike. This shows the level of competency if you are into raiding. What's funny is that a lot of veteran tank raiders had been doing DPS ever since the 2.x period. Now this concept is everywhere because those tanks can get away with it, but what does it leave to the new tanks trying to raid? They can't replicate this due to the skillgap. This is just how it is. People need to understand that this concept only works at the top. IF you don't like the idea, you can just do whatever you want anyway.

Problem is, shit rolls downhill. The stuff done at the top trickles down to the bottom in time. As I've mentioned in the past, this is why during ARR I had WARs say to my face that they couldn't tank HM Garuda or Titan when the problem was in Coil. The problems of the 1% become everyone's problem.

WAR had a variable stance cost in 2.x. Changing from DPS non-stance to a stack-retaining DPS stance two levels later would seem to be purposeful removal of that cost on a theme that SE felt should WARs should push over the added levels.

I disagree. Deliverance was added because it makes no sense for WAR to not have access to its job-specific resource when not tanking. Sure, Wrath is one-dimensional as a resource, but it sucks to go from having the Wrath mechanic while tanking to having nothing after the tank swap. This is why I agree with the idea of WAR getting Deliverance (I was quite happy for WAR when it was first announced).

And why remove a huge portion of interesting gameplay from every other tank, pigeon-holing all any "skillful play" tank into a single job?

We often talk about varying gameplay, and part of that is differing levels of input needed to do the thing the job is intended for. Not every job should be built around the same level of input; some should be simple like PLD, while others should be more button-intensive like DRG and MCH. That's the idea behind what I've suggested.