Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Duelle]

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low (which in turn makes less people want to level a tank, which means if your game has a group finder option, you're going to have that much harder a time finding one). The problem here is that raids measure tanks not by their mitigation (like in every other game) but by how much damage they deal, and that's incredibly lopsided logic. That leads to other things (tanks making themselves take more damage for more DPS, belittling of those who take issue with that) that, to me, are causes for concern.

Barring making soloing unbearable, low damage didn't really bother me; then again, I've played tanks for almost a decade, most of which were designed to deal a lot less damage than the DPS (try playing a tank built mostly around 0-damage enmity generators; weep as you barely register on the DPS meters <,<).

It's a problem most MMOs have had since the beginning. Simply standing there, getting punched in the face and not feeling like you're contributing beyond taking a bullet for someone playing a class with all the, "cool" spells isn't going to sound all that appealing to a lot of players.

That sort of depends on the person. I used to have the ability to slam my weapon to the ground to create a cone of damage that stunned everything in front of me, and if I stomped the ground thunder would crash down and a 5-foot crater would appear at the point I stomped that would slow the attack speed of everyone around me. Tanks can have cool abilities, and they don't have to be focused on just damage.

I think MMOs have painted themselves into a corner by reserving all the fun, flashy stuff exclusively for DPS classes for so long while tanks get...shield bash. Now they're at the point where they have to practically bribe people to play tanks.

You still have the people that don't want the responsibility of wanting to play a tank. It takes colossal amounts of bribery to get those people to take up the role. And the results would be dubious.

Non-sequitur

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

Then everyone else does their thing, while the tank continues doing theirs.

So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

You continue holding aggro and trying to stay alive.

What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

Does there need to be a separation? Tanks generally don't stroke themselves over claims of skill.

How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

Depends on how the tank is designed. There's also mechanics to take into account. A tank doesn't just sit in a corner doing nothing while they take hits.

Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp.

Not "all", but that's a part of the tank role. The rest is filled by whatever incidental damage you dealt while generating aggro (Shield Oath+Goring Blade/Royal Authority in between Rage of Halone applications) and if you have any group utility (Reprisal, Divine Veil, Aegis of Light, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout, Anti-Magic Zone back when that could be used in PvE, etc).

Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

See my above mention of utility if the tank has access to it.

Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

If you want it in one word, balance. And I wouldn't say they bounce off; they just don't cut as deep. And it's fine, because likewise that moogle can smash the kitchen knife-wielder into paste while the greatsword/greataxe/sword&board guy simply takes the hit and asks for someone to close whatever window is open because they just felt a draft.

[Reynhart]

Solo tanking doesn't make tank dps less useful. If you designed a tank that could solo a fight, you're going to prefer players who offer more dps while solo tanking.

Problem is, offering more DPS is always done by sacrificing mitigation. It's how tank stances work. Fights actually allow you to do that because they're all designed around predictable flow of damage, so a knowledgeable tank knows when he can afford to sacrifice mitigation and when the healer can compensate.

Groups like Lucrezia used to do below minimum ilvl clears of older fights between raid tiers, such as i55/AF T5 and i90 T9.

Problem is, theses restrictions don't actually change how you play your job. The CD rotation is still the same, the strategy is the same and the flow of combat is the same. The only thing that changes is that you have a smaller cushion for mistakes.

When I think of mitigation challenges, I think of fights in which the tanks take more damage and survival becomes more dependent on cooldown use. This means less access to "tanky" gear and less passive damage reduction. I don't think you can request "tankier tanks" and "mitigation challenges" in the same breath.

Actually, you can, it just have to work on active mitigation, and challenging enmity control. As with my Mystic example, having to constantly keep a barrier is more challenging that popping a CD on a predicted timer. As for enmity, it would require a great overall, but to sum up, I'd say that DPS should do much more damage, and I mean really much more damage, to the point that keeping enmity on them would be hard, and that they could have to hold back a little if their tank fails to gain enough enmity.
But, with a really good tank, they would have enough room to go full power and wreck everyhting.

MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low

That's what DPS stances are for. But when actually tanking, allowing tanks to stay in DPS stance is pretty...weird. But it can easily be fixed. Give tanks the same HP as DPS, and make tank stances having a far higher mitigation. 20% damage reduction is clearly not enough when you already have around 50% more HP than most DPS.

[Lyth]

Yes, knowledgeable tanks know how to trade off mitigation for dps.

Yes, minimum ilvl challenges offer a smaller margin of error. That is what makes them mitigation challenges. Is your cooldown rotation and strategy the essentially same as if you were overgeared and unsynced with Echo? Try it out and let me know. Playing the piano is just about pressing the buttons in the correct order, right? Okay, then play.

If you want tanks which take less damage, then it makes the mitigation requirements easier. So this is the same as looking for easier mitigation checks. Enmity is just damage with a multiplier attached to it. A rose by any other name...

[Reynhart]

Playing the piano is just about pressing the buttons in the correct order, right? Okay, then play.

Are you really comparing playing an instrument with clicking on one button every 30-60 seconds ?

If you want tanks which take less damage, then it makes the mitigation requirements easier.

You're mistaking the effect of mitigation and the way to achieve this mitigation. Just look at Rampart and Inner Beast, and tell me they're exactly the same in combat.

Enmity is just damage with a multiplier attached to it. A rose by any other name...

Actually, this couldn't be further from the truth, with the existence of pure enmity oriented skills like Flash and Provoke, and more importantly, that tanks achieve highest enmity and highest damage very differently, mainly with stance dancing.

[Lyth]

If you're clicking, that would explain how you arrived at the figure of 1-2 APM.

Enmity generation is different from dps when you are obligated to do both and there's a trade-off involved. If you're taking the stance of "I don't want to maximize my dps, I want to maximise my aggros!" then you're just substituting dps maximisation for enmity.

[Reynhart]

If you're clicking, that would explain how you arrived at the figure of 1-2 APM.

It would have been better if I said "pushing a button" or "activating a skill" ? Would it have changed the fact that Twintania does only one Death Sentence every 30 seconds ? Or that Nael uses Ravensbeak at precise timing whatever your ilvl is ?

Enmity generation is different from dps when you are obligated to do both and there's a trade-off involved.If you're taking the stance of "I don't want to maximize my dps, I want to maximise my aggros!" then you're just substituting dps maximisation for enmity.

Yes, the difference is that one of those is exactly what a tank is supposed to do (To the point that it's the only role that have built-in bonuses), yet they keep designing fights where you want to avoid it as much as possible.

[Sarcatica]

Yes, the difference is that one of those is exactly what a tank is supposed to do (To the point that it's the only role that have built-in bonuses), yet they keep designing fights where you want to avoid it as much as possible.

Is it wrong then that SE designs encounters that way? You are just sore for no reason, don't like it then don't play. Simple. It's already a fact that DPS meta is prevalent and is a requirement to clear raids. It's same as complaining about unable to get a job because you aren't up to the skill you need to be. I really just don't get it, if you aren't raiding, why does this bother you that much? Adaptation is a scary word and not everyone likes to be outside of their bubbles but if you want to raid, minmaxing is what you have to do or you will be left behind. Nothing personal there.

[Jpec07]

So really, this whole discussion about roles and what a tank is vs. what it should be is really murky. I don't think anyone is denying the fact that in how things are currently formatted, tanks do have ample opportunity to contribute to group damage--what's at question is a matter of preference and philosophy as to whether or not that's something that should be as heavy a focus for tanks.

It helps in this context to consider what makes a successful encounter as a whole, and what the goals of the group are as a whole. In order to successfully challenge an encounter, a group needs to mitigate enough of the damage being put out to survive, while also dealing enough damage to kill the boss. So we have two goals that are shared by all party members: party survival and party damage output. In modern MMOs, most encounters are designed around the idea that if you can survive, you can finish the fight, and so really, the challenge comes to party survival.

Now, party survival is all about mitigating damage, either by (1) avoiding avoidable damage, (2) soaking unavoidable damage, and (3) healing the damage that is taken. If these three items are done right by all party members, no one will die, and the raid will very likely meet with success. And this is where the trinity system comes into play.

Most bosses these days will only attack a single target with unavoidable damage. This makes sense, because in combat, in most cases, you can't really fight eight people at once. So tanks exist to fill the role of the person who takes the most damage. They specialize in abilities that minimize the amount of damage they take personally, and so are typically very hard to kill, and bring a lot of personal mitigation to the fore (usually by 2 and 3 above). This is their primary responsibility, and allows other members in the group to focus on their damage output--unless they cannot fully mitigate the unavoidable damage they take. If they cannot (and most encounters are designed such that they cannot), this is why we have healers.

Healers are party members whose abilities focus around ensuring that tanks and other party members stay alive, reversing the damage they take. Healers do have some ability to do damage, but they take on the primary responsibility of making sure everyone stays alive. This, again, allows other members of the group to focus on maximizing their damage output, so they don't have to worry about mitigation.

So tanks and healers both have primary responsibilities that contribute to the success of damage dealers. Tanks' primary responsibilities are holding enemies' attention and doing what they can to minimize damage taken (in many ways, they control enemy damage output), while healers' primary responsibility is to make sure party members don't die, so that everyone else can focus on their own tasks--killing the boss. And in a puritanical trinitarian MMO world, this would be all that these roles do: tanks control damage, healers heal damage, and DDs kill the thing doing damage.

But what if there's downtime in an encounter? What if there is a period where a tank doesn't have much outgoing damage to control, or where a healer doesn't have much to heal? Then they fall back to the second group goal of killing the boss. Encounters in FFXIV are designed this way; they have a lot of downtime, and a lot of opportunities where outgoing damage is low enough to allow healers and tanks to fall back on that second goal of killing the boss.

For career tanks and healers from other games, this might seem counterintuitive. "It's not my job to kill the boss!" Well, actually, since that's the goal of the group, that's your goal as well. Anything you can do to afford yourself to maximize your own damage output is in fact part of your job description--so long as it doesn't compromise your primary responsibility. So tanks, when there isn't a lot of incoming damage for you to control, or when you can control it very easily, your goal is then to maximize your output. Healers, when there isn't a lot of incoming damage for you to mitigate and reverse, your goal is then to maximize your damage output. Sure, when there's heightened incoming damage, both will need to fall back on their primary responsibilities, but if not? That's when you pop your offensive CDs, switch stances, and go to town.

Many tanks and healers don't like that idea, because they have this notion that incoming damage is spiky and unpredictable; and in some games, that's true. In some games, tanks do need to spend every waking moment in their tank stance with their cooldowns active, because they have no way of knowing when the boss is going to throw a nuke in their face. In some games, healers do need to focus primarily on healing, because the incoming damage would wipe the raid if they let up even for a second. But those games are not FFXIV. Here, if you focus exclusively on healing, even if you're trying to keep everyone topped off, you're very likely to have periods of time where you're just standing there. Here, there are periods of time in almost every boss fight where you won't be taking enough damage to justify staying in your tank stance. Here, the challenge of most encounters comes in the form of predictable, scripted, often-avoidable mechanics.

In those other games, counting a tank's ability to deal damage or a healer's ability to deal damage doesn't make sense. The encounters in those games don't afford them the opportunity to focus on other things. But in FFXIV, unless the encounter design paradigm is changed, it absolutely does make sense to include their ability to deal damage into the equation. I agree that it would be nice if the damage control aspect of tanking was more engaging/challenging, but that's not how the game is currently designed.

As a corollary to this, though, it is by no means acceptable to judge another person's skill based upon your own experiences. If a turtle tank and a non-damaging healer are part of a group that regularly meets with success, and they enjoy their gameplay, then who are you to judge them? Yes, your way of playing may make encounters faster, but at the end of the day, what matters is whether or not they have fun, and whether they KO'd the boss to rifle through their pockets. All a group needs to do in most cases is survive long enough to kill the boss, and if they can do that, then they're doing it right.

[Reynhart]

Is it wrong then that SE designs encounters that way?

Yes, it is, because is makes void most of what a tank is supposed to be.
Enmity ? Never an issue.
Mitigation ? Far too much situations where you don't need it.

The fact that Vit was mostly useless before the AP change (Remind that Vit accessories were the only one where tank could actually roll need) and that Parry has absolutely no noticeable effect is a clear hint that they don't know how to properly manage tank jobs. It could be expected though, it already was a big mess in FFXI...

[Sarcatica]

Snip too long

The thing is some posters here don't advocate doing DPS even when their primary responsibility is met. Now that's the issue. Most tanks don't know how to maximize damage output is also another one. You can have tanks doing as low as 400dps and on the extreme side, some tanks can do 1.5k dps, both are doing the same fight. How does that happen actually? Is it just a coincidence that most tanks that advocate pure tanking do as low as 500dps (pls check if anyone here gets that number btw), when optimally you can do 800dps in full tank stance? For tanks to have as high as 60% difference in DPS despite both in the same tank stance uptime is sketchy. People aren't readily going to admit they do low DPS either nor they will say they can't press buttons in a logical way. One word I can say: skill. This is why the discussions always end up in a huge mess because it represents 2 sides that dont want to talk it out. A good discussion can only happen when common issues and understanding match.

How do you feel yourself when you see OTs in 24mans doing way less DPS than you especially when you are main tank, and even worse you are on 100% tank stance? That's a huge red flag people need to look into. And this is not even looking at those DPS at 200dps in Weeping, for goodness sake.