Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[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.

[Jpec07]

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.

I don't actually have a parser because it's against the ToU, and because people have been banned for using parse numbers to belittle other players.

Which is exactly what you seem to be doing here (so be careful).

I'd advise you to read my corollary; at the end of the raid, what matters is not whether you did 500dps with 70% mitigation or 2000dps with 20% mitigation. What matters is whether or not you had fun, whether or not the boss died, and whether or not you helped the group get through the fights. Sure, people who optimize their output will help encounters go more quickly, but the only measure of skill and success is whether or not you are performing adequately to complete the content you are challenging. In something like Weeping City of Mhach? Optimized tank DPS isn't going to matter as much to that end as in A12S. It may help some in Weeping City, but both tanks will be able to succeed at the encounter, and so both are equally performant to that end.

[SpookyGhost]

I'd advise you to read my corollary; at the end of the raid, what matters is not whether you did 500dps or 2000dps, nor whether you mitigated 70% of incoming damage or only 30%. What matters is whether or not you had fun, whether or not the boss died, and whether or not you helped the group get through the fights.

I didn't know someone could say something and then contradict themselves in the very next sentence. Impressive.

[Jpec07]

I didn't know someone could say something and then contradict themselves in the very next sentence. Impressive.

I fail to see the contradiction. Would you mind pointing it out? I fear in my verbosity I may have skipped explaining a couple steps in my logic (which could give the appearance of contradiction).

[SpookyGhost]

I fail to see the contradiction. Would you mind pointing it out? I fear in my verbosity I may have skipped explaining a couple steps in my logic (which could give the appearance of contradiction).

Doing more damage and increasing % mitigated both increase the chance of the boss dying + helping the group clear the fight. If you mitigate just enough to not die, you'd end up causing excess healer stress. Similarly, if you only do "just enough" DPS you'll see many more mechanics which will, in turn, mean that the chance of clearing the fight goes down.

e: Also you're part of a group of 8 people, "ego" would be not caring about doing everything you can and just trying to shoot for the bare minimum - you put your own needs (not really being bothered to do more than the absolute minimum) above others.

[Jpec07]

Doing more damage and increasing % mitigated both increase the chance of the boss dying + helping the group clear the fight. If you mitigate just enough to not die, you'd end up causing excess healer stress. Similarly, if you only do "just enough" DPS you'll see many more mechanics which will, in turn, mean that the chance of clearing the fight goes down.

Oddly, some people enjoy navigating mechanics (they're crazy, I know).

I also failed to specify what I thought was a given for this conversation: damage mitigation is inversely proportional to DPS (in most cases). With a modicum of similar skill, a tank who opts to hone their skill around mitigation and minmaxes their cooldowns for optimal sequence and usage on a given encounter such as to take virtually no damage very likely won't do as much damage as the tank who opts for the minimum amount of mitigation required to survive in favor of Big Numbers (Praise Fell Cleavus).

If a tank has both poor mitigation and poor damage output, then they (1) are new to the game or to their role, (2) have never been offered correction, (3) have some enfeeblement preventing them performing optimally, or (4) they dgaf and are there to troll people. However, regardless of the reason, if the group succeeds and everyone has a good time, then they are adequately skilled for the encounter.

[aleph_null]

I also failed to specify what I thought was a given for this conversation: damage mitigation is inversely proportional to DPS (in most cases).

I think one thing to note is that stacking mitigations has diminishing returns, so after certain points it won't be noticeable at all to the healers. Most of the time stacking two cds is enough with a few exceptions like final punch/beam in a8s or holy scourge + chastening heat in a12s (and in these cases most people would use their invulnerability cds). More dps is almost never a bad thing, while more mitigation may be wasted if it doesn't reduce the number of heals you need to get. (maybe you can argue that more dps is wasted if it doesn't reduce the number of gcds you need to kill the boss lol)

[SpookyGhost]

I also failed to specify what I thought was a given for this conversation: damage mitigation is inversely proportional to DPS (in most cases). With a modicum of similar skill, a tank who opts to hone their skill around mitigation and minmaxes their cooldowns for optimal sequence and usage on a given encounter such as to take virtually no damage very likely won't do as much damage as the tank who opts for the minimum amount of mitigation required to survive in favor of Big Numbers (Praise Fell Cleavus).

Personal DPS and group DPS may work in tandem, but they're still way different from eachother. If making your numbers go up causes your healers combined DPS to go down by more than you're gaining then you've effectively lost damage and made the healers' lives harder. I know everyone likes to believe that the DPS meta means that tanks literally just focus solely on pumping up their DPS, but in reality it's a balance between mitigating damage and dealing it to find an equilibrium that allows for the highest possible gDPS. The only place you'll see players play seemingly risky to an extreme is in speedkills where everything has been thoroughly mapped out, a good example being: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0AyFjeIcaM

Now, let me make something clear: If you feel like you're not being rewarded for PROPERLY mitigating in the current meta then you're wrong. The literal only difference between a PLD or a DRK tanking in content that hits extremely hard and content that hits not so hard is that you have to turn your tank stance on for larger periods for the hard hitting fights (or the full fight, barring tank swaps). WAR is the exception, and only because IB is tied to their tank stance - however, due to WAR's CD kit being more tightly packed and versatile, it doesn't really need IB (though I do miss timing IBs, that was fun). Basically what I'm saying is that even if they made stuff hit wayyyy harder, your CDs would still be used exactly as they are now you'd just be doing less damage because you'd be forced into tank stance more often - maybe you'd see more tank swaps to keep CDs rolling as well but that's about it. The only way they could make mitigation different and more fun is if they went the active mitigation route that WoW and other MMOs took and while I'd be all for that it would take a massive overhaul of a lot of things and I don't see them doing it unless people just stop playing tanks all together for some reason.

Also I don't know what the comment "some people enjoy navigating mechanics" is meant to mean. Even if you skip a lot of mechanics, you still have to do mechanics, so if you have some fetish for moving out of AOEs then you still get to do that... except the boss will have a higher chance of dying by doing less of those. Even if you are addicted to mechanics, you are one in a group of 8, you'd need to find 7 other people who are super into doing all the mechanics of a fight and seeing enrage to really hold any weight.

Actually, the meta says the exact opposite. Mitigates more than you need to survive and you're probably sacrificing too much DPS for it.

There's a difference between mitigating the amount you need to mitigate to survive comfortably and get healed back up and mitigating just enough to not completely get squashed by the tank buster. The former is what good tanks do because being in tank stance neuters your DPS, and if thats the mitigation you can afford to drop and still survive comfortably then you do. If you need tank stance then you use it, but if you don't then you... y'know... don't.

I still fail to see what lunatic decided that "doing everything you can" meant "doing as much DPS you can" when you're a tank or a healer and designed fights around this.

The goal of any boss in any game is to make it's HP go to 0. The only way to do that is to deal damage to it. As a tank your job is to keep aggro and mitigate damage, as a healer your job is to heal people. As a tank you actually have less of an excuse for not maximizing your DPS than a healer does as the healer has to go out of the way to hit the boss, but as a tank you HAVE to hit the boss. Even before we had everyone out of tank stance, tanks were optimizing their rotations (especially WARs) and finding spots where they were just taking autos to drop stance. Anyway, if you as a tank or a healer can contribute to making the boss' HP go to 0 then you should - maximizing that is your goal as a group so that the boss dies and you get loot. The only way to stop this from being a thing is if you make tanks literally do 0 damage and only deal "aggro" and get rid of all the healer DPS spells, which I'm pretty sure would put everyone off both for life if for no other reason than they'd have to party with people to get anything done at all.