Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Reynhart]

What did damage to the raiding community is hardly related to your biased delusions about how tanks should be designed because one PLD got carried through A11N while only spamming RoH.

Then please, tell me how greatly designed tanks are when it comes to actually tanking...tell me how great it is when every fight can be translated to a spreadsheet with every timer (and the CD rotation applied to it) clearly displayed...

Except your seventh step is on a different stairway. Raid content is not the same as Dungeon content -- even the hardest dungeon content.

It's still the same jobs into the same game...so no, it's the same stair. And if you really tink it's a different stair, then what you call the "actual learning curve" is even more nonsense.

However, I'm not like you and don't falsely correlate 1 person's poor performance in irrelevant content to my biased delusions about how a job should be changed to match my personal fantasy.

One example is enough to show that you can do it. That fact is a problem on itself.

[DaulBan]

Then please, tell me how greatly designed tanks are when it comes to actually tanking...tell me how great it is when every fight can be translated to a spreadsheet with every timer (and the CD rotation applied to it) clearly displayed...

You plan DPS buffs, healing actions, literally your own GCDs in fights because of the fact that there is a certain order of events in which things happen since 2.0. If you think that the fact that tanks can set a cooldown rotation for themselves is such an offensive, unacceptable thing, then I shiver to imagine how you feel of the formulaic approach to encounter design that SE has used since the dawn of ARR.

[Reynhart]

You plan DPS buffs

Has nothing to do with tanking

healing actions

Which means, as a PLD, you probably overheal since healers don't rely on you. But yes, with a proper timing, it can have an effect, even if only a little one. Too bad "expert" players will thell you to stop casting since it lowers your DPS...

literally your own GCDs

Which are almost all not related to tanking at all, apart from your basic enmity combo, and the occasional debuffs tied to some GCD...which most bosses are immune anyway.

If you think that the fact that tanks can set a cooldown rotation for themselves is such an offensive, unacceptable thing, then I shiver to imagine how you feel of the formulaic approach to encounter design that SE has used since the dawn of ARR.

More and more boring as they prove time and time over that they'll stick to it. And why shouldn't they, since so much people think it's a great thing to focus on DPS most of the time ?

[DaulBan]

has nothing to do with tanking

Has nothing to do with bad tanking I guess, but then again people think that tanks would be just fine if all they did was 0 damage and generate enmity because they're content with it. Oh well.

not related to tanking at all

I mean you could think that, but I mean, then again you don't raid as a WAR so what would you know about lining up your combos for swaps appropriately, making sure that your debuff (that works, in case you never heard) is applied, making sure that you can pick up an add out of stance to burn it faster because you have a buff up... Or I could be a bad tank. That doesn't make sure that they hit their debuffs and their aggro when they should. Because they think it doesn't matter.

I guess I'll rewrite that in a way which makes more sense to you because this is sort of embarrassing.

All the fights on the game work on timers and % values of Boss HP. A cooldown rotation will always exist for tanks, and it's not a unique situation to them. Healers use the exact same healing rotations every time, dps use the same cooldown hold or use decisions every time. It's not unique to tanks. So long as you can learn a fight and implement that knowledge your cooldowns are always going to have priority and effectiveness. Once you kill a boss for the first time you have a rough idea of how your CDs will work from then on out, it's called fight knowledge. It's what separates a bad tank from an alright one, knowing when to press which button.

Not knowing when to do what comes with learning, that's when tanks will shine. But of course it's going to be easy after that... It's called not forgetting what you've learned. It's not bad fight design, it's called 'learning'.

[Jpec07]

Has nothing to do with tanking

You didn't read the essay I wrote a few pages ago, did you?

As killing the boss is a goal of the group challenging the encounter, anything a tank can do to contribute to that is worthwhile, and part of their job. Yes, a tank's first tasks are holding aggro and surviving, but those are comparatively easy in this game (I remember being encouraged when I started playing that the challenge in tanking gameplay would come in managing enmity; 40 levels later, I now know the truth). You survive the tankbuster, and you mitigate enough damage passively so a single unbuffed Regen can keep you up. What do you do?

You do damage.

If this were any other game, if surviving and holding hate required more effort, then maybe you could say that damage output is not in the tank's job description. But this is FFXIV. Encounters are easy to survive, and tanks are given tools where they can increase their damage without really sacrificing too much mitigation or enmity control.

Which means, as a PLD, you probably overheal since healers don't rely on you. But yes, with a proper timing, it can have an effect, even if only a little one. Too bad "expert" players will thell you to stop casting since it lowers your DPS...

You seem quite bitter on this. I've actually had healers thank me for using Clemency and Stoneskin when the fan starts getting poopy, as there can be situations in the game that require a lot from healers (yes, mechanics are easy, but some people, man...). Advice on the forums almost always revolves around the current Savage raid, and how to operate in a PUG.

But everything you read on here should be taken with a grain of salt. People give their opinions and often clash about them - that's exactly what's happening in this thread. Yes it's usually a good idea to try to maximize your damage output, but there may be situations where a well-placed Clemency or Stoneskin can save a healer or a DPS from dying; how much group damage did you contribute, then, by keeping that person alive?

The key is communication. If there's a part of the fight where you know healers are struggling, ask if they want you to throw out a Clemency or a couple Stoneskins (which, by the way, are a great alternative to helping mitigate group damage without contributing to overhealing). If they don't want it? Focus on surviving and on your own damage - at least you asked.

Which are almost all not related to tanking at all, apart from your basic enmity combo, and the occasional debuffs tied to some GCD...which most bosses are immune anyway.

Except they are. See point 1 for more info.

More and more boring as they prove time and time over that they'll stick to it. And why shouldn't they, since so much people think it's a great thing to focus on DPS most of the time ?

If you think tanking in FFXIV is so boring, why tank?

Damage output has always been a part of tank gameplay, as the fallback when you don't have to focus on enmity or survival. FFXIV downplays those, and so gives tanks more opportunity to "live dangerously" and maximize their output.

But as I keep saying, at the end of the day, if you and your group meet success at an encounter and you all have fun, then your damage output and effective mitigation are completely fine. Guides and forummites will tell you how to maximize your damage output, but in reality that's just because survival and enmity are pretty straightforward in this game, and because doing more DPS is never a bad thing.

EDIT: Just realized that if you'd told me six months ago that I'd be on this side of this discussion, I'd have called you a liar.

[Reynhart]

if surviving and holding hate required more effort, then maybe you could say that damage output is not in the tank's job description.

That's exactly what I think this game lacks. It has taken every core aspect of tanking and made it absurdingly easy. No wonder people say that DPSing is where tank players can really improve...
What I don't understand is how people don't see the problem of making what is a tank only the floor skill.

If you think tanking in FFXIV is so boring, why tank?

It's because I find it boring that I stopped raiding...then reduced my tanking time, and then my playing time...

EDIT: Just realized that if you'd told me six months ago that I'd be on this side of this discussion, I'd have called you a liar.

Times change...but I fear dark times for the game if it keep judging and balancing tanks only around their DPS output...

[aleph_null]

In my opinion even if mitigating and holding aggro is very difficult that it requires you to stay tank stance 24/7, dps will always be a valid way to benchmark a tank. Regardless of how much damage you need to mitigate, there will be a point where you have mitigated enough for the healers to heal comfortably (might require higher gear), and from that point on you'll focus on improving your dps. The same holds for healers, even if at the start of progression they need to heal 24/7 without getting any chance of popping cleric stance, once they gear up and get used to the fight they'll inevitably have rooms for dpsing since the gears you get from the raid are obviously better than the gears you wore when you cleared it (unless they change the vertical progression system). As long as the fights are tuned at lower ilv than the drops they offer, there will be rooms for more focus on dpsing, since tanks get tankier and healers' healing output rise when they gear up.

Heck even staying fully in tank stance good tanks will still outdps the bad ones, so I don't really understand why you're so against people comparing tanks based on their dps output (or maybe to be more precise their group dps, since putting extra strain on healers until their dps loss outweighs your personal dps gain is detrimental to your group).

[FinalWolf]

Dark knight needs to be trimmed a little bit. Sometimes I find myself looking at my hot bar more than the actual fight.

[SpookyGhost]

Dark knight needs to be trimmed a little bit. Sometimes I find myself looking at my hot bar more than the actual fight.

A good way to solve this problem (same with DRG) is to create a seperate hotbar, upscale it, and put all your cooldowns on there. That way you only need to do a quick glance and you'll know what's available. Though I do agree that DRK is a bit cluttered, and found it strange that they focused so much on DPS abilities for DRK - it's kind of why DRK feels like PLD but with more random DPS CDs to keep track of.

[Reynhart]

In my opinion even if mitigating and holding aggro is very difficult that it requires you to stay tank stance 24/7, dps will always be a valid way to benchmark a tank. Regardless of how much damage you need to mitigate, there will be a point where you have mitigated enough for the healers to heal comfortably (might require higher gear), and from that point on you'll focus on improving your dps.

First, we're really far from that sitution for now
Second, you could be creative with enmity so that you always want more of it. The fact that tanks are basically the only role when you can have "too much" of something is, for me, a design flaw.

Heck even staying fully in tank stance good tanks will still outdps the bad ones, so I don't really understand why you're so against people comparing tanks based on their dps output (or maybe to be more precise their group dps, since putting extra strain on healers until their dps loss outweighs your personal dps gain is detrimental to your group).

Let's be honest, the debate of what tanks are supposed to do doesn't concern these "bad" tanks. I'll never advocate for neglecting your DPS when all you do is auto-attacking or just spamming RoH. The meta goes far beyond that, and this is what bugs me, alongside the fact that the game does not require much skill as a tank before tackling savage raid.