Tank Stances.

[Zojha]

I think having frequent mini tank busters and possibly a bit of rng element involved might incentivize the use of tank stance.

Doubtful, because tank stance only really becomes relevant in terms of mitigation when the damage is so high it would otherwise one-shot you. When that isn't the case, healers can pick up the slack easily. Heck, A12S has been solo healed with a monk tanking one of the general adds - and that was BEFORE echo.

It's a different case if healers could go OOM from healing a tank that doesn't mitigate properly or couldn't keep up with the damage. But they can overpower most damage easily and for long periods, which makes more mitigation somewhat pointless.

[Yorumi]

I can't quite explain how refreshing that was to read.

My War being a 5th DPS mentality mainly stems from back my 2.0 or 2.x days.

I didn't get a chance to respond last night. I was reading your post a bit wrong. It seemed more like you were complaining about having to dps and not refusing to do that more than just wanting an overall change to the playstyle. I do agree it does get a bit old mindlessly spamming damage with no threat to me, especially considering how many mechanics ignore tanks anyway. It's why I actually like pld's sheltron and clemency as those are more active.

I think having frequent mini tank busters and possibly a bit of rng element involved might incentivize the use of tank stance.

That wouldn't work. The main problem is that heals are so ridiculously powerful you don't need mitigation. As it stands regens and embrace out pace most of the damage being done in the game. Or if not account for a significant portion of it. If a healer were going full bore healing they could probably output HPS(heal per second) at around triple or quadruple that of the incoming dps from a boss. A whm can use one or two gcds and do around equal hps to the incoming dps for 30 seconds. A sch has a no resource unlimited fairy doing around the same thing permanently. A single cure II can do nearly half of a tank's total hp. Basically to get tanks to use tank stance they would need to do a fairly massive heal nerf.

[Aniond]

@Awful

Im gona guess u only run content with your friends cause most df healers can barely heal a tank in tank stance, Ive seen no grit drks, deliverance warriors melt tryin to pull stuff like that with random healers.

Exactly. Tried doing a big pull in df without grit and died. Never again. When I run with my guild that's a different story

[aleph_null]

Doubtful, because tank stance only really becomes relevant in terms of mitigation when the damage is so high it would otherwise one-shot you. When that isn't the case, healers can pick up the slack easily. Heck, A12S has been solo healed with a monk tanking one of the general adds - and that was BEFORE echo.

It's a different case if healers could go OOM from healing a tank that doesn't mitigate properly or couldn't keep up with the damage. But they can overpower most damage easily and for long periods, which makes more mitigation somewhat pointless.

That wouldn't work. The main problem is that heals are so ridiculously powerful you don't need mitigation. As it stands regens and embrace out pace most of the damage being done in the game. Or if not account for a significant portion of it. If a healer were going full bore healing they could probably output HPS(heal per second) at around triple or quadruple that of the incoming dps from a boss. A whm can use one or two gcds and do around equal hps to the incoming dps for 30 seconds. A sch has a no resource unlimited fairy doing around the same thing permanently. A single cure II can do nearly half of a tank's total hp. Basically to get tanks to use tank stance they would need to do a fairly massive heal nerf.

I was thinking about something like a8s phase 2, where the tank taking blaster/swindler/vortexer can't really stay out of tank stance through the whole phase without straining the healers too much. The mini busters (brute force) from blaster and vortexer, combined with the magic auto atk from swindler and occasional double buster or beta orbs from brawler make the phase chaotic enough. I think even in the a8s speedkill by angered the war had quite high defiance uptime (iirc only going deliverance when using berserk) during phase 2. From my experience nothing in creator savage came close to a8s when it comes to tanking/healing difficulty. I remember some people talking about t5 (twintania) having frequent busters throughout the fight, making it hard for the tank to stay out of tank stance, but back then tanks didn't have as many tools as now so it may not be relevant to this discussion.

[Lyth]

It wouldn't be difficult to artificially force more defensive stance usage. But inflating the incoming damage by a flat percentage or throwing in completely random damage spikes (both of which just increase average damage) doesn't really add anything to the gameplay. You also have to remember that, even as things are now, not everyone who wants to stay out of defensive stance is able stay out of defensive stance. Content is targeted at players of many different skill levels. You will always find it difficult to stay in that sweet spot where the mitigation check is just right for your specific gear and skill level.

If you want more interesting mitigation challenges, you either need more complex damage patterns, or telegraphed damage spikes that still allow the player room to prepare. The damage spikes from Brute Force and Magicked Mark are not any more random than Living Liquid's cleaves. If there's a pattern that can be memorised, then you can design a mitigation rotation around it. The complexity doesn't prevent stance dancing. It just means that fewer players will be able to pull it off. It also may mean that fewer tanks will be able to handle the pattern even in defensive stance.

Increasing the frequency of tank busters doesn't really make the mitigation rotation more complex. It just forces more swaps. Any tankbuster interval greater than 35 seconds gives you enough time to reset Rampart between the first and third tankbuster. Anything less than 20 seconds allows you to mitigate two consecutive tankbusters with Rampart (Brawler's Single Beam can occur twice in a 14 second interval, and that's the only example that I can think of this.) Fights like Twintania and Odin were anomalies in ARR in that they give you a 30 second interval between tankbusters. But it's worth noting that the Infirmary debuff on Death Sentence was probably intended to force a swap, and we forcibly solo tanked these fights despite this.

The short-recast cooldowns (Sheltron, Inner Beast, Dark Mind) kind of throw a wrench in all this as well, because they usually give you a surplus of cooldowns. But they'd be more interesting if you were forced to use them on short notice to react to telegraphed but unscripted damage spikes. At the moment, Dark Mind is the closest thing that we have to resource-based mitigation this expansion, in that you need to decide whether the Dark Arts cost will help you stay out of stance or not. Inner Beast could achieve the same effect, so long as it doesn't get completely overshadowed by Fell Cleave. I think this could be done if they made it stance independent, lowered the stack cost, and gave it a recast. This could force you to stay above certain resource thresholds in order to fend off damage spikes.

The problem isn't in players' stance usage. It's in finding a difficulty level for tanking content that is equally engaging across different skill levels.

[aleph_null]

It wouldn't be difficult to artificially force more defensive stance usage. But inflating the incoming damage by a flat percentage or throwing in completely random damage spikes (both of which just increase average damage) doesn't really add anything to the gameplay. You also have to remember that, even as things are now, not everyone who wants to stay out of defensive stance is able stay out of defensive stance. Content is targeted at players of many different skill levels. You will always find it difficult to stay in that sweet spot where the mitigation check is just right for your specific gear and skill level.

Yeah but I think still having to go into tank stance a little bit would be a better balance, instead of 0% tank stance uptime like in most of creator's fights. Can't really call it stance dancing if you never turned tank stance on. But obviously this would raise another concern as you addressed below:

The problem isn't in players' stance usage. It's in finding a difficulty level for tanking content that is equally engaging across different skill levels.

The performance gap between the good groups and average groups is too big that it might be hard to find that difficulty level which satisfies everyone. Gordias and Midas were clearly too hard for most of average groups, Creator was clearly too easy for most above average groups.

[Yorumi]

Yeah but I think still having to go into tank stance a little bit would be a better balance, instead of 0% tank stance uptime like in most of creator's fights. Can't really call it stance dancing if you never turned tank stance on.

To that end it might be interesting if they added reduced enmity generation to deliverance and sword oath, and maybe blood weapon or something for drk(you get the meaning). It would mean when you go offensive you very quickly start losing the enmity race to real dps classes. It would widen the skill gap between good and bad tanks but no more so than already exists among healers(ie some healers can do significant damage while others don't even seem to have cleric stance on their bar). It would force more thought about the stance you're using.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

To that end it might be interesting if they added reduced enmity generation to deliverance and sword oath, and maybe blood weapon or something for drk(you get the meaning). It would mean when you go offensive you very quickly start losing the enmity race to real dps classes. It would widen the skill gap between good and bad tanks but no more so than already exists among healers(ie some healers can do significant damage while others don't even seem to have cleric stance on their bar). It would force more thought about the stance you're using.

This only nerfs Warrior. Since neither Dark Knight nor Paladin use their aggro combos for damage, they wouldn't suffer nearly to the same extent. On the other hand, it prompts more tank swaps because you'd just have Warrior MT, pop Unchained and the other tanks take it back shortly thereafter. Basically, this really sucks for Warrior's DPS but wouldn't hurt the other two much at all.

[bswpayton]

Exactly. Tried doing a big pull in df without grit and died. Never again. When I run with my guild that's a different story

haha I tired it , what I find works better is doing the pull in grit then turning it off , but you are screwed if its like some dungeons where the adds spawn after you kill some first so it largely depends on the dungeon from what ive see. shom al hard stuff like that is perfect, but other dungeons where you kill five adds then four more spawn you are gona be in a bad spot haha. I can see where it works but it largely depends on where your at

[bswpayton]

This only nerfs Warrior. Since neither Dark Knight nor Paladin use their aggro combos for damage, they wouldn't suffer nearly to the same extent. On the other hand, it prompts more tank swaps because you'd just have Warrior MT, pop Unchained and the other tanks take it back shortly thereafter. Basically, this really sucks for Warrior's DPS but wouldn't hurt the other two much at all.

alot of warriors actually tend to not use butchers , well the ones that follow xenos guides he doesnt recommend it because it can make the mt have to go back into tank stance. But I dont like yorumi idea either tho haha