Boycotting Warrior 4.0 (Let's do it!)

[Reynhart]

We have different definitions so lets leave it at that.

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

I'm asking that a DPS class be designed in a way that doesn't take away the enjoyment from others because their full potential is stepping on someone elses toes.

Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

[FallenWings]

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

*Eye roll*

I'm an immersion player. I enjoy fighting enemies head on like a Fighter/Warrior. I enjoy defending AND attacking rather than pure assassination techniques. So I play XIV's tank. I play WARRIOR and not ShieldBot5000.

There is nothing inherently fun about a stance that boosts 2 of your mandatory to a certain point roles slightly but greatly diminishes your generally always good third one. Worse off yet on WAR with half it's skill set locked behind each stance. (Believe it or not, I'd like to use IB and Defiance more if they didn't suck.)

Defiance, Grit, and ShO frankly suck and never feel good to use. I don't even understand why they punish you for using them and lock you out of your skills, most notably WAR's job toolkit and DRK's Blood Weapon and now Blood Price. It's all passive gains too so it's even less interactive to use.

[Reynhart]

Forcing me to NOT optimize just so you can is just lame.

If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

[Phoenicia]

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

We'll just agree to disagree about what optimizing a job means then.

As for for tank stances, there are many ways to keep balance while still allowing you to solo. Locking mitigation behind GCDs that push the DPS GCDs away is one of them. Take TERA for example, tanks do insane batsh*t damage, but only if they're not tanking. Bosses will always keep a lancer behind his shield and Warrior couldn't finish its combos while bosses wailed at them, but when in solo, lancer and warrior kill things almost as fast as anyone else. Tanking in that game was the most fun I had as a tank in any MMO. Too bad the MMO itself flops when it comes to everything other than combat. (While this game gets so much right but not the combat imo lol).

[FallenWings]

If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

"Hey why is your aggro so gosh darn high?"
"Because I have no utility so yeah, you're gonna have to press that nasty grit button and do more power slashes just for me. :/"

Yeah... I'd much rather play with a MNK/DRG/NIN/BLM/SMN/BRD/MCH... "We can boost yours and our own damage!" Nice!

The slight issue with spectrum scaling is that, the massive raid utility class becomes stronger and stronger the larger the party and the major personal DPS gets weaker and weaker the larger the party becomes. So it's a case of SAM op in dungeons but terrible in raids but Dancer(Placeholder) is god-like and virtually mandatory in raids.

Tank jobs doing absolute crap damage in other games is irrelevant. And I'd wager that is something that adds to why Tanking is unpopular. You don't need a tank stance to exist since the numbers can be tuned on the jobs entire toolkit instead.

If they were going to simplify tanks, they should have just simply removed Grit/Defiance/Shield Oath. The only reason they are even considered because of arbitrary requirements from the design justifying their existence. Much like how I forsee Shake it Off will be utilized. A rather lackluster skill that needs content design to make it useful.

Or even better, reward me for mitigating more or using tank stance right instead of breaking my legs, nerfing my damage, and making me feel bad all around with that terrible, terrible damage penalty/skill lock. Make excess mitigation useful. Have bonus aggro do something. Why do I need to create more aggro if it does absolutely gosh darn nothing?

I want to use Defiance, Grit, Shield Oath and have it feel rewarding.

@P

I'd get banned.

[Phoenicia]

I want to use Defiance, Grit, Shield Oath and have it feel rewarding.

Oh definitely, if tanking stances did ACTUAL gameplay changing effects and abilities behind them instead of existing for the sake of existing and locking a couple abilities behind them (which let's face, is almost exclusive to WARs).

@P

I'd get banned.

Uh-oh. S-some things better remain unknown then.

[Reynhart]

"Hey why is your aggro so gosh darn high?"

Because I'm the most powerful personal DPS and thus, I'm doing my job

Yeah... I'd much rather play with a MNK/DRG/NIN/BLM/SMN/BRD/MCH... "We can boost yours and our own damage!" Nice!

Even if what MNK offers as a damage boost for the whole party is weaker than what the SAM does on its own ? Because that's clearly the idea behind SAM.

The slight issue with spectrum scaling is that, the massive raid utility class becomes stronger and stronger the larger the party and the major personal DPS gets weaker and weaker the larger the party becomes. So it's a case of SAM op in dungeons but terrible in raids but Dancer(Placeholder) is god-like and virtually mandatory in raids.

Except that a job with raid utility will also increase the damage of the selfish DPS. If your Dancer increase eveybody's damage by 30%, then it's better to pair it with a SAM.

You don't need a tank stance to exist since the numbers can be tuned on the jobs entire toolkit instead.

Yes, you do. Tanks need to do significantly less damage than DPS in group composition, or else, DPS are useless. But if a tank does too little damage, then killing stuff in solo content is boring as hell. So, what do you do ? Give them decent DPS in solo but force them to reduce it in group content.

Why do I need to create more aggro if it does absolutely gosh darn nothing?

In that case, it does something. It allows the SAM to do its optimal DPS without being killed instantly as retaliation.

Being optimal on an individual level is different from being optimal in a group.

As a tank, doing the optimal DPS is very different from being optimal. I think more and more people forget about that.

Let me be perfectly clear, sitting on your tank stance 24/7 building so much aggro that you could AFK without losing the boss is useless, and shouldn't be enforced. But, having a higher aggro requirement to let the DPS do their optimal job is more important and more centric to a tank job than doing your personal best DPS.

[aleph_null]

As a tank, doing the optimal DPS is very different from being optimal. I think more and more people forget about that.

Semantics. "If your war is not pulling, your pld/drk isn't doing their optimal dps opener. If your war doesn't start with tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance, they aren't doing their optimal dps opener."

Let me be perfectly clear, sitting on your tank stance 24/7 building so much aggro that you could AFK without losing the boss is useless, and shouldn't be enforced. But, having a higher aggro requirement to let the DPS do their optimal job is more important and more centric to a tank job than doing your personal best DPS.

Yes it's more important and contributes more to the group, as I've said. But the way I see it, if (and this is a big if, since we're assuming quite a lot of stuffs) sam does enough dps above the rest of the dps jobs to make tanks have more issues with aggro, that's a weakness of the job, or if you want to twist words, you can consider "not making tanks have aggro issues" as a pro for every other dps job. In this case you'll simply weigh the benefits brought by sam (high personal dps) vs the cost (no raid buffs, prevents tanks from doing their optimal dps rotation). Yes tanks' most important jobs are aggro and mitigation management, but you can't deny that under our assumptions (again, big assumptions) sam's personal dps comes at the cost of reducing tank dps. Whether that'll be a good tradeoff or not remains to be seen. A lot of people forget that aggro is one of the issues with mnk as well right now. Every other dps job has ways to mitigate their aggro. Excluding extremely short fights like faust z and refurbisher, even a drg needs to use elusive jump to not rip aggro from the tank. Ranged dps and casters need to use quelling everytime they do their big burst rotations.

In 4.x, every role has some form of enmity management under the shared-role actions. That's because if you're trying to play optimally as a team, then it's everyone's responsibility.

I might have missed it, I don't think ranged dps will have the renamed quelling strikes or any other aggro control.

[aleph_null]

If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

Being optimal on an individual level is different from being optimal in a group. As of now, there's one optimal way of pulling. If your war is not pulling, it's not optimal. If your war doesn't start with tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance, it's not optimal.

However if you don't have the optimal group composition you can't do that. If I'm in a group without nin then I'll accept the loss and use a suboptimal unchained opener. If a group doesn't have a war then the pld/drk has to accept the loss and pull in grit/shield oath. It's a tradeoff between members of the group. Just because it's suboptimal to pull with unchained doesn't mean we won't do it. It's just that our optimal play requires a nin (for now at least), just like how other jobs rely on each other to be optimal (brd/mch rely on drg, blm/smn rely on brd, etc). Even if sam has so much personal dps that it's optimal for the group to have the tank in tank stance longer than if they brought nin instead, it doesn't change the fact that bringing sam prevents the tanks from using their optimal rotations. It's just that the sam's optimal rotation is a dps gain over the tanks'.

I see every job's optimality come at a certain cost, like mnk being prioritized when it comes to boss uptime, hence the drg/nin does mechanics and LB, blm being prioritized to stay at the same spot, hence the others cover the blm for mechanics. The current optimal comp is very good because it allows everyone in the group to be optimal on an individual level as well, including the raid buffs buffing each other.

[Phoenicia]

Snips of lots of posts here.

I like this person...

Btw you never told me what happens if that hyur touches me. I'm curious.

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

That's the exact problem. Forcing me to NOT optimize just so you can is just lame. Why should YOUR fun in doing twice my DPS come at the cost of mine being lowered to even half of that? lol

And in any case. Tank stances' penalties are stupid. I'd rather both stances have penalties of one form or another. Or just have tank stances go away and have some skills deal damage while others generate enmity and be enough on their own. I mean the tank stances don't change much in game play anyways.