A PSA to all upset tank players

[Makeda]

You're not seeing the core of my argument, which is that it's not really about tank DPS in itself. It's about fun. Yes, a lot complain about stance dancing and DPS. Do you know why? Because optimizing DPS is a lot more fun than holding aggro and popping CDs. You can still maximize DPS and get like 2.9k DPS or so on WAR, but it feels very clunky. If all you see is that they're trying to DPS and they shouldn't be DPSing then you're missing the main complaint: it's not fun anymore.

If that is what you find to be fun you should not be a tank in the first place.

You first tell me this isn't about the DPS of a tank... then you complain about the DPS of a tank, invalidating your first point.

As a tank since 2005 you what I find fun?

Leading the flow of a battle, the pace of a run.
Staying alive under extreme consitions. Coming back from near defeat after some mitake nearly wipes us with something like massive adds.
Controlling tactical positions.
Saving someone who is under attack (and in Real life I first did this in 5th grade I think and it became a moment in my life that later motivated me to join the military).

Defending a group is where I get my thrill. I find massive damage to have no thrill at all. In games with DOS meters I don't even enable them. In games with threat meters I use them even when forced to DPS.

[aleph_null]

If that is what you find to be fun you should not be a tank in the first place.

Read my post in the previous page lol. Sure if they can make mitigating damage more challenging than now I'd probably stop complaining about stance dancing being clunky since I'll have my hands full with trying to survive. Really doubt that'll ever happen though, considering how people always complain about savage raids being too hard.

I enjoy pushing myself to perform better on my jobs, and if the best that I can do is staying in tank stance mitigating damage to survive, I'll try doing that. Once you have enough mitigation to survive, any extra mitigation is only valuable to let the healers dps more, though in that case you'll have to weigh between the dps we lose (via tank stance) against the dps they gain. Yoshida and the devs can say whatever they think but the players will figure out how to maximize their performance. Make it impossible to survive tank busters out of tank stance, we'll use tank stance. Remove all aggro control skills from non tank jobs and reduce tank aggro multipliers until it's impossible to hold aggro out of tank stance, we'll use tank stance. Add rng elements to the dmg coming to tanks and reduce healers' healing output until the extra cushion given by tank stance actually allows healers to dps more than the dps penalty we take, then we'll use tank stance. As of now none of those are happening though. Wars will probably optimize around never having to switch stance during fights at this rate.

[Odstarva]

When learning a new content? Sure. Once you're farming? You and your healers know precisely when the cleaves and tank busters happen, and if you coordinate with them they know precisely what mitigations you use for each of them. Taking 20k dmg when you have 40k is no different from taking 20k dmg when you have 60k hp, unless there's a chance for you to immediately die after taking that dmg (e.g. if you have 30k hp, you take 20k dmg and there's a possibility of auto attacks critting over 10k). Even if you drop grit you can learn about the timing, how many gcds you have until you need to turn it back on, how much mp you should generate/save during that time. That's how you optimize in a scripted game.

Sure. Or I can keep grit on which reduces damage taken, and allows me to restore HP when using souleater with dark arts. With no MP loss. Mitigation plus health recovery can build up to a considerable amount over time, time that a healer could be DPSing. I still don't understand how tank dps is in any way superior to that of a healer (did they change that?). Plus, healers don't need to stance dance to DPS any more, we do - how is it optimized for us to waste global cooldowns on a stance swap when the healer doesn't have to worry about it? I still believe overall a DPSing healer will do more for the party than a DPSing tank.

And as side note, you can still use cooldowns with tank stance on, why wouldn't you? You're implying a healer needs to be constantly refreshing your health or overhealing when that's not the case.

[Gabrielleblanc]

Considering PLD was the red headed step child of tanks for Hward, you can stop whining and allow them to have a moment.

[akaneakki]

Considering PLD was the red headed step child of tanks for Hward, you can stop whining and allow them to have a moment.

Honestly I'm glad how PLD*s are now, most are in fact. Nobody really complain how WAR is doing ''less'' or anything. It's just not as fun like in HW when it comes to how WAR mechanics was. I mean for me it's fine too but I hate the penality. I swear square loves to punish good players. The funny and worse part is after the 4.0 came out some people have been struggling with aggro and they are all pure tanks, explain?

[aleph_null]

snip

I suggest that you take a look at some speedkill videos of the previous raid tier. There's a balance between maximizing tank dps and healer dps. A tank staying in grit all the time to let healers dps more is not optimal. Neither is having the tank dps while neglecting mitigation and putting strains on the healers. When you maximize group dps you need to maximize both tanks and healers' dps. It can only be achieved by coordinating tank swaps, usage of invulnerable cds (holmgang, living dead), stacking multiple cds for every tank buster and cleave, and minimizing the usage of gcd heals by perfectly timing off gcd or pet heals (whispering dawn, essential dignity, indomitable, etc.) as well as mitigation utilities from non tank jobs (virus, disable, rend mind, mantra) as well as aggro utilities to help with aggro without much tank stance uptime (shadewalker, smokescreen). If you check the parses of the top groups like delete monk and rushers, their tanks as well as their healers were outputting ridiculous numbers, so they're tanking outside of tank stance while requiring way less heals than average tanks who stay in tank stance all the time, thanks to the good planning and coordination between everyone in the group (including the dps jobs pushing huge dps to skip phases).

And actually in raids generally tanks do more dps than healers, though even if we do less, optimizing group dps would still require both the tanks and healers doing as much dps as we realistically can. In fact during the previous expansion the extra healer dps afforded by the tank staying in tank stance never outweighed the dps difference between the tank in tank stance and in dps stance, which is why in speedkills (where people prioritize group dps instead of personal dps) tanks don't stay in tank stance too much, even if they end up needing more heals than if they were in tank stance longer.

As for your last question, yeah you can still use cds with tank stance on, and you should, though for the last raid tier tanks don't really use tank stance at all in speedkills since stacking cds and doing multiple tank swaps were enough. Doing many tank swaps is actually very helpful for both tanks and healers. Having the drk eat two busters with grit+wall and grit+rampart isn't as good as having the drk eat one buster with wall+rampart and war eat the second buster with venge+thrill, or even holmgang.

[Yahallo]

About abyssal drain+dark arts; was an absurd OP combo for big pulls that require no setup at all, current nerf was bound to happen.

sniping...

Losing their stacks each stance change should be a thing since day 1 or a regular GCD like PLD or DK, but no GCD and no resource loss is having it all.

Aside from perhaps A2S, what raid content was Dark Arts Abyssal Drain used on spam? Dungeons shouldn't be where classes are balanced. I may be biased as a Dark Knight, but there was no real problem with Dark Arts Abyssal Drain, and if there was, nerf the HP absorb on Dark Arts Abyssal Drain instead of cutting the MP regen on Blood Price to 1/4th. Right now, we can still do Dark Arts Abyssal Drain by throwing in some Syphon strikes to supplement our MP a bit more and having enough adds where Blood Price&s MP regen does something. I highly doubt Dark Arts Abyssal Drain is the reason why tanks are in this predicament.

Different jobs should be better in some departments than others. Warriors are more dependent on their stance dancing than the other jobs; it's a key component of their gameplay. Sure they were probably a bit too good in 3.x but they did not need to be hit this hard while paladins got so much of a boost. The other tank jobs should have been brought up in other departments while retaining their advantage with the smoothest stance dancing among the three tanks. Right now, we basically just swapped warrior and paladin around when it comes to the tank meta with double paladin being an actual thing that is happening.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

Dark knight. I mean why rampart over shadowskin. And please stop with your attitutude. Ive seen players who can keep aggro and do good damage. While pure tanks often play super bad. Your attitude proves it.

You...realize I don't tank right? Continue to look foolish though. Enjoy your damage nerfs. ^_^

[akaneakki]

You...realize I don't tank right? Continue to look foolish though. Enjoy your damage nerfs. ^_^

So you took time to try prove a point or even a small little complaint about something you don't play? Then you ask for nerfs in msq trial in another thread? Enjoy the other primals for the story mode then lol.^_^

[IzumiOgata]

Been following this thread for a while now, so I'll dump my opinions here:

On enmity generation: More than a few times I've had to hold back my DPS while playing BRD cause the tank was too worried dishing out DPS to have a cushion for burst damage, also, healer damage is better than tank damage for the simple fact that healers use their primary stat for damage, we don't. In the end, tanking properly and dishing out some damage when possible will be the best balance to have bigger party DPS.

On "true" tanking: The challenge while tanking shouldn't be optimizing your DPS, but leading your party through battles, with positioning and coordenation, the battles on HW required little to no movement from the tank. As a tank you first think of your party, then you think of yourself, that way everyone can do their job to the best of their abilities without constraints.

On WARs: They were the only tank class that had no downside to stance dancing, the nerf was needed, deal with it