Lets stop fighting SE and work with them. What are your ideas?

[TaranTatsuuchi]

The problem I see here...

SE seem to be trying to enforce their vision of tanking on the playerbase.
This vision appears contrary to the Meta.


The Meta is organically developed based on the mechanics and design.
If the Meta is to be changed, the mechanics and design need to be adjusted to bring about the change that is desired.

Trying to force a change is just going to see pushback from the playerbase.

[Falar]

The problem I see here...

SE seem to be trying to enforce their vision of tanking on the playerbase.
This vision appears contrary to the Meta.


The Meta is organically developed based on the mechanics and design.
If the Meta is to be changed, the mechanics and design need to be adjusted to bring about the change that is desired.

Trying to force a change is just going to see pushback from the playerbase.

I disagree. Tanking in this game has been a bit unique so far, which is what drew me to it.

Now we're in 4.0 and they are changing to suit the vocal minority, and the lower end of the playerbase at that. The people that said tanking was so hard, they wanted to not have to do damage at the same time. I guess this new tanking will bore the rest of us to moving on.

[VenKitsune]

snip

I agree. as i have mentioned before in this post MOST of our kit is designed around doing extra damage, but then they change how the stats work. it's like they're trying to force a playstyle change without going about it 100%, its like putting an egg in a bowl of water and expecting it to boil on its own.
SE either needs to do one of the following:
1. Embrace the DPS tank meta (as they were designed, looking at you fell cleave)
2. A COMPLETE redesign of all the tanks in the game, how enmity works, and every fight post-lvl 50.

Obviously the 2nd option is out of the question however due to how much time and money that would cost. I mean really after 50 like 80% of skills you get are based around doing damage on all the tanks, PLD gets Goring blade, royal authority, holy spirit. WAR gets Deliverance and all its included skills and a few other attacks. DRK gets ONE shield and several ways of increasing DPS in and out of tank stance. Notice how there isn't a single enmity based ability there, and very very few defensive cooldowns; post-50 tanks have been DESIGNED to do damage, its a simple fact and SE reverting the damage calculations to STR while locking us out of the accessories is as i mentioned only going half way in regards to a forced meta.

[YitharV2]

I agree. as i have mentioned before in this post MOST of our kit is designed around doing extra damage, but then they change how the stats work. it's like they're trying to force a playstyle change without going about it 100%, its like putting an egg in a bowl of water and expecting it to boil on its own.

I think the problem is that raids and trials have at least 2 tanks. Which I mainly see as a result of SE's design, aka uninteresting tank swap mechanics and passive mitigation (which means optimally both tanks should utilize their CDs). So generally one tank is basically another DPS for the majority of the fight.

[Reynhart]

post-50 tanks have been DESIGNED to do damage

Post-50 tanks have been designed to do what they lack, not to do damage.
WAR was given a DPS stance because, even without stance dancing, there are long parts where your tank stance is not needed, like when you're the OT. WAR and PLD also lacked native healing capacities, so they were given one. PLD only had an enmity combo, which made off tanking and tank swapping awkward, so they were given new combos, etc...

You cannot claim that having almost no new defensive CD mean they were designed to do damage. After all, NIN didn't receive any new jutsu in HW, are they meant to not use them ? SMN didn't receive any new egi, are they designed to ignore them ?

[Chevronone]

If only SE actually communicated with their players...

[ADVSS]

If only SE actually communicated with their players...

They are trying too, we just have too many questions lol

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4263595

This answer though, it can be pretty conflicting. On one hand they boost the enmity generated from the enmity combo openers, to help "newer tanks with aggro"(more dps stance uptime.)
On the other hand Vitality is definitely not going to affect tank performance, or scale their AP/performance with it.
They dont want tanks to have inflated HP
They dont want healers to be burdened with tanks having lower HP (from using Str accessories.)
They dont want tanks to not have scaling enmity or difficulty holding aggro
They dont want tank damage to increase or scale with other jobs damage stats(no Str on right hand side)

[Duelle]

1. Embrace the DPS tank meta (as they were designed, looking at you fell cleave)

The additions we saw with Heavensward were not there to push for a DPS meta. They were made to round out rotations & combo chains, add more buttons to push over the course of a fight, or complete systems that were incomplete during ARR.

HW gave PLD two combo finishers plus raid utility. DRK got a gap-closer, a damage zone, self heals and the weirdness that is Carve & Spit. WAR got a DPS stance, which was sorely needed all through ARR whenever the WAR was not main tanking, along with skills to work with that stance; I could argue that the devs "wasted" 4 of the 5 HW ability slots introducing something that should have been part of WAR since it was unlocked at lv30 (you may have seen me saying this before, but Deliverance should be a lv30 skill, not lv52).

Nothing in the design says "DPS meta". It did increase damage options for some of the jobs (PLD and DRK) while completing what were incomplete systems for others (WAR), but the lunacy we saw with triple fel cleaves and other nonsense like tanking in Sword Oath/Deliverance/non-Grit was clearly unintended. Now, you could ask why they didn't add more cooldowns, but that creates problems as well (surplus of defensive cooldowns would not only render tank stances even more worthless than they were to the DPS-only crowd, but make single-tank strats even easier to carry out). You could say that they could have added the abilities to round out the rotations in addition to more defensive mechanics, but adding more than 5 abilities means they had to break their rule of every class having the same number of skills. On top of going against their intent to strictly build on what was already there (the only exception to this was BRD, and we all know how that turned out).

2. A COMPLETE redesign of all the tanks in the game, how enmity works, and every fight post-lvl 50.

Funnily enough, enmity would not need as much work as you think. The main enmity-related issue is that stances enter the game relatively late instead of being one of the key abilities you gain before you're even allowed to queue for your first dungeon. And because stances enter the game as late as they do, the devs opted to give tanks means to at least passably hold aggro between lv15-30.

It doesn't look like a big deal on paper, but this is one of the reasons some players have been able to circumvent one of the uses for tank stances: aggro generation. Your aggro generation does not become non-existent when you drop Shield Oath/Defiance/Grit. Instead, it is diminished to levels that were meant to be used in pre-30 content. Problem is, aggro scales with damage, and damage increases with level/stats/weapons.

Mitigation is circumvented between cooldowns, how powerful healers are and how most mobs don't constantly hit hard, which exacerbates the issue. Those are the things that would need more work; much more work than enmity would.

PLD gets Goring blade, royal authority, holy spirit.

Goring Blade and RA are basically answers to the complaints that all PLD could do at 50 was Rage of Halone. Holy Spirit is pretty much designed in a way that you benefit from being in Shield Oath due to how it generates 20 Oath Gauge.

WAR gets Deliverance and all its included skills and a few other attacks.

52-60 was them giving WAR something it should have had for off-tanking through all of ARR. The only real additions the job got were from 62-70, one of which is another counterpart skill (Inner Release), a gap-closer, a GCD filler that consumes gauge and a status removal ability.

DRK gets ONE shield and several ways of increasing DPS in and out of tank stance.

A shield that can be used every 15 seconds, skills that consume blood gauge to not render it useless, and Delirium.

Notice how there isn't a single enmity based ability there, and very very few defensive cooldowns;

The entirety of enmity generation is tied to the single enmity combo every tank has, so you can't really add skills with enmity without them being complete replacements to enmity combos and Flash/Unleash/Overpower. You also can't give too much in the way of defensive cooldowns. Some would even say we have too many cooldowns as it is.

post-50 tanks have been DESIGNED to do damage,

More like they were given things to do beyond spamming Halone/Power Slash/Butcher's Block. That's VERY different from being designed to do damage. As a PLD, it simply means I can do things beyond Halone by keeping Goring Blade's debuff active and sneaking in as many RA's as I can while keeping an eye on aggro. And I don't need to drop Shield Oath for that.

[Reynhart]

On one hand they boost the enmity generated from the enmity combo openers, to help "newer tanks with aggro"(more dps stance uptime.)

They didn't do that for more DPS stance uptime. Every skill that has its enmity boosted is a low level skill. They want to help enmity management for tanks that don't have their tank stance yet.

[Waliel]

They didn't do that for more DPS stance uptime. Every skill that has its enmity boosted is a low level skill. They want to help enmity management for tanks that don't have their tank stance yet.

Make tank stances level 15, lock all skill enmity modifiers behind tank stance, make DPS stances level 30, and otherwise shuffle the skills around if needed. Something like that maybe?