Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)

[loreleidiangelo]

It's the added responsibility of maintaining respectable DPS and (probably the bigger one) threat/enmity management.

Tanking lost it's soul in WoW the moment threat management stopped being a factor in tanking (in my opinion, which many will disagree with I'm sure). To me, threat management was the entire bread and butter of tanking gameplay. You could easily separate the wheat from the chaff based on which tanks could hold threat on a boss through whatever type of open burst your raid could put out, or the tank that could manage to keep aggro on a group pull, while picking up stragglers or patrols without losing party members in the process.

The way it is now, CC is unnecessary so it's simply a matter of AOE tanking everything, and since all tanks possess some form of mass AOE and threat is a literal non-factor anymore, it takes the entire element of managing threat out of the equation. In WoW, the only way to gauge a good tank from a bad one is basically how quickly they can move through a dungeon I.E. do they know the pulls and pack skips. That, to me, is vapid.

BTW FFXIV in this comparison is for tanking in DPS stance. Tanking in tank stance makes enmity pretty simple, while still not nearly as brain dead as it is for WoW, it's rather ignorable to a degree.

Tank damage is probably the secondary factor. Just the sheer presence of that responsibility, makes the role more demanding in terms of what your peers expect of you, thus, properly executing your role's responsibilities comes with a higher accomplishment factor (in FFXIV).

This is how I, personally, would evaluate the tanking situation between the two games.

At a cursory level (and I freely admit that I might not be getting enough context here), it seems like WoW tanking is actually pretty similar to XIV tanking, except that in XIV you arbitrarily have the ability to "turn off" your tanking for a moderate increase in DPS. Does that mean that if WoW introduced something similar (aka old gladiator stance for Warrior?) that you'd find tanking in that game enjoyable again?

For what it's worth, when tank enmity underwent a rough patch a few weeks ago in regards to how Stormblood changed damage modifiers, there was a pretty big stink on the forums about threat issues, which seems to tell me that the players in this game don't really want these hugely epic battles to maintain top enmity on mobs. I get that the tank community isn't one collective Borg voice, but what are your thoughts on that specifically?

From my noobish perspective, to me good tanking has always been about excellent positioning and cooldown usage more than threat bars, so to see enmity wars held up as a kind of challenge mode for tank mains is a little strange to me. I guess an apt comparison would be healer mana, and its management - it's part and parcel of being "good" at the role, but hardly what defines it (IMO, of course).

Sorry for all the lengthy back-and-forth. I just like both games, and it's rare to see anyone willing to discuss them objectively on any subject.

[zipzo]

At a cursory level (and I freely admit that I might not be getting enough context here), it seems like WoW tanking is actually pretty similar to XIV tanking, except that in XIV you arbitrarily have the ability to "turn off" your tanking for a moderate increase in DPS. Does that mean that if WoW introduced something similar (aka old gladiator stance for Warrior?) that you'd find tanking in that game enjoyable again?

No, because it would still be lacking any sort of enmity/threat management element that it used to have.

For the record, it's important to get the right perspective on what I'm saying. I'm not saying that I like doing lots of DPS as a tank. I am saying that I enjoy the pressure of needing to meet a DPS threshold as a tank. There's some nuance there but these are two different things. One is simply the enjoyment of big numbers in a role not necessarily intended (traditionally) to put them out, the other is the enjoyment of pushing the class to it's limit DPS-wise even though that isn't prime directive #1.

For what it's worth, when tank enmity underwent a rough patch a few weeks ago in regards to how Stormblood changed damage modifiers, there was a pretty big stink on the forums about threat issues, which seems to tell me that the players in this game don't really want these hugely epic battles to maintain top enmity on mobs. I get that the tank community isn't one collective Borg voice, but what are your thoughts on that specifically?

I would not have been one of those people contributing to said stink. The enmity "mini-game" (if you will) is something I've always loved about tanking. My only theory is that this is a concept that more veteran older MMO players like, but newer more modern MMO tank players would prefer it to be a non-factor so they can focus on killing the mob and collecting mobs. That's a complete theory with nothing to back it up but anecdotal experience in discussing MMO mechanics with other players/guildees/groupies or what have you in all games or forums. Threat management was incredibly important in WoW from vanilla until late Cataclysm or so when it became a non-factor, so several expansions. I don't know what specifically the design team's perspective is on threat management mechanics in the MMORPG space, but it clearly wasn't a priority to maintain it within the game. This killed tanking for me in WoW on all fronts.

From my noobish perspective, to me good tanking has always been about excellent positioning and cooldown usage more than threat bars, so to see enmity wars held up as a kind of challenge mode for tank mains is a little strange to me. I guess an apt comparison would be healer mana, and its management - it's part and parcel of being "good" at the role, but hardly what defines it (IMO, of course).

#whynotboth?

I do not reject the assertion that positioning and CD usage is an important element of tanking...but tanking is flat out boring when those are the only elements of tanking. Those things + threat/enmity are what makes tanking fun for me, because it deepens the complexity of your role, which ultimately gives a higher feeling of accomplishment when you do it well.

The healer mana comparison is a good one. Threat/enmity can vary in its importance depending on how whatever game's developers want to balance it, same for healer mana, but for the most part, yeah.

The way I see it, enmity/threat is a bit more of a role-defining job than you seem to think of it though. Think about it...so you're a tank? What's your job? Get the mob to attack you.

Why should the mob attack you? What makes you special? This is where enmity/threat comes in. You are executing a chain of attacks specially designed to piss said mob off more than any other player in the raid, even players doing more damage than you. Reason? You have the shield, you need the mob to attack you so that other less durable fighters aren't taking the fury. So how do you get that mob to attack you, of all people?.

If the paragraph above doesn't make threat/enmity out to be a role-defining element of tanking, I don't know what would. Snap aggro abilities in MMORPG's are often even referred to as a "taunt". So, you're just yelling something offensive at the mob, or something lol.

To me, proper CD usage and positioning are the 2ndary elements of tanking. These two concepts are easy to learn and very simple to execute in the short term. Maintaining good threat/enmity on bosses in high burst situations with little waiting on the DPS part, or maintaining the attention of many mobs in huge pack situations, these IMO are more role-defining and also more fun than the concept of using CDs at the right time and positioning.

Sorry for all the lengthy back-and-forth. I just like both games, and it's rare to see anyone willing to discuss them objectively on any subject.

Np. At the end of the day I'm not 100% neutral myself as I've recently stepped away from WoW for a veritable list of reasons, one of them being that I think tanking is just in the gutter as a role there. I can do my best to compare them objectively though.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

While I see where you're coming from, to me the enmity itself can never be a meaningful function or role unless paired with mitigation and positioning, just as personal mitigation (used on behalf of the raid) and positioning are impossible without having the mob's attention. You've met the investment cost, but then done absolutely nothing with it—all of the waste of taking a tank, and none of the bonus.

The tank's indirect contribution comes from increasing raid dps dealt while decreasing raid dps taken. They adjust input and intake. They are essentially a multiplier, much like Trick Attack or Palisade, but with far more numerous and more sustainable levels of contribution, and even more dependent upon the party than Trick Attack is. If they cannot manage that, being instead just a different player being hit, at most they amount to a faint increase to healer convenience (they can just keep spamming one concentrated target to deal with ST damage, rather than centering on the enemy and using target-of-target, or using their party lists). There's no way that slight convenience alone, with no multipliers, could make up for the reduced damage or sustainability from not taking a non-tank.

[zipzo]

...

I don't reject the idea that enmity/threat, defensive cooldowns, and positioning work in sort of a triad, complimenting one another. I think when you take away any one of those 3 things you make the entirety of the role less interesting. I wouldn't want to give up any of the 3.

Just in my case, taking away the necessity of enmity/threat management would be (is) the most egregious cut, which WoW did.

There can be different things we like about a role, that's ok, but that doesn't mean I don't value the other remaining elements of the role, or think we could do without them.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't reject the idea that enmity/threat, defensive cooldowns, and positioning work in sort of a triad, complimenting one another. I think when you take away any one of those 3 things you make the entirety of the role less interesting. I wouldn't want to give up any of the 3.

Just in my case, taking away the necessity of enmity/threat management would be (is) the most egregious cut, which WoW did.

There can be different things we like about a role, that's ok, but that doesn't mean I don't value the other remaining elements of the role, or think we could do without them.

And for me it's definitely the least painful amputation of what traditionally makes up a tank, mostly because it has only ever been one of three rotational or stance-based concerns, as a triad of damage, protection, and threat. Now, that protection can still come in a myriad form. The damage also can come in self-investment or target-investment, and as damage multipliers, DoTs / stat buffs, or, in the latter case, direct damage. But enmity can only ever be enmity. The more you focus action on enmity, especially purely upon enmity, relative to the number of other paths of action, the more you homogenize internal gameplay. Now, shades or pairings of enmity growth, as often the design concept behind WoW tanks (even the solo-pathetic Sunder Armor), can avoid that problem to an extent, but even if that were perfectly baked into the surrounding toolkit to allow for the most variance possible, you are still deferring or balancing concerns of damage, mitigation, self-healing, damage investment, mitigation investment, healing investment, utility, and so forth in order to ensure that you have a sufficient margin of an incredibly bland metric—enmity. It doesn't vary with different mob behaviors (except in threat wipes, if you can even call that variance), and provides no variance to said behaviors (unlike HP thresholds and so forth). You manipulate nothing but a consistent target via a flat threat table.

As long as enmity remains that dull, I'm not sad that other things have been given room to rise to the fore in WoW tanking. At most, I'm a bit sad that tanks have gotten so strong, both passively and by normal rotation, that there's rarely reason to strip mobs off my tank and kite them briefly, being able to provide damage shifts and support as a non-tank... not that I still can, given that streamlining has occurred not only from the tank side through enmity increases, but also the DPS side through ability pruning.

[zipzo]

WoW shifted the paradigm into tanking not being as much about maintaining aggro so much as doing your rotation to put forth as much active mitigation as possible.

Every tank in WoW has loads of either self-healing, self-shielding, self-armor buffing, or evasion buffing, all of which they generate through their respective rotations.

I wouldn't really call what they did a shift. It was more like a gutting. And like I said before, why couldn't we have both? Did it make the role too complicated?

Tanks were just as focused on constant active mitigation even in vanilla (see: holy shield for Paladins and shield block for Warriors). Some important elements were passive (e.g. Gearing to be uncrushable or uncrittable) but all the way through Cata there was still a short cd defensive cooldowns that you needed to use intelligently.

The only thing that has changed drastically more lately is that tanks now possess the ability to contribute massive self-healing, making the necessity for a healer only reserved for very hard hitting bosses and extremely high level mythic+ dungeons where the scaling is set so high that mobs hit for boss-level amounts. In their current state, tanks can solo (easily) pretty much all content in the game that isn't current raid content or high level difficulty dungeons. Think bloodbath Warriors in HW (that's the best comparison I can think of to FFXIV).

Personally I don't see the positive contribution of giving tanks such abilities in the first place. I think that tanks should be reliant on healers, healers reliant on tanks, and both be reliant on DPS to end the fight. That's the magic of the trinity...they should all work in tandem, and when you start gifting abilities of one to the other (in this case, the ability to heal on a tank excessively) you start to corrupt that trinity and ultimately it leads to imbalance (IMO).

And for me it's definitely the least painful amputation of what traditionally makes up a tank, mostly because it has only ever been one of three rotational or stance-based concerns, as a triad of damage, protection, and threat. Now, that protection can still come in a myriad form. The damage also can come in self-investment or target-investment, and as damage multipliers, DoTs / stat buffs, or, in the latter case, direct damage. But enmity can only ever be enmity. The more you focus action on enmity, especially purely upon enmity, relative to the number of other paths of action, the more you homogenize internal gameplay. Now, shades or pairings of enmity growth, as often the design concept behind WoW tanks (even the solo-pathetic Sunder Armor), can avoid that problem to an extent, but even if that were perfectly baked into the surrounding toolkit to allow for the most variance possible, you are still deferring or balancing concerns of damage, mitigation, self-healing, damage investment, mitigation investment, healing investment, utility, and so forth in order to ensure that you have a sufficient margin of an incredibly bland metric—enmity. It doesn't vary with different mob behaviors (except in threat wipes, if you can even call that variance), and provides no variance to said behaviors (unlike HP thresholds and so forth). You manipulate nothing but a consistent target via a flat threat table.

As long as enmity remains that dull, I'm not sad that other things have been given room to rise to the fore in WoW tanking. At most, I'm a bit sad that tanks have gotten so strong, both passively and by normal rotation, that there's rarely reason to strip mobs off my tank and kite them briefly, being able to provide damage shifts and support as a non-tank... not that I still can, given that streamlining has occurred not only from the tank side through enmity increases, but also the DPS side through ability pruning.

Here's how I see it. Enmity/threat is the only element of the 3 that can present a varying experience from 1 time to the next. Positioning is just where you put the boss/mob. Cooldowns is just timing. People in this very thread have complained about how things are too predictable, and it leads to just popping the cooldown at the precise time it's most effectively used and that's it. What you have then is a completely forgettable element of the gameplay of being a tank because it becomes automated.

Enmity/threat is not an automated element of the gameplay. You actively need to perform your threat gains effectively, and the experience is going to differ usually every single time you do a given piece of content because you'll likely be paired with different DPS. Maybe holding aggro is easier to this group, maybe holding aggro is tougher, it completely depends on the people in your group.

Hence, aggro management is the only interesting element of tanking because it stands to be the only part of tanking that creates the potential need for you to improvise, or make good decisions, and play well.

Positioning and CD usage are just one and done elements of tanking. You put them in the right spot, forget it, you make yourself aware of the best time to use a CD, and forget it.

Enmity you can't forget, there may always be somebody climbing the chart faster than in your other groups either because of spectacular DPS or because you flubbed your perfect threat rotation. It's a wild card element, and hence, the most interesting and potentially exciting. That is why threat/enmity/aggro management is single-handedly the most interesting part of Tank gameplay, and why when it is removed, tanking becomes boring.

[Shurrikhan]

Here's how I see it. Enmity/threat is the only element of the 3 that can present a varying experience from 1 time to the next. Positioning is just where you put the boss/mob. Cooldowns is just timing. People in this very thread have complained about how things are too predictable, and it leads to just popping the cooldown at the precise time it's most effectively used and that's it. What you have then is a completely forgettable element of the gameplay of being a tank because it becomes automated.

Enmity/threat is not an automated element of the gameplay. You actively need to perform your threat gains effectively, and the experience is going to differ usually every single time you do a given piece of content because you'll likely be paired with different DPS. Maybe holding aggro is easier to this group, maybe holding aggro is tougher, it completely depends on the people in your group.

Hence, aggro management is the only interesting element of tanking because it stands to be the only part of tanking that creates the potential need for you to improvise, or make good decisions, and play well.

At best, that is true of some fights in this game alone, and only if one excludes all the ways to optimize both your and your healers' dps.

Yes, there is little to no active mitigation in this game beyond pre-planned cooldowns popped per specific events... in this game. That is failing of the game, however, not of the very concept of mitigation mechanics. And it's why there are quite a few people who have been suggesting more integral systems by which to involve mitigation.

That said, enmity in this game is one thing and one thing only: the GCDs of inferior output to be used when they least get in the way of personal (tank) DPS. Yes, there are fewer when you have a Ninja and an off-tank using VokeShirk. Yes, there are a lot more when you have a Samurai who refused to use Diversion. But nothing about the concept changes. The impact is no more than that of positioning dungeon mobs with chained zone AoEs as to minimize loss of positionals for your melee jobs. It's no more than matching your CDs to Apoc, Feint, Palisade, and healer CDs. They are all equally shallow, each essentially automated. It's literally just increasing or decreasing the amount of reduced-efficiency GCDs required in order to maintain your passive increase to raid input/intake efficiency. In a sense, that can be interesting. But XIV is far from executing it in any particularly interesting way. It's essentially a system in place to increase the raid DPS offered by Ninjas and add another obligatory DPS CD in the form of Diversion (and Shirk, for that matter).

Don't get me wrong; I want enmity to really be a thing. But as long as it's just a threat table, and its related skills pure (or amounting to pure) enmity bonuses, it's not going to be anything more than a flip-side of tank DPS, meant to differentiate good from bad tanks (and far less by who holds aggro as much as while maintaining how much personal output).

[YitharV2]

I don't reject the idea that enmity/threat, defensive cooldowns, and positioning work in sort of a triad, complimenting one another. I think when you take away any one of those 3 things you make the entirety of the role less interesting. I wouldn't want to give up any of the 3.

Just in my case, taking away the necessity of enmity/threat management would be (is) the most egregious cut, which WoW did.

There can be different things we like about a role, that's ok, but that doesn't mean I don't value the other remaining elements of the role, or think we could do without them.

I agree that it's not 100% an automated element of gameplay, but it's almost as boring if not the same as passive mitigation. I mean, even though this is bad gameplay, all you need to do is stay in tank stance and spam 1-2-3 aggro combo or Flash and you're almost guaranteed to hold aggro. The problem I have with FFXIV is that it's too simple. In other MMOs you'd have to actually optimize DPS to hold aggro but here it's do your 1-2-3 combo. That's why I say it's about as boring as passive mitigation. What I found fun in another MMO is combining the challenge of holding aggro with optimizing DPS (which means taking less aggro on gear) and mitigating constant damage.

I also agree with Shurrikhan that in a vacuum enmity can't be meaningful or functional. It's when it's paired together with mitigation and positioning that it's meaningful.