Boss Autoattack Damage and FFXIV's Tanking Meta

[Freyyy]

I think that to fix tanking stances they should just delete every drawback they have. No damage decrease, no ability locking (Fell Cleave, Inner Release, Blood Weapon, Blood Price). Tanking stances should just give the %mitigation and the agro, and be off the GCD with no cost, and DPS stances should be deleted or turned into passive traits. That way, the only reason to turn it off would be not to accidentally steal aggro when you're OTing.

Why am I thinking that way ? Because the "aggressive tanking" meta has changed. Before, back in ARR, the "aggressive tanking" meta consisted in proper stance-dancing which required actual skill to be properly achieved. We were switching between stances because we actually needed them sometimes back then. WAR for example didn't have a DPS stance, they didn't have FC, and they didn't have Rampart, Raw Intuition nor Equilibrium. PLD didn't have Sheltron and Clemency. Tanks back then basically had less defensive abilities to compensate for the lack of tanking stance, and WAR actually used to not lose any DPS by switching back to Defiance for 20s or less when Unchained was available (it was even a DPS gain when combined with Zerk, since IB was the hardest hitting skill, and being in Defiance was the only way to build stacks). So we used our tanking stances for tank busters and other big damage phases. Only Rampart or only Sentinel weren't enough for big tank busters such as Ravensbeak, Revelation, Flatten or Akh Morn. We needed those extra 20% from Shield Oath. We needed that IB on top of Vengeance and the extra eHP from Defiance. "Aggressive tanking" consisted in optimizing both your cooldown usage and the moments where you'd switch back into tanking stance because you needed it in order to gain DPS. It was a careful task. It added a very interesting mechanic to tanking.

But it changed. Partly because of encounter design perhaps, but mostly because starting from HW, while levelling up after 50, tanks gained extra defensive tools which were available regardless of stance, while healers also gained extra healing tools which made the task of keeping-the-tank-alive-while-healing/protecting-the-rest-of-the-party a whole lot easier (stuff like Tetra, Asylum, Emergency tactics, Indom for example; powerful oGCD healing tools). Now, you just never use your tanking stance outside of the first blind runs. You don't even pull the boss with it anymore. You just DPS and use your CDs when needed. Tanking stance is a button that you only press when shit starts hitting the fan and healers need some safety to raise some people. And even in most of those cases, the extra 20% mitigation won't even save you from a wipe. "Stance-dancing" doesn't really exist anymore. It's just an empty shell of what it used to be.

To make the tanking stance and tools like IB relevant once more, they have two options :

1. Delete a lot of the defensive/healing tools that tanks and healers currently have. Basically, make both tanks and healers less powerful defensively. This would give back a lot of value to the tanking stances and IB, since we wouldn't have enough CDs to mitigate everything. This option would change the way we play and might not please everyone since it's a direct nerf to both tanks and healers.

2. Do what I first suggested. Delete every single drawback that the tanking stances have and either delete the DPS stances or make them passive traits. Make tanks able to achieve their highest DPS regardless of their stance. And increase every boss and monster's damage so that the damage we take while in tanking stance is the same as what we currently take without it, that way CD usage wouldn't be trivialized for both tanks and healers. Drastically decrease every aggro multipliers to compensate for the much higher uptime that we'd have on our tanking stance. This option wouldn't change anything to the way we play, it wouldn't make tanking or healing any easier either. We'd just toggle it on when tanking because it's free aggro and mitigation, and toggle it back off when OTing to prevent us from stealing aggro instead of just never using it outside of emergencies like we currently do. This option also fits with what they did to healers by making their damage scale directly from MND, essentially deleting "stance-dancing".
That way, they could also focus on adding complexity to how tanks play by other means without having to bother with the different stances.

[Kerrath]

I think that to fix tanking stances they should just delete every drawback they have. No damage decrease, no ability locking (Fell Cleave, Inner Release, Blood Weapon, Blood Price). Tanking stances should just give the %mitigation and the agro, and be off the GCD with no cost, and DPS stances should be deleted or turned into passive traits. That way, the only reason to turn it off would be not to accidentally steal aggro when you're OTing.

If this change was made, I would quit FF14 without hesitation so fast you'd get whiplash. DPS stance is what makes tanking in ff14 interesting, period. Without DPS stance, tanking is a dull affair, kind of like healing without DPS spells would be.

If you really want to make tanks use tank stance more often, make tankbusters more frequent. As it is, we have cooldowns for every tankbuster, so tank stance is irrelevant.

[Freyyy]

If this change was made, I would quit FF14 without hesitation so fast you'd get whiplash. DPS stance is what makes tanking in ff14 interesting, period. Without DPS stance, tanking is a dull affair, kind of like healing without DPS spells would be.

You didn't read my post.

[Kerrath]

You didn't read my post.

yes i did.

you know what I like about tanking in ff14? i like threat management. i like how threat is something to be managed. in other mmos, you can press any button at any time with no thought to management of threat at all and still hold aggro. it's trivial. in ff14, you are rewarded with more dps for dropping your threat-increasing stance. you have to use things like shirk and dps aggro drops. that's fun. maybe i'd like your idea if tank stance gave a 20% increase to threat generated rather than a 500% increase to threat generated.

[Freyyy]

yes i did.

you know what I like about tanking in ff14? i like threat management. i like how threat is something to be managed. in other mmos, you can press any button at any time with no thought to management of threat at all and still hold aggro. it's trivial. in ff14, you are rewarded with more dps for dropping your threat-increasing stance. you have to use things like shirk and dps aggro drops. that's fun. maybe i'd like your idea if tank stance gave a 20% increase to threat generated rather than a 500% increase to threat generated.

This answer just proves that you either didn't read my post, or didn't understand the idea behind it.

[Kerrath]

your two suggestions were:
1) delete defensive cooldowns so that we're forced to stance dance for tankbusters. of the two suggestions, it is the superior option. however, we could also just make it so that there are more tankbusters in a fight than cooldowns to mitigate them so that we'd be forced to use tank stance as a mitigation tool for some of them, or make tankbusters hit hard enough that cooldowns alone arent enough. i could live with my alteration to your suggestion and enjoy it.
2) delete tank stance and rename dps stance to tank stance and add a weaker threat modifier on top of a damage taken reduction to it. this suggestion is terrible because in reality low-skill and low-gear tanks use tank stance a lot to compensate. it also gives up on the idea of ever having stance dancing again, which is an incredibly satisfying mechanic for tanks.

[shao32]

it also gives up on the idea of ever having stance dancing again, which is an incredibly satisfying mechanic for tanks.

for you who are a warrior and you stances are desing to do that yes, for a DRK is a pain in the ass stance dancing, and for paladins the same, i always love tanks roles bcs all the support and leadership they offer, the feeling im making everyone life easy is more satisfying for me that the most big number you can archive with a fell cleave or whatever and the actual meta is killing that for me bcs im forcing 7 members to work more harder for my personal dps.

for the second point frey dont really say delete tank stance, just remove the damage penalty thats all (and yes ogfc but i think with only damage penalty and mp cost with be enough), in case of WAR you can remove damage penalty and time recast penalty and you will still have tank how tank stance to dealt they job, every one wins, PLD and DRK will no longer get in to the need to imitate WAR with her clunky tank stances to archive the maximun dps with i think is the only real solution to fix the tank stance problem.

the only job with more problems will be paladin bcs we cant do anything with sword oath and i dont think SE want to delete it, probably make it able to use it with shield but thats how is DRK so idk.