Please Buff Tenacity So Tanks Actually Want To Use Tank Stance

[MauvaisOeil]

Sorry, but that's the way it's been since ARR and it's a good design from my view. You gain X by giving up Y. I find the sacrifice of defense (or HP for war) for offense is a good one. What would you give up in tank stance in order to gain the additional 20% constant damage bonus? Would you want Royal authority combo, Requiescat and FoF locked behind DPS stance to gain a constant 20% DPS increase in tank stance? What about DRK, lock darkside and DA to usage only when not in grit?

As far as PLD and DRK not being designed for constant switching, I believe grit and shield oath being on the GCD to be a good thing. You instantly gain a 20% defense bonus when going into SO or Grit; WAR needs to be healed before you gain Defiance's benefit. For DRK, dropping grit instantly gives you a DPS boost; while PLD requires a CGD to be useful so sword oath needs to be on the off global. DRK stance dancing is just as easy as WAR and for PLD, if you just DROP shield oath you get the same benefit as DRK would get but you'd lose your 75 potency mele-range-only DoT; depending on the fight this could be a net 0 loss (like if the boss jumps away from you, drop sword and start casting HS).

That was good design back when War sacrified less than 20% dps for 20% EHPS gain, as unchained, inner beast, and passive crit from rage stack, all lowered the true reduction of the stance. Now it's loose 40% dps for 20% EHPS, which is crap.

[Llus]

It depends how you look at it.
To me, dps stance is too strong as the reduced mitigation/enmity is a small cost for the significant dps gain you get.
Put a higher cost in the form of reduced survivabity/enmity and you can balance stance dancing in an engaging/meaningful way without touching the content at all.

Personally, I blame the stances more than the content.

Nothing much has changed with the tank stances other than the introduction of deliverance in HW and reduced DPS penalty in SB since ARR and I clearly remember having to stance dance in order to survive busters at min iLevel in coil and alexander (at least A1-3, I quit after A3S). Once you over geared any of those fights though you could run DPS stance all day (most of the time... - hell T9 could be solo tanked by a PLD once you overgeared the content); so I blame the content. Also, we're now forced to wear VIT gear instead of letting us use pentamelded STR accesories which makes survivability in these fights TONS easier. Tankbusters now never drop me below about 40% where previous busters would drop me to 20-30% in tank stance fully healed with thrill of war+vengeance. Any time now that a buster drops me or drops me below 35-40% is when I didn't mitigate properly. Remember too that O1S is 310, O2S is 315 and O3S & O4S are both 320 and at this point even late starters (returners) like me are already overgeared for the content. I still didn't find mitigating O1S-O3S difficult at min-iLevel and I'm already overgeared for O4S and not finding that difficult either (in terms of mitigation - still in prog on neo). We'll see with UC and the next raid tier if the difficulty gets adjusted given the fact that you can stay in DPS stance all day; but eventually we're going to overgear the content and no longer need tank stance for those fights. So, maybe you're right - an adjustment to DPS stance to increase damage taken would be the way to go and might make running 100% DPS stance when you're overgeared (with the top gear available at the time) impossible; but eventually (next raid tier & iLevel increase) you'll still overgear the content.

[Llus]

That was good design back when War sacrified less than 20% dps for 20% EHPS gain, as unchained, inner beast, and passive crit from rage stack, all lowered the true reduction of the stance. Now it's loose 40% dps for 20% EHPS, which is crap.

ARR Defiance: -25% damage, unchained or no defiance +25% damage
HW Defiance: -25% damage, HW Deliverance +30% damage (5% for deliverance and 25% non-defiance base)
SB Defiance: -20% damage, SB Deliverance +25% damage (5% for deliverance and 20% no-defiance base)

So unbuffed DPS stance difference:

ARR: +25%
HW: +30%
SB: +25%

The biggest problem isn't the base stance, but the berserk nerf from 50% to 30%

ARR w/ unchained or no defiance +25% damage +50% berserk = 75% damage up
HW deliverance +30% damage + 50% berserk = 80% damage up
SB deliverance +25% damage + 30% berserk = 55% damage up

Ohh and I don't think wrath EVER gave a crit bonus, just abandon in HW up to 10% (max stacks). In SB, we still max at +10% crit under deliverance; but I don't know if that's maxed at 50 rage or 100 rage.

[MauvaisOeil]

ARR Defiance: -25% damage, unchained or no defiance +25% damage
HW Defiance: -25% damage, HW Deliverance +30% damage (5% for deliverance and 25% non-defiance base)
SB Defiance: -20% damage, SB Deliverance +25% damage (5% for deliverance and 20% no-defiance base)

So unbuffed DPS stance difference:

ARR: +25%
HW: +30%
SB: +25%

The biggest problem isn't the base stance, but the berserk nerf from 50% to 30%

ARR w/ unchained or no defiance +25% damage +50% berserk = 75% damage up
HW deliverance +30% damage + 50% berserk = 80% damage up
SB deliverance +25% damage + 30% berserk = 55% damage up

Ohh and I don't think wrath EVER gave a crit bonus, just abandon in HW up to 10% (max stacks). In SB, we still max at +10% crit under deliverance; but I don't know if that's maxed at 50 rage or 100 rage.

You're counting wrong, first because you don't count unchained, that was basically a return back to 100% dps with a 1/6 uptime. Basically a 4.17% damage up overall, a bit more complicated but the picture also flavored :

IB was a 300 Potency attack ignoring the penalty of defiance, with a combo average from a SE-BB combo over 6 hit beeing 206.6 potency, with the damage penalty of 25% was 155 potency average. IB here was a wrecking ball compared to the average potency, that made every stack of wrath worth ((300-155)/5) 29 potency, which is basically a 18.7% damage increase over the average combo worth of defiance. Let's resume the wrath gain from 2 hit per 3 attachs as a 12.47% Damage increase. Which makes the defiance penalty go from 75% damage to 84.35% damage, a sole 15.65% damage nerf from stance.

With a poor addition, because I don't have time to calculate the loss of an IB to go into Unchained, you get the DPS of a war in defiance from 15.65% to 11.48% (15.65-4.17).

During ARR, Defiance also gave 2% CRIT per stack, the parry per stack only came for heavensward when deliverance was added and took the crit buff while defiance got some shitty parry stacks. Since ARR crit was non scaling on damage, it was a flat 50% damage boost, making the median of 10% crit (full stack) a 5% average crit gain, for a few less of 2.5% damage gain.

Whats the point here ? A warrior stanceless had no rage, no IB, no unchained, no critical bonus, and the penalty from going into defiance was around 10% damage less, from 20% EHPS gain.

When HW came, defiance was stripped of it's interested, as crit got taken, delivrance got abandon stacks, and fel cleave became a powerfull tool competing with IB for the consume of stacks. At the same time deliverance got a 5% damage up. The gap began to widen between a warrior tanking and a warrior DPSing.

With SB, IR came and deliverance took away the benefit of Unchained, while pushing the gap even further between a tanking warrior and a DPS ing warrior, making the tanking stance even less desirable.


This made the tanking stance of warrior less and less relevant with every xpac since ARR, leading to the now "fel cleave frenzy" we know now, but affecting every job in the same way : turning on tank stance is a huge DPS loss for a moderate resilience gain.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I tank because it lets me basically be a DPS without positionals and have extra things to do. I'm a melee DPS at heart, but I really don't care for the positionals or mDPS archetypes in this game (due to the netcode) so tanking lets me do all of that.

If I could change anything it'd be to flat out remove stances and just shift the responsibilities around the toolkit and let us make these decisions organically rather than by forced stances. Let me dump my Oath gauge for bonus threat/damage, or bonus defense, etc. Not in huge 50/50 chunks, but maybe in much more smaller meaningful ways and more frequently.

[Llus]

You're counting wrong, first because you don't count unchained, that was basically a return back to 100% dps with a 1/6 uptime. Basically a 4.17% damage up overall, a bit more complicated but the picture also flavored :

IB was a 300 Potency attack ignoring the penalty of defiance, with a combo average from a SE-BB combo over 6 hit beeing 206.6 potency, with the damage penalty of 25% was 155 potency average. IB here was a wrecking ball compared to the average potency, that made every stack of wrath worth ((300-155)/5) 29 potency, which is basically a 18.7% damage increase over the average combo worth of defiance. Let's resume the wrath gain from 2 hit per 3 attachs as a 12.47% Damage increase. Which makes the defiance penalty go from 75% damage to 84.35% damage, a sole 15.65% damage nerf from stance.

With a poor addition, because I don't have time to calculate the loss of an IB to go into Unchained, you get the DPS of a war in defiance from 15.65% to 11.48% (15.65-4.17).

During ARR, Defiance also gave 2% CRIT per stack, the parry per stack only came for heavensward when deliverance was added and took the crit buff while defiance got some shitty parry stacks. Since ARR crit was non scaling on damage, it was a flat 50% damage boost, making the median of 10% crit (full stack) a 5% average crit gain, for a few less of 2.5% damage gain.

Whats the point here ? A warrior stanceless had no rage, no IB, no unchained, no critical bonus, and the penalty from going into defiance was around 10% damage less, from 20% EHPS gain.

When HW came, defiance was stripped of it's interested, as crit got taken, delivrance got abandon stacks, and fel cleave became a powerfull tool competing with IB for the consume of stacks. At the same time deliverance got a 5% damage up. The gap began to widen between a warrior tanking and a warrior DPSing.

With SB, IR came and deliverance took away the benefit of Unchained, while pushing the gap even further between a tanking warrior and a DPS ing warrior, making the tanking stance even less desirable.


This made the tanking stance of warrior less and less relevant with every xpac since ARR, leading to the now "fel cleave frenzy" we know now, but affecting every job in the same way : turning on tank stance is a huge DPS loss for a moderate resilience gain.

You're talking to a career war from 2.2 and I really don't remember defiance giving 2% crit per stack in ARR or parry in HW. I could be wrong and it was on the abandon buff tooltip; but I don't remember that at all. Crit rate buff was on Internal Release from monk with a 20% 15s buff.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/m...or&oldid=11836
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/m...or&oldid=98519

Still dps stance vs tank stance is 25%, 30%, 25%

Unchained only took stacks in SB which they quickly reverted because you couldn't do an unchained pull (because for SB you still can't infuriate out of battle) and was useless outside of pull and when you needed to go back to defiance for a buster.

A Stanceless war in ARR blew shit up.

Unchained, Tomahawk, Overpower, Heavy Swing, Pot, Maim, Internal Release, Berserk, Storm's Eye, Infuriate, Heavy Swing, Skull Sunder, BB, Inner Beast, Drop stance

Trying to get 2 IBs in 1 zerk window was just a PitA. HW, getting 3 cleaves per zerk window was pretty easy because they gave wrath for buffs and not just on path & eye so you could infuriate before the pull and spend RI to keep your stacks before the pull.

It took 5 eye combos to get 1 IB, total potency for those combos was 3050 at a 25% damage penalty during that time frame so you ended up with a 762 effective potency loss - more than double that of a single IB. Wrath on maim, butchers block, and berserk didn't happen until HW. You could short 1 combo if you burned or needed a vengeance during that time frame to gain 1 wrath, but that still left you with a combo potency of 2440 at a 25% damage penalty of 610 potency. Also since BB combo was the higher potency attack and PLD's were stuck with just their rage of halone combo stanceless wars could OT and BB for days just keeping maim and eye up.

[Sylvain]

There is a very easy way to make tank stance more used, you increase both boss damage and the stance mitigation to the point where tanking without it is borderline suicidal and a dps loss as you'd need so much heal that you'd loose all full heal dps.

No wonder it is unused when caster don't even loose 50% of their max hp when hit by a boss AA

[Aana]

There is a very easy way to make tank stance more used, you increase both boss damage and the stance mitigation to the point where tanking without it is borderline suicidal and a dps loss as you'd need so much heal that you'd loose all full heal dps.

No wonder it is unused when caster don't even loose 50% of their max hp when hit by a boss AA

This kinda of change gets to what I was talking about. 'forcing' tank stance goes one of 2 ways.

A: (Your option). Make the game beat you into submission to tank stance. Now theres ZERO choice. No skill expression. Nothing. 'I have enmity what should I do? Tank stance or die?

B: Remove the incentive to drop tank stance. This would be buffing tank stance damage to match out of stance damage (or just nerfing offense stances to oblivion). Again, were just removing the option.

In either scenario you just remove the incentive to do anything but a single, binary choice. "If tanking hit the toughness button". From a gameplay perspective, this is boring AND limiting.

What possible advantage is this from a gameplay perspective? Bosses are already completely 'untankable' by any other class. Theres no secret bard tank strategy (lol FFXI). The tank role is doing its job.

Can we stop asking HOW to force more tank stance and instead ask WHY should we force more tank stance 1st? Before you make a thread explaining how to make tanks sit in defensive posture 100% of the time, 1st ask WHY we should be in tank stance all the time. Please explain why more tank stance is a goal in the 1st place.

I see lots of prescriptions here. What 'problem' are we trying to solve here exactly?

[Llus]

This kinda of change gets to what I was talking about. 'forcing' tank stance goes one of 2 ways.

A: (Your option). Make the game beat you into submission to tank stance. Now theres ZERO choice. No skill expression. Nothing. 'I have enmity what should I do? Tank stance or die?

B: Remove the incentive to drop tank stance. This would be buffing tank stance damage to match out of stance damage (or just nerfing offense stances to oblivion). Again, were just removing the option.

In either scenario you just remove the incentive to do anything but a single, binary choice. "If tanking hit the toughness button". From a gameplay perspective, this is boring AND limiting.

What possible advantage is this from a gameplay perspective? Bosses are already completely 'untankable' by any other class. Theres no secret bard tank strategy (lol FFXI). The tank role is doing its job.

Can we stop asking HOW to force more tank stance and instead ask WHY should we force more tank stance 1st? Before you make a thread explaining how to make tanks sit in defensive posture 100% of the time, 1st ask WHY we should be in tank stance all the time. Please explain why more tank stance is a goal in the 1st place.

I see lots of prescriptions here. What 'problem' are we trying to solve here exactly?

This! EXACTLY THIS! Thank you.

There is a very easy way to make tank stance more used, you increase both boss damage and the stance mitigation to the point where tanking without it is borderline suicidal and a dps loss as you'd need so much heal that you'd loose all full heal dps.

No wonder it is unused when caster don't even loose 50% of their max hp when hit by a boss AA

Anyone besides a tank will be 1-shotted by autos in anything other than dungeon runs (and tanks too if you don't mitigate them in DPS stance)

Alte Roite: Wyrmtail - dead dps or healer
Catastrophy: Paranormal wave - dead dps or healer
Halicarnasus: Any auto - dead dps or healer, tanks in dps stance can handle the autos unmitigated
Exdeath: autos - dead dps or healer, dead tank in 2 if they're unmitigated
Neo: no autos, but the mini busters HAVE to be taken by a tank and well mitigated

[Shinkyo]

Snip

Sorry to burst your bubble but you don’t remember ARR WAR.

2.0: stacks gave 2% healing received increase
2.1: statcks gave 2% crit rate
3.0: wrath gave 2% parry, abandon gave 2% crits

And all combo moves except Heavy Swing gave stacks. It took 2.5 combos to get to 5.

Unchained required 5 stacks until they reduced it to 2 in 4.0 and now 0 since 4.01.

Stanceless average potency was 206.6/gcd (SE>BB)
Defiance average potency without unchained and infuriate was 172.5/gcd (SE>BB + IB every 5 stacks)
That’s ~18% dps reduction. Now, add the increased crit, unchained uptime and extra IB from infuriate and you mostly get 10-15% net dps reduction.

Defiance WAR was a very close to stanceless WAR in ARR.