Tank Stance Redesign

[Sylvain]

That isn't to say tank stances couldn't be improved somehow. I do think they should look at ways to make it more important for high level content and also making it so the decision to turn tank stance on or off puts more responsibility on the tank than their group. Right now, when a tank takes tank stance off, they themselves are not really taking on any extra responsibility. They take more damage, but that falls entirely on the healers. They generate less enmity, but that falls to the healers and DPS to use their enmity reduction skills so that the tank's damage remains supported. While I don't think it's a problem that tanks try to minimize the time spent in tank stance, I think it's a bit of a problem if they can get that time down to absolutely nothing, since it makes tank stance irrelevant in high level content, and using it does nothing but annoy people.

Well this is the core of the reason why we don't use it, because it's absolutely not necessary.

So unless they'd drastically increase the damage done by tank burster or make boss actually hurt the tank consistently I don't see these stance being used in 5.X (for instance, it's not rare to see the tank tanking the add with its tank stance in os10. the breath does quite a bit of damage, but that's about the only situation you see that, and that's the few tank actually doing this stop doing it when they'll have enough gear)

If it were me, I'd try something like, removing, retooling, or reducing the effect of enmity reduction skills on healers/DPS, so that tanks would be forced into tank stance at least sometimes, if only to maintain enmity. At least holding enmity would then be entirely their responsibility, and tank stance would have a distinct purpose, and deciding when to switch in and out of it would be more compelling. Couple this with something like, new enmity mechanics on bosses where a boss could for example, suddenly transfer enmity from one person to another, or suddenly drop their enmity on the tank, to further increase enmity-based tank gameplay.

But beside making it more useful and giving some use of the aggro combo beyond the pull would this actually be an improvement to the tank role?
Tank is the least played role and, usually, loosing aggro is a rather frustrating thing. I might be entirely wrong but I wouldn't be too surprised if actually having the manage aggro would make tanking even less interesting to the crowd. A bit like the healer dps issue where some healer don't want to dps and some love it.

It could also make everyone but the best simply sit in tank stance just for aggro safety. Which is technically no better than the current situation.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

If you want to stop Tanks sitting in DPS stance as a main tank, you have to attack their aggro generation in DPS stance. Removing their aggro combo isn't the solution. You basically have to make their DPS stance give them permanent Diversion while its on plus add a Lucid Dreaming aggro dump when you swap, while removing Shirk and disabling Provoke/Ultimatum during it in order to kill circle shirking but restore its intended behavior. This would heavily discourage sitting in DPS stance for too long as a main tank (which would take a LOT of aggro combos and party effort to enable) and make it incredibly difficult to maintain hate against your party. Only a shadewalker NIN could realistically keep you ahead of the group for any period, likely only for burst windows. If you then add ways to get around this, such as making PLD's DPS penalty only apply to physical damage, making Dark Arts ignore the Grit penalty entirely, and applying Unchained for free during the Berserk window, then that would minimize the value of this ability.

Your idea, with some other system, could be good, but can't be used either.

Some boss, like Lakshmi Extreme, will target the 2nd on aggro even if it's not a tank. If some kind of lethal damage is dealt, the Dps will surely die because of this.

[Sylvain]

While I agree with your wish to add additional gimmicks for each job, it's hard to archieve. We had this in HW with DRK's parry procs, but they also increased DRK's DPS, so they had to MT. If you are going to lower the CD of Shield Swipe, not only you have to manage your oGCD usage way harder (esp. during Req. Holy Spirit window), but also force PLD into MT position just like DRK in HW. So far, there isn't any encounter in which you can get shield procs every 5 seconds without being MT.

As for more active forms of mitigation... I guess Sheltron counts as such... still feels kinda off because it has a 10s duration.

At least WAR has this kinda gimmick with their tank stance, (Inner Beast) WAR stances in general appear to be best designed right now.

Those are very valid concern, I personally believe no tank should be forced to the MT role simply because they play X job. And regarding the weaving issue I for one would like the animation lock entire mechanic to be removed from the game (or the animation lock reduced to something like 0.1s). Too many player don't know about it and beside frustration it doesn't add much to the game.


So regarding the dps, the best thing would be to have both tank pulling out roughly the same dps or at the very least, if the tank stance would be pulling less dmg, it should be marginally less. (Like, unless you're first week racing that shouldn't be regarded as an issue).

I don't think this would be "too" hard to do
Taking the PLD as an example: Sword Oath grants you a very steady amount of potency per minute. Shield Oath grants you a proc on a X.sec cd that you weave in.Balancing one around the other shouldn't be an issue. Worst case scenario we go from "blocking" to "being hit" for Shield Swipe to make it more consistent.

Then, by active form of mitigation yes, we do have Shieltron or The Blackest Night for instance.

But I think more should be done. First, beside for tank burster, Shieltron is usually garbage mitigation and takes way too much time to build in ShO stance. It's also passive generation which means you cannot work your way to build more of it. (which is arguably funny because you'd technically want more gauge when tanking). So part of the "giving gimmick to jobs", this would be something I would adresse.

To take Warrior in WoW as a simple example back then (dunno if they still play this way). Your shield block cost rage, you get rage by smashing, the better and more you smash, the more rage you get, so the more you block. So basically, the more dps you have, the tankier you are. This is a freaking win win situation.

So for instance, let say Shield Swipe would also grant 25 gauge ressource, and that ... I dunno, your goring blade tick also grants gauge. (like 5 per tick) as well as your combo finisher, etc etc. Basically, let say the more you do the more gauge you get. And let's assume for one short instant that boss can actually hit you in a meaningfull way in between TB for substantial damage. (let rework how boss AA works, all attack are crit, parry/block reduces them to none-crit).

Well, the incoming damage on a tank using a lot of shieltron vs one not using many (basically, a tank doing a lot of dps vs one not doing a lot of dps) would be substantial.
But here I think we'd win on both side.
Many tank don't care too much about their tankiness, as long as they survive, and only want to focus on dps (which is usually what's desired), whereas many other tank at first rolled to be... "a tank", like, tough, and to survive and whatnot.

With this kind of design, you achieve the same goal for both player because, the player who solely focus on his dps would still achieve great mitigation whereas the player who wants to be the sturdiest tank that ever was, would need to focus on doing a lot of damage to achieve his goal.

And I think this is an important aspect many people forget. A bit like the healer dps issue, with the "no dps vs full dps camp" on one hand you can't remove the dps aspect of healer without risking to make a significant portion of the healer reroll to dps, on the other hand, doing so would probably make some people actually reroll to healer. This is a very hard situation to solve. But for the tank, at the very least I think both could be achieved.

I know we rarely, if ever, see tank complaining about having to optimise their dps, but from my humble experience, I do know that many tank would like main tanking to be more than simply "dpsing the boss away from the group" with a few ogcd there and there to survive.

[shao32]

You forget holy Spirit generate 20 gauge per cast on ShO

[PangTong]

But beside making it more useful and giving some use of the aggro combo beyond the pull would this actually be an improvement to the tank role?
Tank is the least played role and, usually, loosing aggro is a rather frustrating thing. I might be entirely wrong but I wouldn't be too surprised if actually having the manage aggro would make tanking even less interesting to the crowd. A bit like the healer dps issue where some healer don't want to dps and some love it.

It could also make everyone but the best simply sit in tank stance just for aggro safety. Which is technically no better than the current situation.

Even if no one is using their enmity skills it's usually fairly easy to keep aggro with only occasional use of tank stance and the enmity combo. This change would just take tank stance usage from "almost never" to "sometimes". Staying in tank stance for safety is something that most PUG/roulette players already do, and I don't think you need to be "the best" to both maintain aggro and make use of DPS stance even when no one is using their enmity skills. I think the enmity-generation effects of tank stance are honestly the bigger reason to keep it over the mitigation, but everyone acts like the mitigation is the only reason to use it, and since it's not necessary it's pointless. It is not pointless, it's just that enmity has been made into something of a joke since now every job has abilities which let them delete their own enmity or even redirect it.

And yeah, I absolutely think it would enhance the tank role, because holding aggro is a core part of tanking, or at least it's supposed to be. The fact that tanks offload both the responsibility of mitigation and enmity onto their party members means that they are hardly tanks at all, they are "DPS who takes the hits". If people want tanking to actually be about tanking, making changes to force tanks to consider things besides DPS maximization is definitely going to be a necessary part of that.

I think it is absolutely worth saving tank stance (and the enmity combo) because, well, they're meant to be TANKS goddamnit! Things like tank stance are one of the few things still separating the role from DPS, and if tank stance has become useless or a hindrance, then what should be done is to make tank stance necessary, not remove it and further blur the lines between the tank and damage dealer. Yeah, I get it, everyone wants to do damage and hates it when they have to do anything which might potentially reduce it. Well, tough luck. If the game wants to move closer to a state where DPS is not the be-all and end-all of every encounter, changes like this where players have to temporarily put aside DPS to focus on survival or mechanics, are totally necessary.

There's never really going to be a state where people actually -want- to do things besides maximise DPS. That is just always going to be the state of things, because the ultimate, fundamental objective of all battle content in the entire game is "make the enemy's HP reach 0". As long as that is the goal, that's what people are going to optimize for. Every other consideration is secondary, you only need enough mitigation/healing/enmity/mechanics to survive the battle and then all remaining effort can and should be directed towards DPS, that's just the way of it! The only way to even start to do things like have tanks focus on tanking, is to make it so they NEED to do so to clear the content. Changing enmity mechanics is something that can and SHOULD be done as a way of making tanks more about tanking, or else the entire role is just going to end up being gimped DPS who pop a defense cooldown every so often.

It's possible that mitigation could also be refined to be more tank-based rather than the current state of "just eat the damage and let the healers handle it", but it would probably require more significant reworking of the tank jobs to facilitate this, which I'm not gonna try to touch right now.

[Bright-Flower]

I'd prefer from a personal preference standpoint to have the tank stance be something you almost always want up in a boss fight and dps stance being something for soloing, off tanking or during certain dps checks when there's nothing to actually tank, etc.

Unfortunately so much of FF XIV's endgame meta seems built around dps because of strict enrage timers and only needing a bare minimum of healing and defensive mitigation. The only real way to force tanks into tank stance would be to A. retune enimty generation so that you wont' get enough to stay ahead of dps without tank stance or B. increase output of damage from bosses so that being in dps stance will lead to you getting your teeth kicked in.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

If you want to stop Tanks sitting in DPS stance as a main tank, you have to attack their aggro generation in DPS stance. Removing their aggro combo isn't the solution. You basically have to make their DPS stance give them permanent Diversion while its on plus add a Lucid Dreaming aggro dump when you swap, while removing Shirk and disabling Provoke/Ultimatum during it in order to kill circle shirking but restore its intended behavior. This would heavily discourage sitting in DPS stance for too long as a main tank (which would take a LOT of aggro combos and party effort to enable) and make it incredibly difficult to maintain hate against your party. Only a shadewalker NIN could realistically keep you ahead of the group for any period, likely only for burst windows. If you then add ways to get around this, such as making PLD's DPS penalty only apply to physical damage, making Dark Arts ignore the Grit penalty entirely, and applying Unchained for free during the Berserk window, then that would minimize the value of this ability

This is an excellent way to assure people quit tanking outright. Forcing people into your intended way of doing something never works. Look at how Pagos turned out. If the devs want us utilizing Tank Stance, they need to incentivize it, thus we elect to turn it on to our own benefit, not because the game nerfed DPS stance into the ground. A further issue with simply forcing Tank Stance is it robs tanks of optimization. Once we have a fight mapped out, there simply isn't any reason for all that extra mitigation. Hence why tanks focus on their DPS. It provides them a goal worth striving towards. Take that away and now we're doing less than healers while sitting around, waiting for a buster to go out so I have a reason to give a damn about the fight. I cannot describe how incredibly boring such gameplay would be.

I do agree enmity needs an overhaul as it's become a complete joke, however unless the content actually does more damage, thereby making constant DPS stance an actual risk. Any attempts to force tanks into Tank Stance will simply result in boring gameplay. I mean, speaking only for myself, half the reason I do room wide pulls in dungeons is because I actually feel like a tank due to the incoming damage. If I pulled the way the devs intended, I'd be bored out of my mind.

[Liam_Harper]

I agree tank stance definitely needs a rework. The 25% dps loss is absolutely massive in a game where dps is everything. The fact we meld Direct Hit over Tenacity which is a 4-5% mitigation loss and a 1% dps gain says a lot about how much more important damage is.
I'm not sure about changes designed around "forcing us into tank stance". If you make it mandatory at certain points, it's no longer a choice. It's just something you predictably do at set intervals or situations. Tank busters already have this issue of predictability without adding more.
I don't agree with attacking our emnity or making us paper in dps either. Remember the changes should be fun to play, rather than attacking or punishing pieces of our toolkit.

Personally I'd like to see both stances become viable playstyles, that define the player. For example, a tank stance player could be a brick wall that healers would actually be happy to have in their party and a dps stance player would be the edge needed to beat a strict enrage, but both would be an asset to the group. Both stances could have abilities to master, the tank could choose to specialize in dealing damage or in being unkillable and focus towards that goal.

I don't think dps stance really needs to be more than a 5-10% increase personally. We'd use it. The dps stance could also have far better burst while tank stance is more sustained.

[PangTong]

I agree tank stance definitely needs a rework. The 25% dps loss is absolutely massive in a game where dps is everything. The fact we meld Direct Hit over Tenacity which is a 4-5% mitigation loss and a 1% dps gain says a lot about how much more important damage is.
I'm not sure about changes designed around "forcing us into tank stance". If you make it mandatory at certain points, it's no longer a choice. It's just something you predictably do at set intervals or situations. Tank busters already have this issue of predictability without adding more.
I don't agree with attacking our emnity or making us paper in dps either. Remember the changes should be fun to play, rather than attacking or punishing pieces of our toolkit.

Personally I'd like to see both stances become viable playstyles, that define the player. For example, a tank stance player could be a brick wall that healers would actually be happy to have in their party and a dps stance player would be the edge needed to beat a strict enrage, but both would be an asset to the group. Both stances could have abilities to master, the tank could choose to specialize in dealing damage or in being unkillable and focus towards that goal.

If we're talking about it as a "stance" that's either on or off then there's simply no way to create a state where you can simply be in one or the other all the time and they're equally viable. One will be determined as having the potential for more damage (whether in raid dps or otherwise) and therefore the only one worth using. To give a defensive ability value in this game that's all about damage, it either needs to have almost no negative impact on damage (like cooldowns) or it needs to be absolutely necessary for clearing content. And there is nothing wrong with having it be required. Complaining that tanks have to go into tank stance, is like complaining that healers sometimes have to use GCDs on healing the party when they could be doing damage.

It seems ridiculous to me that there is even an argument about whether tanks should be required to do tank things. Of course they should! They're tanks! I get the whole aspect of wanting to optimize for DPS, but that doesn't mean the game should go in a direction where actual active tanking becomes less and less important so everyone can just be a pseudo-DPS job and not worry about it. If DPS is so superdy-duper important for tanks that they desperately do not want to do anything tank-like, that ought to change! Cut back DPS requirements, or make tanks a smaller proportion of raid DPS if need be, just do something to save tanking as a distinct role.

I don't see anything wrong with forcing tanks into tank stance at least sometimes. Making it enmity based doesn't mean it's completely predictable either, as enmity will vary depending on the group. Having to balance damage output with tank responsibilities sounds like a perfectly fine concept for a tanking role to me. If the game ends up in a state where tanking is just a side effect of certain jobs doing their DPS rotation, that's a complete failure to design a tank role.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I don't see anything wrong with forcing tanks into tank stance at least sometimes. Making it enmity based doesn't mean it's completely predictable either, as enmity will vary depending on the group. Having to balance damage output with tank responsibilities sounds like a perfectly fine concept for a tanking role to me. If the game ends up in a state where tanking is just a side effect of certain jobs doing their DPS rotation, that's a complete failure to design a tank role.

Enmity is static though. It doesn't matter if I generate 1,000 points or 5,000. So long as I am first, I have sufficiently done my job. Therefore, I cannot optimize it. Mitigation falls into the same issue. If I can survive with Sentinel, the extra mitigation from Shield Oath is utterly useless. There is never a scenario where you need more mitigation unless it's free. This is why Tenacity has largely been ignored despite being the pseudo-tank stat. If stacked you gain an extra 5% mitigation, but when nothing remotely comes close to requiring said mitigation, it's entirely wasted. Hence why people focus on damage.

For example sake, let's use Suzaku EX and apply a rigid Tank Stance requirement. Following her phase transition, I will have an easy enmity lead and can survive Phantom Flurry with Vengeance and Raw. I've achieved my whole as a tank. There is literally nothing else I could or should do in regards to enmity and mitigation. Therefore, if I were arbitrarily forced to sit in Defiance until the swap, my damage is simply being nerfed into the ground for no reason. I'm not being rewarded with more compelling gameplay, which would come in the form of consistent damage and/or struggles with enmity. I'm merely sitting around, waiting for Suzaku to do her tank buster. This is neither fun nor interesting because I can't optimize. Nothing I do will improve the situation. I can't better mitigate her tank buster nor is generating even more enmity necessary. My role, as a tank, is done.

You may say, "Well now you can focus on damage!" Except my damage has been artificially gimped to the point of being irrelevant.

While you may prefer these sorts of restrictions to ensure a more genuine tank experience, I guarantee people will quit in droves, thus defeating the whole purpose. It may feel more "tank-y" but that hardly matters when no one's playing it.