Tank Stance Redesign

[Kyrph]

I think what it boils down to that the stances brings to the table is choice and skill capping. I mainly play WAR so most of what I am saying comes from that perspective. It is perfectly fine if you want to play the tank role solely as a defensive tank by staying in tank stance throughout a dungeon or boss so you barely take any damage and never have to worry about enmity problems. However by giving the tanks a dps stance as well, you open the opportunity for players that choose to try to maximize the role a bit further by putting out a decent amount of damage as well. I don't see the problem with that at all and why people argue that tanks shouldn't do damage is beyond me when it is very rewarding to properly stance dance and push a lot of damage to help kill things quicker. Although I do believe the stances could be worked on a bit more so that stance dancing feels a bit more fluent I do not believe they should get rid of stance entirely and anyone that plays a tank shouldn't want that as well.

[shao32]

I honestly agree with this. Every other mmo gets it better then we do here. A tanks job is to tank. If not you are just a dragoon with more health. They have no purpose being a dps and it seems to only be causing everyone more stress.

Tanking and dpsing are not mutual exclusive, a tank can dealt a big chunk of damage and don't create any stress on others if being played properly and that's pretty fine, the problem is tanking itself is easy and when you cover that you only have to do dps and tank stances are in the way.

I think what it boils down to that the stances brings to the table is choice and skill capping. I mainly play WAR so most of what I am saying comes from that perspective. It is perfectly fine if you want to play the tank role solely as a defensive tank by staying in tank stance throughout a dungeon or boss so you barely take any damage and never have to worry about enmity problems. However by giving the tanks a dps stance as well, you open the opportunity for players that choose to try to maximize the role a bit further by putting out a decent amount of damage as well. I don't see the problem with that at all and why people argue that tanks shouldn't do damage is beyond me when it is very rewarding to properly stance dance and push a lot of damage to help kill things quicker. Although I do believe the stances could be worked on a bit more so that stance dancing feels a bit more fluent I do not believe they should get rid of stance entirely and anyone that plays a tank shouldn't want that as well.

It will be true if turtle tanking offer equivalent benefics to agresive tanking, they don't, agresive tanking offers a lot more benefict to the party transforming this choice to good play vs poor play, there is no stance Dancing, or you stay out or you stay in, the middle ground is almost as bad as staying full stance on, it's not fine being defensive when you can do a lot more with using your tools properly and pusing you dps further with that, choices never work in mmos, the only way to make tanks work better is letting be defensive and dealt a good chunk of damage (properly balanced of course with DPS) so everyone will be happy and the role will be more straight forward, not like now where turtles hurt themself and they party's for this poor desing.

[Kyrph]

Tanking and dpsing are not mutual exclusive, a tank can dealt a big chunk of damage and don't create any stress on others if being played properly and that's pretty fine, the problem is tanking itself is easy and when you cover that you only have to do dps and tank stances are in the way.



It will be true if turtle tanking offer equivalent benefics to agresive tanking, they don't, agresive tanking offers a lot more benefict to the party transforming this choice to good play vs poor play, there is no stance Dancing, or you stay out or you stay in, the middle ground is almost as bad as staying full stance on, it's not fine being defensive when you can do a lot more with using your tools properly and pusing you dps further with that, choices never work in mmos, the only way to make tanks work better is letting be defensive and dealt a good chunk of damage (properly balanced of course with DPS) so everyone will be happy and the role will be more straight forward, not like now where turtles hurt themself and they party's for this poor desing.

I think you are leaving out the options that healers also have on dpsing. While it is true tanks that do damage bring more, tanks that stay defensive give the healers time to dish out a lot of damage without having to focus the full dps tank that is getting rocked. I have seen some healers pull some crazy numbers so I do believe that being a full defensive tank does not fall to far behind a aggressive dps tank. Which is why I mentioned that the stances could be fixed a bit cause I do agree they are not completely balanced but to say it is a poor play style is only looking at the tank itself. In regards to stance dancing when it comes to WAR a lot of our burst damage comes from IR so switching to Deliverance, popping a defensive and IR to dish out huge damage then going back into defiance so you can get caught up in health to go back to deliverance when you are ready again is 100% more viable than just staying in defiance the entire time.

[shao32]

I think you are leaving out the options that healers also have on dpsing. While it is true tanks that do damage bring more, tanks that stay defensive give the healers time to dish out a lot of damage without having to focus the full dps tank that is getting rocked. I have seen some healers pull some crazy numbers so I do believe that being a full defensive tank does not fall to far behind a aggressive dps tank. Which is why I mentioned that the stances could be fixed a bit cause I do agree they are not completely balanced but to say it is a poor play style is only looking at the tank itself. In regards to stance dancing when it comes to WAR a lot of our burst damage comes from IR so switching to Deliverance, popping a defensive and IR to dish out huge damage then going back into defiance so you can get caught up in health to go back to deliverance when you are ready again is 100% more viable than just staying in defiance the entire time.

The whole conception of if a tank stay on defensive stance allow healers to push more dps is wrong in all terms, you are free to check any fflogs and see the top healers have tanks with zero or near zero tank stance uptime, healers heals are to powerful as tanks mitigation tools and if both use they tools properly both tank and healer are able to push high dps, the DPS tank meta don't come at the cost of anything at contrary the turtle strat.

[Kyrph]

The whole conception of if a tank stay on defensive stance allow healers to push more dps is wrong in all terms, you are free to check any fflogs and see the top healers have tanks with zero or near zero tank stance uptime, healers heals are to powerful as tanks mitigation tools and if both use they tools properly both tank and healer are able to push high dps, the DPS tank meta don't come at the cost of anything at contrary the turtle strat.

It is just something I have found after tanking for so long. Maybe at the highest level this is true but for more casual players it really helps inexperienced healers in more stressful situations and allows them to improve with putting out some damage too.

[shao32]

No one said Defiance itself was or would be dull. They said being limited to JUST Defiance would be incredibly dull, just as SITTING in Defiance is now.

my question was why its gonna being dull if mechanically the job dont change at all, same buttoms same everything just less overall dps and more mitigation that you need, i ask that bcs im a person that enjoy the jobs for his gameplay not his numbers.

It is just something I have found after tanking for so long. Maybe at the highest level this is true but for more casual players it really helps inexperienced healers in more stressful situations and allows them to improve with putting out some damage too.

im being tank since 2.1 war rework, as my own experience this 5 years show me the skill of the healer is irrelevant for non savage content, if i have proper gear and use my job tools properly i can stand anything bcs outside of savage everything hit like a wet noodle, if a healer is having troubles to keep me up i highly doubt they will have the skill to push some dps bcs they will strugle on everything else.

[Shurrikhan]

my question was why its gonna being dull if mechanically the job dont change at all, same buttoms same everything just less overall dps and more mitigation that you need, i ask that bcs im a person that enjoy the jobs for his gameplay not his numbers.

Okay, but... numbers generate gameplay.

Do you dislike current Warrior gameplay, because it doesn't often enough encourage frequent enough or long enough uses of Defiance?

If not -- if you enjoy the gameplay -- that is the gameplay the numbers have created. Tuning is part of gameplay. It doesn't bar options entirely, but it does have a heavy-handed influence on the when and where of each.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think you are leaving out the options that healers also have on dpsing. While it is true tanks that do damage bring more, tanks that stay defensive give the healers time to dish out a lot of damage without having to focus the full dps tank that is getting rocked. I have seen some healers pull some crazy numbers so I do believe that being a full defensive tank does not fall to far behind a aggressive dps tank. Which is why I mentioned that the stances could be fixed a bit cause I do agree they are not completely balanced but to say it is a poor play style is only looking at the tank itself. In regards to stance dancing when it comes to WAR a lot of our burst damage comes from IR so switching to Deliverance, popping a defensive and IR to dish out huge damage then going back into defiance so you can get caught up in health to go back to deliverance when you are ready again is 100% more viable than just staying in defiance the entire time.

This is decidedly false. Healers lose negligible amounts to their DPS—if any whatsoever—because the vast majority of healing in this game is handled through HoTs and oGCD aoes. More often than not, Tank Stance causes overhealing as tanks no longer take the expected damage making abilities like Excog and Essential less effectively. Regardless, since Tank Stance in a single target environment costs over a 2,000 DPS loss, healers would have to either lose an equivalent amount or deal comparable damage for it to ever been a gain for tanks to sit in Tank Stance. There is no scenario whatsoever where Tank Stance is ever a raid DPS gain. In fact, to put this into perspective, it's less of a DPS loss to have a Monk use Purification to dump their aggro than force a tank into Tank Stance to do an aggro combo unless it's Warrior and they have Unchained. That is how severe the damage penalty is, and why tanks what virtually nothing to do with stances outside Ultimate.

IMO the best way to go would be to cut the stances altogether and shift the tanks' gameplay more towards mitigation. DPS should only be a by-product of the tanking gameplay, secondary in concern to minimizing and smoothing your damage taken.

Unfortunately, this can only happen with a fairly significant philosophy change. The devs would have accept outgoing damage is simply too low while tanks, and healers especially, have far too many options at their disposal to mitigate the damage we do see. Content as a whole would need to encourage defensive play through sheer damage and mechanical necessity, which has the indirect effect of making things more difficult for inexperienced players. With Stormblood's shift to a more simplistic approach, I cannot see them do a 180 come 5.0. Which is somewhat ironic given how much they seem to dislike our aggressive playstyle.

[Big-Isaac]

Unfortunately, this can only happen with a fairly significant philosophy change. The devs would have accept outgoing damage is simply too low while tanks, and healers especially, have far too many options at their disposal to mitigate the damage we do see. Content as a whole would need to encourage defensive play through sheer damage and mechanical necessity, which has the indirect effect of making things more difficult for inexperienced players. With Stormblood's shift to a more simplistic approach, I cannot see them do a 180 come 5.0. Which is somewhat ironic given how much they seem to dislike our aggressive playstyle.

I agree that it would take a lot of work, but I don't think it would be insurmountable. There's plenty of measures they could take to ease the transition and avoid punishing inexperienced players too much. I just really hope this game gets there at some point, if not in 5.X then in 6.X