Tank Stance Redesign

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The difference doesn't matter. Lowering someone's ceiling doesn't change the range of a poor player from a good player.

If your max is 5000 now, but was then reduced to 4000, your lower end is going to proportionately drop.

If dropping that damage capacity makes you quit the job, you didn't like it to start with.

That's silly way of looking at it. Arbitrarily lowering the ceiling in the manner proposed takes away better player's ability to optimize. Even in a dungeon, I want to squeeze how as much as possible from the jobs I play. Locking me into Tank Stance is the developer's condescending way of saying, "No, no. That's enough damage." Not to mention, as Spectre noted above, Warrior in particular, is boring when locked in Defiance.

No matter how you slice it, this slows down the run and forces people into a sub-optimal position because the devs didn't like us tanking outside Tank Stance yet couldn't be bothered to make Tank Stance worthwhile.

[shao32]

How WAR is boring in defiance? They gauge generation is the same, the rotation is the same, you replace fell cleave for inner beast and add unchained to the buttons you have to press, the rest it's just the same.

[347SPECTRE]

How WAR is boring in defiance? They gauge generation is the same, the rotation is the same, you replace fell cleave for inner beast and add unchained to the buttons you have to press, the rest it's just the same.

This is just me, but staying in defiance for too long in a single target situation just feels wrong.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

How WAR is boring in defiance? They gauge generation is the same, the rotation is the same, you replace fell cleave for inner beast and add unchained to the buttons you have to press, the rest it's just the same.

Because the fun part is maximizing damage. At least for me. If mechanics or outgoing damage incentivized Defiance, that's a different story. On the other hand, if I'm forced into it, that's just the game punishing me because the devs want to make things even easier. It's the same reason I dislike dungeons that forced small pulls (Hullbreaker HM comes to mind). Technically, nothing changes about the dungeon itself. I just can't pull more than four mobs that do trivial amounts of damage, thus it's boring.

It's entirely subjective though.

[shao32]

So in resume is a question of numbers more that gameplay mechanics itself.

It's still a pretty valid point of why tank stances sould be change.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

How WAR is boring in defiance? They gauge generation is the same, the rotation is the same, you replace fell cleave for inner beast and add unchained to the buttons you have to press, the rest it's just the same.

Defiance is fun when and only when you survive as a result of sacrificing your own damage. It's a balance, a compromise, and a bit of a gamble until the fight is wholly known, from which you are trying to cheat out a greater-than-sum equilibrium. That's what makes either stance interesting -- because the other exists. Defiance allows for powerful tools, but comes at a cost. Minimizing that, coming nearer and nearer the event horizon, is what makes Deliverance entertaining. It's not the Fell Cleaves. They entertain as well as they can only when held in contrast to each other.

[Big-Isaac]

It seems to me like the stance dancing is there to paper over the fact that the act of tanking in this game is A) very simple and B) not particularly ... tank-y.
My interpretation of what a "tank" is supposed to do comes down to keeping the target's attention away from the rest of the party and staying alive. This is the tank jobs' purpose in FF14 as well, but unfortunately neither of those two things provides much of a challenge. Enmity is borderline a non-factor and so long as you follow the mechanics of the fight like everyone else, you shouldn't have trouble staying alive, either.

So with the two major aspects of tanking out of the picture, what does your gameplay focus on? DPS
Hence why staying in tank stance feels so bad for so many people - the tank stance's contribution to your survivabiltiy and enmity output is largely unnecessary while kneecapping the DPS you contribute to the raid.

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.

[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.