Don't repeat the past a third time, Yoshida.

[Awful]

It's true though, the devs give us nothing to worry about other than ways we can contribute more DPS, or postion for more DPS, mitigation isn't in their balancing equation here it's DPS and ilvl progression the more uptime and positioning you give to your party the faster you clear. It's like in A11S back in the day when the raiding scene was so hellbent on skipping Lapis and the devs said that it shouldn't of been possible (I'd find the quote or source but it's 3am maybe later) to skip a whole phase but we as the raiders pushed ourselves.

You'll never be rewarded for mitigating a boss for 20 seconds while the healers cheer you on from the stands instead they'll ask you "why didn't we skip Soar?" it's like Lyth said we're just glorified DPS with mitigation, there's a lot wrong with tanks especially in regards to when we were using ilvl 270 accessories at the start of SB. That to me was enough to make me wonder what was the devs team idea here? It was a big step back and it's a design choice I honestly to this day can't comprehend why it got to that point.

Honestly SE could take a page out of WoWs book back in Wrath of the Lich King even though all tanks were tanks and not DPS with mitigation cooldowns but I digress, there's 2 fights I can recall that would work well in XIV in regards to tan king. 1st one is Grobbulus where the tank has to keep moving the boss around while the boss drops fart clouds on the ground so you gotta kite em around while the OT tanks the oozes, while this is going on healers have a debuff on them that they gotta heal through the fight. This would work so well in XIV as there's a tank swap when the MT gets a poison debuff on them, this incentivizing Shirk it'd be a well designed tank fight, the second is Heigan the Unclean (dance dance) where the MT has to kite the boss to the safe areas with the rest of the raid group. It's another well designed tank fight as it gives you awareness and hindsight where to move before the poison rises up and you stand on the safe spots to avoid dying.

I was gonna include A7S but Lyth beat it to me that's great tank movement and a great fight for tanks to understand awareness but back on topic, if the Dev team repeats the same issues as this xpac then tanking is going to continue to be the same old, nothing but DPS to contribute in a straightforward way which leaves tanks with such wasted potential that could have been.

[Lyth]

Naxx set the standard for raid design in its heyday, with multiple, well designed raid wings of bosses that you could progress through in any order to unlock the final two bosses. Thaddius remains one of my favourite fights of all time. You want a creative tank swap? The twin opening adds periodically launch their respective tanks across the arena at each other, forcing you to taunt your new add when you landed. There are so many creative ways of doing swaps which don't involve vuln stacks.

Grobb is an archetypal example, but the broader concept is a shrinking arena. It exists in this game too.

Aiatar from Brayflox is a good example. In standard raid content, the party member with the poison puddle would get a mark above their head several seconds in advance, with the expectation that they would either bait the puddle somewhere else, or that you would engage in some sort of Cover shenanigans to ignore the mechanic and maximise uptime.

Instead, the only cue that you have is his targeting arrow, which appears about a second before the puddle goes out. So if he targets you or a melee, it drops on the boss, forcing you to re-position. Which is great. You make a slow spiral inwards as the arena shrinks around you.

Likewise, the final Mamool Ja boss of Wanderer's Palace Hard places totems where he stands, also forcing you to move him or take increased damage. And these are dungeons.

I think that somewhere along the way, the raid design mantra has become more about creating the most elaborate choreography and the flashiest mechanics, while losing sight of the fundamentals. That's why raid tanking feels like it's lost its substance, and the only thing we have left is DDR dps.

[Awful]

Naxx set the standard for raid design in its heyday, with multiple, well designed raid wings of bosses that you could progress through in any order to unlock the final two bosses. Thaddius remains one of my favourite fights of all time. You want a creative tank swap? The twin opening adds periodically launch their respective tanks across the arena at each other, forcing you to taunt your new add when you landed. There are so many creative ways of doing swaps which don't involve vuln stacks.

I agree I missed this one, Thaddius is a good representation of a great tank fight instead of just moving the boss around and trading off vulen stacks, I'm even gonna throw O3S in as probably the most unique fight for tanking (at least for me) this expansion. It's unique in the sense of there's lots of adds to OT, the board is always changing so tanks have to adapt and move the boss around depending on where the adds are, it's fast, fun and really left an impression on me a much better fight than O6S, O5S, O1S, O2S, I haven't gone into this raid tier as my raid group disbanded after getting to Kefka so I can't comment on this raid tier.

What i'm saying is I hope the dev team introduces more interesting fights that aren't just a bore like 2/4 fights that require no effort, no positioning, you just "tank" like O5S you just tank and dodge AoEs, O6S the OT "add" is just auto attacking the OT and the MT is barely taking any damage as the boss moves itself making you do less work, the boss is all ass too so there's no positionals for melee.

A lot of MMOs could learn from how Naxx was made having wings and access to what bosses you want to fight I'm honestly tired of having 4 circular arenas every patch I would love to have an actual raid where we could go through, fight trash (yeah I said it), and then get to bosses at the end and progress.

[Maltothoris]

I'm reminded of the some of the savage second coil stuff or final coil. In t11, you had the nodes where 2 could be tanked while the other just moved around and you each on their own thing. The cube had the shared aoe and could cleave, the sphere would always crit and place puddles on a random person which would slow them for the Kaliya's three lasers and the egg which just moved slowly, could only be damaged in melee range and would place forked lightning on a random person, when you killed one of the other two, they would try to get to the egg and absorb it and it would gain extra hp and its gimmicks. Or Phoneix and the Bennus gimmick with flames of rebirth. The add phase of T13 where the pain of Meracydia has to be kept seperate from the rest or else they would eat the the gust of meracydia and get damage buffs. HW still had moments like this, like A7S's ball phase or A8S if you decided to do the uplink correctly you had to position the boss' flarethrower to get rid of the tornado.

In Alphascape, every boss repositions themselves after their ultimate aoe or for Final, he goes to the center for hello world.

[Kalise]

I feel that in addition to making more tank related mechanics for bosses (Also, trash, because heck, why not) they could really do with giving Tanks more tools to play with (Which could also help them include more mechanics).

Like, a core premise of a Tank is to protect your allies. But in actual gameplay it's just about bopping things on the head with an Axe/Sword.

It always feels good when I drop Shake It Off and mitigate a big AoE attack, but it's rare that it's actually necessary as well as being only a single skill devoted to actually protecting allies...

There's so much potential for actually protecting allies with skills. Stuff similar to old WoW's Paladin skill Blessing of Sacrifice (Where you take a percentage of the damage your ally takes). You could have things where you intercept the next debuff placed on an ally (So you could have mechanics that put stuff like a damage reduction debuff on DPS or a healing output debuff on Healers and you take it instead). Things like Warhammer Online (RIP) where tanks had a channelled ability that made allies behind you take 50% less damage which could easily be transferred into FF by making one of those bubbles where allies take less damage in, so for big AoE nukes everyone hides behind the tank.

This is but a small selection of a vast number of potential things that could be done to divert the Tank role away from "DPS but who takes less damage" and more towards being an actual Tank protecting their allies.

Also: Please remove stances, they suck. Especially when it's really just down to "Stay in DPS stance 24/7" because threat and mitigation are non-factors (Not to mention, DPS stances also have zero downsides compared to the significant damage reduction on Tank stances...)

[Thela]

You could have things where you intercept the next debuff placed on an ally (So you could have mechanics that put stuff like a damage reduction debuff on DPS or a healing output debuff on Healers and you take it instead).

It's called Cover and already exists.

Things like Warhammer Online (RIP) where tanks had a channelled ability that made allies behind you take 50% less damage which could easily be transferred into FF by making one of those bubbles where allies take less damage in, so for big AoE nukes everyone hides behind the tank.

Already exists as well in form of Passage of Arms.

[Kalise]

It's called Cover and already exists.
Already exists as well in form of Passage of Arms.

If you're specifically Paladin, yes.

If you're Warrior/Dork Knight then you do not get those tools.

Also, Cover just transfers damage, not Debuffs. While Passage of Arms is only 15% mitigation, while I was more envisioning something strong enough so people hide behind the tank in encounters instead of conveniently placed rocks/pillars.

In addition to being just overall examples of things Tanks could do as a form of protecting allies as a core mechanic as opposed to a niche ability a single Tank has.

[SargentToughie]

Snip

I feel like your heart's in the right place here, but the execution is just a little off. For instance, 50% mitigation on an ability is just hilariously broken. That's more mitigation than the Tank LB2 provides. I think that as far as being a protector/guardian goes, Paladin actually fulfils that fantasy fairly well as is, with Passage of Arms and Cover.

I think a bigger issue, coupled with the overarching gameplay squabbles from previous pages, is that the identities of the 3 tanks has become somewhat muddied. Warrior is the token barbarian, and yet it has the best party wide shield of any tank? And then Dark Knight is... uh... honestly I'm not too terribly sure what Dark Knight's identity is supposed to be. Right now it just feels like Paladin 2: Dark Boogaloo - APM harder.

Doing more to give each tank it's own unique identity would go a long way. Not that such a thing alone is quite enough, considering the deeper mechanical complaints that a lot of veteran and ex tank players are making in this thread.

[Kalise]

I feel like your heart's in the right place here, but the execution is just a little off. For instance, 50% mitigation on an ability is just hilariously broken.

Again, it was merely an example. Something more than 15% but less than 50% could work. Heck, you could even tie it in to mitigation stats so they actually have a use over just get stuff that increases DPS because that's the only thing that is actually relevant to increase...

I think a bigger issue, coupled with the overarching gameplay squabbles from previous pages, is that the identities of the 3 tanks has become somewhat muddied. Warrior is the token barbarian, and yet it has the best party wide shield of any tank? And then Dark Knight is... uh... honestly I'm not too terribly sure what Dark Knight's identity is supposed to be. Right now it just feels like Paladin 2: Dark Boogaloo - APM harder.

Doing more to give each tank it's own unique identity would go a long way. Not that such a thing alone is quite enough, considering the deeper mechanical complaints that a lot of veteran and ex tank players are making in this thread.

True, though, the issue is, trying to make each Tank unique, without then breaking things so that one particular tank with one particular niche skill (Or set of skills) becoming "Mandatory" in order to deal with a mechanic.

If you make it so that mechanics then don't need any unique skills, then you end up with this current situation where they all feel similar because their only use is stuff that all the classes share...

At best you can try and do something like, give them all the same types of skill that a mechanic is based around, but each of them does it in a unique way.

For example, in regards to an AoE protection a la Passage of Arms, we have well... Passage of Arms for Paladin to provide % mitigation. Warrior's could provide an AoE health boost a la Thrill of Battle while Dork Knight could have the AoE shield with comparable strength (As an extension of The Blackest Night)

That sort of thing would be the only real way to kind of diversify the tanks. Unless you want to try and get really into balance and have their core gameplay differ (I.e. Having Warriors deal a butt load of damage compared to DRK/PLD but having something like PLD being able to buff allies DPS so their party's DD's do more damage while DRK debuff enemies making them take more damage. With the result being that they all offer similar overall party DPS. The issue is that balancing that would be an absolute NIGHTMARE)

But for sure, one of the things that needs to be done is for boss mechanics to start actually being a thing for Tanks. Which is where new utility could come in to play as an avenue for design (In addition to using existing utility such as Shirk)

[Grimoire-M]

To be honest one of the things that baffles me about SE is that they haven't taken advantage of the fact that in 8 Mans you can split the party into two completely cohesive 4-man groups with a tank, healer, and two DPS each.

Imagine a savage raid that actually was a raid. Where your goal was to do a speed run down two trash-packed halls side by side with two 4-man parties simultaneously, with mechanics where you specifically have to swap individual members in specific instances in order to clear the fight. Stuff like transferring keys/cargo across from one area to the other, or placing the two trying to swap in a mini-arena on order to use abilities that only that role has access to in order to deal with enemies, or allow two separate arenas to be close enough together that the healers can heal both tanks and/or prey targets in order to deal with one side getting bombarded, or just to barely let you use Ranged LB3 on a pair of giant packs.


Hell that would be a unique enough arena in of itself without having to make it a full-scale dungeon.