DPS mentality in MMOs

[Dualgunner]

-Don't pull is correct. Letting tanks pull is a good way for them to start their agro management. DPS should never pull since it's the tanks job to control the flow of battle.
-Manage your threat, so the DPS can do more DPS easily without fear. Sorry but your job isn't to dps, it's to control all the mobs. It's very annoying to see tank's in attack stance telling DPS to slow down because they lose agro.
-Avoid AoE. Goes without saying

Uhm...dps aren't being told to slow down generally, they're being told to use aggro mitigation tools provided to them. Tools that are literally one button. Tools that do anything from cut aggro in half to reduce its generation by 90%.

If a tank can't hold off a dps who is properly dumping / mitigating aggro, there is something seriously wrong whether it's gear or skill.

[EaMett]

1.) It's not normal to see a DPS pop a threat reduction cooldown in DF dungeons. So I don't think it's really misinformation but bad habits taught by the "Don't even move the mouse cursor or allow the half second delay for the cooldown cause moar deeps!!!!" attitude.

As others have already stated. It's very common in MMOs for DPS to have to manage their aggro. If you meant that it's not common to see a DPS pop threat reduction in DF dungeons then I can see that being mostly true yes. Doesn't mean they're in the right, it's just that for the most part enmity generation for tanks is pretty easy in FF14 so it's not often that you have to use it, hence it isn't a go to.

The DPS in your example is totally wrong for complaining to the tank though. He should be managing his own enmity.

2.) Its not about getting more comms its about the most comms for the least amount of effort.

How do you measure effort? If you want 100 comms it's less effort as healer or tank. If you mean how much effort went into clearing content.... it's a little hard to measure as everyone will have a different opinion. Some people find DPS hard, others tanking hard or healing hard. DPSing for me is way more effort for instance.

Honestly though, most of the content in ff14 is pretty easygoing on the healers. Especially ex roulette stuff. A bit of stupid is barely a dent in the process, not anywhere as penalizing as a squishy tank for example.

3.) My whole point of more development time is based on the fact there are more variety in DPS than in tank/heals. That's why it's more boring to play tank/heals couple that with the stress of the group's success hangs on the balance of whether or not you do your job well = less people doing it. Dps is a way less stressful position to play in dungeons than healer for example.

That's because tank and healers are much harder to balance. Not only is their balance complex because if you up one aspect of their kit it has the effect of uping/nerfing another aspect of their kit as a result (give a healer a stronger heal and his DPS could potentially go up from not having to heal as much). But also because changes to these classes can also affect the damage output of the rest of the party (better mana management or mitigation could outright change strats and dps output).
And lets not even mention synergies between healers' and tanks' mitigation and healing kits.

Because of this these classes really need to be homogeneous to avoid serious imbalances.

Also there really isn't anymore pressure. The only pressure you have is not to die because your death could be hard or impossible to recover from but that's about it. Yes some responsibility is transferred to healers mostly. But with greater responsibility comes greater power, you also get to pick who gets to live and who dies because you can't be bothered healing stupid.

Overall I don't think tanks and healers are abandoned because of any of this rather than it being due to every kid wanting to be a virtual badass and healer/tank isn't really that.

4.) The point of worrying about MP or mana is only viable when you're not having to heal through stupid. Which is what the DPS mentality breeds; Stand in stupid to cut half a second off the encounter = way less MP left over at the end of the fight. You are right about there being a balance but that balance is shot to pieces when the DPS mentality cuts in. Tanks fight over aggro because it proves they do more dps and ignore adds and the healer has to heal through it. DPS stand in stupid to get that last half of that spell cast so they don't suffer a .5 dps penalty.

That's not true. Mana is a huge liability for DPSing as a healer in plenty of content. Dungeons and aoe DPS particularly. A dungeon party with low DPS is a HUGE HUGE HUGE Mana drain for the healer even if there is ZERO damage to heal. Caps for emphasis because I cannot stress this enough. If your party takes forever to kill packs of mobs you'll burn through your mana management tools in no time by just DPSing. It's much easier on the mana being in a party where the DPS is high and everyone is standing in aoes.

The other two things that can drain your mana are raising and overhealing.
It's extremely rare to have mana issues if dps is good, nobody dies, and you don't overheal much (<30%). Sounds like a captain obvious statement but what it means is that stupid is rarely a big hindrance if stupid survives. Classes like BLM are pros at "surviving stupid" but a lot of players use moves from their books if they feel like the healer has their back and it comes at very little expense on the healer end.

I'm not saying DPS mentality isn't a thing (it is for very good reason, namely game design). I'm also not saying it doesn't suck. It very much does if people are dying right and left for that .5%. It's just that everything becomes easier with more DPS and if people being stupid for that sake is upsetting, it's even more upsetting getting people who have no clue what they're doing, have low dps and/or non-optimized characters that you need to carry around like dead weight even if their mechanic handling is flawless.

Pick your poison, basically.

[Adrestia]

As others have stated already. It's very common in MMOs for DPS to have to manage their aggro.

Not sure if this is related to the descriptions I gave to KaivaC earlier, but just to clarify, those were *legacy* mechanics. DPS managing threat in WoW died around the launch of SWP in TBC, over a decade ago now, when they buffed Consecrate on Paladins to the point that losing threat would be a challenge. Other tank classes followed suit. In other recent(ish) holy trinity MMOs I’ve played, DPS classes didn’t even have tools for threat management. It was all up to the tanks to use some combination of tank stances and/or increased threat moves to hold hate. Most of the time, much like say the Rage of Halone combo, these threat multipliers were so high that losing hate was pretty unimaginable. XIV is just more convoluted than many other games (just speaking in terms of threat management) in that the aggro combos are the things you try not to use more than absolutely necessary and the DPS jobs have kit to help deal with that reality.

[Lunalepsy]

This is what you get when you streamline things that are supposed to be versatile.

[Jonnycbad]

While I enjoy the dungeon mentality of pulling all the things and burning them down, a part of me still wishes it were slower if not for immersion reasons. I mean I know it's a game and dungeons are a means to an end (currency for gear), but like in a real tabletop RPG or even fantasy story, rarely is it the case where adventurers would run through a dungeon aggroing and pissing off everything and then melting them all. You would proceed cautiously, being ambushed when turning corners, fighting a few mobs here and there as you explore certain rooms, trigger traps etc. FFXIV dungeons are just decorated linear tubes where mobs jump out at you. Literally, like a haunted house ride where you're on a track.

[EaMett]

Thanks for the extra information. I've mostly played legacy MMOs so your initial comment resonated well with my experience. Even games that had no enmity management still required you to stop DPSing if you took aggro, or move further, etc. etc.. I also stopped playing WoW after the end of the burning crusade so yeah I did see those changes, though I still remember aggro meters being a thing during the lich king for some reason, maybe I'm just projecting older memories into the newer content.

So yeah. Perhaps it isn't as intuitive as I made it sound for people coming from other MMOs. It's still not common for people with experience to outright ignore skills in their toolkits though.

[wereotter]

Your story sounds more like misinformation on the DPS' end than an actually issue with game design. DPS should keep their aggro in check period. Even if that means they stop dpsing. If dps is too slow because of an aggro cap, blame the tank sure but don't grab aggro and complain about grabbing aggro. That's like shooting someone and then complaining they didn't move from in front of your gun.

No. Just... no.

A DPS should not stop performing their role because of a failing on the part of the tank. DPS at this point all have many options to keep their emnity under control with every job except ninja having access to an agro dump, and every job except bard and machinist having access to Diversion. However if a DPS is using their tools and a tank isn't holding hate, the DPS should not be expected to just sit around with a thumb up their butt doing nothing, the tank, in that case, needs to be doing their job and holding agro, because at the end of the day, that's the tank's primary job. Anything the DPS is doing is all their only to help the tank perform that role.

[Nora_of_Mira]

rarely is it the case where adventurers would run through a dungeon aggroing and pissing off everything and then melting them all. You would proceed cautiously, being ambushed when turning corners, fighting a few mobs here and there as you explore certain rooms, trigger traps etc.

this sounds like a certain piece of content that these forums really don't like...

(not meant to be taken seriously, just a joke)

[EaMett]

While I enjoy the dungeon mentality of pulling all the things and burning them down, a part of me still wishes it were slower if not for immersion reasons. I mean I know it's a game and dungeons are a means to an end (currency for gear), but like in a real tabletop RPG or even fantasy story, rarely is it the case where adventurers would run through a dungeon aggroing and pissing off everything and then melting them all. You would proceed cautiously, being ambushed when turning corners, fighting a few mobs here and there as you explore certain rooms, trigger traps etc. FFXIV dungeons are just decorated linear tubes where mobs jump out at you. Literally, like a haunted house ride where you're on a track.

One thing FFXIV is missing imo is a real use for CC. Which you would usually get from tackling hard dungeon content.

[SendohJin]

One thing FFXIV is missing imo is a real use for CC. Which you would usually get from tackling hard dungeon content.

it's because of Duty Finder. that or every job has to have the same CC. right now at least half the jobs don't have any kind of CC.