Community Opinions on Tanking

[Shurrikhan]

I think the main issue with this, is the limited amount of shared utility between tanks as well as the fact that much of this would be dependent on encounter mechanics rather than specifically to do with tanking.

I disagree. The mechanics don't have to be encounter-specific at all. Rather, the game is in desperate need of universal mechanics that can lend themselves to nuanced usage. I believe enmity, if revised, could be one of those things. If all mob attacks were skillshots, of sorts, and thereby interceptable (albeit it with whatever pierce/splash/cleave factor), that would be another. And that's barely scratching the surface. For instance:

"Stagger" as a nuance-capable party survival tool.
Since 1.x I'd been pushing for a revision of the XIII Stagger mechanic. Consider all damage as the product of Potency and Pierce. In XIII terms, this is the raw, initially Ravager-like effect of Stagger and the factor by which it can be modified towards the longer-lasting Commando-like effect that keeps it from draining as quickly. Jobs are balanced around having either more Potency or more Pierce by which to put out their intended damage levels. Those with the most Pierce, such as MCH, BRD, and DRG, are good at longer-term harassment of enemies through Stagger. Those with the least -- and therefore the most potency to compensate -- are good at immediate, short-term Stagger. But, this doesn't lead to an incapacitated effect. Instead, it simply directly saps from a combination of the enemy's Potency (based on the Potency of your attacks) being generated or readied at that time, draining over time and upon the drained skill's use, and Strength/Dexterity/Vitality (based on Pierce damage). In this system, Attack Power is integral to means of defense -- without it, you cannot significantly block or parry.

In this system, active mitigation would also be based on readied potency and upon one's main stats. Being bashed about reduces the strength with which you can block or parry right now. Being gutted reduces the main stats by which you can increase block/parry strength, block/parry chance, and your maximum HP and HP restoration over time and from external sources. Being overwhelmed will kill you. The advantage of tanks, then, is less that they can survive a single blow or flurry of blows that otherwise would not be able to, but they can continue to take hits without being trampled, and with the least negative impact on their own damage (proportionately, and perhaps even flatly). This allows non-tanks additional lenience by which to participate in tanking tasks, albeit only momentarily, and reason to do so. Inversely, the tank's survival depends largely upon the party focusing down and/or suppressing enemies who would do the most harm so that they tank can survive. Survival is now everyone's concern.

The key here as it applies to the present state of tanking -- party irrelevant -- is that not all skills Pierce equally. Enmity skills, therefore, would be replaced with skills highly capable of immediate Stagger, while everything else is invested with utility that allows you to tap into your resources, ready yourself, ramp higher, or whatever else possible in the time that you needn't bash an enemy back just before their blow so that you can survive by bare hundreds of HP. For Warrior, Skull Sunder has the most stagger immediately producible. Butcher's Block has the most over three hits, sustaining the Stagger but spiking for less. Storm's Eye peaks at the end of its animation and adds Armor penetration. Storm's Path sustains, heals, and has twice the gauge benefit of any other skill. So on and so forth.

Debuffs and DR.
Replace Diminishing Returns. Replace most pure Stuns/Silences. In their place, create spectrums of debuffs, with multiple tiers therein, inflicted with debuff "damage", so to speak. Stun degrades to Pacification/Silence which degrades to Slow (Action Speed). Bind degrades to Snare* which degrades to Heavy (Movement Speed). (Tugs, slowing heavily rather than completely, like trying to pull free of a trap, taking effect over displacement rather than breaking instantly upon movement again becoming possible.) Essentially, players universally and mobs by rank, type, or uniquely are given initial and end thresholds (think, static vs. kinetic friction coefficients) for a (de)buff of a given spectrum, be it Action (Haste <> Stun/Pacify/Maim), Movement (Alacrity <> Bind/Snare/Heavy, Vertical (Launch <> Smite), Incapacitation (Sleep/Apathy/Daze), or whatever, for when the spectrum will allow the next tier of effect. If a player fails to deal enough Action Speed-type debuff "damage" to meet the start threshold for Stun, it'll be degraded to whatever tier it can afford.

This debuff "damage" works on literally anything, but, naturally, at less effect the more mass or HP or resistance or whatnot an enemy has. Moreover, each time a debuff of a given debuff "Damage" amount is inflicted, resistance is added proportionate to that "Damage" over a second or so, with drain speed being inversely proportionate to the %effectiveness of the debuff that created it. A Stun has 100% effectiveness in preventing actions and Bind in preventing movement, so their resistances do not decrease while Bind is active, giving it a longer period during which some portion of Stun or Bind "Damage" is reduced. This means that debuffs, e.g. Stuns, are hard to stack continuously, because the more -say- Stun you hit for, each following stun is worth cumulatively less until the resistance has had time to wear off. This is your DR component, but done flexibly.

Let's say one player tries to stun a mob with some 1500 Stun "damage", but its threshold is 2000, then it instead inflicts Pacification and drains continuously based on the damage generation (e.g. building continuously towards the next special or two coming off cooldown but locked out due to pacification) being prevented. Let's say the mob builds 20% resistance, so 300 debuff damage mitigation. If another ally a second later hits the mob with another 1200 Stun damage after 200 has already drained and 280 is reduced by resistance (20 faded over the second), then we're looking at a total now of 2200, enough to inflict the full Stun. The Pacification is then consumed instead as a Stun, and the debuff Action Speed debuff "damage" is now consumed at the higher drain rate of a Stun, during which resistance does not fade.

Again, just as this works for players against mobs, this also works for mobs against players. Tanks will have higher thresholds, drain rates, and inflicted-resistance modifiers inherently atop just taking less debuff damage in the same way they take less HP damage.

Outside of that, I once suggested that there would be more onus on Tanks doing stuff like protecting allies, or taking the place of the convenient pillars that protect against those massive AoE spells... But the issue with this kind of thing is that they're uniquely Paladin skills.

They don't have to be, and so long as PLDs remain the best at that functionality due to some unique capacity or extent of their arsenal, they have nothing to fret over.

For instance, give them the best cumulative mitigation factor. Turn Cover into Protector, a trait by which allies behind you receive your Defense towards their mitigation against cleave attacks and cleaves dealt against/through you are doubly reduced in their damage to others after you by your mitigation.

Have cleaves deal x% damage dealt to the previous target to the next. Each target hit applies their Defense or other forms of mitigation and thereby reduces what's dealt to the ally behind them. This adds up cumulatively, e.g. over a Dullahan greatsword swing's worth of allies from tankiest to least when locked into an area from which one cannot job -- squishy healers at the far end so they can survive. A tank naturally takes less damage and thus passes on less, but a PLD in particular maybe affects cleave damage's cumulative reduction doubly when blocking, atop loosely reducing cleave damage taken by allies behind them. Now you have more to do as a tank, including as a Paladin, but Paladin remains special. If need be, replace the current Intervention with a stronger Aegis Boon spell-shield by which to block for another as if you had blocked it yourself, or with an ally-targeted charge that does action intervene -- intercepting the strike directly for your ally. Cover (now called Guarding Force?) not only allows you to intercept from a range, but allows you to absorb debuffs on the ally's behalf. Passage of Arms applies up to the whole of your mitigation to those behind you and lengthens the cone of effect, building off what all tanks have, which PLD naturally builds off even further, and now making some ridiculously strong tools out of those aspects.

As it is, Tanks are limited in what they can actually do.

Yes, but not because they need to be. Don't mistake an already criticized status quo with a fundamental truth.

Which is the thing about making everyone have Tank activities, you start to make the role feel worthless because you're not in control of anything, other people are.

I wholly disagree. I'm not recommending taking control away from the tank, nor even requiring considerable coordination within casual content. But, I feel far, far more immersed in and engaged by my role -- be it tanking, damage-dealing, or healing -- when my party is coordinating with it, when I know what they want from me and they know what I want from them, when the WHM knows to allow me the few moments of no-CD bashings and heals through it with only an Aero III to spare while I'm milking my Blood Price and The Blackest Night before I drop Grit completely in favor of a Blood Weapon DA-Quietus spam as the Holy Spam goes out and I've 7 seconds of complete mitigation before having to pop my own tool -- LD if sync-able with Bene -- everything else if not. It feels great when melee are already stretching to the edges of their hitboxes as you silence a caster and pull him out of where the incoming AoEs would be. And that's the kind of stuff all this would double down on -- the feeling of teamwork seen through a particular role, not because you have sole proprietorship over its functionality or responsibility, but because you have a toolkit that wants to be abused and by golly you're going to milk it for all its worth in the party- and encounter-context you're given.

Because that's the defining thing about a Tank, is they are the ones with control over the fight.

I have to disagree again. They do indeed have the lead control over mob positioning, but if a tank honestly feels as if they personally control everything in the fight... they're probably not a terribly good tank. Granted, I may just be misreading your tone here, but as I see this far too often from... dare I say, "entitled" tanks, I have to point out a tank's control is ideally only to do what is best in the context of the fight and who's involved in it. Playing well, a tank doesn't exactly "get a say" outside of perhaps pull size. If Mythic+ dungeons or the like were a thing, where time actually matters beyond just not needlessly wasting others' time, even that wouldn't be the case. A great tank looks at the situation, and responds accordingly. There's no real personal "control" or expression there. There's just competency and responsibility, shown in a way that's a lot more visible than the other roles' in many a situation.

What makes a tank a tank is what mental processes are involved in playing it well. Memory. Awareness. (Of both mechanics and, in less structured content, one's teammates.) Planning. Procedure. (Since you can't wait and think about it once already under pressure.) And the better a tank gets at those things, the less they feel in control, yet the more they feel their able to adapt. There really shouldn't be any sort of 'party lead' grandstanding or similar feeling of role-play in being a tank. You just have a toolkit, same as anyone else, and you put it to best use.

Now, am I suggesting we make some of those mental processes less unique to being a tank? Yes. They're fun when done well. Letting others in on that fun outside of the occasional Savage gimmick lets more people feel that fun. And letting more people experience it doesn't take away from the unique perspective a tank's toolkit places on that fun. Control shouldn't be zero-sum with one's party. It should be without any limit-by-competition, and felt as an ability to respond to content. Coordination is fun. Competency is fun.

But then to pander to DPS players who don't play Tank developers remove any and all control that tanks have (Fights where bosses position themselves, fights where bosses don't really do much that requires the Tank to react aside from "Tankbusters" where it's a simple "Pop a CD at X time", remove Enmity control in favour of getting non-Tanks prepared for Tanking, push Tanks into just wanting to sit in DPS stance and spam DPS combos so that non-Tanks feel more at home)

Which, you know what? Doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. Taking away all the aspects of Tanking that lets Tanks have to think about what they're doing, doesn't make any more non-Tanks suddenly start playing them (If anything, it turns them away because they come up and say "Tanking is boring") while it makes Tank mains feel like they're getting screwed over and aren't wanted in the game at all.

I've not suggested anything remotely sharing trajectory with that trend. Quite the opposite. I realize you may be waxing against some generalized faction of opinion, but it is not mine, and I would caution assuming such exact connections off a single sentence asking for "more tank-like things to do" (albeit not through gutting mitigation or enmity to force their 'importance' down our throats).

Give Tanks actual Tank things to do. Don't give DPS/Healers Tank things to do any more than giving Tanks things to make Healers and DPS do their job.

In the end, you have mechanical depth or you keep the shallow slew alone that we have now -- enmity slapping and circle-shirks and CD timing charts, no matter how you change the mitigation or the enmity generation. But depth of undermechanics has no sole recipient. Nor does it need to or ought to.

Like, DPS wouldn't like it if a Healer had to press a button every minute to let them deal damage and if they forgot or didn't care to they wouldn't do anything. Neither would a Healer like to ask DPS permission to have mana. Why make Tanks have to have their job reliant on other people to let them do it?

Your red herring has in turn gone and chased something shiny off into the abyss here...

My suggesting that DPS and healers might benefit from being encouraged to share in the aspects of awareness usually required only of a tank, to be more viably or truly given the ability to take part in positioning mobs, managing enmity, or keeping the party alive through reduced party damage intake, is not remotely like what you're suggesting above. We already have the things your indicating as a slippery slope here. They're irrelevant to improving the attractiveness of tanks or tank gameplay, but they're quite wholly already there. I am not asking for more gimmicks of interdependence. I'm asking to move away from gimmicks towards real manageable depth.

[Refrain695]

Excellent information regarding the state of Tanking. I do have an additional question for you all on this topic:
Can SE feasibly make these types of changes to Tanks and Healers without redesigning content old and new from the ground up? These types of implementations would require new content to be designed differently as well as require old content to be balanced around it to make the leveling process still attainable. Is there a way to make this kind of change with minor tweaks and adjustments to previous content?

[Refrain695]

"Make tanks have to tank" tends to take optimized gameplay in which tank, healers, and DPS feel in sync and each directly capable of good value and replace it with gameplay in which they don't, all in favor of enmity-slapping enemies enough to ensure they don't look away. I don't find that aspect of "tanking" particularly fun or even remotely tank like. It's just a table metric to stack that has little to do with facing, thwarting, or overpowering an enemy offense. If the people pushing for tanks to feel more like tanks actually pushed having more tank-like things to do (e.g. interception, active mitigation, key stuns/silences), rather than merely gutting tank mitigation as to require tank stance (which just removes options in another way while ensuring that lower-end players can't survive) or requiring a deluge of enmity combos, I'd be all for it. But I've yet to see such suggested.

Give everyone more tank activities to be a part of, giving more depth to tanks but also spreading the responsibility around some so that everyone's already a bit trained to tank and the pressure is less uniquely on the one player, and I think you'd get more tanks.

I don't necessarily want to gut mitigation abilites from the dps stance I just want a majority of the "powerful" mitigation tools to be more readily available within the stance and for a requirement to use them due to raid damage. One thing that I disliked about 4.0 WAR was inner release was locked behind dps stance. Similar to current DRK and blood weapon. I think that all skills should be available in both stances. Just create a dps tool that uses the "tanking" recources when dpsing. Thanks for the input!

[Kabooa]

Tanking should feel best when you're in front of the big ole monster, and the shift in gameplay should reflect that.

#RealStancesOrRiot

[Kalise]

I disagree. The mechanics don't have to be encounter-specific at all.

Some would. I mean, you mentioned Stuns/Silences. They quite obviously can only be encounter specific. As, in order to make them relevant in all the current content where they are not, would mean completely redesigning all of that content to make use of Stuns/Silences.

It also, would be ineffective, as all physical DPS also have access to Stuns/Silences so it wouldn't even be a uniquely tank thing.

Outside of Stuns/Silences, Tanks don't offer any shared utility. They don't have skills like Palisade to toss onto allies. They at best, have Reprisal which can reduce the damage of a bosses AoE attack so allies take less damage (Not that they really care because the healer can just insta-heal them back up if they even take damage because lolshields)

Enmity is also a thing that won't become a thing. Not when a majority of Enmity control is in the hands of yes, you guessed it, DPS and Healers. Diversion, Lucid Dreaming, Tactician, Refresh and Shadewalker are all far stronger abilities for managing Enmity than anything in a Tank's kit. Heck, even Taunts only bring them UP TO the highest Enmity and nothing more, not even a leeway to let you get an Enmity combo off to try and pull ahead at all. This is why tanking can be frustrating. Since you rely on your party to do all the work managing Enmity, while you just sit there spamming DPS combo's because Enmity combos aren't needed if your party actually knows how to use their Enmity dumps.

As far as interceptable attacks, honestly I can't see that having an effect other than changing where you position. I.e. Instead of standing opposite your party, you stand in front of them and tank all the attacks aimed at them. That's not really adding much mechanically to tanking. The tank won't feel useful, it just means that they no longer have to avoid the damage telegraphs and now have to actually stand in them.

Replace Diminishing Returns. Replace most pure Stuns/Silences.

Again, this has nothing to do with tanking. All it means is you buff all the DPS and Healers who have a plethora of CC in their kits. Like, a WHM spamming Holy now affects a group of trash longer. Meanwhile Tanks are sat there with their useless Stuns/Silences because few enemies actually need to be stunned/silenced and if they do, well DPS have it covered anyway.

As far as your Stagger mechanic suggestion, it sounds absolutely horrible. From again, needing to stack POWER POWER AND MORE POWER in order to be able to do things, a particularly frustrating thing for tanks whereby Tank stats are already useless and the only useful stats are STR, Crit and Direct Hit because they give more DPS.

But also is massively complex and would deter not only tanks, but also DPS who suddenly now need to do things to make their tank live? Also, again, it takes away even more control a Tank has on his own impact. So, not only would Enmity be in control of DPS/Healers because Detaunts >>>>>>>> Tanks but now a Tanks survival is now hinging on DPS being able to pressure the right enemies to reduce the damage the tank takes?

Do you WANT people to play Tank ever? Because this is how you make no-one play Tanks ever. Give all of the power to DPS and make Tanks be useless little punching bags that can only do what Healers and DPS allow them to do.

They don't have to be, and so long as PLDs remain the best at that functionality due to some unique capacity or extent of their arsenal, they have nothing to fret over.

Uhh... Yes they do.

You give Cover to WAR and DRK. Then you'll get all the PLD's asking where their Inner Release or Blackest Night is. You cannot simply distribute a classes skills among the other Tanks and not expect them to be miffed. Even if theirs is slightly better, that's not a good compromise. Heck, DRK and PLD are STILL salty over the fact that Vengeance is better than Sentinel and Shadow Wall (Yes, Sentinel is 10% more DR but that's not worth the 60s increased CD. To say nothing of the 55 potency retaliation damage, which can crit and is particularly strong during Inner Release)

For instance, give them the best cumulative mitigation factor. Turn Cover into Protector, a trait by which allies behind you receive your Defense towards their mitigation against cleave attacks and cleaves dealt against/through you are doubly reduced in their damage to others after you by your mitigation.

This is a complete non-issue, because if the Tank is doing their job, then allies won't get hit by cleave attacks. As the tank will position the boss so they won't cleave across their group. This only makes sense in a world where your suggestion to make damage cleave/pierce through the tank and the tank has to sit in front of their party and soak all the damage like an incompetent fool.

I'm not recommending taking control away from the tank

Actually you are. Your version of stagger means that DPS have to try and stagger the dangerous enemies so the tank can survive. You literally said that. Now, this means that a Tanks survivability is no longer in their control. This is on top of you not addressing the fact that currently, DPS are already in control of Enmity, in fact you mentioned REPLACING tanks enmity skills with your stagger ones. So you're pushing Enmity control even further into DPS/Healer control.

But, I feel far, far more immersed in and engaged by my role -- be it tanking, damage-dealing, or healing -- when my party is coordinating with it, when I know what they want from me and they know what I want from them

There's a plethora of ways to do this that don't involve gutting Tanking so that they have literally nothing to do other than hope their party can manage aggro and stagger the dangerous enemies for them while they sit there and hope the engine works well with their stagger abilities and that no WHM exists in the party who wants to spam Holy on a group of trash to build up all their stun DR and make one of only 2 CC skills a Tank has completely worthless.

For example, my suggested version of stagger still has everyone working together, only everyone is fully in control of their own part to play. DPS do DPS things and pew pew. Healers heal things and DPS when there's downtime. Tanks mitigate the damage and build stagger. Then when the boss gets staggered and is now taking additional damage, the tank pops mitigation CD's and goes into DPS stance and goes ham on damage, DPS pop their CD's to buff themselves and the team's damage output and healers pop whatever CD's and sustained heals/shields they can and whatever ally damage boosts they have and try and pump out as much damage as they can. Then when the stagger wears off, everyone goes back to their standard role, DPS work down the bosses health, tanks go back to mitigation and stagger building and healers go back to healing and with occasional dps.

The best part is? It's all simple. It would be a fairly seamless transition from current to this method of working together for a common goal. No-one would have to relearn the entire game because of a bunch of bass ackwards mechanics being added. They just do their own thing, only now they have additional bonuses for working together (Capitalizing on Staggers to pop offensive CD's, rather than just spamming them as they come off CD), with even better bonuses from more co-ordinated groups (Where a Tank can hold off on building stagger to not proc it until the boss is in a good phase to just focus on pumping out damage for example)

I have to disagree again.

A tank controls the fight.

They control the positioning of the boss (If mechanics don't do that naturally).

They control their threat over targets (So can manage adds with a co-tank)

They control when a pull happens and also the size of a pull (In the case of trash)

They usually point out priority targets, since they know which enemy is dealing the most damage to them.

Often, Raid Leaders are tanks, because they dictate the pacing of the game as well as observe the battlefield looking for what they need to do next and in some cases, look to see if there's any support they can give. In this case it would be stuff like using Reprisal, Blackest Night, Cover, Shake it Off to try and save an ally that's taking a lot of damage.

Honestly, it's really sounding like you think that Tanks should be mindless punching bag slaves to run around and follow you and stand in front of you while you get to play the game and they just sit there with their thumb up their rear.

I've not suggested anything remotely sharing trajectory with that trend. Quite the opposite. I realize you may be waxing against some generalized faction of opinion, but it is not mine, and I would caution assuming such exact connections off a single sentence asking for "more tank-like things to do" (albeit not through gutting mitigation or enmity to force their 'importance' down our throats).

While you've not asked for anything like that, this is what developers have been doing.

Meanwhile when you state things like how you're against the "Make tanks have to tank" opinions people have, this is how developers respond. They remove tanks and turn them into beefy DPS.

Pushing for "Making tanks have to tank" is a direct outcry to STOP them doing these things. Once they stop forcing Tanks to just be DPS, THEN people will be able to start asking for more mechanical depth in engagements. As it is right now, the game is moving towards Tanks completely taking Tank stance and enmity combos off their bar (If they haven't already). This needs to be addressed first and foremost before we can start to ask for "more tank-like things to do".

In the end, you have mechanical depth or you keep the shallow slew alone that we have now

It's possible to improve mechanical depth without just taking everything unique about being a Tank and handing over to other roles. You can improve other roles within themselves. Like as it is, DPS already have more party utility than any Tank, even Paladin. They all have a plethora of Role Skills that let them toss out damage reduction on allies, they're in control of giving others resources when they need it, they're in control of their Enmity they even have skills to reduce the damage of bosses. They don't need to be given Tank duties on top. If DPS want more things to do, give them more support skills.

But honestly, I don't think it's either necessary or healthy for the game. Heck, as is, I really wish all these Enmity reduction skills were massively nerfed, so that a Tank has to actually care about Enmity at all as a mechanic. Not "Enmity Slapping Targets" because that's pointless now as a simple detaunt will do more than an entire fight of slapping enmity combos. Give tanks more control over enmity so they can decide if they need to use an enmity combo or a DPS combo or a mitigation combo (Such as Storm's Path which gives the self heal)

My suggesting that DPS and healers might benefit from being encouraged to share in the aspects of awareness usually required only of a tank, to be more viably or truly given the ability to take part in positioning mobs, managing enmity, or keeping the party alive through reduced party damage intake

They already ARE MORE IN CONTROL OF ALL OF THAT STUFF THAN THE TANK.

With the exception of positioning mobs, tanks are worse than DPS/Healers at all of that stuff. Detaunts >>>>> anything a Tank has for enmity. Healers provide all the reduced damage intake a party needs because lolshields and outside of that, well DPS have a plethora of damage reduction skills that tanks do not.

If you want more mechanics for DPS/Healers, sure, go right ahead. Throw some more mechanics their way. But, don't for a second think that Tanks in this game have even a fraction of the team support that DPS/Healers do. It's ridiculously bad how little Tanks have that it's no wonder they're forced to just try and go full DPS because there's literally nothing else to focus on. Then you want to take EVEN MORE away from them?

Talk about eating your cake and having it too... Here people are trying to make tanks have actual things to pay attention to in their role and you're coming in suggesting that more stuff needs to be taken away from tanks...

Excellent information regarding the state of Tanking. I do have an additional question for you all on this topic:
Can SE feasibly make these types of changes to Tanks and Healers without redesigning content old and new from the ground up? These types of implementations would require new content to be designed differently as well as require old content to be balanced around it to make the leveling process still attainable. Is there a way to make this kind of change with minor tweaks and adjustments to previous content?

As far as my initial post suggestions go, it wouldn't be too hard to implement.

It wouldn't really need redesigning of old content, since the only new mechanic is the Stagger one, which needn't be tied to actual bosses, it would functionally just take the form of a modified Limit Break bar.

Everything else is just a rebalance of potencies and what not. But given that old content has healers being even more ridiculously OP, that's not even a notable impact (Like, I can heal Amdapor Keep with just the fairy. Literally I spend 100% of my time there as a SCH just DPSing because Fairy heals for like 25% of peoples health per heal... It's insane. Or recently I've been leveling AST and after level 50 it's like 1 Aspected Benefic shield = 2 packs where the tank takes 0 damage)

[Canadane]

Right now tanking is actually at a pretty good position. It's been like this for a while, in fact.
You have the tank stance which allows newer players, timid players, returning players, all to get their feet wet without too much trouble. The job will get done, and nobodys going to expect a newbie to play optimally, so this added layer of protection will still let them see through content, just at a slower pace. You have your damage stance, which will be used at the majority of time in encounters for experienced players. This allows people who tank main to really help move things along. It doesn't keep things slow and methodological, but can have gameplay that moves swiftly and gives the tank more feeling of contribution. People seem somewhat divided on the issue for one reason or another, but the fact is if something dies faster, it's better for everyone. An experienced tank isn't going to lose enmity nor will he let damage overtake them. High level healers don't even use their GCD for heals these days, the game isn't designed around such. In other words, the role gives people an extra step to help them along the way.

One downside to all this is the role has two learning curves. One, the initial one where it's usually at lower level and everyone doesn't have a lot of skills anyway. Nobody is expecting much out of anyone and is the best time to learn for any class. The second being when a tank finally realises they can do a lot more to help if things die quicker. This is where some problems do arise. You'll have people at a higher level, which generally comes with the expectation of knowing your basic role, who are now re-learning what their basic role even is. Players find a tank swapping into dps stance too much, forgetting that there are still times to use tank stance, forgetting basic cooldowns because now they're learning a dps rotation (not much of a rotation mind you...), or other mistakes someone can make when learning. These other players get frustrated because usually this results in a party wipe, so the tank ends up not just killing themselves but everyone. In an attempt to GOFAST they end up taking much longer. I believe this is what sparks the idea from people that something must be wrong with tanks today. This is unfortunate because lots of people have room to improve and others don't want them to. That or they romanticise the ideal classic party composition, with your knight jumping in dangers way, the healer doing absolutely nothing until it's time to heal, while the dd are dpsing nonstop.

My opinion on tanking is it's fine for what this game is. You wouldn't be able to change tanking without changing the core functionality of the game. And this is where a lot of people actually want changes. The core function of the game itself. It is not designed around a frail tank barely able to keep themselves alive without consistent upkeep from a healer. No, it's designed to be a team of 4-8 badass powerhouses having their way with whatever comes their way. From the tank perspective you still end up feeling like a tank. You're going toe-to-toe with big bosses, hoards of minions, and you can feel that damage, but also have the tools to not feel that damage. By all accounts you are everything a tank is! This topic could be about healers and you would need to change very little about what I said. The fact both tank and heal dps are a 'big concern' is what brings me to believe players romanticising the game is what's causing all this.

[Refrain695]

I think my current issue with the way tanks currently play is that we mostly concern ourselves with dps outside of pressing one or two mitigative CD's to survive tank busters. This does make it easier for newer players to understand ie. press this button if you want to live, but creates a play style that makes veteran players feel like a glorified dps with defensive CD's. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being able to contribute to damage as a tank, it makes me feel that I'm offering more than what my role normally allows, but I think both playstyles of feeling "Tanky" and damage oriented can be allowed within the content of the game. If implemented correctly.

[Lyth]

I don't think that you need a radical rework to fix this.

First, design fights with the awareness of what your tank is supposed to be doing. If there's a mechanic going out that requires the boss to be at a specific location, don't have the boss move there on its own. Make the tank reposition it. Don't always animation lock the boss during big mechanics. Have them throw out cleaves while the team repositions itself. Come up with more creative mechanics to keep both tanks engaged. Do more council fights.

Second, take a good hard look at tank cooldowns. There's no reason why any invuln should be on a less than five minute recast. If anything, these should be moves that you use once per fight - on a seven to ten minute recast. Trim the excess. Get rid of Dark Mind, Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, and Bulwark. Instead, have players rely more on resource based defensive moves, like Sheltron, TBN, and Inner Beast. Reward players for active mitigation - let your defensive moves tie in to counter attacks.

Stances may seem like they're there to help newer players, but they're not. The main fear of newer players isn't mitigation. It's losing aggro. Replace tank stances with burst enmity moves that help you quickly establish control of a boss or newly spawned add.

[Shurrikhan]

I mean, you mentioned Stuns/Silences. They quite obviously can only be encounter specific.

Once. In a four-sentence little post that you continue to strawman to your every whim.

Outside of Stuns/Silences, Tanks don't offer any shared utility. They don't have skills like Palisade to toss onto allies.

...Have you forgotten that entire part by which they can direct an attack to themselves, and use, say, Rampart?

Enmity is also a thing that won't become a thing. Not when a majority of Enmity control is in the hands of yes, you guessed it, DPS and Healers.

And? What does this have to do with my post? I specifically said I don't care for enmity.

Diversion, Lucid Dreaming, Tactician, Refresh and Shadewalker are all far stronger abilities for managing Enmity than anything in a Tank's kit. Heck, even Taunts only bring them UP TO the highest Enmity and nothing more, not even a leeway to let you get an Enmity combo off to try and pull ahead at all.

Should I likewise be decontextualizing your every comment? No mutatis mutandis, whatever your clearly stated intentions? Okay, if so, I must remind you -- Shirk is a thing and Tactician soon will not be.

As far as interceptable attacks, honestly I can't see that having an effect other than changing where you position.

It frees design from dependence on enmity tables alone, allowing for more varied AI and nullifying the "need" for DPS's enmity reduction cooldowns. You rant irrelevantly about the failings of enmity, but you've never so much as thought about what any alternative to <apply the minimum amount of enmity required to hold threat while maximizing damage> would look like?

While you've not asked for anything like that, this is what developers have been doing.

Okay. Doesn't have anything to do with my suggestion. Not sure why you worded it as such.

Pushing for "Making tanks have to tank" is a direct outcry to STOP them <conveniencing tank concerns into nothingness>.

Which I'm fine with. But I've yet to see any idea I like as to how when made solely as a counter-movement. Thus far, in the majority of cases, the how is never included. In the remainder, it's tends to revolve around simply nerfing tanks into the ground to roll back every optimal behavior they personally dislike. I'm open to different solutions. I just, again, haven't seen one I like yet.

Once they stop forcing Tanks to just be DPS, THEN people will be able to start asking for more mechanical depth in engagements.

What, in your opinion, is making tanks into DPS? I'm curious, and I'd like you to at least try something:

Imagine any of various changes to make tanks have to tank. In any of those, does your party DPS stop being a goal? Are you no longer expected to put out whatever you can? I can imagine that if healer healing and tank damage were nerfed, leaving tank tanking and healer damage more nearly as is, there would be breakpoints where (over)mitigating would see rDPS value. But, does that change the goal from what it is now? Are you any less someone who wants to lead to the enemy's HP being depleted?

You'll technically be a DPS so long as the only long-term goal of a given encounter involves dealing damage until there's no more damage left to deal. There is effectively no cap for damage dealt save for winning, while healing and effective mitigation are capped. So functionally speaking, you may survive to deal damage and help the party to do the same through what direct damage you've sacrificed for healing-taken efficiency and increased maximum eHP, but you're still a damage-dealer.

The only thing left then to make any role itself is the depth and skew of their perspective on how best to accomplish the ever-shared goal of clearing the content as quickly as possible. In gutting enmity, for instance, design simply shifts to slightly offset norm about which one maximizes their damage dealt (e.g. "to be a DPS"). In gutting mitigation, directly or through the removal of others' enmity control skills, to force greater use of tank stance, one simply reduces the potential gameplay involved in stance-dancing and/or removes the safety margin certain levels of players may depend on.

And let's be clear: the only enmity skills commonly used in Heavensward--where Diversion (then called Quelling Strikes) was available only to casters and ranged--were Savage Blade (on the way to Royal Authority) and Butcher's Block combo. Rage of Halone was often skipped unless before a tank-buster without delaying Goring Blade. Enmity hasn't been newly erased as a concern. Diversion didn't kill enmity. It's always been a pathetically basic mechanic to minimize. The number of enmity combos used in a given raid will have changed, but the consideration hasn't.

Nor does creating engaging mechanics require that tanks stop dealing enough damage that they're worth the effort to optimize or that they spam enmity skills or stay in tank stance 24/7. None of that is remotely relevant. Take any of the large-arena fights from World of Warcraft and see how they let tanks make use of the space. Or even just take something like the last boss of Wandering Palace Hard Mode. It's good and fine to fix more fundamental issues with tanks, but it has no relevance whatsoever to how our boss fights don't allow tanks to position the boss in interesting ways. Only the room and the particular mechanics do that. When you ask yourself why does the boss continually return to the center of the room, it stands to reason to ask also, "Why is the room so damn small?" or "Why is the room a square/circle?" or "I wonder if that mechanic would be irrelevant if the boss didn't use it from the center of the room?"

As it is right now, the game is moving towards Tanks completely taking Tank stance and enmity combos off their bar (If they haven't already).

Though in practice this is sheer hyperbole--you simply move the skills to where more often used skills will take up the most easily used button space --avoiding tank stance as much as possible is, again, nothing new. I'm fine with seeing the tank stances buffed a bit. Completely removing the damage penalty, though? Not so much. Not unless there's something sort of replacing it.

Ideally, I'd like optimal play to involve stance-dancing, but that's not going to happen off something as simple as removing the majority of downsides to tank stance, and certainly not just because it's the stance we've decided to call "tank" stance.

A tank controls the fight.

You've clearly not read that section. I didn't disagree that they have control over mob positioning or the like; as much is mentioned, right there. I disagreed that a tank somehow gets to arbitrarily decide the pace or position of things by virtue of being a tank. A bad tank may find that fine and fun. But a good tank simply does was it called for. There is nothing arbitrary about it. That's no more personal control over the situation than exerted by the melee DPS or whosoever else. It's just responsibility and capacity.

Honestly, it's really sounding like you think that Tanks should be mindless punching bag slaves to run around and follow you and stand in front of you while you get to play the game and they just sit there with their thumb up their rear.

Yes, wanting party coordination whereby awareness and preemption becomes required for every party member due to there being more to tanking than just making sure you've the lead position in the enmity table and are aiming the boss due North, and preferring more means of active mitigation than just popping off CDs on a fixed schedule, is definitely wanting a mindless punching bag and a team of the rectally fixated...

Often, Raid Leaders are tanks, because they dictate the pacing of the game as well as observe the battlefield looking for what they need to do next and in some cases, look to see if there's any support they can give. In this case it would be stuff like using Reprisal, Blackest Night, Cover, Shake it Off to try and save an ally that's taking a lot of damage.

They're often tanks because tanks already have to remember timing schedules for their own CDs. The relationship between phases and DPS comes down merely to a particular opener, and is thus far more... sketchy. Moreover, they usually have, frankly... less to manage between those CDs. Unsurprisingly, healers are probably the second most common, and then ranged unless carrying or able to offer specific preemptive advice, in which case casters are probably next for prevalence.

It's possible to improve mechanical depth without just taking everything unique about being a Tank and handing over to other roles.

By your own words, what remains unique to a tank, then? Apparently Palisade offers more to its group than a whole tank. Divine Veil and Shake it Off are apparently irrelevant despite being able to "save an ally that's taking lots of damage". So what's left? Enmity-stacking? Clearly non-tanks naturally do that, too?

Your version of stagger means that DPS have to try and stagger the dangerous enemies so the tank can survive. You literally said that. Now, this means that a Tanks survivability is no longer in their control.

Right. We should get rid of those pesky healers while we're at it. Tanks need control over their well-being. Human rights and all that.

I said it would play a part. I also said it would not be to a degree that it'd ever feel needed in casual play. (In the same sense that one needn't play well or optimize their damage as a tank in casual play.) Would it be significant against a massive boss? No. But it would be useful against key targets. Let's consider your Stagger:

• Because Enmity skills now double as a massive eventual payoff to mitigation and damage, enmity management is not a concern whatsoever and combo variance only exists in a sense of "Staggered? Y/N?"
• Tenacity now not only directly generates two thirds as much damage as other secondary stats and 5% mitigation per thousand stat, but also increases the rate at which one triggers a massive payoff in terms of mitigation and damage. Stack it above all else.
• Make sure everyone's topped off before you pop the Stagger on the focus target so we can fully go ham on it for as long as it's staggered.
• Take the DPS whose CDs and other periodic damage intervals (e.g. Higan) will best sync to Stagger.
• Don't AoE or DoT spread during Stagger.

Your version of Stagger differs primarily only in that the timing by which choices are available, are made for you. That, and a few balance-diminishing issues.

In the other version, you choose whether to push towards bringing down a focus target--your CC becoming more effective, its attacks and defenses becoming less effective--or just keeping him off you. You can kite again. You can CC again. But most of all tanks, due to their massive stagger applications on what were their enmity skills, have more active control over their survival rather than just going from nothing (stack those auxiliary numbers, stack those auxiliary numbers) to everything (Stagga~!!). As a team you make your own peaks and valleys. The flexibility that safety-wheels-stance provides now will comes instead in the form of players' own risk of and from Stagger, giving healers more to work against without crushing lower-skilled players and giving more rDPS to defensive play without having to crush "tank" and "DPS" stances into barely varied shades of the same thing.

Like as it is, DPS already have more party utility than any Tank, even Paladin.

I get the feeling you haven't really played much DPS. Goad is useless. Feint is nice, but worse than Reprisal. Addle is nice, but worse than Reprisal. Crutch is useless. Bloodbath does not provide group utility. Arm's Length does not provide group utility. Second Wind does not provide group utility. True North does not provide group utility. Drain is useless. Break is useless.

There is Palisade, on Bard or Machinist only and on nearly twice the cooldown of tank's Rampart, and the far stronger Apocatastasis. That's it. 2 skills of significant party utility, with a maximum of just 1 available to each of 5 of the 9 DPS. And they're going to somehow be more useful than Divine Veil, Improved Cover, Intervention, and Passage of Arms, 30% mitigation for a single hit on demand, 100% mitigation, stackable 20% mitigation, stackable 30% mitigation, increased chance of 30% mitigation, all PLD's role skill defensives, atop the ability to aim those enemy attacks at the PLD?

...

[Kalise]

Once. In a four-sentence little post that you continue to strawman to your every whim.

Once yes, and you provided no other examples for.

...Have you forgotten that entire part by which they can direct an attack to themselves, and use, say, Rampart?

SHARED UTILITY. As in Utility that ALL 3 tanks have. Not just Paladin.

Paladin is the ONLY tank that can redirect damage to themselves because Paladin is the ONLY tank that has Cover.

And? What does this have to do with my post? I specifically said I don't care for enmity.

What does it have to do with your post?

The part where you said this:

Rather, the game is in desperate need of universal mechanics that can lend themselves to nuanced usage. I believe enmity, if revised, could be one of those things.

Or have you already forgotten what BS you've posted to try and remove what little utility Tanks have and shift it all over to DPS so they can be the kings of the game and do everything while Tanks and Healers just hold them up so they can play the game.

Okay, if so, I must remind you -- Shirk is a thing and Tactician soon will not be.

This has no effect whatso ever.

A tank using Shirk will not gain aggro. It's literally a detaunt for the tank. Literally it's specifically only useful for tank swapping. Not general enmity control. Taunt > Shirk for swapping tanks in raids.

Meanwhile, while Tactician will soon be going, all the other detaunts available to DPS/Healers will not be. So, yes, 1 less detaunt for MCH/BRD. That skews enmity control vastly into the favour of the actual role designed around trying to generate and maintain enmity /s

It frees design from dependence on enmity tables alone, allowing for more varied AI and nullifying the "need" for DPS's enmity reduction cooldowns. You rant irrelevantly about the failings of enmity, but you've never so much as thought about what any alternative to <apply the minimum amount of enmity required to hold threat while maximizing damage> would look like?

How exactly does it free design from enmity tables alone? Will enmity tables exist? Will enmity matter? Or will it just devolve into boss hits whatever is in front of him, so make it the tank and that's all that's necessary for the tank to keep "Aggro". Don't even bother to move out of attacks, because if you do then your party dies. Just stand in that 1 spot forever until the boss dies. Let DPS/Healers get to have the fun of paying attention to stuff and moving out of AoEs...

Enmity tables only fail because far too much of the control is in the hands of DPS/Healers. If there was more control in the hands of tanks and it was balanced to the point where it wasn't an all or nothing (Which can happen in video games) where a tank does need to pay attention to enmity but doesn't need to just constantly sit in tank stance and spam enmity combos that'd be fine. Give other classes detaunts but make them less potent and more of a way to tone down burst damage, such as if there's a phase where everyone, including the tank, wants to be prioritizing DPS.

Basically, meaning, that everyone participates in Enmity management, but you have the effect where tanks don't need to spam nothing but enmity combos for eternity so they can look to push DPS or active mitigation skills (If they actually start to exist in a more meaningful way) but also you don't get the scenario where tanks output is ultimately meaningless because detaunts on DPS/Healers do a majority of the work including making it meta to have a NIN in the party/raid purely to buff the tanks enmity.

Heck, I've even posited a suggestion that would make enmity, or at least enmity combo skills, useful beyond "Just enough enmity to have aggro" by adding additional tank related mechanics tied to them to help them feel less like "Bad DPS but with defence CD's"

Okay. Doesn't have anything to do with my suggestion. Not sure why you worded it as such.

What suggestion? Your initial post was just damning people wanting Tanks to feel like Tanks rather than fat DPS.

Which is exactly the kind of opinion that developers pander to when they try and make tanks simpler and more DPS focused.

Every role should feel unique. Yes, DPS will always be a factor, you'll always strive to do more DPS, but a tank should feel like a tank, a healer should feel like a healer. Otherwise you may as well just delete the roles and have everyone be a DPS and just buff everyone's defence so everyone can play DPS all the time no matter what.

Which I'm fine with. But I've yet to see any idea I like as to how when made solely as a counter-movement. Thus far, in the majority of cases, the how is never included. In the remainder, it's tends to revolve around simply nerfing tanks into the ground to roll back every optimal behavior they personally dislike. I'm open to different solutions. I just, again, haven't seen one I like yet.

Probably because the game is stuck in a very particular pattern. Which is that damage is pretty much meaningless, outside of tankbusters, which are negated by a single CD. "Nerfing" tanks so that mitigation is useful and they use more than 2 CD's on rotation during a fight helps make them a little bit more engaging.

It's of course, not helped by Healers also being stacked af with healing power out the wazoo that enables this complete blanket ignoring of all non-tankbuster damage.

Again, if the end goal is to have damage be irrelevant outside of tankbusters... Why not just delete Tank and Healer roles and just give every DPS an "Immunity" CD that they use for every tankbuster. That way, everyone gets to play DPS AND a Tank wew so kewl! /s

The general idea that goes along with "Nerfing" tanks is to make it so the actual end result is pretty much the same, but in order to blanket immune all the filler damage, the Tanks and Healers have to actually do something about it. Using cooldowns, active mitigation, *Shock* *Horror* maybe even Tank stance on occasion! Or even, spend actual GCD's on heals for the tank on occasion! What a novel idea, a healer having to spend time using healing skills!

What, in your opinion, is making tanks into DPS?

The complete and total disregard for any actual tank skills or stats.

Tank stance? Not WANTED let alone needed in an optimal set up.

Cooldowns? Only need 2 of them and you just rotate them to be practically immune to all damage.

Enmity and Mitigation combos? Irrelevant. Maybe you use an Enmity combo on the pull and that's about it. Then technically WAR uses the mitigation combo because it generates the most Beast Gauge for more Fell Cleaves.

Tank stats? Worthless. Just gear for more STR/Crit/DH. What's that? Raid gear not got that option? Stick with much lower item level crafted stuff you can pentameld into DPS stats because it's BETTER

Ability to position bosses? Irrelevant, so many bosses position themselves.

What is a tank to do? They literally just sit there in DPS stance and push their highest DPS combo and then let the NIN boost their enmity and let the rest of the party detaunt for enmity control and... That's about the extent outside pushing a button for each tankbuster.

I'm curious, and I'd like you to at least try something:

Imagine any of various changes to make tanks have to tank. In any of those, does your party DPS stop being a goal? Are you no longer expected to put out whatever you can?

No. In fact, my original suggestion back on page 1 included a Tank specific mechanic that is literally designed to be a massive DPS boost.

Only, instead of Tanking being ONLY about DPS stance and your DPS combo, there's more input from you and more dynamic playstyle where you utilize more of your jobs kit.

Like, the scenarios I painted in my thread I created about the topic of Tanks/Healers was such:

Tanks using Tank stance (Which in this thread I put forward my suggestion of reworking to remove the pointless damage down among other things) and a mixture of Enmity combos (Which also build up stagger) and DPS combos (Because DPS output is still a thing to strive for) while rolling CD's to mitigate some damage. Then upon staggering a boss, they swap over to DPS stance, pop DPS cooldowns (If they have any) and go ham with DPS combos while buffed up by the parties team damage boosts. Before then swapping back to Tank stance to start building up stagger again (Unless the boss is low where they can stay in DPS stance and just burn them down). With the added complexity, to where a co-ordinated team could have their tank(s) prematurely stance dance in order to tactically delay the stagger for a designated time (I.e. When the boss is in a certain phase, or when DPS have their cooldowns ready again)

Thus, they feel like a tank, but still want to push out damage, but do so in a way that partially relies on being a tank and partially relies on finding the best opportunities to go full DPS mode.

While healers, will do their thing with healing, but whenever there are periods where they don't need to heal (Such as if the tank has a cooldown active and they've just put a HoT/Shield on them) they push out DPS (With potentially a more interesting DPS rotation), which, doing so will also build their job mechanics in some way (Stacking lillies, gaining Aetherflow and a cooldown reduction on Draw) meaning that if incoming damage remains low, they can continue pushing out DPS and use their job mechanics to spot heal. But when damage becomes high again (Such as if the tanks defensive CD's drop off or if someone messes up and is hit by an AoE/mechanic) they put their DPS on the back burner while they cast the heals they need, meanwhile, they would also have damage skills from their class mechanic they can use while they are healing. So they don't have to fully stop healing and DPSing at any point, they just shift their focus between them dividing their time spent using GCD's and oGCD's on each one as the situation permits.

The end result is, DPS is still a concern, everyone will be working towards pushing out DPS. Only, not every class will feel like a DPS, because Tanks and Healers will both rely on using Tanking and Healing skills and mechanics in order to push out damage in some way, while DPS classes will focus entirely on pushing out their DPS rotations, they won't need to use tank skills, they won't need to use healing skills (Outside RDM who is designed as a DPS/Healer with situationally useful healing skills) for them it's just their rotation, the mechanics of the boss and their utility/support skills.

Though in practice this is sheer hyperbole--you simply move the skills to where more often used skills will take up the most easily used button space --avoiding tank stance as much as possible is, again, nothing new. I'm fine with seeing the tank stances buffed a bit. Completely removing the damage penalty, though? Not so much. Not unless there's something sort of replacing it.

Ideally, I'd like optimal play to involve stance-dancing, but that's not going to happen off something as simple as removing the majority of downsides to tank stance, and certainly not just because it's the stance we've decided to call "tank" stance.

Actually, it can work that way.

Part of the reason why Tank Stance is so avoided, is because you receive such a massive penalty to use it for not nearly as much gain.

Like, even without the damage penalty, DPS stance is still objectively the best choice. Since it's a DPS gain because of the additional skills and effects it gives over the, mostly redundant, defensive attributes and skills on the Tank Stance.

Removing this penalty, would mean it's a lot more feasible for someone to consider stance dancing. After which, you put in some sort of benefit from stance dancing (Such as my suggestion of building stagger better, ultimately a DPS gain but delayed in its effect) so that the pure DPS boost from the DPS stance isn't objectively always the most desirable trait and then you have your dynamic gameplay where you stance dance depending on what you need and what the situation is like.

While Tank Stance is so horrendously crippling, no-one will ever want to be in it if they aren't forced to. Which is where the gripes about "Nerfing Tank Mitigation" to a point where Tank Stance is a necessity to make people use the damn thing with the current penalty. Remove the penalty, and it's much easier to add incentives to use the stance without having to hamfist changes to such an extreme (Which, I personally would be against too. If I have stances, I want to dance them)

By your own words, what remains unique to a tank, then? Apparently Palisade offers more to its group than a whole tank. Divine Veil and Shake it Off are apparently irrelevant despite being able to "save an ally that's taking lots of damage". So what's left? Enmity-stacking? Clearly non-tanks naturally do that, too?

Currently very little. Which is why people are asking for tanks to feel like tanks.

Why they ask for tanks to be nerfed so they can at least work on their own mitigation. Why they ask for Enmity to be changed so that Tanks are the primary controllers of Enmity.

Because Enmity skills now double as a massive eventual payoff to mitigation and damage, enmity management is not a concern whatsoever and combo variance only exists in a sense of "Staggered? Y/N?"

What? I never mentioned anything about mitigation payoffs. Only damage.

Enmity will be a concern because you just balance enmity so that the enmity combo's aren't ridiculously powerful for enmity and you also nerf detaunts so DPS/Healers in general will be generating more enmity in total.

Also, this is to say nothing of if active mitigation is highlighted in any way, to make the decision to stray away from stacking stagger in order to reduce damage taken.

Not to mention, I never specified any values for the damage bonus from stagger, nor any timings for how long it will take to build a stagger bar. They could be balanced in a way where you won't always need to focus on stagger generation.

Tenacity now not only directly generates two thirds as much damage as other secondary stats and 5% mitigation per thousand stat, but also increases the rate at which one triggers a massive payoff in terms of mitigation and damage. Stack it above all else.

Tanks want to prioritise the Tank specific stat!? No wai!?

Far better than now where Tenacity is basically on the same tier as Piety in terms of where you prioritize it...

Make sure everyone's topped off before you pop the Stagger on the focus target so we can fully go ham on it for as long as it's staggered.

Yes, you want to co-ordinate with your team to try and maximize the benefits the tank will bring.

Isn't that literally what you wanted?

Take the DPS whose CDs and other periodic damage intervals (e.g. Higan) will best sync to Stagger.

You speak as though you know the specific timings and durations of stagger, even though, I included no such details. As such, it's possible that it could be balanced in a way where it's not majorly different between DPS.

Don't AoE or DoT spread during Stagger.

You mean that you might have to think about the encounter in some way shape or form? No wai!?!?

If it's a council type fight, then you won't need to prioritize stagger as much.

If it's something like adds spawning, then you try and delay the stagger until you've dealt with them.

I get the feeling you haven't really played much DPS. Goad is useless. Feint is nice, but worse than Reprisal. Addle is nice, but worse than Reprisal. Crutch is useless. Bloodbath does not provide group utility. Arm's Length does not provide group utility. Second Wind does not provide group utility. True North does not provide group utility. Drain is useless. Break is useless.

There is Palisade, on Bard or Machinist only and on nearly twice the cooldown of tank's Rampart, and the far stronger Apocatastasis. That's it. 2 skills of significant party utility, with a maximum of just 1 available to each of 5 of the 9 DPS. And they're going to somehow be more useful than Divine Veil, Improved Cover, Intervention, and Passage of Arms, 30% mitigation for a single hit on demand, 100% mitigation, stackable 20% mitigation, stackable 30% mitigation, increased chance of 30% mitigation, all PLD's role skill defensives, atop the ability to aim those enemy attacks at the PLD?

Again, Paladin =/= Tanks.

Only Paladin has team utility. This doesn't mean Tanks as a whole have team utility.

It's like saying WHM is fine, because SCH and AST have good team utility and party damage increases and they're healers so thus all healers have good team utility and party damage increases.

Goad can be useful, at least until 5.0, because physical classes do drain their TP when spamming AoE which makes them weaker than magical classes at sustained AoE. Goad is a way to mitigate that.

Then there's Refresh, Tactician (Until 5.0), Mana Shift (Mostly useful for BLM's to use on AST, because Astral Ice and the fact that AST wants to Minor Arcana Ewers they get stuck with).

Crutch and Erase may be lacklustre, but it's at least something that can maybe have some fringe use. More so than my WAR who, outside of Shake it Off and Reprisal, can do what?

Of course, there's plenty of job skills too. RDM with Vercure, Verraise, Embolden, NIN with Shadewalker and Smoke Screen, SMN with Contagion and Radiant Shield, DRG with Disembowel and Battle Litany, MNK with Mantra (Admittedly useless) and Brotherhood, MCH has Dismantle and Bard has all 3 songs for the 2% crit, Foe Requiem, Battle Voice, Troubador, The Warden's Paean (Admittedly lacklustre) and Nature's Minne (Admittedly useless). With only BLM/SAM having nothing outside of Role Skills for utility (Aside from SAM's Slashing Resistance debuff which is shared by NIN and WAR)

All but 2 DPS have several utility skills. Only 1 of 3 tanks have notable amounts of utility.