Community Opinions on Tanking

[Rongway]

[arguments regarding raids]

I was talking about the severe repercussions that would apply to everyone, worst of all dungeon runners, if tanks had to be tanky tanks.

[Kerrath]

FF14's tank meta is my favorite among currently active and live MMOs precisely because of the predominance of DPS stance. It makes threat an issue, which I like, while still having the option of tank stance for players of less skill who don't care as much about maximizing their performance. It would be nice to have a game meta where swapping into tank stance with relative frequency on a situational basis was more encouraged, but I think you would have to eliminate defensive cooldowns in the current state of the game to do so.

[Lyth]

I was talking about the severe repercussions that would apply to everyone, worst of all dungeon runners, if tanks had to be tanky tanks.

If you go back and actually read the post that you quoted, you'll see that I was talking about issues that both affect novice tanks in dungeons, as well as issues that affect more experienced tanks in raids. I'm sorry, but most of us are not willing to see tanking be oversimplified just so that you can get your weekly tomes done more quickly. Novice tanks need to be challenged in dungeons in a way that hones their skills. More experienced tanks need to be challenged in raids in a way that keeps them engaged with the game. People play tanks because they want to make a difference to their team. Take that away, and you're going to lose a lot of tanks.

Enjoy your queue times.

[Shurrikhan]

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

No. Every tank has Provoke. The entire point of having a tank revolves around their redirecting damage onto themselves. It is not a one-off thing. When you can re-aim an attack, Cover is not your only means of taking damage for what would have been someone else.

A tank using Shirk will not gain aggro. It's literally a detaunt for the tank.

How do you have this much vehement confidence without knowing how circle-Shirking works?

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.

When a position says that enmity has to be changed to be a satisfying mechanic thing, why would you then strawman that position defending enmity as it currently stands?

Enmity tables only fail because far too much of the control is in the hands of DPS/Healers.

You keep using the term control. I'm not sure it means what you think it means. Control is viable arbitration. Apart from popping Diversion/detaunts on CD, the only way for a DPS to control their enmity against a boss is by doing less DPS. That is not a viable solution. They cannot blindside an enemy to reduce enmity generated or be seen as to increase their enmity generated. Mechanically, their enmity merely happens, either 10% or 100% of it, without anything in between or any universal means of reduction for 90 of every 120 seconds.

I think enmity mitigators and detaunts are too powerful, clunky, and outright unnecessary. They provide power, but it is periodic, not pursuant to player control. The most control a DPS can exert upon their enmity generation as a decision is to not use Diversion, saving it for an add. That's it. That's the extent of their viable arbitration. But wanting those skills gone is not to say I want to simply spam Enmity combo after Enmity combo. I'd like to see more of them used, but for reasons of variance in gameplay and decision-making, not mere "tank-ness". There is nothing iconic about spamming enmity combos, only about having to choose between two goals with one's and/or one's parties survival hanging in the balance.

I don't want the decision between "enmity combo" and "damage combo" again basically made for us, simply shifted towards the way that makes tanks less useful (i.e. nerfs them without surrounding consideration). In terms of simultaneous throughput, tanks do start early tiers slightly overpowered, but I consider that better fixed by getting rid of the need and benefit for pentamelding rather than essentially disabling their damage combos until X factor occurs.

And just as importantly, I'd like to see those combos have throughput, short-term rather than wholly long-term, immediate rather than preparative, that's actually worth something more than just getting to continue to perform one's role.

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"

And my issue with it is the same as I have with Diversion and de-taunts. It's all or nothing and simply acts as a race to pop the Stagger state for bonus damage. Thus it simply turns into immediate damage (and insufficient enmity to -- with your other suggested changes -- be worthwhile) or party-dependent damage. Their both very much just damage-dealing. It's just in the style of, say, SAM or that of Trick Attack. I prefer something granular that feels like a fight to survive. Now, yes, I like that others can have a part to play in that, that all can see a basic mob winding up for a tankbuster that would nonetheless deal hellish damage that would put a tank on its rear and nuke that mob for all its worth, finishing that snap-flurry with stuns, but a tank would still have the most force to throw around in those situations and it has its CDs.

...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.

But you don't find those opportunities. You merely stack a metric until the effect occurs and unless everyone is about to go into relative downtime, in which case you delay slightly, you do that as quickly as you can or Stagger is not worth it. If Stagger is worth anything in solo play, it will be overpowered to the extent that DPS combos are a non-option in light parties. If it's balanced to be a viable option in light parties, it will be obligatory in full parties. You've referred to it only as periods of available burst and an infinitely scaling damage modifier. Neither is damage-proportionate; the whole mechanic is to exploit the window of opportunity for all its worth. There must therefore be a "useful at" breakpoint, obligatory thereafter and avoided therebefore.

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

Really?

"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 get that you can be hair-triggered over differences, assumed or otherwise, but that is not remotely the point I was trying to make.

My point is that the best improvements possible for tanks are the one's that make them feel like a tank, what makes a role feel like itself is the depth of consideration and activities consequent to logical use of its toolkit, and that the features of tanking as it stands (e.g. enmity, CDs) are not enough and should not be held as the end-all-be-all of what can make a tank feel like a tank. The solution is not necessarily or even likely in what little we have now.

I am scornful of those who would limit themselves solely to shallow, already-criticized systems to pursue their gameplay interests, or make changes aimed at gameplay without considering the surrounding balance, not of anyone and everyone who'd ask for rescaling of the existent tools as an element of more comprehensive changes. I think the latter is necessary, just not enough in itself.

Do I think healer oGCDs are too strong? Yes. Do I think healing in general is a bit overtuned, even with oGCDs out of the picture? A bit. Do I think tank CDs are too strong? Mildly to moderately.
On all these points I agree with many of the tenants of that sort of position. But gutting tanks to fix it or providing an incomplete plan merely replaces the problems with new ones that within a month's time will feel mostly identical. It needs more than that.

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.

Agreed. I just said as much. We just disagree on what makes tanking feel unique. For me, it's being in the thick of the situation, adapting to it, and the awareness, instinctive planning, and balances between personal and team or immediate and upcoming survival necessary to make that adaptation work. I want to see those aspects emphasized.

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

My mistake then. I assumed based on every example of Stagger we've had thus far, from XIII or from, in gimmick form, T4 of BCoB, wherein Staggered enemies are stunned for the duration of the Stagger. "If a stun is mitigation, and Stagger is a stun, would not Stagger be mitigation?" so to speak.

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.

Fair enough. Now that I know that a balance between the skill usage is desired, I will assume that whatever smaller technical changes are necessary to result in that will be made. Spirit over letter.

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...

Tenacity would already be quite decent if healing and/or base mitigation were nerfed. 10% passive mitigation at 2k Tenacity is no joke.

Also, I didn't mean that as a bad thing. I listed them only as the changes I'd expect to happen.

Of course, if Stagger does not trigger a stunned/pacified/slowed state, and therefore provides no mitigation, I'd prefer to see Tenacity just stick to its guns for the... most part, and just give its modification to damage taken/dealt, so that it doesn't feel like an obligatory do-all stat and one feels like they can actually specialize into tankiness. But that's just me.

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?

Yes. I like that.

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.

Stagger will build at a tank-dependent rate. If it's not damage-scaling -- and given your acidity towards any suggestion of granular scaling through damage, my assumption is leaning that way -- then that rate is essentially preset. All that remains to vary it, then, is the enemy's threshold and the tank's Skill Speed, which may become the new best rDPS stat for 8-man content unless Tenacity overwhelms it as a do-all stat. Since the only point at which any of this would be significant is in versus-boss content, I'd have to assume Stagger applies to bosses as well. If the threshold varies by boss, then the boss determines the Stagger timings, and this will have an effect on the available compositions for that raid or trial. If it does not vary, then the Stagger timings are preset and certain jobs are automatically pushed in or out over a given fight length, or the tank varies their Skill Speed based on the composition at hand. Ideally, one would set the Stagger rate, universal or otherwise, to be achievable at some timing that can be viably accelerated to match any composition, but gradually desyncs from pairing best with one composition to another. For instance, 60/90/120/150/180 are all frequent CD timings, but most jobs tends towards either essentially per-90 or per-120 intervals. The winner between a per-90 or per-120 composition would be the one that faces the least waste (time necessary to hold buffs) in matching to Stagger. To balance the implications of Stagger, it would need to be just off from one such that it just enters the other after x time. The better the natural sync, the more Tenacity (assuming Skill Speed is still superior for Stagger generation) is available for the tank.

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.

Again. I think that's a good thing. I mentioned only what changes would be consequent to such a system. I wouldn't have mentioned that those effects were shared between both our systems if I was attempting to throw your every point under the bus and later stand triumphantly upon its corpse. I want interesting tank play, same as you. I just don't see the point, in such an important undertaking, of being less than comprehensive about it. I'll critique what cracks I find in your system. I expect you to do the same to mine. I'd just prefer we each consider the intent of our suggestions a bit more. I'll intend to do better in that regard, but it'd help to know more about what your exact intent is, in terms of how it feels and plays. I'll do the same where you have questions or note discrepancies.

Again, Paladin =/= Tanks.

It was a direct response to "Like as it is, DPS already have more party utility than any Tank, even Paladin." Expect the refutation to be on the point it's being made in reply to.

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

Didn't you just mention that Shake it Off (superior to Divine Veil) and The Blackest Night were useful tank tools?

Moreover, again... having enmity control at all and access to mitigation tools is already team utility. You're not a solo player. What non-raidwide or -split damage you take is mutually exclusive with the damage your party takes. Tanks are 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.

It's quite the opposite. It's like saying that WHM shouldn't be judged against AST and SCH by the strength of its Regen or Cure III when oGCDs alone already make up the uptime difference providable by either.

Goad is of little value even in dungeons unless someone is underperforming in dungeon AoE spams or has died just after using Invigorate; I play at 2700+ SkS (a 1.8s GCD) and I don't run out. Erase doesn't work on most DoT mechanics in savage content, for which there are already next to none. Only 3 DPS have Mana Shift, though it comes at cost of either MP or uptime except immediately after Blizzard III or a in-UI Thundercloud proc (3 lost casts over the course of 10-minute fight due to clipping if the BLM casts it at any other time and/or lost F4 potential). Tactician is useful only if someone has died just after using Invigorate. It is quite literally impossible to run out otherwise. Refresh and Diversion alone are notoriously OP. Addle and Faint are each just halves of Reprisal, but each at a 50% longer CD. Compare all this to, say, Rampart, Reprisal, Convalescence, Shirk, and Provoke. By nature of controlling where so much of the damage goes, tanks are by no means short on team utility.

Natively, Vercure is worthless. Smoke Screen is irrelevant unless you have one and only one high pDPS party member (e.g a SAM or BLM) or only have a single Ranged and wish to delay Refresh/Tactician. Shadewalker is still made mostly superfluous by proper circle-shirking, Diversion/detaunts, and equal percentile tank damage. Dismantle is typically avoided except on tank busters, for which it tends to be unnecessary, because sabotage-based mitigation reduces limit gauge growth where shielding and personal mitigation. As you said, Mantra is superfluous. Brotherhood, however, is in a way more so, as Monk's personal damage is balanced around its presence; it pays personally for every cent it gives others except in a pure-physical comp where Monk provides competitive tDPS. SMN pays with its own damage for Contagion and Radiant Shield, though probably a bit less than it should in multi-caster compositions (every third Contagion stacked with every other TC-Ley Lines is a ridiculous source of rDPS). Bard, in turn, pays for having Battle Voice and Foe Requiem. Nature's Minne is actually decently useful when stacked with Convalescence. Stack that with Troubador and you can see why Machinist apparently needed such a huge damage buff to even the scales until 5.0. And, finally, despite having no "utility" BLM can take the lead tDPS (personal DPS dealt + bonus damage given to others - bonus damage received from others) in certain speedruns, making it potentially the most valuable member of its party.

But all this is comparing apples and oranges. In the end, which can you most afford to go without? Which one has the most significant impact upon party clear time? Any one DPS? Or a tank? A BLM doesn't need utility to be, in the hands of a good player, a top-tier contributor. Tanks, by virtue of holding threat, surviving what others could not, and being more efficiently healable, don't need much utility to provide everything that a whole arsenal of "utility" would. That's just common sense, and I don't know why you're bristling over an imbalance that exists only if taken out of context. All you stand to gain from adjusting it is an equalized directness of tank contribution, taking away what's special about PLD. And unlike what suggested, you wouldn't be making it more flexible and integral for PLD in the process so they remain uniquely the masters of that aspect.

[Kalise]

No. Every tank has Provoke. The entire point of having a tank revolves around their redirecting damage onto themselves. It is not a one-off thing. When you can re-aim an attack, Cover is not your only means of taking damage for what would have been someone else.

Provoke only works if the attack in question is one that is directed to "Whomever is the highest enmity", which, should be the tank anyway, as that's the general idea around an enmity table.

There are plenty of attacks that target random non-tank targets that only a Paladin can redirect to themselves.

How do you have this much vehement confidence without knowing how circle-Shirking works?

Because I discuss Tanks in an overall sense, not specifically only in reference to raiding.

From level 15 newbies in Sastasha to Trials to Raids.

Meanwhile, Circle-Shirking tends to only be relevant during Raids, where people will co-ordinate that with the OT. It's also completely useless in dungeons where there is only 1 tank.

When a position says that enmity has to be changed to be a satisfying mechanic thing, why would you then strawman that position defending enmity as it currently stands?

Well, had you made any reference to HOW enmity should be changed in that instance, maybe that would have helped. Since "Enmity has to be changed" can mean a lot of things, from entirely new mechanical systems to just tweaking how much enmity is gained and lost by various actions.

Mechanically, their enmity merely happens, either 10% or 100% of it, without anything in between or any universal means of reduction for 90 of every 120 seconds.

That's still control. You have a literal button you can press that either makes 50% of your enmity fly out of the window, or makes your skills produce 50% enmity for a period of time. That is control. You can choose not to press these buttons and generate more enmity, you can choose to time these buttons for when you're bursting hard and so generating a lot of enmity to make them more effective, or you can choose to just press them on CD.

They don't need the Tank to taunt in order to let them press these buttons. They don't rely on the Healer or other DPS to press these buttons, these buttons aren't only available during certain encounters or certain phases of a boss. These are buttons that DPS can use whenever they wish, provided they're not on CD.

This is control.

Unlike a Tank, who can only Circle-Shirk when there's another tank in the same content and they want to taunt the target. Unlike a Tank who still relies heavily on DPS/Healers pressing these buttons. Yes, a Tank has taunts and enmity combos but even then, Taunts require someone else to be top enmity and enmity combos are fairly lacklustre in their enmity generation on the whole, especially if DPS are not using their detaunts.

I don't want the decision between "enmity combo" and "damage combo" again basically made for us, simply shifted towards the way that makes tanks less useful (i.e. nerfs them without surrounding consideration). In terms of simultaneous throughput, tanks do start early tiers slightly overpowered, but I consider that better fixed by getting rid of the need and benefit for pentamelding rather than essentially disabling their damage combos until X factor occurs.

And just as importantly, I'd like to see those combos have throughput, short-term rather than wholly long-term, immediate rather than preparative, that's actually worth something more than just getting to continue to perform one's role.

True, but it's such a hard line to balance.

Given that always, the ideal scenario will be Tanks spamming DPS combos forever. Since, that is the only thing that will ever work towards the one true goal of making the enemy dead fastest. Admittedly, my implementation of Stagger also isn't the perfect implementation either, because that just ends up trading the ideal scenario to being spamming Stagger generators, until the boss is low enough to where another stagger is not possible in which DPS combos take over again (Though, this is at least more dynamic than the former) - Though, I'll try to address this a bit more later.

I think that we can both agree that initially, the best way to improve Tanks rotations, would be to implement more impactful active mitigation and do so in a way where people actually care about it. That way, you at least have to consider breaking up your DPS/Enmity combo spam to make yourself not die.

Of course, this would need a fairly substantial overhaul to Tank combos. So that Storm's Path/Souleater not only provide more substantial benefit, but aren't also DPS combos and there would need to be something defensive for PLD to combo (Which, would be adding to their skill bloat... Unless Goring Blade and Royal Authority where combined into a singular damage skill with 370 combo potency and the DoT effect and thus actual Royal Authority was then reworked into a defensive skill).

WAR would likely be the easiest, as you'd just tweak it so that Storm's Eye has the highest potency and Beast Gauge generation (Though, personally, I'd prefer if all combos had the same BG generation so you're not still incentivised to spam one combo over the other because Fell Cleave > All) and perhaps boost the healing of Storm's Path and let them "Mitigate" through self healing.

PLD as mentioned could have the DPS combo consolidation and get one of their 2 current DPS finishers reworked into an active mitigation combo. Possibly providing Block chance or Damage Reduction.

DRK would need a new combo that serves to be purely damage focused. With also changes to Souleater to make it more impactful for active mitigation (Potentially a health shield, letting them stack absorbs?)

Which not only would help give tanks as a whole their 3 combos each with which to be balanced around, but could also stand to emphasise the difference between tanks and how healers would respond to damage they take. Instead of them all feeling pretty similar because so much damage comes down to "Press X to immune tankbuster" while being naturally resistant to damage so that shields/regen from healers work the same across the board...

But you don't find those opportunities. You merely stack a metric until the effect occurs and unless everyone is about to go into relative downtime, in which case you delay slightly, you do that as quickly as you can or Stagger is not worth it. If Stagger is worth anything in solo play, it will be overpowered to the extent that DPS combos are a non-option in light parties. If it's balanced to be a viable option in light parties, it will be obligatory in full parties. You've referred to it only as periods of available burst and an infinitely scaling damage modifier. Neither is damage-proportionate; the whole mechanic is to exploit the window of opportunity for all its worth. There must therefore be a "useful at" breakpoint, obligatory thereafter and avoided therebefore.

Well, this is where balance and suggestions come into play, rather than just outright dismissing the concept in its entirety.

Personally, I didn't envision Stagger to be relevant in solo play, given that solo play is typically just spam your DPS and try and burst targets down, maybe popping some defensive CD's if you're soloing something noteworthy.

While for party content, I did imagine that Stagger requirements would differ between bosses and boss difficulties. Allowing an adjustment to be made so that there isn't a blanket X period where Stagger will kick in so Y boss is not useful to bring Z DPS because the boss dies before Z DPS is able to sync up with a Stagger. In addition, with it also scaling somewhat off of Tank gear, there's also progress to be made whereby the better gear the tank has either the more frequently they can activate Stagger or the more time they can spend NOT building stagger in order to sync it up with DPS.

This is still only an initial suggestion too, the idea can be tweaked and adjusted. Such as perhaps trying to figure a way where Tank Stance/Enmity Combos work more like XIII's Commando where it prevents the decay of Stagger allowing it to be built up, but where DPS Stance/DPS Combos work more like XIII's Ravager where they BUILD the Stagger. Leading to a more stance-dancey type gameplay where you try and build up time with Enmity style of play to then capitalize off it with DPS style of play. With of course, active mitigation being the spanner in the works that throws off your ideal rotations causing the need for more flexibility and more forethought about when bursts of damage will be coming in.

Tenacity would already be quite decent if healing and/or base mitigation were nerfed. 10% passive mitigation at 2k Tenacity is no joke.

Also, I didn't mean that as a bad thing. I listed them only as the changes I'd expect to happen.

Of course, if Stagger does not trigger a stunned/pacified/slowed state, and therefore provides no mitigation, I'd prefer to see Tenacity just stick to its guns for the... most part, and just give its modification to damage taken/dealt, so that it doesn't feel like an obligatory do-all stat and one feels like they can actually specialize into tankiness. But that's just me.

I think the main issue is that the mitigation on Tenacity just isn't currently relevant. It's why it's not particularly valued, because people instead prefer the higher DPS output of STR/Crit/DH/DET over the lower DPS output of TEN.

Which is one of the driving forces between peoples opinion of "Nerf Tanks" mitigation so that you have a reason to stack mitigation stats like TEN, in addition to using more active mitigation (If it gets implemented in a useful yet not obligatory way, because the last thing we need is for designs to ultimately be a choice between balancing so you just spam DPS combos 24/7 like current, spam Enmity combos 24/7 like with some suggestions or spam Mitigation combos 24/7 if tank mitigation was gutted too much)

I suppose, one consideration to make with Tank stats in mind... Would be trying to make some balance between the 3 main stat types in some way. Making DPS focused stats (STR/Crit/DH/DET) useful alongside making both styles of defensive stats (VIT for Health and TEN for mitigation) useful.

With my above spitballed reconsideration of my Stagger mechanic, whereby you mix together DPS and Enmity styles of play to build and maintain stagger respectively, there could be some sort of synergy where DPS stats increase your damage which increases the amount of stagger you build as well as improving your output while the targeted is staggered. VIT would have a co-efficient on it that would amplify how effective your Enmity skills are at building time where the stagger doesn't decay (Or if time where it doesn't decay is not a mechanic that functions well, perhaps some sort of slowing down of the decay whereby there could be a maximum percent it would be slowed down by affected by this co-efficient or some such). While TEN would build both DPS allowing the increase to stagger building and capitalization while also providing mitigation reducing the number of mitigation combos needed so improving throughput.

Of course, even in this case people will calculate the mathmatically optimal stats (Likely having a specific breakpoint for VIT and then stacking primarily whatever mathmatically wins out between raw DPS and DPS/Mitigation hybrid)

Natively, Vercure is worthless. Smoke Screen is irrelevant unless you have one and only one high pDPS party member (e.g a SAM or BLM) or only have a single Ranged and wish to delay Refresh/Tactician. Shadewalker is still made mostly superfluous by proper circle-shirking, Diversion/detaunts, and equal percentile tank damage.

I'd argue that Vercure is only worthless outside of progression, in specifically raids.

During progression it has some use and during more casual content such as Dungeons and Trials is again, offers some use. Never as much as Verraise, but at least some. I mean, if you can Vercure to prevent needing to Verraise, that's objectively better, since then you avoid the Weakened state as well as the time spent by the healer trying to re-apply Protect (Not to mention the time spent with the person being resurrected and then regaining MP/TP)

Smoke Screen and Shadewalker are still popular enough to bring NIN's to a majority of parties (In the same vein that DRG are brought to many parties purely to buff the BRD's damage that is in every party, which is in every party because BRD brings so much utility and support that it outperforms even BLM/SMN/SAM which can often deal 1-2k+ more DPS than the BRD)

Meanwhile, PLD's don't have the same kind of prevalence. Mostly, the favoured Tank is WAR, not because of its utility but because Fell Cleave is ridonkulous. Especially with Inner Release. Which puts them on top of the DPS for Tanks. Which is always a strange feeling, when the best tank to have is not the one that can protect the team the best, nor the one that can survive the best, but the one that can DPS the best because the other aspects are irrelevant.

[Shurrikhan]

That's still control. You have a literal button you can press that either makes 50% of your enmity fly out of the window, or makes your skills produce 50% enmity for a period of time. That is control. You can choose not to press these buttons and generate more enmity, you can choose to time these buttons for when you're bursting hard and so generating a lot of enmity to make them more effective, or you can choose to just press them on CD.

They don't need the Tank to taunt in order to let them press these buttons. They don't rely on the Healer or other DPS to press these buttons, these buttons aren't only available during certain encounters or certain phases of a boss. These are buttons that DPS can use whenever they wish, provided they're not on CD.

This is control.

Only to the same extent that a tank can choose not to hold threat, or a melee could choose never to use Invigorate or a healer Lucid Dreaming. You use the button, or you're griefing. That's not control. It's bloat. You have the "choice" of doing the obviously required thing or not doing it and forcing your team to suffer for it. That's like the choice between giving your wallet or being killed and the wallet taken, or paying your taxes or going to jail and your taxes being taken from you just the same. The latter is a non-choice. And only one real choice does not allow for one to choose anything, and without choice there is no control, merely convolution and forced dynamics.

Because I discuss Tanks in an overall sense, not specifically only in reference to raiding.

The level of extremity at which your suggestions would have any notable consequence would almost solely be within raiding, hence my assumption. Nonetheless, I understand that at present raiding has some of the least attractive threads from which to spin out an idea of what all a tank ought to be able to do or be responsible for. I'll keep this in mind. Who knows -- perhaps we may eventually see serious content that isn't a striking dummy with scheduled raid mechanics and some slight mobility in a tiny, perfectly geometrical room.

True, but it's such a hard line to balance.

Yes. Which is why the decisions shouldn't be made per a philosophical gesture of "enmity is a tanking manipulator, so tanks should mostly just use enmity combos". The goal has to be the gameplay, not just its components. Even if the idea that more enmity skills should be used may sound appealing in itself, it needs to be taken in light of everything else -- does it actually offer what a tank needs to feel like a tank (imo, the decisions necessary for management and survival).

Admittedly, my implementation of Stagger also isn't the perfect implementation either, because that just ends up trading the ideal scenario to being spamming Stagger generators, until the boss is low enough to where another stagger is not possible in which DPS combos take over again (Though, this is at least more dynamic than the former) - Though, I'll try to address this a bit more later.

Fair enough. I'm glad you're not content with merely cyclical variance over having multiple choices in any given context.

This is still only an initial suggestion too, the idea can be tweaked and adjusted. Such as perhaps trying to figure a way where Tank Stance/Enmity Combos work more like XIII's Commando where it prevents the decay of Stagger allowing it to be built up, but where DPS Stance/DPS Combos work more like XIII's Ravager where they BUILD the Stagger.

I think you can get by with just the skills unlocked by the relevant stance doing a better job in each regard. For instance, imagine if Shield Oath actually did something with its shield beyond being a faster generator of Oath Gauge in and only in mass pulls or AoE pulls under Bulwark/PoA. Imagine being able to empower Shield Swipe or even Shield Bash, or having the damage mitigated actually throw off the enemy a bit. Likewise, what if Grit allowed you greatly increased parry strength and let Souleater build shield (assuming it'd then be able to self-heal in either form), each of which applies some stagger even on the defensive? (The Commando variety in each case, to be clear.) Inner Beast? That enemy is trucked and prepped for a right profitable Fell Cleave spam. At the point, you don't need any special mechanics for the "dps" stance's Ravager-like effect. You just need damage scaling.

At most, have the tank stance generate in additional Commando-esque stagger whatever portion, or more, it lost in damage. (Again, I'd like to see these tank/dps stances feel pretty different from their opposite, and until such time as even Grit On and Grit Off feel diverse through toolkit alterations, that's probably at least partly going to mean direct damage modifier variance...)

I think the main issue is that the mitigation on Tenacity just isn't currently relevant.

Agreed. I thought I was clear in saying as much.

However, there is something to consider:

Parry, however objectively worse a stat it was than Tenacity, did at least manage something that Tenacity cannot. It could potential save a GCD when precasting was unnecessary, by the mere fact that it had a chance to remove a much larger chunk of damage. We don't tend to feel granular adjustments in and of themselves. We only feel the breakpoints they cause: Stagger happens 1 GCD sooner; I can survive off just an oGCD where a Cure II/Aspected Benefic was necessary before; it's dead in 5 minutes, down from 6. But it takes an almost absurd amount of passive, permanent mitigation to achieve that. Perhaps there are other, better ways Tenacity could have been done. Parry at least contributed towards a meaningful breakpoint immediately, whereas that breakpoint might only occur after a great expense with a pure % mitigation stat. And had it been changed to, say, Evasion or Guard*, as to apply to all damage sources, and RNG mitigation reworked somewhat, something like that could have been far more reliable and integral.

Which is one of the driving forces between peoples opinion of "Nerf Tanks" mitigation so that you have a reason to stack mitigation stats like TEN, in addition to using more active mitigation.

Again, I'm fine with that so long as it doesn't simply shift obligations. We need choice, which requires contextual balance.

I suppose, one consideration to make with Tank stats in mind... Would be trying to make some balance between the 3 main stat types in some way. Making DPS focused stats (STR/Crit/DH/DET) useful alongside making both styles of defensive stats (VIT for Health and TEN for mitigation) useful.

This has been widely suggested in regards to tank accessories, giving a roughly materia's worth short of cap for each of Strength and Vitality on Fending accessories, (say, 65STR/65VIT, with an actual cap of 90 for each), thereby giving tanks the choice between further maximum eHP and increased damage. Pentamelding would then just add additional secondaries, just as for everyone else. The alternative was to make TEN worthwhile and put Fending accessories at their cap already, such as by giving .33 AP per VIT and .67 AP per STR, removing the left-side bonus VIT on gear, and giving Fending accessories the full amount of each stat so that tanks need only decide between secondaries.

In both cases it came down to -- you guessed it -- no perceived value of TEN or VIT due to current content and the power scaling that surrounds the task of tanking.

I'd argue that Vercure is only worthless outside of progression, in specifically raids.

It's scarcely of value inside progression, either. You'd have to already be royally done in to see the slightest use of it. And, again, balance probably needs to be considered from the top down. Content can be diversified however later so that someone else has the chance of competing with the massive value of RDMs in Eureka, but RDMs should not be paying a cent in raid balance for having a skill that's useful only outside of raids.

Smoke Screen and Shadewalker are still popular enough to bring NIN's to a majority of parties

They're practically a non-factor. TA is all NINs need to be practically assured a place in any party. Smokescreen may or may not see any value whatsoever. It is literally impossible, however, to find a composition that wastes the value of TA, unlike Contagion, Radiant Shield, Brotherhood, Embolden, etc.

Which is always a strange feeling, when the best tank to have is not the one that can protect the team the best, nor the one that can survive the best, but the one that can DPS the best because the other aspects are irrelevant.

For better or worse, it's pretty normal across any MMO that doesn't involve a constant struggle for survival in its highest difficulty fights once fully memorized... which is most of them. So I can't honestly say it gives me a strange feeling, at all, though I do wish we could see more value for and from indirect contribution.

[Kaitoo]

I mean you either want it a holy trinity combat system or you dont. And seeing how anything non-holy trinity has horrendous pve content imo i rather want i to stay that way. I always find it odd how tanks (and healers) are expected to dish out so much dmg, while the devs proclaiming they dont design around that.
On that note other mmos got alot of gamebreaking problems when the tanks got too self-sufficient, as in they were more resistant AND had comparable output to dds. So i dont agree with @Kalise at all here for example. 99 % of the time the problem is always the tanks can do too much, not the opposite. Like its not 1999 anymore where tanks literarly just auto attack and get punched, in any mmo

[Shurrikhan]

I mean you either want it a holy trinity combat system or you dont. And seeing how anything non-holy trinity has horrendous pve content imo i rather want i to stay that way. I always find it odd how tanks (and healers) are expected to dish out so much dmg, while the devs proclaiming they dont design around that.
On that note other mmos got alot of gamebreaking problems when the tanks got too self-sufficient, as in they were more resistant AND had comparable output to dds. So i dont agree with @Kalise at all here for example. 99 % of the time the problem is always the tanks can do too much, not the opposite. Like its not 1999 anymore where tanks literarly just auto attack and get punched, in any mmo

There's a vast range both between and within each of "Trinity" and "Non-Trinity" designs, and codependence solely by specialization is not the only way to manipulate player behavior and frame balance around coordinated tasks, perspectives, and responsibilities.

And though it's a long read, I think you'll find that Kalise's position is quite far, if not antithetical, from wanting tanks to be able to excel in every output. No one thus far has asked that tanks be brain-dead. No one has asked, either, that they be more nearly omnipotent.

[Kaitoo]

There's a vast range both between and within each of "Trinity" and "Non-Trinity" designs, and codependence solely by specialization is not the only way to manipulate player behavior and frame balance around coordinated tasks, perspectives, and responsibilities.

And though it's a long read, I think you'll find that Kalise's position is quite far, if not antithetical, from wanting tanks to be able to excel in every output. No one thus far has asked that tanks be brain-dead. No one has asked, either, that they be more nearly omnipotent.

I read both of your posts, i was referring to this:
"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." Which i am not seeing, hence me pointing it out. I didnt say he/she stated they should ne omnipotent, but the reality of tanks being too potent is much more realistic then they being punching bags iny any modern mmo. Thats like a fact of life.

As for holy trinity: There really isnt imo. Like it is a system closed in itself. You cant put external factors in if its about the codepency. Meaning if you alter the balance of a role, you gonna take or add it from an another role. Everything a tank, or any other role for that matter, does more you gonna subtract from other roles and vice versa. Another interesting point actually even if its a little bit offtopic: Because raids got more mechanically complex in the mmo genre (which has also its imprint on FFXIV) the role of healers got diminished. There were no "tankbusters" or similar mechanics in mmos, auto attack just really hit hard. So the healers had always something to do. Over time, more encounter involved more "skill" based mechanics where if played perfectly, the group could avoid almost all of the damage, making healer almost obsolete . The "solution" to this was unavoidable raid-wide damage that players take regardless of mechanics so the healer has something to do which we also have in FFXIV. Which is quite funny and silly to me.

[Drakkaelus]

First time posting in forums so bare with me here, but I\\'m curious as to what the community would like to have change with the play style of current tanks within the game. Not specifically with the jobs, but tanking in general. I personally hope that SE creates more of an emphasis on actually TANKING, mitigating damage etc. and base our rotations around providing these tools.

I'm sure it's already been said but you're not really going to get these sort of things in a game where every fight is so scripted. That's the thing with a lot of MMOs, right? Shit's either a tankbuster or it isn't. If it is, you'll never be able to boost your defense enough to shake off the damage without cooldowns and/or heals, so what's the use of basing your gameplay around something that won't actually make a difference when it counts?

SE would have to redesign every encounter from the ground-up to make mitigation mean more than, "use a CD when the boss uses a tankbuster". And while I wouldn't mind it (I love the feeling of being an immovable object when I break out the Lance in Monster Hunter), I doubt it'll happen.