Can we remove Tank Stance?

[Burningskull]

So... I have been playing tank for the last few days since they announced Gunbreaker to try and get use to tanking. I've been doing it on PLD since Gunbreaker looked like PLD without a shield. I also haven't done any high end raiding, nor do I plan to, so take this current opinion with a grain of... salt is considered a bad term now-a-days so.. Sugar?

I don't think they should remove Tank Stance.

I do however agree with an earlier poster that your DPS stance should just be tuned into your regular stance when you are not in tank stance. I also think the tank stance should be OGCD but have a cool down timer of maybe 10 - 30 seconds so you can't just pop it for an attack and then turn it back off immediately.

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

[Dralonis]

After NA's Fan fest, I doubt they will remove tank stance, but make it more interesting/involving to use and useful. Giving it a semi warrior treatment possibly. Shelltron being tank stance only and spirits within dps stance only, that kind of stuff. As well as I kinda feel they will remove diversion or just some threat drop from DPS in general to make enmity more of a tank job in general since they don't like the DPS focus tanks have. I feel they may nerf tank damage over all, then only reduce tank stance damage from 20% down to 15% or 10% to sorta balance it out and make tank stance not seem as bad to use.

When asked about tank accessories lacking STR and that BIS rings are crafted etc, he said he didn't like it and will be addressing tank DPS later.

Just a guess though. I don't think they will be reduced down to healer damage, but I think they want tank stance to be more appealing and useful because currently, it's barely needed. And not just simply making bosses hit tanks harder when not in tank stance, they gotta make some tank stance only stuff and utility tank stance only.

[Burningskull]

After NA's Fan fest, I doubt they will remove tank stance, but make it more interesting/involving to use and useful. Giving it a semi warrior treatment possibly. Shelltron being tank stance only and spirits within dps stance only, that kind of stuff. As well as I kinda feel they will remove diversion or just some threat drop from DPS in general to make enmity more of a tank job in general since they don't like the DPS focus tanks have. When asked about tank accessories lacking STR and that BIS rings are crafted etc, he said he didn't like it and will be addressing tank DPS later.

Just a guess though. I don't think they will be reduced down to healer damage, but I think they want tank stance to be more appealing and useful because currently, it's barely needed. And not just simply making bosses hit tanks harder when not in tank stance.

Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

[whiskeybravo]

So... I have been playing tank for the last few days since they announced Gunbreaker to try and get use to tanking. I've been doing it on PLD since Gunbreaker looked like PLD without a shield. I also haven't done any high end raiding, nor do I plan to, so take this current opinion with a grain of... salt is considered a bad term now-a-days so.. Sugar?

I don't think they should remove Tank Stance.

I do however agree with an earlier poster that your DPS stance should just be tuned into your regular stance when you are not in tank stance. I also think the tank stance should be OGCD but have a cool down timer of maybe 10 - 30 seconds so you can't just pop it for an attack and then turn it back off immediately.

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

One of the main reasons I still defend tank stance. There are actually still moments when it's needed, or at least useful, especially for people who don't main tank.

The damage penalty really only makes sense if you think of it as cost/benefit. You are trading offense for defense (and threat) or vice-versa. Beyond that it doesn't really make a lot of sense, though.

[Gemina]

I also don't see a need for the damage penalty while in tank stance. You are already a tank and tend to have less potencies than DPS anyway so... And logically speaking tank stance is there to give you more hate and take less damage right? Well wouldn't hitting a mob harder make them hate you more than if you were tickling them? Although if you want to make it so you can't turn tank stance off immediately then maybe it would still need some kind of penalty to it so... who knows.

Any thoughts?

Getting rid of the damage penalty for tank stance is essentially the same as not having reduced enmity generation in DPS stance. Either one basically eliminates the need for any stance at all. Enmity generators multiply the potencies to the skills that qualify. They don't multiply the actual damage that comes out, but they do in terms of the hate they generate. Right now tanks can maintain enmity easily in DPS stance after acquiring it in tank stance. It's not a bad concept, but it's the min/maxing that tries to reduce the time in tank stance to next to nothing.

Devs are going to have to make a decision. They can eliminate tank stance, or reduce the enmity generated in DPS stance so it will force them to spend more time on the defensive. If they want tanks to be tanks, they need to do the latter. Otherwise they're just DPS with an inflated HP pool that trade not having to be in the spotlight for tank privileges such as survivability.

[Alaray]

Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

I get the mindset, but the crux of the tank design is: You don't need the stance to continue generating threat. For tanks, when you do your opening threat combination and slip into DPS you're generating enmity from the initial few moves you do, while generating bonus threat that assists the entire party's overall DPS when you take advantage of the damage output a tank can do in the opener of a fight (which, again, generates threat). Mitigation isn't really useful if you don't need it, there's other buttons all tanks can utilize to mitigate incoming auto-attack damage, raid-wide damage, and large cooldowns (that can in a lot of fights be preemptively popped in a boss's rotation to mitigate other things) for tankbusters.

If you sit in tank stance, on a fight with DPS checks and enrage checks, and everyone around is maybe slightly below average in their damage output -- your choice in not assisting the damage output could kill your entire party, as the game is literally designed around DPS checks. (It's not about "I wanna PARSE" it's often "I want to beat enrage.")

That said, you can still manage threat -- You *can* do enmity combos in DPS stance, even if they're not optimal, if you realize someone is catching up to you. Your OT also manages threat with you with the provoke + shirk. And, if a bad moment happens (as fights in this tier can have wonky timings for some things that might need higher mitigation) you can dip into the stance for the mitigation, treating it like a Rampart. (And some tanks, like PLD, can generate threat just doing more DPS -- more shield swipe procs = more damage = more threat, since it's not only more damage but also increases threat. Same with Circle of Scorn).

When I tank? I'm there to tank, too. If I mess up my opener and a DPS dies for it? That's on me, and it happens sometimes -- fat fingering the wrong button, or just forgetting everything in a moment of blank-mindedness. If I'm with a PUG, I'll do enmity combos if I see it as necessary, while watching threat (which is, imo, more interesting than just turning on tank stance, spamming Halone Bologna and never having to manage it from that point onward since it manages it for you). If I know my OT isn't shirking me, or I'm aware DPS aren't using Diversion/Lucid/Tactician/Merciful Eyes/Elusive Jump/etc... I'll adjust around it in most cases since in Normal, or 24 mans, it's not worth the trouble of asking them to use a freebie button to help you because they all complain about it.

I like that threat management is an actual thing. Just keeping on tank-stance removes that entire responsibility, and removes the necessity to learn how it works, since it'll never be an issue if all you do is sit in Grit, Shield Oath, or Defiance the entire time spamming threat combos. It also burdens your DPS and Healers to output *more* DPS in to make up for the lack of damage output *you're* doing, since the lower DPS is more likely to kill a party than auto attacks to kill a tank.

You have CD's for a reason, they're there for you to map out appropriately and utilize for the biggest mitigation benefit (and if I can CD a Tail End appropriately, my health barely moves, if I use weaker CD's, I might be chunked to 1/3rd of my HP, but Defiance isn't going to change that from happening on its own since it's a stance that doesn't innately mitigate damage, just gives you HP -- which *can* save you in a pinch, and Equilibrium and a Inner Beast *can* save you in a spaghetti moment, but spaghetti moments aren't supposed to be the norm. But being able to know what to do and how to execute, as a tank, in a spaghetti moment? That's more interesting to me than not needing to do *anything*).

I'm going to compare it, again, since I feel like it's a decent comparison:

In a game like World of Warcraft, as a tank, you can pretty much turn off your brain and do just fine. You rarely have to manage hate, you usually have a passive or passive-ish defensive running, and your defensive CD's tend to come up fairly fast (Specifically thinking of Blood Death Knight's Vampiric Blood). Outside of optimizing your damage... there's nothing left to improve on. There's no real direction to *get* better after you get the basics down. You kinda exist, and in that existential boredom, you work on damage since it's all that's left. (and in a 20+ person raid, a tank's damage output is a lot less impactful due to the gap between tanks and DPS in said game).

In XIV, the damage is a lot more important to your group. It's also important to your threat generation, and you have to use more active abilities (so, understanding what they do -- Raw Intuition Parries and only works on Physical damage, is one example. Dark Mind is a *really* strong CD, but it only works on magical damage, so if you pop it for a tail-end and nothing else you kinda just explode). With the tanks in this game there's often a lot of room for improvement, there's more awareness required, there's looking at how boss rotations actually go to map things out to make life easier for your healers, there's a lot more to threat than just "I sit in tank stance" and it's more engaging and interesting to work with (IMO), and the way enmity works teaches everyone else how it works (and before you say they shouldn't have to, that's like saying if a DPS is in a fight with raid-wides, they shouldn't *ever* use *any* of their personal mitigation since "Healing is the Healer's Job". And that Red Mages should *never* rez, because that's the healer's job.)

And I know that the dev's, or at least Yoshida, mentioned wanting to make them more tank-oriented than DPS-oriented. But if they do that, they're going to need an entirely new philosophy to how they approach fight design.



That all said, I'm not the best tank player. I'm average at best. But this is all coming from the amount of information I learned from people who *really* know what they're doing when I approached them, or information haphazardly re-worded from guides and general tips (along with personal experience in terms of just... remembering when I learned bosses actually had physical or magical differentiations on attacks)

(If it's not clear, I like having the other stance. If they removed it, I'd prefer them make enmity as a whole a more interesting resource to manage which'd require a bigger rework)

[Canadane]

Those seem like good ideas. When I'm tanking I tend to have the mindset of, "Okay, I'm hear to tank. I need to keep agro and make it as easy on the healers as possible." Unless I'm off tanking in a 24man or a normal 8man I never leave tank stance. Yes I know that's frowned upon and that you should be in DPS stance sometimes but, I just don't like leaving tank stance when I'm there to keep hate.

See the thing that helps the healers the most is things dying faster so they deal less damage to the party/you.
A lot of people don't realize that, or at least the weight of that.

As for keeping hate, which is indeed the tanks primary job, you don't need to stay in tank stance for. Not only do you start off with a tank stance enmity boost but it's not like you DON'T generate any while in DPS stance. On top of that, everyone else has enmity reduction abilities. It's not your fault if they don't press Diversion here and there.

But all of this is more reasons to keep it as it is. It gives players the crutch they need before spreading their tank wings.

[Dralonis]

Getting rid of the damage penalty for tank stance is essentially the same as not having reduced enmity generation in DPS stance. Either one basically eliminates the need for any stance at all. Enmity generators multiply the potencies to the skills that qualify. They don't multiply the actual damage that comes out, but they do in terms of the hate they generate. Right now tanks can maintain enmity easily in DPS stance after acquiring it in tank stance. It's not a bad concept, but it's the min/maxing that tries to reduce the time in tank stance to next to nothing.

Devs are going to have to make a decision. They can eliminate tank stance, or reduce the enmity generated in DPS stance so it will force them to spend more time on the defensive. If they want tanks to be tanks, they need to do the latter. Otherwise they're just DPS with an inflated HP pool that trade not having to be in the spotlight for tank privileges such as survivability.

kinda why i get the feeling they will make DPS rotation and tank rotation reflect then add a button or 2 somewhere into that for maybe some variety, so tanks can't generate aggro outside of tank stance to that of normal tank levels and DPS stance is effectively like DPS and Offtank focus. Making MT be in Tank stance, but OT being in DPS. They also need to give OT's more of a job to do rather than just rotating tanks. They could make it to where tanks just take too much damage not in tank stance though that it would be better on healers mana if they were in tank stance but i'm not sure if they need to do that nor is that entirely fun.

Either way, I feel like the tank changes may be controversial to a lot of people, especially the ones that want to be those high dps tanks. Could be why they are holding off on info for changes until mid-may. I Just hope the changes over all will be better than current tank and how they are. Maybe more people would be willing to play them and less intimated by them/more fun to play.

Removing diversion and a lot of DPSers threat drop would be nice and get rid of buttons like they are wanting.

[Derio]

I dont see them removing it. They would have to further increase enmity gains or once again reduce dps enmity reductions tools cooldown timers.

You have to look at tank stance not just from a endgame standpoint but from a leveling standpoint as well.

I think tank stance needs to stay as it is training wheels that are there for support, especially for people learning tanking. Plus you still have more than half the dps population who dont use diversion or other enmity reduction tools. Plus the gear difference in some dungeons between the tank and the rest of the party is also a factor.

[technole]

Many still don't realize that killing things faster means less to heal/mitigate, as everything is based on damage. Every job is DPS, the only difference is the color role behind the job icon. Green is DPS when not having to heal.

Tank stance can be useful for learning fights and damage patterns, and open up more cool downs (Inner Beast). As skill goes up, you know timelines, how to optimize such as using Hallowed, Holmgang, LD as much as possible and not as "oh crap" buttons.