I'm thinking Dark Knight's rework will be more extensive than I initially thought.

[Kalise]

While the concept in itself might seem interesting, the game itself doesn't lend to such opportunity cost play-style.

This is not an intrinsic aspect of the design and is more to do with how the game has been balanced.

Currently, Tank Stances and their associated skills are unwanted because they're unnecessary because Tank mitigation and Healer output is high enough that damage is never a concern outside of Tankbusters which are conveniently mitigated through CD's.

The skills tied to Tank Stances aren't inherently bad in design, it's just that numbers are overtuned so that they're never necessary.

Like, why should a WAR care about the self heal and 20% damage mitigation buff from Inner Beast, if Healers themselves don't even care about spending actual GCD's on healing in the first place, let alone wanting assistance from the Tank to mitigate incoming damage...

I honestly think that this situation should be fixed, rather than fed into. We shouldn't get more Tanks that don't have anything cool with Stances just because everyone is just going to be tuned so that the meta is for Tanks to sit in DPS stance 24/7 and healers will just DPS 24/7 and rely on oGCD's for healing.

Instead, there should be changes so that Tanks can be incentivised to actually use Tank stance and active mitigation skills while MT and where Healers are incentivised to use GCD heals and want Tanks to actively mitigate damage to make things easier for them.

I think the better solution is to not have stances at all. If you try your hardest to force players to use defensive stance through mitigation requirements, there's still going to be a subset of us who manage to get by without it (remember i270 accessories?) So you just create a performance gap.

The take home message should be: stop punishing players for playing the game. People don't like defensive stances because they're effectively just a penalty slapped on to extra mitigation. They're also cumbersome and costly to switch in and out of if you're not playing WAR.

Honestly, there's room to actually have stances be meaningful.

As it currently stands, most of Tanks mitigation is passive. Through inherent defence and passive mitigation from stats. This means that there's really little difference between the stances and it mostly comes from the paltry mitigation (Or health in the case of WAR) boost on the actual stance at the cost of massive damage down.

If stances were made more important for gameplay as well as less punishing to swap between, it could be an improvement to Tanking without having to feel like you're being "Punished" by going into Tank stance.

For example:

• Make stances for all tanks oGCD like WAR.
• Remove the damage penalty from Tank Stance (DPS stance already has BONUS damage and damaging skills, it doesn't need Tank Stance to have a massive penalty on top of this).
• Adjust WAR's Tank Stance bonus so it doesn't suck when you swap into it (Max health is kind of lame when you swap in and you're just missing that extra health until the Healer tops you off)
• Put some active mitigation skills into Tank Stances, so the reason you're in Tank Stance isn't just extra passive mitigation while you spam less effective DPS combos, but so you can access skills that keep you alive while you're MT.
• Put more Damage and Supportive skills into DPS Stance so it's the go-to stance when you're OT (Also, when not having adds or a secondary target to engage with)
• Take Unchained and rework it (Also, create thematic alternatives for the other Tanks) to allow access to some of the DPS Stance tools while in Tank Stance so that good players will find ways to push out extra damage.

Or you know... Delete stances and any kind of active mitigation from tanks and keep just giving them a ton of passive defences so that they just mongo smash as Beefy DPS while healers continue to only care about oGCD heals...

[Megguido]

Put some active mitigation skills into Tank Stances, so the reason you're in Tank Stance isn't just extra passive mitigation while you spam less effective DPS combos, but so you can access skills that keep you alive while you're MT.
Put more Damage and Supportive skills into DPS Stance so it's the go-to stance when you're OT

The other ideas are intersting, but this solves nothing. If they took away Grit's damage penalty but it still locks me out of Blood Weapon, I'm still not touching it beside opener and dungeon trash.
If you lock DPS abilities behind OT stance, people will optimize their play / teamplay to stay in OT stance as much as possible, unless the defensive part of the MT stance becomes mandatory.

[Kalise]

The other ideas are intersting, but this solves nothing. If they took away Grit's damage penalty but it still locks me out of Blood Weapon, I'm still not touching it beside opener and dungeon trash.
If you lock DPS abilities behind OT stance, people will optimize their play / teamplay to stay in OT stance as much as possible, unless the defensive part of the MT stance becomes mandatory.

Making the defensive aspect of the Tank Stance mandatory for MT is a requirement for this yes, but the hope is that it wouldn't feel so bad in order to make such a change if Tank Stance felt less like a punishment (Such as not having the penalty associated with it, as well as access to interesting skills instead of being almost entirely passive such as how it currently is for DRK/PLD)

In addition, that's why I also mentioned about making Unchained work to allow access of alternate stance skills, so for example, as a MT DRK you could choose to gain access to Blood Weapon while MT in order to push out extra DPS but at the cost of maybe not having access to some other supportive skills instead due to spending your "Unchained" for BW. So that there's more choice and min/max play that isn't just "Lel DPS stance 24/7"

Since, as long as Tank Stances aren't mandatory to survive, they'll always be unwanted and seen as "Training Wheels" or a "Punishment" with people trying to make Healers work harder in order to make their non-use feasible.

This hampers Tank design heavily because it severely limits diversity between MT and OT roles as well as limits design because they can't make mitigation skills meaningful if people don't need them...

[kashi11]

How would giving the tanks 'active mitigation' be more engaging than DPSing? I'd say give tanks more interesting/complex DPS rotations before I would want more active mitigation. Active mitigation could create 1 of 2 things, either few forms of active mitigation that feels spammy to mitigate autos, OR if they give us some type of active mitigation combo it would create unnecessary button bloat while in DPS stance.

[Kalise]

How would giving the tanks 'active mitigation' be more engaging than DPSing? I'd say give tanks more interesting/complex DPS rotations before I would want more active mitigation. Active mitigation could create 1 of 2 things, either few forms of active mitigation that feels spammy to mitigate autos, OR if they give us some type of active mitigation combo it would create unnecessary button bloat while in DPS stance.

Active mitigation would be more engaging than DPSing because it would mean that you'd not have a useless Tank Stance that you'd never be in. So you'd be trying to stance dance when swapping between MT and OT roles (Or if min/maxing, swapping into DPS stance when the boss isn't actively attacking you, such as while it channels big attacks or other such pauses in incoming damage, or during periods where you have strong CD's active to mitigate incoming damage enough to get away with it)

It also means that you'd be trying to balance your DPS combo vs active mitigation skills to ensure maximum DPS without dying (As opposed to DPS combo all the time every time)

Depending of course, how they implemented "Active Mitigation" - I.e. If it was a combo or if it was just skills like Inner Beast that use merely used alongside your DPS combo...

If the concern is merely button bloat... Then wouldn't it be rather simple to just make combos change depending on what stance you're in? Exactly like how Inner Beast/Fell Cleave and Steel Cyclone/Decimate already do? So for example, in Tank stance you have an Enmity/DPS combo and a Mitigation combo (With maybe some extra stuff to go with it, such as Goring Blade and Storm's Eye as additional damage/utility things to maintain alongside these combos) while in DPS stance you have your DPS combo and some other utility combo that helps you provide support/damage and helps make DPSing as a Tank more interesting than using the same 3-4 skills ad infinitum.

[kashi11]

thanks for clearing that up. I like the idea somewhat, as if the active mitigation was oGCD it would make the job feel faster paced, weaving active mitigation between DPS GCDs. Would basically feel like a dark arts type defensive cool down. So basically take inner beast, the blackest night, and Shelton, make all of them oGCD, reduce cool down timers to about 5-10 seconds, and nerf them a bit so that they wouldn't be too strong. This would create a higher skill floor though, and most non tank mains are already turned off to tanking due to anxiety. I feel like a higher skill floor is not what we need, but a higher skill ceiling.

[Shurrikhan]

Making the defensive aspect of the Tank Stance mandatory for MT is a requirement for this yes, but the hope is that it wouldn't feel so bad in order to make such a change if Tank Stance felt less like a punishment (Such as not having the penalty associated with it, as well as access to interesting skills instead of being almost entirely passive such as how it currently is for DRK/PLD).

When you give both, overpowering the benefits of tank stance relative to going without it for the moment, you just shift gameplay over to where there's no lenience and fewer stretches of opportunity, yet the same stale gameplay prevails. You essentially have managed only to nerf tanks, albeit likely with a simultaneous increase to the party's dependence on them.

[Kalise]

When you give both, overpowering the benefits of tank stance relative to going without it for the moment, you just shift gameplay over to where there's no lenience and fewer stretches of opportunity, yet the same stale gameplay prevails. You essentially have managed only to nerf tanks, albeit likely with a simultaneous increase to the party's dependence on them.

Except the parts where I mentioned including extra stretches of opportunity that go far and above the current system which literally has no lenience and 0 stretches of opportunity because it's literally a matter of use DPS Stance 24/7 outside of exactly the pull, and use the static DPS combo 24/7 outside of exactly the pull, irregardless of whether you're MT or OT.

"Nerfing" Tanks is a necessity, given that there's no opportunity cost to staying in DPS stance and only ever using DPS combos and DPS bonus skills. In addition, the same can be said of Healers too, they also suffer from scaling that causes issues such as Critlo spreading to nullify mechanics.

I quote "Nerfing" because the actual output is not a nerf, but a retune. Instead of being stuck ignoring most of your kit as a tank because it's literally worthless, you now have more dynamic gameplay that's both more engaging and more fulfilling if you can master it.

There would now be differences in gameplay depending on if you were MT or OT as the OT can go ham on DPS while they don't need to tank something and don't need to use any utility/support skills to aid the party, while the MT will try and kick out as much damage as they can but prioritizing making sure they stay alive through mitigation uptime and skill usage.

There would be thoughts about min/maxing where as a MT you would look for opportunities to dance into DPS stance and kick out some bonus damage while incoming damage is paused for whatever reason. You'd look to find the best times to use "Unchained" in order to access a skill(s) from your DPS stance.

The same stale gameplay only occurs if you ignore 90% of the content of my post and only focus on the "Make Tank Stance Mandatory" line, disregarding to the changes put forth to not only change Stances themselves, but also various parts of Tanks kits that would interact with Stances.

[Shurrikhan]

Except the parts where I mentioned including extra stretches of opportunity that go far and above the current system which literally has no lenience and 0 stretches of opportunity because it's literally a matter of use DPS Stance 24/7 outside of exactly the pull, and use the static DPS combo 24/7 outside of exactly the pull, irregardless of whether you're MT or OT.

Except that stretches of opportunity can be accentuated far, far more easily just by having more frequent, slightly less predictable lesser damage spikes atop all we have now and simple changes to the access to tank stances themselves. We don't need to remove the reward for optimization. We just need to give things to optimize and the means to do so more nearly in real time. In that last regard, I agree with certain of your previous posts. I'd just like to point out the difference between "white" damage, "random" damage, and nearly-but-not-wholly-predictable patterns of damage. The first two can help, but it's the last that makes or breaks opportunity cost-reward systems.

Not taking sides here--sadly, you both seem to be ignoring logically-obvious conditions attachments to each others' hypotheticals while approaching very nearly the same point or trajectory thereof--but as I've no time to write a text-wall at the moment, I'd prefer to pick very specific points. Please don't take this as my disregarding the rest of your source post. I've read it. And the whole of the conversation proceeding it.

1.x actually had an interesting concept by which to do that, originally. Every monster had generative TP (so, job gauge these days), which built according to unique behaviorals/triggers. There were cooldowns to some of their skills, but all had gauge costs and most had only that gauge cost, so to speak. Because gauge would build variably, with little spikes from critting or being crit or the like atop basic generation, the rate of specials varied, while certain less obvious CDs (such as one by which a certain skill' or skills' costs were reduced for a brief time) could pump out patterns that were familiar and expectable without being wholly predictable. The damage would have felt a little more "organic" while also providing a good basis to risk-reward, which kind of made sense when slated also to have a channeled GCD block on Sentinel, tank-swap tools on Gladiator, and the best incap tools on Marauder.

[Phoenicia]

This is sort of a self defeating overview. "The game doesn't support it so don't do it", but then you can't do things because the game hasn't previously supported it.

So you can't do anything.

Okay. I'll sill enjoy Gunbladadin then.

It's not really self defeating if they keep treating the symptoms instead of the disease. Locking actions behind stances that we do NOT use to make us use them will only mean we won't use them. I used the WAR's example there because it's true. I'm not against stance dancing. I'm against stances being bad in the first place.

This is not an intrinsic aspect of the design and is more to do with how the game has been balanced.

Currently, Tank Stances and their associated skills are unwanted because they're unnecessary because Tank mitigation and Healer output is high enough that damage is never a concern outside of Tankbusters which are conveniently mitigated through CD's.
...Snip

The first sentence is basically what I said but in different words. I was too generalized not to go into too much detail since that can get boring and is already discussed on the forums in many threads.

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I personally prefer if tank stances are completely removed and the enmity system revamped. It is annoying that everything related to actual tanking comes at a cost against our DPS.

Not only are our tank stances heavily penalized, our enmity combos are too. Then we have things locked behind those "bad" stances. What irks me more is that this is not true for all 3 tanks.

WAR is hurt by it the most. For one, it loses access to all self healing outside of SP combos (which is very negligible). It also loses access to arguably the strongest "on demand" mitigation tool available to the three tanks (IB vs Sheltron vs TBN). And swapping to that stance locks you in it for 10 seconds, that's 4~5 GCDs. And in it you lose a LOT of access to good damaging abilities.

DRK sees this as a bit of an annoyance. Bloodpact in its current form sucks anyways. Losing access to its self heal from Souleater kinda sucks, but DRK in general needs better on-demand self-healing since it is the only tank that has a "Get healed or die" ability.

PLD on the other hand, COULD NOT CARE LESS!! Clemency available from either or no stance, all its CDs are available regardless too. Sheltron FILLS FASTER (yes, very ironic) in its DPS stance than its "Defensive" stance. Not even the MP cost of the stance matters to PLD. Only concern PLD has regarding stances is: "I have to pay 2 GCDs going to and back.

As for the game forcing tanks to use tank stances... I talked about it in a post on another thread (Maybe this one? Too lazy to look for it). The damage pattern being predictable means we will never need our tank stances.

It is not the healers' output that is overpowered in this game, as a matter of fact, healer's maximum HPS to the DPS's maximum DPS ratio in this game is quite low compared to other MMOs (1~1.5 times the DPS of a BLM). Our mitigation is bonkers. We have too many tools, they last too long and are on short CDs. Most other games have the tanks with 1 or 2 very strong cooldowns that act like our Hallowed Ground. To give a couple example in some of the recent MMOs I played:

- World of Warcaft: Warrior's Last Stand is a 4 minute CD that gives them 20~25% increased max HP and healing received for 10 seconds. Shield Wall reduces damage by 40% for 10 seconds, 3min. Monks have a "Fortifying Brew" CD that increases health by 20%, healing received by 20%, damage taken reduced by 20% for 20s... 7 minutes CD. Any "cheat death" mechanic tanks have is on a 6 minute CD and puts tank in a "Living Dead" situation of "meet condition or die". It is automatic so mistakes can mean the tank later dying to the planned "Cheat death" and as such no one plans around those mechanics.

Yes, no immunity cooldowns (enemies actually drop the target if it becomes immune). And tank busters can be as frequent as TB/20s.

- Aion: Templar has Iron Skin (50% damage reduction) on a 10 min CD. It has a magical resist CD at 7. And its physical immunity is a very expensive 4k DP (a personal limit break system of sorts) 1 hour CD.

Both WoW (1s~1.5s GCD) and Aion (No GCD, all moves have animation-time) are much faster games than FFXIV and tanks taking a beating happens much more frequently.

In contrast here in FFXIV, we can count up to 9 cooldowns on some of our tanks. Our TBs are on a 1 minute or longer timer. Or 2 in a row then long down time of only auto attacks and mechanical damage, which is funnily mitigated by tools available to EVERYONE. Reprisal, Sacred Soils, Galvanize and Noct Sheilds, Feint, Addle, Dismantle and so on. All of those are funnily stronger than any tank stance. It doesn't even matter how many CDs we have, broken BS like Holmgang and Hallowed exist.

Of course healers won't need the WAR or DRK to help them heal when all the healer has to do is literally wait for tank to "die" to TB and then use that supposed "emergency" heal that takes you from 0.1% to 70~100%.

So asking for the new tank to be a "stance dancer" because it is going to be fun without changing how the whole game is balanced is just not learning from the mistakes that already exist and asking for another WAR where you don't want to use half your toolkit. (Bold and italics so people don't confuse want with can).

The problem with stances on tanks is that they're really just there for the sake of being there. If you want a job to be based around "stance dancing," then there are a few requirements. First, it should be easy to switch stances. This means that stances should be oGCD and ideally should have no cost attached. MNK and WAR are examples of jobs which are setup appropriately for this. Second, no stance should be a clear cut winner. The instant that one stance offers more dps than the rest, you just pick that stance and sit in it. Instead, it needs to represent a more situational choice, either in terms of rotation or fight-specific conditions.

The problem with all of this is that stances are effectively just buffs with a permanent duration. So nothing has to be done using stances. If you need a stance for "enmity generation", why not just make it a 20 second buff? If you want the player to choose between a stance which makes you move faster but increases knockback distance vs. a stance that prevents knockback, just make them both temporary buffs, with recasts, that are mutually exclusive and/or share a cooldown.

The concept of a 100% uptime anything is baffling. Something that is up all the time does not represent a decision. It just takes up hotbar space.

Actually the current monk swapping between stances so it can abuse Tornado Kick is a very good example of stances done right. Monks now try to sit in Fire for as much as they can, but then they want to use as many TKs as they can (being the hardest hitting ability they have) and wanted to rebuild back to 3 stacks of GL via FoW is very good design, although accidental (I do not believe SE had that in mind early Stormblood).

WAR however is an example of it done NOT right. Inner Beast and Fell Cleave sharing the same resource is the biggest mistake SE made. As a matter of fact, it was also true for Inner Release and Unchained which they fixed merely 2 patches later.

In a game that is VERY DPS oriented, you can't put anything at the cost of DPS. Unless you remove this whole DPS orientation. The only time "stance dancing" in order to mitigate at the cost of DPS is to make it so tanks' DPS does not mater... Sadly, it matters in most games I've played so far.

Also SE, please remove all these crappy 100% uptime <damage type> resist down debuffs. This game does not support it. Not while we have more than twice as many classes as many we have raid spots. We can only take less than half the jobs available in any raid group. Unless we have 2 CLEAR CUT EQUALLY WELL SYNERGIZED groups, having permanent buffs synergizing with only set classes is very restricting and B.A.D. Look at how DRG, BRD and NIN are so solidified into the meta. And have been so since 2.3.

In WoW they have some classes that bring VERY good utility. Mages bring Arcane Intellect that increases everyone's INT by 10%. Warriors bring a 10% attack power buff. Monks do a 5% defense down that is permanent on target. Mages, Shamans and Hunters bring a 40s 30% haste raid buff. But when your raid is 20+ members and you only have 13 classes to choose from, what are the chances of not having 1 of each class?... Even then, by some intentional effort of avoiding having 1 of each class, some crafted items are available to provide a weaker version of the buffs.

Do not get me wrong, I do not want FFXIV to be WOW. But this game's devs were smart enough to learn from other MMOs (WoW and GW2 specifically) and implement good ideas into this one, why not take yet another leaf from their books, yeah?

Cheers~