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

[Seraphor]

In general I would say that's not an unreasonable interpretation, but as per the ShB trailer and the concept of revolver-type gunblades, I don't think building a scaling bonus like Beast Gauge would fit. Ammo sits inert in the cylinder until fired. It wouldn't make sense for it to give a bonus while it's just sitting there.

But in the sense that any job that has an "instantly fill gauge" ability could be compared to an Aetherflow ability, sure. Some gauges just get spent in increments of 50 or 20 instead of increments of 1. But an Aetherflow mechanic sounds like the best fit for the bullet point on this slide, when coupled with the reasonable expectation that ammo will have a limit on the order of 6.

I'm wondering if it would be more like an 'aspected aetherflow' mechanic.
You load your 'DPS' ammo to spend like Dark Arts as a pseudo DPS stance on successive abilities, or you load your 'shield' ammo to make your successive attacks your tank stance, with special abilities for either (think Inner Beast/Fell Cleave) expending all currently loaded ammo.

[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.

[Lyth]

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.

[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~

[Kalise]

The instant that one stance offers more dps than the rest, you just pick that stance and sit in it.

Only in the case where you only care about doing 1 thing, DPS.

For Tanks, they have at least 3 things they *could* need to care about. DPS, Enmity and Survival.

However, currently they only care about DPS.

If balance was changed so that they cared about something other than DPS (Which, honestly, they should. Damage dealers should be the role that only care about DPS), then they have an opportunity where stances become a decision based on what they prioritize at the specific moment.

Why stances instead of just temporary buffs?

Well, because stances provide semi-permeance. You have the effect(s) of that stance until you no longer need it and change to a different one. Which goes hand in hand with how Tanks play and face content. I.e. You're MTing until the mechanics force a swap. You're fighting trash until you're fighting a boss. Both of those scenarios can change what base stats and skills you need (I.e. A MT needs to be able to handle the incoming damage. When fighting trash you need to be able to deal with multiple sources of incoming damage as well as deal AoE threat)

In addition, stances are easier to incorporate conditional abilities. For example, swapping between Inner Beast and Fell Cleave is a matter of shifting stances, it uses the same button on the hotbar but provides 2 distinctly different skills based around your stance. As opposed to something like BRD's Pitch Perfect which is literally pointless and just taking up action bar space until you put on The Wanderer's Minuet. Or BLM's Blizzard IV and Fire IV which are just taking up hotbar space unless you're in Astral Ice/Astral Fire with Enochian active.

(This is to say nothing of the fact that stances themselves, can be consolidated into a single button too... Swapping between the 2 stances when you activate it... Heck, this is actually the case for DRK as they only have the 1 stance so it is 1 button to toggle it on/off)

[Phoenicia]

Only in the case where you only care about doing 1 thing, DPS.

For Tanks, they have at least 3 things they *could* need to care about. DPS, Enmity and Survival.

I explained in my previous post how enmity and survival aren't much of a concern thanks to tools available to literally everyone.

As for stances, I think BRD is a good example of "stances" done right. You enter a stance to benefit from what it gives, and when you're done with that or it expires, you move on to another stance.

WAR's stance problem stems not only from moves locked behind stances, but sharing resources. If I use my gauge to Fell Cleave, there is no point in going to Defiance for Inner Beast. And do I really need Inner Beast? no, I already have 8 other defensive buffs and the ridiculously OP Holmgang.

On the other hand, if Inner Beast was not a gauge move, instead it was a TP expensive GCD or an oGCD with 15s, then entering Defiance to get "extra mitigation" wouldn't be so bad. We'd mitigate the DPS loss with Unchained (and upheaval's bug lol) and end up DPS neutral with mitigation gained on top. It would be kind of similar to how DRK uses 2400 MP on TBN instead of DA, where the temporary DPS loss is made up for with a Bloodspiller.

[Kalise]

Not only are our tank stances heavily penalized, our enmity combos are too.

Actually, this is not technically true.

In terms of combos, WAR's Enmity combo is actually higher potency than its "DPS" combo.

Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block is 160 > 210 > 300 potency.

Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path/Storm's Eye is 160 > 200 > 280 potency.

Just, Storm's Path randomly gives 20 Beast Gauge instead of Storm's Eye and Butcher's Block's 10. So more Gauge means more 520 potency Fell Cleaves (Which means more Infuriate which in turn means more Fell Cleave...)

DRK and PLD have DPS combos that deal more damage than their Enmity combos thanks to Royal Authority and Syphon Strike (Rage of Halone combo out damages the direct damage of Goring Blade and Power Slash is equal in damage to Souleater, Syphon is just the major culprit with not only dealing more damage than Spinning Slash, restoring MP for more Dark Arts and thus more damage but it benefits from DA itself to boost its damage)

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.

That's why change is suggested.

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.

Comparing healers output to our DPS output is meaningless. You have to compare healers output to NPC output. As, in PvE you're not taking the damage the BLM is dishing out, you're taking the damage the BOSS is dishing out.

In any case, it's a mixture of both the output of healers and the passive mitigation from tanks.

Tanks take so much less damage passively compared to other games. In addition, healers have such massive outputs that they can easily heal large chunks of a Tanks health with 1-2 heals.

Also, if we're comparing CD's, let's not pick the classes that notoriously have few CD's:

DK:

Anti-Magic Shell: 1 minute CD (Can be talented to 45s CD) absorbs 30% of your max health worth of magical damage.

Vampiric Blood: 1.5 minute CD increases max health by 30% and healing/shielding received by 30% for 10 seconds.

Dancing Rune Weapon: 2 minute CD 40% increased parry rate (Parry in this game is also 100% damage mitigation, not just 20%)

Icebound Fortitude: 3 minute CD 30% less damage taken for 8 seconds.

Purgatory: 4 minute CD upon death instead gain healing absorb shield equal to the amount of overkill damage for 3 seconds. If this isn't healed off then you die.

Vs FFXIV:

Rampart: 1.5 minute CD 20% less damage taken (For 20s)

Anticipation: 1 minute CD 30% more parry chance for 20s (Parry only being 20% damage reduction not 100% damage reduction)

Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall: 2 minute (3m for Sentinel) CD for 30% damage reduction (40% for Sentinel)

With then Equilibrium/Shake it Off/Raw Intuition/Bulwark on top.

Really, the only really notable thing with CD's is Holmgang being a complete tankbuster ignore with only a 3 minute CD (Hallowed Ground is less obscene given it has a 7 minute CD)

But even then, they're matched by WoW Paladin with Ardent Defender's 2 minute CD 20% less damage taken, if you are killed while active you're instead healed to 20% max life, Divine Shield 5 minute CD immunity for 8 seconds and taunt all nearby enemies to attack you for 8 seconds and Lay on Hands 10 minute CD 100% max health heal.

The major difference between FFXIV and WoW tanks is that WoW tanks need to be constantly using active mitigation with often a dedicated "Tank Healer" providing them with continuous healing in order to survive to the tankbusters which require them to have a big CD available for (Or a healer has to have a big CD available to mitigate damage for them)

As opposed to FFXIV where damage is basically non-existent except for these tank busters where you're practically free to use any CD's you want because you didn't need them for any damage between the last tankbuster and the current one even while you were sat in DPS stance and mashing DPS combos.

Due to high passive mitigation and massive throughput from Regen/Shields that allow healers to focus mostly on dealing damage.

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)

But at the same time, designing the new tank to feed into this "Damage is irrelevant outside of Tankbusters" and "Just play as a Beefy DPS because your passive mitigation is nuts" offers little itself and in fact just causes more work to need to be done if an overhaul to the game balance is done in the future.

It's also worth noting that this issue stems entirely through scaling too. Given that when you're leveling up and so don't outgear content, then balance is fine. Tanks take plenty of damage and often need to be in Tank stance and roll CD's to keep incoming damage down, while Healers will often be focusing too much on spamming out GCD's on heals and managing their mana to push out much DPS.

Only when you start to get into the wonky end-game scaling does it transition into this "Tanks are Beefy DPS" and "Healers just use oGCD's for healing" scenario.

[Phoenicia]

Actually, this is not technically true.

In terms of combos, WAR's Enmity combo is actually higher potency than its "DPS" combo.

Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block is 160 > 210 > 300 potency.

Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path/Storm's Eye is 160 > 200 > 280 potency.

Just, Storm's Path randomly gives 20 Beast Gauge instead of Storm's Eye and Butcher's Block's 10. So more Gauge means more 520 potency Fell Cleaves (Which means more Infuriate which in turn means more Fell Cleave...)

Storm's Path doesn't "randomly" give 20 gauge, it always does. (Unless you meant they chose it randomly). Regardless, the correct math is:

Storm's Path Combo is 150 + 200 + 280 + 50 (from gauge, using Onslaught as baseline for gauge damage. 20 Gauge = 100 potency). So Storm's Path is more potency than Butcher's Block, making BB a DPS loss.

Same with DRK when you account the MP regen from Syphon strike. 150 + 230 + 300 + 140/70 from MP (Grit/NoGrit) + 40 from Gauge lost (using Bloodspiller here, 40)

PLD's RoH provides no MP regen, is much lower potency than either DPS combo and as such "delays" Requiscat combos and throws off your CD alignment with raid buffs.

That's why change is suggested.

I'm not anti-change, I'm anti-half-change. Don't give me more unfit stuff that you end up reverting 2 patches later (WAR's IR with Unchained).

Comparing healers output to our DPS output is meaningless. You have to compare healers output to NPC output. As, in PvE you're not taking the damage the BLM is dishing out, you're taking the damage the BOSS is dishing out.

The comparison here came because it is what pops in our DPS meters. In WoW during prog, healers are outputting HPS that is 2 to 3 of the highest DPS.

In any case, it's a mixture of both the output of healers and the passive mitigation from tanks.

Snipping numbers.

DK in WoW has not been a cream-of-the-crop tank since Cata iirc. It did get to shine in mythic plus dungeons due to self healing and kiting abilities, but not in raids where mitigation vs damage mattered most. None of its CDs scream "I won't die muwahahaha" like the warrior's or paladins (I happen to main these three until BFA where I played monk for the whole month before I quit lol). Early Legion Blood DK didn't even have Icebound Fortitude so Outside of VB, DK has bad/situational CDs (DRW is used as a DPS CD more than a defensive one). Later Bliz realized it and added IBF back.

Paladin's Immunity CD is a talent that competes with 2 very good talents (reduced CD on the other 2 CDs that you gain more usages or ability to heal self or others more frequently) so it is not a solid pick.

Regardless, my point was that game IS MUCH FASTER. TBs happen MUCH more frequently, like something between 20s to 30s. CDs are there to force, cheese, or save bad situations. In FFXIV CDs aren't there for that purpose, they are there to mitigate, and the damage we have to mitigate is much less frequent. Like once every what, 1.5 minutes average? Inner Beast is NOT designed for this type of damage pattern.

In O10S, tanks will either use immunity/cheat death on Tail's End, or throw all they have without going into tank stance. In cases where they have neither, they will ask healers for shields, DPS for feints and palisade, they still won't go into tank stance. We ARE risking death over losing DPS because it simple IS doable. People only take risks if they see the rewards and in this case the reward is quite high and the risk is negligible.

But at the same time, designing the new tank to feed into this "Damage is irrelevant outside of Tankbusters" and "Just play as a Beefy DPS because your passive mitigation is nuts" offers little itself and in fact just causes more work to need to be done if an overhaul to the game balance is done in the future.

It's also worth noting that this issue stems entirely through scaling too. Given that when you're leveling up and so don't outgear content, then balance is fine. Tanks take plenty of damage and often need to be in Tank stance and roll CD's to keep incoming damage down, while Healers will often be focusing too much on spamming out GCD's on heals and managing their mana to push out much DPS.

Only when you start to get into the wonky end-game scaling does it transition into this "Tanks are Beefy DPS" and "Healers just use oGCD's for healing" scenario.

Scaling is quite slow in this game in general. I honestly have not leveled a tank exclusively through dungeons as a first tank job. My first tanks in ARR and HW leveled through MSQ. In SB I leveled as RDM then SCH then tank. By the time I get to "spam dungeons" I always had either fully crafted sets or the dungeon sets so the damage intake wasn't bad (except in Bardam's, holy poop that dungeon mobs hit HARD).

Regardless, again, I'm not anti-change. I actually do want tank to do "tank stuff" and not be over-glorified beefy blue icon DPS (not that I dislike this play-style either).

I am just saying if they keep things as is, I'd rather not have things locked behind a stance I won't use. It would be bad design. It means I will have abilities that count towards ability number cap (Which I believe is ~25 usable actions) that no one is going to use. The correct way to fix the problem it is the damage patterns, definitely not by adding abilities that do not fit how they design the fights. After all you don't design a car that's going to be always on paved roads and then put a life-boat in the trunk in case of sinking... It's bad design.

Let's use DRK's Dark Mind. It will count as a CD, but then imagine that ZERO bosses deal any form of magic damage. Adding more magic damage reduction cooldowns won't be the cure. Adding magical damage would be.