How to make tanking fun.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I did read the entirety of the page and am most definitely not being pedantic.

The description that was given regarding a shift to a more "Active Mitigation model" in which tanks were required to be more "active" in their defense is very similar to the model that FF14 has used for quite a while, focusing on low consistent incoming damage with spikes of high incoming damage through things like tankbusters and abilities designed to counter those damage spikes.
This is juxtaposed by the fairly common tanking model that existed before in MMOs in which defense and incoming damage on the tank was more a battle of attrition where damage was fairly constant and defenses tended to be more passive in implementation, relying on stances or passive ability buffs gained through specialization trees and the like.

Basically the concept of the "Active Mitigation model" that they went over was the more general design concept and delineation of active vs. passive and how that plays into encounter and ability design. Active being abilities that are designed to be activated in response to periods of spike damage and passive being the stuff that just kind of happens in the background that tends to help with just general survivability and lessening damage consistently and being relatively constant over a long period of time.

The more refined idea of "Active Mitigation abilities" that evolved in Legion is something that I also touched upon in my initial post on the matter, pointing out the evolution and implementation of such abilities in FF14 as well with IB, TBN and Sheltron.
WoW just went all-in to one extreme (surprise ... surprise ...) on the conceptual implementation of Active Mitigation, shrinking the breadth of mitigation and highly focusing it into one ability that needs to get used over and over.
FF14 on the other hand did a more measured and mixed approach, where they kept the idea of a number of varied mitigation abilities, paced out by cooldown times but still having relatively shorter durations to be used to counter moments of spike damage but also layered in the short to no cooldown time abilities with very short durations which are gated by other things such as resources akin to what WoW did in Legion.

Both are methods of Active Mitigation design, just with variances of implementation. Spread out or consolidated.

Active mitigation is not determined by it being a part of a rotation, although an ability that provides defense that is part of a rotation can be Active Mitigation.
I feel the confusion likely comes from the implementation in Legion where mitigation was so consolidated, that it resulted in one ability being used over and over regularly and thus being factored into being a part of your standard rotation. This was probably compounded by many of the early implemented abilities along this vein having the mitigation aspect tacked onto an offensive ability.
This is only one heavily skewed implementation of what Active Mitigation can be and by no means is the very definition of it.

So again I state, Active Mitigation is when mitigation is designed to be actively engaged in response to damage and attacks, whereas Passive Mitigation is mitigation that is designed to simply exist passively and fairly consistently without real extra thought or engagement on the player's part.
It is these such variances in design and implementation of Active Mitigation that caused me to ask that people not just generally throw the term around without better defining what they mean.

Also, I think it goes without saying that falling to ad hominems such as calling someone pedantic doesn't strengthen your argument.

[Burningskull]

I think it would make tank more fun if all your abilities were different when you were in one stance or another, or not in tank stance if they were to get rid of dps stance. For instance when you're in tank stance you generate enmity, your defensive abilities mitigate damage, etc, etc. But when you are in tank stance or normal stance you no longer generate extra enmity, your defensive abilities now do dps abilities. For example your shield wall or shield block abilities make your shield swipe do more damage or have no cool down or something. This is just paladin example tho. I think it would give tanks more stuff to do during off tank, but making your tanking stance more important cause you couldn't keep hate outside of tank stance.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't believe that to be correct.
While I hate to point to WoW related things in regards to defining things in MMOs, this gives a decent general overview of the idea of active mitigation through the lens of WoW.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Active_Mitigation

"With Mists of Pandaria the various tanks gained short-cooldown abilities that embody active mitigation. Tanks who use these abilities optimally will be able to overcome challenges that would defeat a less skilled tank."

"The term "Active Mitigation" now refers to a single, specific ability that a Tank must use as a counter to specific Boss abilities. These Boss abilities are designated as Mitigation Checks."

I have to agree with Kalise on this one. Active mitigation typically has to be something that is not reserved for express use. If it could, it wouldn't require any active efforts on the player's part to prepare for the coming damage, merely a timer of sorts. There has to be an integral means of compromise available to be manipulated, decisively and timely, towards mitigation.

How WoW decides to redefine the term as in order to offer additional gimmicks and continue not to have much actual active mitigation is of no consequence to its typical meaning.

[Kalise]

Also, I think it goes without saying that falling to ad hominems such as calling someone pedantic doesn't strengthen your argument.

I never called anyone pedantic.

I merely stated that it would be pedantic to be trying to break things down to stuff like "You technically activate CD's therefore they're 'Active Mitigation'". Since similar logic allows one to say "You technically activate defensive stances, therefore they're 'Active Mitigation'"

Both of which are rarely, if ever, referenced under the term "Active Mitigation"

In terms of WoW, Active Mitigation existed well before Pandaria.

Warriors have had Shield Block and Paladins have had Holy Shield (Later named Shield of the Righteous) forever, which were active skills that they would use frequently to reduce the average amount of damage they took throughout an engagement. Not always a direct response to incoming damage or a telegraphed burst (Especially since they were only block chance increases so ineffective against most sources of burst damage which were spells or abilities) but essentially taking the place of Passive Mitigation in a way that required them to be active in a fight.

With WotLK there was the release of DK which has been the epitome of "Active Mitigation" in its use of Death Strike for self healing and shielding. Again, often used throughout an encounter for replacing Passive Mitigation. Though, there was also some usage in a Legion style burst counter by gaming your Death Strikes by intentionally taking damage before a tankbuster so it would provide a larger shield to let you mitigate the burst damage (Especially when you didn't have a Priest for shielding), this however was not widely utilized and was mostly for the min/max raider types, as it required co-ordination with your healers to make sure you were kept alive while you soaked the damage and healed to full before the tankbuster came.

In Cataclysm, Druids got their first taste of Active Mitigation, with Savage Defense, which would provide them with an absorb shield based on their attack power and cost a whopping 60 Rage to activate, this meant that this truly required Active participation in a fight in order to generate Rage to use this (Along with their other skills for damage and threat). Cata is also where other Tanks active mitigations started to be tied to resource generation from combat, with such things as DK's gaining Runes back faster when they spent Runic Power.

Then Pandaria is when all Tanks were designed to have to manage Active Mitigation that often required resource management (Through fighting), such as Rage generation (For Warriors and Druids), Holy Power generation for Paladins, Rune regeneration for DK's and Monks with Chi generation. This is when Active Mitigation began to involve more "Activity" in order to access the mitigation, creating more dynamic playstyles wherein you'd be pushing out DPS in order to get your resources for mitigation skills back (Some of which were also DPS increases, such as Warriors did bonus damage with Shield Slam while Shield Block was active, or how Paladins and DK's had their highest hitting attack be their active mitigation skills) so that you can survive in lieu of high passive mitigation.

Legion is where Active Mitigation was next altered, wherein they started making Tankbusters that REQUIRED one of these classes active mitigation skills in order to survive. Pushing them into this realm of "Saving it" for these TB's as opposed to using them freely to mitigate damage over the whole engagement (Also, serving to equalize tanks across the board in terms of available CD's to use vs Tankbusters which always favoured DK and Paladin for their numerous and powerful CD's while screwing over Warriors with their long CD's and Monks/Druids who just didn't really have much at all)

But prior to Legion, WoW (To say nothing of every other MMO) had Active Mitigation and it was almost exclusively used as a more engaging form of "Passive Mitigation" designed to be used frequently to decrease the average damage intake, with TB's still forcing out CD's in response and sometimes timing of Active Mitigation to prevent certain types of TB's (Such as block based AM used against auto-attack damage spikes, or DK's gaming their Blood Shields from Death Strike)

[Noldornir]

I've been trying to get use to tanking in preperations for Gunbreaker. I've only been using PLD but even when OTing I'm bored out of my mind.

Any suggestions?

Depends, what makes it boring for you while off-tanking?
When I OT i tend to behave like a DPS, there are not many occasions for me to do so. I take it as an opportunity to get accostumed to my rotation.

As a personal opinion:

In most games the OT role is often underrated (OT is often seen as the weaker tank) while in many, MANY occasions the OT does an harder job then a MT (like getting the aggro from a sudden wave of adds, pack em, turn em). This is usually VERY fast and much more skill demanding than surviving a boss.

If you play with a MT mate you could also work something togheter and "tank as one" (especially since you are a PAL) with not only tank swaps but also intervention/cover.

Also when they say that you should not MT they are actually saying "do not pull, you generate less burst-enmity than any other tank, there's the risk than in the first few seconds some DPS/healer will out-enmity you". This doesn't mean you should not "main tank" (tank the boss). It IS a perfectly valid option to make a WAR pull than shirk on you (especially < lvl 50 where all your combo WILL be Rage of Halone that will continue on generating aggro).

Tbh I started noticing this enmity "issue" with PAL only around level 55-60 (never had enmity issues before)

What level are you now? (Paladins tend to change A LOT and have little to do until level 55/60 as an off-tank).

BTW you can pull, you just loose some DPS for swapping stance (GCD) and delaying your rotation while other tanks does it faster.

If you want to MT just start a boss fight in shield oath->shield lob->Rage of Halone combo (2x)
Probably you'll get a block by this time and you can use shield swipe oGCD inbetween for more aggro

check on enmity and all the others should be next to 0% (if not they are probably to blame)

Swap to sword stance and start your standard rotation

This will delay your rotation (and lower your damage for 30 secs or so) but you shouldn't loose aggro in any circumstances (even with obsolete equipment).

[Burningskull]

Depends, what makes it boring for you while off-tanking?

I think it's the fact that I mostly play DPS. My main is SAM. And the rotations for tanking / off-tanking just don't feel as complex to me? Then again I get bored easy which is why I tend to switch jobs a lot in Roulettes to keep it fresh somewhat. So maybe it's just the fact I've been using PLD only to try and prepare for Gunbreaker. Or my depression is kicking in and making things more boring than they are. Who knows lol. God I wish Gunbreaker had been a DPS ; ;

[Derio]

Play WAR or DRK. I only play my PLD when someone is already playing as DRK in the party.

PLD can be very boring especially in the early leveling dungeons and trials. I find PLD to be fun at lvl70 but anything below that its meh, same for DRK without TBN.

Tanking is a mindset. Rather than thinking of just targeting mobs and doing a rotation. Think more outside the box when attacking groups of enemies. Such as this mob is charging up a move better stun him, or this mob is casting a spell better silence, or AOE these mobs.

Dont think of tanking as just grabbing enemies and holding aggro, because with that mindset it becomes very very boring.

[Awful]

I have to agree with Kalise on this one. Active mitigation typically has to be something that is not reserved for express use. If it could, it wouldn't require any active efforts on the player's part to prepare for the coming damage, merely a timer of sorts. There has to be an integral means of compromise available to be manipulated, decisively and timely, towards mitigation.

How WoW decides to redefine the term as in order to offer additional gimmicks and continue not to have much actual active mitigation is of no consequence to its typical meaning.

It depends if you're doing Mythic+ tanking it's no different than say an Expert in XIV where you save your CDs and cycle them for example, if you're doing a Mythic+10 you'll have 4 affixes affecting you and depending on the A) Dungeon B) Affixes C) Season affix (right now in BfA it's Reaping where all monsters you killed at a % percent completion come back to life to attack you all at once). You generally plan how you're going to do them based on your CDs, how to juggle them, your healers CDs, and Line of Sight if needed all comes into play. Raid tanking is more or less CD cycling on trash/tank CDs on bosses in BFA.

Honestly if XIV had Mythic+ dungeons I think it'd work very well if they redesigned tanking to a more Active Mitigation tanking or leave it as it is and add in Pomanders from PoTD/HoH to give it a unique FFXIV with it's own Affixes and I think it'd be better than WoWs.

[Shurrikhan]

It depends if you're doing Mythic+ tanking it's no different than say an Expert in XIV where you save your CDs and cycle them for example, if you're doing a Mythic+10 you'll have 4 affixes affecting you and depending on the A) Dungeon B) Affixes C) Season affix (right now in BfA it's Reaping where all monsters you killed at a % percent completion come back to life to attack you all at once). You generally plan how you're going to do them based on your CDs, how to juggle them, your healers CDs, and Line of Sight if needed all comes into play. Raid tanking is more or less CD cycling on trash/tank CDs on bosses in BFA.

Honestly if XIV had Mythic+ dungeons I think it'd work very well if they redesigned tanking to a more Active Mitigation tanking or leave it as it is and add in Pomanders from PoTD/HoH to give it a unique FFXIV with it's own Affixes and I think it'd be better than WoWs.

I'm aware of the comparisons available to WoW's Mythic+ tanking -- I frequently run them on both BDK and Prot Warrior (finally highly desirable with Reaping affix) myself, along with healing them on Priest and Shaman -- but how WoW approaches active mitigation doesn't change what active mitigation is, nor that it has to be active (and integral) rather than simply time-deployed and/or separable.

I have no doubt, also, that XIV could do a better job of something like WoW's Mythic+'s affixes than WoW itself, but I'd prefer to see not only the means, but also the goal, made XIV's own. Simply slapping pomanders onto it will only make a gimmick-ridden and incohesive knock-off. There's a ton that they can do with cards, elements, and so forth in order to make not only unique gameplay, but unique progression and encapsulation for it all. True active mitigation would be slightly outside the point unless fit into systems that extend beyond the tank alone, but such improvements could be a hell of a boon, too.

[Awful]

I'm aware of the comparisons available to WoW's Mythic+ tanking -- I frequently run them on both BDK and Prot Warrior (finally highly desirable with Reaping affix) myself, along with healing them on Priest and Shaman -- but how WoW approaches active mitigation doesn't change what active mitigation is, nor that it has to be active (and integral) rather than simply time-deployed and/or separable.

I have no doubt, also, that XIV could do a better job of something like WoW's Mythic+'s affixes than WoW itself, but I'd prefer to see not only the means, but also the goal, made XIV's own. Simply slapping pomanders onto it will only make a gimmick-ridden and incohesive knock-off. There's a ton that they can do with cards, elements, and so forth in order to make not only unique gameplay, but unique progression and encapsulation for it all. True active mitigation would be slightly outside the point unless fit into systems that extend beyond the tank alone, but such improvements could be a hell of a boon, too.

I'm totally in agreement with you I feel like extending that into tank gameplay alone could be one hell of a boon I'd welcome it honestly, as for Pomanders yeah it was mostly just an idea it's not the best but you adding in cards makes it way more diverse. And apologies you're right it doesn't change what active mitigation is or it to be "active" within the parameters of being time-deployed and separable, I just wish XIV had more diverseness within the tanks, which might change in 5.0 (hopefully).

I like how Blood DKs are in WoW (I'm playing one as well Prot War was my 2nd choice alongside DH even if they fell off, but I digress) as they fit their fantasy role as well as having their OH CRAP buttons such as Bonestorm for smoothing out damage and healing on AoE pulls, Vampiric Blood for strong burst healing, Ice Bound Fort, Anti-Magic Shield and Eternal Rune weapon. They fit their own class fantasy as well as being a very strong Mythic+ tank which is what I wish DRK was but I know they're 2 different games, DRK just doesn't have the self healing and is more of a hand cramp to play, I hope 5.0 we get more of WAR being a strong mitigator while DPSing, PLD being a utility tank for the party and itself and I have no idea what GUN will be.

Bottom line is if there was a Mythic+ system I'd want it fleshed out like you described as well as having diversified tanks with their own strong but different ways to mitigate, whether it be self heals, strong mitigation, or strong utility such as debuffing as well I find that WoW has quite diverse tanking combined with great class fantasy, now I don't want copies of them just those are ideas.