The time has come to get rid of enrage timers

[Alaray]

Tank stance and abilities also generate more aggro, not just give damage reduction/more hp.
To forsake your job of holding aggro because you don't want to for even ten seconds hit the tank button cause my sweet fell cleaves and lower total party damage by .1%?
I promise you, inner release wont disappear from your hotbar by using it in defiance.

But why would you IR in defiance unless you needed to fully heal yourself from 1000 HP or something?

If you already have a high threat lead on the party, any extra threat generated is a wasted resource just like overcapping your job's gauge, or overcapping MP on a job like DRK, or casting heals when no one needs healing. And the only time people rip off me (I primarily tank, so I can't pull examples from DF tanks) is if either: I mess up (you know, people make mistakes), try something different that doesn't work out, or they don't use any instances of diversion or lucid or tactician. Players mess up frequently in this game, just because it's easier to notice a tank messing up doesn't excuse DPS players who don't know how to do more damage output than the WHM in the party, but we're not talking about how DPS jobs are too hard and need to be streamlined so even the lowest common denominator can actually do decent damage (and is a good example of why tank damage can be important to succeeding on a fight that has an enrage, since you aren't beating it in tank stance the entire time + DPS making their own mistakes they don't notice).

(And even here, I've had DRKs and PLDs camp their tank stance and do threat combos, but still end up ripping off them or getting dangerously close to doing so as... just being a Warrior in Deliverance, because that +3 to 4k extra damage I'm doing over them adds up in terms of threat)

IR itself in Deliverance generates a lot of threat: it's a massive amount of damage in a short period of time that'll secure a hefty lead after the pull with the Equilibrium overheal threat on top of it.

Doing something completely suboptimally doesn't help anyone. If anything, doing things suboptimally creates a higher chance of losing on a fight that has an enrage, just because you're busy generating tons of threat you don't need anymore, at the cost of damage output that could've killed the boss.

But again, just because players don't know how to operate a job of a particular role is a flimsy and weak argument to use when trying to justify taking a dump on the role.


And the way stances are now make tanking feel more dyanmic and fluid, especially since you can use it to fix errors, to potentially save runs, or help your healers in a high stress moment, and with WAR you can also just... use Defiance with Unchained any time you're planning to use Thrill with an Upheaval coming up for an overall gain over the course of four to five gcd's. Which does tend to line up with high damage moments in fights.

If it's just pure-1-stance per fight, you lose that interactivity.

[Selova]

Sounds to me like tanks don't want tank anymore but dps. Find it pretty bad all time when use my 2 skills to lower enmity that have long cd and still have all monsters charge after me when using a spell to attack all mobs that tank pulled into a huge group. Lost count how many times have died and group wipe from it. Doesn't matter if tanks quit being tanks still going to have very long queues when get moved to new datacenter. Heard eu already getting them like 45 minute queue for potd.

It actually has little to do about tanks wanting to dps and more about people wanting to get the maximum potential out of their job they play. There's really nothing that is exciting sitting there on a boss and just doing your bare bones aggro/threat rotation and then shirking/taunt swapping for tank busters with your co-tank. The only 2 ways to possibly make it interesting is by making tanks actually have to pay attention to threat generation, or give them a way to pump out good numbers while also being able to perform their role of tanking correctly.

The former is the less interesting route to go (Vanilla WoW did this and basically required you to have Omen threat meter (aggro add-on) and even then it wasn't interesting) so they decided to give them the means to contribute in a way that's more fun then tracking how much threat you had on a boss periodically. Giving tanks a means to contribute more to damage is far more engaging and meaningful.

I highly doubt their design decision on how tanks play is going to change anytime soon and personally i think they need to focus on how powerful healers are in this game above all else. At the end of the day it's about people wanting to get the most out of whatever job they are playing and even if they did remove the dps kits from all current tanks, they would still be trying to push out as much damage as possible regardless of the scenario.

[Thoosa]

Now everyone has good items you can beat savage quite a bit before enrage - for example now groups are killing o9s before he casts earthquake (if that’s the last phase) or before balls (on wind). Even on o10s they are killing him way before ack morn enrage or even before panto 2 in 011s - not sure about 012s as I’ve not done it.

If they remove the enrage timer it will just be like normal mode and then it would be no longer savage.

IMO enrage timers make the fight fun and everyone makes that bit more of an effort to beat it and it forms part of the challenge of savage.

[SaitoHikari]

I'm not sure how many people have any experience designing content and actually balancing it at all.

Let's say SE actually does remove enrage timers. Ya'll are nuts if you don't think they're going to compensate somewhere for their removal. And that means they'll make each individual mechanic harder so that you literally can't recover from failing them.

It's not going to make the fights easier or any more accessible to the average player, it's far more likely that the absolute opposite will happen. Do you want savage fights tuned up to the point where people become even more judgmental of everyone else's recorded performance? It'll become less about people being able to clear a fight before an enrage timer, and far more about whether or not the party collectively has enough DPS to skip as many of the hard-hitting mechanics as possible (assuming one of the ways the devs compensate is by having mechanics become triggered by the amount of HP remaining again, instead of the strict timeline that all of the savage fights in SB operate on).

If the devs remove enrage timers, I guarantee you that we'll regress back to the 'Skip Soar or Disband' era.

Enrages are really the least of everyone's worries in savage fights anyway. If you fail the enrage timer, it's usually because the party collectively failed too many mechanics beforehand. The vast majority of wipes have never been due to the enrage timer itself.

[Voltyblast]

Remove the enrage timers and you remove a large part of the impetus behind everyone trying to push out as much DPS as possible. Right now, there is no choice; you either dps hard enough to avoid enrage/clear the check or you wipe. If SE is serious about not wanting the dps speed/efficiency meta to reign supreme, then they need to remove dps checks and enrage timers and let players choose whether they want to run a sprint or a marathon.

You see, I totally agree here that enrage timers should be at least used less and dps checks should be easier to check out, but this would imply having bosses with good tactics that rewarding mechanics that actually encourage people to play their class to the fullest by using the tools at their disposal (I still remember Essence of Souls back in TBC, one of the toughest but most rewarding boss I ever did that required a lot of coordination and teamwork to kill it). However why actually bother with making good tactics and everything when all you can do is make the same tactics from centuries ago into new ones and slap a new DPS check/enrage timer with a tenth of the budget?

In other words, it's not gonna happen because it would require a lot more work to make bosses actually unique to play and have mechanics that can replace DPS checks and enrage: these two are essentially the easiest method to make a boss harder, which is why dungeon bosses are easier because they basically have tactics that don't actually require preparation - you can pretty much survive them all the time - and no enrage timer means that you can basically do them without any punishment. Heck I remember doing halatali HM and the first boss was such a joke that a warrior can solo it - and I did - because it had no real punishing mechanic.

But if only they had better mechanics, it would be a different story - especially with normal trash: it would make mass pulling much less effective too..

[fumofu]

SE have all the numbers. They can see what percentage of active characters clears hard content and they seems to be happy with these numbers. And while i'm personally not happy with enrage in ex trials, at least it gets easier over time, cos first we get echo bonus and later it's possible to overgear so much that enrage timer and most of mechanics is no longer an issue. I think it's a good compromise.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Found the Blue DPS.

Seriously, though, why would you *not* want a situation where you have to be in tank stance to survive? As a healer main, having to actually be completely on the ball with keeping up tanks is what makes it exciting. I've started calling out dungeons with damage checks so low I could have kept old clerics on and been fine, and the few times I actually have to work? It's awesome. I feel like I actually DID MY JOB.

this "blue dps/green dps" mindset doesn't (or shouldn't) exist in endgame content, for the most part. Everyone is DPSing. Dungeons don't let anyone feel like they're doing their job because they are faceroll easy. Tank stance doesnt matter, healers can afk, dps can be dead... it doesnt matter. If you wanna feel like an actual healer and Tank, and HAVE to use your abilities at the right time or cause a wipe, you have to do extreme/savage content.

[Kalise]

Tank stance and abilities also generate more aggro, not just give damage reduction/more hp.
To forsake your job of holding aggro because you don't want to for even ten seconds hit the tank button cause my sweet fell cleaves and lower total party damage by .1%?
I promise you, inner release wont disappear from your hotbar by using it in defiance.

Please enlighten me on how you make enmity into compelling gameplay.

Aggro is a thing that is very difficult to make work as a core gameplay design.

Since, you only ever need to be 1 point of enmity above everyone else, anything more is literally redundant.

If we ignore the multitude of tools that allows for Tanks to hold enmity without touching Tank Stances or Enmity combos in this game and focus on the core design of enmity, it's still a no go.

Other games have tried to make spamming enmity (Or threat) a thing for Tanks. But do you know what happened? It became a terrible design, because it meant that Tanks would be spamming out threat as fast as they could 24/7 and thus DPS ended up being limited in how much damage they could deal based on how much threat the Tank was generating. To the point where if DPS got some lucky crits that pushed their threat up too high, they would have to stop attacking completely while the Tank generated more threat to cover their normal DPS rotation.

That is the outcome of making aggro generation the core gameplay design of Tanks. You limit the potential for DPS to actually play the game, depending on how much threat the Tanks pump out. Meanwhile for the Tanks? They have no control over their gameplay, it's just sit in Aggro stance and spam all the highest aggro generating skills.

Thus again, coming back to Tank Stances being just passive bonuses that don't alter gameplay.

Especially in this game where there are SO many tools available to make enmity a non-factor, even in DPS stance and even without actually using enmity combos. Tank's aren't forgoing their job of holding aggro, they're just doing so without much concern because of Circle-Shirking and every non-Tank job having an oGCD button to dump their enmity (Either through periodic reduction or outright slashing it in half) to say nothing about NIN who has access to 2 skills specifically designed to allow them to manage enmity for the party.

The only way to make "Enmity" function as a core mechanic, is to tie it to something else completely unrelated, that somehow creates an advantage for the party, but in doing so, you also render enmity itself redundant as you will be spamming it out irregardless of the need to actually manage aggro or not.

Which is why most games choose to make aggro a completely irrelevant mechanic, outside maybe some aggro reset mechanics (Though, they're always difficult to do in actual content because raid bosses will often just then go one-shot a healer who had a HoT ticking)

FFXIV at least makes enmity somewhat relevant by putting the onus onto non-Tanks to utilize their enmity reduction skills to manage it, as opposed to making things focused around the Tank doing anything (Outside of being in Tank Stance and using a single Enmity combo on the pull in order to cover DPS's alpha enmity. Especially BRD/MCH whom don't have Diversion to proactively mitigate their initial enmity spike)

This is why Tank functions and gameplay should revolve more around, staying alive (Through active mitigation) and dealing damage (Either through personal DPS, or through mechanics that allow them to enhance the parties DPS (I.e. It would make more sense if Tanks were the ones who set up things like Trick Attack windows instead of having raw DPS, so that they would focus around setting up the DPS classes to do their thing)), potentially with also some ally protection mechanics thrown in (For example, if you had to Cover a DPS or Healer as PLD to prevent them from being nuked by the boss)

Since, Enmity is inherently a flawed thing to focus gameplay around. While other "Tank" themes include: Staying alive, shielding the party from harm (Which is the point of having aggro, to prevent the boss from wailing on your allies and hammering them into the ground like nails into a 2x4) and then because they're not pacifists, dealing damage (Again, personally or via tDPS boosts)

Edit:

For example of a potential Tank design: What if personal DPS between "Tank" and "DPS" stance was the same. But the difference was in a FFXIII "Stagger" mechanic.

Wherein, the "MT" (Active tank) in "Tank Stance" (Commando Stance) had more access to defensive skills to mitigate damage frequently (Active mitigation) and skills that allowed them to set up the ability to generate "Stagger" similar to Commando's in XIII.

While, the "OT" (Inactive tank) in "DPS Stance" (Ravager Stance) had more tools that increased the "Stagger" gauge but had the caveat of not working if you'd been AA'd recently maybe with a couple of extra tools to protect allies (Such as PLD having Cover, DRK sacrificing life to shield allies, WAR intercepting an attack etc).

Leading to a design where tanks improve tDPS by working towards generating Stagger to increase the damage everyone does against the boss in a way where they will also shift stances depending on their position in the fight (Actively tanking a boss or nah)

So that Tanks don't feel "Punished" for going into "Tank Stance" even if it's "Forced" via the stagger mechanic, and then have gameplay focused around maximizing mitigation (Of themselves and allies depending on position in the fight), DPS output and Stagger generation (To improve party DPS)

[Nora_of_Mira]

Please enlighten me on how you make enmity into compelling gameplay.

Aggro is a thing that is very difficult to make work as a core gameplay design.

Aggro in this game is the only thing keeping tanks from just spamming their DPS rotations. they have to start their rotations with a high enmity gain combo (if they want to do damage) and maintain aggro by balancing their enmity combos with their DPS combos. Maintaining aggro is pretty easy, i think most people agree, until you get a team of high dps and you suddenly have to start throwing out more dark arts+plunge/power slash to stay on top (assuming you're avoiding tank stance and only tank with DRK like me).

certain fights also have mechanics that target the #2 person in the enmity list, giving the offtank some responsibility. Im a big fan of Seiryu's double tank swap, too. one enmity mess up and the party is dead. its not a perfect gameplay design, but i think they're getting more creative.

[LineageRazor]

Folks brought up the point that, without enrage, you could just toss DPS to the curb and bring nothing but tanks and healers to a fight to guarantee a win. Thing is, though, nobody wants to farm a fight that takes an hour for each completion.

I bring up, once again, FFXI, a game with challenging fights and (mostly) no Enrages. Why didn't folks bring nothing but tanks and healers to these fights? Because tank and healer DPS SUUUUUUUCKED. Many enemies had built-in regeneration that would easily overtake an all-tank/healer's ability to pump out damage - but even for the ones that did not, the amount of time it would take for a such a group to win was simply untenable. It was also the case that resource regeneration was much more difficult in that game; with the exception of specific jobs (and even then, only in minute quantities), players did not regenerate MP or HP. In theory, a party of all tanks and healers could rotate a "resting" rotation to recover resources, but that would slow an already slow fight even further. In general, a six-man party contained one tank, one or two healers, and the rest DPS - it was the only sane way to play.

In this game, tanks and healers have decent DPS. They were given this so that they could participate competently in SOLO content - but folks (understandably) leverage it against GROUP content, as well. I believe Yoshi P said himself years ago that healer DPS was an unexpected component in raids, and that they needed to bump up the DPS check to compensate.

Even if we want to keep tank and healer DPS, and even if folks were actually willing to play it safe in spite of the longer fight times, there are plenty of ways to prevent the tank/healer zombie apocalypse. For example, rigidly enforce the role restrictions, even in pre-made parties - you CANNOT bring six healers to the fight, because exactly two healers is enforced. Another idea would be to have recurring DPS checks during the fight, without an enrage on the fight as a whole - you'd still have to pump out the numbers during these checks, so tanks and healers alone wouldn't be able to cut it.

tl;dr: The removal of enrage does not automatically give DPS a free ride, nor does it make them obsolete. It all depends how the content is built. I, personally, would have preferred that they built the game without Enrage being a necessity.