Why having a dedicated MT and dedicated OT is a TERRIBLE idea

[shao32]

Unchained is a nice threat boost, but Tomahawk>Equilibrium>Deliverance works without it. By your logic it'd be acceptable to have Fight or Flight and Requiescat share a timer. Hell, it's not a far fetch from Blood Price/Blood Weapon being locked to their respective stances which most of the community wants changed as well.

But hey, let's keep the boogeyman alive.

by my logic? PLD already pay a lot of dps by pulling with the GCD of the oaths and the sad potency of rage of halone and if you wanna bost it more the waste of several GCD with fight or flight, in 4.0 that was comparable to a WAR have to use unchained to set a proper amount of agro and swap to deliverance at the cost of lose 1 inner release, yes they work without it like everything but that dosen't make it efective.

the point is the PLD status at pulling come from WAR being buffed like that, and much later DRK leaving PLD the last one without having some love in that area, SB make a lot of bad choices and by my logic no, nothing related to tank stances is acceptable right now, there is a big inbalance when we talk about tank stances but since they are not optimal nobody cares, and looks like its the fault of PLD being so poor on pulling when it was the result of trowing buffs to WAR in the first place and later on on DRK.

[SleepyNeko]

Is pulling in Sword Oath as a PLD some kind of flex? Because that ends badly most of the time unless you only play on a static with a Ninja and no BRD.

[whiskeybravo]

by my logic?

Yes. If it's "a bad idea" for WAR to be able to use 2 DPS increasing abilities at the same time, then it should be for PLD and DRK as well. If by chance you don't feel that FoF/Req is a problem, or if you feel that Blood Price and Blood Weapon should be separated, then it's consistent to think that IR/Unchained change was appropriate in that regard.

Additionally, even if we accept that IR/Unchained needs to go in order to "knock WAR down a peg" - that doesn't solve the underlying issue of other tanks having a poor "pull game". If we accept the premise of MT/OT split, you're going to be stuck with 2 tanks that probably have a weak "pull game" too. So what exactly is going to solve your concern?

You seem to be getting into the habit of labelling posts that you disagree with as dishonest. I'm all for having a good debate, but let's keep these attacks out of it.

To say that the war community wanted unchained to be free of cost IS dishonest, which is why I called it out. That's not how it went down. Unchained was useless because it meant losing IR, which was in no way whatsoever an acceptable trade off. There was already the cost of losing gauge to activate on top of the general losses associated with swapping to tank stance. In regards to selective commenting, yes I don't want to spend all my time on this article because 1) I don't actually think it's likely to happen and 2) there are plenty of obvious contradictions being pointed out (like the above) that just keep getting hand-waived away, which is creating a pretty repetitive conversation.

Players asked for several different things with regards to Unchained, Inner Release, Shake it off, and WAR's stance costs. Whose fault was it? Was it the prominent streamers who campaigned for it? The playerbase which echoed and copypasted those demands? Or the devs for actually listening? It's hard to say, but I didn't see any WAR players arguing that the changes were too powerful after the fact.

It was obvious they wanted to reduce tank dps coming in to the expansion, I was one of the few on this forums actually arguing on behalf of SE for the community to suck it up and deal with it. There were ways to mitigate the wonky gauge costs and realistically it only caused a problem in those moments where a tank died and the other tank had to pick up threat quick. I've been one of the few to consistently argue on behalf of the other tank jobs to bring them up to the level of WAR - because it's actually a well designed job. Chrono Rising made a great post capturing how synergistic WARs kit was, and that the other tanks should also focus around those kind of synergies on their own.

That being said, I don't recall seeing any bandwagon of WARs asking for themselves to be nerfed after the fact. Has that happened with an "OP" job in any game? Ever?

Regardless of how you want to spin it, they were a bad set of decisions. As far as tank balance goes, anything that erodes WAR's set of systemic advantages built over Heavensward and Stormblood and brings tanks into parity is going to be a good thing.

We both agree there is a point of balance that needs to be achieved/strived for, we just disagree on how to get there. I think they should look at what made WAR successful and emulate that on the other jobs.

Anything that puts checks and balances such that no one tank is good at everything is going to be a good thing.

I actually wanted to address this separately because it's more or less the crux of my half of the argument. "No one tank that's good at everything" means that you won't actually be able to play the job you want. You'll only be able to play the job that's more effective in a given situation. Is that really what you're hoping for? To be locked in specific jobs, for specific roles, instead of being able to play whatever job you prefer - with the confidence that you can handle anything thrown your way?

Is pulling in Sword Oath as a PLD some kind of flex? Because that ends badly most of the time unless you only play on a static with a Ninja and no BRD.

Kinda, yea. If you want to succeed then you have to lay it down like a boss.

[shao32]

snip

depend, if the reward is equal in both side then yes im ok, if its desigual then nope, SE make a big mistake by buffing WAR like that and don't adress DRK and PLD on that too, but leaving that apart this is a counter point of some ppl that argue OT and low enmity are related when the reality is not and this was a more or less equal situation at the begining that turn in to the adventage of WAR and later on DRK being more or less equiparable leaving the tank with a kit suited to a OT having worse pull of all tanks in the end.

[whiskeybravo]

depend, if the reward is equal in both side then yes im ok, if its desigual then nope, SE make a big mistake by buffing WAR like that and don't adress DRK and PLD on that too, but leaving that apart this is a counter point of some ppl that argue OT and low enmity are related when the reality is not and this was a more or less equal situation at the begining that turn in to the adventage of WAR and later on DRK being more or less equiparable leaving the tank with a kit suited to a OT having worse pull of all tanks in the end.

Now we're making P R O G R E S S

Yes, it was unfair of SE (whether they knew it or not) to create such a disparity between the tanks in this particular area. But I think we can now agree that such a powerful tool is beneficial to tanking as a whole. It makes tanking more engaging to play (for people that enjoy contributing damage, at least), slightly more technical for those that like to optimize, and easy enough for newbie tanks to pick up and establish a strong lead against better DPS players. It has a lot more benefits than drawbacks. Really the only drawback isn't even in the ability, but in the disparity that only 1 tank can optimally perform in this area. All tanks would benefit from a strong "pull game".

[shao32]

Now we're making P R O G R E S S

Yes, it was unfair of SE (whether they knew it or not) to create such a disparity between the tanks in this particular area. But I think we can now agree that such a powerful tool is beneficial to tanking as a whole. It makes tanking more engaging to play (for people that enjoy contributing damage, at least), slightly more technical for those that like to optimize, and easy enough for newbie tanks to pick up and establish a strong lead against better DPS players. It has a lot more benefits than drawbacks. Really the only drawback isn't even in the ability, but in the disparity that only 1 tank can optimally perform in this area. All tanks would benefit from a strong "pull game".

since i consider tank stances a complety waste of space and a outdated mechanic for a game that have a combat system like we have i think unchained is a exclusive broken skill that don't have any comparation and i was glad it have such trade off at the begining of the expansion since it was pretty broken in HW, now we back to the same and despite they buffed DRK the job is still unable to macth the benefics of unchained, so i think unchained need to disapear at the same time we need a tank stance rework or ajustment to fit better in the game combast system.

[Lyth]

...

The community was demanding a lot of different things. The most common request was certainly to decouple Inner Release and Unchained, but people also raised the argument that "if you're not going to uncouple the two abilities, you should at least make Unchained better. So they tried to satisfy you, by removing the cost from both IR and Unchained.

I like unchained for mass pulls, though it was admittedly better with bloodbatch self healing. If they aren't going to untie the CD they should at least attempt to improve unchained enough to not make it entirely useless. I think baking a bloodbath effect into unchained would be good. Although I'm sure some people would be upset they couldn't use it to sustain themselves longer in deliverance. But it's an easy way to work in a desirable effect that people miss none-the-less

Hey, look, it's you, circa 2017.

Of course, then some other people came along and said that it wasn't enough. And when they uncoupled the abilities, they didn't revert back the costs.

Either way, the accusations are a rhetorical device that we can do without.

It doesn't matter what tanks can do individually. What matters is what they can do relative to each other. If you want enmity generation to have a cost attached, then it should probably be that way across the board. If you want it to be free, it should be free across the board. Alternatively, if you're able to generate enmity for free while other tanks have to expend dps to do so, you probably should start out at a dps disadvantage to offset this. There has to be some sort of counterbalancing element to offset the advantage.

Personally, I'd be in favour of just removing stances altogether and replacing them with a burst enmity cooldown on each tank which adds an enmity multiplier while it's active.

While I understand that some people just want their job to be the most powerful, I think it's smart to rein yourself in. If you're fair and balanced in your suggestions, people who don't play your job are more likely to view your points credibly. I think WAR players developed a bit of a reputation post 4.2, both here and on reddit, that I don't think was in your best interests for the long term.

For me, personally, I'd prefer DRK to not be "the most powerful tank" at any point. I'd rather it be viewed as the "highest skill" tank. That's why, even now, there are some things that I'd like to see nerfed on the job. And again, I don't envy you 4.2's ungabunga. You only have yourselves to blame for that one.

I don't think that you can achieve an upward balance of only buffs. Eventually, you find yourself in a world where you have five tank busters per fight covered with invulns, bubbles that ignore every other raidwide, and DPS job level burst in exchange for mashing your forehead against the keyboard. Let's bring the skill back into tanking. Part of this means encounter design which actually requires us to tank. But part of this also means pruning back some of our capabilities such that we're not quite so powerful anymore.

[whiskeybravo]

I'd have to go back through that conversation to get the full context, but I don't disagree with that particular statement. No other job was required to sacrifice their entire damage potential in exchange for a niche threat boosting ability. So yea, if they weren't going to uncouple them then they should've made them more equal in benefit.

I also notice you use the phrase "across the board" a few times. Careful now, you're starting to sound in favor of more homogenization.

For me, personally, I'd prefer DRK to not be "the most powerful tank" at any point. I'd rather it be viewed as the "highest skill" tank. That's why, even now, there are some things that I'd like to see nerfed on the job. And again, I don't envy you 4.2's ungabunga. You only have yourselves to blame for that one.

I don't disagree with you. When DRK first came out it was, in my opinion, THE highest skill tank. I tried raiding the first alex savage on DRK and it didn't take me long to realize I was pretty terrible at it and needed to spend a lot more time with it if I wanted to be good. While I don't take up the greatsword too often, but it's undeniably more basic now than it used to be. And tbh I feel similar about the change to IR. It actually had some challenge to it trying to maximize gauge generation and expenditure originally, and they just completely dumbed it down to one-button spam. Inconsequential as it is, one of the things that grinds my gears is how utterly broken Berserk became pre-70. Just me, but it was one of the most frustrating things when I was leveling up my WAR alt. I never take it into lower level stuff, I'd rather sit there and spam Halone.

Maybe that's one reason I'm defensive about Unchained. Sure we got it for free, at the expense of one of WARs other core abilities being absolutely neutered in return lol.

[Ekimmak]

Does anyone remember when Red Mage would do everything they could to rip hate at the start of a fight, and then blame whatever tank lost aggro if they *didn't* go all in for that initial threat? Yeah, Savage PUGs weren't fun.

I feel like "The dev team doesn't play like the community does" is nothing new or surprising. So that they're trying to hardlock OT and MT roles isn't too surprising.

[Kabooa]

Does anyone remember when Red Mage would do everything they could to rip hate at the start of a fight, and then blame whatever tank lost aggro if they *didn't* go all in for that initial threat? Yeah, Savage PUGs weren't fun

Back when diversion was 50% I'd believe it.

Tank dps isn't worth throttling DPS dps. There will never be a point that this isn't true. But don't worry, because threat's a joke now, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.