Removing Tank Stance Argument

[Kabooa]

The main challenge in tanking isn't enmity generation, nor should it ever be. Most people aren't interested in hitting their dragons with foam bats while maximising their "aggros". It's about clever boss positioning and movement, fight knowledge, and mitigation. Streamlining tanking so that it places a greater emphasis on these elements would be a big step forward.

My main issue here is aside from boss positioning, which the boss does itself or has only one clear "correct" answer most of the time, you just described everyone else in the party too. What you describe is also the opposite of streamlining. Streamlining is auto positioning bosses, tightly scripted mechanics, uniform boss arenas, etc.

To have greater emphasis on these elements, you are removing the automation many of the bosses currently implement.

To make boss positioning more important, arenas must be less uniform, the boss must not re-position itself as much or ever, even if the current position would lead to an auto wipe scenario, and more mechanics would need to put more pressure on the amount of space left on the arena.

To make fight knowledge matter more, things need to be better telegraphed but less scripted. Stormblood encounters you can practically plan everything barring the few random target mechanics. This goes hand in hand with mitigation, making snap decision making more important because you might know what the boss can do, but you're not sure what its going to do next, as opposed to literal cooldown timelines you can just look up on google.

[Shurrikhan]

I think it comes down to the dps driven meta. People want it removed to avoid:

Losing damage by having tank stance on when needed.

If it's needed, then they're not losing net damage by having it on. If actually needed, the only alternative was death, which comes with rez delay, stat penalty, CD delay, desync, and loss of gauge -- a net damage rate loss.

Note: I otherwise agree with all you've said. I just want to point out that in the few cases that tank stance is worthwhile at all, it tends to be quite worthwhile. Those situations just tend to be fewer and farther between than they perhaps ought to be. Much of that can be dealt with via the relative cost of defensive stances rather than requiring the full removal of stances altogether. At present, tank stance is mostly an initiation stance and/or a training wheels mode, but even (or especially) the latter isn't something we should so readily or uncompromisingly give up when the game has so few in-game teaching tools and such a wonky difficulty curve. Our player skill levels are all over the place, and thus far tank stances have at least prevented that from wrecking our random dungeon runs.

Granted, if the removal of the stance came with enough increase to convenience and coverage -- deflating some of the difference between high-enmity and low/non-enmity skills, for instance -- while bosses and mobs continue to hit so mildly in most content as they do now... there might not really be any loss. We'd just have spared ourselves a bit of hotbar space, albeit at cost to prospective design paths where those stances could have instead been turned into something interesting. Tanks suffer a bit from a feeling of enforced behavior and schismatic expectations, sure, but just as much they suffer from, well, boredom. Their rotations are generally rather dull compared to those of DPS, and revised stance play could help with that.

Simply put, I'd rather see interesting stances than yet another expansion filler, convoluted, uninteresting macro-rotational, and/or rarely useful ability, and I'd certainly rather see the 10 slots of bloat from Role Actions trimmed before turning on stances for the next bit of butchery.

[Shurrikhan]

I want stances gone and this is the last thing I want.

In WoW they had no real stances and up until Legion, I'd by far prefer to play a WoW tank than a FF tank. Your rotation, or priority system, actually revolved around mitigation. Your dps was a higher skill ceiling as your mitigation abilities were also your hard hitters, so you had to know when you could blow them and when you needed to hold them. In general most tanks played it safe and the really good tanks were rewarded with the extra utility. Things generally hit like trucks but you had the tools to handle almost anything if you played it well. I miss that.

Tank Stance is simply a passive you turn on, take a big punishment and your rotation is almost unchanged except for a button or two. I fail to see the appeal of it. Tanking in tank stance is the most simplistic gameplay in the entire game.

Honestly, pre-oGCD Ignore Pain BfA Protection felt great to me for this reason. But as much as many of we Warriors asked for simply improvements to Ignore Pain to make its mitigation worth its GCD cost in some way behind pure and immediate mitigation (that is to say, without making us specialized turtle tanks), community conceptions and hashtag chains of "what Warriors clearly want[ed]" gave us yet more carpal-tunnel, low-thought mitigation. I loved weaving between offense and defense. And I don't think we need stances to accomplish that.

That said, I don't think stances, properly made, work against that in any way. They should augment it. I know we have about the worst possible examples of their application at present, but what we've had isn't the be-all-end-all of what could be.

There's nothing intrinsic about making tanks do low damage. They do need to do less damage than pure damage dealers, because otherwise we'd just bring tanks and healers (we sometimes do that anyways). But tanks are still here to do damage.

Please teach me to be a pacifist with an oversized axe. My greatsword was clearly never meant to inflict mortal wounds. Tanks are still damage dealers, first and foremost. We just happen to be the only ones brave enough to hit from the front.

To make fight knowledge matter more, things need to be better telegraphed but less scripted.

These are by far the two most important considerations relevant to the conversation of MMO tanking (especially in XIV), imo.

[Big-Isaac]

Nobody reasonable would say that tanks should do absolutely zero damage. That's just silly. However, dealing damage shouldn't be nearly as big a priority as it presently is.
If I was standing in front of a cyclops the size of a building with an uprooted tree in its hand, my first thought would not be to throw my shield to the ground and try to poke it in the jugular. Especially when there's 4 other people in my party who are (A) infinitely more efficient at poking it in the jugular and (B) aren't about to get smashed with a freaking tree

In my opinion, the best compromise would be to rebalance the tanks so that achieving max DPS also achieves max survivability. That way you'd still have incentive to optimize your deeps without abandoning what the role is supposed to be about.

[SargentToughie]

In my opinion, the best compromise would be to rebalance the tanks so that achieving max DPS also achieves max survivability. That way you'd still have incentive to optimize your deeps without abandoning what the role is supposed to be about.

I don't entirely agree with how you came to it, but I do agree with the conclusion. Tanks are the big, sturdy badasses that, while not quite able to match the damage of an express DPS, are still able to lay out enough pain on their own that they're a force to be reckoned with. I think "infinitely" more efficient is a bit of a stretch. Tanks have some of the biggest, angriest looking weapons in the game. It would just be wrong if they couldn't use them proper.

That said, max DPS also equating to max survivability is something I've wanted since Heavensward. One skill ceiling, one ideal playstyle, no more of this stupid tank stance bickering nonsense, and no more fostering bad habits in newcomers about what ideal gameplay looks like. I still see tanks that just sit in stance and 1-2-3 combo at level 70, it's insane.

[FallenWings]

I mean, I'd much prefer to slice the troll in the jugular thus removing the threat rather than cower behind my dinky shield and await inevitable death or hope my DPS overlords would grace me with mercy and flick the troll away but to each their own.

I personally would prefer if tanks *did* do as much damage as DPS but with the caveat being that the DPS held the actual raid boosting abilities as to prevent the "dreaded" all tank parties and still retain their exclusive usefulness.
To illustrate it would be something like:
Tanks and DPS do 1000 dps ea.

A full tank party does 6000(6 tanks)
But a full proper party does 12,000 (2 tanks 4 DPS) through various buffing, debuffing or even new mechanics like destroying certain boss parts in the rear and/or flank that causes a state of temporary vulnerability.

This would enable tanks (and maybe even healers) to participate *equally* in contributing in the winning metric(killing the enemy) rather than only play with the prevention of loss which has no real room to excel in(mitigation and healing). But I don't know, maybe people just simply want to feel more powerful than someone else rather than feel like they're working in a team (Selfish DPS classes /vomit) so there's always a constant demand that DPS do 20x big numbers while tanks and healers play in the kiddie pool with their pool noodles and can only support the chad DPS who constantly wonder why their queues are so long and no one is playing these support roles. Tanks and healers adjust. /shrug

But tangent aside, rather than removal of Tank Stances, I am of the side that Tank Stances should instead be changed to accommodate a non punishing play style dependent on the situation. And to go further on that, I feel that all Passive Cooldowns like Rampart or it's ilk should be replaced with the magnificent concept that is The Blackest Night. Effective mitigation that rewards with more damage. (Ofcourse Bloodspiller should be buffed so that it is an actual gain from TBN rather than being a loss or at best DPS neutral but that's beside the point)

This should allow tanks to acquire a skill ceiling that is relevant to their suggested priorities: mitigation and give the player a tangible reward for excellent execution(more damage = more winning). One easy to digest goal and progression. Unga bunga me defend good, me attack/reflect better!

But at the end of the day I can understand the necessary evil that a tank stance provides because as binary as survival is, it does have a huge raid wiping consequence and as with their design philosophy with Stormblood of lowering the skill floor, especially if Billy 1-2-3 Tank stance spam is also a target audience, tanks just need to brain dead for the sake of everyone else that isn't the tank player.

[Kabooa]

I personally would prefer if tanks *did* do as much damage as DPS but with the caveat being that the DPS held the actual raid boosting abilities as to prevent the "dreaded" all tank parties and still retain their exclusive usefulness.

Sure, as long as DPS can mitigate damage as well as tanks then.

But don't worry, tanks will still have all the threat controllers, so -ideally- you still want tanks so you can properly plan your cooldowns instead of playing threat ping pong.

[FallenWings]

Sure, as long as DPS can mitigate damage as well as tanks then.

But don't worry, tanks will still have all the threat controllers, so -ideally- you still want tanks so you can properly plan your cooldowns instead of playing threat ping pong.

God forbid we give our poor DPS any more responsibility beyond 0.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if "Tank Defensive Stance" was changed like the new Cleric Stance.

Give me 10 seconds of ungodly amounts of enmity in all my abilities.

Dungeon big pulls? Fixed.
Extreme runs? Fixed.
Savage mode tank swaps? Fixed.

You only need 10 seconds (or less) of Enmity boost. Yeah you could say "Shirk" but that's not gonna work in dungeons, so boost up the enmity and let the tank do their DPS combo. You don't even need to add defensive or attack changes.

Or do. Life is short.

[Kabooa]

God forbid we give our poor DPS any more responsibility beyond 0.

The only combat role the tank can claim sole responsibility of in this game now is add interception.

Everything else that used to be the sole realm of tanks have been part and parceled to every other job to share in or gets automated.