Tanking feels unimportant

[Maeka]

Please no. No more linear gated hallways. This is part of what makes dungeons so dull. Give us room to wander or take different routes. Give us the opportunity to over pull and potentially fail. Let's see a modicum of challenge in all content.

The problem with this, is that your average speedrun group just wants to get the dungeon done ASAP.

Branching paths and such are counter-productive to that, and will only become annoying.

There's a reason why people groan when Aurum Vale comes up as the Leveling Dungeon, and there's a reason why people hate the Wanderer's Palace (the one with the tonberry assassin stalkers, I think that's the one?).

I kinda miss the older style, but then I'm not one of those people in a perpetual hurry. Heck you got people complaining about tanks not doing optimal DPS so they can clear the dungeon 30 seconds sooner than they would otherwise, you kidding me?

Uuh, no?

No idea where you come up with all that nonsense but is not the case.

Over the years, I've seen several instances where a tank goes "Hi, I'm new here, please tell me anything I need to know" and see someone immediately drop group. People would rather eat a 15min debuff than have to explain things to a newbie tank who's never been there before.

And personally, I've gotten remarks of "you didn't have to pull that group" or "wrong way, go this way instead!" whenever I wanted to clear a side-room in those older dungeons and one-or-two occasions of "c'mon, I just wanna get through the dungeon already" type complaints. Maybe not verbatim but something that means essentially that.

[Casualty]

You could still speed run the older content, including Aurum Vale. I think people disliked it so much because the opening had a ton of patrolling mobs and frogs with knockback, so to a newer/careless group it could spiral out of control quickly - and that was the beginning of the dungeon. It also had Coincounter who has an instant kill pbaoe without a visible ground telegraph, which was hard for some people.

While it's more open, there are no branching paths, just a few packs that are optional. A better example would be Haukke Manor or Dzemael Darkhold, along with your point about Wanderer's Normal. None of those typically get the hate that Aurum does.

I can tell you I speed run not because I need to have the dungeon over quickly (although that is a nice perk) but because if I pull one group at a time I have barely anything to mitigate (if I'm playing DRK it's questionable if TBN breaks), the healer has barely anything to heal, and the dps have barely enough mobs to effectively make aoe worthwhile over single target, but don't live long enough for a full single target rotation. It feels bad for everyone.

[SleepyNeko]

If there is a hard cap on damage and a set length of the fight that people have to get through it forces players to actually do mechanics and soak / heal the damage, then DPS wouldn't be as important and would be a step in a different direction. This can be done a number of ways out side of lowering the damage dealt to the boss as well. But I do agree that the fight design would need to be vastly different than what 14 is currently offering.

Actually I feel this a bit in the Hades Ex fight, where there are multiple phases that there is no longer a reason to do damage once you hit the phase transition life threshold. Mechanics like Earthquake acts as a dps check but in the same time forces you to wait out the cast bar and cannot be skipped.

[Seku]

Actually I feel this a bit in the Hades Ex fight, where there are multiple phases that there is no longer a reason to do damage once you hit the phase transition life threshold. Mechanics like Earthquake acts as a dps check but in the same time forces you to wait out the cast bar and cannot be skipped.

Wouldn't fully know. Haven't done Extreme's and ect in a long while. I'll take your word for it though. When I get life up to date, I'll give it a shot and give my opinion on it.

[Valic]

Actually I feel this a bit in the Hades Ex fight, where there are multiple phases that there is no longer a reason to do damage once you hit the phase transition life threshold. Mechanics like Earthquake acts as a dps check but in the same time forces you to wait out the cast bar and cannot be skipped.

That's not a good example considering the amount of health the boss has casting quake, is how much damage the party receives in return. The only thing this makes any sense of is phase 1 where you can go beyond 10% of his health required to force a transition and even that is just because of animation lock the majority of the time.... AND EVEN THEN if you dps hard enough you can skip his 2nd tank buster.

[Maeka]

You could still speed run the older content, including Aurum Vale. I think people disliked it so much because the opening had a ton of patrolling mobs and frogs with knockback, so to a newer/careless group it could spiral out of control quickly - and that was the beginning of the dungeon. It also had Coincounter who has an instant kill pbaoe without a visible ground telegraph, which was hard for some people.

While it's more open, there are no branching paths, just a few packs that are optional. A better example would be Haukke Manor or Dzemael Darkhold, along with your point about Wanderer's Normal. None of those typically get the hate that Aurum does.

I can tell you I speed run not because I need to have the dungeon over quickly (although that is a nice perk) but because if I pull one group at a time I have barely anything to mitigate (if I'm playing DRK it's questionable if TBN breaks), the healer has barely anything to heal, and the dps have barely enough mobs to effectively make aoe worthwhile over single target, but don't live long enough for a full single target rotation. It feels bad for everyone.

That's what I mean -- the added challenge of possible wipes and extra mob patrols and the jumping frogs is what people hate about Aurum Vale. The earlier poster who said "BRING BACK CHALLENGE!" is failing to realize that the vast majority of people running Duty Finder hate wipes, and hate getting killed.

And you know? I'd have to agree. I hate that first room of AV for exactly the same reasons as everybody else. So many people do stupid junk in that room and nobody wants to be careful so it's like... 6-7 times out of 10, there's going to be a wipe in that first room.

It's not that I'm against having to be careful, it's more that nobody wants to be careful and it's just annoying. Tanks just wanna run straight in, ranged DPS and healers wanna stand 50y away from the mobs we're fighting and aggro everything else in the room, blah blah blah blah.

But yes, you're only helping prove my point as to why people hate dungeons like Aurum Vale and why it is counter-productive to add them.

SE is giving the majority of the playerbase what they want. You can't fault them for that, to be honest.

[Yorumi]

The problem with this, is that your average speedrun group just wants to get the dungeon done ASAP.

Branching paths and such are counter-productive to that, and will only become annoying.

There's a reason why people groan when Aurum Vale comes up as the Leveling Dungeon, and there's a reason why people hate the Wanderer's Palace (the one with the tonberry assassin stalkers, I think that's the one?).

I kinda miss the older style, but then I'm not one of those people in a perpetual hurry. Heck you got people complaining about tanks not doing optimal DPS so they can clear the dungeon 30 seconds sooner than they would otherwise, you kidding me?

You keep saying speedrun as though it's somehow some cheat people are doing. I mean the devs have made it clear how many groups they think people should be allowed to pull. On top of that they gave us the tools to encourage larger pulls with aoes that are far more efficient on large groups and are borderline worthless on 3 targets. Then there's healers who has WAY WAY WAY WAY more healing power than is necessary for the damage that this game dishes out. The more you go into online games and demand that your way is the only right way to play the more problems you'll have.

Speaking of which if you don't want to play the way the party does then play with trusts. You can sit there and stare at the scenery all day long. To be quite frank here if you're honestly wiping as much as you claim and getting as many complaints as you claim the problem is you not everybody else. People have tried over and over on both the tank and healer forums to explain to you what you're doing wrong and all you seem to want to do is whine about everybody else. In playing since 2.0 I've never experienced anything close to what you claim to experience all the time in dungeons and I've played all roles. People hardly say anything beyond "hi" in dungeons even when a wipe happens. If you're being honest about what you experience then you need to stop and do some serious self reflection.

[BarretOblivion]

The biggest problem with Tanks is the fact that when they removed the complexity of stance dancing, they kinda didn't give us anything else to fill the hole tanks have in complexity or interesting gameplay loop of a tank. Some tanks just got dumber and easier to use than before, and sure, for getting new players to try tanking that's fine... but most tanks that stick with it aren't going to be new tanks, they will be more along the lines of sticking with the game actively. When it came to Stormblood, tanks were masked in completely straightforward and almost braindead gameplay with the only exception holding tank players' interests in the end game was the fact we could do almost as much damage as a DPS if using DPS stance and managing aggro to an extent. Some couldn't grasp this skill gap and it likely led to plenty of complaints about the mechanics over the SB lifespan. They removed some of the annoyances with tanking, fine, but what did we get in return? Jack. So now we have barren tank gameplay of a braindead rotation, little room for improving skills for a noticable gain, another role riding our butts on our damage, and nothing to compensate for the fact that we all got OT skills... and yet we never need to use them. It all leads to a terrible experience playing tanks currently... and that's one of the sole reaons tank numbers are down in the end game, complaints of tanks are increasing, etc. The thing is... DPS got more tools and generally more fun this expansion... and yet tanks got shafted. So you wonder why Tanks feel unimportant? Because the devs have so far ignored these complaints and instead where has almost all the patches gone towards at this time? DPS and Healers. Tanks only got a small time increase on our 30% mitigation and increasing Holmgang's duration to make it not completely suck in some fights. WOoooooooow, that helps sooooo much.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

snip

Tbf, no tank really stance danced except WAR, it was literally the worst thing either DRK or PLD could do and both avoided it like the plague. It was so punishing to both jobs and any talk of QoL was met with vehement disagreement from WAR mains.

As a pld main, I only ever used tank stance for M/F in o12s, if there was no ninja, or for aggro resets in o4s, otherwise never used ShO, not counting casual content but that doesn't matter so much, but was still a pain to pull as paladin. But overall it wasn't complexity, it was 3 GCDs and never turn tank stance back on for the rest of the fight.

Personally I want more tank mechanics in fights, more adds, and the removal of auto positioning, like o8s for example and celestriad, where incorrect positioning and at least two people were dead because not enough room to avoid splash damage from the fire. I can't see much happening in the way of cc usage making a resurgence at this point, outside of niche one off encounters like e1s. Current tank mechanics in savage are pretty boring, double busters, double auto attacks, forced swaps, everything else is pretty generic after that, that everyone has to do.

I will agree that a widening of the gap in dps between tanks and healers should happen, in the favour of tanks, but that's been discussed to death in another thread.

[Steinar]

This has been said again and again, but let's say it once more: Aside from war, "stance dance" did not exist. Whoever tells you it did is a moron. DRK and PLD going tank stance lost dps, and dps loss is bad. There is a reason why WAR was the best tank to pull and shirk was praised as the best thing ever.