Can we please get aggro management back?

[Shougun]

Personally I think it's better now than before. In that I didn't think it that fun to worry about since it was only a problem when either A. you were being rofl stomped on ilvl differences in those ilvl changing dungeons like i59 to i60 (new tanks being synced with mega geared players) or B. other players weren't using their kit and so it was just adjusting your damage potential down (while still playing the same buttons) to compensate for other players not playing their entire toolset. Or alternatively some people looking at you negatively because you don't want to worry about people playing right or not. If you didn't want to test the party out and see if they were going to use the skills and kept it on, then someone might look down on you for not being optimal, but if you test out the party and someone steals hate because you weren't ready for every single spell and ogcd they own as fast as they possibly can BUT emninity reduction.. then you get looked down on too lol. It was just not that great a thing to have to worry about. Usually I just left it on slightly longer than necessary so there was a huge difference and then turned it off, trying to find the best of both worlds, but I still felt it was not the fun part of being a tank.

Also it was a bit of a philosophy sore thumb in that it cost you damage to tank better, which was your job, but damage is king so that's really your job.. lol. So do your job better by doing your job a bit worse. Obviously it was fine because your cooldowns and healer were enough, but it just seemed like a backwards companionship in terms of playing optimally. I'll be a better tank by turning off the stance that defines my job's name. Always made me laugh. I prefer that's not the core design philosophy of aggro management, if it did ever come back. So like using the aggro combo vs damage combo didn't really bother me but I personally hope the toggle dance never comes back. Which is obviously what I've focused on mostly here lol (the tank stance thing).

I suppose If they want they could introduce a new mechanic (sort of new), where monsters begin to look around and the tank can assert their dominance by preventing that shift with their single target ranged attack (giving it purpose inside of normal combat, and making it a tank specific duty so it's not something that players shift blame / responsibility around on like using your emnity reducing toolkit was). If the tank fails to stop that then the monster goes off to wack / cast at another player for one turn (or perhaps until the effect is broken) and then goes back to whoever had aggro in the first place. Can have it happen here and there, a few times a dungeon but not like every monster in a trash pull will do it (which would be annoying). Can give it an exclamation mark graphic above their head for info that it's happening shortly (orange ! to state it will happen, will be red while happening). Bosses will not have this mechanic outside of it already being something that they do as per their mechanic (like the few bosses that aggro reset).

[Claire_Pendragon]

There'd be a few glaring flaws with such a thing:

1) You'd have people that love the 1 tank that has to work for enmity complain about why it has to work for it when the other three don't.
2) The single tank that'd have to work for enmity would never have to work with it in 8-man content, as all you'd have to do is let any other tank build enmity, then have the hard tank voke. Done, their one weakness gone.
3) Fight design would be a mess. Do you balance mitigation around the tank who has the hardest time with it, thus causing the other three to utterly trivialize any mitigation requirements of the encounter? (I.E - Ultimates/savage floors), or do you design it around the tanks who have the easiest time with it, making it extremely difficult for the bad mitigation tank to keep up? Likewise, how do you balance dps? balance it around the tank that has to work for its dps + the tank that has to work for its enmity and thus give a huge advantage to any group that runs the other two tanks that have no issues outputting their full dps?

If they're going to adopt a system for tanks, it's gotta be all or nothing for all of them, or it just creates a whole nightmarish mess of balancing issues, compared to the very strong balance the tanks already have at the current moment. Considering that with SHB its clear they wanted to reduce the barrier of entry for newer tanks by simplifying aggro in response to how tanking ended up in SB, they made the right call. I've had a couple friends who were scared of tanking in SB actually try it this expansion and loving it due to a lot of weight being lifted off their shoulders from having to not worry (too much) about enmity.

1) No problem with that, they can pick a different tank, which is why the system is designed that way ^^; (Essentially 3 of the tanks would be no different than they are now)
2) Nothing wrong with that, that would be perfect teamwork by my book... but.. based on how you phrased this...
3) I think you misunderstand what I mean by "Difficult" I dont mean its inferior in ability. Like I dont mean a tank who only uses rampart, and no other mitigation. I mean stuff closer to how some jobs have longer/more complex rotations, vs those with simplistic rotations. (PLD vs DRK) Raw intuition has no prerequisites to use, but TBN requires holding onto MP, all the while the DRK is also trying to pump out that MP for DPS. (IMO these are pretty bare bones basic comparisons to what im suggesting) No one is saying DRK is struggling to handle tank busters, if anything, quite the opposite. No one is saying PLD is struggling to do good enough DPS because of its rotation. If these classes suffer from mitigation/DPS its from a completely different type of design. But due to how tanking is now designed in this game, I'd have to say the only example I could think of, is to make an oGCD that puts up the tank stance. But unlike others, it has a time limit, like 30 seconds.
but the oGCD is still on CD for... idk, 2mins? (maybe 1, im not sure) And to extend it requires another action apart of thier rotation. (But it cant be at the cost of DPS, or it has to refund it, just like how TBN refunds lost DPS) In short, its playstyle, not performance. Oldschool tanks had to suffer DPS loss for enmity control, this would need to avoid DPS loss, just as mitigation cant be at the cost of DPS either. (I'd go on about more details, such as the focus of enmity control, rather than just having to work for it.)

From a design perspective its no different than maintaining a dps buff, that has slightly different flavor. In this case, we also add mitigation or enmity flavor.
I think the current tank system is absolutely perfect for a tank who focuses primarily on DPS. (Mostly for PLD, being the most "complex" out of the 4, and GNB feels like a middle ground to an extent) I think DRK comes close to the tank who has to focus more on mitigation.
In the end, I'm glad they finally incorporated this style of tanking, as I've been saying its possible to do, despite how many people opposed it. But at the same time, I didnt want them to throw away enmity for all tanks either.

[Theodric]

I miss diversion.

[Awful]

Give me an actual interesting tank tool kit and identity/class fantasy then I'll worry about threat management I do miss the 3 Sunder rule in WoW, many whelps handle them.

[Melichoir]

Give me an actual interesting tank tool kit and identity/class fantasy then I'll worry about threat management I do miss the 3 Sunder rule in WoW, many whelps handle them.

Yeah but that was pretty much part of the tank identity - managing threat and making sure you could hold the boss. Before it was a management game, now youre nothing but a dps that has better mitigation. You want threat, turn on tank stance. Thats pretty much it outside of fringe stupidity cases, and even then people complain about tanking.

The great irony about SB is that people still had trouble managing aggro in 8 mans. I mean Circle Shirking was a pretty straight forward concept, if you really had to go that far. Even then in casual content, literally just turn tank stance on and use your aggro combo and it was hard for people to take it off you. But of course, to many people trying to be "Leet DPS Best Savage Skillz Evar" and drop their tank stance not even realizing theyre not doing the class rotation properly to begin with so aggro gets away from them.

But Instead of teaching people how to properly manage threat, the Devs (unfortunately) decided to gut the system and dumb it down to "Press 1 button" for threat. And frankly, considering how some people continue to witch about tanking cause "Using CDs to hard", I woudlnt be suprised if yoshiP comes out next xpac and just makes tank mitigation passive or remove tank busters all together. Afterall, its to hard to learn basic mechanics of when to use one or how many to use.

Yeah admittedly Im a bit bitter about it, and DRK being so unsatisfying to play from a playstyle PoV makes it worse. And while I know its anecdotal, the people I generally see who say "Yeah, this version of drk is the best version" are people who never played it in SB or HW or people who are bad at tanking. The average player wanted to play DRK for the Edginess, but complained it was to hard or to spammy, so they dumbed it down. I just feel like the biggest problem I have with the Devs and balance is that they keep listening to the 'average guy/gal' and just make everythign stupid easy so "Everyone can play it!", shafting anyone who enjoyed the play style and difficulty of the class. And this continuous driving of the skill floor down overall just impacts the game negatively.

Bah. Ok.

[NanaWiloh]

Yea I like the current system and I say this a healer. I do not miss the old days of a wall to wall pull, and me pulling aggro cause I have to spam heal to keep the tank up. Who despite CD usage his getting hit like their wearing cardboard, leaving me two options keep the tank alive or take a beating from mobs. Make matters worse tank would pop tank stance to help get the mob back just to lose another one to a dps, All because the tank was trying to do their job and save my butt. Dont even mention lucid dreaming that crap ability at times barely kept me from pulling aggro in that particular senario. Which happend more times then I care to remember, with everyones go go go pull the whole dungeon mentality. Goes without saying that the old threat system would cause one Hell of a mess.

[Fluffernuff]

I recall a specific thread back when Stormblood first released begging to remove the gauge penalty for stance dancing. So, yes, I do remember stance dancing, more so in dungeons than in raid content.

Alright. so. There's much, much more nuance to this than you let on, here.
Before explaining what/why... we all need to get something out of the way about this; This was a WAR specific issue. and had very little to do with the stance effects themselves.

To your credit, though, WAR did Stance Dance. At least the *proper* WARs did...... but it was never for emnity. or for any sort of nuance for aggro management. Heck, memes aside, it wasnt even for damage sometimes. Stance Dancing DID happen, even in Raid content. Though to a lesser extent, as you say. Fell Cleave was the way, but you cant do that when you got killed. "Just pop IB 4head"


Here's the thing about WAR in HW+SB; Deliverance and Defiance changed the effects of several abilities. Abilities such as Steel Cyclone, Equilibrium, and Inner beast/Fell Cleave. Inner beast and steel cyclone in specific being an on-demand 20% damage mitigation, and steel cyclone being an AoE leech. It was common to use these for large pulls, for Tank Busters (unchained removing the damage penalty) and the like.

The reason there was an outcry about this is BECAUSE WAR was the only tank that had an actual reason to change stances..... and were the only tanks that had a penalty for it. PLD didnt lose oath gauge. DRK could have grit AND darkside without losing blood gauge. WARs peers lost nothing for the same benefits. it was blatantly imbalanced, and using the tools available to you severely dug into a WARs performance.

That was the outcry.

[Fynlar]

The reason there was an outcry about this is BECAUSE WAR was the only tank that had an actual reason to change stances..... and were the only tanks that had a penalty for it. PLD didnt lose oath gauge. DRK could have grit AND darkside without losing blood gauge. WARs peers lost nothing for the same benefits. it was blatantly imbalanced, and using the tools available to you severely dug into a WARs performance.

I don't know about DRK, but PLD had a penalty in that switching oaths cost you a GCD. WAR did not have that penalty because its stances were abilities.

[Fluffernuff]

You're right. I could have worded that better. PLD did have a cost associated with it.

but I was more focused on specifically on WAR's gauge controversy in 4.0-4.05. DRK's also cost a GCD IIRC but DRK's didnt and dont stance dance. they had both at all times. And in 4.0 they couldnt lose darkside anymore, since they removed the MP cost from it. Losing a GCD isn't quite the same as losing resource. but a cost is still a cost.

[Marxam]

Tank stances would work if aggro was disabled in off stance, thus requiring someone to stay in tank stance in order to hold aggro. If provoke or shirk didn't work when you are in an off stance that would potentially fix things but raid design would still need to be taken into consideration. I think o4s is probably a good example where enmity resets after grand cross required the tanks to be top 2 enmity asap or the mechanic might target a party member. Now if we apply the same mechanics but if one of the tanks were in Deliverance, Darkside, or Sword Oath, they would not get aggro and potentially kill a party member.

Ultimately Tanking has lost any sense of actual tanking and all we are is just a weaker dps with more defense. To the people who said tanking was just tank stance > one enmity combo > off tank stance. Guess what you do now. Regardless of tank stance enmity has been buffed so insanely high that it is possible to keep hate and we even have less combos so literally all you are doing is spamming an enmity combo. No reward for going into off stance and risking higher damage for potentially losing aggro.