Tanking in FF14 question

[MerlinCross]

Really love the class balance. SE does an amazing job at it. Play what you want not what people say you should play. Those people should go play WoW. Thats how that game is so toxic.

Over there they dont have fun they download 3rd party crap to monitor everyone's dps then kick people out. Or imagine being kicked because everyone was i500 and you were i490 for a raid that needed to be i440. Game is stupid there.

FF14 is the best mmo out there! Been playing since 2.0

Im almost done with PLD to 80 for my 2nd tank.

Balanced doesn’t mean fun, ask any version of MNK it seems.

Are there some people that take balance too far and exclude some jobs due to meta? Yeah but that’s not the rule here and I’m thankful for it.

Doesn’t mean jobs should be in the state they are in now.

[Awha]

Really love the class balance. SE does an amazing job at it. Play what you want not what people say you should play. Those people should go play WoW. Thats how that game is so toxic.

Over there they dont have fun they download 3rd party crap to monitor everyone's dps then kick people out. Or imagine being kicked because everyone was i500 and you were i490 for a raid that needed to be i440. Game is stupid there.

FF14 is the best mmo out there! Been playing since 2.0

Im almost done with PLD to 80 for my 2nd tank.

Sure we have diehard meta advocates, but that does not mean SE should go to the extremes they did with healers and tanks. Sure tanks for example probably are the most balanced in terms of raw numbers but the gameplay loop leaves much to be desired in my own opinion. Playing a job and seeing the visible and tangible difference between all skill tiers is a awesome sense of personal progression, and something we are sorely lacking.

[Leiron]

Bleh, to heck with balance if it means playing any of a role is unenjoyable. Balance means beans cause having two buttons to mash can be balanced too.

Thing is you can have unenjoyable roles without balance as well.
I do think there is room for improvement for the roles so they play better, but it feels better when you can pick any role and succeed rather than be forced to go meta.

[BarretOblivion]

Thing is you can have unenjoyable roles without balance as well.
I do think there is room for improvement for the roles so they play better, but it feels better when you can pick any role and succeed rather than be forced to go meta.

Even in SB, you weren't forced to go into the meta. Need I remind everyone World's First of UCOB was with a DRK. The 'meta' of SB was due to poor design on DRK and SE taking to long to adjust/fix skills on DRK. At the end DRK was actually pretty good, but it was competing against PLD as an OT and most groups prefered all the raid wide mitigation PLD provided while DRK didn't have one. That was the core reasoning why DRK was wonky, WAR was the best MT to pull, and PLD was great at the MT. You could still play DRK and do really well with it. If you want to play an off meta Tank, then just do it. If the group gets butthurt about it... find a different group.
I played SAM in SB, and SAM was not meta, people get over it.

[XeroXelence]

Pushing 2 buttons or 9 buttons doesnt equal balanced.

[Jirah]

I’d say it’s more boring to DPS as Tanks have more control. But man tanks are boring in FF14 the game sets up interesting Mechanics in the early dungeons (notable ones are in the Dark Hold and the Vale) and never ever utilize them as the boss encounters take priority. Your just AOE spamming and cycling your buffs until trash is dead and even the bosses aren’t interesting. Tank busters are very minor and You almost never need to guide the boss anywhere.

[ArianeEwah]

Pushing 2 buttons or 9 buttons doesnt equal balanced.

Why not, if the outcome/output is the same, why change it? It's balanced, design doesn't matter. /s

In all seriousness: current tanks are like pushing 2 buttons compared the (imaginary) 9 buttons we had before. Even tho it was imbalanced, it was far more enjoyable to play around those imbalanceness as long as it was possible to do so.
That's one reason why DRK was actually the least enjoyable because they suffered from bad mitigation cooldowns in comparison to PLD and WAR, and that was something you couldn't work around it... or TBN not even breaking on tank busters in e.g. E2s which was pretty ridiculous.

[Leiron]

Even in SB, you weren't forced to go into the meta. Need I remind everyone World's First of UCOB was with a DRK. The 'meta' of SB was due to poor design on DRK and SE taking to long to adjust/fix skills on DRK. At the end DRK was actually pretty good, but it was competing against PLD as an OT and most groups prefered all the raid wide mitigation PLD provided while DRK didn't have one. That was the core reasoning why DRK was wonky, WAR was the best MT to pull, and PLD was great at the MT. You could still play DRK and do really well with it. If you want to play an off meta Tank, then just do it. If the group gets butthurt about it... find a different group.
I played SAM in SB, and SAM was not meta, people get over it.

Not disagreeing with that notion, simply speaking in general.

[NanaWiloh]

So.... I'm going to have to say a few unpopular things.

I used to play back during WoW during the "Three Sunders" rule. I didn't play a lot, but I did do some tanking, enough to easily get an idea of what it was like. I did tanking during ARR, near the middle until I got tired of people expecting me to know my way around dungeons with optional ways to go and optional mobs, and expecting me to know which I should pull and which I should skip even if it were the first time I was there. I tanked on-and-off through Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, just a smidge in Cata, a bunch in MoP and a little in WoD, and once-or-twice in Legion and BfA.

I tanked in FFXI.

So I feel I've a decent amount of experience of tanking across three different games, and well..........

All of this "Enmity Management" you guys are harping on about? Can you guys please take off the rose-colored goggles for a second? Enmity Management was never really a thing for tanks. You simply spammed the skills that had the highest enmity gain, and usually, especially for early WoW tanking, these skills did jack all for damage. I twas all about "What skills do the most enmity so I can keep the enemy on me"? You want to harp on about low DPS? That's laughable, because tanks did far less DPS back in those days.

"Enmity Management" was always about DPS not overshooting their tanks, and it was a crutch to slow DPS down and to make them wait before actually using their highest DPS skills, and it was also a crutch to limit healing. None of these had any impact on what the tank was doing, because the tank, yet again, was simply spamming the highest-enmity routines they could do along with whatever defensive cooldowns they had.

Also, "Stance Swapping" is something else I'm getting tired of hearing about, when tanks wanted to run with DPS stance because somehow they weren't doing enough freaking DPS that without a button that says "I DO MOAR DPS NOW!" they feel like they are doing less DPS (even though they aren't). Same with healers complaining about the loss of Cleric Stance; that DPS was baked into them without CS but yet healers still think that without a toggle "MOAR DPS" button they feel like they aren't doing DPS.

Back to the OP's actual question.....

PLD is the funnest tank to actually play because you have the most mitigation buttons out of any job:

Sheltron: You are popping this anytime you are anticipating big incoming damage.
Cover: I've saved peoples' lives from this. Someone with 3+ stacks of Vuln about to take a huge AoE hit? Yeah, I've done that. It feels awesome.
Passage of Arms: Boss is about to do a huge AoE and I pop this and we barely survive because people messed up the "boss buildup" mechanic? That's usually worth at least 3-4 comms at the end of the fight.
Clemency: I love popping this on the healer to save us from a wipe and/or the healer goes down with 20-30% left and I manage to keep myself and a DPS alive until we finish off the boss.
Shield Slam: For trash mobs with annoying attacks when your group doesn't have WHM (or low level when WHM doesn't have Holy yet) and/or the few early bosses that aren't immune to stun.

And of course you have your standard Rampart and your 30% less damage button like any other tank does, as well as Interject and Provoke, and Reprisal (which makes enemies do less damage).

I find myself, when I'm running lower level content going "blah... no Clemency?" or "Meh, wish I had Passage of Arms there.."

As to your rotation?

Later levels, you have 2 Rotations, or well.... the first 2 buttons are the same and you end with either DPS or DoT. Late Level, you get Sword Oath, finishing the DPS rotation gives you 3 charges of an even more powerful skill which is great for building a bunch of MP back fast. Your AoE later on is a 2 button rotation, and you have an oGCD AoE as well, as well as an oGCD single-target attack. Sheltron gets thrown in either to soften the tankbusters, or to help deal with a lot of incoming damage (like when you're pulling large groups of trash). You also get a "Dump MP to do crazy AoE Damage" rotation that involves popping an oGCD+4 casted spells+finisher.

Tanking in FFXIV is about knowing when to use your mitigation buttons as far as trash packs go. Spacing out your various buttons, and planning ahead, as well as dodging all of the AoEs (which get more common, esp in Lv80 dungeons). Nothing like pulling 7-10 mobs and each of them are throwing AoEs down on the ground every few seconds and you have to keep dancing and weaving around them while doing your rotation while keeping track of your mitigation buttons so the healer doesn't run out of skills to keep you alive. An awesome tank vs a reasonable tank vs a crappy tank, the difference is night and day when they try to pull 2+ groups. The tank that stacks all of his mitigation together with a macro vs the tank that knows which should be paired with which.

For boss fights, it's far more mechanic-heavy, knowing what bosses do and how to deal with it, knowing what the tankbuster attack is called so when you see it come up, you react to it before you get 70% of your life sheared off in an instant because you didn't have any mitigation up at the time, knowing where to position the boss, some bosses should be tanked at the edge because they have nasty AoEs you don't want getting dumped on the rest of the group.

The 8-man fights, sometimes the two tanks need to be working together, and be in agreement as to who does what (Thornmarch, Leviathan, Susano's sword phase, Titania to name a few). Also need to be paying attention, if the main tank dies, you need to be ready to step up to the plate quick and need to know the fight yourself so you don't get killed too while they get the other tank back up, etc.

WoW places a lot of emphasis in pushing the buttons in an optimal order, FFXIV places that emphasis elsewhere.

You hit the Enmity management and Stance swapping especially right on the head. Just spent like the last hour looking through threads on tanking and see nothing but tanks. Wanting the old days of go Offensive stance, then expect healers and dps too use ENMITY REDUCING ABILITES whenever their up. So Mr or Mrs. tank could continue to spam their dps abilites and avoid their Defensive stance. Grit,sword oath, Defiance no longer grant damage reduction only enmity generation. So they could just leave it down and lower their enmity generation just like if they were in Offensive stance. As healer I should not have to lax at my job because my tank wants to play dps instead of Tank.

[ReiMakoto]

You hit the Enmity management and Stance swapping especially right on the head. Just spent like the last hour looking through threads on tanking and see nothing but tanks. Wanting the old days of go Offensive stance, then expect healers and dps too use ENMITY REDUCING ABILITES whenever their up. So Mr or Mrs. tank could continue to spam their dps abilites and avoid their Defensive stance. Grit,sword oath, Defiance no longer grant damage reduction only enmity generation. So they could just leave it down and lower their enmity generation just like if they were in Offensive stance. As healer I should not have to lax at my job because my tank wants to play dps instead of Tank.

This is such a bad take for so many reasons. First of all dps and healer aggro management was almost completely free, it didnt break your rotation and requires you to press a button every few mins, so it was not like it was hard to do. Second, the damage difference between a tank in dps stance and tank stance was huge, like really huge, and the defence gained simply wasnt worth it. You barely had to heal the tank more (regen still covered autos and you would have to heal after a buster regardless) and tank stance actually made your defensive cooldowns worse due diminishing returns on stacking defence buffs. And finally, more damage meant for a safer run, the damage difference between a tank in tank stance and one in dps stance was so huge it would make meaninful impact on kill time, meaning you had to deal with more mechanics. More mechanics means more damage and more things that can go wrong, so the best defence is a good offence