Let's talk about this games tanking philosophy...

[Wyndam]

To continue on from my prior post, now that I'm not half asleep....

Personally I've found that stance to punish myself more than it does the tank while also punishing the rest of the group as well. And the tank rarely learns anything from it so it's just not worth it. So, alright, fine, I'll energy drain and the tank can learn when they're ready to listen.

[Mavrias]

Anyway, I AM going to use clemency after requi and HOLD requi as a defensive for clemency use, I will only hit damaging abilities if I am comfortable. Because to me, clemency SHOULD be part of your tanking rotation. PERIOD.

Oh, so you're going to be a super bad tank, then?

[Lyth]

Let's design an encounter. There are three mobs:
1) A mob with an aggravating foam bat that does 0 damage who can heal themselves up and takes little damage.
2) A mob that does a lot of damage but dies easily.
3) A mob that heals everyone up to full health but dies easily.

Which mob do you kill first? Which do you kill second? Which do you ignore until the end?

If you're smart enough to figure this one out, why shouldn't the dragon that you're fighting be able to as well?

[Lucy_Pyre]

Personally I've found that stance to punish myself more than it does the tank while also punishing the rest of the group as well. And the tank rarely learns anything from it so it's just not worth it. So, alright, fine, I'll energy drain and the tank can learn when they're ready to listen.

And you know what? I'm perfectly fine with that. I can be quite the petty bitch if the need arises, so if a tank who wants to do nothing but spam Clemency decides that he's going to be his own healer and we end up wiping because I allow him to do so and play green DPS, I'm okay with that. Following the wipe I'll just vote kick the tank and get one that actually understands how to do his job properly.

[Wyndam]

You're an angry healer, but at least you're honest!

[Recon1o6]

You're an angry healer, but at least you're honest!

as an ex healer myself, salt is the default state of healers in 5.0
why do you think the blood lily is weaponised salt?

and yes honesty is important.

[DWolfwood]

I think you had to have played end-game raids in FFXI, FFXIV 1.x, FFXIV now, and WoW to really understand why people compare the game to WoW now and point out the similarities.

FFXI and FFXIV 1.x approached threat management as the fundamental element of tanking gameplay.

DPS was a means to help achieve this, and it didn't matter how well you could survive if you couldn't manage threat too. These games made this a challenge, and there was no automatic increased enmity generation stance nor an ability which put you automatically at the top of the threat list. FFXI's voke gave you 1000 enmity points from what I remember which is equivalent to 1000 damage. Then of course you have gear which had multipliers on these, so that whole game was just more nuanced since your strategy in any fight included wearing the right gear for each encounter.

Surviving was also of course a lot intricate as you didn't hold onto CDs for very specific tank busters, but rather would have a constant onslaught which would kill you if you didn't do your part.

While I greatly prefer XI's take and how much more interesting tanking was, this game aims to give us basically movement mechanics to try and make up for it. Which weren't entirely absent in XI, but yeah.

What also set this apart from FFXIV and WoW is the degree of randomness and indicators which things happen. In FFXIV you're at most ever reacting to a couple different variations of 1 or 2 expected moves coming up, whereas in FFXI for example, you might get an onslaught of the worst possible mechanics all at once or get nothing and you had to be ready for anything when a boss had enough TP built along with a couple expected mechanics at certain HP%'s. Essentially the reverse of FFXIV in that sense since every raid fight in FFXIV is like 95% entirely scripted and 5% randomness.

That said, you just gotta accept that's what this game is.

Even though I feel this game isn't everything it could be, I think there's still enough to enjoy.

[BarretOblivion]

Firstly made a post about PLD before, and from what I understand, some people find it amazing, yet still I have no idea what they are seeing.
Within this game tanking seems somewhat skewed, like it doesn’t really have an identity, because apparently you should prioritise DPS over surviving as a tank. If I wanted to yolo swag bolo DEEPS, I would just play a dps. I find that tanking isn’t what tanking is in other games over here – as there is too much focus on maximising dps. I watch guides on how to play my tank class and the content creator is showing me dps rotations from start to finish. It’s WEIRD…

I don’t know of square made a mistake by letting players think tanks should be dps that just get healed or they believe healers should heal more (lets not get started on healers). I just think it’s all so silly and detrimental.

Imagine playing the posterboy of tanks, but you within your job only ONE ready to go active cd when go into a fight. Yes, ONE. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because you have some time until you can use sheltron with your oath gauge, meaning you just have sentinel and that’s it outside of your role actions. Yet to me, I felt that (at 78+) you should be actively using clemency with requi as a strong source of mitigation, because again, you have so little in the way of mitigation, unless you like RNG… But imagine to my horror, that the community doesn’t think you should use your insta cast high potency heal to survive, you should just YOLO SWAG BOLO DEEPS! And then you are frowned upon for using your SURVIVABILITY TOOLKIT AS A TANK! You can’t make this crap up.

I can only imagine in WoW, you gave any Tank a high potency heal and said “yeah but don’t use it though, you need to damage”, the eye rolling would be immense. It’s like having a Ferrari and living next to a race track but never driving it. It’s retardation.

Anyway, I AM going to use clemency after requi and HOLD requi as a defensive for clemency use, I will only hit damaging abilities if I am comfortable. Because to me, clemency SHOULD be part of your tanking rotation. PERIOD.

That's just not how this game is. A Tank uses thier cooldowns to survive and position the boss. Its everyone's responsiblity to do DPS, even healers. You use clemency as a defensive cooldown and not use requiscat for damage you will find a one way ticket to being booted from any raid group including PUGs. This is not WoW, there is a completely different philosophy to tanking and healing than WoW. All players contribute damage, the DPS checks and enrage timers are strict. Learn how to DPS as a tank.

[OdinelStarrei]

Firstly made a post about PLD before, and from what I understand, some people find it amazing, yet still I have no idea what they are seeing.
Within this game tanking seems somewhat skewed, like it doesn’t really have an identity, because apparently you should prioritise DPS over surviving as a tank. If I wanted to yolo swag bolo DEEPS, I would just play a dps. I find that tanking isn’t what tanking is in other games over here – as there is too much focus on maximising dps. I watch guides on how to play my tank class and the content creator is showing me dps rotations from start to finish. It’s WEIRD…

This is an astronomically bad take, and it's insanely frustrating to see any post like this after the garbage we've had to put up with in tank design as of late. The reason people say DPS DPS DPS on EVERY job is because of scripted encounters in their totality. Scripted damage, scripted burst windows, scripted mechanics, every single thing in this game is on a fixed timeline you could map out on a spreadsheet with a time code and appropriate response in an encounter. There is practically no variance in things on pull to pull basis like damage intake, fight duration, DPS checks, or any numerical value that would actually alter the tanking mentality we've been pushing since like, 2.2. Not 3.0, 2.2. Of course people who are more experienced than you are going to flat out tell you that the only thing that matters is DPS, because that's the only metric the game has for feedback for personal improvement. Of course you're going to do the mechanics right and move the boss, that's your ROLE, that's the BASIC REQUIREMENT. This is crucial on PLD/GNB in particular, because the class rotation is designed with ZERO variance outside of small things like 4th atonements in FoF. It's not feasible to freestyle and "make up" your own playstyle in a game that explicitly denies that methodology because of things like, fixed mana regen, fixed potencies, fixed rotations. All of that combines to foster the "bleeding edge." How far can we go? How fast can we kill?

If you want to exceed, and separate yourself from the chaff that is most tanks in this video game, you can't make comments like this. "If I wanted to do DPS, I'd just play a DPS" Do you understand that comment is a literal meme in this game? That's something people say as a JOKE. It's on the same level of "You don't pay my sub." In fact, I think it's worse, because you're actively playing the game wrong on purpose, either out of ignorance or spite, and I hope it's the former, because maybe we can educate you in how this game works. We didn't design this encounter framework, SE did. We just live in it.

I don’t know of square made a mistake by letting players think tanks should be dps that just get healed or they believe healers should heal more (lets not get started on healers). I just think it’s all so silly and detrimental.

No, let's get started on healers, because I'm 99% sure you have equally flawed opinions on them as well. Tanks are DPS with an aggro tool and some cooldowns. Healers are DPS that have some healing responsibilities. DPS are DPS. I HIGHLY recommend actually researching the difference between an oGCD heal VS a GCD one, because that opportunity cost is 1:1 to Holy Spirit VS Clemency in terms of wasted time.

Imagine playing the posterboy of tanks, but you within your job only ONE ready to go active cd when go into a fight. Yes, ONE. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because you have some time until you can use sheltron with your oath gauge, meaning you just have sentinel and that’s it outside of your role actions. Yet to me, I felt that (at 78+) you should be actively using clemency with requi as a strong source of mitigation, because again, you have so little in the way of mitigation, unless you like RNG… But imagine to my horror, that the community doesn’t think you should use your insta cast high potency heal to survive, you should just YOLO SWAG BOLO DEEPS! And then you are frowned upon for using your SURVIVABILITY TOOLKIT AS A TANK! You can’t make this crap up.

I was going to legitimately post in your other thread that you made trying to help you with PLD, but then you posted this, instead you shoved a potentially good thread off the 1st page, and now I'm just going to translate what I was writing into this section.

You do not understand PLD. PLD is the best overall designed tank in the game, I don't think many people are going to argue with me on that. PLD's extra party defense tools are a godsend in progression and it has the 2nd highest damage!

>"Only one active CD"
Sentinel, Rampart(it being a role action is irrelevant), Hallowed Ground

That's three on demand buttons you can press in a majority of raid situations. If you're in a dungeon, you can add reprisal and arms length (essentially rampart) for two more, for a total of five. And then you have the passive block chance, which DOES matter in the long run. It only takes 20 seconds for you get enough gauge for Sheltron. That's Rampart duration, and there is not a single fight in this game that you won't have Sheltron for when you need it as long as you used your brain and didn't spam it. In fact, because of the SCRIPTED fight design, even if there was a tankbuster in the first 20 seconds that you wouldn't have Sheltron for (frequent occurrence), you HAVE other cooldowns! Just hallowed! The earlier you use it, the sooner it'll be back up, assuming you aren't saving it for something else! If you are, you have ANOTHER TANK TO HELP YOU. Sentinel for yourself, cotank helps you out for AT LEAST 10%, if not more from something like TBN or NF, Reprisal from either tank, feint or addle from the DPS, and a healer shield if absolutely needed. And that same tankbuster is going to happen every single pull and you'll always do the same thing. You DO NOT take enough damage in this game for this to be a valid point in any form, and that's not even counting the infinite regens and instant, no GCD, high potency healing healers can throw on you.

> Yet to me, I felt that (at 78+) you should be actively using clemency with requi as a strong source of mitigation, because again, you have so little in the way of mitigation, unless you like RNG… But imagine to my horror, that the community doesn’t think you should use your insta cast high potency heal to survive, you should just YOLO SWAG BOLO DEEPS! And then you are frowned upon for using your SURVIVABILITY TOOLKIT AS A TANK!

HEALING IS NOT MITIGATION. IT'S HEALING. And it's not your job to heal, it's your job to tank. If you actively use Clemency, you are NEGATING the healer role's responsibility, and there ALREADY issues with the healer role without having you displace them. Under what circumstance with a standard composition would you require a 1/3rd of your health restored PER GCD, per minute? Go ahead, give me an encounter name and the time code of where that's required. You won't find any ever, because if that was required, no other tank but PLD would be able to complete the content, which is antithetical to the "every job can clear" design of the game.

If you run out of mitigation, two things are happening. If it's in raid, it's intended, and it's time for tank swap or more healer attention. If it's in a dungeon, your party is not doing enough damage to huge pull everything, use your big CDs in the big pull, and move on. The game isn't balanced around dungeons, they do negligible damage so in terms of raid, you have another tank to help you mitigate. Do not force other players to not pull their own weight so you can say "But I'm being safe! I'm helping the healer!" All you will do is remove what little agency and responsibility we have left and make those players worse in a game that already has a dreadful playerbase. There is a time and a place to use Clemency, (progression) and you are vastly misusing and not understanding it's point in the PLD's kit. Take your feelycraft, and remove it. There's no place for it here. Back up your statements with numbers and statistics please.

When you screw around and use Clemencies, or don't do a proper rotation, you aren't making enrages, which means everyone gets to die with you because you wanted "use your survivablity toolkit". (Small tangent: We don't have that anymore because of players said what you're saying now. We USED to have a tank stance we could fall back onto for extra mitigation during progression, but they had to remove it because players could not understand when to use it properly, and when to drop it because the extra defense wasn't required. ) Tanks do 2/3rds of DPS's damage, and some tanks have openers that are some of the highest burst damage in the ENTIRE GAME, it's SIGNIFICANTLY a factor in being a contributing player in a party. When you put two good tanks together, you're doing more damage as a unit than ANY single DPS in the game can bring to a party, same with two healers. You objectively cannot devalue the tank dps contribution with the current implementation of the DPS checks. It's just not compatible. If you pulled this nonsense into a proper raid group that actually cared about completing content, you'd be kicked instantly for trolling and not respecting the party's time.

I can only imagine in WoW, you gave any Tank a high potency heal and said “yeah but don’t use it though, you need to damage”, the eye rolling would be immense. It’s like having a Ferrari and living next to a race track but never driving it. It’s retardation.

Yeah, that's exactly right because this isn't WoW. This is FFXIV. I don't go around comparing XIV to Tera, ESO, or any other MMO I've played, because it's not that game. Games in the same genre should have the creative freedom to attempt different design decisions and philosophies. In FF, tanks have never just been tanks. Healers have never just been healers. There has always been a precedent for roles blending together in the franchise, this game is no exception. To pigeon hole the sandbox like what you're suggesting would just make this game no different than the others I've played, which is BORING. If you changed tanks to do no damage and just had aggro combos they spammed for 13 minutes, your tanking population would be non-existent in this game, there's nowhere to improve. The encounter design doesn't support it. We have that issue NOW with ACTUAL rotations. But you know who doesn't have rotations?

HEALERS
THAT'S WHY THERE'S A 60 PAGE THREAD IN THE HEALER FORUMS ASKING IF ANYONE QUIT THE ROLE IN SHB


That's our future. That's us next.
You are stepping on a landmine comparing this game WoW tanking. They are not the same, and should not be compared. People seem to have an aversion to to the game in general around here for some reason.

Anyway, I AM going to use clemency after requi and HOLD requi as a defensive for clemency use, I will only hit damaging abilities if I am comfortable. Because to me, clemency SHOULD be part of your tanking rotation. PERIOD.

I guarantee you will not make any friends with such a narrow-minded approach. The most offensive part about your post is right here. When people who have seen the highest levels of content, spend days of their lives optimizing, creating resources for other people, publish massive guides and websites, people on the multiple forums constantly debating or attempting to teach, just to help other people improve and make themselves the best player they can be. And you're willing to completely ignore all of that, to the detriment of the party, to the detriment of FFXIV tank design because TO YOU, YOUR ideas are better. YOUR decisions matter more. YOUR unwillingness to trust your teammates to back you up in a raid. It's hubris. And it's insulting to players who have been playing longer than 2 months and give a damn about playing correctly. Because it is objective. And it isn't up to you.

if I seem hostile, it's not really intended, but you must understand the frustration of having this debate over and over and over again for YEARS, with people who fall on the worst part of Dunning-Kruger graph, when all you have to do is look around you and see a lot of tanks unhappy their unique FFXIV job identity continue to get eroded. Instead of demanding, and assuming, and forcing, you should be asking "Why are things this way? What factors in the encounter design push a more DPS-focused mentality compared to other games? Why does the raid design lead more into fixed dances, rather than randomization?" People would be more than happy to give you a ten thousand word history lesson, myself included. Instead, you just sound like every person who thinks they are better than they really are.

Being a new tank is uncomfortable. Being an old tank that players expect to be perfect is uncomfortable. I've been on both sides. That's the point. If you can't handle taking risks, and making mistakes, and killing your party sometimes because you don't have a perfect memorization of the team jump rope or you want to push yourself to be better. This game at a competent level isn't for you.

If tanking isn't what you think it should be, that's fine. But don't play it intentionally wrong just to prove your point. Go in trusts. Random players don't deserve this. This schism is unnecessary and just promotes more lowering of the skill floor to the development team.

Take this feelycraft nonsense back to General Discussion like the last guy.

[ItMe]

Firstly made a post about PLD before, and from what I understand, some people find it amazing, yet still I have no idea what they are seeing.

I love PLD if only because it's magic helps me keep uptime when I need to peel away from the boss for whatever reason.