6.0 Both Tank and Healers Need Major Focus on Bringing Back Job Identity

[LeonKeyh]

I started playing with 5.2 and hadn't played since early 2.0. As a new player, I did find it strange how Tanking/Healing worked in the game. I'm wondering what everyone's idea of making the tanks "different" is. What does everyone see as the main point to differentiate the tanks on? My thoughts are that there are ultimately a handful of responsibilities that need to be fulfilled by skills that tanks have:

1. Keeping threat
2. Decreasing Damage taken
3. Outgoing DPS

I promise that I'm trying to learn and not asking this as a "gotcha" of any sort, but where is it that people would like to see the differentiation? All of them?

For threat, I actually enjoy the current "You don't really need to worry about it." as a DPS main, because in most other MMOs, I felt like I was being punished for doing well. At some level, I enjoyed the need to manage aggro if there were sufficient tools to do so, but it meant that a mediocre tank could really slow down the entire dungeon run. But from the sounds of it, there are people that "miss" the need to work to hold aggro, to juggle dealing damage with holding threat. I don't have any idea what FF14 was like before these changes, but was that really something that was fulfilling? Did it go farther than just "I do rotation A twice for emnity, then just DPS the rest of the fight."? How was that system for the other players (healers/DPS)? Did you really notice a bad player in that set up?

For decreasing damage taken, it sounds like from what I've read, too much differentiation in the type of mitigation ultimately lead to overall meta problems. There are definitely different _ways_ to decrease damage which I could see trying to do. Things like a class using MP to create shields to prevent damage, leeches, defense-based rotations to weave into normal rotations, etc. Seems like there are ways to handle this that won't cause huge swings in class value in _most_ cases.

The last big thing is DPS, which it _seems_ like there is some differentiation for. But from the ways everyone talks, it sounds like that's not the case. Sure, you can argue that it's still about 30s/60s burst windows for each of the tank classes, what's the alternative being suggested though? One class that has burst windows, one that has sustained damage, one that has a staggered OGCD rotation, etc?

I'm just trying to understand what everyone is pushing for a little better.



Alternatively, with healer, I (SCH) enjoy the fact that I get to do some DPS, but definitely get bored with the DPS rotation. Maybe it shouldn't be that engaging because I'm not DPS, but it seems like there's a better way to handle all of that. Things like damaging spells/debuffs "powering up" the Fairy who can then heal better. I don't really play healers much at all, so I can't comment on things that are engaging for the role, but the most fun I've had as a healer was in RIFT with a Chloromancer who healed by doing damage mostly, with a few heals to use in certain instances.

[Sqwall]

But from the sounds of it, there are people that "miss" the need to work to hold aggro, to juggle dealing damage with holding threat. I don't have any idea what FF14 was like before these changes, but was that really something that was fulfilling? Did it go farther than just "I do rotation A twice for emnity, then just DPS the rest of the fight."? How was that system for the other players (healers/DPS)? Did you really notice a bad player in that set up?

I for one as a paladin tank main here have this to say. "Good Riddance to stance dancing!" It was the single thing holding tanks back for being on equal footing. Removing it from your rotation all together was a god send as far as i'm concerned. Now I can just DPS in peace and mitigate in peace. Stormblood was rough on tanks I think Dark Knight had it worse though with darkside off and on, blood weapon, and dark arts dancing. I opted to main healing in stormblood since tanking was a kind of in turmoil. Shadowbringers made everything hunky-dory for tanks and a lot the people that devoted there rotation of stance dancing to meta. Those folks may be a little sour about putting so much emphasis on perfecting tank rotation in SB and now having it throw to the wind in ShB. LOL let's be honest though.....i found it miserable to get through SSS in SB. ShB it is very coherent rotation for my paladin and I love it.

[Torunya]

But from the sounds of it, there are people that "miss" the need to work to hold aggro, to juggle dealing damage with holding threat. I don't have any idea what FF14 was like before these changes, but was that really something that was fulfilling?

Personally, I like the notion of tanks having to work for their aggro, and I found it enjoyable back in ARR and HW. The thing is, my stance on the matter is that tanking shouldn't be about dealing damage, but about holding threat. I know I'll be contested on this, and that's fine. It's just my personal preference. Back then, whenever I had exceptionally skilled dps in my party, I really had to watch the enmity bars and make sure I was focusing down whichever mob they were so it didn't pounce back on them. Sure, at worst this could turn into a ping-pong match, but at its best it made me as a tank player feel engaged in the role I was taking responsibility for. And I kind of miss that. =')

[BarretOblivion]

For decreasing damage taken, it sounds like from what I've read, too much differentiation in the type of mitigation ultimately lead to overall meta problems. There are definitely different _ways_ to decrease damage which I could see trying to do. Things like a class using MP to create shields to prevent damage, leeches, defense-based rotations to weave into normal rotations, etc. Seems like there are ways to handle this that won't cause huge swings in class value in _most_ cases.

This wasn't what lead to this issue, far from it. The issue was the fact invlun timers and how invulns worked allowed you to 'cheese' mechanics or ingnore them on top of Damage.
WAR had the lowest cooldown for its invuln signficantly back in SB leading to WAR having a stupid easy time with tankbusters, ignoring tank swaps, etc WITH the highest DPS and basically able to ignore the whole threat system even when sitting in DPS stance the whole time. PLD allowed for a ton of cheesing with Hallowed and Cover.

[bundythenoob]

snip

so I might be in the minority in this, but I do agree with you on the whole aggro management. emnity was always difficult for new tank players to maintain due to the item levels of your gear making your damage output increase, so new tanks had difficulty maintaining aggro against overgeared DPS or healers, especially if those players didn't use their emnity dump skills. plus, overhealing would generate a lot of aggro too, which was solved by the new tank stance. HOWEVER, I for one DO NOT like the fact that the individuality of the tank stances was stripped from them, which removed some of the key gameplay elements of each job. WAR's beeg HP pool and healing received matched its berserker playstyle which lacked defence, PLDs bulkiness solidified that feeling of a sturdy wall, and DRKs mana generation being turned off allowed the class to build more mana itself through its abilities since they didn't have to take natural mana regen into account. these individual flavours added a lot to each job, and I wish they brought that back.

As for the mitigation part, DRKs TBN is a very good example of how to use your resources to create a shield for tanking, and being rewarded for smartly tanking with it. I do wish PLD WAR and GNB had a similar defencive ability that showcased their individual playstyle, but atm we don't even have a different playstyle. i also dislike the tank mastery trait that every tank gets at lv 1. it basically invalidates good usage of mitigation skills because it gives each tank an excuse to pull without using cooldowns, something that used to be punishable by enemies and would put a strain on healers, thus allowing tanks to naturally realise that they need to use those cooldowns (rampart, sheltron, sentinel, etc).

Like you said, most of us want a return to differentiation for the tank jobs playstyles. In STB, all 3 of them played very different from one another, but you still had fundamentals you could carry over, such as AOE for big pulls, rolling your cooldowns over, using gap closers to maximise uptime after dodging aoes, etc. with SHB, they went overboard with the homogenisation and ended up butchering what made both WAR and DRK unique, and made both classes suffer simultaneously. PLD doesn't get a lot of hate in this because it actually retained its gameplay identity, while still evolving AND being accessible thanks to the emnity changes. the old sustained dps tank DRK is now a burst dmg WAR clone with extra oGCDs, and the sustainability of WAR was taken from them, and then give back as a weaker version at later levels.


As for SCH, you may have noticed that some of its heals arent the strongest, and this was due to SCH dealing more damage in the past. a good defence is a good offence as they say, and SCH was the most battle medic of the 3. its damage allowed it to contribute to killing mobs faster, which allowed for its heals to be weaker. nowadays, it lacks that damage source, so its weak heals stand out more. the fairies were also outright ruined (something that they had fixed in STB) and their abilities have a chance to whiff, but thats a whole other story.

[Ririta]

But from the sounds of it, there are people that "miss" the need to work to hold aggro, to juggle dealing damage with holding threat. I don't have any idea what FF14 was like before these changes, but was that really something that was fulfilling? Did it go farther than just "I do rotation A twice for emnity, then just DPS the rest of the fight."? How was that system for the other players (healers/DPS)? Did you really notice a bad player in that set up?

I once was the bad player in that setup. On one of my first attempts Coil Turn 4 run, I decided to leave Eos on Sic because, in my mind, that turn dealt so much damage that it was pointless to not just let her use cooldowns whenever available. Result: her Whispering Dawn aggroes bugs and the tank was physically incapable of getting aggro off her. We wipe, I get scolded.

I mean, sure, it's fun to Fire IV without a care in the world. No more getting my face mauled because I accidentally pulled, and no longer have to old a proc because an add just spawned like the good 2.0 days... But... then what? That's it? Just do my rotation minigame ad nauseum? I swear, sometimes I don't even feel like I'm in a group. I literally lost the habit of checking on my aggro. It doesn't matters who the tank is or what they're doing, and it's irrelevant, just click Fire IV... in the end, it's just another step of the WoWfication of FFXIV. Turning & reducing everybody into numbers and removing every party dynamic that would tell you otherwise. Feeling this hard as I level up white mage, the job that would occasionally suicide by casting a single Medica II and then run out of MP and cry to the bard to play ballad.

Point being... I actually liked the low enmity generation. Some times I think that the FFXIV team needs to listen less to parsers and just focus on making a good RPG first. I feel really sad knowing that I wouldn't have the same fun that I had playing warrior and paladin in ARR and even dark knight in HW, because of all the little things and effects removed. I liked giving a fat Rage of Halone and seeing "STR Down". I liked "Slashing Resistance Down" being my responsibility. I liked keeping an eye on aggro to see if a DPS was getting close to pulling... then again, I was mostly active before the fflogs meme so tanking in tank stance wasn't a capital sin (and even then it was complicated sometimes to keep things off black mages and summoners). But anyway, I rambled enough.

Not related to your post, but I keep seeing people talk about the flavor of jobs and I don't see how it's even possible to fix it, I mean, how do you even do it now that TP is gone? Half of the flavour between paladin and warrior was TP usage...

[Lyth]

Mandatory 100% uptime buffs were the single worst decision in the history of this game. The only system of stances that was reasonably well designed was Defiance/Deliverance, but good riddance to all of them. TP made sense in ARR, but the subsequent overabundance of TP buffs, as well as the development of job specific gauges made it redundant.

Likewise, trade-offs between enmity and damage offered nothing of gameplay value. The most important part of enmity is in intercepting and picking-up a mob, and you do that by moving to said mob in a timely fashion and hitting it. Maintaining enmity on a secured mob never required any brainpower.

If you want to protect a teammate, it should be done actively by means of your actions, rather than by accumulating enmity points on a static mob. This is where actions like Cover and TBN come in. If you want to mitigate big incoming hits, it should be on a more frequent basis through low recast cooldowns. Not invuln-swap-invuln-swap every three minutes. Active engagement is how you win players over to tanking.

[Absurdity]

As for the mitigation part, DRKs TBN is a very good example of how to use your resources to create a shield for tanking, and being rewarded for smartly tanking with it. I do wish PLD WAR and GNB had a similar defencive ability that showcased their individual playstyle, but atm we don't even have a different playstyle.

Warrior does to a certain extend in Nascent Flash. Sure you could just use it whenever but then you maybe get a heavy swing, maim and path in before it runs out which isn't exactly optimal.

i also dislike the tank mastery trait that every tank gets at lv 1. it basically invalidates good usage of mitigation skills because it gives each tank an excuse to pull without using cooldowns, something that used to be punishable by enemies and would put a strain on healers, thus allowing tanks to naturally realise that they need to use those cooldowns (rampart, sheltron, sentinel, etc).

This is basically a myth. If any tank thinks they can do big pulls and not use cooldowns because they have 20% passive mitigation they're in for a bad time, the Tank Mastery trait is basically a noob trap like freecure. I atleast haven't even noticed a difference between the damage I took in dungeons while tanking in Deliverance in SB and the damage I'm taking now, the damage mobs do has probably been adjusted to account for the trait which makes it essentially nonexistent.

and the sustainability of WAR was taken from them, and then give back as a weaker version at later levels.

As much as I dislike the current warrior design I'd argue that the sustain was simply shifted instead of weakened. Okay you can't spam Inner Beast with IR running anymore and heal yourself back to full but you really only used it when 1. everything had already gone terribly wrong 2. you wanted to solo old content. Instead we can use Equilibrium whenever we want now instead of having to switch to Defiance, which you wanted to avoid because it was a dps loss, and Nascent Flash can pump out an insane amount of selfheal if you know what you're doing.


I definitely agree with tanks needing to be more unique again, besides different tank stances we probably should also get away from the "spam the same button X amount of times" design for most of the tanks, it's unimaginative, becomes boring incredibly quickly and makes these signature abilities feel less impactful since they're designed around you spamming them.

[bundythenoob]

This is basically a myth. If any tank thinks they can do big pulls and not use cooldowns because they have 20% passive mitigation they're in for a bad time, the Tank Mastery trait is basically a noob trap like freecure. I atleast haven't even noticed a difference between the damage I took in dungeons while tanking in Deliverance in SB and the damage I'm taking now, the damage mobs do has probably been adjusted to account for the trait which makes it essentially nonexistent.

I was basically referring to this in my post, but I guess I should work on articulation first :P

you hit the nail on the head though. I meant that I dislike the trait because it makes new players think that because they have a base 20% def modifier they dont "need" to use rampart on the mobs, and basically invalidates the idea of using effective mitigation. I didn't think of it how you said though, how it forms a trap similar to cure 1 trait. well put!

I don't play WAR myself, but I have a few friends who do, and they complain about certain aspects. I do wish that a lot more changes were made to tanks, but I think the easiest things Square can do is just to tweak some skills to return flavour to the jobs, and to make some adjustments to the leveling kits. im not expecting much, if anything, judging from the radio silence

[Marxam]

IMO they should have reworked Defiance/Deliverance between WAR and DRK (25% hp boost, -20% dmg, +20% in self healing skills while in Defiance and 5% dmg up, 10% crit in Deliverance) and gave the Grit/Darkside to PLD and GNB (20% mitigation, mp regen on defensive cds while in Grit and 20% dmg dealt, mp regen weaponskills in Darkside). GNB might have to use some MP skills to accommodate but all the stances share the same 10 sec recast when swapping to avoid WAR being OP, and that way you got the 2h tanks with high hp to differentiate from the 1h tanks. It's personally why I loved WAR. Sure the big dmg and heals were nice but not as nice as rolling into a party with the highest HP even among the other tanks.

Unpopular opinion to have but I really like the OT stances and that's where I saw the difference in tanks. Made you feel like you got two jobs for the price of one. Stance dancing was out of necessity since raid design shifted heavily to dmg focus rather than mechanic execution. We've come along way from T7 "STOP DPS!!!" to make sure phase changes were smooth to now where people make mistakes in easy mechanics because they're too greedy and want the uptime but wipe the party. Let's also pour one out for unique skills like Mercy Stroke and Sole Survivor. We'll never forget the few times you saved us and got the clutch win.