PSA: Provoke and You.

[Boomsmash]

Then by that logic we also don't need Enmity toggles and have just enmity tied to the "Tank Mastery Trait" but someone is going to make an argument about why we need the enmity toggle to begin with, while also arguing that enmity combos should never come back.

The logic of the former Does Not Follow, and the latter is my position.

It's simple.

1) The Tank Stance toggle lets the Tank focus on pushing their buttons, attacking, healing (if applicable), mitigating, keeping things pointed, and still having an engaging amount of junk they can do. They are still generating good threat and not locked to the old 1-2-3 combo that made tanking a boring drone in order to be doing your job well. They can adapt to the situation without being on the edge of their seat about if they can keep aggro on that fourth mob that the BLM has a Blast Romance going on with.

2) Tanks want and need some way to manage their enmity generation in order to hold threat or not, if they are in a situation where there is more than one person in the Tank role. Otherwise it is very hard to prevent "fighting for aggro" when they do not intend to. Not everyone has the same skill, the same gear, ping and rotation speeds, so there's plenty of fiddly bits that would make aggro start bouncing around just from those normal mismatches. The simple way to do this is to let them have a toggle that turns the multiplier on or off.

"But wait!" you say. "There's Provoke!" A Tank that is geared, seasoned, and determined will take that piddly lead and snap it like a twig, especially if the Tank using Provoke isn't any of those. But when you have multiple Tanks with varying skill levels, it's just a recipe for Aggro Pinball.

[DRKoftheAzure]

1) The Tank Stance toggle lets the Tank focus on pushing their buttons, attacking, healing (if applicable), mitigating, keeping things pointed, and still having an engaging amount of junk they can do.

Watching the bosses cast timers and trying to see if there are AoE is boring at times, but the tank stance toggle seems to only work very well with GNB, because it was never designed around an enmity combo to begin with but someone at Square-Enix thought that there would be a problem because only 1 tank was allowed to not have an enmity combo and just have a toggle and pushed for all the tanks to be the same... which made the other tanks boring(with the exception of PLD because it's always been boring to level past a level 26 only this time it's even worse now because the level cap is 80 instead of 50/60/70 and this isn't even exclusive to PLD) as a result and require a major re-work in the next expansion, IF there is even going to be one because some people feel like their sub money is being used to fix problems that shouldn't even be a problem in the first place... and keeping things pointed only seems important when their actual cleaves are going out which the devs are steering away from outside a few instances, or the cleave is just a standard tank buster that's also a target AoE...

Tank DPS rotation at level 80 is the most engaging for both GNB and PLD, however GNB doesn't get interesting until level 70(I would be perfectly okay with Continuation getting a level 70 trait that boosts its potency so long as I get it at the same level Gnashing Fang combo), and I want my jobs to have a second single target combo to rotate with my main combo once I hit level 30 or even before level 40 and not feel like a boring drone if it feels like the leveling takes too long.

They are still generating good threat and not locked to the old 1-2-3 combo that made tanking a boring drone in order to be doing your job well. They can adapt to the situation without being on the edge of their seat about if they can keep aggro on that fourth mob that the BLM has a Blast Romance going on with.

Except DRK and WAR ARE locked into an even more boring 1-2-3 combo that's making tanks be a boring drone, same with PLD and GNB if you're doing synced content... you know, the thing people avoid like it's COVID-19 or the plague...

2) Tanks want and need some way to manage their enmity generation in order to hold threat or not, if they are in a situation where there is more than one person in the Tank role. Otherwise it is very hard to prevent "fighting for aggro" when they do not intend to. Not everyone has the same skill, the same gear, ping and rotation speeds, so there's plenty of fiddly bits that would make aggro start bouncing around just from those normal mismatches. The simple way to do this is to let them have a toggle that turns the multiplier on or off.

It's called communication, but I have had instances of wiping because the off tank was not second on enmity list regardless of communication or needing to know common sense...

"But wait!" you say.

More like, "Have you ever died as the Main tank and watched as the off tank just let everyone else die because the off tank wasn't second on enmity list?" because I have seen it happen PLENTY of times. There too many factors beyond my control that usually led to that happening. I we need the the "Fighting for aggro" problem just so that people know that off tanks should be at least second on enmity list, then fine I am willing to deal with that, because I have actually dealt with it when I chose to off tank.[/QUOTE]

"There's Provoke!"

Any tank will know that Provoke can only do so much without the enmity toggle this expansion...

A Tank that is geared, seasoned, and determined will take that piddly lead and snap it like a twig, especially if the Tank using Provoke isn't any of those. But when you have multiple Tanks with varying skill levels, it's just a recipe for Aggro Pinball.

Oh, so you've seen tank stance wars this expansion, this is actually the reason why enmity combos need to comeback on DRK and MAYBE WAR so long as WAR get their DPS stance back, but that actually requires reworking WAR from the ground up again, and at least buffing DRKs Syphon Strike to where it restores HP like Souleater so that way the Souleater combo is more viable as not just a Main Tank combo but an Off Tank combo as well with the Power Slash combo being more for generating resources and enmity when off tanking.

No it doesn't affect the skill ceiling or floor when main tanking, just only for off tanking...

[Curisu]

Please don't:

1). Pull with Provoke. Use Tomahawk/Shield Lob/Unmend/That GNB ranged attack instead. People who pull with Provoke almost always immediately lose whatever they pulled to the first person who touches the enemy and then Provoke is on cooldown.

Well, you can use provoke to pull adds.
Since SHB you get a big load of additional aggro for using it.
It is not like in SB were you get on aggro place 1 by just 1 aggro point.

[Absurdity]

Curisu is correct, they significantly increased the extra enmity that provoke generates with ShB.

This does however not mean that you suddenly want to pull everything with provoke.



If you're in a fight where you do not want to pull with your ranged attack because need your burst to be 1 GCD earlier due to phase changes or specific mechanics, which is really only a thing in some savage and extreme fights, you simply do a face pull, a.i. you run into the boss and hit your single target skill to start your opener+provoke and then proceed to continue said opener while positioning the boss correctly. Provoke is still pretty much only used for 4 things, picking up stray mobs/adds, provoking the boss in case the original tank died or you died and tank swaps.


For 90% of all cases you simply pull with your ranged attack, keep provoke where it belongs^^

[Curisu]

I use provoke quite often for dungeons.
Especially when I pull more adds and didn't hit one with my aoe or a DPS is single attacking one add and gets aggro of it.

It is also useful because of its range.
It has the range of magic casts.

[Wolwosh]

I wish tanks would talk more about who's the mt in alliances. It often turns into hate ping pong even in the Puppets Bunker. Even if a tank does really bad or dies and I take over that ressed tank often just provokes again immediatly xD

[Cabalabob]

Then by that logic we also don't need Enmity toggles and have just enmity tied to the "Tank Mastery Trait" but someone is going to make an argument about why we need the enmity toggle to begin with, while also arguing that enmity combos should never come back.

Yes someone is going to make that argument and someone is going to make that argument because it makes sense and you acting condescending about it doesn’t make it any less true.

If you tied extra enmity to a trait then all tanks would be fighting over enmity with no way to control which one is going to MT. Having it be a toggle allows you to have one tank generate an enmity lead while all other tanks can keep up by toggling it on once the MT has that lead. Having a stance that you toggle for enmity basically turns EVERY combo into an enmity combo, but only when you need enmity so you’re not taking hate when you don’t need to (like you would if it was a trait).

[LeonKeyh]

I feel like this argument about needing enmity combos is being shoehorned into this conversation. I don't understand how "People are misusing provoke and fighting for enmity!" turns into "We need enmity combos!"

If a tank is lacking awareness to the point where they're using provoke to pull off another tank, why would they be aware enough to not be using their enmity combo? What problem would enmity combos solve? I don't see any except making tanks needlessly fiddly. I understand that there are people that "miss" needing to pay attention to threat and bounce between doing damage and holding threat, but this isn't the topic for that argument. Enmity Combos wouldn't solve anything mentioned in the OP...

[Kurando]

With all the emnity changes through the expansions, there is nothing to teach players (especially new ones) how to manage threat effectively except through trial and error or from word of mouth. Tanks that fight each other for aggro, tanks that aoe a mob once then use single attacks resulting in losing stragglers to the aoeing dps, tanks that don't use provoke at all when their co-tank dies etc the list goes on. Some say it's a WoW thing or maybe it's job boosts, but tanking has really never been easier and there are more than enough activities in-game to learn the tricks of the trade.

[Maeka]

The thing is, though, is that WoW's Taunt works exactly like FFXIV's Provoke, except for I think WoW's Taunt is "Top of the List +1". (EDIT: WoW's taunt also forces the enemy to attack the tank for 2-3 seconds last I checked. Don't know if this had been changed)

As for ShB's Provoke being "stronger", coulda fooled me, because I've seen tanks pull with Voke and the mob goes to the first DPS who touches it, esp when I'm playing DNC. All I have to do is use the first ability in my rotation and wham. The mob is mine. I've also pulled aggro with casting Jolt as RDM.

I have, however, never seen any scenario where Shield Lob failed to keep an enemy on me long enough for me to Eclipse the pack. I have seen MCHs and BRDs dumping Quick Nock/Spread Shot and pulling the other mobs for a split sec, but that tends to get sorted out before they even get hit usually, or if they do get hit, it's scratch damage.

As for bosses, personally, I always use the gap closer to pull a boss, and then follow that up with Spirits and then Scorn. Never lost a boss, not once. If I don't have the gap closer because of Level Sync, Shield Lob always works just fine. There may be niche situations like someone mentioned some caster mobs in special pulls in some dungeons, but those are the exception, not the rule.

And the arguments about enmity combos are so eye-roll worthy: There are no scenarios, absolutely none, where enmity combos are needed.

What IS needed is for people to use Stance and Provoke properly. It is so very simple. If you want to be the MT, turn Stance on at the beginning. If you are not the MT, leave Stance off and do your opening routine, and after your first full combo, turn stance on. Assuming the other tank is doing what they should, you will never rip the enemy off of them and you'll maintain about 75% threat. If that tank dies, you're #2 on the threat list. If you're in an Alliance Raid, you need to think about if you wanna be OT #1 or #2. If you don't want the mob at all, then leave stance off entirely.

If, for any reason, you find yourself in a situation where you're the only tank alive and the mob isn't yours, first turn stance on if it isn't already, and voke. It's really that simple. You'll keep the mob on you 99.999% of the time. If the other tank is rezzed and they want the mob back, turn your stance off. They'll voke and the mob will be theirs within a GCD, maybe two.

Any fight that requires Shirk, tank swapping, etc is in Extreme/Savage/Ultimate, and..... if you're trying to do Extreme/Savage/Ultimate and you don't know how to tank..... please.... drop group and go learn first.

Now maybe they need to make a new Smith type thing for an 8 person group, using the Trust System that teaches people how to play in 8-person groups. I would be all for that. In fact, they could give out a full set of i70ish jewelry because getting to Lv50 and having to grind for 4-5 days in Castrum kinda blows.