PSA: Provoke and You.

[Sqwall]

Wait... so I actually enjoy FFXI style tanking, without even playing FFXI, because FFXIV 2.0-4.5x was similar in to how tanking was in FFXI was when leveling a tank...?

That actually blows my mind, in a good way.

Yeah FFXIV "sort of" borrowed from 2 camps of thought here from other MMO's.
1. Enmity generation in FFXI, by using modifiers to skills that increase enmity or decreased it for some DPS classes. These came in the form of skills, items, potions, abilities. Where this was DIFFERENT was enmity came is SMALL amounts at one time.

Example: WAR/NIN uses utsusemi: Ichi to cast 3 shadows on self...then uses provoke for hate. WAR/NIN doesn't take damage for 3 attacks while the mob is focused on them. Meanwhile the PLD/WHM heals his wounds and then uses provoke off WAR/NIN. rinse repeat.

DPS and healers had to be aware of what was going on as to NOT GRAB the mobs attention and refrain from using certain skills/magic until the tanks were in sync. i.e. WHM uses elemental seal (x2 potency on next spell) + Curaga (party LARGE heal). This would result in a party wipe as by doing this the enmity dump would fall on the WHM and stay there until the WAR or PLD could "catch up". I ave been in a group where we had 3 consecutive provokes go off AND STILL the hate was on the WHM for doing this.

Battles were VERY party/class dependent in FFXI with this dynamic of tanking, and the WHOLE party had to be paying attention as to not pull hate. I vividly remember as a RNG/NIN class I literally had to just STOP DPSING to lower my enmity so the tanks could catch up...ultimately NIN was the main tank near the end of my tenure in FFXI


2. Agro table from WoW and this worked much like FFXI did, but was way more skill dependent. And agro wasn't in small doses but LARGE dumps of hate and whoever had the most hate was gonna get smacked. The modifiers/multiplers were reserved mostly for tanks.

With a stance on you did more damage which in turn generated more agro towards you. DPS had to be more aware so as not to pull ahead of the #1 in the agro table like all MMO's, but this was MUCH less severe.

Example: First 2 minutes of Onixia in vanilla was just the tanks establishing agro, which allowed the whole raid to go bonkers with insane DPS without issue. Healers using range/wands doing literally 100 points of damage during the opener lol.

ARR, HW, Stormblood, all adopted this style of a "hybrid hate" generation for all the party members involved. This made raids VERY compelling for hate managment. ShB just made it stupid simple to hold hate, and removed Diversion from the game. The only time I see agro creep is when I have a WHM or SCH in the group.