PSA: Provoke and You.

[Maeka]

It's a fact Provoke is stronger in ShB as it has a boost in enmity, while previously, Provoke only placed you 1 point ahead of the enmity lead, and it's recast is now 30 seconds down from 40 seconds. DNC front loads it's burst, and to some degree so does RDM, so even with PLD typically using Holy Spirit to pull instead of shield lob (more dps), DNC can still rip aggro for a second.

I've never seen anybody rip a mob off of me with Shield Lob. Not once. I suppose it could happen between pulls, like if a RDM were to have Verholy/Verflare and/or that Lv80 closer ready from the previous pull and dumps that from the start or something similar, maybe? Or a BRD dumping Barrage? Maybe a MCH who likes opening with Reassemble+Drill/Air Anchor? But other than extreme cases like that, nope. Doesn't happen.

If you check the tooltips on the tanks basic ranged skills, all have an enmity modifier on top of the stance bonus enmity, which is a significant boost compared to Provoke, but sometimes, certain situations allow for faster reaction times picking up adds using Provoke, or it allows and extra GCD to be gained, that would be lost using ranged skill to pull. Certain tank openers will just have the tank run in and face pull, then kick their rotation off on the first GCD.

The original point was, that Shield Lob (and similar) generates more threat on pull than Provoke and I've seen plenty of pulls off the tank with Provoke and none with Shield Lob, so.......

This is by far the worst means to pull a boss, using gap closers to pull screws over your melee getting to the boss and delays positionals (in certain circumstance), and typically creates more issues to positioning the boss (can screw with ninja's who pre pop doton as well). You should always hold your first Spirits Within until you've at least used Fight or Flight. As mentioned above, typically Holy Spirit is a better means to pull for paladin on bosses. Dungeon trash, either Intervene, Shield Lob or Total Eclipse.

FoF can be used while dashing into the boss. *shrug* Never said it couldn't, I didn't really see a reason to mention it. As for "positioning issues", I've never seen it. The boss stops exactly where he is (he'll move a tiny amount) and then I run through him to turn him around almost immediately upon pulling, and he stays right there unless I want him to do otherwise or the fight is scripted (Rukshs Dheem for example) to have the boss move. I don't get why you'd want the boss charging halfway across the arena towards you?

This I do agree with you on, even last expac, enmity combos seen one use per fight, and then forgotten about, tanks have more than enough tools to manage enmity as it is. More frustrating was the tanks in 8 or 24 man content, that insisted on OT then subsequently spam their enmity combo preventing veteran tanks to tank in DPS stance. The removal of enmity combos at least made a significant improvement there, As for the provoke spamming tanks, I typically let them keep it, unless said person tanking will be a detriment to the party / alliance, in which case, I will Provoke back when safe to do so.

What inspired me to write the OP was a WoD run at the Ahriman boss. Two of the tanks, both in Ironworks gear, both newbies, spamming Provoke on cooldown, and one tank that actually knew what he was doing.

We asked the two newbies to stop provoking and let the experienced tank have him. The newbies ignored requests and kept voking off of each other, even when the experienced tank decided to go to OT mode.

So no matter what, we were screwed as that boss has a number of cone and direction-based attacks, etc.

[ReiMakoto]

I've never seen anybody rip a mob off of me with Shield Lob. Not once. I suppose it could happen between pulls, like if a RDM were to have Verholy/Verflare and/or that Lv80 closer ready from the previous pull and dumps that from the start or something similar, maybe? Or a BRD dumping Barrage? Maybe a MCH who likes opening with Reassemble+Drill/Air Anchor? But other than extreme cases like that, nope. Doesn't happen.



The original point was, that Shield Lob (and similar) generates more threat on pull than Provoke and I've seen plenty of pulls off the tank with Provoke and none with Shield Lob, so.......



FoF can be used while dashing into the boss. *shrug* Never said it couldn't, I didn't really see a reason to mention it. As for "positioning issues", I've never seen it. The boss stops exactly where he is (he'll move a tiny amount) and then I run through him to turn him around almost immediately upon pulling, and he stays right there unless I want him to do otherwise or the fight is scripted (Rukshs Dheem for example) to have the boss move. I don't get why you'd want the boss charging halfway across the arena towards you?



What inspired me to write the OP was a WoD run at the Ahriman boss. Two of the tanks, both in Ironworks gear, both newbies, spamming Provoke on cooldown, and one tank that actually knew what he was doing.

We asked the two newbies to stop provoking and let the experienced tank have him. The newbies ignored requests and kept voking off of each other, even when the experienced tank decided to go to OT mode.

So no matter what, we were screwed as that boss has a number of cone and direction-based attacks, etc.

It doesnt matter if you rip hate immediatly with your first hit, the tank will take the boss back again almost immediatly if you do and at worst you'll take an auto attack, not a big deal.

Using FoF before dashing to a boss will kill your damage, as it will probably cuck you out of a gcd across the FoF window as well as you starting fof on the wrong gcd. By dashing to the boss you delay your melees reaching the boss unless they also use a gap closer (which is bad for thier damage), whereas a shield lob or provoke pull will nicely put it in the center and have the melees hit it straight away, the positioning issues also arise because after a gap closer you're in a short animation lock before you can turn the boss. This is not to mention the fact that unless mechanics dictate otherwise, having the boss in the center is usually more beneficial

[Maeka]

Using FoF before dashing to a boss will kill your damage, as it will probably cuck you out of a gcd across the FoF window as well as you starting fof on the wrong gcd. By dashing to the boss you delay your melees reaching the boss unless they also use a gap closer (which is bad for thier damage), whereas a shield lob or provoke pull will nicely put it in the center and have the melees hit it straight away, the positioning issues also arise because after a gap closer you're in a short animation lock before you can turn the boss. This is not to mention the fact that unless mechanics dictate otherwise, having the boss in the center is usually more beneficial

You're talking about tiny bits of DPS that would only matter in Extreme/Savage/Ultimate Progression, lol. Like literally less than 2 seconds total fight time of the entire fight between the two pulling methods. And I didn't say use FoF before dashing, I said use it while dashing so that just as you get in range of Spirits, you get the buff, but that's if that 1 GCD actually mattered that much in Duty Finder content (which it doesn't).

If you wipe at 1% on a Duty Finder boss.... there are 1,000,000 things going wrong, each of which would make far more impact on the success of the fight than the tank wasting a GCD of FoF or a DPS dashing in to get to the boss 1 GCD sooner.

EDIT: My point about pulling with Provoke wasn't about bosses, but rather trash packs. 30 seconds is a decent amount of time (Many trash packs are dead within 30 seconds these days), and what I've seen some tanks do, is they'll use it to pull, and some caster mob in the pack won't get into their eclipse range, and they won't notice at first, and about 5 seconds later, a DPS (or worse, the healer) has 50% health because the caster is beating on them, and.... the tank has no Provoke to get the mob back. Then the tank has to spend 3, 4 GCDs to get the mob back rather than Provoke it, run over to it and drag the pack with him and AoE the whole thing and then the caster is his and will stay his.

[ReiMakoto]

You're talking about tiny bits of DPS that would only matter in Extreme/Savage/Ultimate Progression, lol. Like literally less than 2 seconds total fight time of the entire fight between the two pulling methods. And I didn't say use FoF before dashing, I said use it while dashing so that just as you get in range of Spirits, you get the buff, but that's if that 1 GCD actually mattered that much in Duty Finder content (which it doesn't).

If you wipe at 1% on a Duty Finder boss.... there are 1,000,000 things going wrong, each of which would make far more impact on the success of the fight than the tank wasting a GCD of FoF or a DPS dashing in to get to the boss 1 GCD sooner.

You cannot use skills while dashing? The animation lock of intervene means all you're doing there is a horrible clip thats a further damage loss especially if you're doing intervene-> fof-> spirits, you've not rolled your gcd at all there and are using fof on the wrong gcd still. I'm not trying to say you can't do it your way, just that your way is very sub optimal, and if a more optimal way exists why wouldn't you do it especially as its easier for you, easier for your party and generally just good practice? You're right that its not causing more wipes, but thats an incredibly lax attitude when you could be better for just as much effort

[Maeka]

You cannot use skills while dashing? The animation lock of intervene means all you're doing there is a horrible clip thats a further damage loss especially if you're doing intervene-> fof-> spirits, you've not rolled your gcd at all there and are using fof on the wrong gcd still. I'm not trying to say you can't do it your way, just that your way is very sub optimal, and if a more optimal way exists why wouldn't you do it especially as its easier for you, easier for your party and generally just good practice? You're right that its not causing more wipes, but thats an incredibly lax attitude when you could be better for just as much effort

Maybe I'm just weird, but doing the super-optimal robotic rotation over and over again is rather boring. I don't even always dash, either, sometimes I do throw the shield as I run in. *shrug* Either way, it's duty finder... and no I'm not saying that as a license to be lazy, but sometimes just mixing things up a bit, is more fun than being robotic all the time. I'm not saying that we should just mash random buttons and not even pay attention to combos and rotations, but there's enough variance to where you can do reasonably well, comfortably clear the content, but also mix things up a bit anyhow.

If I wanted "must be at 100% optimal performance 100% of the time" I'd go to Savage or Ultimate.

EDIT: A bit off-topic, but I have to comment on your signature:

Savage Completion Rate ~5%+ of active players. Community: "Ugh stop catering to savage"
Ultimate Completion Rate ~1% of active players. Community: "Ugh stop catering to the hardcore raiders"

This only proves the Community's point: 95% of the community does not do Savage, therefore when you make changes to the game aimed at savage players, it feels like such changes are made to pander to a very small minority of the actual playerbase especially when such changes are detrimental to casuals.

Frontline/ Rival Wings/ Hidden Gorge Mount Aquisition ~0.05-1% of active players. Community: "Ugh PVP is so dead in this game, they should stop investing in it"

Same thing as above: PvP is such a small niche area that few people in this game are even interested in, and so spending so many resources on it seems like a waste.

Blue Mage Morbol Mount Aquisition ~0.01% of active players. Community: "WoW bLuE mAgE iS sO fUn AnD aCtIvE i CaN't WaIt FoR mOrE lImItEd JoBs"

People like Blue Mage.... but maybe they don't like the ridiculous amount of work, and manual group-making that is required to get dungeons to learn the necessary spells to do all of the content required for the Morbol Mount. I'd like to get the mount myself, but you know..... I need dungeon bosses and I don't like having to leech off of other players and there's no duty finder for BLU until way later on. I need dungeons I can't solo, and some of those spells come out of Extreme Trials and what-not and it's like "bleeeeh".

I like the idea of limited jobs, and BLU, etc. I don't like the lack of automated matchmaking for the group-required content.

[ReiMakoto]

Maybe I'm just weird, but doing the super-optimal robotic rotation over and over again is rather boring. I don't even always dash, either, sometimes I do throw the shield as I run in. *shrug* Either way, it's duty finder... and no I'm not saying that as a license to be lazy, but sometimes just mixing things up a bit, is more fun than being robotic all the time. I'm not saying that we should just mash random buttons and not even pay attention to combos and rotations, but there's enough variance to where you can do reasonably well, comfortably clear the content, but also mix things up a bit anyhow.

If I wanted "must be at 100% optimal performance 100% of the time" I'd go to Savage or Ultimate.

I'd disagree here, especially with the class mentioned here pld. Outside of niche high end optimisation is there is basically a correct way to play a job, and you'd be surprised how much your damage tanks by "mixing things up a bit" especially on more rigid classes. Obviously some jobs have more free form elements and rng, but even then there is generally an easy optimal flowchart. Obviously its all "enough" to clear df content, but thats because DF content is almost completely braindead with non existant dps checks, imo making the effort to do better and play correctly in this content is simply a common courtesy showing that you respect other peoples time.

Edit:

Commenting on my sig, i need to update it, savage clear rates have gone up considerably since then as the patches/ year has rolled on, as has ultimate, tragically BLU blu is still down in the garbage where it belongs :P, also it doesn't get a Duty finder at all, not just later on, the BLU log is a party finder interface, you still need to manually find people.

Also can you tell me what changes have been made specifically to cater to savage players? Only thing I can think of their is maybe the AST rework, but even then calls for that came from all levels of play not just savage

[Maeka]

I'd disagree here, especially with the class mentioned here pld. Outside of niche high end optimisation is there is basically a correct way to play a job, and you'd be surprised how much your damage tanks by "mixing things up a bit" especially on more rigid classes. Obviously some jobs have more free form elements and rng, but even then there is generally an easy optimal flowchart. Obviously its all "enough" to clear df content, but thats because DF content is almost completely braindead with non existant dps checks, imo making the effort to do better and play correctly in this content is simply a common courtesy showing that you respect other peoples time.

The problem here is that such optimization has very little impact on the actual total clear time, even as a PLD. It's less than a minute or two for the entire dungeon.

I simply don't play the game to be on the edge of my seat, mashing buttons trying to achieve that 99th percentile. I'm sorry, but I play games for fun, and shaving 5 seconds off of a boss fight is really not something that really matters to me much, and if it mattered to the other 3 people in Duty Finder, then maybe they shouldn't Duty Finder. Maybe they should run with their Ultimate/Savage FCs instead if they want their 10 minute clears.

Some people need to just chill and lighten up and understand that not everybody worships parsers and damage meters, and they just wanna chill in a MSQ dungeon, expert, trials roulette, whatever.

Now, of course, we don't need people doing like 30-50% of their possible DPS, well obviously. But losing 10% DPS because you're not mashing the buttons so that you squeeze 0.1s between attacks, or going for <0.2s time between an ability is available and using said ability, etc... doing that constantly is exhausting, and simply not fun especially when there's very little need to do that.

I mean... IRL, when you go shopping, do you run full speed down the aisles, and hurry hurry hurry grab everything you need, run back up, and hurry and dump everything on the checkout belt and have everything ready to go so you can hurry hurry hurry out the door, etc? No, of course not.

There's a time to hurry and there's a time to relax a bit. In fact, this insistence on being 100% optimal and doing things 100% right at all times is why most people don't think too highly of Savage/Ultimate players. I mean, do you guys do this with non-instanced quest mobs, too, where you run 100% optimal rotations for every open world fight, too? I can't imagine trying to play like that, just seems so pointless to get that mob dead 0.5 seconds faster.