Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[Renkei]

Not in general, no.
But I do think I can be cool.
For example I thought it made E2S *very* fun~

it is at higher levels of play, same thing with fighting for and working for aggro which was a thing before current expansion. which i really miss about current tanking.

[Vyrerus]

Aggro is a pointless, boring mechanic, and is not the thing SE should be looking at with regards to tanking.

Honestly it's not, they're just afraid to make tanks take any kind of responsibility, and mostly always have been. There's really easy ways to make agro management matter, outside of just balancing it off with doing DPS. These are hate resets followed by tank busters and stuff like that. We only ever got that in Neo Exdeath though, but it was delicious.

They could also get rid of Shirk. Heck, if they really wanted to spice up enmity, they could get rid of provoke too.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly it's not, they're just afraid to make tanks take any kind of responsibility, and mostly always have been.

That's not really a "tank" responsibility, though, unless the mechanics by which it might succeed or fail belong solely to the tank. Thus far we've only see it be a "DPS-limiter" mechanic or, on the rare occasion, a DPS "hit only what the tank hit or get slapped" mechanic.

That's not to say it couldn't be a hell of a lot better, but it certainly has been dull thus far, especially as a tank mechanic.

They could also get rid of Shirk. Heck, if they really wanted to spice up enmity, they could get rid of provoke too.

By all means, if a skill's function/feature is redundant or makes an otherwise enjoyable mechanic redundant, then scrap it. But note that, as far as it's taken form so far, you're arguing for a basically redundant mechanic. Wouldn't it be better to try to imagine how revised abilities might play into a revised version of it, rather than minimizing tools just to make room for a mechanic that is itself, at present, redundant?

What do you imagine an engaging version of Enmity (or rather, its interactions) would look like?

[ItMe]

What do you imagine an engaging version of Enmity (or rather, its interactions) would look like?

If you were to remove provoke & shirk I don't imagine that trying to tank swap by spamming shield lob / unmend / tomahawk / lightning shot while the other tank literally does nothing would actually make swapping be more "engaging."

As for the larger question of emnity management being more engaging, that sounds nice in a vaccume, but...
especially since the MT and the OT can have such vastly different iLVLs (especially in Unreal) blunt emnity tools are needed.
I'm not even gonna touch on the headache that would be trying to level your tank with a dungeon (your party is probably gonna have at least 1 level synched DPS), but asking tanks in pugs to keep their emnity close enough to tank swap at a moment's notice is asking too much if one tank isn't as geared as the other.
Heck, even in my static that would be a big ask because it means my friends who are trying out tanking... wouldn't be able to tank with me.
They would need to have close to BiS Savage sets to properly co-tank with me or their emnity control would be too poor.

If you need to be near fully geared up to tank... that's just bad design.
Blunt emnity tools are fine.

[Seraphor]

If you were to remove provoke & shirk I don't imagine that trying to tank swap by spamming shield lob / unmend / tomahawk / lightning shot while the other tank literally does nothing would actually make swapping be more "engaging."

As for the larger question of emnity management being more engaging, that sounds nice in a vaccume, but...
especially since the MT and the OT can have such vastly different iLVLs (especially in Unreal) blunt emnity tools are needed.
I'm not even gonna touch on the headache that would be trying to level your tank with a dungeon (your party is probably gonna have at least 1 level synched DPS), but asking tanks in pugs to keep their emnity close enough to tank swap at a moment's notice is asking too much if one tank isn't as geared as the other.
Heck, even in my static that would be a big ask because it means my friends who are trying out tanking... wouldn't be able to tank with me.
They would need to have close to BiS Savage sets to properly co-tank with me or their emnity control would be too poor.

If you need to be near fully geared up to tank... that's just bad design.
Blunt emnity tools are fine.

Precisely why enmity management is about as good as it can get right now.
Provoke and Shirk are necessary for tank swaps, and recovering from a death, and pretty much nothing else.
Tank Swaps are a decent enmity mechanic, it forces cooperation between tanks, forces both tanks to be involved in actually tanking the boss.

The only way I can think of spicing up enmity management that wouldn't mean returning to the old aggro tug-o-war with DPS that required DPS to have enmity dumps, would be something like certain bosses having certain enmity debuff skills. Like "get hit by this and your enmity gets slashed by 20%", forcing you to work in Unmend/Tomahawk/Shield-Lob/Lightning-Shot a few times. Or a slow aggro drain that would similarly force your to keep track of your aggro and work in your pull skill as needed.
Maybe they could even be unavoidable occasionally, just to mix things up from tank swaps and as another use for Provoke.

[ItMe]

something like certain bosses having certain enmity debuff skills. Like "get hit by this and your enmity gets slashed by 20%", forcing you to work in Unmend/Tomahawk/Shield-Lob/Lightning-Shot a few times. Or a slow aggro drain that would similarly force your to keep track of your aggro and work in your pull skill as needed.
Maybe they could even be unavoidable occasionally, just to mix things up from tank swaps and as another use for Provoke.

Mechanics that are just there to toy with your emnity?That is def an interesting idea~
And they could play with the inverse too: fail a mechanic and your emnity is screwed up. That just sounds WAY wilder than the traditional approach of fail a mechanic and you take damage.

[LeonKeyh]

I just agree with TheRealQuah/Shurrikhan; Aggro management has always just been a DPS limiter or a means of punishing DPS that targeted the wrong enemy. It's _more_ engaging that what is happening now sure, but it was still something that has been more of a chore than anything.

It just seems like there are other options that would make tanks more engaging without bringing back fighting for aggro. Maybe more mechanisms that require tanks to stand between the boss and another player that has been randomly targeted to take the hit, or tank-only stack up mechanisms where a tank needs to stack up on a person to save them from being 1 shot. Give them an ability called "take the hit" or something and have bosses randomly target people with a tank buster that the tank needs to toss the ability on.

Maybe arena wide AEs that Tanks need to position correctly so that people don't die. Something similar to the first boss in Qitana but with a sliver of safe zone that the tank needs to flip the boss to point toward the group to save.

Maybe make some AoEs (e.g. cone/line AEs) essentially "stop" at the first person they hit so there's safe zone behind other players and have the safe-zone that tanks make be 4x-5x as big as anyone else.

I feel like things like this would make tanks feel like they should, that they're protecting the party from damage. That they're rushing to the aid of another party member. I feel something like that ultimately embodies the flavor of a "tank" character, more than 3 different buttons to press sometimes and complaining about the DPS that took that stupid ability that doesn't do damage off their hotbar.

[Lyth]

Is boss positioning really a highlight on tanking?

Positioning and movement is a central part of tanking in most games. The problem with FFXIV is that mobs generally cannot activate abilities while moving. Even for simple abilities like cleaves, mobs generally have a brief period of animation lock that becomes noticeable if you're backpedalling while tanking. It's a bit of a strange programming limitation, especially when even ancient games like Warcraft never had issues like this even 16 years ago. That's also coupled with a historical exploit in which spinning mobs prevented them from activating abilities. It's not even that the development team don't know how to design tanking mechanics; the present animation locks limit them from doing so even if they knew how.

DDR shouldn't be confused with tank positioning mechanics, either. Both tanks and melee dps do the similar DDR. For tank positioning/movement to be a unique experience, you need responsive mobs that move easily, with quick cleaves that can happen while moving to ensure that the tank orientates the mob properly. Mob movement in this game feels like molasses half the time, and the other half they ignore your positioning and the fight is the equivalent of a rail shooter.

[ItMe]

Positioning and movement is a central part of tanking in most games. The problem with FFXIV is that mobs generally cannot activate abilities while moving. Even for simple abilities like cleaves, mobs generally have a brief period of animation lock that becomes noticeable if you're backpedalling while tanking. It's a bit of a strange programming limitation, especially when even ancient games like Warcraft never had issues like this even 16 years ago.

It may be a weird relic they couldn't completely iron out from how 1.0 had menu based combat until shortly before release.

[Renkei]

That's not really a "tank" responsibility, though, unless the mechanics by which it might succeed or fail belong solely to the tank. Thus far we've only see it be a "DPS-limiter" mechanic or, on the rare occasion, a DPS "hit only what the tank hit or get slapped" mechanic.

That's not to say it couldn't be a hell of a lot better, but it certainly has been dull thus far, especially as a tank mechanic.


By all means, if a skill's function/feature is redundant or makes an otherwise enjoyable mechanic redundant, then scrap it. But note that, as far as it's taken form so far, you're arguing for a basically redundant mechanic. Wouldn't it be better to try to imagine how revised abilities might play into a revised version of it, rather than minimizing tools just to make room for a mechanic that is itself, at present, redundant?

What do you imagine an engaging version of Enmity (or rather, its interactions) would look like?

This is why i believe Having an OT and MT Stance Baked into a Single Button is probably a better idea, MT Stance could just give the same effect as provoke (Or make it so nobody can exceed your CE thresh-hold), It gets rid of Redundancy, and bloat and Makes it easier for the party to recognize the main tank.

Though i really miss the old engaging version of enmity, which involved Shirking when ever possible though i felt like it could be improved on.

I Assume the engaging version of Enmity would look like the Stormblood System but with the bonuses on accessories we have today. Granting all GCD abilities increased enmity effect and a additional bonus when in MT Stance of been a better fix then what we are looking at now along with the consolidation of Tank Stances Into a Single Button, Nobody would accidentally drop stance ever. The Tank Rework was targeted at the community as a whole to make tanks more accessible but alienated everyone else who enjoyed the idea of engaging enmity requirement, It made UPTIME for tanks something that had to be taken into consideration for the sake of Enmity Preservation. The game should try encouraging groups to play better and more efficiently through its job mechanics and mastering its mechanics. Them Excluding Enmity generation excludes tank from this being necessary when its baked into a Stance, but doesn't solve the issue of missing stances.

I'd like to see more interactions between both MT and OT, but currently balanced, Tanks Damage output seems short of what it should be considering their constant attacking compared to similar damage output at half the damage uptime of healers.

What i find appalling is Tanks lost Enmity handling and gained "What does MT Stance look like again?" Instead of the obvious counter contrast we had when MT and OT stances Existed, even though OT Stance was employed as a DPS Stance. I don't think they should reinstate a DPS Stance, But I'm okay with them consolidating both into 1 button with separate bonuses to enmity.