Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[Shurrikhan]

especially since the MT and the OT can have such vastly different iLVLs (especially in Unreal) blunt emnity tools are needed.

I wanted to address this in particular. Let's try some spitballs here:

What if tank stance, rather than solely multiplying the enmity contribution of your own damage, also "stole" a portion of existing and incoming enmity?

Atop that, what if enmity generation in general depended on your positioning? For instance, attacks from the flanks would inflict 30% less enmity, and attacks from the back would inflict 40 or 50% less enmity. (Note that spells always count as back attacks. Healing enmity, likewise, would be squished as well.)

Finally, allow further control over that enmity-stealing. If I'm between an enemy and its target, not only can I of course intercept many an attack for their target, but my enmity-inflated skills will rapidly steal their enmity temporarily. Etc., etc.

Again, this all is spitball at the moment, so I'm not explaining it well, but I figure it is possible for gear to be a non-issue when it comes to enmity.

I'm still in favor of only including enmity mechanics in any meaningful way by extension of actual enemy AI (Enmity then acting as behavioral manipulation, in which everyone plays a part but the tank obviously has the most impactful tools), but it seems wise to figure out what are and what are not unavoidable issues.

[Lyth]

The only way that you can improve on enmity in this game is to turn tank stance into a toggle off button instead of a toggle on. That way losing stance and forgetting to reapply it on syncing won't happen.

Enmity challenges are about picking up a mob on spawn or enmity reset. That, in turn, has less to do with enmity generation and more to do with being at the right place at the right time (positioning, once again!) This comes down to designing fights from a tanking perspective.

[Vyrerus]

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

Ok, so, think about it. If they get rid of Shirk and Provoke, then what do tanks have to do in order to swap? Keep up with each other on enmity, constantly. Sometimes it might be easy, if the boss doesn't cleave, you both just move in front, in tank stance, and then it doesn't matter who it's hitting or if it switches hands. However, if it cleaves, then things get a bit more complicated. Enmity would be a constant consideration, rather than the current binary situation that it pretty much is, as of now. At least so long as the fight enforced swaps with tankbusters laden with potent debuffs. Swapping would simply be impossible if both tanks didn't constantly consider their enmity. If the MT overtakes the OT by too much, they turn off their enmity stance until the OT catches up.

That's one way. The other ways involve the other party members, because the other way you make enmity interesting is by tying it to fight mechanics directly. We've seen a few over the course of the game's history, but they don't usually bother with it, because they ultimately view enmity as the tank's responsibility, which is why we have the enmity stances that we do now. Remember that though we had it as a group activity in Stormblood, they put those role actions in as a measure to assist newbie tanks, not a measure to optimize tank damage.

Anyway, so you tie enmity to mechanics. Examples we've seen in the past usually involve highest enmity and second highest enmity. Things like bosses attacking two party members with auto attacks, based on enmity. Dual tank busters targeting the two highest enmities. Well we could implement other enmity driven mechs like, targets highest and lowest enmity. Or targets numbers 3 and 4 etc. This is about as arbitrary but harder to control than other mechanics in the same vein that do things like target party member that is furthest from the boss or closest to the boss. Enmity based mechanics would easily be integrated into any such mechanic as well, forcing the tanks and party to reposition. If we did leave in Shirk, it'd give it a purpose beyond hand-held swapping. Of course, we could leave in Shirk, but only make it usable on non-tanks.

Also, to your other comments, enmity has never been a redundant mechanic, it only seems that way now. Before Shadowbringers it was quite easy for enmity to get out of a tank's hands, especially if they were trying to milk damage, hence why it's been a point of contention. Tanks that don't want to bother with it are tanks that never wanted to do their job in the first place. It's no less stimulating than healing or dealing damage, it's just we can't see the numbers for it. I speak from a point progressing from where we are now. Most wouldn't understand how to swap if we canned Provoke and Shirk, since those are so baked into everyone's mind as tools that must be used to swap, when in reality neither is necessary and never have been. They are just aids to making tanking easier, and to make recovery easier as well.

You make enmity interesting by making it a large concern. Its diminished importance is why it feels redundant.

[Vyrerus]

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.

Since we can turn our enmity stances on and off at will, and before we could do or don't our combos, it's always been possible to swap without Provoke or Shirk, but the devs are nice to tanks in this game, and want us to have an easy time swapping. Hence why Shirk was added in Stormblood in the first place. All you'd need to do with your lower iLvl friends if they removed Provoke/Shirk is turn your stance off and let them catch up, meaning that the timing of tank busters and you knowing them would be all the more crucial, since it takes time to build enmity naturally.

[Vyrerus]

The only way that you can improve on enmity in this game is to turn tank stance into a toggle off button instead of a toggle on. That way losing stance and forgetting to reapply it on syncing won't happen.

Enmity challenges are about picking up a mob on spawn or enmity reset. That, in turn, has less to do with enmity generation and more to do with being at the right place at the right time (positioning, once again!) This comes down to designing fights from a tanking perspective.

It's already both a toggle on and off, with a mildly low cooldown if you had just toggled it on. A QoL change for the absent minded wouldn't be an improvement in the system as a whole.

Also combatting enmity resets in the past were a challenge, because they were paired with required AOE healing, which had everything to do with enmity generation.

[Shurrikhan]

Anyway, so you tie enmity to mechanics.

You make enmity interesting by making it a large concern. Its diminished importance is why it feels redundant.

Let me say first that I agree with the latter point; I feel that way about almost all mechanics or sets thereof, and Enmity is no exception.

However, I feel the idea of what is, or is not, involved in "Enmity" is where its often breaks away from people seeing eye to eye.

Reading Lyth's posts, for instance, I get the sense that Enmity is no more than the metric which determines who the target will next attack, invariably (outside of specifically OT-targeting attacks like Lakshimi or dual-targeting attacks like Leviathan-remixed).

Reading mine, one might assume that Enmity is the player output that directs mob behavior (and, perhaps all the associated undermechanics, mob characteristics, or interactions therebetween which could influence such).

Reading yours, my best guess is that Enmity centers on the redirection of mechanics, and therefore gives obvious opportunity to have more to redirect. If I had to guess, this could even be extended to where each member of the party is hit with a highly damaging DoT for a duration based on their %Enmity.

Let's also look at that word I used perhaps too hastily before, redundant. If there's (lasting and engaging) gameplay consequent to a mechanic, then I think we could safely assume most would agree that mechanic is not redundant. However, the majority of players (even if not perhaps a vast majority) seem to have found Stormblood's enmity interactions lacking in lasting and engaging gameplay.

The reasons for this could be myriad:

• There were only really two values of Enmity -- either you were the mob's target, or not. The only value in building an enmity margin was to be more DPS-efficient over a long fight by never having to waste a GCD on swapping to and from your "tank" stance.
• Enmity multipliers stacking multiplicatively obviously meant that you wanted to only ever use an enmity-multiplied skill within your "tank" stance.
• The tank kits themselves offered no sense of exploitable momentum, situation, or burst that would synergize uniquely with enmity generation.
• Enmity lacking any natural fade or drain easily allowed for Enmity to be "one and done" as a mechanical involvement.
• The costs for swapping between "tank" and "DPS" stance were excessively punishing for what little they offered, thus preventing alternate or more involved interactions for the time being.
• Enmity was largely controlled more by simply gear than performance, and perhaps unfairly punished skilled DPS, especially if with relatively little enmity control, for having partied with a less geared tank, making the mechanic feel more like something with limits other jobs rather than a form of tank-centric optimization.
• ...And probably 2-5 more factors, depending on how you split them up...

Personally, turning tank stances on and off so I land in the mechanical sweet spot hardly seems interesting design worth slowing down or muddying up the occasional dungeon run when I'm stuck with a tank less geared than I am, but of course you've merely tapped a single card so far, fight design.

What other mechanics or the like do you think might be worth adjusting?

[Vyrerus]

As it stands right now, tank enmity is more powerful than it's ever been and the, "Tank less geared than me" side of the argument holds no water. You can tank for level 80 characters at level 60 with level 60 gear as it stands right now, but, of course, that wouldn't make much sense to do(though I have done it in synced extremes).

Other than designing fights with precision enmity control in mind, the only other thing to do is to add more abilities that directly influence it or that play off of the mechanics designed around it.

Let's take the one fight in the game where the enmity reset mattered many times in the fight, Neo-Exdeath. The enmity generation of tanks didn't matter as much for the most pivotal point if you had a WHM and PLD, wherein the WHM pulls their agro up to A with Cure III healing up the Beyond Death resolvers, and is promptly covered by the PLD during Aero III's cast, the PLD blocking Aero III and the subsequent Earthshaker, assuming precise timing on the cover. If we were to add in precision enmity mechanics, then we'd want tanks to have things like cover in order to react to the enmity list. Cause as it stands, the only mechanics that really matter, in general, are the ones directed at the highest enmity, but if we had bosses occasionally use lethal-to-DPS attacks on say #6 on the enmity list, then the tanks would have two ways to resolve it. Either they could precisely control their enmity via stance on/stance off for a long enough period of time, or they could blow their cover ability(something I think every tank should be having, honestly).

Further than that, since we aren't going to give DPS or Healers methods to affect their own enmity beyond damage and healing generating enmity, tanks would have to consider how much damage and healing certain jobs put out and actually pay attention to the entire enmity list, rather than just their spot in it. It would vary every time there was a compositional change, and it would also vary fight to fight, based on lag, personal performance, and the RNG of Crit/directs.

[Seraphor]

Ok, so, think about it. If they get rid of Shirk and Provoke, then what do tanks have to do in order to swap? Keep up with each other on enmity, constantly. Sometimes it might be easy, if the boss doesn't cleave, you both just move in front, in tank stance, and then it doesn't matter who it's hitting or if it switches hands. However, if it cleaves, then things get a bit more complicated. Enmity would be a constant consideration, rather than the current binary situation that it pretty much is, as of now. At least so long as the fight enforced swaps with tankbusters laden with potent debuffs. Swapping would simply be impossible if both tanks didn't constantly consider their enmity. If the MT overtakes the OT by too much, they turn off their enmity stance until the OT catches up.

This would definitively stop me playing Tank.

Tank swaps often need to be made in a very short window, during a 1.5s cast bar.
Good luck coordinating with your PUG tank to be exactly 1 point of enmity behind you at all times.

[Vyrerus]

This would definitively stop me playing Tank.

Tank swaps often need to be made in a very short window, during a 1.5s cast bar.
Good luck coordinating with your PUG tank to be exactly 1 point of enmity behind you at all times.

You've seen tanks jockey for who MTs and be constantly at the same relative enmity. It'd be like that, only you'd let them overtake you once the time for swap came into play. It'd be tense instead of effortless.

[ItMe]

That doesn't sound like a way to make emnity engaging so much as a way to make it stressful.