Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[Shurrikhan]

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.

We're designing for a system which at present basically lacks any and all interaction (i.e. is a "non-mechanic" apart from Provoke itself). There's no point in not future proofing. So long as Attack Power and its accordant effects on damage remains a mechanic, the problems that can cause will continue to hold water.

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.

Ngl, this sounds like an incredibly gimmicky "notice the subtle connection after dying to it, or die to it repeatedly" kind of mechanic. Moreover, just how much buttons' worth of enmity tools are we talking here, such that a tank could drop precisely to position #6 precisely before the skill's targeting is actuated?

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

That's not a requirement. It looks like most people here would prefer to avoid bloat, but otherwise this is, again, a theoretical system. Add away if it helps. To me, at least, there seems little point in shoving a bunch of (at present, likely incohesive) buttons into one role if you're not willing to flesh out that area of play generally.

tanks would have to consider how much damage and healing certain jobs put out and actually pay attention to the entire enmity list

How would this interaction occur? Even assuming slot-sniping were smoothly doable and somehow engaging, that wouldn't actually force you to pay attention to the entire enmity list, let alone give means to interact with it. It'd just be the slots in question.

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.

To be frank, that sounds like maximal annoyance for no improvement in gameplay (and I don't even mean no net improvement).

[Mikey_R]

This is a post regarding Vyrerus' idea on getting rid of provoke/shirk.

You don't even have to look at mechanics to see how bad a system without at least provoke would be and I'm just going to be looking at tank swaps.

We know enmity is just a number behind the scenes, so for the 2 tanks to be able to swap quickly and effectively, they need to be close, so you would need a way to monitor that quickly. Just slapping the raw numbers down will not do as they are constantly changing and even the rate that enmity is increasing will change dependant on what the tank is doing, eg Warrior in their Inner Release phase. It is such a dynamic system that you would need something to represent that.

As we all know, currently, it is just a bar that appears in the party list. Highest enmity is the bar max and everyone else is just a % based on their enmity compared to max. Again, just looking at the 2 tanks, how do you determine how far behind you are for a smooth swap? You have no numbers or any sort of measure to see how far behind you are. So lets add that.

We give each tank a new bar that tracks their enmity compared to their co-tank. It will have a number associated with it, lets say 0-100, which tracks what your enmity is compared to top spot. Obviously, the MT will be at 100 and the OT will be at some % below that. Now to show the flaw. Using arbitrary numbers, say the top spot is at 10,000 enmity and you are at 9000, so your bar would say 90. Sounds easy right? If we now assume the tanks need to swap, and we know the OT generates 1000 enmity per GCD, it will not take long to swap. However, as we get later into the fight and assume the MT has generated 10x the enmity, the MT will be at 100,000. With everything equal, the OT will be 1000 behind, putting them at 99,000, which on the bar, is 99. This basically means that the safe % that you can be behind the MT changes as the fight drags on. This just makes things needlessly complicated for no real benefit and bear in mind, this is using nice simple numbers, not the complete random mess it would be in an actual encounter where, as I have stated, the rate of enmity gain will change constantly.

If you can come up with a method that is simple and intuitive, I would love to hear. This is also only applying this method between the 2 tanks, if you start adding others in, it becomes a whole other mess.

Now, getting away from numbers and onto just how it would affect gameplay. Assume there is a perfect system in place for it. Your gameplay has now shifted from focusing on the boss and what it is doing and it is now focusing on the enmity meters and how you plan to manipulate them. You go from fighting the boss to fighting with the enmity system, essentially micromanaging it. That is not fun. I want to fight the boss, not the enmity and having such a large portion of my focus on enmity is exactly what makes a fight unfun and is another reason why SB tanking was generally disliked.

[Leiron]

I am not sure why everyone is so insistent on taking a massive step backwards and going to the olden days of WoW, Everquest, and a number of other games where enmity management was the mini-noss to the actual boss.
It didn't make the gameplay fun, and for the tank, they often had little to do in terms of trying to retain it simply because they relied on DPS reducing their own enmity rather than some dynamic means of increasing it.
Even then, it meant drastic changes in how they played.

it wasn't enjoyable.

[Gawbles]

The bottom line of all of this is the same as it is with every other tanking issue: there's a divide in the player base on how it should be handled - so it seems likely that it will continue to be the way it is. Unless the majority of Japanese players feel differently for wanting the ways of old, those of you who have enjoyed the game's simplification/streamlining, it's your game to enjoy now. As much as I want everything about Heavensward job game play back, XIV's streamlining has gone too far to reverse course and even I understand that it just doesn't make sense to rip the current style away from the majority of players who seem to be liking it. Does anybody know of a Heavensward emulator out there, by chance?

[ADVSS]

Still getting flashbacks from 2.0 PLD....

[Shurrikhan]

Still getting flashbacks from 2.0 PLD....

That said, remember when Sword Oath was bugged to retain the enmity modifier from Shield Oath?

Also, I still kinda miss some things about 2.0 Warrior. It really felt like you were a dominant force behind your own survival, and that worked its way in rotationally, macrorotationally... all of it... rather than just brief periods of CD-based mitigation. 'I'mma hit you even harder so I can survive.' It was a pretty unique mindset that was pretty refreshing at the time.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Also, I still kinda miss some things about 2.0 Warrior. It really felt like you were a dominant force behind your own survival, and that worked its way in rotationally, macrorotationally... all of it... rather than just brief periods of CD-based mitigation. 'I'mma hit you even harder so I can survive.' It was a pretty unique mindset that was pretty refreshing at the time.

Wasn't that more in 2.1 after Inner Beast's healing was nerfed and it appled a 6 sec 20% reduce damage tank buff in exchange? Prior to that Warrior was more "I won't die unless you can one shot me or deal damage faster than I can heal myself," which is why it had problems in BCoB that necessitated the original rework that added a bunch of mitigation effects to WAR's existing abilities.

[Shurrikhan]

Wasn't that more in 2.1 after Inner Beast's healing was nerfed and it applied a 6 sec 20% reduce damage tank buff in exchange? Prior to that Warrior was more "I won't die unless you can one shot me or deal damage faster than I can heal myself," which is why it had problems in BCoB that necessitated the original rework that added a bunch of mitigation effects to WAR's existing abilities.

Nope. I specifically mean when I could no-heal WP and AK via its pre-nerf heal. And I managed to prog decently far into T5, even as a late-start raider, off the original kit alone.

I liked that for 2.0 Warrior tank survivability was "doubly gear-based" so to speak, rather than my damage being based on my gear while my total combined mitigation and restoration dealt (effectively just mitigation after 2.1) was mostly just based on the content I was running. I kinda wish PLD had gone the other way, with Rampart and Sentinel being replaced with more frequent, gear-scaling, and active forms of survivability, rather than Warrior so largely copying PLD.

[Spartan_Aoues]

I wanna thank you all for the discussion i love hearing different ideas about tanking, and hope some of this stuff ends up in game.

While reading some of the posts, I was inspired, and came up with this.

The ideas is that enmity comes not only from damage, but from doing machnics, and using midigation correctly.

Boss changes:
bosses hit much harder(100-200% more)
boss pasterns variety wildly some are much less static, others are linear
generaly mig attacks properly grants more emity(example. lets say boss does a single target attack that hits 3 times every 3 seconds, every attack gens more emity then normal)
tank busters are a raid effort, dps must use different mig, shields. also opportunists for a dps or off tank to help with damage(taking portions of a tank buster my doing some machinics).
Require the use of full class kits including sleep,stun,inter,magic/phycal valuablites(ex trick attack), and migations
clear distinction between physical and magical damage
elemental damage

Tanks changes:
Tanks get 1.5% more aggro as a base with a toggle stance lose a percentage of damage, some tanks have other stances some don't
Different tanks have different specialization which help indifferent fights.
Tanks can have multiple sets of the same raid gear(1 for war, 1 for drk etc....).
tank stats are clearifed, and impactful. there should be a reason to use piety, focusing a spefic stat should be a tank play style and should matter. (right now, the meta is get to sps, max crit/hit/det depending on class. basically build for damage. good play style but should not be the only one.)
focusing hit should mean a clear improvement to the number of hits
focusing det, umm i have no idea what this does
focusing crit, do what it does now more of a high risk high reward style
focusing piety, stronger mig and def playstyle

Raid changes:
Dps will have an active role in reduce their enmity. some classes will have built in skill the help some wont, machicas will have a way for dps to help reduce tank damage, and reduce their enmity
To steal enmity a dps would need to generate about 110% of the total enmity generated by the tank.(the longer the fight goes on the hard it is to steal threat)


feel free to add/remove anything or share your thoughts.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Nope. I specifically mean when I could no-heal WP and AK via its pre-nerf heal.

Which was a broken state more allowed by the fact that we could exceed the dungeon's i50/i55 tuning of the dungeons by 20 to 40 ilevels combining with WARs very steep survivibility scale.

It was cool state but not a healthy one.

And I managed to prog decently far into T5, even as a late-start raider, off the original kit alone.

You were likely completely reliant on the i90 myth gear for BCoB progression. Below i80, WARs required near constant babysitting by a healer to stay alive which actively tanking in BCoB.

I liked that for 2.0 Warrior tank survivability was "doubly gear-based" so to speak, rather than my damage being based on my gear while my total combined mitigation and restoration dealt (effectively just mitigation after 2.1) was mostly just based on the content I was running. I kinda wish PLD had gone the other way, with Rampart and Sentinel being replaced with more frequent, gear-scaling, and active forms of survivability, rather than Warrior so largely copying PLD.

The 2.0 War's scaling literally breaks things if it gets outside of fairly narrow gearband. Going your route would have made content nearly impossible to balance.