Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[Mikey_R]

Especially since I didn't have Savage gear, or even a full set of tome gear, so in expert roulette DPS were always ripping aggro from me and then berating me for putting tank Stance on.

I always say the same things in regards to enmity management and 'having to work' for it. In those arguments I often ask, how would you balance it? With an extreme being a lower geared tank and a high geared DPS. The tank would be punished and forced to go into tank stance/use more enmity combos, which then negatively impacts the tanks DPS, making runs even longer. The above quote is the outcome of this situation. Lesser geared tank, being forced into tank stance and then being berated for it.

Everyone always assumes tanks and DPS will be on equal footing gear wise. This might be the case during savage raids with statics, but out in the world of dungeons and normal modes, you cannot guarantee that. This is why you always have to ask, how would these things be balanced, bearing in mind it has to work at the extremes as well.

Even during SB, when I done dungeons on monk, I would rip aggro off of tanks even if I used diversion. Even if you account for equal gear, a BLM will generate much much more enmity than a BRD. How would this be balanced? You have to work extra hard for the BLM but the BRD, you can be a bit more relaxed now.

Nothing positive came from having the DPS up a tanks arse enmity wise except the tank having to neuter their DPS and completely mess up any flow the job had by replacing a DPS combo with an enmity combo (prime example being PLD, replace any Royal Authority combo with a Rage of Halone combo and you would not have the MP for your requiescat phase). I could go on, but I will leave it at that.

However, I do suggest other things, making interrupts and stuns more prevalent and I don't mean being able to stop an attack but rather weaken it. A boss could have a Raidwide AoE that does damage and applies a paralysis...unless you stun it during the cast. The damage would still go out, but the paralysis would not be applied. You could make things a 2 part attack, the first part being a 'buffing' cast and the second one the actual damage. I see this happening as, buff cast, which you stun/interrupt, you can then have some mechanics, then the boss can cast and if the buff section was stopped successfully, you get a weaker version. So much can be done with attacks if you get out of the mindset of stuns/interrupts HAVE to stop an attack and I think this will help tank gameplay.

There are some things that need to be addressed to make tanking feel better to play, but forcing restrictions on them with tighter enmity checks is not one of them.

[Anhra]

I also don't know why you're so fixated on removing any selfheal, do you really want to babysit other players and stare at their health bars 24/7? Do you want dps and tanks to have even less responsibilities?

That's what a healer is suppoest to do, it was that way on any other MMO i played and everytime, the role of a healer never was a beginner friendly job to do, because you had to be able to multitask like this. That is in my opinion, the biggest peak a Healer can reach, having the entire partys HP bar on your shoulder alone, knowing that they can barely fight for very long without you until the tank gives in.

As for the matter of DPS, their role is the most selfish one since all they are required to do is as much damage as quickly as possible, with normally having the most complex skills for doing so.

My point on stating something this obvious:
There is no complexity or peak to reach after. Instead we have balance which reached a point, where the Dev's removed one thing after another just to uphold it and they will keep doing so to until combat doesn't even matter anymore.

All im hoping for is that this game doesn't neglect its MMORPG aspects, and combat, is the largest one.

[Absurdity]

That's what a healer is suppoest to do, it was that way on any other MMO i played and everytime, the role of a healer never was a beginner friendly job to do, because you had to be able to multitask like this. That is in my opinion, the biggest peak a Healer can reach, having the entire partys HP bar on your shoulder alone, knowing that they can barely fight for very long without you until the tank gives in.

No idea what mmos you've been playing but the last time healers were the only class that could regenerate HP was maybe back in Everquest or Vanilla WoW and even there it wasn't the case for all classes.
Even in D&D both Fighter and Paladin can heal themselves.

Reducing jobs down to either "deals damage, takes damage or heals damage" makes for incredibly boring game design.


Besides requiring a redesign of the entire combat system you would just be placing the burden for mitigating damage, healing (and potentially dpsing as well) onto the healer while everyone else drools on their keyboard because literally the only thing they can do is dps, good luck with that.

[Garnix]

From my "casual player" point of view :
I am not really fond of enmity management in the way it worked before, and I am glad they removed it.
But I think enmity should be achieved via our defensive cooldowns as much as it is from our offensive ones.
You still find too many new tanks going in dungeons and not popping their defensive CDs on any pull. If they'd need to use them to keep aggro, they'd know it is needed.

Another issue for tanks is the lack of 'punishment'. For example, in many scenarios, you can have 3+ vuln stacks, and live with it. You might be a burden on the healer at this point, but you probably won't die. Vuln stacks should be more punitive on tanks. Tank busters are also not anything for the tank to sweat over in most casual content: you can pretty much avoid popping any CD, and let the healer do the job.

IMO tanks, by nature, should have a bit more responsibilities and pressure than just pressing their attack buttons and waiting to be healed in casual content. If a healer doesn't heal, everybody dies, but if a tank doesn't use defensive abilities, everybody lives...
I think more importance should be put on the defensive cooldowns outside of extreme/savage content (and I think they need to be a bit more varied between each job, but that's another topic).
This could be done either via enmity management or an increase in the incoming damages in my opinion.

[Anhra]

No idea what mmos you've been playing but the last time healers were the only class that could regenerate HP was maybe back in Everquest or Vanilla WoW and even there it wasn't the case for all classes.
Even in D&D both Fighter and Paladin can heal themselves.

Reducing jobs down to either "deals damage, takes damage or heals damage" makes for incredibly boring game design.


Besides requiring a redesign of the entire combat system you would just be placing the burden for mitigating damage, healing (and potentially dpsing as well) onto the healer while everyone else drools on their keyboard because literally the only thing they can do is dps, good luck with that.

And the current combat system isn't boring and simple enough for you? We got ourselves 4 versions of warrior for tanking and 3 versions oh white mage on the healing side, in case you have forgotten, those slight potency/cooldown and animation changes aren't fooling anyone that can count 1+1 together.

The matter of self healing as a tank specifically is way overboard and should be far more limited at the very least compared to a healer, as it isn't its primary function. PLD is understandable for having access to white magic by having high MP costs + slow MP regen to balance this out. As for the other tanks, it would be great if they had their own way of getting arround in a similar way without just going the "lets just give them all healing abilities and be done with it" -route.

And if that requires alot of changing on Squeenix's part, then so shall it be, if they can rework 1.0 from the ground up, i don't see why re-designing jobs should be a large scale issue, it might sound arrogant from someone who has no experience in game development, but don't forget that this community has its fair share of players that have been arround with MMOs for quite a while and those can easily tell that compared to other games, FFXIV might be a overall fun game, but if i'd have to name two weak points on this, it would be combat and pvp.

[Mikey_R]

From my "casual player" point of view :
I am not really fond of enmity management in the way it worked before, and I am glad they removed it.
But I think enmity should be achieved via our defensive cooldowns as much as it is from our offensive ones.
You still find too many new tanks going in dungeons and not popping their defensive CDs on any pull. If they'd need to use them to keep aggro, they'd know it is needed.

I will start with, again, how do you effectively balance it? Not every trash pull requires a defensive cooldown and so, as a result, a tank still needs to be able to hold hate without the defensive cooldowns. As a result, adding enmity to defensive cooldowns doesn't solve the issue of tanks not using cooldowns. This is just down to players either not having the knowledge, in which case they just need to gain that knowledge, or they are just bad, in which case there is no saving them.

[Anhra]

The best way to generate enmity in my opinion, is by having the last ability of a combo generate it, along with some other oGCD skills that compliment the playstyle of the JOB (not the role, we have way too many copypaste shenanigans already).

If a dps gets himself killed because they steal aggro, they only get themselves to blame, mindlessly spamming the biggest numbers should be punished by bosses and force dps players to opimize their gameplay by also paying attention to these kind of things.

-But Anhra, wouldn't that just make the gameplay unnecessarily harder?
Yes, but not unnecessarily so. Inplimenting Aggro management like this could create opportunities not only to a different kind of fighting experience in groups, but also allow room for new mechanics for future bossfights which could target specific members which are, for example, 3rd or 4th on the list, or even straight out manipulate it without the tank just using his special rights privilege buff and be done with the matter once and for all.

[Kabooa]

If a dps gets himself killed because they steal aggro, they only get themselves to blame, mindlessly spamming the biggest numbers should be punished by bosses and force dps players to opimize their gameplay by also paying attention to these kind of things.

The tank losing threat is their fault.

Even in Stormblood with shared responsibility, this was mostly on the tank. The melee especially only had threat reduction, not dumps, for most of the expansion.

[Anhra]

The tank losing threat is their fault.

Even in Stormblood with shared responsibility, this was mostly on the tank. The melee especially only had threat reduction, not dumps, for most of the expansion.

That is not how this works, the unwritten golden rules of MMORPG's states:
-if the healer dies, its the tank's fault
-if the tank dies, its the healer's fault
-if the DD dies, its their own fault

Why? If a dps goes overboard and steals aggro from a boss, its their own fault for not holding back on the first line, the possibility of being at fault yourself also exist, you know?

[Kabooa]

That is not how this works, the unwritten golden rules of MMORPG's states:
-if the healer dies, its the tank's fault
-if the tank dies, its the healer's fault
-if the DD dies, its their own fault

Why? If a dps goes overboard and steals aggro from a boss, its their own fault for not holding back on the first line, the possibility of being at fault yourself also exist, you know?

They are not golden rules, they are guidelines that encapsulate general scenarios, but not this one.

If the DPS already used their tools and you lost it, it's your fault. This shouldn't need explanation.

There were two distinct scenarios in Stormblood, both of which were not the fault of the DPS.

1. Prior to Alphascape, Samurai and Monks had no dump. Once diversion was gone, they had no options to reduce threat. Conversely, tanks had options to increase threat. Losing threat was the tank's fault.

2. Bard and Machinist only had dumps, meaning the opener was extremely volatile. You either planned for this and built the initial hate should you lack help, or you didn't and you lost threat. Tank's fault.