Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[ForteNightshade]

You have to be careful when increasing a tank's dps contribution though. Make it too high and you start to blur the line between, do I bring a DPS, or can we replace them with a tank. Yes, they do slightly less DPS, however they can survive more things, have defensive cooldowns to make healing easier and can potentially cheese mechanics where it could mean more uptime and therefore a higher DPS contribution compared to another melee. Personally, I don't play tanks and expect to do close to a DPS in terms of damage output. I play tanks because of the defensive nature of play and being the one that holds the boss, or groups up all the mobs for the DPS to be able to effectively do their job.

It would take a considerable boost in DPS for tanks to supplant DPS. Bard, the weakest DPS in the game for E12 currently averages 20.3k at 99% while Gunbreaker, the strongest tank, averages 13.5k. Keep in mind, Range are notoriously weaker than any other DPS role—much to the chagrin of many. With that in mind, we'll use Dragoon, the lowest non-Range DPS who sits at 21.5k

Therefore, you'd have to buff tank DPS by 45% or more for anyone to consider replacing a DPS. No one is asking for such an absurd increase, but 15-20% is fairly reasonable. Basically, I think it's more than fair tanks can surpass dead or bad DPS players.

I mean you have a good amount of damage to increase tank damage by to even put it into the realm of, do we take a second or third tank in place of a DPS, content depending. As it stands, most people don't make the same leeway to help tanks keep uptime like they did in HW or SB. So, take o11s for example, I joined a random PF, there so happened to be a BRD, This BRD told me to stand in the corner for Pantokrator II and soak the missiles with hallowed Ground, because they weren't able to or were babied through the mechanic I dunno. But I instantly told them to f*** off, I ain't sacking my DPS because they were bad, and the party sided with me, so the BRD had to do the bait. (Unfortunately it was more common than it should have been in some PFs for a tank to just invlun it)

One of the reasons I often stayed on Warrior for O11S. Holmgang didn't work for that mechanic, thus PF couldn't whine about it. Speaking off disengaging for no reason, I have noticed the devs repeatedly having tanks do that this expansion and I really hope they knock it off. There's nothing fun about spamming Tomahawk in the corner. At least we've found a way around Anti-Air compared to Twisters in E6S.

[Absurdity]

At least we've found a way around Anti-Air compared to Twisters in E6S.

I do actually remember a strat where the tanks would take 1 hit of twisters and then charge the boss, immediately pop tank LB3 (+probably even more mitigation that's available) and just heal through the rest...the things you do just to ignore some terribly designed mechanics.
The much bigger question I have however is why that mechanic made it in the way it did anyway? O11s already had something extremely similar in Wave Cannon Kyrios, but a lot better executed.

[ForteNightshade]

I do actually remember a strat where the tanks would take 1 hit of twisters and then charge the boss, immediately pop tank LB3 (+probably even more mitigation that's available) and just heal through the rest...the things you do just to ignore some terribly designed mechanics.
The much bigger question I have however is why that mechanic made it in the way it did anyway? O11s already had something extremely similar in Wave Cannon Kyrios, but a lot better executed.

If I had to guess, it honestly feels like a complete afterthought; something for the tanks they added last minute because otherwise they would be almost nothing for tanks to do during Raktapaksa. Cloud feels similar in that they came up with her mechanic but then didn't know where to position tanks.

[ReiMakoto]

I'm just sayin' hard slash going from 6500 to 7150 isn't trigger the fun sensors on this side of the boat.

Its reductive to assume that the 10% comes from a flat potency boost to all actions. Adding potency in the right places can make tanks a bit more fun to optimise without making rotational changes. Boosting potency in places where it would show a pronounced player skill would achieve this. To use gnb as an example boosting the potency on rough divide could create a differentiator between tanks who are able to consistently keep both uses of rough under no mercy, and those who lose this to create mobility. Adding a trait to burst strike increasing its potency under no mercy would encourage better cartridge use and further create differentiators. This would make the jobs more fun whilst boosting their output to be a bigger slice of the pie, without changing anything about the rotation

[Lyth]

Let's rebalance things so that tanks and healers have more impact.

I'm afk, but I should still do more damage than tanks and healers. I also don't want to move for the entire fight, it interrupts my fir- I mean netflix uptime.

Ok, we will make you feel speeshul! But please buy more mogstation Y'shtola black mage glamours!

Er... right. Enjoy your queue times then.

Bingo.

[Kabooa]

Bingo.

New day, doesn't count unfortunately, but a strong start.

Queue times are fine, thanks. Plenty of scabs in this boycott.

boosting their output to be a bigger slice of the pie, without changing anything about the rotation

Going to point out that this is effectively no different than a flat increase, you're just reducing the relative importance of uptime.

The thing about having just a few actions serve as the general meat and potatoes of the skill line up is that they are the most important to hit.

Warrior falls into this. 100% uptime is always desirable, but it's not as important as hitting both infuriates and IR. Around 40% of the warrior's damage is concentrated in 16% of its uptime.

Also somethingsomething mobility tools - When those become your big-hitta-quittas, that causes other problems - Namely that you don't get to actually use them for mobility.

[Hold up, early morning math off]

Burst Strike and Rough Divide are currently about 11.7% of the Gunbreaker's damage. Using an averaged 13,000 [Mid 90s on Promise, a near 100% uptime fight], adding 10% via these two skills is increasing their output from 1,521 to 2,821, or by about 85%.

So under No Mercy, Rough Divide would be 370 and Charged Strike 925.

Probably just cut it down to 300 and 1000 for nice even numbers, and it works out better for the Gunbreaker.

This seems a little extreme, and I wonder if increasing No Mercy instead would make more sense. Frontloading one ability too much narrows the performance band and puts more importance on critical hits.

[ItMe]

Speaking off disengaging for no reason, I have noticed the devs repeatedly having tanks do that this expansion and I really hope they knock it off. There's nothing fun about spamming Tomahawk in the corner. At least we've found a way around Anti-Air compared to Twisters in E6S.

God... this is one of the reasons I've been rocking PLD over any of the other tanks this expac. Setting up that instant cast ranged magic burst window for disengage phases just feels so good. Way better than just resigning myself to it being tomahawk time.

[DaulBan]

God... this is one of the reasons I've been rocking PLD over any of the other tanks this expac. Setting up that instant cast ranged magic burst window for disengage phases just feels so good. Way better than just resigning myself to it being tomahawk time.

The good ole days of O7S where you couldn't even do that during virus made me koo-koo bananas.

[ReiMakoto]

New day, doesn't count unfortunately, but a strong start.

Queue times are fine, thanks. Plenty of scabs in this boycott.



Going to point out that this is effectively no different than a flat increase, you're just reducing the relative importance of uptime.

The thing about having just a few actions serve as the general meat and potatoes of the skill line up is that they are the most important to hit.

Warrior falls into this. 100% uptime is always desirable, but it's not as important as hitting both infuriates and IR. Around 40% of the warrior's damage is concentrated in 16% of its uptime.

Also somethingsomething mobility tools - When those become your big-hitta-quittas, that causes other problems - Namely that you don't get to actually use them for mobility.

[Hold up, early morning math off]

Burst Strike and Rough Divide are currently about 11.7% of the Gunbreaker's damage. Using an averaged 13,000 [Mid 90s on Promise, a near 100% uptime fight], adding 10% via these two skills is increasing their output from 1,521 to 2,821, or by about 85%.

So under No Mercy, Rough Divide would be 370 and Charged Strike 925.

Probably just cut it down to 300 and 1000 for nice even numbers, and it works out better for the Gunbreaker.

This seems a little extreme, and I wonder if increasing No Mercy instead would make more sense. Frontloading one ability too much narrows the performance band and puts more importance on critical hits.

Holy bad faith interpretation batman, I believe I said Rough Divide and Burst Strike were an example i wasn't saying just boost these two skills and only these 2 skills to make up the 10%. Also in a max optimised setting, yes it would be no different to a flat increase, however in trying to reach this optimisation it will creates larger divides between those who are optimal and those who are not.

And yes that was the point about saying rough divide, someone who is optimised won't need to use the skill for mobility most of the time so it creates a toss up between optimisation and comfort, again making optimisation more engaging and rewarding.

[ReiMakoto]

You have to be careful when increasing a tank's dps contribution though. Make it too high and you start to blur the line between, do I bring a DPS, or can we replace them with a tank. Yes, they do slightly less DPS, however they can survive more things, have defensive cooldowns to make healing easier and can potentially cheese mechanics where it could mean more uptime and therefore a higher DPS contribution compared to another melee. Personally, I don't play tanks and expect to do close to a DPS in terms of damage output. I play tanks because of the defensive nature of play and being the one that holds the boss, or groups up all the mobs for the DPS to be able to effectively do their job.

To bandwagon back to this a second. Most things that kill players in this game are failing mechanics, which is usually and instant death, and if not an instant death, it comes with a chonky damage down, so there would be very little reason to take a tank for safety or cheese, unless you have party members consistently dying to unavoidable damage, at which point your healers need a wakeup slap not your dps being replaced.

This isn't even getting to the headache that would be adjusting how you do mechanics to deal with the fact that you no longer have a 2/2/4 party comp which would lead to some mechanics targetting in strange/random ways.