Quote Originally Posted by Absurdity View Post
Why do people have this misguided notion that tanking was somehow more complicated in Stormblood because enmity was a thing? It wasn't. If you knew what you were doing you did the same thing you're doing now, try to deal as much dps as possible because high dps also meant high enmity generation. Even if the worst case happened and some dps player somehow managed to deal high dps but not know what diversion was you would simply occasionally replace 1 dps combo with an enmity combo, it barely made an impact on how you played as a tank.

The only thing that changed between SB and ShB for tanks is that you can't lose aggro on an enemy anymore unless you're literally afk and that tanking became significantly more boring, this is less due to enmity changes and more due to all other tank changes.
For any tank worth their salt it made no difference if you had to "work" for enmity or not because that's what you're already always doing by just pumping out maximum dps.
It's not a misguided notion, but yours is a disingenuous one. Like, yes, we're always doing the, "Maximize DPS" because that's what combat games are, conceptually. But maximizing damage was never the same as maximizing enmity while enmity combos and enmity mitigators were still in play in FFXIV. This is why tanks could and would lose aggro.

By removing enmity combos, they removed something that a lot of players had trouble managing/didn't want to manage. This is evidenced by nearly every tank and their mom wanting to pawn off enmity responsibilities onto the Ninja in HW and then to every other party member with the Ninja in SB. Like, sure, it was an optimization thing and easy, but it was still a facet of the job. It was also incredibly relevant in every single fight that had enmity resets(see: Not many).

More importantly though, it gave another layer of something to do, and something to be perceived as being good at by non-tanks. As easy as it ultimately was, because it wasn't simple and involved different multipliers for different skills, different openers for different comps, and in HW/ARR different criteria/mode for swaps, it lead to having one more job facet to engage with. Tanks are so boring now because the rotations are easy, there is no RNG on enmity(the difference between enmity opener critting or not, difference in hate combos needed per your comp), and our damage is lower than ever before relative to other roles. It all adds up to feeling less meaningful.

Whether you or others want to admit it or not, enmity was a large portion of tank's engagement. It could have been even larger if they'd been brave and given us more fights like Neo-Exdeath.