Flaws of the combat system

[Lucky_CJ]

Nearly everything brought up as a response so far is stated as though there isn't anything that can be done about it, and that these are all unfortunate realities that we *have* to live with.

I've heard about old aggro management, and I think it would lead to an interesting amount of depth that the game feels lacking in with the normal dungeon content. I don't know how it would be implemented, but I don't like that I was able to begin leveling Gladiator into PLD, and the only 2 things I needed to do to succeed with regular commendations was put on tank stance, hold W and mash my 1 or 2 AOE buttons. (Don't worry, I know that mitigation is a thing, that is a different subject and subnote.) I feel as though I could have very easily went through ALL of the dungeons I ran to level my PLD to 80 without giving a care to the enemies I had following behind me, as long as I was hitting my AOE, I had no worry that anyone in the party was going to die by getting slapped to death unless I did first.

I think having to actively make the trash in dungeons pick me out as the main target over my party would make it more interesting. How anything like that would be accomplished within the current system is beyond me though. I can't think of anything within the current design to make aggro more interesting for tanks. If the tank stance aggro was lowered, and dps were given a mini-shirk button, I feel it might be at the least a more engaging minigame than we have right now, but in its current state it feels impossible to lose. The only thing I can think of as to why there is absolutely no more depth to it than that, is because aggro isn't a feature the design team is worried about messing with.


On Mitigation from earlier. If you are not using it, and your healer isn't communicating to you that you are taking more damage than average, then your inability to play the class effectively, or arguably competently, literally has no way of making its self know to you. I would hope that people playing a TANK role would recognize the use of these abilities, but as a WHM main, I know that is unfortunately not always the case. The unclear thing with mitigation timing talked about in the live letter might be in the right direction.



For healers fix, I say give them another unique damage button as a blanket idea. Plenty of ways to do it, they are all casters, maybe tie it to another resource. Its simple, but it has a chance going in the direction of fixing the mindnumbingness of the 1 button rotations. I know that in reality its much harder to do than say, but I think there has to be something done about the monotony of it right now.


Are there not any ideas that are better creative solutions to these problems? Have I just joined at the weirdest time to talk about the game state with the upcoming expansion? Have problems and ideas like these already been talked to death prior to the live? I am in the wrong spot? Thanks for reading!

[Kes13a]

On Mitigation from earlier. If you are not using it, and your healer isn't communicating to you that you are taking more damage than average, then your inability to play the class effectively, or arguably competently, literally has no way of making its self know to you. I would hope that people playing a TANK role would recognize the use of these abilities, but as a WHM main, I know that is unfortunately not always the case. The unclear thing with mitigation timing talked about in the live letter might be in the right direction.

nice that you think that a healer telling a tank that they might not be playing optimally would be welcomed... in any game.

even doing it nicely, can result in harsh words from the tank, especially if they have been tanking for years in WoW for instance, so "I know my damn role" is likely going to be a response. not singling out WoW but most of the less optimal people recently have gone on about how much experience they have in 'other game' (singular since the rant is typically involving mythic + blah blah blah) The concept that this is a different game and somethings might not be the same as the idolized WoW is as foreign as the idea that 'murica is not the only country on the planet.

you are right though, it is about communication... but the idea of talking to other people without ridicule and contempt is something is a hard concept to muster up for some.

I main healers, and will carry through healing someone who is taking a boatload of damage and usually after if they havent run off already, will ask if they were having any issues, or bothered to repair or anything else that may seem appropriate. but if its only a one way conversation... not much you can accomplish

[Lucky_CJ]

nice that you think that a healer telling a tank that they might not be playing optimally would be welcomed... in any game.

I certainly wish it would. Criticism is just really hard to take it seems.

I haven't really played any other MMOs myself, but simply from the way the American communities handle themselves, I wish that there was something the game could about it without having to step in myself.

[Kes13a]

I certainly wish it would. Criticism is just really hard to take it seems.

I haven't really played any other MMOs myself, but simply from the way the American communities handle themselves, I wish that there was something the game could about it without having to step in myself.

problem with the game doing it is... what criteria does it judge by? anything like that would need to be coded in, and doing so, would then cause complaints about being told how to play. Those complaints in this case, would be fully justified.

even helpful tips are often considered useless, there are a couple dungeons where I have recommended the tank take it a bit easier with pulls simply because if they are new, and dont have a firm handle on mitigation, it can get dicey for keeping them up if they are determined to stand in everything. generally in that case usually its an incoming wipe because they will pull everything, stand in everything and lose health faster than I can replace it. you WOULD think maybe that would teach something, but, it never seems to lol.

I dont have a solution for that aside from accepting that people are people and moving on.

[Lucky_CJ]

Nor do I.
I guess I just needed to vent

[Mikey_R]

I've heard about old aggro management, and I think it would lead to an interesting amount of depth that the game feels lacking in with the normal dungeon content.

But what depth can you effectively add to an enmity system? You either have hate, or you don't. The discussion on enmity has been talked about alot, especially once ShB released. I do not know how much you know about the old tank system, but to break it down.

All tanks had a tank stance, this reduced damage incoming and outgoing and increased enmity, they also had a DPS stance, which is just more damage and lacked the tank stance effects. They all also had a combo that done less damage than the other combos, however, each one had increased enmity generation.

Now, a tank in Tank Stance, just doing the DPS rotation (no enmity combos) could easily keep hate on any DPS (as long as they were appropriately geared), however, turn on DPS stance, and it is a different ball game. A tank could keep enmity without outside help if they were either overgeared compared to the DPS or they used the enmity combo. This should give you an idea how enmity generation was balanced.

However, with SB, all DPS gained Diversion/Lucid Dreaming, which either cut enmity generation in half or halved current enmity respectively. With the DPS/Healers now being able to reduce their enmity, tanks could now be in DPS stance and do their full DPS rotation, as long as the other members of the party co-operated. Obviously, in normal content, good luck with that.

This then creates a weird synergy. Using Paladin as an example, their MP management was so tight in SB that missing just 1 DPS combo would put them short on MP enough that they wouldn't get enough MP to use Holy Spirit 5 times in Requiescat. Similar things could be said about the other tanks, Warriors losing out on Beast Gauge and Dark Knight losing out on Blood and MP. So you have the situation that tanks do not want to be in tank stance (who wants to lose 20% of their damage for effectively no reason) and use their DPS combos and DPS who are potentially too lazy to dump enmity. This meant tanks could effectively be punished based on the DPS that they got, were they good, were they bad? Who knows. Even if the yare good, some DPS, like Monk, could easily rip aggro from a tank, despite using Diversion, reason being, Diversion was a 2 minute cooldown and Monk's burst was 90 seconds. This meant Diversion would only line up with the burst at the 6 minute mark again, by that point Monk is already acting as a tank.

Now, I know what you are thinking, why not just add in the extra benefits of the DPS combos to the enmity combos to prevent the lack of resources and to that I say, what is the point of having 2 combos that are basically the same and people will still aim for the highest DPS combo anyway. It might help keep tanks rotations flowing better, but it is verging more towards button bloat which could be used for other things.

We can then go onto how to balance it. Assume all members in a dungeon are of equal gear and equal skill. Now, since enmity is based on damage, do you balance it around the strong Black Mage, or the weaker Bard. Though, on the topic of Bard, it had insane burst damage right at the start of a fight, do you balance around that instead? With that out of the way, do you balance around Diversion or not? If you allow a tank to hold enmity in DPS stance without Diversion, then you essentially have no issues with enmity, you can out enmity the burst from the highest burst DPS, so you will have no issues throughout the fight. Balance around Diversion, then you need to have the tank in tank stance. So the tank is being punished because the DPS is being lazy. Balance it around being in tank stance, then you will have tanks complain that they have to stay in tank stance and gimp their damage for no reason (people will still get an enmity lead, then switch to DPS stance).

That is just the decisions for equally geared party members. What would happen if your tank is overgeared and your DPS are lesser geared, you can suddenly use your DPS stance for the whole thing, reverse it and the tank has to stay in tank stance just so the dps doesn't rip enmity.

So, if you end up with 2 combos that basically do the same thing, reduce it down to 1 combo that does everything you need. Then, to help players, just increase the enmity of everything. People also hate the damage reduction and everyone is trying to stay in DPS stance anyway, so lets take that away. What you have left is essentially how the game is now, just the damage mitigation is built into every tank as a trait and the tank stances just increase enmity so you can toggle it on and off. I suspect a similar thought process was used to get to the decision of the ShB changes. Enmity is just a messy thing to work with, especially when you take everything into account.

[Jeeqbit]

I've heard about old aggro management, and I think it would lead to an interesting amount of depth that the game feels lacking in with the normal dungeon content. I don't know how it would be implemented, but I don't like that I was able to begin leveling Gladiator into PLD, and the only 2 things I needed to do to succeed with regular commendations was put on tank stance, hold W and mash my 1 or 2 AOE buttons. (Don't worry, I know that mitigation is a thing, that is a different subject and subnote.) I feel as though I could have very easily went through ALL of the dungeons I ran to level my PLD to 80 without giving a care to the enemies I had following behind me, as long as I was hitting my AOE, I had no worry that anyone in the party was going to die by getting slapped to death unless I did first.

Even though tanking normal content is easy, there is a such thing as a good tank. Does your tank pull big? Do they go fast or slow? Can they survive even when the healing isn't good? Do they stun and interrupt trash? Do they use their abilities well, both for damage and to prevent someone from dying who is about to die (TBN, Nascent Flash, Cover, Reprisal)?

There is depth, that depth just isn't required, but feels good and looks good when you do it. I do really mean it when something like reprisal can save a wipe, because when everyone is not topped off and they survived with a few % of health you know it changed everything.

Shadowbringers dungeons added some depth by giving certain trash a powerful interruptable cast, so you have to pick them out of the dozens you pulled and interrupt it. Most tanks don't so it's a bigger burden on the healer, but it's something that you can do.

I think having to actively make the trash in dungeons pick me out as the main target over my party would make it more interesting. How anything like that would be accomplished within the current system is beyond me though. I can't think of anything within the current design to make aggro more interesting for tanks. If the tank stance aggro was lowered, and dps were given a mini-shirk button, I feel it might be at the least a more engaging minigame than we have right now, but in its current state it feels impossible to lose. The only thing I can think of as to why there is absolutely no more depth to it than that, is because aggro isn't a feature the design team is worried about messing with.

That's how it used to work (at least, aggro was more of a challenge if you were using your DPS stance so the DPS shirked you). The problem is that because dungeons are for casual players doing the story and nothing else, they have to work for people who are not interested in challenging content. The dungeons cannot be too difficult for them to clear, for that there is optional content like extreme, savage and ultimate.