Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Shurrikhan]

While I'm not a fan of bringing back Enmity without radical reform --nor do I care much about the loss of TP-- I want to touch on three points as exemplified in posts on the first page (quoted below):

[1] Insufficient aggro generation meant dps needed to use aggro dumps.
That removes agency from the tank. It's no longer your fault, or within your control, if the dps steal aggro.
[2] And if aggro management ever conflicted with optimal dps output, as it did with the old tank/dps stances, then it becomes an obsolete system.

There is a reason why the game is no longer the way it used to be back in those days, and we're better off for it. If tanking was still in the state that it was back in Stormblood I would not even consider touching the role at all, whereas these days I'm comfortable running things as a tank. Having tanks yell at me to use [1] Diversion was also something I won't miss, and [3] TP gating not only sprint but massively hindering melee aoe attacks was extremely unfun.

1. Bringing back Enmity would not require bringing back aggro control for anyone but tanks.
   
   
2. Optimizing damage within the bounds of maintaining a lead in enmity by timing enmity-generation to where such would least decrease their overall damage to be dealt would not make enmity management "obsolete". It would instead be exactly what makes enmity management an actual mechanic. Anything less than a cost to damage --a cost which ought then to be skillfully minimized-- would render it a non-mechanic.
   
   That being said, to say that there was skillful management to be done with that timing, beyond simply only using enmity skills while under tank stance, is perhaps a gross overstatement. Given that the more high-enmity attacks would generate that much more enmity, thus allowing that much less use of said enmity attacks in favor of further damage attacks, the only skill-gap involved in enmity management that could exist without tank stances would be to have minimized excess enmity by the time of the enemy's death.
   
   
   
3. Running dry is not an issue fundamental to long-term resource consumption. Nor is a requirement for bloat skills like Invigorate or Lucid Dream. Both are externalities, matters of shoddy implementation. Had TP been granted per GCD's time, rather than per a fixed 3 seconds, Skill Speed would not have further penalized its users. Had TP been tuned slightly higher, Invigorate would not have been required. And finally, had TP simply made use of a simple compensatory system such as decreasing the potency and cost of attacks when below X% TP (or per % below X until reaching Y, etc.), starvation would be impossible even while that long-term resource consumption could still allow for further decision making via burstier, utility-carrying, or more highly tuned AoE skills.

___________________

While we're at it:

Every time I see this come up; it’s another day I think we should just yoink the GW2 system of everyone is a DPS.

You can remove the Holy Trinity system (itself merely a way of preventing the all but one role each from tanking, healing, or having sophisticated damage-dealing kits) without removing tanking and healing.

One can tank without being a Tank. In fact, tanking often has the more depth available to it, in terms of mechanics and gameplay, when no strict Tank exists.

Just someone in DnD would tend to have a far more involved and exciting experiencing surviving in the woods without specialized survivalist skills or in persuasive conversation without relevant specialized skills by which to cheese that area of potential play, tanking requires more involvement when that gameplay isn't meant simply to be absorbed by role bonuses (as it has always been within any Trinity system).

Rather than merely existing and slapping a massive threat modifier over the gameplay of a watered down dps, one must actively --through the mechanics available to everyone-- distract, bait, goad, stagger, avoid, sabotage, counter, and by whatever other means thwart the enemy's offensive efforts against your party within the bounds of what is least costly to your kit. Because of the complexity involved, often just one or few players will end up tanking for the majority of a fight, but this also means that everyone can and frequently will still partake in that aspect of combat, be it by obfuscating their impact or inflating it, avoiding notice or facilitating it.

That's the Trinity-less model of tanking, one where role passives do not exist and therefore bypass the need for deep undermechanics and, thus, those undermechanics are actually given reason to exist, complete with far more available gameplay (both for those who as players--not merely as classes--tend towards tanking and those who do not). Rather that tanking being boxed in, watered down, and quarantined among a small group of players, it remains an integral part of gameplay that forces coordination and teamplay among a party.

On the other end lies, simply, an absence of tanking altogether (which, compared to XIV, is mostly just a difference in how "messy" non-Tank becomes). On that end sits GW2, a game that, beyond the shallowest degree, has no tanking -- an altogether different story from differences between Trinity and non-Trinity games.

[MerlinCross]

Every time I see this come up; it’s another day I think we should just yoink the GW2 system of everyone is a DPS.

Because that’s where the vocal people want to seem to go. Damage damage and nothing but damage anything else is bad design and obsolete.

Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I just don’t get it. But how are people getting enjoyment out of tanking when it’s just putting me to sleep. I just don’t care. I barely move, I don’t even turn on my stance in multiple tank fights, I just blindly do my rotations; the changes in Shadowbringer have just let me be such a lazy brain dead tank and still get away with it.

Oh the answer is do extreme/savage? Yeah, be allowed to actually care and have fun in 10% of the content and with the worst of the player base. That sounds great.

Someone explain it to me cause I just don’t get it. Just make me a DPS already.

[Malthir]

Every time I see this come up; it’s another day I think we should just yoink the GW2 system of everyone is a DPS.

Because that’s where the vocal people want to seem to go. Damage damage and nothing but damage anything else is bad design and obsolete.

The thing is, that's the reason why GW2 PVE sucks. I'm not crapping on the game, I absolutely loved GW1 and loved GW2 mainly WvWvW, which was great. The dungeons and PVE endgame was crap which is why it had such a huge drop of in playerbase people stuck around for PVP only. The reason it was crap, because holy trinity didn't really exist. everyone was dps and healer, dungeons were a shit show of running around dodging AOE, it was a tab target action game not really an mmo which lost lots of fans of the original. that's the dangerous route FF14 is on IMO

Another Example Black Dessert, ignoring the horrendous item upgrade system and exploitative cashshop, It had the best combat system I have ever seen implemented in any MMO or RPG. What really stopped that game being brilliant though, was no holy trinity, fighting bosses was just everyone smashing into it with the boss running around to whoever had currently hit the hardest. It was a mess, granted we are saved from that in FF14 by having a designated DPS be the target of the boss but it's very very boring.

Both of the games I've mentioned above most other failed mmo's have the same issues. Without a strong Holy Trinity and a resource management system your combat is shallow, your players are running and gunning, spamming buttons and not having to pay attention or work as a team. Being a tank in FF14 is something you could do asleep. In fact with rescue on healers I'm pretty sure you could just get a person to macro their 1 AOE move on a tank class and have the healer pull them around the dungeon gathering up mobs and that be perfectly runnable. That's how stupid the current state of tanking is.

Look at by comparison WoW in the earlier days and Lotro. When you played those games, you had to CC mobs in dungeons, you had to be careful on your pulls, you had to communicate and work as a group, you know almost as if the game is massively multiplayer. It was engaging, you were part of a team, most players don't care about shaving 30s off a run, they just want to enjoy what they're doing and have a feeling of epicness and grandeur about what they're doing.

[MerlinCross]

The thing is, that's the reason why GW2 PVE sucks, I'm not crapping on the game absolutely loved GW1 and loved GW2 WvWvW which was great. The dungeons and PVE endgame was crap which is why it had such a huge drop of in playerbase people stuck around for PVP only. The reason it was crap, because holy trinity didn't really exist. everyone was dps and healer, dungeons were a shit show on running around dodging AOE, it was a tab target action game not really an mmo which lost lots of fans of the original. that's the dangerous route FF14 is on IMO

I tried one dungeon because everyone was doing the World Boss Mombo it was impossible to get a team for any non end game dungeon. It was miserable because of how hard hitting the enemies were and how all over the place our builds were. To the point at the time you had to go full damage or it was worthless.

Given how scripted FF14 is and the fact we barely have any input on how a job plays besides how tight we can make the rotation functions during DDR; I don’t quite see the problem here. Granted if we went full GW2 I’d bail, but that seems to be how people want to go with damage, rotation, position focus of the game.

Maybe I’m jaded or burnt out cause it’s not just tanking, I just don’t feel like I’m playing with others for the most part. I feel like it’s 4-8-24 solo instances at the same time.

As for tanking, I brought this up in Shadowbringers. Back in the old days, Titan egi could tank Ramuh. Probably others but Ramuh was the big one where he just kinda sat there. Most the time, I feel like Titan Egi could just come back and replace me.

Is Aggro coming back the answer? I dunno. But I do miss the panic slam realization of “oh I need aggro now, (BLM gets two crits) oh I need aggro NOW!”. If they could find a way to make me get a feeling like that, props to them. But the only time I really enjoy tanking these days is when everything is on fire.

Snip

You put it far more descriptive than I would or could. But at the same time I don’t think the community at large would like that in depth method. I bring up GW because of how set in rotation of damage going out and coming in. We don’t need wildly in depth interactions, we could just get away with many meaty DPS and each one has a ‘Max aggro gain’ button. Just ax tank buster/immunity needed attacks and what would change?

Again maybe I’m burnt out and just jaded at this point.

[Malthir]

I tried one dungeon because everyone was doing the World Boss Mombo it was impossible to get a team for any non end game dungeon. It was miserable because of how hard hitting the enemies were and how all over the place our builds were. To the point at the time you had to go full damage or it was worthless.

Given how scripted FF14 is and the fact we barely have any input on how a job plays besides how tight we can make the rotation functions during DDR; I don’t quite see the problem here. Granted if we went full GW2 I’d bail, but that seems to be how people want to go with damage, rotation, position focus of the game.

Maybe I’m jaded or burnt out cause it’s not just tanking, I just don’t feel like I’m playing with others for the most part. I feel like it’s 4-8-24 solo instances at the same time.

As for tanking, I brought this up in Shadowbringers. Back in the old days, Titan egi could tank Ramuh. Probably others but Ramuh was the big one where he just kinda sat there. Most the time, I feel like Titan Egi could just come back and replace me.

Is Aggro coming back the answer? I dunno. But I do miss the panic slam realization of “oh I need aggro now, (BLM gets two crits) oh I need aggro NOW!”. If they could find a way to make me get a feeling like that, props to them. But the only time I really enjoy tanking these days is when everything is on fire.

It wont go the same way as guildwars because we do have a designated person who the boss looks at, the problem is, that's not fun. It's not a tank and it's not a DPS either.

Honestly I'm only set on aggro because geniunely have never heard anyone come up with any kind of system that could remotely give engaging tank mechanics that didn't involve aggro. That being said it's not impossible, I'm not some 5head who knows all, perfectly possible that people come up with a badass tank mech that I've never even considered. My point to this whole post was that the game was more engaging when we had Aggro, when we had consequences for messing up, not saying it was perfect many people have listed the issues it had, but I don't feel wholesale removal was the smart choice, the game has become less engaging mechanically.

Anyone who is talking about wanting DPS as a tank isn't a tank player, you're a DPS who wants faster queues. I don't say that to gatekeep, I'm saying that because tanks have and always should be in all games a SUPPORT ROLE, we are closely linked to healers in that regard. Yes any extra damage you deal is nice but the role of a tank in an MMO is generally keep aggro and Debuff the boss, be that, dazes, stuns, blinds, cripples, armour sundering etc etc/ or buff party taking damage in place of XYZ player, putting down fields of mitigation etc. When designing tanks damage needs to be an after thought, otherwise you're not making a tank, you're making a more survivable DPS.

[Mikey_R]

That's not an argument against TP or aggro, that's an argument that they implemented it poorly.

I don't think anyone here is advocating for the exact old aggro system to be brought back, or TP management system.

You say this, but offer no suggestions. I can give fairly accurate experiences from playing Monk alot in HW and SB. In HW, you Invigorate at ~550 TP, you then run out at about that point Invigorate comes back, which it takes no time at all to bottom out again...and so you are left with no way to restore your TP and attacking slower whilst waiting for TP to refresh. You are punished for being efficient, even more so the higher your uptime is, which you want to maximise. In SB it was different as the TP required for Monk's GCDs was reduced by 10 (60 -> 50). At this point, for single target, you really didn't have to worry about TP at all, or at least, you didn't have to be as strict in its placement. AT this point, is there really much point in it? You aren't really managing it, just pressing a button at about the right time, but this is single target.

In AoE, as I stated, your actions cost between 2 and 3 times as much TP, which means you bottom out much much quicker, even with Invigorate. Suddenly, you have to go from AoE to single target to even be effective, but you are still doing so much less damage. You could change the TP costs to be more inline with single target, but then the same argument can be used in AoE. Plus, with Invigorate's cooldown, you couldn't expect to use it on 2 trash pack one after the other, unless the trash is taking ages to kill. Compare this all to casters and the difference is night and day. Casters didn't have to worry about MP as much and so were much much better at dealing with dungeons. You are hindering physical jobs for no reason.

While I'm not a fan of bringing back Enmity without radical reform --nor do I care much about the loss of TP-- I want to touch on three points as exemplified in posts on the first page (quoted below):
[*]Running dry is not an issue fundamental to long-term resource consumption. Nor is a requirement for bloat skills like Invigorate or Lucid Dream. Both are externalities, matters of shoddy implementation. Had TP been granted per GCD's time, rather than per a fixed 3 seconds, Skill Speed would not have further penalized its users. Had TP been tuned slightly higher, Invigorate would not have been required. And finally, had TP simply made use of a simple compensatory system such as decreasing the potency and cost of attacks when below X% TP (or per % below X until reaching Y, etc.), starvation would be impossible even while that long-term resource consumption could still allow for further decision making via burstier, utility-carrying, or more highly tuned AoE skills.

If you make running out impossible, why have the system? If you want to make a system that gives you more damage the higher your TP is (from a certain value) then just doing your normal rotation would neccessarily need to force you to be negative, which would then require the implementation of an action that cost less TP to make up the deficit. At this point you have to think, are you really making a deep system, or one that has unnescessary hurdles to jump through. Again, it would just be forcing actions onto a job that could be used for something else that is more engaging.

As for Enmity, the important thing to note is that it is a Binary system, you either have it or you do not. If the old system was so bad, what could replace it?

Optimizing damage within the bounds of maintaining a lead in enmity by timing enmity-generation to where such would least decrease their overall damage to be dealt would not make enmity management "obsolete". It would instead be exactly what makes enmity management an actual mechanic. Anything less than a cost to damage --a cost which ought then to be skillfully minimized-- would render it a non-mechanic.

That being said, to say that there was skillful management to be done with that timing, beyond simply only using enmity skills while under tank stance, is perhaps a gross overstatement. Given that the more high-enmity attacks would generate that much more enmity, thus allowing that much less use of said enmity attacks in favor of further damage attacks, the only skill-gap involved in enmity management that could exist without tank stances would be to have minimized excess enmity by the time of the enemy's death.

The issue here is that the games UI does not support such a system. Enmity is being built up constantly and the only way to see how far ahead you are is with the gauge in the party list. The issues will start coming up the longer a fight goes on for. With low enmity values, like at the start of a fight, you have a good idea of how far ahead of the pack you are. As the fight progresses and enmmity increases, the same space on the enmity bar is eqivalent to a much higher value. What was one GCD worth at the start is now worth 100 in the same space. Enmity starts becoming more of a guessing game rather than something you can rely upon to accurately gauge the gap. I also do not know of any system that would be able to accurately track this short of giving actual numbers, which is then way too much info and still has it's own problems.

[Lyth]

It's not hard to come up with ways to make an engaging tank fight.

Regular boss autos (perhaps they occasionally crit, or is that too ambitious?), coupled with a cleave pattern that you need to memorize and mitigate with your short recast cooldowns. Bait out the invulns such that players are forced to use standard mitigation for tankbusters. Perhaps have a mechanic that requires the use of an interrupt to make it more survivable. Lots of movement, either through a need to keep two mobs separated (cat phase), to dodge aoes (Aiatar), or due to a shrinking destructable arena. Council fight with interesting swaps. Maybe have the bosses swap tanks, Stalagg and Feugen style? I've always wanted to do a double arena council fight with a gravity mechanic where half your party fights on the floor and the other half on the ceiling. What about an aggro reset mechanic where the bosses dive a healer and you have to peel for them? There are so many ways to make fights feel fresh and interesting if the starting point for your design is 'how do I expect this to be tanked?'

Or you could have a massive boss that sits outside the arena, positions itself, and spends most of its time casting AoEs outside of two tankbusters that you invuln-swap out of. I dunno, I really don't think that bringing back TP and waiting for three sunders before starting to dps is going to improve the quality of that sort of experience.

[MerlinCross]

There are so many ways to make fights feel fresh and interesting if the starting point for your design is 'how do I expect this to be tanked?'

But it's not and I don't think it's ever going to be. The starting point seems to be "What cool things is the boss going to do?" And then the players get put into the arena.

[TheOperator3712]

I can think of a ton of things that could be done done to make the tank jobs more interesting, but at the end of the day, if your encounter design is boring then everything is boring. Tanks in FFXIV have potential. They could bring back aggro combos and ditch stances entirely. Throw in aggro decay and aggro resets. There are a ton of ways you can play around with making tanks care about the enmity gauge on the party list again. It won't making tanking interesting though if the encounter design remains the same. Encounter design is the single biggest issue in FFXIV's combat design.

[Undeadfire]

Hate Resets/Decays would be more annoying than being fun and innovative. Tanking is only boring if you do nothing than push buttons to clear a fight.

How I make the role more fun is doing dangerous strategies to push more uptime, try to beat other tanks top logs, improve my positions, timings, CD syncing, anything to improve my parses, do uptime strategies, the feel of danger uptime does make it more satisfying if you pull it off. Same for Healers, push the best math possible. DPS do very epic timings for better uptime, CD syncing, etc, same examples. Creative ways you can already do yourself if you actually try, and it doesn't take hardcore game time to do it, it's motivation.