Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[LittleImp]

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.

Aggro combos impose limitations on job depth. It's like a less extreme version of the problem with healers; It's difficult to give them a proper rotation because they need to be able to potentially interrupt that 'rotation' at any time to heal without incurring major penalties, ergo they've always had the least amount of interesting options in terms of dealing damage. Tanks suffered from this to a lesser extent previously, and some jobs still haven't fully recovered from it.

Throw in aggro decay and aggro resets.

The game had these when "aggro management" was a thing, and they weren't very exciting in practice. You just ended up voke/shirking at a scripted time, or asking your party to save their aggro dumps for that scripted time. It was still just a matter of pressing a button at a timestamp, it didn't really add the kind of dynamism people in this thread seem to be after.

[TheOperator3712]

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.

-snip-.

Yes, because my point was clearly that we should implement those two specific things and not what I said shaped my comment around and stated immediately after that. /s

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.

Reading comprehension check failed. Please level up your reading skill and try again.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

No. If you build around a particular rate of consumption (which is GCD scaled anyways, in this case), then that rate of consumption does not force you to go negative. You can weave in more burst skills than you typically would, such that, much as the case with enmity, you end the fight with minimum excess TP if the value of those higher-TP-cost skills over the normal rotation is greater than the value of the %TP potency modifier, or likely just anywhere just short of or barely dipping into the penalized range if not, unless the fight's situations give cause to burst further.

You can, of course, build short of that particular rate of consumption, as to oblige the use of Support skills after X minutes, but that's an externality. All a ubiquitously-tied resource system fundamentally does is allow you to trade long-term gains that are greater on paper for short-term gains that may be greater, or at least vital/necessary, in certain contexts.

In AoE, as I stated, your actions cost between 2 and 3 times as much TP

This, too, is externality. You can tune them to whatever you damn well please; it's merely a matter of balancing higher tuning against lesser available resource. For instance, if potency is decreased by 1% for each %TP below 75, to a minimum 50% potency at 25% TP, but TP costs decrease over that same span to a minimum of a quarter, the AoE penalty of using (stronger) AoEs would begin to right itself after the first 4-5 GCDs of burst, as their (and other) potencies decrease; similarly, your TP would quickly right itself to over 80% with time not spent on using those burstier skills.

The issue here is that the games UI does not support such a system [as managing enmity].

XIV UI has been sufficient for that purpose. That's why we have the bars. The Enmity percentile bars weren't hard to use.

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.

Yes, because that's how percentiles work. Again, it wasn't difficult to understand or work with. ...Do you want bars that traverse your whole screen? Unlike HP, precisely because of Enmity modifiers, there is no maximum to enmity that wouldn't make the UI worthless early in a fight if were linearly representative rather than percentile.

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?

Short version: You include more than a single mob script (what we sometimes call "AI") and make further factors available to those scripts. At present, there is only one in the whole game (attack top threat regardless of other conditions), which at most adds the feature of also attacking 2nd threat with a second, dedicated periodic attack.

Longer version: You differentiate, under the game's hood, between latent and active enmity, mob script and mob mode (a different behavioral set procedurally called upon by conditions set in the script, such as being frenzied, wary, cocky, etc.), and generate undermechanics for affecting enmity that interact with mob behavior.

[Lyth]

I mean, dps optimizations are a lot of fun, but they're even more exciting on an actual melee job without training wheels and tank privilege. I think if you want the dps work that tanks do to have equivalent value, you have to seriously step up the mechanics game for tanks. It's the same complaint healers are making with regards to caster dps. Big fish in small pond and all that.

[MerlinCross]

I mean, dps optimizations are a lot of fun, but they're even more exciting on an actual melee job without training wheels and tank privilege. I think if you want the dps work that tanks do to have equivalent value, you have to seriously step up the mechanics game for tanks. It's the same complaint healers are making with regards to caster dps. Big fish in small pond and all that.

This. It's not that we say... want Aggro itself back. Maybe some of us, myself included but... we just want MORE to do.

I can't speak for others but what I would want is; the ability to fail and have to fix it without causing an entire wipe, dying, or dooming the run due to a 5% damage loss from damage down.

Aggro, old aggro, to me did this. Let me be clear, I know it was just a band aid to the bigger issue but when the BLM started to pull hate or the MCH suddenly shot up from Wildfire my thought was "OH GOD I need Aggro combo/bonus" not "OH STUPID DPS didn't hit their anti aggro button". Maybe at the casual level I played at I never expected DPS to do that, or Ninja's to use their own. Much like I still don't expect DPS to use Feint like ever. And usually, if the boss swapped aggro, it wasn't a full on loss if fixed fast enough.

That's just how I remember it, suddenly there's a problem and I need to fix it. Aggro returning would be a band aid fix again but I just want something to get that feeling of "I've messed up but can fix it". I don't get that with Tanks these days, and I barely get that with Healers too.

Side question; is there anything from Shadowbringers onward that takes advantage of Two Tanks that couldn't just be done with a DPS? Like the only thing that comes to mind was Eden Titan but I haven't played the new content.

[LittleImp]

Yes, because my point was clearly that we should implement those two specific things and not what I said shaped my comment around and stated immediately after that. /s



Reading comprehension check failed. Please level up your reading skill and try again.

Why on earth are you so angry randomly? I just responded to some of the ideas you were talking about and you're acting like you're under personal attack.

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

[baklava151]

Side question; is there anything from Shadowbringers onward that takes advantage of Two Tanks that couldn't just be done with a DPS? Like the only thing that comes to mind was Eden Titan but I haven't played the new content.

The E5S bird

[TheOperator3712]

Why on earth are you so angry randomly? I just responded to some of the ideas you were talking about and you're acting like you're under personal attack.

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

You took two ideas I listed as examples and proceeded to bash on them without mentioning my main point at all. In my experience that only happens when someone is taking something out of context to win internet points by beating up a scarecrow.

[MerlinCross]

The E5S bird

I've seen the normal fight so if it's what I'm thinking of, wouldn't that just be picking up adds? Riveting gameplay. I mean if there's more, fair enough but I'm trying to think of Tank swaps, or placed double tank buster like O1's Twinbolt that nuked the person closest to MT, I hope the OT is awake enough to be there.

It's still not steller gripping stuff but... look I'll take what they give me these days.

To be fair, I don't know what I expected really. This is yet another thread mostly populated by weird players who don't even touch difficult content, but push for vaguely defined 'depth' to be added around systems they don't actually understand or even interact with regularly.

Also by people that think the solution is clearly to just play the last bit of the game and clear it before they're allowed to talk. Don't forget them.

I admit I'm not an Extreme or Savage raider, not unless I'm doing it with friends cause people seem way too bitter in PFs. But it doesn't seem to fix the problem of tanking for me which is; I'd like smaller things to pay attention to or care about without causing a wipe or mass panic if I mess up. Most the time Extreme just hits harder, faster or more "Don't touch the bad stuff" like juggling buffs/debuffs and placement. I'm sorry given this is old, but did anyone actually find Light Rampant fun?

I hit stance, Rotation, Dance around as needed. If I'm OT, I don't even hit stance. I just do rotation which is the same thing I do as DPS.

I don't know, what do you find fun about tanking in Extremes? Because once you realize the order you need to hit your defenses, all that's left is to push your damage as hard as you can and..., I mean I guess that's fun for enough people but just not for me.

Should Aggro and TP come back? Don't know. Anything they would provide would be a short band-aid solution before the community cracks the new number on "THIS is how you should be hitting your buttons" and we're just back where we started save for maybe a new button press every so often. And when people are always about Uptime, rDPS and the boss designs seemingly based around pushing damage as much as possible; I think any big in depth changes to boss design or tanking gameplay would lead to a riot.

[Undeadfire]

I've seen the normal fight so if it's what I'm thinking of, wouldn't that just be picking up adds? Riveting gameplay. I mean if there's more, fair enough but I'm trying to think of Tank swaps, or placed double tank buster like O1's Twinbolt that nuked the person closest to MT, I hope the OT is awake enough to be there.

The add in E5S attacked whoever had the most Lightning stacks, and did a buster each round, consisting 3x total rounds, at the same time if it reach melee range you're instantly killed. It's the tank version of SCOB Turn 7.