Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
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.
So basically, take what I said and flip it on its head, so your main combo builds it up and you spend it on burst damage, whilst keeping above a certain threshold. This is just another gauge and personally, I would say it was better suited as a main mechanic for a job rather than something all TP users should have. Infact, we even had a job similar in the form of original SB Machinist. You wanted you build up heat to get above 50 Heat to get access to the heated shots, then used the stronger Heat Blast to bring it back down before you capped at 100 (Overheating was a DPS loss on the original MCH), so you had to strike a balance between 50 and 95 for maximum damage.

As for the enmity comments, I don't think you quite understood where I was going. To give simplistic examples, tanks have 2 attacks, one that does enmity, one that does damage, and DPS just damage consistently. This means you want to use the enmity combo to keep above the DPS, but not so much that you could potentially lose out on a damage hit. This means you need to keep your enmity higher than the DPS by some amount. This amount would remain consistent throughout the fight as enmity gain is essentially linear.

For this, I am only going to say, you get 1000 enmity per second. This enmity is tracked by a bar which has a certain resolution, to make life easier, lets just give it 100 units of resolution. After 1 second, each unit represents 10 enmity. After 10 seconds, you have 10,000 enmity, each unit now represents 100 enmity. We have already lost a whole order of magnitude to the resolution, but lets continue. 5 mins, which is 300 seconds, or 300,000 enmity, each block is now worth 3000 enmity. 10 minute fight, each one is worth 6000. The size of the bar itself has not changed, but how much each unit represents has. If you know you need to stay, say, 500 enmity above the dps to be safe, after 1 second, the 500 enmity is equivalent to 50 units. After 10 seconds, the dps would be at 9500 to your 10,000, each block represents 100, so your have 5 units to show that you are still just above the dps. After 5 minutes, you at 300,000 enmity, staying 500 above the dps, 299,500 enmity. Each block is 3000, so the DPS have filled 99/100 units. The DPS could be 500 behind you, they could be 3000 behind you, which would allow more damage on your end, you just do not know. After 10 minutes, the DPS is still at 99/100 units, but the range they could be in has increased from 500 behind you to 6000 behind you, you just do not know. The longer the fight goes on for, the less accurate you would be, and so the more likely you are to use your enmity combo, just to be safe and bear in mind, this is a very very static example simplified to get the point across. In reality, it is going to be much more dynamic with different jobs catching you at different rates, it is going to depend on how lucky the got with direct/crit hits, how much self healing have they done etc. It would make the whole enmity thing a complete guessing game the later in a fight you go.

Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
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.
And I fail to see how this would make things fun. Ok, a mob decides it wants to smack the healer, fine, I am now forced to use the enmity combo to get it back, or, more likely, just provoke it, if provoke is down, shield lob/tomahawk etc. to get it back. This isn't going to make tanking more engaging, it is just going to be annoying. If it is just, the mobs hits the healer/dps for a hit, well, we already have that, so that is nothing new. I suspect there is something else you had in mind, however, I fail to see what you are trying to get at with your vague explanation.

If you want to make things more interesting, you need to make use of the tanks full kit, things that are currently woefully underused are Low Blow and Interject. Apart from the odd scenario here and there, you have no reason to think about them. Provide some interesting things that go with them, the big thing I have always said was changing a moves properties rather than just outright stopping it. As a tank, you should be there to control the enemies, both in positioning for easier DPS uptime and mitigating damage to help the healers keep you and the party alive.