Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Shurrikhan]

1. Whether it start at max or 0, whether it regens over time or not, whether it is gained via GCDs or not, at the end of the day, the mechanic is, keep it between 2 values with things that manipulate the value. If you are forced out of the ideal range, you get back in as quick as possible. Trying to adopt this into the existing jobs is not going to work, it has enough complexity to warrant a whole job based around it.

I disagree, but only very mildly. I feel that as long as MP is to be a universal component, we may as well make use of it (though such does mean getting rid of Lucid Dream, scaling MP ticks to GCD speed, and so on). It'd also help balance out the rDPS value of having access to rez / greatly diminish any need for a rez tax, as getting someone back up means that much less burst potential over time available for the rezzer. It's not where I'd choose to use developer resources, unless they were damn near boundless, but any necessarily universal UI component (for the space for an MP bar must always be made, even if the bar need not always be shown) that is not also made a universal mechanic will at the very least be an eyesore.

2. Yes, that is my point. There is no way to do it without numerical values, but I guarantee SE will not put numbers onto enmity that we can see by default, which then means you cannot have a mechanic that requires you to stay a bit ahead of the DPS.

You know what, I probably am overestimating the devs here, given the amount of rather important QoL changes that, despite being desired since ARR, have seen no adjustment outside of modder communities. I concede this point. Sorry for being a bother.

3. Going back and re-reading past posts, it seems I did misunderstand/miss a detail. Neither of us want the old enmity system back, you just want something different to replace it, which then goes into the next points.

Any my apologies for thinking you were purposely strawmanning. Looking back on it, that detail hadn't been repeated for a couple posts.

4. I never said they were, however, I fail to see what adding different mob scripts would actually do? You say they could be frenzied, wary, cocky, etc. but how does that translate into what I have to do differently as a tank to deal with it. What different scenarios could be made? I have already gone with a randomly attacking healer/dps, easy to deal with and if done too much, would get annoying. You could have a mob run away, that would get tiring fast having to chase it down. If you want a boss to have different 'moods' that is just different phases of a fight that might come in a random order (which could be a good thing to have more of). I suspect you have some ideas, I just want to know what they are.

I don't have much time at the moment --I had a long convo with Shougun, I think, and a couple others about this back in the day, but I couldn't seem to locate the old threads. I'll try to give the short of it, but I'll need to situate it within some context first.

Namely, we wouldn't be able to drag-and-drop this upon our current tanks, given current undermechanics. For more shit happening that isn't controlled by tanks' merely existing (and being dps with occasional mitigation skills to press according to schedule) to be fun... tanks would need to be able to skillfully deal with that.

So how do we make tanks able to deal with shit, especially without relying on enmity tools? Well, primarily by making everyone able to perform a degree of tanking at a moment's notice, without need for enmity, which is best done by changing the way attacks work. Consider, for instance, if nearly all attacks were among four types:

• Split-damage/soakables,
• Smart-damage soakables (damage is distributed according to remaining eHP)
• Degradable cleaves (damage is decreased cumulatively by mitigation, and perhaps a further amount per hit, as it moves through its victims), or
• First-intercepted skillshots (it hits whoever's first in its path or emanation)

At that point, you don't actually need to be a Tank to 'tank' (in the sense of defending others); instead, being a Tank would simply give some obvious synergies, such as having a larger hidden/secondary hitbox that'd be supersede other interceptees' if and only if another is hit or reducing the total damage dealt by any soak in which it contributes by its mitigation (probably OP, and should instead work akin to smart-damage soakables, but w/e).

Further, you perhaps give more some Tanks (Paladin, at the very least) to-ally gap-closers, a bit more abundant ability to suppress enemy damage directly (rather than only via diverting attacks to you and then mitigating them), more integral and frequent use of job-thematic ability by which to protect or replenish the party (think Dark Missionary revisions, like Passage of Arms being way more available, Warrior getting a more versatile War Cry mechanic in place of just a dull raid barrier, etc.).

Okay, now we're finally on a trajectory that, at least from the Tank perspective, could deal with more varied mob behaviors.

Now, why would I even want that, though, in general? Primarily, because I see Tanks as a role whose purpose is to increase the ratio of party damage done to party damage taken through leveraging (at least momentarily) above-average eHP and/or threat to manipulate enemies, and I want to do more with that. Secondly, because I want there to be content that isn't a set DDR experience. I want variety not just in fights, but within a given fight, at least across certain content types. That means there need to be factors by which to generate alternate events. I'm not looking for "smarter AI" (which just leads to us getting the absolute poorest showing out of our on-paper capacities as they kick our asses with a given set of stats and abilities finally well utilized), but simply at least a pretense of our fighting an enemy, rather than striking dummy, and the variance that ought to contain.

The (bareness of the) current enmity system basically forbids that, which is why I want to revise it. Let's put it this way: no matter what changes we might imagine have, in the enemy's mind, occurred over the fight, the enmity calculations will remain exactly the same. Even if, after a whole few lines of monologuing, two ASTs instantly heal the whole party back from 1 HP to full in just over a GCD's time, nothing would change. Even if the healers, repeatedly, leave all but the tanks at just enough HP to survive the next raid-wide, nothing would change. There are no thresholds under which a fight can differ based on player behavior. Now, while I'd be as pissed as anyone if the boss left the nearly dead party to slowly regen the first time around only to, without any warning, decide simply to finish them off the next time, but that's where you utilize those kind of clues and make use of your tanks not just as people who go 123 while aiming the enemy out, but actually have to thwart the enemy's offenses. If there are times when the boss will go for the most wounded target, or attempt to just maximize damage across all your squishies, that introduces new considerations to tanking -- especially regarding positioning and use of defensive CDs.

Now, the far end of that pipedream even involves actually turning the enemy into something like a player, with a given body of characteristics, skills and resources and certain thresholds (unknown to it) that may unlock further buffs, skills, and resources such that you'd want to have a Paladin especially earn its hatred for a time until it attempts to unleash a party-wipe skill focused solely on that PLD (who Hallows it) while your Warrior soaks lighter cleaves for a flanking group, sharing lifesteal buffs based on proximity before taking the higher part of the mob's attention when it realizes it may die --putting it into a panic so it burns defensive resources when you're actually overextended anyways-- etc., etc. But, for the start it's just a matter of giving tanks more to do and shaking up fights a bit, giving us some further reason for our actions beyond just "heal everyone to at least Y amount by time X:XX" or "hold at least one point of Enmity above any non-tank".