Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Mikey_R]

Bumping an old thread since it seems like an appropriate spot for it

I joined during ShB so I didn't get to experience old tank stance and enmity management, but the general idea sounds like it could be interesting and give tanks more to think about during a fight. Just from what I'm reading it sounds like good tanks would use tank stance once during their opener to get aggro and then ignore it the rest of the fight, I guess between doing high damage and DPS using their enmity tools. I wonder if they could have tweaked some numbers, possibly remove DPS enmity tools, to make it mainly the tank's responsibility to maintain aggro and they had to swap between stances throughout the fight to hold aggro. I also see reading old guides that DRK and PLD would get increased defense when they had tank stance on, and WAR increased health and healing received with Defiance, maybe they also could have also played with mechanics where you had to be in tank stance to survive or just generally give bosses harder hitting autoattacks (if that wasn't the case already).

If you read post number 16 it goes into detail on how it was before, what the issues were with it and how potential fixes just lead us to where we are now. It also addresses the concern of, where do they balance things. Granted, I didn't re-read what I posted however IIRC the bulk of the issues the old system had were there.

As a very short summary, there were too many negatives and not enough positives with the system. From what I remember of this thread, you don't make tanking more engaging or more interesting by enforcing an enmity system, you do it by giving the tanks more control over the boss in various ways.

[stellahawke]

im ok with getting rid of stance changes. war stance dancing was a pain in the ass when whey always wanted to be main tank. in content that requires both tanks to have top enmity and off tank was just fighting all the other classes for second aggro. was my entire experiance with stormblood ex and savage raiding

[ZaqueXIII]

If you want to improve tanking or increase its depth you should look forward not backward. All those old mechanics were superfluous bloat. Removing TP has allowed more skill expression in rotation and removed "mandatory" actions. Simplifying enmity mangement to effectively 3 tank abilities reduces actions bloat too and has allowed for more fluid and mechanically interesting strategies regarding boss management. And sprint no longer robbing you of a resource adds a layer of depth as now you can be reasonably expected to use it and the "punishment" is it going on cooldown so you have to have a plan with it.

All of these changes raise the games overall skill floor by letting players focus on actually imoportant things rather than artificially forcing them to focus on some secondary or tertiary system. The skill cielling gets a bit of a bump too(not as significant) as now you are no longer constrained by "manadatory" buttons that inhibit your ability to act freely.

In general the entire community on the whole has simply been getting better at the game, more people than ever now are attempting, clearing and even PUGing the high end content not becuase it is all easy baby content but because we have learned how to play the game better and are challenging and improving ourselves.

[Shurrikhan]

If you want to improve tanking or increase its depth you should look forward not backward. All those old mechanics were superfluous bloat. Removing TP has allowed more skill expression in rotation and removed "mandatory" actions. Simplifying enmity management to effectively 3 tank abilities reduces actions bloat too and has allowed for more fluid and mechanically interesting strategies regarding boss management. And sprint no longer robbing you of a resource adds a layer of depth as now you can be reasonably expected to use it and the "punishment" is it going on cooldown so you have to have a plan with it.

All of these changes raise the games overall skill floor by letting players focus on actually important things rather than artificially forcing them to focus on some secondary or tertiary system. The skill ceiling gets a bit of a bump too (not as significant) as now you are no longer constrained by "mandatory" buttons that inhibit your ability to act freely.

Mostly agreed, save for the underlined bits.

• Not every mechanic was fundamentally superfluous.
  
  Their past implementations were poor, yes, but that doesn't mean that Enmity, for instance, cannot ever be a mechanic beyond existing and smacking an enemy at least a fifth as often as a DPS. Heck, that doesn't even necessarily require any additional buttons. A poor attempt doesn't necessarily mean its goal is impossible. (Shirk, on the other hand, is just pathetic button waste, the value of which should be wrapped into Provoke if it's somehow considered necessary. Even the tank stances, arguably, are button bloat, as the devs could just have tank Enmity be increased from the enemy's front as not to let the OT pull without Provoke.)
  
  
• Removing TP had zero impact on skill expression, rotational or otherwise.
  
  No Monk was forgoing the rotational alignment value of, say, Fracture just to avoid its higher TP cost. It'd be more ppgcd efficient, even, to just use an extra Purification within the fight than to start clipping Twin, Dragon, and Demolish where they otherwise wouldn't have. The closest we got to this is that SkS became slightly less punished, but... it's still an inferior option that the devs refuse to actually balance, so that hasn't changed what we can actually do with it at a competitive level.
  
  
• Simplifying enmity didn't allow for any more interesting of boss management strategies.
  
  It's done nothing that Provoke and other rDPS-free abilities of that time (Shadewalker, Circle-Shirking, etc.) didn't already do.
  
  
• We're still constrained by mandatory bloat buttons, including ones specific to resource generation.
  
  Have you met Lucid Dreaming, or even the likes of Barrel Stabilizer?

But, agreed that getting rid of TP, at least as it existed then, was a good thing.

That is primarily because TP was never implemented as a meaningful system, though, instead being tertiary at best outside of dungeon AoE. Had it been an actual, meaningful resource system, I'd likely feel differently.

[baklava151]

If you read post number 16 it goes into detail on how it was before, what the issues were with it and how potential fixes just lead us to where we are now. It also addresses the concern of, where do they balance things. Granted, I didn't re-read what I posted however IIRC the bulk of the issues the old system had were there.

As a very short summary, there were too many negatives and not enough positives with the system. From what I remember of this thread, you don't make tanking more engaging or more interesting by enforcing an enmity system, you do it by giving the tanks more control over the boss in various ways.

Thanks for pointing it out, it cleared up a few things on how it worked. I'm still not convinced that generally a more active enmity system wouldn't make a fight more engaging for tanks, regardless of the system being flawed before, since it does give one more thing to keep track of throughout the fight. For what it's worth I agree with what you posted about them adding more tank mechs like more opportunities to interrupt the boss or more adds to deal with outside of specific add phases, I just don't see why aggro management couldn't also be included in one way or another.

Admittedly I'm struggling to come up with what that would look like though. You could bring back the old enmity combo, have it generate half the resources your main combo does to avoid crippling your rotation and DPS too much, but obviously that involves quite a bit of reworking and possibly some ability cutting. You could keep it simple and use Provoke, but spamming Provoke on CD doesn't really feel like a huge step up. Maybe there are entirely different options I'm not thinking of.

[Caitlyn]

Does someone remembers accuracy? That one stat which makes you miss your hits? xD

[Sparkthor]

The only times i see aggro management cool it's when the tank need to drop the defensive and go one the offensive sometimes, to force taking risk for the group. However, this is good for action type gameplay, not for target lock system, furthermore on FFXIV system where all defensives ability (but passage of arms and clemency) are ogcd based. And giving more gcd defensive abilities will result on tank NOT using them because of the dommage loss, and fight designed with them in mind will utterly finished and additionnals burden for healers.
In a nutshell, a pain for PF groups, with maybe gimmick strategies on full team.

It also reminds me why the WAR was probably the best tank in SB : it could get the most of aggro without too many dps loss on the beginning of the fight. Thanks to his deliverance or what else skill which withdraw the dommage loss of tank stance for some seconds. Dark Knight was not to far away because a dark art aggro combo was most of the time enough to not be worried. And Paladin was just awful with a lot of dommage drop, shiltron charge somewhat slower and need to use a GCD to go on offensive stance.
I agree theses are the worst exemple of how aggro was a think back to SB, but it was only 4 years ago.

Moreover, tanks todays got way more tools to protect the party, and sometimes a more specific target. Fights by themselves tends to have deeper mechanics where tanks need to acts, either on positionning the boss or simply mitigation. Nearly all end dungeon today got some kind of team buster where tanks can help. Theses are way more engaging than forcing dps to press one more button or tanks to presse one or two mores.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

Just turn off tank stance idk

[Chopstix]

hell no

agro check is absolutely dumb, what is going to happen is a very good dps cant enjoy the game cause they have a very bad tank, no ty

[ZaqueXIII]

Mostly agreed, save for the underlined bits.

I still stand by my main point, that these old systems should not just be reinstated on a whim. And all of those snippets are wrapped with context.

I'm not saying everything was superfluous just that the ones brought up were; Aggro, Resource(TP), and Movement.

Yes, people still did the most efficient thing and just acted like TP wasn't there but at its core, it was a limitation that was unnecessarily punishing by design.

The interesting strategies were from a mechanical perspective such as specific enmity targets being selected with boss mechanics, The player side retains a similar depth because the core concepts of tanking and Tank swapping are still the same but it lets the dev's pull more tricks on their side.

And the "mandatory actions" were still in regards to how DPS had to help manage enmity with the tanks. Yes, button bloat is still a problem but if anything on the whole it looks like they are taking it into consideration with the largely cropped down hotbars of reworked Monk and Summoner. Also, Many of the Jobs with Lucid Dreaming currently don't need it to gain back MP effectively (Sweats audibly while looking at WHM)... mostly.