No rose tinted glasses here, I remember clearly, only 1 tank was even remotely designed well to handle the garbage that was enmity management back in SB, yet Paladin and Dark Knight would get shafted. Any time parity was asked for WAR mains cried and made excuses.The problem is, enmity is just a pass/fail check, so if you want a scenario where tanks can potentially fail, you then have to start talking about how finely tuned you want this enmity management to be.
Do you want the tank to be able to hold enmity whilst in tank stance doing their DPS combo? What if they done their enmity combo in DPS stance? Obviously, they should be able to hold it with tank stance and enmity combos, and they should be losing it in DPS stance doing their damage rotation, so the middle ground needs to be worked out.
Then, how does gearing affect this? What 'level' of enmity generation from above is required if you are all equally geared, how does this change when the tank out gears the DPS or the DPS out gears the tank? Just to clarify, we are talking about equally skilled players here. If the tank is under geared compared to the DPS, and they have to use tank stance/enmity combos where the equally geared did not have to, why is the tank being punished despite the fact they would be skilled enough? The tanks damage is already lower due to gear, but you want to reduce it even lower just because.
Next is about skill levels. Equally skilled, where should they sit on the enmity line. If the tank is more skilled than the DPS, would they be able to hold enmity in DPS stance using their DPS combo? How about the other way round, should the lower skilled tank be forced into tank stance and enmity combos?
And now, since we have dealt with them in isolation, let's mix the 2 groups together, how does varying degrees of skill AND gear affect your ability to tank?
However, let's be honest here. All someone did in SB in a party of randoms was start the fight with their ranged attack, use an enmity combo, and swapped to DPS stance and used their DPS combo for the rest of the fight, or at least the majority of it. You rarely had to touch your enmity combo after the initial pull so again, it is just wasted button space.
I guarantee a lot of people are looking back at SB enmity management with rose tinted glasses and, for one reason or another, they didn't necessarily see the flaws in the system. This is before we even get into Provoke/Shirk where, if you had the opportunity, you could sky rocket your enmity where enmity management wasn't an issue anyway, killing whatever sort of nuance it might have had.
Then the Dark Knight did a shit job, especially after 4.3.No rose tinted glasses here, I remember clearly, only 1 tank was even remotely designed well to handle the garbage that was enmity management back in SB, yet Paladin and Dark Knight would get shafted. Any time parity was asked for WAR mains cried and made excuses.
All you really had to do was DA+Dark Passenger and a Power Slash in your opener, that was more than enough enmity provided you knew how to dps properly.
Paladin was absolutely terrible at establishing snap aggro at the start of a fight, which is why it was never used as "main" tank, but after a swap it could hold aggro just fine.
If we want to talk about tank stances specifically however then yes, warrior's was the only well-designed one.
I wasn't there back in HW when it was different but I kinda wish I was I am okay with stance switch from DPS from Tank what really bug me is that tank rn deal so much damage that it dosen't help anyone getting better. Sometimes I have dps in my team that I don't even need my stance to be at top of the agro I just feel like I do all the work and I am not here to carry anyone but myself and to conclude it's kinda funny in some way when I see sprout player playing sometimes way better than end players. So yeah a bit more complexity to tanks I would be happy whatever form it takes.Except that's what the tank gameplay was when Enmity was still relevant.
Why? Because what generates Enmity? Doing damage. So being the best blue dps you could be also meant you were the best at holding aggro.
Not counting abilities with high Enmity modifiers because they didn't really require anything from you besides actually pressing them.
I don't particularly feel one way or the other about Enmity management, because for me that wasn't what made tanks interesting, it was the benefits/punishments that came with switching stances and their additional mechanics.
If the DPS is more geared than you, then you just generate extra enmity where necessary while the geared DPS makes up for your lowered damage to keep the party's DPS the same or better. This is only a 'punishment' if you're a parse-brain, otherwise it's just a matter of coordination.Then, how does gearing affect this? What 'level' of enmity generation from above is required if you are all equally geared, how does this change when the tank out gears the DPS or the DPS out gears the tank? Just to clarify, we are talking about equally skilled players here. If the tank is under geared compared to the DPS, and they have to use tank stance/enmity combos where the equally geared did not have to, why is the tank being punished despite the fact they would be skilled enough? The tanks damage is already lower due to gear, but you want to reduce it even lower just because.
he/him
This is stupid, overall group damage output is still lower because the tank has to sacrifice damage to keep aggro, there is no "making up for lowered damage" lmfao overall it punishes the whole group that an already under geared tank has to give up even more damage.If the DPS is more geared than you, then you just generate extra enmity where necessary while the geared DPS makes up for your lowered damage to keep the party's DPS the same or better. This is only a 'punishment' if you're a parse-brain, otherwise it's just a matter of coordination.
That's called skill issue, if DPS are below you in damage more than likely they are playing like shit or undergeared, nothing to do with tanks damage out put.I wasn't there back in HW when it was different but I kinda wish I was I am okay with stance switch from DPS from Tank what really bug me is that tank rn deal so much damage that it dosen't help anyone getting better. Sometimes I have dps in my team that I don't even need my stance to be at top of the agro I just feel like I do all the work and I am not here to carry anyone but myself and to conclude it's kinda funny in some way when I see sprout player playing sometimes way better than end players. So yeah a bit more complexity to tanks I would be happy whatever form it takes.
Then gear the tank.This is stupid, overall group damage output is still lower because the tank has to sacrifice damage to keep aggro, there is no "making up for lowered damage" lmfao overall it punishes the whole group that an already under geared tank has to give up even more damage.
If gear stops being automatically funneled to DPS first because the tank needs it equally since he doesn't get free top aggro from a babyproofed tank stance multiplier anymore, this is sounding better and better.
he/him
Meh, personally I don't miss it much. Good tanking ended up with you in your dps mode for like 90-95% of runs anyways so not much objectively changes. I understand that people find it more fun to dance between the enmity mode and dps mode, but I feel like that only persists because current tanking is boring as shit. Honestly changing the AOE's to all be circles instead of cones amplifies that boredom far more than I think SE realized.
Hmm I'm bit torn on that one after having experienced tanking during 3.0 as well (granted I played WAR back then and it felt quite fun to stance dance but...) I think it's quite unneeded most of the time - not to mention most DPS would have to use quelling strikes again and healers use lucid to cut hate.
I'd rather have a focus on tank specific nuances like protecting the party by standing in front of them, pick up a target marker from others or even shield a healer with your special 25s mitigation to protect them from unavoidable damage.
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