Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Absurdity]

...Man do I love when the forums are bugging out and won't actually let me edit a post properly.

Neither of those were the tank stance, and no, there was not a giant interplay. You were not holding max stacks of deliverance and overcapping to benefit from the crit rate. Darkside, although requiring management, was not like Deliverance. It was not the opposite stance of grit, it was a self buff.

I probably should've mentioned that I was specifically talking about 4.2 Deliverance because despite the rework making warrior significantly easier it was pretty much the only time where it had some resource management, due to several limiting factors.

-Every 10 points of gauge gave you 1% crit so you wanted to keep it as high as possible without overcapping.

-You want to Upheaval on cooldown which will cost you 20 gauge every 30 seconds.

-Onslaught allows you to spend 20 gauge at minimal dps cost because it wasn't far behind Fell Cleave on PPG, allowing you to not only manipulate your gauge but also manipulate how many Fell Cleaves you do in X amount of time and therefore manipulate Infuriate and your GCDs

-Storm's Eye only lasted 30 seconds, you rarely ever wanted to drop the buff but you also wanted to use it as few times as possible. At the same time you needed at least 17 seconds left on Eye when you went into Inner Release.

-Every Fell Cleave reduces the cooldown of Infuriate by 5 seconds, you have only a single stack of the ability which meant you wanted to use it on cooldown. Inner Release shaved 25 seconds off of Infuriate which meant it could come up during your IR burst but you also couldn't spend any gauge during those 10 seconds.


All of these were restrictions that needed to be kept track of and managed to maximize dps by not wasting resources. Granted only the %crit increase actually had anything to do with stances and most of it was managing your Eye buff, Infuriate cooldown, Inner Release and your gauge, but they certainly made for more nuanced gameplay than spam 1-2-3, dump gauge whenever and IR every 60 seconds.

If we are talking about the tank stances, Grit and Defiance, again, I am going to say there was no management. You turned them on before the pull, used a combo (WAR wasn't even penalized for this because they had unchained) and then turned it off for the remainder of the fight. They had mitigation attached to them, and no one used them for that.

Correct, tank stances in 4.X were simply a case of "Use them during the opener to establish snap aggro and then forget about them for the rest of the fight" because you didn't actually need the mitigation they provided. Which is why I want to make them a necessity to survive certain mechanics, you just decide when it happens.

It then becomes about learning the fight and figuring out when you should drop your DPS stance buff to mitigate a mechanic in exchange for being able to keep the damage buff for longer later down the line.
Let's say in an 8:30 fight you would be forced to use your tank stance 3-4 times because other mechanics have forced you to use your active mitigation, but you get to decide when to use your tank stance and save your mitigation cooldowns for points in the fight where there are long stretches of full uptime to maximize the damage bonus from your DPS stance.

It doesn't even need to be a direct dps buff, it could be something like increased MP regeneration while in Darkside. The stacking dps buff was simply the first thing that came to mind to make maximizing your time in DPS stance relevant while not outright slapping a damage down on the tank stance.

The part you are doubling down on (the reduced damage) was one of the biggest complaints from this entire forum from DRK/PLD players. You could achieve a higher level of decision-making by keeping current skills and giving more things outside of ultimate to mitigate, whether that be more busters, or overall higher damage.

Would it technically be a damage nerf? I would call it being rewarded for using your tank stance at the optimal time to maximize your dps bonus but yes, technically you would lose damage from dropping your DPS stance.

I guess I just don't see having to sacrifice damage at certain points in a fight as this unspeakable horror.
I certainly wouldn't make the dps buff the ridiculous 20% that you lost by staying in tank stance previously.

Tying X% damage to not using an ability, an ability that you really probably won't have to use outside of savage/ult, would likely make it a dead skill for people who don't do that content as they adjust to having just one less tank cooldown. To me, it makes more sense with a powerful cooldown to not make people actively avoid using it until they can't get away with it, but rather give multiple reasons to use it and you have to pick and choose which is the best situation to do so.

True, it probably wouldn't see too much use in casual content but that's because the content is brain dead easy already. I don't need half of my defensive kit on current tanks in most content.

Our current mitigation is completely stale, the big decision boils down to "do I use my 120s+short mit here or my 90s+short mit, and then proceed to spam 1-2-3?" Adding another mitigation cooldown would do nothing to change that, especially not in content that already doesn't require our full 6.0 mitigation kits.

Alternatively you could also make it a necessity in casual content, but we all know how the current playerbase feels about being able to actually fail at something.

[kuroashi_sanji]

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

[Mikey_R]

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

But the old enmity system wouldn't change that at all. You just established enmity at the start, then swapped for the rest of the fight. You now have your enmity combo which is taking up button space which could be used for something else.

However, the question should be, why do you think enmity is the only thing that could be added that would make tanks interesting? Especially when, looking back on it, it done no such thing.

[ForteNightshade]

I personally want it back, but I don't think they'll ever revert it or try to think of a way to implement it better than it was (which would honestly just be buffing the enmity generation from tank stance so that the dps wouldn't need to use diversion/old lucid). They perhaps thought of that is my guess, but they ultimately decided on just making it impossible to fall off after a few GCD's.

This would only reinforce the exact system that existed before: pull with Defiance, press Unchained and swap to Deliverance either after Main/Storm's Eye. Tanks proceed to voke/shirk periodically so they never have to turn on tank stance again.

Too many people have revisionist history when it comes to aggro. Tanks weren't stance dancing or really considering aggro whatsoever unless a DPS didn't press Division. In which case, they'd often let said DPS eat autos until Unchained or Shirk were off CD. If that system existed nowadays, tanks would sooner toss Nascent/HoC/TBN/Intervention on a DPS than switch to tank stance. The whole reason we have the system we do now is because tanks weren't ever going into tank stance anyway. So what's the point?

[kuroashi_sanji]

But the old enmity system wouldn't change that at all. You just established enmity at the start, then swapped for the rest of the fight. You now have your enmity combo which is taking up button space which could be used for something else.

However, the question should be, why do you think enmity is the only thing that could be added that would make tanks interesting? Especially when, looking back on it, it done no such thing.

Well, I don't like enmity management so much tbh, I think is a okay mechanic, but I only want more GCD for tanks, you know, doing 1-2-3 the entire fight is boring as hell, so that's why I want it back.
If SE don't bring back enmity management, but add more GCD to tanks, complexity and identity for them, I would be happy in either situation. I just want have fun with XIV like before ShB.

[CKNovel]

Yes please, tank are now just blue DPS with boring rotation.

They were already except the tank stance had a 20% damage down.
So people tried their best to avoid putting the tank stance on. Except it needed the other players to press their buttons and guess what, they didn't and still won't.
So SQEX removed the damage down. And this is where we are.

I don't want ARR/HW/SB Enmity management back, I just wish Shirk had a lower cooldown and would also transfer your enmity to the target for a few seconds.

[Mekhana]

Emnity is a joke now since a lone WAR can early pull a S-rank and easily stay aggroed over 100 other tanks

[ijuakos_xqwzts]

Yo fellow tanks, it’s as the title says do we want enmity management back? If so how should we go about it? Would we still keep Tank stance? Or are things better the way they are now? Personally I think things are okay the way they are, but I would certainly be open to the idea of putting more enmity responsibility on the tank, it would just have to be better balanced than in StB(that’s when I started, maybe I was just new and it was a skill issue, not sure tbh). Maybe Provoke could have a shorter cooldown, Flash(and other tanks equivalent) could have a bigger radius and maybe be oGCD, and maybe other select skills could have increased enmity generation. Anyways what do you guys think?

Take away provoke. Too many bad tanks think they have to hit it every time it's off cooldown, the worst one being last night when the other tank kept dying and provoking Shiva to cleave the rest of the raid. Shirk works just fine for tank swap mechanics.

[Renathras]

This is stupid, overall group damage output is still lower because the tank has to sacrifice damage to keep aggro

Howso?

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

It's the same argument for a Healer using a GCD on healing to keep a DPS alive. One lost Glare will NEVER be equal to the lost DPS of the DPSer dying. Sometimes, it's so lopsided the WHM casting Cure 2 instead of Glare on the BLM so the BLM can stand there and finish that Flare cast is enough of a DPS gain that it makes it worth doing. If your DPSer getting gear is doing enough damage to rip agro off the Tank, it SHOULD be enough damage that it's a party DPS increase even with the Tank switching to a lower damage agro rotation.

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.

To be fair, Healers basically use Lucid on CD at this point anyway, so nothing would really change as far as Healers are concerned.

I think the problem with SB enmity was that it was pretty much pointless. Even for PLD. Turn on agro stance. 1-2-Rage of Halone. Congratulations, you're now a mile ahead of even that overgeared BLM in enmity on the boss. Worst case scenario, you can flash it on later for a Rage of Halone or a Shield Lob if you're desperate...or just use that Provoke button you have sitting there feeling lonely. Yes, the tank stances reduced damage. You would THINK this would translate into "Tanks stay in them to reduce damage or 'flash' them for mitigation", right? Well, you would be wrong. In practice, it just meant Tanks would use some CD or another, or the healers would adjust.

The problem is, enmity Tank stance in ShB/EW is also worthless. You turn it on and that's it. Why not just have it be on all the time? "Because you may not be the main tank?" Shirk exists. Just give it a 30 sec CD. Problem solved. There's no reason for tank stances, as they presently exist, to exist. They could just make them passive like MNK's Greased Lightning and lower Shirk's CD to match Provoke's 30 sec. They're borderline obsolete as it is.

I think the IDEA of having tank stances has merit. The problem is the execution doesn't work that way now, and didn't in SB, which is why they made it into the ShB/EW version.

.

I don't think that means we shouldn't try it, but the really haven't managed to get it right yet, either. I DO think having an enmity system should be a thing, I'm just not sure the how...

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Howso?

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

It's the same argument for a Healer using a GCD on healing to keep a DPS alive. One lost Glare will NEVER be equal to the lost DPS of the DPSer dying. Sometimes, it's so lopsided the WHM casting Cure 2 instead of Glare on the BLM so the BLM can stand there and finish that Flare cast is enough of a DPS gain that it makes it worth doing. If your DPSer getting gear is doing enough damage to rip agro off the Tank, it SHOULD be enough damage that it's a party DPS increase even with the Tank switching to a lower damage agro rotation.

You ask how, so but you did the maths to show a lesser overall DPS output the moment you used a minus lmao

My point which is apparently oblivious to you is if MT has to be in a stance that sacrifices damage to generate more enmity, and use a lesser damage combo in the beginning of the fight where everyone bursts and pots, you're 3 GCD behind in your rotation for pretty much the rest of the fight. But the OT doesn't have to sacrifice damage, and is sync'd up with raid buffs seems pretty unfair.

And using healers as an example is poor as one GCD here or there doesn't disrupt an entire rotation, and more often than not healers, overloaded oGCD suit will cover most fights if used correctly to mitigate potential damage loss, the MT and the beginning of the fight does not have that option it's an arbitrary loss for no valuable gameplay added.