Tank Stance/Shirk - Get rid of it.

[Rithy255]

It's an awareness check on duty entry. I'd rather not have it be passive until turned off because that would be more annoying for me with co-tanks.


They could. Enmity management should be a tank's job, but let's stop kidding ourselves, enmity combos were trash. Managing CDs correctly to get the most enmity out of a specific attack window, that's what enmity should be about, not an obglitary combo noone will use because it does less damage and has no other purpose other than enmity.

Ok I guess i can agree we don't need enmity combos, but old enmity combos should have been repurposed into more DPS buttons, keeping tanks complex and having different paths in their combos (like samurai), Right now 1, 2, 3 ain't cutting it design wise, hence i liked how PLD had two finishers that you used often, but now it's just a dull 60 second button, I don't disagree with your points though, I just want tanks to have more rotational buttons instead of OGCD spam which is not what tanks should be about.


(Not really a response on your reply, just separate thoughts)
Stance dancing and managing aggro would be fun, I don't even think it's "anti new player friendly" to have a defensive stance and a offensive stance, as new players can gravitate to the defensive stance, while experienced players would lean into their DPS Stance more, I'm sure theirs way they could even balance a defensive and offensive stance in high end duties, it would just take more effort to make the game less "100% dps focused, dps is the only important thing" because that goes into healer/tank design which should actually have roles outside of "dps and throw a bit of support here and there" which fills like the current design.

Personally I don't think aggro management has to come back to "fix tanks" but tanks just need more to do outside of "blue boring dps" I think tanks (and healers) have just been really neglected the past two expansions in terms of design, It's really frustrating to see the direction that the non DPS roles have been took, what makes those roles fun isn't being a easy version of DPS, it's having more to do outside of DPS while also contributing DPS. I feel like the issue is even worse in EW where tanks quite literally play the same and feel the same, what's worse is I don't think anything will change anytime soon.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Also not sure why you revived a months old thread out of nowhere, I suppose you were bored and scoured the tank forum.

Got sick and tired of provoke wars, which is why I necro'd this thread along with another...

Also apparently there are still people who want to voice their opinion.

The oGCD stance argument is debatable in its current state, but I do agree that other enmity generating actions helped make the tank role stand out, and I will be the first one to admit that MAYBE enmity combos probably should have been DPS neutral FROM THE START instead of just outright removed in Shadowbringers, and Provoke + oGCD stances work better when you have enmity combos than having to rely on a co-tank and hope that they use Shirk to give enough enmity in case things go south, and right now Shirk has no reason to exist because when was the last piece of casual content that made you go "Oh I need to hit Shirk on for my co-tank because they don't have enough enmity"? Yes I know low bar and arguably not relevant content, but how many people actually care about Savage and Ultimate Fights? Because I sure as heck do not care for Savage or Ultimate fights. Casuals DO NOT CARE about Shirk and consider it as button bloat, they only care about whether or not they have tank stance on and that's it.

But what do I know...? I'm just a casual who doesn't even do Extreme, Savage, or Ultimate fight, why would my opinion even matter at this point...

[Renathras]

No, what was good was something Warrior had and should've been a baseline, with variations of other actions to handle enmity. Namely OGCD Stance + Unchained. What they should've done was make Inner Beast have similar potency to Fell Cleave, get rid of Deliverance's bonus damage and treat Unchained as the "you can enter Defiance penalty-free" window, which would be part of your enmity management. And then make a similar system across all the tanks.

That sounds absolutely terrible and like something everyone would hate.

I much preferred having Rage of Halone as an Enmity thing I could use to shore up Enmity if it got close for some reason to something like that. Or, honestly, a stance. Stance is no thought, and oGCD weaving is stupid. Trust me, as a healer, you do NOT want your role's primary function to be relegated to oGCDS to the point you become a GCD nukespammer who just weaves your "actual job" every 30-45 seconds via an oGCD.

The worst things you could do for a role in FFXIV:

1) As for the role's main function to be handled by oGCDs instead of GCDs.
2) Ask for all Jobs in the role to be the same.

Unpopular opinion : I would like Tanks to have an Enmity Generation combo like they used to. I know it will sound dumb for a lot of people but I always love to have more combos to spice the fight a bit more beside it would split tanks and blue dps. But sadly they wanna make the game easy for everyone truly a shame.

Honestly, agreed.

I think it might work more if the Tanks each worked differently (for example, if there's an oGCD heavy tank, having enmity on its oGCD abilities could be an interesting design). But I liked SB PLD a lot other than the button bloat. They probably should have gotten rid of stances but kept the Enmity combo. Now, we just generate insane Enmity, defeating the whole purpose, and our only actual "enmity generator" specific ability (other than Provoke) is Shield Lob/etc (the ranged GCD attacks build ridiculous enmity). Granted, I guess we can use the ranged attacks for that now, but stance generates so much enmity, there's no need.

It's an awareness check on duty entry.

I don't mean this to be mean but...that's...stupid. Not only that, it doesn't turn off if you don't sync. Meaning if you do level 90 content, you have this "problem" anyway.

[Mikey_R]

MAYBE enmity combos probably should have been DPS neutral FROM THE START instead of just outright removed in Shadowbringers,

To give a simple example. if I have combo A and Combo B. The both do the same damage, but Combo A produces extra enmity whilst combo B doesn't, doesn't that make Combo B redundant?

If you want an actual ingame example, imagine if Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone done the same DPS and Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Royal Authority, with the rage combo still having it's increased enmity, then what is the point of the Royal Authority combo?

[TheDustyOne]

If we just had the enmity combo do the same damage as the primary combo (including all resources obtained from the damage combo) then we're not any different from now in regards to enmity; it's fully automatic just by doing the rotation.

The point of managing enmity should be for the risk-reward of it, can I get away with an extra damage combo before the DPS grab hate, or do I play it safe and use the enmity combo? If the enmity combo provided the same damage as the damage combo, then it's a shallow choice and you're better off not putting your damage combo on your hotbars.

I wouldn't mind if they brought back enmity management myself, but I want the tanks to be a bit varied in how they handle it rather than fully homogenized by giving them an obligatory combo. Like one could do stance dancing, another has the extra combo, another requires good resource management, etc.

[DRKoftheAzure]

To give a simple example. if I have combo A and Combo B. The both do the same damage, but Combo A produces extra enmity whilst combo B doesn't, doesn't that make Combo B redundant?

If you want an actual ingame example, imagine if Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone done the same DPS and Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Royal Authority, with the rage combo still having it's increased enmity, then what is the point of the Royal Authority combo?

First of all; terrible example.

Second; let me show a better in example that is VERY hypothetical because it very unlikely that this will actually happen but to entertain the thought; Dark Knight has 2 combo paths after Hard Slash, the both do the same amount of Damage, generate the same amount of job related resources as each other, but one path also restores HP at the cost of no enmity generation, and you're in a piece of content that requires 2 tanks and has a forced tank swap, is A) the Enmity generation combo invalidated by the HP restoring combo because they are DPS neutral, B) HP restoring combo is invalidated by the enmity generating combo because they are DPS neutral, C) neither invalidates on or the other because both have a specific use based on whether or not you have Tank Stance on or off, or in the case HP restoring combo, restore HP if you took damage.

[Mikey_R]

First of all; terrible example.

Second; let me show a better in example that is VERY hypothetical because it very unlikely that this will actually happen but to entertain the thought; Dark Knight has 2 combo paths after Hard Slash, the both do the same amount of Damage, generate the same amount of job related resources as each other, but one path also restores HP at the cost of no enmity generation, and you're in a piece of content that requires 2 tanks and has a forced tank swap, is A) the Enmity generation combo invalidated by the HP restoring combo because they are DPS neutral, B) HP restoring combo is invalidated by the enmity generating combo because they are DPS neutral, C) neither invalidates on or the other because both have a specific use based on whether or not you have Tank Stance on or off, or in the case HP restoring combo, restore HP if you took damage.

You start with different combos then end up talking about tank stances (highlighted for your convenience). Just to comment on that, if you have tank stances, there is no need for an enmity combo.

However, ignoring all of that, regardless of what the combos do, the only thing that matters is that one generates enmity whilst the other doesn't. If you have a HP restore, shield or whatever, it makes no difference, the only reason you use the enmity combo is to produce more enmity. It isn't a choice, there isn't any thought that goes into it and it is just 2 combos that are essentially the same.

This doesn't even count the fact that all people will do is use the combo during their burst (assuming nothing else gets in the way) to produce even more enmity and forget about it for the rest of the fight. You don't even want to use it as an OT, which means it is useless half of the time anyway. There isn't even a benefit to trying to skit the line between having enmity and not, not to mention the more enmity you have, the harder it gets to discern how much of a lead you actually have.

Also, the healing on a combo action really isn't useful and cannot be relied upon, for one, it doesn't heal much, and it only does it every 3 GCDs, unless you have something else which delays the combo, at which point, the healing potential goes down, not to mention that, since you cannot control it, you could heal for no reason, wasting that heal potential. Compare that to a healer, who heals a lot more and can heal when needed, it becomes even more redundant. It is just flavour and not something to rely upon.

[Elucesta]

Tank Discussions are very interesting

[DRKoftheAzure]

Tank Discussions are very interesting

In sense yeah they can be, but they can also be VERY FRUSTRATING at the exact same time... Which probably didn't get this bad UNTIL Shadowbringers media tour info dropped... which was probably the same for healers when Stormblood Media Tour info dropped... I could be wrong though...

As for DPS, far as I can tell issues are too much RNG on Dancer and Red Mage, and not enough positionals on melee DPS, with Summoner being boring for a little extra credit... Again I could be though...

Kinda sad when the discussion on roles are actually more interesting than the actual game itself when you start thinking about it too much...

[Renathras]

To give a simple example. if I have combo A and Combo B. The both do the same damage, but Combo A produces extra enmity whilst combo B doesn't, doesn't that make Combo B redundant?

If you want an actual ingame example, imagine if Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone done the same DPS and Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Royal Authority, with the rage combo still having it's increased enmity, then what is the point of the Royal Authority combo?

Could do like WAR does now.

Storm's Path and Storm's Eye do exactly the same damage.

...but Storm's Path generates more Beast Gauge and heals the WAR while Storm's Path gives them a damage buff they upkeep. They're not QUITE damage neutral, but they're not super FAR from damage neutral, or at least not so far that players refuse to ever touch Storm's Path and use it at least twice per minute.

Not saying do exactly that, but the point is, two abilities can do the same damage while each having some other secondary effect. Yes, yes, you could math out the 10 extra Beast Gauge as damage, but even if they gave you the same amount, you'd still generally prioritize Storm's Path for the free healing while still wanting to use Storm's Eye for the buff.

So to use your example, it'd be like if Royal and Halone did the same damage, but Royal also did a small heal or shield, but while generating far less enmity. The player would thus use Halone from time to time to prevent losing enmity while prioritizing Royal when they didn't need the enmity boost due to the self-heal, but a 200 or so potency heal also wouldn't be so powerful that players would grumble whenever their thumb had to grace their Halone button with its presence.

That is, there can be difference, where the difference is meaningful but minimal and non-damage related - such as contrasting self-healing or mitigation (GNB's -2 makes a small shield, too) vs threat - so that one isn't always "by default the correct choice".

There's a thread in the healer forum discussing what makes "meaningful choice", and it's a complicated question, but for my part, I contend when one choice is so inferior that it is never picked, that isn't a real choice. They should be distinct so that you have reason to pick one over another, but not so different in some significant way that one is considered always the better option such that the other is never touched.