Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Shurrikhan]

"An older MMO did an aspect of design wrong in one fashion, so now we should embrace this current MMO doing it wrong in the diametrical opposite way and call it progress."

Singling out an aspect done wrong =/= okaying everything else.

[CidHeiral]

"An older MMO did an aspect of design wrong in one fashion, so now we should embrace this current MMO doing it wrong in the diametrical opposite way and call it progress."

This might be the dumbest post I've ever read on this forum.

Well done!

[Post]

Here's a short list of examples of encounter design space lost because of Enmity's changes in FFXIV:

T9 golem phase screwed any overzealous healer for Stardust damage if they didn't manage their Enmity or didn't heal efficiently; you could get too much aggro on golems or even the boss while tanks couldn't get any more themselves. Generally they just don't ever have the boss come back swinging like Nael, though.

Moggle Mog extreme threat drops as a tank check; as it is now tanks won't even notice something happened much less lose aggro because aggro is not a consideration unless they need to swap and shirk is on cooldown

o4s dropped aggro every Grand Cross, attacks that would frequently require lots of healing and boss would frequently tankbust afterwards

It's a pretty short list outside of the general places that this change impacted, but the thing is they barely take advantage of where it does help make the role more approachable:


Tankbuster swaps. You have to swap more often in older boss fights because older bosses tankbust more often. Generally, since Shirk was added in StB you probably won't to swap more than once a minute because Shirk has a two minute cooldown. Compare Golbez Extreme to Sophia Unreal, they're both .4 extremes. Shirk is ready for every Golbez tank swap, even if you don't actually change who's main tanking.

Any fight where adds show up while the boss is attackable. Rare now, aggro being easier to manage for tanks makes them EASIER to deal with, yet despite this freedom they don't exist anymore.

They don't use quality of life to iterate on design ideas or space, they just remove Enmity and if there's something uniquely in the tank role to be done to make a fight more manageable it's by pure happenstance, not by battle design.

[HappyHubris]

I would split the difference.

Lower the multipliers so holding threat requires some sort of execution, but there's no need to have a tank stance.

[Sazuzaki]

I started in Shadowbringers but quickly realized how dull tanking can be in non-raid encounters. From what I've read, I would like it back only if it was exclusively the tanks responsibility. As a tank-exclusive responsibility, it could make so many dull encounters somewhat fun again since all the tanks now have to constantly manage their aggro rather than be a gimped DPS.

The main thing I wish I got to experience from the old enmity system are tank stances, as juggling between maintaining aggro and maximizing DPS seems to be very fun and dynamic. I'd like it back with some revisions; rather than having 2 separate combos, just change the main combo between the DPS combo and enmity combo depending on which stance you're in to nullify button bloat. It might also be good to make all the stances stay an oGCD so it feels smoother to stance-dance, unlike the old system where only WAR could smoothly change stances. I could go on, but you get the picture.

TL;DR: I'd like it back with revisions made to it so it's a tank exclusive responsibility.

[Valence]

Small precision, tank stance before the changes was not an aggro stance, unlike what we have today. Sure it gave a 1.7 aggro multiplier on aggro generation, but it was nothing compared to the actual aggro combos. Tank stance was primarily a defensive stance, which is why it was not used at all in serious content. But the way you describe it could also make sense to me.

[Sazuzaki]

Small precision, tank stance before the changes was not an aggro stance, unlike what we have today. Sure it gave a 1.7 aggro multiplier on aggro generation, but it was nothing compared to the actual aggro combos. Tank stance was primarily a defensive stance, which is why it was not used at all in serious content. But the way you describe it could also make sense to me.

Ah that makes sense. If it were to make a come back, ideally it would be an aggro stance that boosts enmity accumulation and unlocks the enmity combo. You would still be encouraged to use the DPS stance as much as you can, but you would also be forced to swap to aggro stance to maintain enmity occasionally. This could actually be pretty interesting with the 2 min burst windows, as tanks would have to do the enmity combo at least once before bursting to make sure aggro doesn't get stolen during bursts. Could pose some other problems though, like tanks getting punished to spam enmity combos if one party member just happens to crit a lot.

[Valence]

I liked that having a ninja was also an indirect damage increase since shadewalker allowed them to shirk off someone into the target (the tanks) for 80%, which allowed them to not use the aggro combo much if competently used during bursts. A bit of a shame it was locked behind ninja, I could have seen this as a role thingy for the whole rphys role.

[Lyth]

This is a 2023 thread, so there's not much point in engaging with it now.

While the topic gets resurrected every so often, the bottom line is that tank stances didn't add anything of value to tanking. What tank stance did do was create large discrepancies in player dps output based off of their philosophical views around keeping the button on or off for the entire fight. Simply leaving the button off put you in the top 30% of the playerbase for zero effort whatsoever. If you're a good player, you don't need this sort of differentiation to be competitive, but I can see why some lament its loss.

[Valence]

Imagine if every subject's relevancy was tied to the time they were posted.