Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Lyth]

Yes and pressing your buttons to do a rotation isn't a skill check either, it's a knowledge check. Clearing a fight isn't a skill check, it's a memory check.

Tank stance was a button that you were rewarded if you didn't press it, rather than a button that you were rewarded if you remembered to press it. It's more accurate call it a forgetfulness check.

Either way, it didn't really add to the challenge of tanking.

[Valence]

Tank stance was an on demand defensive tool, which unfortunately the encounters didn't fully take advantage of and had mostly niche uses in savage either for prog or other things (but prog on its own made it relevant), but that's a problem to put on the encounters themselves rather than the design of tanking. It was also somewhat relevant in dungeons for the simple reason that depending on the party, not turning it was a death sentence with weaker healers or pulls that took ages to kill (here it was a handy button to have when more mitigation was required).

I liked the idea that tanks were a bit less tough by default, but had the option to opt in for a fully defensive stance at the cost of damage, much like healers have had to make choices between more damage or more healing with ED or lily skills before. That's way more that just a button to press, and saying otherwise is extremely reductive.

[Lyth]

The idea of less survivable tanks with higher damage output had less to do with tank stance and more to do with gearing. If you chose to swap out your VIT accessories for STR or even STR pentamelds, you gained a much bigger boost to damage output. That's what let tanks be able to outperform physical ranged DPS at the time. Although an even better example of this was in early Stormblood, where they tried to remove STR from tank accessories such that your damage didn't scale up with gear upgrades, so everyone swapped off to the i270 relics from the Creator tier instead. You had to be a lot more active with your cooldowns, but in exchange you did significantly more damage.

I'm sure that tanks would be happy with that sort of design, especially if you put their damage back on par with physical ranged.

[Malthir]

The problem with removing enmity is they didn't replace it with any other form of system, and it's removal has lead to the wall to wall dungeon rush meta that's rampant in the game.

For example, back in the day the AOE weaponskills for tanks, didn't give aggro. So every instance wasn't just wall to wall pulls, only people who were massively overgeared for content could do that. Generally you either had a tank that was great at switching targets constantly balancing the aggro alongside the dps, or you did smaller pulls. As opposed to now where tanks just press button their 2 button aoe combo and nothing will attack anything else, because this is how the game was played they had to make tanks stronger and stronger to survive the pull, which leads to the birth of the current incarnation of the warrior where healers aren't required. Which then means you need something for healers to do, well I guess we give them more damage, and then content becomes to easy so buff enemy damage numbers, but now tanks die, well buff them and so on and so forth.

Most of the games combat issues boil down to the removal of TP and enmity, while the original system wasn't great they shouldn't have ripped it out, they should have re worked it. imo.

Like positionals for DPS, they shouldn't have removed them they should have adjusted them so they weren't bad. For example instead of you do more damage with this move at the side. Make it so, if you use this move from the flank it does X if you use it from the rear it does Y, having DPS moving about and having to think about what they're doing is good and engaging, but punishing people because boss threw an attack so I either fail my combo or get hit is poor design.

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

Like positionals for DPS, they shouldn't have removed them they should have adjusted them so they weren't bad. For example instead of you do more damage with this move at the side. Make it so, if you use this move from the flank it does X if you use it from the rear it does Y, having DPS moving about and having to think about what they're doing is good and engaging, but punishing people because boss threw an attack so I either fail my combo or get hit is poor design.

I don't understand, positional damage still exists in the game. The only positional-related thing they took out was Raiden Thrust explicitly requiring a hit positional to trigger, but all the melee weaponskills still have positional damage bonuses listed in the tooltip. True North is still around too, and the recentish change to Dragon Sight (IIRC) added positional nullification to help cover you when you know a set of attacks that will make you miss positionals is coming, with the expectation that you will be attempting to hit them as often as you can otherwise.

[Oizen]

The idea of less survivable tanks with higher damage output had less to do with tank stance and more to do with gearing. If you chose to swap out your VIT accessories for STR or even STR pentamelds, you gained a much bigger boost to damage output. That's what let tanks be able to outperform physical ranged DPS at the time. Although an even better example of this was in early Stormblood, where they tried to remove STR from tank accessories such that your damage didn't scale up with gear upgrades, so everyone swapped off to the i270 relics from the Creator tier instead. You had to be a lot more active with your cooldowns, but in exchange you did significantly more damage.

I'm sure that tanks would be happy with that sort of design, especially if you put their damage back on par with physical ranged.

It sounds preferable to having -20% Damage +20% Mitigation hard baked into all of the tank jobs. I do believe we're about to enter one of the worst expansions for finding Healer/Tank players so I'd hope they'd do something to make those roles more appealing outside of shitty mounts you can farm.

I don't understand, positional damage still exists in the game. The only positional-related thing they took out was Raiden Thrust explicitly requiring a hit positional to trigger, but all the melee weaponskills still have positional damage bonuses listed in the tooltip. True North is still around too, and the recentish change to Dragon Sight (IIRC) added positional nullification to help cover you when you know a set of attacks that will make you miss positionals is coming, with the expectation that you will be attempting to hit them as often as you can otherwise.

Positional used to be required to continue your DPS combo, not just a way to get like 60 extra potency.

[Supersnow845]

Positional used to be required to continue your DPS combo, not just a way to get like 60 extra potency.

Yes but the person he replied to seemed to imply that removing the combo fail portion of positionals is good but removing positionals all together was bad as if it had already happened

Maybe I read it wrong as well but that comment definitely reads like he thinks positionals are already gone and that they should have left them as just not breaking combos (which is exactly what they are right now)

[Valence]

Positionals just changing potency is lame. We used to have more interesting without even talking about combo discontinuation: SAM for instance used to reward you with kenki when positionals were met. I like this better, it's not that dissimilar to BRD back then for having your dots actually running giving you more procs and gauge to play with.

The problem with removing enmity is they didn't replace it with any other form of system, and it's removal has lead to the wall to wall dungeon rush meta that's rampant in the game.

For example, back in the day the AOE weaponskills for tanks, didn't give aggro. So every instance wasn't just wall to wall pulls, only people who were massively overgeared for content could do that. Generally you either had a tank that was great at switching targets constantly balancing the aggro alongside the dps, or you did smaller pulls. As opposed to now where tanks just press button their 2 button aoe combo and nothing will attack anything else, because this is how the game was played they had to make tanks stronger and stronger to survive the pull, which leads to the birth of the current incarnation of the warrior where healers aren't required. Which then means you need something for healers to do, well I guess we give them more damage, and then content becomes to easy so buff enemy damage numbers, but now tanks die, well buff them and so on and so forth.

Most of the games combat issues boil down to the removal of TP and enmity, while the original system wasn't great they shouldn't have ripped it out, they should have re worked it. imo.

Like positionals for DPS, they shouldn't have removed them they should have adjusted them so they weren't bad. For example instead of you do more damage with this move at the side. Make it so, if you use this move from the flank it does X if you use it from the rear it does Y, having DPS moving about and having to think about what they're doing is good and engaging, but punishing people because boss threw an attack so I either fail my combo or get hit is poor design.

I remember people mostly wall to walling in endgame roulettes even in HW personally. Less systematically than now, but it was still a majority of runs. Less so in leveling dungeons though yeah (since they always hurt more due to harsher syncs).

AoE weaponskills definitely gave aggro for WAR and DRK. PLD had none in ARR/HW, but had to rely on Flash (no damage) and Circle of Scorn for AoE aggro, and in SB they got Eclipse added but without aggro increase (so it dealt normal aggro damage), if that's what you refer to.

I don't disagree with what you're saying though, simplification has made the game more one dimensional and fixing problems now seems like a real conundrum because a lot of things have been left into a binary state where it's either 100% of something or 0%.

[AmiableApkallu]

Positionals just changing potency is lame. We used to have more interesting without even talking about combo discontinuation: SAM for instance used to reward you with kenki when positionals were met.

As someone who (currently) spends more time closer to the "Duty Finder" end of the spectrum than the "world-first Ultimate" end of the spectrum: If a button or mechanic or what-have-you solely depends on "more damage"… why am I supposed to care? There's no enrage, and the incoming damage is such that any healer who knows how to push a heal button can deal with it, so it doesn't matter if the enemy/trash takes a few seconds longer to kill.

If I don't actually feel the impact of failing a positional, there's no point to it.

[Supersnow845]

Positionals I don’t like because as above said you don’t feel the penalty of missing a positional but to me they feel garbage to attempt to execute because they don’t feel like they offer a reward (the galaxy sized hitboxes don’t help here)

Something like old jump that caused a long animation lock putting you in potential danger I feel is a much better direction for melee because positionals feel underwhelming and messy without really providing any kind of visual benefit