Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Malthir]

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.

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%.

I played tank since ARR and I'm almost certain the AOE weaponskill move didn't give enmity, I might be wrong as it was years ago, I know circle of scorn did, and I believe there were OGCD aoe's that did but not your aoe spammable weaponskill, also because we had TP back then you could actually run out of resources so you literally weren't just over spamming AOE. Taking away the resources for the melee I believe was a terrible Idea, the only real issue with TP is that using sprint would 0 your TP which they could easily have removed but other than that there was no need in getting rid of TP. And having all moves as a tank give 100% enmity is bad IMO because it basically removes the entire point of tanking you instead are blue DPS. To get around this without brining back enmity they need to overhaul all the tanks and make them a more reactionary playstyle based around mitigation instead of being identical to DPS with less damage output.

For Example:
Bring back the debuff's that worked on alot of bosses for example, Drks used to be able to blind which worked on most things and prevented white damage etc. Remove most of the tank mitigation OGCD's there's too many of them and these effects could be better implemented into the mechanics of the classes themselves imo.

Warrior - Do more damage and reduce their global cooldown on less health and have moves that give them back health basically they can stay as they are just change the numbers so they aren't making healers pointless. Basically keep to the fantasy of being an unga bunga boy but they have to actually pay attention to their health as to not kill themselves doing damage.

Paladin - More block engagement, make their mechanic that when they block it procs moves that fulfil oaths which in turn change their weaponskillls effects, give them more moves that increases their block, and a move that guarantees a block, lots and lots of OGCD's around blocking and counter attacking that buff them. Have their giant sword moves based around oaths and have different buffing effects on the party.

Drk - Give them back toggle darkside, while in darkside all moves deal more damage and have effects that debuff, brining back things like blind so no white damage for x amount of seconds, slows to the enemies attack speeds etc. In darkside you constantly lose mana and have no moves give that restore mana or health. Outside of darkside their moves restore health and mana but with lower damage. Make their blood meter the darkside meter while in darkside this meter fills, it can then be used for moves like the shadow, or you can eat the meter for a self heal/TBN

Gunbreakers - really I think they are in a pretty good spot, i think give them more shells and potentially changing it so you can use continuation midway through the weaponskill 1,2,3 with each weaponskill continuation giving a different buff or debuff.

That's just my opinion as a tank player. I understand if people don't like those changes specifically, but the point I was trying to make is that Tanks should focus more on dubuffing the boss to reduce it's damage output or mitigation damage through debuff etc that's tied to their mechanics instead of just OGCD reduce damage but 30% for 10s. As well as giving them back some class identity that they are slowly losing, in the current incarnation Drk's and Warriors have been getting more and more the same but warriors have better moves, Paladin is moving in the same direction as becoming the same as Drk and Paladin.

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.

They have removed positionals from most melee classes, I completely agree that positions increasing potency was bad, my point was that positionals in themselves are not bad, just the incarnation of them that was in the game. Instead of making them better they just ripped them out of pretty much all melee jobs.

What I was saying was, instead of having a weaponskill do more damage from the rear. It should give you, say a buff if you use it from the rear or give you a different buff or debuff on the boss if used from the flank. Doesn't have to be buff or Debuff either could tie into the classes mechanics, there's lots you could do with it, the point I was trying to make is they are ripping out features to simplify the game when it comes at a cost of engagement, the boss fights have become more and more rushdown streamlined DDR fests where you just dodge colour'd circles, if you look at some of the bosses from earlier raids there was far more engaging mechanics. Just my opinion.

[Valence]

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.

Yes that's why I'm saying positionals could benefit from the old samurai positionals that rewarded you in kenki (more resources to do more things as you please) instead of just a small damage increase. Would it ultimately result and translate into more damage either way? Sure, but the added thing is that you'd still benefit from being rewarded by gameplay on top of just damage and I think it's a critical point of difference that the devs chose to forego.

I played tank since ARR and I'm almost certain the AOE weaponskill move didn't give enmity, I might be wrong as it was years ago, I know circle of scorn did, and I believe there were OGCD aoe's that did but not your aoe spammable weaponskill, also because we had TP back then you could actually run out of resources so you literally weren't just over spamming AOE. Taking away the resources for the melee I believe was a terrible Idea, the only real issue with TP is that using sprint would 0 your TP which they could easily have removed but other than that there was no need in getting rid of TP. And having all moves as a tank give 100% enmity is bad IMO because it basically removes the entire point of tanking you instead are blue DPS. To get around this without brining back enmity they need to overhaul all the tanks and make them a more reactionary playstyle based around mitigation instead of being identical to DPS with less damage output.

Overpower and Unleash had the additional effect "increases enmity". You can check the page history on job wikis, it's there.

They actually changed sprint for Stormblood, where it became what it is today, and TP was unaffected by it during that expansion. It worked decently well.

But I agree anyway.

[rawker]

Way back in HW, DRK has the advantage of using Sprint since Unmend and Unleash used to cost MP, not TP... Oh wait there's Flash :X

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Fine with enmity as is, there's other things they can do to make tank gameplay and team play more interesting.

[Absurdity]

Fine with enmity as is, there's other things they can do to make tank gameplay and team play more interesting.

Problem is they aren't doing any of that, they haven't in the almost 5 years since that change.

They basically removed enmity, tank stances, resource management (TP, MP and gauge), boss positioning, buff/debuff management and haven't replaced those systems with anything after two full expansions.

And no, I don't consider Dark Knight to have any resource management either. Doing a proper opener pretty much ensures you always have enough MP for your burst and the blood gauge is as much of a joke as Warrior's beast gauge.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Problem is they aren't doing any of that, they haven't in the almost 5 years since that change.

They basically removed enmity, tank stances, resource management (TP, MP and gauge), boss positioning, buff/debuff management and haven't replaced those systems with anything after two full expansions.

And no, I don't consider Dark Knight to have any resource management either. Doing a proper opener pretty much ensures you always have enough MP for your burst and the blood gauge is as much of a joke as Warrior's beast gauge.

I liked STB DRK best and once shb hit my favourite tank was and still is dead to me. But I don't feel the need for enmity management to return at all. Just make my rotation feel less boring. It feels like a crappy warrior to me. It doesn't even have decent damage compared to the others now.

Enmity management going wrong just causes friction and more often punished the tank than the rest since you had to fix people's failure to manage enmity. No thank you. Just make my rotation interesting again and give me more things to do in encounters.

[Yeol]

Enmity was almost never an issue when playing with a static. Everyone simply pressed their aggro dumb buttons. Meanwhile this wasn't the case in PF. If you bring enmity management back, it's PF that will struggle.

The only fun bit about enmity was fights that reset enmity mid encounter. It was still a party responsibility V.S. now DSR last phase and P4S P2 final mechanic where tanks need to watch aggro while keeping it their responsibility only.

[Yeol]

Problem is they aren't doing any of that, they haven't in the almost 5 years since that change.

We are told that small hitboxes will be back in 7.0 and tanks positioning bosses will be a thing again. I really don't like bosses automatically resetting/jumping back to middle after each mechanic.

[Valence]

Anything botched in a team multiplayer game causes friction. It's not inherent only to enmity management, but also healing, etc. The only way to remove friction is to remove failure states and gameovers.

I feel like tank players those days just don't want to do tank things.

[Absurdity]

Anything botched in a team multiplayer game causes friction. It's not inherent only to enmity management, but also healing, etc. The only way to remove friction is to remove failure states and gameovers.

I feel like tank players those days just don't want to do tank things.

Which seems to be their design focus since at least ShB, remove as many potential failure states as possible to not cause friction because some people might get upset.
You're essentially playing a single-player game with 3-7 other people.

Except that goal is never going to be achieved, they just shifted the failure states from job mechanics to boss mechanics.
Now people aren't angry anymore because someone failed at their job, they instead get angry over someone failing the mechanics dance for the 5th time and instantly wiping the party.


You could even argue that it made the problem worse, because now the failure states are completely out of the other player's hands. The party could make up for someone being weak at their job, you could even recover from a death and the consequent damage penalty, but when a single weak link now means everyone is punished with a complete fight reset it is all the more frustrating.