ARR/HW/SB tank vets: how do you feel about the current state of tanks?

[CKNovel]

Started as WAR at ARR end/start HW, played DRK then to finish maining GNB at the end of ShB. Very happy with the (general) state of tanks.

There's not much to say about tanks before SB/ShB, their DPS rotation were almost copy pasted:
-Maintain your dot
-Maintain your special debuff (Strength down for PLD, Intel down for DRK, Slashing down for WAR)
-All tanks had one enmity combo they'd press once, tank swap were often "Taunt, activate tank stance", similar to Taunt + Shirk we have today but it used to be slower. Bonus point if you had a NIN, you wouldn't put tank stance on at all.

All tanks lost their dot GCD, debuff combo and enmity combo.

Warrior barely changed outside of that, they just added more and more GCDs/oGCDs to the job until today. WAR has been the biggest winner.
Paladin was always in a weird spot. Its magic phase got added in Stormblood and expanded upon with each expansions and things move a bit so PLD would fit better in 2 mins meta. I feel PLD today is better than any other iterations.
Gunbreaker was added after the big changes, its kit just got expanded upon. It only lost Rough divide's damage.

Dark Knight has been the biggest loser of all four, it got reworked to remove the dark art spam and replace it with many other oGCDs and Edge of Darkness spam.
Its gauge could be hidden and you would not know about it, you'd be able to keep it up 99% of the time. The job simply doesn't feel engaging.

[Mikey_R]

I want to point out in the vast majority of cases, 'maintaining a debuff' was automatic in the job's damage combo.

Dark Knight was on Delirium, the most used combo.

Slashing debuff? Used to be on Storm's Eye, which you then rotated with Storm's Path, the all damage reduction, both of which is used in the damage rotation. In all respects, this is exactly how Warrior plays now. As for Main, the old damage buff, obviously, automatic.

Paladin? Before 60 was the only time Strength up was applied, because after, it was replaced by Royal Authority for damage.

Enmity? In HW, Warrior was king, Paladin second, then DRK last. Warrior with Unchained absolutely destroyed any notion of enmity management. Paladin was also very good as it had enmity management baked into their damage combo in Savage Blade and Shield Swipe. Dark Knight didn't get any of that. This does mean Warrior and PLD could effectively tank in DPS stance no problems. This all changed when SB removed all enmity generation from tank's DPS combos and gave all the management to everyone else.

Though, speaking of Enmity:

I would actually support stance dancing returning if it was actually a tank mechanic they were forced to engage with. Like say current tank stance became 2* agro but 0.75* damage and DPS stance was 1* agro and 1* damage and NONE of the DPS or healers had any skills that interacted with agro

No. Reducing a tank's damage by 25% is more than the old tank stances, and noone wanted to use them then. This would feel worse. I guarantee no one really wants this for some vague sense of 'enmity management' (I could go into more detail of all the issues, but I won't here).

As for the state of tanks now, nothing has really changed. You done your damage combos, you used your defensive tools as required. What has changed is the encounters. We have no agency over the bosses and what they do. We cannot move the boss to where it would benefit the party, we cannot stun or silence certain mechanics to help out the party. With Dawntrail, they have shown they are going to mixup encounter design somewhat. We have seen adds in bosses, which is something the off tank could do in 8 man fights, there is a more unique tank buster in Valigarmanda EX, which, whilst I haven't done it yet, is going to make you feel more like a tank. How this is going to be expanded into the raid series is yet to be seen, but how encounters play out has a massive impact on how it feels to be a tank.

[Supersnow845]

I want to point out in the vast majority of cases, 'maintaining a debuff' was automatic in the job's damage combo.

Dark Knight was on Delirium, the most used combo.

Slashing debuff? Used to be on Storm's Eye, which you then rotated with Storm's Path, the all damage reduction, both of which is used in the damage rotation. In all respects, this is exactly how Warrior plays now. As for Main, the old damage buff, obviously, automatic.

Paladin? Before 60 was the only time Strength up was applied, because after, it was replaced by Royal Authority for damage.

Enmity? In HW, Warrior was king, Paladin second, then DRK last. Warrior with Unchained absolutely destroyed any notion of enmity management. Paladin was also very good as it had enmity management baked into their damage combo in Savage Blade and Shield Swipe. Dark Knight didn't get any of that. This does mean Warrior and PLD could effectively tank in DPS stance no problems. This all changed when SB removed all enmity generation from tank's DPS combos and gave all the management to everyone else.

Though, speaking of Enmity:



No. Reducing a tank's damage by 25% is more than the old tank stances, and noone wanted to use them then. This would feel worse. I guarantee no one really wants this for some vague sense of 'enmity management' (I could go into more detail of all the issues, but I won't here).

As for the state of tanks now, nothing has really changed. You done your damage combos, you used your defensive tools as required. What has changed is the encounters. We have no agency over the bosses and what they do. We cannot move the boss to where it would benefit the party, we cannot stun or silence certain mechanics to help out the party. With Dawntrail, they have shown they are going to mixup encounter design somewhat. We have seen adds in bosses, which is something the off tank could do in 8 man fights, there is a more unique tank buster in Valigarmanda EX, which, whilst I haven't done it yet, is going to make you feel more like a tank. How this is going to be expanded into the raid series is yet to be seen, but how encounters play out has a massive impact on how it feels to be a tank.

No one wanted to use tank stance because you could externalise enmity to the DPS/healers in SB or in HW you just had internal tools within DPS stance that increased enmity

I would prefer a system that was “you need to drop into tank stance at some points or you are going to lose agro and the DPS can’t help you keep it without going in tank stance

Nobody wanted to reduce their damage when you could just scream at the DPS to do it for you, that was old tank stance problem

[Post]

The worst thing about tanks right now in my mind isn't the absence of enmity as a mechanic or them largely forgetting to have enemies need to be positioned or their current imbalance or their insistance on removing all the cool animations from DRK to add in milquetoast, damageless gap-closers.

No, the worst thing is that they all do the role the same way; they just have roughly equivalent cooldowns that they all press at the same times compared to Pre ShB where there was some overlap because of cross class/role actions, but even small things like Reprisal/Storm's path debuffs went from being applied differently with different opportunity costs to uniformity. And then you had big things, like PLD being all easy access cooldowns and WAR having some of those but more 'build to spend' mitigation like Inner Beast, and DRK being 'balance empowering your mitigations for MP/damage'.

It's easy to see why they moved away from this over time; it was all very hard to optimize in a world of fight design where ultimately only damage mattered and they stopped including mechanics that might make you want to play it safer, like boss crits or adds showing up or lower HP pools/no passive mitigation without tank stance or auto attacks continuing during boss casts or much less telegraphed unavoidable damage.

But, the flavor of the tank jobs was heavily impacted by this decision IMO. Even GNB which was born into this 'all tanks play the same' world feels like it has some unique potential explored by its PvP kit where its offensive Gnashing Fang combo is empowered by its Draw to provide party support or self survivability as it attacks, but given they've streamlined so much about the combat system it's hard to envision what support such a kit could even provide that tanks aren't already all stepping into with actions like Shake It Off or Nascent Flash, again, uniformly.

[Arohk]

Dark Knight is just as bad as always, the rest is good.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

No one wanted to use tank stance because you could externalise enmity to the DPS/healers in SB or in HW you just had internal tools within DPS stance that increased enmity

I would prefer a system that was “you need to drop into tank stance at some points or you are going to lose agro and the DPS can’t help you keep it without going in tank stance

Nobody wanted to reduce their damage when you could just scream at the DPS to do it for you, that was old tank stance problem

Sorry but no. Most people that wanted to get the most out of their job hated tank stance and aggro combos they're ancient relics of old school tanking in an era that doesn't suit modern MMO players.

It always felt awful sat in tank stance know I could be doing 20% more damage, if only I didn't have some arbitrary system that only one job could effectively circumvent while two jobs had to suffer, there was 0 parity in it, the system was shit, and rose tinted glasses do not save how shit it was.

Go play another MMO, if you want old school tanking or suck it up, and deal with the fact this is the system we have now and it is a lot fairer to tank players than what we had before.

[Post]

I always felt that the optimisation that came from willingly giving up extra mit or health and enmity to deal more damage was way more fun than optimizing my sorry excuse of DPS rotation.

It was a unique risk and rush that DPS jobs did not get to enjoy, so it felt fitting that the optimisation was THERE instead of... What we have now which doesn't even include oGCD damage dashes on two tanks even though we already all had charges and the ability to stitch stock a gap-closer if we needed one at no damage penalty at all since ShB.

They used to be able to have bosses that ignored enmity, too, and that would be a fun gimmick as a tank because I could really go full bore, now those same bosses are played exactly the same the tank is always played. Full bore.

Now I have more defensives that I often need and no way to use them to increase my damage. My rotation is basically solved with no thought or teamwork.

[ForteNightshade]

Stance dancing was bad because they added stupid broken abilities to NIN that allowed tanks to not have to stance dance which made it feel bad when you did have to

NIN never should have been able to give its agro to the tank essentially making the NIN the controller of agro and not the tank (the other big agro offender being WHM with its AOE healing and it’s only agro reduction ability being tied to mana regen which was also garbage)

I would actually support stance dancing returning if it was actually a tank mechanic they were forced to engage with. Like say current tank stance became 2* agro but 0.75* damage and DPS stance was 1* agro and 1* damage and NONE of the DPS or healers had any skills that interacted with agro

So stance control and agro generation combos (or even oGCD’s that generated more agro that were stance independent) were actually a skill check on the tank, not just the tank sitting in DPS stance screaming at the NIN to give them agro

Even without Ninja, stance dancing was never really a thing despite how much it gets glorified around here. If you were running Warrior, and you absolutely were in HW/SB, Unchained and Voke/Shirk spam was more than enough to hold off everyone except a very optimized Bard, White Mages spamming overheals or people refusing to use Diversion. In those cases in was always better to simply let them eat autos unless said attack would be lethal. What largely ended up happening is newer or more conservative tanks refused to ever leave tank stance, which meant they were doing significantly less damage throughout the whole fight for no intrinsic benefit.

If they were to even consider bringing back that version of the enmity system, it cannot come with a 25% penalty nor lock tanks out of their most potent abilities. That alone will always push them to avoid tank stance like the damn plague. Additionally, enmity can't be so easily generated otherwise we're right back to voke/shirk spam. Finally, while I did like aggro being a party mechanic, it's hilariously toxic because so many DPS simply won't use Diversion. I'll openly admit to letting more than a few die because I got sick and tired of them expecting to sit in Defiance. Samurai and Black Mage players were notorious for it. Nonetheless, it's all a moot point, really, because the old enmity system is as likely to come back as Cleric Stance.

[Supersnow845]

snip

snip.

For both these points maybe I didn’t really make myself clear. I know why the old agro was bad and I know why it was easy to dodge it. I’m saying that I would support an agro system that is actually a tank mechanic. In both your points you basically say “it was shit to be in tank stance” which i agree, but it was bad because you knew if the DPS actually knew what they were doing you could be in DPS stance. I’m saying get rid of that, agro is now a mechanic that only tanks interact with. If you want to hold agro over a long period of time you HAVE to enter tank stance at some points, no asking for diversion or asking the NIN or letting the overhealing WHM die. No you enter tank stance at select points otherwise you will lose agro to the DPS doing more damage

If you don’t want a DPS penalty for this then tie tanks overpowered self healing to tank stance and give some kind of utility for DPS stance- like vengence upgrade gives the damage reflect in DPS stance or the regen in tank stance, or SIO gives the shield in tank stance or the regen in DPS stance (I’m just throwing ideas out here, they aren’t necessarily good)

If the DPS and healers can’t interact with enmity then it becomes a tank check to actually change stances to hold agro over a certain period of time, tanks shouldn’t maintain permanent agro just because they farted in the bosses general direction 15 minute ago

[Mikey_R]

I would prefer a system that was “you need to drop into tank stance at some points or you are going to lose agro and the DPS can’t help you keep it without going in tank stance

If you really want, you can simulate such a system with the current tank stances, with some caveats of course.

First, don't have tank stance up when pulling with Shield Lob, Unmend, Tomahawk or Lightning Shot. These already have a 7x enmity multiplier baked in, so adding the 10x multiplier from tank stances would be unfair.

From there, just drop your tank stance when you think it is a good time to. Just bear in mind with your proposed system, you will be in tank stance longer, just because of your lower enmity multiplier. With that in mind, the longer you have the stance up, the less damage you are doing, which, compounded with the first point, means even lower damage than you might otherwise expect. Which then leads to the next point, since you are doing less damage, due to stance, you will need to be in stance longer to generate the extra enmity to make up for that lost damage.

This is before we even consider enmity combos and hoping that you don't want them implemented as they were in the past (lower damage for more enmity but with no resource generation).

As an edit, I forgot to mention just tracking enmity accurately gets harder and harder as a fight increases in length.