Ditch the Tank Stances and fit enmity management into active gameplay

[Shurrikhan]

So, given the stuff on the previous post, my $0.02. If Enmity were returned...

• There should be no buttons wasted on buffs/states that solely maintain normal action/wants vis a vis Enmity (i.e., for non-tanks to reduce Enmity or tanks to increase Enmity).

  It's fine for a skill like Divergence to temporarily massively increase a DPS's threat to allow them to cycle peels for healers or cycle 2nd-tank mechanics per their defensives/vuln stacks when running a normally two-tank fight with a single tank, but there is zero reason to have it decrease Enmity, since that's just the default intention / business as usual and should therefore be passive while leaving any such space to situationals (that should then be given more reason to see use, in turn meaning more gameplay variance across content).
  
  A returned Enmity-reducing Diversion would merely, like Lucid Dreaming now, be about the least interesting use one could have for a button.

• Enmity should not proportionately punish tanks for their non-tank party members' outputs.

  This could be by having Enmity scale with relative potency instead of raw damage (and therefore only with secondary stats, instead of primary as well, and therefore scale far, far less with gear), or by giving tanks the ability to steal away Enmity from others, be that preemptively (making enemies associate others' attacks with the tank drawing attention) or retroactively.
  
  For my part, ideally, I'd like to see tanks' eHP inflation wholly reverted ¹ and incoming damage mostly reduced accordingly, with melee actually having a reason to play an occasional part in tanking in odd scenarios (distant add spawns while the boss must be briefly held at a certain location unsafe to the party, wherein a healer may draw aggro to a central position and the melee grab them off the healer just before the healer gets melee'ed) or even ranged in kiting or LoSing in ranged mobs, etc. In such a case, it'd be best to set up a couple undermechanics, such as Enmity falling off by 15% each when not easily visible to the enemy (for most mobs, flanking it) or not in melee range and a further 15% each if not in view of the enemy (for most mobs, behind it) and not within 15 yalms, with those decreases halved for tanks. (I.e., up to a 51% (if multiplicative) or 60% (if additive) Enmity reduction total for someone out of sight and at max range.)
  
  ¹ Here meaning no Tank Mastery, including the removal of its listed 20% mitigation, its hidden %damage nerf AND its greater HP per point of Vitality and Attack Power per point of Strength --as each is a needless complication-- replacing the last two parts with (A) just ~25% more Vitality than Striking/Maiming gear and leaving the rest to Fending's greater Defense and (B) whatever potency changes are necessary for a simple, normal, 1:1 ratio of primary stat to effective attack power as on everyone else. Yes, I'd also remove Maim and Mend, Job Action Damage, and all other percentile modifiers, replacing them with visible potency shifts for simple, intuitive interchangeability of output per stat point across all jobs.

• None of this would necessarily require a whole separate ability set, such as the "Additional Effect: Increased Enmity" skills from before, but simply slightly more choicefulness within our existing skills, as would be use with or even without making Enmity a real thing again.

  While it would probably be still more beneficial to replace the rote button-cycling of Warrior's 1-2-3 1-2-4 1-2-3 5 or Paladin's 1-2-3 4-4-4-4 5-5-5 or GNB's 1-2-3 4-4-4 5-5-5 or DRK's 1-2-3 4-4-4-4, etc., with the likes of PLD being able to move smoothly between a combo each of <Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone> or <Riot Blade -> Goring Blade -> Royal Authority>, with either ending offering up a separately bankable <Atonement -> Supplication -> Sepulchre>, especially if there were frequently-situationally-varied reason for each job to swap back and forth between those buttons...
  
  ...we don't actually need to add any weaponskills, let alone rotational ones or ones specific to Enmity bonuses.
  
  Just accentuating² the GCD-to-GCD dynamics of tanks' attacks slightly and providing some reason to perhaps use them out of their max overall damage order (as sometimes done, before Enmity was basically removed as a gameplay-affecting mechanic, in opening with an uncomboed Butcher's Block for up-front Enmity, for instance) and/or giving ways to sometimes sacrifice mitigation for extra damage (that is, if we de-inflate tanks' absolutely bonkers eHP, nerfing only the strongest tankbusters proportionately, and offer reasons to stay above, say, 50% health [rather than a character a sliver of a breeze from death/unconsciousness still hitting with the same force as when at the peak of health]) would already serve the same purpose of offering choice, both via what to bank for timing Enmity and, especially if in failing perfect optimization/team-coordination, in what overall dps to sacrifice by using skills slightly out of order (especially if, say, those skills were a tad bit more bankable or raid buff cycles were de-emphasized).
  
  ² By "accentuating", I mean both (A) increasing GCD-to-GCD potency differences (which can then be important for add spawns and increasing moment-to-moment options such as by making things that are overall damage losses, like Burst Strike relative to Gnashing Fang with Continuation, a bit more situationally useful (such as by buffing Burst Strike with the same upgrade that adds Continuation or even just again allowing Burst Strike to hit for more than a mere combo opener itself [Gnashing Fang even without Continuation] and (B) maybe exaggerating instant big hits' contribution slightly, such as by giving tank hits (or maybe even all hits, if we want to involve melee more) 1% more Enmity per point of potency, such that a 600p Burst Strike [yes, some potency reshuffling here], for instance, would produce 960e (960 potency worth of Enmity) but a 380p Gnashing Fang and its 220p Juglar Rip (600p total) would produce only 524e and 268e (792p total), giving some (extra) use case for the prior.
  

[PyurBlue]

So, partly agreed, but a few things here:

There could, especially if one realistically isn't perfectly able to access exactly how much damage has been dealt to them and by whom with each attack taken, be a difference in how you instinctively allocate your attention between someone basically unknown or at least out of sight stabbing you with a spear from behind and someone yelling in your face and taking up a large portion of your vision while stabbing you with a spear for an equally damaging attack.


That yelling in the enemy's face to hold their attention, thereby giving better access to back attacks and drawing counterattacks onto yourself... is, if indirectly, disrupting their offense, or at least their offensive potential, since the tank is more resistant to attack than non-tanks. From the party's perspective, relative to not having a tank, each skill used that directs the enemy's attacks onto the tank... is suppressive. The only reason it wouldn't really feel like that right now is because tanks have effectively infinite Enmity so long as they don't go afk (with increasingly long durations thereof required) or die.

Yeah the mechanics might be an attempt to abstract that entire attention grabbing process but it goes too far in its abstraction to be believable. It's not just tanks radiating a flood of enmity in the same way that the Sun is bright enough to light an entirely solar system, it's that in game causality is backwards. Tanks don't have to get in anyone's face because they somehow force their targets to face them with only the tiniest amount of effort.

Finally, if getting enemy's to attack you relied on how much suppression you do, then (A) if calculated in terms of final damage nullification, it'd be least on attacks already against you, and (B) unless we're still riding high passive Enmity modifiers, DPS would start off with higher enmity than you... which together mean you'd be required to run around peeling enemies off your individual high-Enmity (high output) allies, and in this case not even by being an ostensible threat to them, but merely by sapping the strength from their attacks against others.

That seems like it'd be an even less thematic experience, even before getting to the whole disordered and allies-dependent (with the party and especially tank being punished the more dps their DPS do) nature of it.

Point A isn't a problem. It's just the reality that the tank isn't interesting to hit by nature of being a tank, outside of actions taken. If you're trying to get past an obstacle, why bash your head against the toughest wall instead of finding a crack to hammer away at?

On point B, the use of modifiers would be fine. Some raw enmity gain on actions may also make sense, especially CC. Holmgang for instance is a forced duel. You are chaining yourself to your adversary and making it impossible or at least very difficult to focus on anyone else. That could theoretically be infinite damage suppression. If enmity were generated this way tank openers would involve throwing out lots of CC and party defense initially. Binds, slows, party shields, etc to make attacking anyone but them futile. In addition they would be attacking the target of their CC, making them a threat directly through damage and through supporting the 3-7 other party members contributing damage.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah the mechanics might be an attempt to abstract that entire attention grabbing process but it goes too far in its abstraction to be believable. It's not just tanks radiating a flood of enmity in the same way that the Sun is bright enough to light an entirely solar system, it's that in game causality is backwards. Tanks don't have to get in anyone's face because they somehow force their targets to face them with only the tiniest amount of effort.

None of those states you mention here would have anything to do with what's being proposed, though, or even to how those Enmity systems originally worked? Like, the whole idea here is to replace the passively supernova-esque Enmity tanks currently have.

The game launched with just a less than a third net Enmity increase in Shield Oath (less in ST for having missed the sizeable bonus 50 potency per auto-attack), for instance, and zero free passive increase. The largest Enmity gains were through, very visually distinctly, clobber the heck out of an enemy's face with Rage of Halone or Butcher's Block or by being that sunburst via Flash. Fast Blade was ~120 potency of Enmity, Savage ~320, Rage of Halone ~1100, scaled pretty sensibly with exactly that visual element/theme-ing.

Point A isn't a problem. It's just the reality that the tank isn't interesting to hit by nature of being a tank, outside of actions taken. If you're trying to get past an obstacle, why bash your head against the toughest wall instead of finding a crack to hammer away at?

Yes, an intelligent creature would ideally find a way to target the weakest link or the most crucial-yet-destructible element of its enemy, but that's not describing attention so much as strategy, and unless we'd both (A) have a way of hiding our most crucial parts' strengths until the pivotal moment to use them AND (B) such gameplay would actually be preferable, that's not really relevant to a system of mob-manipulation (something dependent on their not being especially intelligent, even if it can still allow for idiosyncratic or mob-type-specific calculations).

On point B, the use of modifiers would be fine. Some raw enmity gain on actions may also make sense, especially CC. Holmgang for instance is a forced duel. You are chaining yourself to your adversary and making it impossible or at least very difficult to focus on anyone else. That could theoretically be infinite damage suppression. If enmity were generated this way tank openers would involve throwing out lots of CC and party defense initially. Binds, slows, party shields, etc to make attacking anyone but them futile. In addition they would be attacking the target of their CC, making them a threat directly through damage and through supporting the 3-7 other party members contributing damage.

A couple things here, too:

CC goes most to waste precisely if it has significant (e.g., enough to force a target-swap) Enmity attached and is applied from melee range (as per most tank actions) because now, instead of getting the full mitigation of chasing someone out of reach, the enemy can just swap to the other (even if less efficiently attacked) target, still getting some 60+% of their value instead of none of it. Even basic 'intelligence' (scripting) can make it so that, barring any other opportunity, a bound enemy would swap targets to something that's at least in reach, certainly, but (1) it's not sensible for the focus to shift cumulative threat perception just because of one action that merely delayed their original plan (the 'target-swapping' would be more of a temporary trickling down) and (2) this would make tanking inherently more finicky to min-max party value from, since you'd want a large enough gap in Enmity not to actually force attacks against the tank while the enemy is CCed away from its current/original target.

So, yes, you can force attention onto the tank by binding or heavy-ing enemies, but literally any non-melee would do better with that purpose for the simple fact that then the enemy's attacks would go wholly to waste instead of just partly to waste. Meanwhile, temporarily occluding the enemy's best options still wouldn't actually sensibly contribute a lasting need to kill off the, as you said, least interesting-to-hit enemy. Unless every other party member holds fire or attacks something else, the same ratios of Enmity would still be accumulating over that time, baring the 'oh, crap, this humanoid can annoy me with Heavy / Bind effects' if tanks alone could apply such, just as before. So you'd have a tank chasing down enemies just to briefly allow the enemies to deal more damage than had the tank not existed.

Tl;dr: Heavy Enmity on CC is wasteful and if you want perfectly intelligent enemies, the only way to tank (offer meaningful help to the party's ratio of damage dealt to damage taken through manipulation of mobs or of their attacks/positions) wouldn't be through Enmity (cumulative reactive perception of who is worth prioritizing) anyways, but simply by... well, intercepting skill-shotted attacks (likely after baiting and resisting the mobs' own CC skills, if any), etc., since they'd know not to actually go for the kill on an enemy so resistant for attack, instead CCing and then bypassing them.


Tldrtl;dr: Having tank Enmity operate primarily off damage denial conflicts with having them operate off CC that would nonetheless let them reach someone extra (the tank) and is inherently finicky to get started (they have to already be trying to hit a non-tank for the tank to suppress meaningful damage and force threat onto them). The basic Enmity modifiers would almost certainly lead to better gameplay outcomes, especially so long as Enmity generation and the balance¹ of moment-to-moment GCD value are both decent.

¹ "Balance" here does not mean making everything flat, but rather having a good range of potencies (even when accounting for oGCDs) that can be skill-expressively played around, and perhaps making long-term losses occasionally situationally useful (Burst Strike situationally useful over Gnashing Fang even if the latter had no cooldown, for instance [but only enabled Continuation as its benefit over normal combo instead of also adding the same amount over normal combo in itself]).

[Carighan]

But using attacks that deal +emnity instead of +damage or +whatever still holds no meaning.

I agree the current bonuses are simply too large, yes.

But ignoring the raw amount for a minute, moving emnity from being passive onto skills... has no value. Genuinely. What gameplay interaction arises from this? Having to alternate "The emnity combo" and "The damage combo"? That's not new gameplay. This just means you press 1-2-3-4-5-6 instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3, wow such gameplay, many decision, much skill, wow.

Without actual interaction with the tank's threat-production-per-second value, there is no reason to make it something you actively press buttons for. Period.

What interactions could those be? There are options:

* One way WoW had at least a few fights each expansion interact with this, particularly in older ones, was percentage-aggro-resets. Every X seconds, the boss would cast something that removes Y% of the tank's threat. No matter how you slice it, even multiple tanks taking turns will eventually asymptotically approach a final threat value. Being able to produce more total threat was hence an increase to the absolute cap of damage a DPS could do before they needed to reduce their threat value (death works). This is one way, if tankbusters always came with a "concussed" effect that bled a certain % of emnity over a few seconds or so. It'd be a bit lame if every fight had this, granted.
* Maybe being top threat and having a comfortable distance or being close to top threat and close-enough (offtank) has some mechanical benefit to your kit that is not damage, but also meaningful. Maybe certain mitigation CDs just do not work otherwise, or scale with the lead in threat you have. This has as big downside in that it is the same non-choice as damage-vs-threat-rotation: You will only want to enable as many mitigations as you minimally need to survive, then sink everything else into damage rotations, 0 exceptions. But if balanced well it could provide some interesting interplay between the MT and the OT, as the MT wouldn't want to pull too far ahead either, lest the OT loses access to their mitigation CDs.
* Maybe tankswaps are frequent (not just TBs that need a temp swap or an invuln, actual swaps), and don't transfer threat. In this case it's still a bit lame as you only run "threat combo" while actively having swapped for a little while, then both tanks just fall back to their damage skills. But hey, some gameplay out of it at least.
* And, and this is the interesting one, maybe tanks have loads of skills that consume and lower their threat. Hence using threat-gaining skills is a resource builder even on a personal basis, a resource you need enough lead with to later spend them in particular during burst without losing the boss mid-burst.

(edit: I'm not saying these should actually be implemented, they're examples of how game mechanisms can interact with active threat-producing gameplay)

[Shurrikhan]

But using attacks that deal +emnity instead of +damage or +whatever still holds no meaning.

I mean, it does at least as much as "higher total damage contribution but constrained" (Storm's Eye) and "situationally higher damage" (Storm's Path), etc., ever have. At least it has something nearer than the enemy's death that it could interact with.

Granted, yes, you could have particular HP thresholds on mobs that change their behavior, make them interruptible or end their attacks outright, knock them backwards, etc., too, so even damage could be leveraged far more/better than is done presently.

But ignoring the raw amount for a minute, moving emnity from being passive onto skills... has no value. Genuinely. What gameplay interaction arises from this? Having to alternate "The emnity combo" and "The damage combo"? That's not new gameplay. This just means you press 1-2-3-4-5-6 instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3, wow such gameplay, many decision, much skill, wow.

We currently do less. Would having choices between threatening and damage-maximizing (and, say, threatening, and self-healing or gauge-maximizing) actions necessarily be such a waste?

Without actual interaction with the tank's threat-production-per-second value, there is no reason to make it something you actively press buttons for. Period.

So first, we do actively press buttons for our alternate combos as is, and this would have the difference at least of being per target instead of just generating self-buffs (more akin to a DoT combo, if you prefer).

Meanwhile, any further "active" cause or "actual interaction" is just literally anything that novelly uses Enmity, which is... yeah, the necessary other half of all this, but I don't think almost anyone's implied that it wouldn't be required. We don't have to leave Enmity as just an inalterably cumulative table value.

But here, let's put the spitballs below to the same test:

percentage-aggro-resets (on [A. current tank only?] [B. on all tanks]?). Every X seconds, the boss would cast something that removes Y% of the tank's threat.

* Brackets my own additions to clarify what seems ambiguous.

This just means more combo A, less combo B, especially for whomever swaps in (in case B). Nothing beyond that would be within player control without punishing your best outputs for being high output.

No matter how you slice it, even multiple tanks taking turns will eventually asymptotically approach a final threat value. Being able to produce more total threat was hence an increase to the absolute cap of damage a DPS could do before they needed to reduce their threat value (death works).

If it's asymptotic per resets, the total threat done is not the most relevant factor. And, again, this would ultimately exist just to make your best DPS sandbag unless the fight would run more than n minutes or so longer than when that 'asymptote' is reached, since 25% of DPS for 90s + drift from death would be worse than selectively dropping certain combos to reduce DPS unless one could get in enough time uninhibited thereafter to make up for it.

Maybe being top threat and having a comfortable distance or being close to top threat and close-enough (offtank) has some mechanical benefit to your kit that is not damage, but also meaningful.

If the fight is ended by killing all enemies, all is ultimately worth damage. Damage from healing GCDs skipped in favor of extra healer attack GCDs. Damage from being able to greed an extra hit before dodging AOEs. Damage from baiting AoEs away from the BLM enough for it to get an extra cast off. "Utility", yes, but only of utility (literally, usefulness) because it ultimately amounts to damage.

And it'd take a lot of reworks across the board to allow for even that level of indirectness to be useful in this game, though I'd likewise love to see it.

Maybe certain mitigation CDs just do not work otherwise, or scale with the lead in threat you have.

Please no. That'd be nonsensical and, in party mitigation terms, redundant, as if the tank hasn't produced enough threat to aim the attacks onto themself instead, the mitigation potential is already wasted.

That in turn would just mean that there'd be no value in, say, gap-closing to an ally to intercept an attack (based in some way on Enmity instead of being pre-set to healer 1 or a random non-tank)... unless you already had enough threat to (very nearly) turn that attack onto you before it ever went on the ally anyways, in turn precluding many additions to tank gameplay otherwise possible.

This has as big downside in that it is the same non-choice as damage-vs-threat-rotation: You will only want to enable as many mitigations as you minimally need to survive, then sink everything else into damage rotations, 0 exceptions.

Unless, again, that utility has great enough rDPS value. If an Inner Beast just 300 effective potency less than a Fell Cleave were to, given incoming damage, allow for an extra 400 effective potency Glare over a Regen, for instance... that's a net gain, and so you absolutely would use it even if not strictly necessary for survival.

And, hell, that'd be a hugely more involved one than mere self-buff alt-combos since knowing the best option requires knowing your CDs, your healers CDs, incoming damage to be reducible by this GCD, and the upcoming damage for your next CD(s) / choiceful GCDs.

That said, you've already heard how I'd generally prefer a 0.01% health character not to somehow nonetheless retain 100% of their speed and power, and yeah, I'd be all for some sort of linearly scaled potency loss when under some health threshold (maybe 1% per HP missing below the "healthy" margin of 70+%, perhaps opposite a "critical" margin of below 30% if Executes were ever reintroduced).

Maybe tankswaps are frequent (not just TBs that need a temp swap or an invuln, actual swaps), and don't transfer threat. In this case it's still a bit lame as you only run "threat combo" while actively having swapped for a little while, then both tanks just fall back to their damage skills. But hey, some gameplay out of it at least.

Unless removing only Shirk without the far more significant Provoke, this would actually play more like 2 Warriors would without having leveled Gladiator, back in ARR: The other would maintain a close enough enmity to be ready to overtake on next combo without accidentally overtaking on the current combo via a critical hit, so there would be significant bar-watching, too, at least.

And, and this is the interesting one, maybe tanks have loads of skills that consume and lower their threat. Hence using threat-gaining skills is a resource builder even on a personal basis, a resource you need enough lead with to later spend them in particular during burst without losing the boss mid-burst.

Then that's just a gauge builder-spender system where you can get a higher portion of spenders the worse your DPS are. It makes tanks' rDPS (when including mitigation value in healing GCDs spared relative to healing a non-tank) more even --since the less damage the tank is distracting from, the more they personally deal-- but would probably just feel as bad as it did before.

Not losing the boss mid-burst meanwhile, would just be a more granular form of, say, ensuring cartridges enough for original (2-cart) Double Down and (1-charge) Gnashing Fang, both, on cooldown.

___________________

Let me double back lest this end purely deconstructively:

Yes, there will need to be some manner of situational variation possible.

That said, just like adding a instance-long burn doesn't meaningfully change healing, neither would just adding some awkward (fight-specific) mechanical tax to Enmity, nor would (gamewide) redundantly doubling up on punishments for lack of threat, etc.

• We could have mobs different mob scripts, including with further conditionals, that would vary when Enmity is more required from tanks and when healing or heavy damage may want to be held off on slightly or would need true specific body-guarding (if that's something we want to see occasionally), etc.
• We could have more than just threat vs. damage if the addition of threat would otherwise seem too basic A-B.
• We even could involve times where we actually want to peel some attention off the tank and back towards split AoEs onto melee or baited attacks onto evasive ranged, etc., if we so want.

There's a lot else we could do with it even before looking at ways for tanks to specifically intercept or forcibly divert attacks not even aimed against them, just by varying calculations and putting the balance of available tank enmity to non-tank Enmity such that it can play a frequent and varied part AND perhaps even see more creative approaches to fight that aren't so rotely and universally "tanks grabs everything and just holds them conveniently for uptime".

[PyurBlue]

No of those states you mention here would have anything to do with what's being proposed, though, or even to how those Enmity systems originally worked. The game launched with just a less than a third net Enmity increase in Shield Oath (less in ST for having missed the sizeable bonus 50 potency per auto-attack), for instance, and zero free passive increase. The largest Enmity gains were through, very visually distinctly, clobber the heck out of an enemy's face with Rage of Halone or Butcher's Block or by being that small supernova via Flash. Fast Blade was ~120 potency of Enmity, Savage ~320, Rage of Halone ~1100, scaled pretty sensibly with exactly that visual element/theme-ing.

I thought we were close to agreeing so I'm not sure what the objection is. Holding attention by putting yourself front and center in the enemy's vision, as you presented, sounds like a valid explanation of the enmity system. I'm onboard with that. However there isn't any in game distinction between getting in someone's face versus attacking out of sight besides tanks simply generating more aggro. I find that level of abstraction sufficient to cross my threshold for suspension of disbelief. In terms of gameplay it also makes tanks essentially DPS.

As far as animations go, some of the tank attack animations look menacing but they have to complete with DPS animations that can involve tossing fireballs on foes or diving on them from the stratosphere.

Yes, an intelligent creature would ideally find a way to target the weakest link or the most crucial-yet-destructible element of its enemy, but that's not describing attention so much as strategy, and unless we'd both (A) have a way of hiding our most crucial parts' strengths until the pivotal moment to use them AND (B) such gameplay would actually be preferable, that's not really relevant to a system of mob-manipulation (something dependent on their not being especially intelligent, even if it can still allow for idiosyncratic or mob-type-specific calculations).

The intelligence barrier for that strategy isn't very high. Wild predators, which we could use as a stand in for random monsters, will naturally learn to attack weaker prey. Some enemies in game are clearly meant to be intelligent as well - and the concept of different aggro rules for intelligent/non-intelligent enemies sounds like a fun idea to explore, though its for another discussion.

Holding attacks back to hide or obfuscate the most threatening element of the party is one way of managing attention but it isn't required in a defensive aggro system. The tank would be the source of most aggro just as is the case now. The difference is what skills are used to generate aggro and the resulting strategies that emerge as a result.

CC goes most to waste precisely if it has significant (e.g., enough to force a target-swap) Enmity attached and is applied from melee range (as per most tank actions) because now, instead of getting the full mitigation of chasing someone out of reach, the enemy can just swap to the other (even if less efficiently attacked) target, still getting some 60+% of their value instead of none of it. Even basic 'intelligence' (scripting) can make it so that, barring any other opportunity, a bound enemy would swap targets to something that's at least in reach, certainly, but (1) it's not sensible for the focus to shift cumulative threat perception just because of one action that merely delayed their original plan (the 'target-swapping' would be more of a temporary trickling down) and (2) this would make tanking inherently more finicky to min-max party value from, since you'd want a large enough gap in Enmity not to actually force attacks against the tank while the enemy is CCed away from its current/original target.

So, yes, you can force attention onto the tank by binding or heavy-ing enemies, but literally any non-melee would do better with that purpose for the simple fact that then the enemy's attacks would go wholly to waste instead of just partly to waste. Meanwhile, temporarily occluding the enemy's best options still wouldn't actually sensibly contribute a lasting need to kill off the, as you said, least interesting-to-hit enemy. Unless every other party member holds fire or attacks something else, the same ratios of Enmity would still be accumulating over that time, baring the 'oh, crap, this humanoid can annoy me with Heavy / Bind effects' if tanks alone could apply such, just as before. So you'd have a tank chasing down enemies just to briefly allow the enemies to deal more damage than had the tank not existed.

The CC in this case is the player's actively controlled method of getting in the enemy's face and drawing attention that I feel is missing from the current tank aggro generation system. I see it as being more logically cohesive than what we have now even if it doesn't completely remove the abstraction around drawing attention.

If the ability of the enemy to turn to face someone else is a problem then tank CC could take that away. CC that not only lowers movement but the ability to turn. Personally though I don't see the need.

An in world explanation for why ranged aren't performing the CC is that they're too busy dealing damage as they should be better at this than the tank and that the tank being in melee range has more opportunity to impede the actions of the enemy. The tank can trip a foe or attempt to knock a weapon away. This is harder for ranged DPS.

Tl;dr: Heavy Enmity on CC is wasteful and if you want perfectly intelligent enemies, the only way to tank (offer meaningful help to the party's ratio of damage dealt to damage taken through manipulation of mobs or of their attacks/positions) wouldn't be through Enmity (cumulative reactive perception of who is worth prioritizing) anyways, but simply by... well, intercepting skill-shotted attacks (likely after baiting and resisting the mobs' own CC skills, if any), etc., since they'd know not to actually go for the kill on an enemy so resistant for attack, instead CCing and then bypassing them.

Perfectly intelligent enemies weren't a consideration. Varying forms of intelligence is an interesting idea, but not directly related to defensive or CC based tanking. I was assuming enemy behavior to remain close to what it is now.

Tldrtl;dr: Having tank Enmity operate primarily off damage denial conflicts with having them operate off CC that would nonetheless let them reach someone extra (the tank) and is inherently finicky to get started (they have to already be trying to hit a non-tank for the tank to suppress meaningful damage and force threat onto them). The basic Enmity modifiers would almost certainly lead to better gameplay outcomes, especially so long as Enmity generation and the balance of moment-to-moment GCD value are both decent.

I see CC and damage denial enmity as being complimentary. The tank's job is to protect the party. CCing the enemy to reduce their attack ability as well as directly negating their damage both accomplish this goal. Enmity generation wouldn't require targeting others besides the tank either. The idea is that the target of the CC feels its effects and this is enough to draw their attention to the CC user. Practically, CC enmity could scale off the remaining party combined HP (current or maximum), with multipliers for fine tuning, as a stand in for actual damage done. Some of the CC might be incidental as it's used purely for aggro purposes but I think this is fine as long as it doesn't all get used this way. As an example, using low blow to stun at random should have less value than using it to cancel an attack. This is innately true if said attack is inconvenient for the rest of the party (like a large AoE that forces melee to move out) and the value could be reinforced mathematically by adding an enmity bonus to stun if party members were in the AoE when the cast began, as an example.

[Shurrikhan]

I thought we were close to agreeing so I'm not sure what the objection is.

The objection across what you quoted was on your point, seemingly, that none of the skill-specific Enmity modifiers mattered because of the sheer massive passive modifiers tanks had. I pointed out that those were in two different eras, not simultaneous. We lost Enmity skills before we got any Enmity modifiers greater than a net doubling, with initial modifiers closer to a net third or less. And that such would be largely irrelevant anyways since we're free to remake all this as we see fit.

Holding attention by putting yourself front and center in the enemy's vision, as you presented, sounds like a valid explanation of the enmity system. I'm onboard with that. However there isn't any in game distinction between getting in someone's face versus attacking out of sight besides tanks simply generating more aggro. I find that level of abstraction sufficient to cross my threshold for suspension of disbelief. In terms of gameplay it also makes tanks essentially DPS.

Fair enough. See above:

such as Enmity falling off by 15% each when not easily visible to the enemy (for most mobs, flanking it) or not in melee range and a further 15% each if not in view of the enemy (for most mobs, behind it) and not within 15 yalms, with those decreases halved for tanks. (I.e., up to a 51% (if multiplicative) or 60% (if additive) Enmity reduction total for someone out of sight and at max range.)

Would something like that suffice? Though shared by non-tanks, tanks would be the ones to most leverage it.

Some enemies in game are clearly meant to be intelligent as well - and the concept of different aggro rules for intelligent/non-intelligent enemies sounds like a fun idea to explore, though its for another discussion.

I mean, if we're going to make an Enmity system... why not explore that? Without it, we at best have a slightly more interesting extra combo. With it... we've potentially got a way to interestingly sandbox encounter designs, especially for, say... Hunts and certain dungeon bosses (anything less formalized than a strict raid) by manipulating what skills they'd use or strategies they'd pursue, etc.

Ideally... we would eventually get to there, even if it might be jumping the gun a little at present.

The tank would be the source of most aggro just as is the case now. The difference is what skills are used to generate aggro and the resulting strategies that emerge as a result.

I don't think you're quite understanding me, then.

If Enmity produced is based on the damage (in)directly to be nullified, then that means you have to let the mob attack a non-tank for the tank to then generate substantial Enmity... at which point it gradually gets pulled off the tank again because the CC is worth that much less if only obstructing attacks to the tank (bind/heavy not at all unless the tank walks out of range and stuns not at all if, say, the tank were already in Hallowed Ground).

To skip ahead briefly before returning...

I see CC and damage denial enmity as being complimentary.

In practice, though, they're more likely to be anti-synergetic, for the same reason Holy spam during an invuln is.

If a Ranged CCs a melee enemy chasing it, that's 100% mitigation over that duration. If a tank CCs a melee enemy chasing another player, that's 100% mitigation over that duration. If a tank CCs a melee enemy chasing another player and in doing so forces that enemy to attack said tank instead, that's only some 35% mitigation (over the non-tanks' passive mit). It's the worst choice the party could make in that situation.

(Moreover, XIV's unique in that the mob wouldn't just turn and slap whoever they still can. In WoW, for instance, if a tank gets hit with a debuff that stuns them until they're next struck, the mobs just swap and attack whoever else. In GW2, similar. A mob that wants to attack player A but gets bound and can only attack player B will then attack player B. So all that, too, is still something we could easily flip a switch on however we please.)

The tank's job is to protect the party. CCing the enemy to reduce their attack ability as well as directly negating their damage both accomplish this goal.

It does, but is there any part of that which is especially tank-ish? Tanks started off with the least CC of any role, and even now CC is far from tank-specific.

When I think of a tank, I don't think of an arrow pinning one's foot, a kick to the back of the knee, or a sleep spell, etc. I think of someone actively blocking the path or diverting my attention directly, not merely harassing/harrying the mob as it goes.

Enmity generation wouldn't require targeting others besides the tank either. The idea is that the target of the CC feels its effects and this is enough to draw their attention to the CC user.

So no longer based on damage to be nullified? Because otherwise, with tanks passively nullifying a majority of damage dealt to them even before defensives, CC applied when the target is already a tank with defensive up is going to be trivial by comparison, so... for all intents and purposes, CC would have to deny attacks against a non-tank or multiple players to be do much.

...Are we maybe trying to constrain this to raw, pre-mitigated damage? Because otherwise, yeah, scaling this way would neuter our only deliberate Enmity tool's ability to generate Enmity until the biggest possible 'oh shit' moments, or at least until it'd go make its mere slap fatal against a non-tank.

And if not based on damage to be nullified, instead just having the CC skill slap a bunch of extra Enmity onto the enemy baseline, then you basically just have standard Enmity skills again, but with all the more anti-synergy, since the same thing that holds them back from one player now forces them to turn and attack another, again granting the enemy the value you had just previous denied.

Practically, CC enmity could scale off the remaining party combined HP (current or maximum), with multipliers for fine tuning, as a stand in for actual damage done.

This doesn't quite make sense to me. Why would we get a combined-party-Vitality/HP Enmity-punch for using CC? And as a stand-in for whose actual damage done? The CC's, or what damage was denied? Sorry, I'm just not quite following here.

As an example, using low blow to stun at random should have less value than using it to cancel an attack. This is innately true if said attack is inconvenient for the rest of the party (like a large AoE that forces melee to move out) and the value could be reinforced mathematically by adding an enmity bonus to stun if party members were in the AoE when the cast began, as an example.

Okay, fair enough (probably not actually even that difficult to calculate by just having the cast continue ghosted and then checking whose still in it when it would have gone off otherwise).

And now back to the earlier point:

The CC in this case is the player's actively controlled method of getting in the enemy's face and drawing attention that I feel is missing from the current tank aggro generation system.

If it's just intended to force them to face the tank, then why not just use an Enmity tool like the old Butcher's Block, Rage of Halone, Power Slash, etc.? Again, just like it's least sensible to pop defensives when the enemy's being stunlocked anyways or vice versa, I don't see the intent here of instead having, say, {hamstringing the enemy as it's trying to reach someone else} as the main way for a tank to generate Enmity, since

1. it would neither have the visuals of something that'd lastingly get the enemy's attention nor feel tank-specific,
2. the Enmity generated would most often just remove most of the mitigation the skill would otherwise have provided unless the tank immediately runs away, and
3. in any other game, it'd already be redundant, as even a modicum of "smarter" mob scripting would have it swap targets when clearly unable to spend its upcoming action on its original target.

[Canadane]

I don’t think anyone wants an agro system back where the person who controlled the agro was the NIN.

If you are talking about SB battle style, I greatly enjoyed that. It being a team activity made it much more engaging.

[PyurBlue]

The objection across what you quoted was on your point, seemingly, that none of the skill-specific Enmity modifiers mattered because of the sheer massive passive modifiers tanks had. I pointed out that those were in two different eras, not simultaneous. We lost Enmity skills before we got any Enmity modifiers greater than a net doubling, with initial modifiers closer to a net third or less. And that such would be largely irrelevant anyways since we're free to remake all this as we see fit.

To condense my opening paragraph in post 22, it seems nonsensical that tanks can hold attention while doing nothing just because they've used a few attacks with the current enormous aggro generation and - nothing that they do, unless you look at the math used by the game, would make me think an enemy would prioritize a tank over someone else.

Fair enough. See above:
Would something like that suffice? Though shared by non-tanks, tanks would be the ones to most leverage it.

Mechanics similar to this would be very welcome. There actually is a related mechanic in FF already, but only when a player dies. All aggro is remove. A similar loss of interest should occur with inactivity or ineffective actions.

I mean, if we're going to make an Enmity system... why not explore that? Without it, we at best have a slightly more interesting extra combo. With it... we've potentially got a way to interestingly sandbox encounter designs, especially for, say... Hunts and certain dungeon bosses (anything less formalized than a strict raid) by manipulating what skills they'd use or strategies they'd pursue, etc.

Ideally... we would eventually get to there, even if it might be jumping the gun a little at present.

It's an excellent idea. The feeling that it is jumping the gun is what caused me to make my comment about it being out of scope but in hindsight maybe that wasn't the best way to look at it. The enmity system would need to change depending on whether or not this was in place.

I don't think you're quite understanding me, then.

If Enmity produced is based on the damage (in)directly to be nullified, then that means you have to let the mob attack a non-tank for the tank to then generate substantial Enmity... at which point it gradually gets pulled off the tank again because the CC is worth that much less if only obstructing attacks to the tank (bind/heavy not at all unless the tank walks out of range and stuns not at all if, say, the tank were already in Hallowed Ground).

Yes, these are potential issues with a defense based enmity system. However there is a lot of freedom in defining what negated damage means which creates some dials to turn to tweak the system. Say if shields count as negated damage when cast that would provide a method for tanks to generate enmity without any other party member needing to be targeted before them.

Though thinking about it, having the enemy's attention pulled to a non tank party member doesn't sound that bad - if the tank can intervene and generate enmity from doing so. Imagine the opening of a raid boss fight where the the boss goes for the DPS only to have the tank put a tether on the boss, or perhaps covering the target DPS, and that action having enmity tied to it. While initially the boss would be interested in a non tank, it wouldn't last long and correcting this situation would take some direct tank engagement.

To skip ahead briefly before returning...

In practice, though, they're more likely to be anti-synergetic, for the same reason Holy spam during an invuln is.

If a Ranged CCs a melee enemy chasing it, that's 100% mitigation over that duration. If a tank CCs a melee enemy chasing another player, that's 100% mitigation over that duration. If a tank CCs a melee enemy chasing another player and in doing so forces that enemy to attack said tank instead, that's only some 35% mitigation (over the non-tanks' passive mit). It's the worst choice the party could make in that situation.

(Moreover, XIV's unique in that the mob wouldn't just turn and slap whoever they still can. In WoW, for instance, if a tank gets hit with a debuff that stuns them until they're next struck, the mobs just swap and attack whoever else. In GW2, similar. A mob that wants to attack player A but gets bound and can only attack player B will then attack player B. So all that, too, is still something we could easily flip a switch on however we please.)

If a ranged party member could kite an enemy without getting hit that would lower that enemy's damage output more than a tank using defenses to reduce HP lost to hits. Whether or not this strategy works over an entire fight will depend on a number of factors. Can the ranged player do this indefinitely? Does CC take resources from the ranged party member? Does the enemy being kited have the ability to cast a ranged TB that a Ranged can't survive? Is it beneficial for the party if the enemy is held at a specific location?

Mechanically the tools that would allow the ranged player to kite successfully forever could be removed. Thematically I'd imagine that the ranged player would be more focused on damaging the enemy.

It does, but is there any part of that which is especially tank-ish? Tanks started off with the least CC of any role, and even now CC is far from tank-specific.

When I think of a tank, I don't think of an arrow pinning one's foot, a kick to the back of the knee, or a sleep spell, etc. I think of someone actively blocking the path or diverting my attention directly, not merely harassing/harrying the mob as it goes.

The image of actively blocking the path to allies is also what comes to my mind when I think of the tank role. DPSing, but with more aggro, doesn't conjure that image when I'm playing the game. Pinning an enemy down with an arrow (or sword) actually sounds closer to the tank ideal. I also expect that the party member in heavy armor would be the one to try this because it's risky. The tank would be the one to try to trip or shove a foe because if they made a mistake they'd have the least chance of suffering a fatal blow because of it.

At some point I think this amounts to more than passive harassment too. The tank won't step back after trying to trip you on stab you in the foot. The tank will follow up with a full blown attack. If this is to be reflected in the game then perhaps enmity bonuses on attacks could be kept, but tie them to the state of the enemy. If you as the tank have the enemy under CC, then your attacks get an enmity bonus.

So no longer based on damage to be nullified? Because otherwise, with tanks passively nullifying a majority of damage dealt to them even before defensives, CC applied when the target is already a tank with defensive up is going to be trivial by comparison, so... for all intents and purposes, CC would have to deny attacks against a non-tank or multiple players to be do much.

...Are we maybe trying to constrain this to raw, pre-mitigated damage? Because otherwise, yeah, scaling this way would neuter our only deliberate Enmity tool's ability to generate Enmity until the biggest possible 'oh shit' moments, or at least until it'd go make its mere slap fatal against a non-tank.

And if not based on damage to be nullified, instead just having the CC skill slap a bunch of extra Enmity onto the enemy baseline, then you basically just have standard Enmity skills again, but with all the more anti-synergy, since the same thing that holds them back from one player now forces them to turn and attack another, again granting the enemy the value you had just previous denied.

Originally I didn't specify damage reduction based enmity, but "disrupting enemy offense". Damage reduction/nullification would be a part of that, but not the sum total of tank enmity generation. Enmity on abilities that reduce attack potential fits, even if the enemy isn't attacking.

Your point about CC going to waste is an important consideration. It would likely be the case for CC used in the opener to establish aggro, but afterward the CC should have more value being used to negate damage. I tried to elaborate on this:

Some of the CC might be incidental as it's used purely for aggro purposes but I think this is fine as long as it doesn't all get used this way. As an example, using low blow to stun at random should have less value than using it to cancel an attack. This is innately true if said attack is inconvenient for the rest of the party (like a large AoE that forces melee to move out) and the value could be reinforced mathematically by adding an enmity bonus to stun if party members were in the AoE when the cast began, as an example.

This doesn't quite make sense to me. Why would we get a combined-party-Vitality/HP Enmity-punch for using CC? And as a stand-in for whose actual damage done? The CC's, or what damage was denied? Sorry, I'm just not quite following here.

This was just a proposition for a mathematical way to generate an enmity score. The idea is to assume that the CC has some amount of potential value just by being applied to the enemy and this is used as a stand in for damage that the enemy could do, but has not (yet). The use of party HP is arbitrary, but this number should scale with the level of the encounter, which would be convenient for calculation.

Okay, fair enough (probably not actually even that difficult to calculate by just having the cast continue ghosted and then checking whose still in it when it would have gone off otherwise).

And now back to the earlier point:

If it's just intended to force them to face the tank, then why not just use an Enmity tool like the old Butcher's Block, Rage of Halone, Power Slash, etc.? Again, just like it's least sensible to pop defensives when the enemy's being stunlocked anyways or vice versa, I don't see the intent here of instead having, say, {hamstringing the enemy as it's trying to reach someone else} as the main way for a tank to generate Enmity, since

1. it would neither have the visuals of something that'd lastingly get the enemy's attention nor feel tank-specific,
2. the Enmity generated would most often just remove most of the mitigation the skill would otherwise have provided unless the tank immediately runs away, and
3. in any other game, it'd already be redundant, as even a modicum of "smarter" mob scripting would have it swap targets when clearly unable to spend its upcoming action on its original target.

I can't tell the difference between Butcher's Block and Midare Setsugekka. Butcher's Block doesn't look like it should draw any more attention than Midare and if I read tool tips, Midare is much stronger. If the Midare comparison isn't convincing because Midare is a special skill and not just a filler combo, then replace with Gekko, Kasha, or Yukikaze. Visually I'd expect the SAM to draw as much attention as the WAR.

If the tank were trying to hold down the enemy to prevent it from attacking or moving at all, then I'd feel like the tank would certainly be the priority on that enemy's mind. This may be my own personal interpretation since you feel the opposite.

[Sparkthor]

If you are talking about SB battle style, I greatly enjoyed that. It being a team activity made it much more engaging.

If you mean "team activity" you mean "have your dps click on diversion on cd" or "have a NIN" not really a better thing that todays where aggro is a no existent. Also it put tanks on a very strict ranking : WAR > DRK > PLD for aggro.

Also I think there is many "sense" to have about emnity, FFXIV is a video game rules which stand with video games rules, and the core gameplay expect mobs and bosses to focus on very resilient target in order to test them. And hopefully tanks are resilient because many hard content bosses need 2 attacks to kill a non tank player.

I also wonder : what could bring a more complex aggro system in the actual gameplay of FFXIV ?
I can understand active and very dynamic aggro system is fun. I've played some action MMO with such systems and it was cool, but it was on action style, and I think it work well here because it force tank players to not build aggro and be passive when the boss is a bit more active. So tanks need to be active and focused to not die to a no blocked hit and find opening to maintain the top aggro.
But does this could work in FFXIV ? I don't think so because FFXIV main rule is "ABC", and all gcd action to tanks are offensive one (but clemency, which is nearly never used for this reason), while defensives are only abilities. So to justify having a more dynamic system, to me it would need to create GCD meaningfull defensives actions, and manage to learn tank to use them (and it's not really easy in FFXIV because even heals have hard time casting healing gcd).

Also, FFXIV is a MMO where "everybody is a dps", and considering supports roles are supposed to deal something around 60% of a dps dommage, you cannot tell them to stop focusing on this (And this is a healer issues where they are supposed to DPS but don't feel they have the tools to do so). So tanks share a dps responsibility. They also have their survival responsibilities and group mitigation one. Do they really need to have a focus on aggro ? To my understanding, tanks in WoW have a heavy focus on aggro management because they deal no relevant dommage compared to DPS, so as heal.

In a nutshell, I don't think having a more dynamic aggro system on FXIV would impact the game as much as having better identities, better fight design and an overhaul of healing in the game. You have to choose your battle.

However I really enjoy theses kind of discussions.