Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
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:

Quote Originally Posted by PyurBlue View Post
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.