Butcher's Block... worthless.

[Leiron]

Good tanks differ themselves from bad tanks beyond enmity generation.
Anyone can hold agro.
What makes a tank good, is how quickly they pick up adds, interrupts, silences, stuns, knowing the mechanics.
All of which has far greater consequences.

[Gamemako]

still...have you ever lost aggro in 2.0? (don't count rare occasion when someone (bardXD) pulls before you can do anything) I think the answer is no. so what changes?

I had the luxury of playing with +1 MNK, SMN, BLM with ilvl50-55 gear, where simply smashing Overpower will get aggro taken from you in a hurry. I continued to gear this way for spiritbonding. Poor execution will result in you losing aggro, and the margin of error was pretty damn small. To claim that enmity was lolnp before and no different now is pretty godsdamned disingenuous.

That's a horrible analogy. Just because square tweaked Defiance and Shield oath doesnt mean everyone will start facerolling Turn 5 Now.

We were talking about enmity, and yes, people are facerolling enmity for everything now. It is an exact analogy. There is no way you can lose aggro without completely failing to touch a mob.

Theres more to End Game Raiding than just holding threat.

Red herring. "But there's other stuff!" doesn't justify trivialization of enmity, just as the existence of PLD would not justify the outright deletion of WAR. Well, unless you're arguing that all tank players are too stupid to deal with enmity while tanking, in which case I question your good sense.

The Changes made it easier for a Tanks who are equally Geared or Outgeared their party members. Still possible to pull threat off of undergeared tank and anything Pre-50.

Enmity is easier while leveling due to the gear sync and early access to high-enmity abilities (whereas DPS are still getting their primary attacks up to level 50), not to mention that it isn't (and never was) possible to pull aggro off a tank pre-50. There is also a base strength modifier unaffected by weapon damage which prevents anything but the most extreme undergearing from being a problem.

If you ask me, the change made tanking more Future Proof, because as the DPS margin continues to grow between tanks and pure DPS, it would become a problem since PLD and WAR both sacrifice % of their Damage. This was a re-evaluation of how fast DPS threat scaled.

That would be a misunderstanding of enmity in general. Potency does not scale differently and primary stats do not scale differently as you level. Tanks will continue to have a large enmity-potency lead, and the primary stats on armors and weapons mean that tanks always have a strength value proportional to DPS.

Good tanks pick up adds quickly and efficiently. Good tanks keep the appropriate buffs/debuffs up at all times.

Except that both of these were beholden to the enmity subgame that was mutilated by 2.1. You needed room to put down enough enmity that you could get Maim up, and if you didn't have enough of a cushion, you'd be chasing after the mobs that decided the DoT-spamming SMN looked tasty while you were smacking something else. If you were collecting adds, you had to build enmity on those adds and gather others at the same time, while those others would immediately head for the healer or other DPS. People view enmity as trivial in 2.0 when they were overgeared with 150 hours of practice grabbing every opponent and putting exactly the right amount of enmity on each to hold it, just like people who talk about how loleasy Twintania is when it was previously thought nearly impossible.

Because DPS and healers scale better than us

Can stop right there, because they don't.

What makes a tank good, is how quickly they pick up adds, interrupts, silences, stuns, knowing the mechanics.

Trololo interrupts, because WAR totally can interrupt more than a DPS. And man, knowing game mechanics, like knowing how to sit in one spot for the entirety of Titan HM and never moving an inch? SO PRO.

[Leiron]

Trololo interrupts, because WAR totally can interrupt more than a DPS. And man, knowing game mechanics, like knowing how to sit in one spot for the entirety of Titan HM and never moving an inch? SO PRO.

And there is so much skill hitting the same 3 buttons in sequence over and over again right?
Or hitting Overpower over and over for AOE agro right?
Or Flash?

To even suggest that there was any skill in gaining enmity is completely false.
Tanks never had to manage agro. They only had to generate it.
This is a case of complaining for the sake of complaining.

[Gamemako]

Tanks never had to manage agro. They only had to generate it.
DPS were the ones that had to manage it

If you had DPS considering enmity, then you are a bad tank. Enmity is not their job, it's yours. Do you see the word "enmity" plastered all over MNK abilities? Is it anywhere at all? Nope. MNK's job is to be hammering opponents as hard as possible without getting smashed by random-target attacks (you know, like the plumes that are their job and NOT yours).

[Leiron]

If you had DPS considering enmity, then you are a bad tank.

So if you are a tank that does everything right, but you have a GC ilvl 50 weapon and they have relic +1 and pull agro, you're a bad tank?
Blanket statements are bad.

Sorry but, enmity generation is something a tank does, its not something they manage.
They don't raise, lower or siphon.
They mash their combos/AOE ability and generate it.

Enmity is not their job, it's yours. Do you see the word "enmity" plastered all over MNK abilities? Is it anywhere at all? Nope. MNK's job is to be hammering opponents as hard as possible without getting smashed by random-target attacks (you know, like the plumes that are their job and NOT yours).

Pardon but in EQ, enmity was not listed in any of a DPS' abilities, but what do you know, DPS had to help manage threat.
This was the same in WoW's early days of tanking, where management of agro was really beyond the tank.

It fell down to the DPS to hold back and not generate too much enmity.
I fail to see why you are so intent on arguing the matter.


Tank's dont do squat for enmity management.
They don't decide anything, let's not pretend they do.

[Gamemako]

So if you are a tank that does everything right, but you have a GC ilvl 50 weapon and they have relic +1 and pull agro, you're a bad tank?
Blanket statements are bad.

Actually, I did (not could do, did) that frequently -- I used an ilvl55 GC weapon against full +1 DPS and held aggro just fine. If you couldn't, it's because you're bad.

[Leiron]

Actually, I did (not could do, did) that frequently -- I used an ilvl55 GC weapon against full +1 DPS and held aggro just fine. If you couldn't, it's because you're bad.

Cool, and I did too, and was playing with a Bard, a BLM and WHM and my experience was entirely the opposite. Agro was a struggle to maintain unless they intentionally throttled their DPS.

If your DPS couldn't pull agro, its because they are bad, or they pitied you and held back.

The bat swings both ways.

[Calib0s]

People view enmity as trivial in 2.0 when they were overgeared with 150 hours of practice grabbing every opponent and putting exactly the right amount of enmity on each to hold it, just like people who talk about how loleasy Twintania is when it was previously thought nearly impossible.

Actually, I did (not could do, did) that frequently -- I used an ilvl55 GC weapon against full +1 DPS and held aggro just fine. If you couldn't, it's because you're bad.

Which is it?

[Giantbane]

Tank's dont do squat for enmity management.
They don't decide anything, let's not pretend they do.

For PLD? No, there's very little they decide. That's the point. PLD is supposed to be an easier tank to play because some people want that. They don't want to worry about de-buffs, different combos, or ability synergy. They just want to worry about controlling their enmity on multiple targets (single target shouldn't be an issue), using their buffs to stay alive and not standing in the fire.

WAR? There was a lot they could do. Unchained for more threat or Inner Beast for mitigation? Do I pick a combo that does the most enmity, the most damage, does the most mitigation (include SP in 2.1)? How soon do I have enough threat to work in a maim combo which boosts my BB even further? During AoE threat, can I work in a maim combo to boost my damage and refresh wrath stacks? During AoE threat, how soon could I swap to target cycling to conserve TP?

As a WAR, there was a lot that could go into your decisions on how you manage damage vs. mitigation vs. threat. Now, there is no decision, it's just derp derp derp all the way home.


Before, you needed to maintain your threat to stay above DPS. Now you can open up with damage buffs and high threat moves (WAR or PLD) and and just go make a sandwich while the rest of the team finishes the fight.

[Giantbane]

I don't understand the scaling argument. I have never seen any math that actually suggests that DPS enmity scales faster than Tank enmity.

And it doesn't really pass the smell test either. A PLD just doing his Rage of Halone combo generates 683 potency of enmity per GCD without using any off GCD abilities, fight or flight or shield oath. How many damage classes can maintain that kind of potency per attack?

And that's just the baseline threat. Throw in damage buffs (fight or flight, unchained, berserk), off GCD abilities and the ~15-20% boost that old shield oath/defiance used to supply and I don't see how any of the DPS classes can scale faster. Even with DPS gaining more damage stats on their accessories (if you don't include crafted gear), I find it difficult they will be able to keep pace with that kind of threat multiplier.

It doesn't even mesh well with most of the arguments in this thread. If enmity "wasn't a problem in 2.0" if you were well geared, then obviously being at the top level of Tank gear meant you could hold threat against the top level of DPS gear. Which tells me that scaling wasn't an issue here either.