How to make tanks more fun to play (devs please read)

[therpgfanatic]

Can I finally post again? Ok great. Stupid posting limits have prevented me from responding to anything since this morning.

I will update this post with response now.

First off, I want to clarify that I think tanks are capable of doing their role just fine. The problem has never been that tanks cannot tank.

The problem is that it's not very fun to be a tank for players such as myself who traditionally gravitate to the tank classes in MMO. I have been playing tanks since the mid 90s, in dozens of games, both Western and Eastern in origin. I have sampled tons of designs of what a "tank" is, so I am very adaptable.

And tanks not being very fun to a wide number of the playerbase is a problem for anyone that hates long wait times in Duty Finder, or difficulty finding a good tank for your FC. The root of the problem isn't about bad attitudes of other players or that the role is very stressful. Healers have that same issue and yet there are a lot more healers than tanks. The difference is that, as far as healers, the FF XIV healers Scholar and White Mage are actually more fun than your typical MMO healer.

And I don't need to play the class myself to see other players' YouTube commentary videos and guides; I can see for myself exactly what is going on. I'm gradually leveling up my Conjurer right now, so I know from first hand experience this low lv Conjurer is more fun to play and level than anything I've done in other MMOs as a healer.

I cannot say the same about Gladiators. I've been having flashbacks of my days leveling a vanilla World of Warcraft Protection Paladin, and I don't say that in a good way. So long as I live I will never level another Gladiator as they are today and I could not recommend it to anyone else.

Secondly, at no such time did I say Cover should replace Shield / Sword Oath. I said it should be a toggle similar to how the oaths work, with the ability to switch it on/off at will.

Thirdly, to those who are accusing me of being a bad player / not educated tank by spamming uncomboed Halone;

Read this chart, http://valk.dancing-mad.com/tables/enmity-tables/

Halone has the highest threat (enmity) multiplier of all Paladin abilities except Flash. Halone is a x7.5 multiplier on Shield Oath; by contrast Fast Blade is x1.5 and Savage Blade is x.4.5

But Flash cannot be spammed indefinitely, requiring the Riot Blade combo to recover MP. But Halone uses little TP and, Paladins have a much larger TP bar than MP bar.

This is very easy to understand. It's basic math guys.

Performing three non-comboed Halones generates much more threat than a Fast Blade + Savage Blade + Halone combo. This is a mathematical fact.

Sure, if you can do your combo and not drop aggro, congrats you have acquired good gear. But your solution is not realistic. Some of you have been playing since 1.0. Guys like me have not. We do not have top tier gear, and we will never get top tier gear unless we can tank for people who already have top tier gear.

And it's impossible for us new 50 tanks to hold aggro against DPS and Healers in full i90 if we do things like Halone combo. The progression is different and has unique sets of challenge you didn't have, as you progressed before everyone (literally, it seems like everyone) has full i90.

I have no control over who goes into the Duty Finder groups. And it's not like I can just abandon a party if everyone is decked in top tier gear and try to get into a group of people with similar item levels. Even if there was no penalty for abandoning duty finders three times in a row, I would be abandoning every Duty Finder because they all have people in top tier gear.

So yeah, I and others make adjustments to how we play so we can still tank. And for me that is spamming Halone and forsaking anything else but defensive cooldowns.

Maybe top tier tanks don't notice the threat issues new 50 tanks have. That doesn't change the fact it exists, and I am not alone in noticing it; there are many threads about the topic in the tanking forums here, as well as on third party sites like GameFAQs and such.

The point is that, because of the design of the Paladin, it is very hard to have fun with the class until you have invested a serious amount of time into it. And now that I hit 50, I feel very limited in what I can do because it is challenging to hold aggro when everyone is better geared than my character. As many have said, many others players expect the tank to just do their job. They don't care that we are doing our best to gear up to progress.

It's the developers job to address issues with game balance and ensure it is fun. And right now it's not very fun to be a Paladin trying to level up because nearly all abilities triggering GCD when they shouldn't (meaning things like Shield Bash are difficult to use, as enemy cast time is nearly always shorter than the GCD), the damage is low making soloing very, very frustrating AND adding to the challenges of maintaining aggro against Duty Finder groups that have 20 item levels on you.

Enmity / DPS needs increasing, and something has to be done about the GCD tying our hands. And I do very much believe tanks having more iconic abilities would increase their appeal, but the mechanical issues need to be solved, too. It'd actually be great to make both changes at once; the developers would be sending a very clear message to the playerbase that they want people to enjoy playing tanks.

PS: About Provoke. The ability needs to force the target to attack the tank for at least 3 seconds. Simply putting the tank to the top of the aggro chart is not good enough if the tank cannot generate enough threat fast enough. Every Provoke I do has to be accompanied by spamming shield lob, and it is a coin toss if I will actually maintain aggro. If it was a healer who pulled aggro I find it impossible to recover aggro with anything but Halone spamming that mob, but I have even had difficulty using Provoke to pull aggro off my own Chocobo(!).

Paladins just do not do enough burst threat, and it is due to a combination of things; low damage, most abilities not having high threat multipliers, Provoke not forcing the target to attack the tank for a set period and the GCD being much longer than it should.

[Pooky_Pasha]

Thirdly, to those who are accusing me of being a bad player / not educated tank by spamming uncomboed Halone;

Well, the thing is you really are playing poorly/not educated. Lets look at the abilities:
Fast Blade: Delivers and attack with a potency of 150 (threat modifier 1.5)
Savage Blade: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. (threat modifier 4.5)

Additional Effect: Increased enmity
Combo Action: Fast Blade
Combo Potency: 200

Rage of Halone: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 (threat modifier 7.5)

Additional Effect: Increased enmity
Combo Action: Savage Blade
Combo Potency: 260
Combo Bonus: Reduces target's strength by 10%
Duration: 20s

So 3xRage of Halone=3x100x7.5=2250 enmity since an un-comboed Halone is only 100 potency. (This would really be 1800 in Shield Oath due to 20% damage reduction)

Now for the Fast Blade >> Savage Blade >> Halone combo: 150x1.5 + 200x4.5 (since Savage Blade has a combo potency of 200 instead of 100) + 260x7.5 (since Halone has a combo potency of 260 instead of 100)=3075 enmity. (This would be 2460 in Shield Oath).

Taking (3075-2250)/2250x100~37% more enmity from a comboed Halone than a spammed Halone. Also, you're missing out on the Combo Bonus: Reduces target's strength by 10% by just spamming un-comboed Halones, and your overall damage will be roughly 50% lower than it should be, depending on how you use your off-gcd abilities. The same is also true of WAR Butcher Block spam vs Butcher Block combo.

It should also be noted that the data you linked is old, and I do not believe it reflects the enmity buff both tank jobs received from the 2.1 patch. Please don't quote me on that though, but it wouldn't change that comboed Halone is roughly 37% more effective than spammed Halone.

As for how to make PLD a little less boring, I've been thinking put Spirits Within as the tail end of the Fast Blade >> Riot Blade combo. It would something like:
Spirits Within: Delivers an attack with a potency of 200.
Combo Action: Riot Blade
Combo Bonus: Damage scales up with current HP (up to a potency of 300)
Non-combo Additional Effect: Silence Duration: 1 sec
That might bloat the ability, however. There would probably also need to be a 30 sec cool down on the Silence effect. I will let the theorycrafters pick that apart if they want.

tl:dr You're "mathematical facts" are wrong. Read tooltips and the entirety of the Valk chart you linked.

[LRoland]

Cover getting an additional toggle version would be wonderful and certainly an iconic tribute to paladin passive abilities in other games. It would need to only trigger when teammates are low health, but some kind of visual cue that you just took a hit for your buddy would give some nice reinforcement to why I play a tank.

[BotenAnna]

I enjoy playing WAR because it is super fun and there's a lot to do, also maybe you should look up some PLD tanking guides if you are having problems holding threat!

Most of these changes you propose are so disruptive to game balance that I have a hard time believing that you are on the design team for any MMO that is or has been in production, but maybe that would explain why this one is so much better than them.

[therpgfanatic]

I enjoy playing WAR because it is super fun and there's a lot to do, also maybe you should look up some PLD tanking guides if you are having problems holding threat!

Please re-read my latest post. Especially the part about the mathematical facts involved in Halone spamming vs Halone comboing.

Seriously, it's such a cop out to accuse the player as being bad. It's actually pretty insulting. I have obviously been studying guides or I wouldn't know about the threat multipliers to begin with.

(and before you argue that I am insulting the devs with my statement, no. I am sure they have exhaustively playtested many things before pushing live. However I know how MMO playtesting works. It's always done to test for specific conditions because of time restrictions in delivering fresh content, and even open beta tend to miss things, especially if the testers are all using the same gear on the prebuilts. There are just some things you cannot see until the content goes live, such as the effects of Paladin design in a world where nearly all the Party Finder groups have top tier characters with a low tier tank who struggles to maintain aggro while doing anything but Halone spam. )

tl:dr Halone spamming works. I can tank effectively. However it is boring as hell, and limits my character more than it should.

[BotenAnna]

I'm no mathologist, but I'm pretty sure that with regards to the seafoam green parts of this chart:



It clearly states that comboed abilities generate much more hate per second. I don't have a degree in the arcane arts of mathologica, but I'm pretty sure that 750 times 3 is less than 3075, meaning maybe you should spend less time misreading charts and more time actually tanking where you would quickly find out that comboing your threat abilities makes it so you can actually hold threat, something you said you had a problem with.

[therpgfanatic]

I'm no mathologist, but I'm pretty sure that with regards to the seafoam green parts of this chart:



It clearly states that comboed abilities generate much more hate per second. I don't have a degree in the arcane arts of mathologica, but I'm pretty sure that 750 times 3 is less than 3075, meaning maybe you should spend less time misreading charts and more time actually tanking where you would quickly find out that comboing your threat abilities makes it so you can actually hold threat, something you said you had a problem with.

You are looking at it as if no other characters will be generating threat with their own abilities. So what you are saying is 100% incorrect. The fact is you don't generate significant threat until the end of the combo. In the 6 seconds that it takes to reach the Halone part of the combo other characters have an opportunity to pull the mob off you.


Using the damage parameters of the chart,

Fast Blade + Savage Blade = 1,125

x2 Halone = 1,500

If you are trying to build and maintain threat, using a non-comboed Halone is superior than the spiky threat of the Halone combo.

Also, 10% STR reduction, whoopie freakin do. I don't have problems taking too much damage. At all. I rarely ever die because I use all my defensive cooldowns and step aside from AoE cones.

I have been playing this game exhaustively since starting. If I am telling you that when I do a Halone combo I lost threat in eight mans with high tier DPS and healers, but if I spam Halone I maintain threat then I mean exactly what I'm saying. It's not a problem with not understanding the class, it's a problem with the class design and how it wasn't accounting for the realities of play.

I already covered this in a follow up post but, keeping it brief, the OP cited 30 years of experience with MMOs when the genre didn't come about till '97 with Ultima Online. Yeah, you could play NWN online, it was an MO, not an MMO. In the same way text-based games, Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) weren't MMOs. Yeah, it seems a minor consideration but when you're proposing radical class changes on the basis of a misleading statement then it becomes relevant.

As an aside, I used to raid in Everquest in the early days on dial up and can't even begin to fathom how I managed with a 30 minute disconnect. We used to prep for a raid and I'd often log back in surrounded by corpses because someone had accidentally aggroed the boss while I was frantically dialing up to get back online.

You have already been told that you are mistaken about MMORPGs being invented in the late 90s. Go read Dr. Richard Bartle's book, Designing Virtual Worlds and become educated on the actual history. You really need to drop this accusation because it's making you look foolish. MMORPGs are just a graphical MUD, and folks like Ralph Koster (lead design of Ultima Online) have repeatedly said this in interviews. Richard Garriot came up with the term MMORPG when marketing Ultima Online but it was by no means the first of its kind.

[XNihili]

You are looking at it as if no other characters will be generating threat with their own abilities. So what you are saying is 100% incorrect. The fact is you don't generate significant threat until the end of the combo. In the 6 seconds that it takes to reach the Rage part of the combo other characters have an opportunity to pull the mob off you.


Using the damage parameters of the chart,

Fast Blade + Savage Blade = 1,125

x2 Halone = 1,500

If you are trying to build and maintain threat, using a non-comboed Halone is superior than the spiky threat of the Halone combo.

So you are generating slightly more hate on the 2 first GCD then a truckload less after (825 from the previous page calculation) ...
Is it really the superior way ? Every 3 GCD you are losing that much threat potential.
Why don't you ask the other players to let you build hate first ?

[therpgfanatic]

So you are generating slightly more hate on the 2 first GCD then a truckload less after (825 from the previous page calculation) ...
Is it really the superior way ? Every 3 GCD you are losing that much threat potential.
Why don't you ask the other players to let you build hate first ?

Again, you are arguing for Spiky threat instead of consistent steady threat.

Spiky threat gives opportunities to lose aggro to DPS doing spiky damage, or healers doing spiky healing. OR those who have superior item tiers that consistently do way more damage to the point they generate more threat than the tank.


If all game solutions could be boiled down to simply asking players to do something then people wouldn't constantly be complaining about how "toxic" the community is. It's much more likely players will vote abandon so they can do a speed run than cater to the shortcomings of a tank geared below them.

Fact is threat in the game isn't perfect. Medica II having problems is another good example of this game having balance issues with tanks threat generation ability, http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ence_its_math/ . During Garuda hard it took dozens of tries until my party finally had a White Mage who didn't spam Medica II during the adds phase and cause a wipe.

Doesn't anyone else think it's silly that a White Mage was given a heal spell that nearly always pulls aggro off the tank?

[XNihili]

Again, you are arguing for Spiky threat instead of consistent steady threat.

Spiky threat gives opportunities to lose aggro to DPS doing spiky damage, or healers doing spiky healing.

We can't call this Spiky when it is not random. If you consider 3 GCD being a hate cycle, then the combo is a consistent, steady yet more efficient threat generation.
On the long run, which method is having generated the most hate ? Yours or this ?
This game threat management is kinda simple compared to FFXI for example. You can gain hate but never lose it even if you are slapped around like a wuss.
Even if you lose hate a few second at the Savage Blade using the combo way, the boosted comboed Rage of Halone is making you ahead of a Rage of Halone spam.
Asking for a few second to build hate works most of the time cauz no DPS want to tank/die.