Thread: Intuitive Tanking.

The longer a fight goes on the more damage you take and if you don't tank the boss for a while you recover to what you had before? That's pretty much what you wrote and want introduced?

It exists and its called Titan Extreme mode.

I just want to give my thoughts.

1. It's only easy if you are geared similarly to the dps/healers, if you are geared under it can be a nightmare to hold hate, or even just downright impossible. But regardless, I enjoy tanking, even if you are just stood there most of the time.

2. Then fight harder enemies. Of course something like Ifrit HM is going to be challenging when you are fresh level 50 with your AF armour, but once you gear up, it's going to be a cake walk. But how can you address this? You can either make harder content easier, requiring you to need lower gear, so all the fights are tuned to your AF armour. That then leaves no room for gear progress otherwise you would start curbstomping the enemy. The other thing would be to make the bosses harder, but that then restricts the access into endgame for the fresh level 50s. They would be expected to grind out higher levelled gear straight away, just so that they can even stand a chance. As it stands, as long as you do the content that your gear level was designed for, it should still pose a challenge.

3. Considering there is a lack of tanks to start with, why would that make tanks roll DPS? Tanks are generally the most sought after and quick looks through PF can show you that when they have all slots filled except the tanks. That should in theory make more people want to play tanks as the need is there, but it doesn't. You also have to take into account the vast majority of the players are DPS. If you can replace one of the less needed tanks, which is a hard slot to fill, with a DPS, which is an easy slot to fill, you are going to. In the short of it, tanks can easily get into content, but DPS struggle more. There is no logical reason why a tank would start rolling on DPS/healer and in the same case why a DPS wouldn't go as a tank.

As for battle fatigue, I honestly don't like the idea. It is essentially a forced tank swap, but applied to all content. Ok, so it might make some fights without a tank swap, actually require one, but what about the fights that do require one? Would you tank swap based on the fatigue, or the actual tank swap debuff? If you get forced to switch on the fatigue, then who's to say that won't mess up the tank swap debuff? If you get forced to switch, but the debuff timer hasn't worn out yet, you then get smacked by it, increasing the timer and needing to swap again for that, but the other tank hasn't recovered yet, that's a bit of a bind you are in. 2 tanks who really shouldn't be tanking, not a good idea.

So, what if you switch on the debuff? Well then, what's the point of the fatigue to begin with if it doesn't change the fight? Adding to that, if you do make it so that tanks can recover more than their initial state as it were, then it makes the fight even more trivial. Assuming you recover quicker than the main tank, so that you don't end in a position where both tanks get slowly worn down as the recovery isn't enough, that then leads to the position that the tanks will be taking less and less damage the more they swap, which brings us to your second point where you have already stated that things do too little damage in the first place, and what you suggest makes tanks take even less damage over the course of a fight.

Overall, there are several problems with your idea of a battle fatigue, mainly focused around tank swap mechanics already in the game, and that's without even giving specific examples, one big fight where I can imagine battle fatigue would be the worst is in the case of Titan Extreme. Adding Vulnerability up and then naturally increasing the damage you take just for being there isn't going to be fun, especially for the healers.

Tanks do take more damage as a battle goes longer. It's called running out of cooldowns, and mages running out of mana.

I did mention that. Tank 1 goes in, started taking more damage due to more attacks. Tank 2 isn't getting beat on, and so gains Vul down. When tank 2 gets a decent enough Vul down, swaps with Tank 1. Tank 1 then recovers while tank 2 is taking the beating and getting weaker.

With that system, the recovery from fatigue would have to be quicker than the increase in the fatigue, otherwise you end with a situation where both tanks will end up in a fatigued state, which is meant to cause a tank swap. So, assuming recovery is quicker than weakening, as tank 1 recovers, they will get into the vul down stage, you can then swap, tank 2 then gets vul down, swap. You will end up with a state of 2 tanks that will have a permanent vul down state, which means in the end, the tanks are taking less damage as a whole, which is something you didn't like in the first place as evidenced by your second point in the first post.

you also have to consider fight mechanics, when adds show up and you've just tank swapped, you then have a weakened tank going after adds and correct me if I'm wrong, but the adds in T9 do hit very hard, having a weakened tank when tanking hard hitting adds isn't desirable at all, however, there is no way to predict when this situation will come up, it might happen the first time, but not the next due to the random variations in the damage the tank takes, just due to random variances in damage, how quickly the dps can deplete the enemies HP, meaning you would get to the same point with less damage taken, which will screw up timings on the swap. I am assuming the weakened state is going to be something quite drastic, as just a small drop isn't going to force anybody to swap.

As for Titan Extreme, no it isn't current, but the system has to work on all encounters, and so past fights are still relevant, especially for ones that are just getting to them. You might not care for them anymore, but others do and speaking of it having to work with everything, what about 4 man dungeons, or 4 man trials? Are you going to make the solo tank tank them in a weakened state, or make it so that they never get that far to begin with which makes the whole thing pointless anyway.

Fair enough if you only wanted to add it to SCoB, but you never said that, so it's a safe assumption that you wanted it on everything, and in most cases, it won't work out, especially not the way you seem to be envisioning it. Tank 1 goes in, started taking more damage due to more attacks. Tank 2 isn't getting beat on, and so gains Vul down. When tank 2 gets a decent enough Vul down, swaps with Tank 1. Tank 1 then recovers while tank 2 is taking the beating and getting weaker.

With that system, the recovery from fatigue would have to be quicker than the increase in the fatigue, otherwise you end with a situation where both tanks will end up in a fatigued state, which is meant to cause a tank swap. So, assuming recovery is quicker than weakening, as tank 1 recovers, they will get into the vul down stage, you can then swap, tank 2 then gets vul down, swap. You will end up with a state of 2 tanks that will have a permanent vul down state, which means in the end, the tanks are taking less damage as a whole, which is something you didn't like in the first place as evidenced by your second point in the first post.

you also have to consider fight mechanics, when adds show up and you've just tank swapped, you then have a weakened tank going after adds and correct me if I'm wrong, but the adds in T9 do hit very hard, having a weakened tank when tanking hard hitting adds isn't desirable at all, however, there is no way to predict when this situation will come up, it might happen the first time, but not the next due to the random variations in the damage the tank takes, just due to random variances in damage, how quickly the dps can deplete the enemies HP, meaning you would get to the same point with less damage taken, which will screw up timings on the swap. I am assuming the weakened state is going to be something quite drastic, as just a small drop isn't going to force anybody to swap.

As for Titan Extreme, no it isn't current, but the system has to work on all encounters, and so past fights are still relevant, especially for ones that are just getting to them. You might not care for them anymore, but others do and speaking of it having to work with everything, what about 4 man dungeons, or 4 man trials? Are you going to make the solo tank tank them in a weakened state, or make it so that they never get that far to begin with which makes the whole thing pointless anyway.

Fair enough if you only wanted to add it to SCoB, but you never said that, so it's a safe assumption that you wanted it on everything, and in most cases, it won't work out, especially not the way you seem to be envisioning it.

So your idea is just a simple forced tank swap.
Pretty boring considering this is already one of the most boring mechanics in fights for tanks anyway.
Instead of "Oh I'm at three stacks provoke" It'll be "Oh I'm low fatigue, provoke"
Genius.

With all due respect, if people didn't catch on that the tanking in this game wouldn't exactly be hugely dynamic...I really don't know what they were playing. The game beats you over the head with how tanks function, what they do, what they're capable of. From 1 to 50, a Paladin (I don't know about warriors just yet) gains only a few options. At 50, you have a staggering five options for damage. (Roh Combo, Circle of Scorn, Spirits Within) that can work in a normal rotation. I don't think the mechanics of bosses need anything. I just think the options for PLD are very minimal in terms of 'excitement'.

Originally Posted by Ashkendor

How about T2? It's not like fights that can be done with single tanks (and parties that have two) are anything new.

Lol, bringing up enrage method as if that's the basis of how the fight should be done.
If you did T2 the correct way then tank swaps were necessary.