Thread: Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

And SMN with E4E/Virus... BLM with Lethargy/apocastasis/E4E...

Honestly, with the 'DPS comes first' meta that's so prevalent within the community, no one cares about support, just stopping power.

I disagree. It's not even the meta that is wrong. It's the players' skill and mentality. And it's the majority of the community that is at fault. They don't even take the time to read tooltips, like what, Foes reduce your damage as BRD? The DPS meta is not to be blamed when most of these players do 3 digits DPS which is so horrible and to think that now all DPS is capable of doing 2k+dps in Savage. I was in this Sophia EX clear party and we got 2 tank busters before add phase, all 4 DPS are well below my damage by a huge margin. That's a huge problem that is inherently from the player's skills, and not the meta. How do you blame the DPS meta when most of these players trying to clear contents do abysmal damage? It doesn't add up. Is pressing buttons really that hard?

I don't even know how these people get as low as 3digit DPS, DPS and OT alike . It's as if they aren't even using their combos, it's just appalling at this point. Or using macro which is terribad?

EDIT: nice DPS there.

The problem with guides is that they're often designed for target dummy conditions. So while you can memorise and practice the rotation if you're completely lost, unless you understand the rotation from first principles, you won't be able to adapt to more complex situations. Do you know why the moves are listed in that order? Do you know their potencies? If you're playing at a slightly higher latency and you clip at points, can you adjust the rotation to adapt to it?

To be fair, some guide makers try to account for this and create a number of case scenarios. Use this opener if you're MT. Use this opener if you have a NIN. This can become quite dense to read. Ultimately, the guidemaker ends up learning more about their job from writing the guide than the novice player does reading it.

There are things that we sometimes take for granted when explaining a subject. What's the function of an oGCD? Which skills are oGCDs? What is DoT clipping? How do DoT ticks work, and how do I calculate the potency loss from clipping? DoTs are an important element of every job, but I've only seen one job guide (for SMN) actually explain the math behind it.

This brings me to another problem: math. There comes a point where you need to put the guides aside and figure out for yourself how the potencies trade-off. Most of this is just napkin math involving simple addition and subtraction, but quite a few people find this daunting.

There's a lot more to dps than the sequence in which you press the buttons. 20-25% of your overall dps as a tank or melee dps comes from auto-attacks. If you're not physically glued to a mob all times, you're losing a substantial chunk of your dps, regardless of your rotation.

When a mechanic comes up, you can see players' attention immediately shift to the mechanic. Suddenly, dodging or moving to the correct position takes the complete focus. Buffs, debuffs, and DoTs are dropped. Contact with the boss/mobs is broken, and dps drops. This is partially from lack of exposure, and partially from a fear of screwing up and wiping the raid.

But mechanics need to stay in your peripheral vision. You know exactly when it's coming. You can see the AoE markers appear, but it's not time to move just yet. You know exactly when the mechanic happens, and you leave at the last possible second, and come back to the boss at the earliest possible moment. This is especially important for jobs with very high APM, such as NIN and DRK, where you could be losing two attacks to other jobs' one. To play melee well, you have to be absolutely relentless. Guides can't really teach you this, but watching and playing with players who you know are better than yourself can.

In fairness, the auto-attack change in 3.4 was partially designed to address some of the performance difference resulting from differences in melee uptime.

DPS is a good way of assessing your overall performance and tracking your progress over time, but it's not particularly useful for actually getting better. Some people look at it and get discouraged, either giving up or getting angry at the system. Others pat themselves on the back, and use it as an excuse not to push themselves harder. Other metrics, such as DoT/buff/stance uptime are much more beneficial to making improvements. These all indirectly reflect in your dps, but they actually tell you where the loss comes from. I feel like this is feedback which can be provided to the player without their peers becoming overly judgemental.

The main challenge isn't recognising that you've made a mistake. The main challenge is in figuring out where it was made, and how to fix it. That's why some players continue to improve while others stagnate. They're just good at self-assessment.

EDIT:
@Duelle:
The discussion regarding PLD is linked to that thread we referenced earlier in the discussion "Four Ways to Die". Truth is, the idea of tanks maximising their damage output is not a new idea in this game. WAR OTs were experimenting with pentamelds as early as first coil, and it was well accepted in the community. It only suddenly became a "problem" in Gordias, when there was suddenly (gasp!) a legitimate alternative to the MT slot. There were a lot of MTs who had become entirely too comfortable playing in a style which was extremely sub-optimal, simply because expectations were low (who cares about their dps, they're just the MT) and non-tanks didn't pick up on it. When MTs were suddenly forced to change because dps checks got tighter and people finally caught on, they lashed out against it, which is really what that thread was about. This may not be you specifically, but I cannot bring myself to respect that kind of behaviour. We need to be challenged. We need to be accountable. We need to get better.

People tried to make DRK into a lot of things that it wasn't, based on whatever preconceptions they came in with. I'm personally delighted with how it turned out. Weapons are generally either one-handed or two-handed, so outside of a three-handed weapon user, it sounds like you were against the idea of another tank. I find MT interesting, but outside of very specific fights, PLD's gameplay generally doesn't cut it for me. I learnt to MT T9 on WAR during initial progression because I was desperate to find an interesting alternative, even though I have a preference for the sword aesthetic. I'm sure that there are other tanks out there who enjoy playing specific roles, but the playstyle that they're looking for doesn't exist yet. That's why we get new jobs every so often. Attracting non-tanks to the role is a bit of a bonus on the side.

You talk about tanks "pretending to be dps" disparagingly, as if they're sacrificing their ability to tank by outputting more damage. The thing is, because they know the damage patterns of a fight, they can do this without sacrificing their defensive capabilities. You only need to keep your shield up all the time if you don't have any idea when the damage goes out. True mastery of the fight comes when you know the damage patterns well enough to understand when this is necessary and when it is not. They do more dps because they mitigate more effectively, not because they sacrifice it wantonly.

I suppose I've tended to gloss over some of the things that you consider to be critical because, if you don't do those things, you can't tank (price of entry). But most of those things are significantly easier to do when you don't push yourself and play extremely safely. You can play with 100% Shield Oath uptime and mitigate tankbusters even if you know nothing about the fight. Some players may still struggle with it, but it really is the bare minimum required to clear. The skill ceiling is much, much higher, and that's what we're talking about.

If this doesn't fit you personally, then don't take it personally. Not everything that I'm writing is directed solely at you.

Originally Posted by Lyth

When MTs were suddenly forced to change because dps checks got tighter and people finally caught on, they lashed out against it, which is really what that thread was about.

Between design and pacing, the devs largely expected raids to basically grind out tomes and kill what they could while the DPS geared up to do meet the checks of A3S and beyond. Instead, what happened was that raids decided to use tank DPS to circumvent that (basically taking a shortcut) using something the devs didn't really foresee. Much like they didn't foresee raids using healer DPS to get clears faster than intended during ARR.

People tried to make DRK into a lot of things that it wasn't, based on whatever preconceptions they came in with. I'm personally delighted with how it turned out. Weapons are generally either one-handed or two-handed, so outside of a three-handed weapon user, it sounds like you were against the idea of another tank.

Not really. See: BST, SAM, MTK, DNC.

As far as "what DRK wasn't", we can go back to the old discussions after the job was announced. A job known for sacrificing HP to deal high damage (FFIV, FFVIII, FFX-2) and having built in drains (FFTactics, FFXI) was turned into a tank. The precedent for a darkness-themed tank does exist (Everquest, WoW, Lineage II to name three games), but let's at least recognize that some expected the job to be a DPS because they wanted to be the guy with the huge sword dealing high DPS. And frankly speaking, I can't blame anyone who felt disappointed at how DRK has been implemented. And yes, I can admit I'm a little worried that SE might try to pull this again with RDM, since much like DRK it is a highly requested job.

I find MT interesting, but outside of very specific fights, PLD's gameplay generally doesn't cut it for me.

Which is fine. I don't expect everyone to fall in love with PLD or to find it appealing enough to make it their main. We'd all play the same job if that were the case.

You talk about tanks "pretending to be dps" disparagingly, as if they're sacrificing their ability to tank by outputting more damage.

If you're dropping Shield Oath/Grit/Defiance while still taking hits to the face, you are sacrificing the mitigation that comes with your primary role (to badly paraphrase the legendary Alamo, "sheild oeth iz 4 tank, swoard oeth iz 4 fite"). As I've said, I'd have no problem with this if it were exclusive to one job in the guise of "unique gameplay". It's when it starts spilling over to the other tanks and leads to belittling others as a result that I feel I have to voice my concerns and opinions on the matter.

To me, judging tanks by how much damage they deal is the wrong way to approach raid comps and player dynamics. It's like judging a construction worker by how much they know about the business accounts of the company they work for. It's unreasonable and irrelevant to the duties of that person.

That being said, damage to a tank is a means of holding aggro, and as such a tank should use the skills in their arsenal when possible. As a PLD, as I said before, it's rotating and prioritizing Rage of Halone, Goring Blade and Royal Authority while doing the rest of the things expected of the tank; in short, we already have a gameplay model that encourages maximizing damage output without engaging in unintended behaviors that we aren't even designed for.

Originally Posted by Sarcatica

It's only fair that raids account for the total DPS everyone can bring, it shows how capable you are as a tank at understanding how to time your CDs properly and effectively do damage while tanking, with or without tank stance alike. This shows the level of competency if you are into raiding. What's funny is that a lot of veteran tank raiders had been doing DPS ever since the 2.x period. Now this concept is everywhere because those tanks can get away with it, but what does it leave to the new tanks trying to raid? They can't replicate this due to the skillgap. This is just how it is. People need to understand that this concept only works at the top. IF you don't like the idea, you can just do whatever you want anyway.

Problem is, shit rolls downhill. The stuff done at the top trickles down to the bottom in time. As I've mentioned in the past, this is why during ARR I had WARs say to my face that they couldn't tank HM Garuda or Titan when the problem was in Coil. The problems of the 1% become everyone's problem.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

WAR had a variable stance cost in 2.x. Changing from DPS non-stance to a stack-retaining DPS stance two levels later would seem to be purposeful removal of that cost on a theme that SE felt should WARs should push over the added levels.

I disagree. Deliverance was added because it makes no sense for WAR to not have access to its job-specific resource when not tanking. Sure, Wrath is one-dimensional as a resource, but it sucks to go from having the Wrath mechanic while tanking to having nothing after the tank swap. This is why I agree with the idea of WAR getting Deliverance (I was quite happy for WAR when it was first announced).

And why remove a huge portion of interesting gameplay from every other tank, pigeon-holing all any "skillful play" tank into a single job?

We often talk about varying gameplay, and part of that is differing levels of input needed to do the thing the job is intended for. Not every job should be built around the same level of input; some should be simple like PLD, while others should be more button-intensive like DRG and MCH. That's the idea behind what I've suggested.

Originally Posted by Duelle

As I've said, I'd have no problem with this if it were exclusive to one job in the guise of "unique gameplay".

It's unreasonable and irrelevant to the duties of that person.

problems of the 1% become everyone's problem.

To address these three points in particular:

Tank stance will always be dropped by tanks in order to do more damage if they so wish. Unless you wholesale nerf the base to terribad DPS you will still have people dropping stance to do more damage. I'd say that the choice to drop your tank stance is about as ingrained into tanking now as the shield stance itself.

Secondly, if you're a chartered accountant who happens to work construction, you better know how to do basic math, and DPSing as tanks is some of the most braindead activities in the game. You should at least try in difficult content to be better than the bare minimum. Again, doesn't matter in casual content but in savage content it does. I can't imagine the frustration of being in a static where the tanks did ~500 DPS and said that because they were holding aggro everything was fine on the 5% enrages. You're asking for blood from a stone (even better DPS) when you're doing the least work out there. Talk about getting carried though Savage.

Finally, if trickles down because it's the best way to do it. Anybody can try and do the suboptimal thing, and it might work, but not for everyone (the best thing can be the easiest thing in terms of DPS), or at all (running DRK/PLD and expecting to have efficient burn of adds in A9S). You expect people to make lives harder for them because you think they should be more hardcore? What are you, some elitist?! /s