Thread: Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

Originally Posted by Lyth

3 years and one expansion later is a long time for a "mistake" to go unnoticed, though.

Considering these are the same developers that rarely deal with unintended developments unless they involve very recent content and enough complaints surface (Ramuh EX with Titan-egi comes to mind), it wouldn't surprise me. Also consider their aversion for outright nerfing things.

I'm a bit baffled with this part. If damage output is irrelevant to a tank, then why are you using RA or GB? RoH maximises enmity and mitigation. You're actually losing enmity and mitigation by using these other combos.

Since you didn't read or ignored parts of my prior posts, I'll reiterate: I'm okay with tanks having abilities that let them deal some damage. Rage of Halone's debuff lasts 20 seconds, and combined with Shield Oath's enmity bonuses you can afford to rotate Halone, Goring Blade and Royal Authority. As I said in an earlier post, you can rotate all three to the point Halone's debuff only drops for 1 or 2 seconds between applications (assuming you want to prioritize Royal Authority over RoH). You're still generating aggro while in Shield Oath; more than if you were trying to tank a mob in Sword Oath and while taking less damage, to boot.

And all I said was that damage to a tank is a means to an end, not that it's irrelevant.

Originally Posted by DaulBan

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.

There's other ways to bring change without nerfing damage from abilities. One would be a mechanical punishment (maybe the equivalent of WoW crushing blows or insta-crits). Another would be increasing tank damage to the point it's more beneficial overall to full-time your defensive stance when tanking the boss. Lastly, and healers won't like this, but set the pace of battle and damage taken by the raid to the point anyone taking extra damage creates the risk of the healer going OOM (and that would include tanks making themselves take more damage than they should).

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.

Ignoring the issue of stances, the means to maximize DPS are there. At 60 PLD can and should work Goring Blade and Royal Authority into the rotation in addition to the other tank duties, and not exclusively use Rage of Halone. DRK, as I've said before, has a similar ability flow and priorities, so that also works for them.

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.

And instead of reaching the logical conclusion of "let's gear our DPS", you're trying to blame the tank for not meeting a DPS check. That's bizarro world logic in almost every possible way.

Finally, if trickles down because it's the best way to do it.

"Best", "balanced" and "intended" are not always the same. Reckoning Bomb could have been the "best" way to kill a boss, but it was a broken as hell way of doing that. Utsusemi was considered by some the "best" way to mitigate things, but it was still a broken ability that screwed with the rest of FFXI's design. The grenade trick on the platforms during progression on Heroic Lich king was for a short time the "best" way of doing things, but it was still broken as hell (to the point Blizzard stripped the guild that got world first of their clear because of it). Sitting around in turn 2 for 9 minutes so that you could power heal through the enrage instead of actually doing the mechanics was the "best" way of doing it, but it was still broken as hell.

Simply saying "it's the best" is not, well, the best reasoning.

Originally Posted by Frowny

I think that may speak more to how tanking can just be boring. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather DPS an instance than tank one.

Tanking does require a specific mindset, just like healing does (and I'll be the first one to say I do NOT have the mindset for healing, which is why I generally avoid it). A person is allowed to lean towards what they find fun, and if tanking is not your bag, that's okay.

Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

3x FC is possible regardless of SkS, you just have to drop the Fracture from your Berserk window.

True... you can 3FC if you trigger Berserk mid-combo after a Heavy Swing, but that is something fairly easy to miss as it requires a not quite intuitive action (Holding a Fell Cleave for 1 or 2 GCDs). But my point pretty much still stands as outside of that corner case 9GCD 3FC is only possible due to Client Server latency before getting a 2.22 gcd. This is similar to the ability for Paladins to squeeze a 13th GCD into FoF before getting a 2.3 gcd.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

All you need is a 9-hit Berserk speed while minimizing non-stack GCDs (dropping Fracture and obviously not starting on Heavy Swing).

Which should be impossible prior to a 2.22 GCD (9 GCDs in 20 seconds). Client/Server latency is actually what lets us do 9 GCD Berserks and 13 GCD Fight or Flights before getting the "proper" amount of Skill Speed due to latency giving the buffs roughly an additional second to their durations.

Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

True... you can 3FC if you trigger Berserk mid-combo after a Heavy Swing, but that is something fairly easy to miss as it requires a not quite intuitive action (Holding a Fell Cleave for 1 or 2 GCDs). But my point pretty much still stands as outside of that corner case 9GCD 3FC is only possible due to Client Server latency before getting a 2.22 gcd. This is similar to the ability for Paladins to squeeze a 13th GCD into FoF before getting a 2.3 gcd.

You could actually do it in 7 GCDs, once every second Berserk. You have potentially two free stacks if you have access to both RI and Vengeance, so you only need to make up three stacks over four GCDs. If you're aiming for 8 GCDs, then you'd only need three stacks over five GCDs, which is guaranteed to happen irrespective of which step of the combo you use Berserk on. That's a lot of corners.

Not that it particularly matters if it was "unintentional" or not. We're just guessing either way, and it's easy enough to titrate a job's dps up or down after the fact.

Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

unintended rotation

Problem is we have no idea what's intended and what isn't in this game. We can only assume what their intention is from the way the skills are described, such as how BotD is supposed to work and so on. While you can claim that there was never any intent for the 3FC opener to exist, the fact that RI is to be used aggressively is pretty easy to divine from the fact it gives you a stack, and a stack is always an aggressive tool. I'd also be surprised if during testing for 3.0 they didn't come across the triple fell cleave during regular play.

btw, Fracture will be good when you can prove in-game that it leads to more damage, because as far as the only reliable source for damage charts go (fflogs of course) there is very little use of Fracture in top kills of savage content. At most, it's used as a way of delaying a fell cleave or a decimate for more damage without wasting a stack.