Thread: Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

Originally Posted by Reynhart

So, keeping the boss on him is not "contributing" to the fight ?
And actually greatly depleting the boss HP is not "solely enabling" it ?

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp. Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

Even worse, when said opportunity is not even being utilized by the DPS.

So what now?

In a world that once existed where a Tank is but as I've said, a punching bag with flashing lights.

You've become exceptionally skilled at generating massive amounts of hate to allow the maximum potential from the damage dealers and beyond.

You've mitigated exceptionally well to the point that your healers need only press one basic heal button every 20 seconds.

The progression of the fight has not changed since you've only barely kept your hate above the DPS's max potential, or when you've managed to survive the rate of incoming damage.

Your huge aggro lead is worthless.

Your excessive mitigation does nothing but flaunt the iron wall perception.

Now, you sit there, and hope to be carried by the DPS.

At the end of the day, if you're in a good group or a bad group. What you do means nothing, because you cannot in any shape or form change the outcome of the bad group away from failure.

Not to mention a large part of a game's enjoyment is also the theme and visual style.

Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

They technically can design encounters that focuses more on tank checks, but admitedly the skillgap between players is too much. If you introduces so much damage to tanks more often, it becomes really frustrating for new tanks to get into raids, see t13 in ARR. Good tanks will simply adjust their playstyle but not so for the rest. It'd be boring to just stand still and take damage too. SE hasn't changed this part for tanks and healers to stop doing DPS for patches now. You also do need to understand that you only need to do enough damage to clear raids (that number is still high enough for most tanks to achieve), pushing damage is an extra. Enrages for Creator fights is also lenient enough, a12s has enrage timer of 13:30 iirc and most groups can clear it within 12mins. So you don't absolutely need huge dps tanks do clear current raid, just have competent tanks to deal respectable damage to enable clearing raids.

Originally Posted by Falar

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low (which in turn makes less people want to level a tank, which means if your game has a group finder option, you're going to have that much harder a time finding one). The problem here is that raids measure tanks not by their mitigation (like in every other game) but by how much damage they deal, and that's incredibly lopsided logic. That leads to other things (tanks making themselves take more damage for more DPS, belittling of those who take issue with that) that, to me, are causes for concern.

Barring making soloing unbearable, low damage didn't really bother me; then again, I've played tanks for almost a decade, most of which were designed to deal a lot less damage than the DPS (try playing a tank built mostly around 0-damage enmity generators; weep as you barely register on the DPS meters <,<).

Originally Posted by Drakkaelus

It's a problem most MMOs have had since the beginning. Simply standing there, getting punched in the face and not feeling like you're contributing beyond taking a bullet for someone playing a class with all the, "cool" spells isn't going to sound all that appealing to a lot of players.

That sort of depends on the person. I used to have the ability to slam my weapon to the ground to create a cone of damage that stunned everything in front of me, and if I stomped the ground thunder would crash down and a 5-foot crater would appear at the point I stomped that would slow the attack speed of everyone around me. Tanks can have cool abilities, and they don't have to be focused on just damage.

I think MMOs have painted themselves into a corner by reserving all the fun, flashy stuff exclusively for DPS classes for so long while tanks get...shield bash. Now they're at the point where they have to practically bribe people to play tanks.

You still have the people that don't want the responsibility of wanting to play a tank. It takes colossal amounts of bribery to get those people to take up the role. And the results would be dubious.

Non-sequitur

Originally Posted by FallenWings

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

Then everyone else does their thing, while the tank continues doing theirs.

So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

You continue holding aggro and trying to stay alive.

What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

Does there need to be a separation? Tanks generally don't stroke themselves over claims of skill.

How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

Depends on how the tank is designed. There's also mechanics to take into account. A tank doesn't just sit in a corner doing nothing while they take hits.

Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp.

Not "all", but that's a part of the tank role. The rest is filled by whatever incidental damage you dealt while generating aggro (Shield Oath+Goring Blade/Royal Authority in between Rage of Halone applications) and if you have any group utility (Reprisal, Divine Veil, Aegis of Light, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout, Anti-Magic Zone back when that could be used in PvE, etc).

Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

See my above mention of utility if the tank has access to it.

Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

If you want it in one word, balance. And I wouldn't say they bounce off; they just don't cut as deep. And it's fine, because likewise that moogle can smash the kitchen knife-wielder into paste while the greatsword/greataxe/sword&board guy simply takes the hit and asks for someone to close whatever window is open because they just felt a draft.

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids. Even if SE designs raids around much higher tank checks requirement, you can't have tanks doing something like 500dps like most tanks will do realistically. Not to mention that hard tank checks mean that most tanks are still going to fail. Pros and cons weigh each other. I welcome a much harder tank busters like T13 or even harsher actually. If you like to be a turtle so much, you should prove how good you are at mapping enough CDs for harder tank busters. That's however still within the scope of raid tanks to do just as well as current meta, so nothing much will be changed anyway.

Basically it still comes down to how skilled you are, that's universal.

Most people here probably didn't even clear T13 before 3.0, much less before 2.5 ended. So you pretty much have the demographic supporting how most tanks couldn't cope with the hard hitting tank busters.

Originally Posted by Sarcatica

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids.

Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names ). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.