Quote Originally Posted by Jpec07 View Post
So, harkening back to an old thread from a little over a year ago, SE might not be satisfied with the fact that progression-level tanks "need" to stance dance to be successful. But the problem isn't tank design here so much as encounter design.

Fights in FFXIV require dedicated tanks specifically and exclusively because of tankbusters. The white damage they do to tanks is simply not enough to usually require any more healing than Regen plus the occasional Cure/Cure II (this may be different in Savage), and usually the damage that tanks take outside of tankbusters is comparable to the rest of the group. Especially when this is coupled with tight DPS checks, the push for maximizing tank DPS is natural - since they only need to be "tanky" once every 30 seconds, they can spend the rest of the time maximizing their output and contributing more to group success (this is also why Parry is so undesirable - there isn't enough incoming damage to make it worthwhile in most cases).

If they want to change it, they will need to up the ante for how much damage tanks take, and how frequently. "Death by a million needles" would need to be the mantra--but in this case, too, they'd need to adjust how tanks work (though not in a way to eliminate DPS stances--that would be silly, and more something Blizzard would do). Instead, I imagine we'll see a few PLD skills revisited, as well as an adjustment to the combat table to make Parry more desirable.

In any case, I don't imagine we'll see too much of a change to either of these things. SE is a lot more iterative in their changes than some other companies, and they have tended very well to avoid overshooting the fixes they need to make. Many very strongly like this DPS meta, and it would do them well to consider that as they move towards Stormblood.
While I'd have to disagree in part with SE tending rarely to overshoot with changes, they do at least hold back better than certain MMOs, sure, and I do hope they consider exactly how they think the actual gameplay of the "DPS meta" is somehow wrong before they attempt to modify it, rather than taking forum labels as the end all be all. (Case in point: the so-called "dps fixation" was just as present at release; there were just fewer people maximizing their jobs yet and standing as guides to the others. The rest comes down primarily to fight design, one tier in particular, and hype's positive-feedback loops.)

The issue with the "death by a million needles" mantra is that it intends to de-emphasize skillful (read: timely & trimmed) tanking in order to force particular toolkit use. A high-party-dps-check fight does the same in the opposite direction, but if Midas and the Creator are any indication, that isn't likely to be the design direction anymore. Periodic and rotational attacks put more responsibility on tanks by allowing them to better focus their input- vs. output-scaling, but the only alternative to that is to literally try to take away control, or the rewards for learning a fight. In other words, it's a spectrum between either interceptable, memorizable/analyzable/somehow-knowable damage and faceroll damage that keeps you from taking any output gambles, or in doing so leaves you susceptible to RNG.

Now, there is probably some point of better equilibrium on that spectrum that can de-emphasize tank dps slightly without having to adjust stance multipliers, tank damage generally, etc., with minimal cost to skillful-to-rewarding gameplay. Alternatively, it may require certain tank toolkit revisions so that, apart from Inner Beast, our debuff weaponskills, and maybe the saving DA-SE crit, we aren't dependent solely on our cooldowns for mitigation, allowing more frequent damage and interception that less skillful players can more prevolently and with lesser loss use their tank stances for while more highly skilled players, now under an even higher ceiling, can still maximize outputs and avoid tank stance where possible if they so desire.