Tanks and super pulls

[Eli85]

Big pulls with thick packs of enemies all beating on the tank is the only way I can get excited while playing healers.

This. When I queue up as a WHM, if the tank isn't doing big pulls I get bored out of my mind bordering frustration. It just isn't fun without big pulls.

[kujoestars]

How many I pull as a tank can vary from 5 at a time to 10 or 12 depending on what mobs we have. I try to remember what each kind of mob does and how hard they are to kill when I do dungeons the first time as a DPS main so I know how to pace things as a tank on roulette. And of course if a wall-to-wall pull could go either way depending on healer, I always ask to be safe.

But really, this is the trouble with random groups in general; you never know who you'll be stuck with so you have to learn to roll with the punches. Maybe try asking the tank to shrink down the pulls a bit first? Of course if they refuse, they usually ragequit in my experience, lol. I had a tank do that to me once when I was healing regular Haukke on roulette and they kept doing giant pulls and standing right inside terror aoes instead of interrupting or dodging them.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

This is throwback behavior from previous expansions. Because there is a preconceived notion of what a tank is and how they should act and I think in Stormblood it finally came to a head.

Last Expac, people took the concept of 'optimization' and ran with it. Hard. Even in basic content you were expected to optimize, and Tanks were often the worst offenders where if you took enmity from them you could expect A) a shirk, B) verbal abuse, or C) a vote-kick. Or if they were passive aggressive they just wouldn't take aggro back so you could lie there dead and think about what you'd done.

This squeezing every drop of dps to the detriment of your role, your class and your enjoyment of the game is why this Expac has neutered so many jobs.

The super-pull was part of that community tank expectation and unfortunately still carries on to this day. I've seen my group wipe 3 times to the same pull before the tank either leaves or finally adjusts. For those of you who pull to your group or to the duty layout--I'm glad you're the next generation of tanks. I miss smart pulls, instead of just big ones.

[Shurrikhan]

This is throwback behavior from previous expansions. Because there is a preconceived notion of what a tank is and how they should act and I think in Stormblood it finally came to a head.

It came to a head long before that. And while the notion can certainly be conceived prior to actual play, actual play also proves it out.

Last Expac, people took the concept of 'optimization' and ran with it. Hard. Even in basic content you were expected to optimize, and Tanks were often the worst offenders where if you took enmity from them you could expect A) a shirk, B) verbal abuse, or C) a vote-kick. Or if they were passive aggressive they just wouldn't take aggro back so you could lie there dead and think about what you'd done.

They've run with that concept since 1.x. It's called wanting to be good at a game.

This squeezing every drop of dps to the detriment of your role, your class and your enjoyment of the game is why this Expac has neutered so many jobs.

Squeezing out every drop of dps is no detriment to one's role or class. Being shortsighted, blowing cooldowns too early, or forcing others to lose more dps in compensating for your actions than your actions gained (such as not sufficiently healing), does. But that, too, is a failure to squeeze out dps.

The super-pull was part of that community tank expectation and unfortunately still carries on to this day. I've seen my group wipe 3 times to the same pull before the tank either leaves or finally adjusts. For those of you who pull to your group or to the duty layout--I'm glad you're the next generation of tanks. I miss smart pulls, instead of just big ones.

Smarts are a requisite only for the big pulls, and only while undergeared. A small pull has almost never also been a smart pull since early Amdapor Keep.

That said, if the tank and healer cannot handle big pulls, they are wasting dps. The question is whether you allow them to learn their roles or complain that they're wasting your time (in the short run) when they're learning how not to waste people's time (in the long run).

Now, to be fair, I wish the game gave us reasons to vary our pull size. I'd like to have reason to use CC. I'd like to have reason to burn down specific mobs first. But the community doing as it has isn't, in this case, a mark of collective insanity. It's just a mark of a incredibly barebone dungeoning experience that does little to lend itself to any other playstyle.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

snip

Smart pulling is assessing the level of content, the group performance and enemy grouping. You mass pull in lower level content and it could mean death depending on what skills are available. Sure if the group can handle it, its wonderful but tanks have a tendency to keep trying for this even when its obvious the group can't handle this.

Also the optimization crap from last expac was criminal. I had never seen people as ostracized and criticized as i did in that expansion over aggro management and enabling other roles' dps.

When a WHM is shirked during a regular dungeon run because she did TOO MUCH DPS and grabbed aggro from the tank...That is not about being a good player. That is unacceptable behavior.

[ForteNightshade]

Smart pulling is assessing the level of content, the group performance and enemy grouping. You mass pull in lower level content and it could mean death depending on what skills are available. Sure if the group can handle it, its wonderful but tanks have a tendency to keep trying for this even when its obvious the group can't handle this.

Also the optimization crap from last expac was criminal. I had never seen people as ostracized and criticized as i did in that expansion over aggro management and enabling other roles' dps.

When a WHM is shirked during a regular dungeon run because she did TOO MUCH DPS and grabbed aggro from the tank...That is not about being a good player. That is unacceptable behavior.

This occurred because of everything becoming increasing simplified not in spite of it. When DPS could mitigate their aggro through Diversion and Lucid Dreaming—two oGCDs that has zero impact on their rotation—it made no sense to force tanks back into tank stance. The whole Shrink memes only happened when people refused to quell their own aggro. And even then, they were rare.

Outside early leveling dungeons, there is precisely zero need to "assess" dungeon content. They can all be mass pulled and AoE'd down with minimal effort. Even current dungeons aren't difficult to do large pulls—which is why they have become optimal. Put another way, SE has given us virtually no reason to care about anything except damage. Even tanks and healers are largely gimped DPS. Naturally, this encourages more and more players to focus on how much damage they do and little else. Simplifying things only strengthens that mentality. If SE wants players to prioritize something else, they need to give them a reason to. So far, they haven't.

[Shurrikhan]

Smart pulling is assessing the level of content, the group performance and enemy grouping. You mass pull in lower level content and it could mean death depending on what skills are available. Sure if the group can handle it, its wonderful but tanks have a tendency to keep trying for this even when its obvious the group can't handle this.

Review Forte's post above.

Also the optimization crap from last expac was criminal. I had never seen people as ostracized and criticized as i did in that expansion over aggro management and enabling other roles' dps.

If your job is to provide damage and you're purposely ignoring tools that provide damage, albeit through someone else, then why wouldn't you be criticized for not using, say, Diversion? By all means, complain about them being part of your dps kit as one might complain about Battle Voice or any other raid buff, but they do provide dps; it's not out of role for you to be expected to use them. (Granted, I wasn't especially sad to see that skill go since it felt like bloat to me; its play just wasn't attractive enough to warrant its button, even if I did like the variance it tossed the tank's way.)

When a WHM is shirked during a regular dungeon run because she did TOO MUCH DPS and grabbed aggro from the tank...That is not about being a good player. That is unacceptable behavior.

I'm not sure that term means what you think it means. And whose behavior was unacceptable here? Did the tank actually Shirk the healer? If so, sure, that's trolling and unacceptable, but hardly a case for being in or out "of role". The healer who pulled off the tank was playing unacceptably? I'd disagree. The undergeared and/or incompetent tank who let the healer take aggro by not using his stance or a single enmity skill? I'd agree, since healers had no enmity mitigation (only an enmity purge that would likely also overcap their MP).

But that last one honestly... is also about being a bad player. No one goes into a dungeon undergeared, to the point that their unmodified enmity will not possibly match the damage+healing of their healer even without overheals, and refuses to modify their enmity on principle alone (especially since that'd mean purposely neglecting their AoE skills). Ignorance and/or stupidity definitely played some part. That's not optimization at that point. It's not even an imitation of optimization.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

snip

Yes. Our healer was shirked and yes they were playing acceptably, by trying to balance healing and damage (and not screaming at everyone not to take damage so they could maximize their dps). We thought it was a mis-click but they posted a snooty little emoji in the chat and the only reason they were not immediately kicked was because we were almost at the last boss and it wasn't worth the wait for a Tank who was less entitled.

The argument that it is SE's fault that the game is designed for maximum damage output is only MAYBE true for Savage/EX/Ultimates. Standard content is pretty much made to be completed with mash-button damage (albeit not quickly) and for Tank optimization to work, the party basically had to devote time and effort to manage something that wasn't damage output--it wasn't just pressing a button, it was paying attention to your threat level acting accordingly. All so the tank could eek out more dps.

While I can understand this strategy in those high-end duties, expecting this in standard content was not only laughable, it created a huge backlash which caused pretty much all utility between the roles to be removed. Now the roles are clear and set in stone. And boring. But hey. This has somehow enabled 'Green DPS' healers. I can't wait to see SE's reaction to that.

I'll conceed that it was mostly idiots abusing the system back then, but even when SE added more utility to the roles, it was still just used to squeeze out more dps . That will never stop being a thing but it's not a design flaw. Just a human one.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes. Our healer was shirked and yes they were playing acceptably, by trying to balance healing and damage (and not screaming at everyone not to take damage so they could maximize their dps). We thought it was a mis-click but they posted a snooty little emoji in the chat and the only reason they were not immediately kicked was because we were almost at the last boss and it wasn't worth the wait for a Tank who was less entitled.

Oof. That sucks. And yeah, that's of course unacceptable. I was just curious as to whether you meant that in a "tunnel-visioned neglect of others' ability to perform" sort of way, which would tie more closely to what you were talking about before, or outright griefing. I see it was the latter.

it wasn't just pressing a button, it was paying attention to your threat level acting accordingly. All so the tank could eek out more dps.

To be fair, though, that is only a thing when your tank is outright griefing, as above, or utterly ignorant that the game didn't, at that time, have enmity modifiers on all but select skills. Everyone else's contribution to tank damage output was solely Shadewalker, Tactician, Refresh, Lucid Dreaming, Purification, Third Eye, and -- above all -- Diversion. And as you could never have access to more than 2 of those at a time, and the main one could simply be hit on CD, one could call it bloat but rarely ever much of a mechanic or lasting concern for anyone but the tank.

While I can understand this strategy in those high-end duties, expecting this in standard content was not only laughable, it created a huge backlash which caused pretty much all utility between the roles to be removed. Now the roles are clear and set in stone. And boring. But hey. This has somehow enabled 'Green DPS' healers. I can't wait to see SE's reaction to that.

Apart from the Ranged Role Actions, Diversion was the only utility removed. Invigorate was not utility; it was just bloat that let you continue to do things rather than giving all physical dps a 3-to-5-minute expiration timer. The Ranged role was also far more set in stone before the removal of their shared actions.

Likewise, Green DPS have been commonplace since ARR. You've already seen their reaction to it. So long as standard content is "made to be completed with mash-button damage" and similarly poor healing, Green DPS will be the predominant gameplay loop of all healers as increasingly more healing power is placed into actions that they cannot expect the lowest denominator to use yet all others maintain access to.

[ForteNightshade]

The argument that it is SE's fault that the game is designed for maximum damage output is only MAYBE true for Savage/EX/Ultimates. Standard content is pretty much made to be completed with mash-button damage (albeit not quickly) and for Tank optimization to work, the party basically had to devote time and effort to manage something that wasn't damage output--it wasn't just pressing a button, it was paying attention to your threat level acting accordingly. All so the tank could eek out more dps.

When it comes to Diversion there was nothing to pay attention to. Press it before you start attacking or sometime after. Even if you were five GCDs in and pressed it, you'd be fine assuming the tank knew what they were doing. Only Paladin had issues given it had garbage aggro generation and Shield Oath lost them a GCD. Lucid required you to glance at the party list—something healers should already be doing. None of this is to say tanks should go around Shirking but lets not pretend like Diversion and Lucid were remotely difficult.

While I can understand this strategy in those high-end duties, expecting this in standard content was not only laughable, it created a huge backlash which caused pretty much all utility between the roles to be removed. Now the roles are clear and set in stone. And boring. But hey. This has somehow enabled 'Green DPS' healers. I can't wait to see SE's reaction to that.

As Shurrikhan said, what utility? This game has never put any emphasise on CC abilities. Refresh was axed because the devs assumed it'd force healers to heal more (Ha!), which has nothing to do with tank aggro. Speaking of, "Green DPS" is a thing because this game has pitifully low damage output and overpowered healing spells. When not even Ultimate demands 50% healing, of course healers are going to prioritize their damage. This is entirely on the dev team for continuing to assume people play in a manner we don't. They added a plethora of healing spells when that's the last things healers needed. What happened? Things like Temperance, Seraph and etc are hilariously overpowered for anything outside Savage. The problem has always been content doesn't give healers a reason to heal.

Their reaction will likely be to keep things as are or cave and give healers more of a DPS kit next expansion. Why? They know if they forced healers to heal, i.e., locked out DPS spells in instances, people would quit the role in droves. And they don't want to make healing more challenging, thus nothing will change.

]'ll conceed that it was mostly idiots abusing the system back then, but even when SE added more utility to the roles, it was still just used to squeeze out more dps . That will never stop being a thing but it's not a design flaw. Just a human one.

Because nothing else matters. How isn't it a design flaw? If I can heal a dungeon without touching my GCDs or have 70-90% of my casts be DPS abilities and no one dies. What else am I going to be doing except damage? People didn't decide one day to be Green/Blue DPS. They realized the system not only allowed them to push numbers but outright encouraged it. Until SE's design philosophy changes. People are going to prioritize damage over everything else.