Boss Autoattack Damage and FFXIV's Tanking Meta

[Sarcatica]

what?

the optimal way to play a tank right now is to sit in dps stance, bottom line. the benefits of tank stance are negligible and the penalties of tank stance are massive. It has nothing to do with other players in your party. A 'good player' strives to perform the best they can, and so by extension, a 'good tank' learns how to properly tank in dps stance.

Depends on the parties. I tend to tone the "dps stance all the way" approach when I am helping a group trying to clear or progress. The premises of dps stance tanking is much more appealing when you know the game more and you know the healers are capable. This is why it's very hard to just know if someone is really a good tank or if that person just wants to dps and don't know how to adjust to the team he/she is with. This also applies to healers and also DPS believe it or not. Good players are people that know how to push their limits in the given situations. You don't just get that same dps when you are playing other groups.

Example: each group has different players and it means that you have different total dps. As a DPS player, you need to account for phase changes, burst times etc to have the most dps. I have seen so many dps having 95%++ on fflogs but when that dps joins my team as a sub, their performance went down by a good amount. Why? Mostly because they are so used to their own killing time that it would take more time for them to adjust to our time (faster kills). This applies double to tanks and healers on different groups where they probably need to heal more or be in tank stance more etc, on top of their centralized dps rotations.

[gti443]

which basically means the healers must contribute more extra dps than what we gain from switching to dps stance, though in that case we're just shifting the burden to maximize dps to them, and they can complain over that as well.

I would... kinda love that as White Mage TBH.

I would actually prefer a wider gulf between tank and DPS stance though. My ideal would be something like turtle in tank stance with more in the way of group DPS buffs, while pretty much zero survivability in DPS stance but higher potential DPS. Not true DPS numbers but close(r).

[aleph_null]

I would... kinda love that as White Mage TBH.

I would actually prefer a wider gulf between tank and DPS stance though. My ideal would be something like turtle in tank stance with more in the way of group DPS buffs, while pretty much zero survivability in DPS stance but higher potential DPS. Not true DPS numbers but close(r).

In that case you'll just see a similar thread in the healer forum, where "pure healers" don't like how their healing skills are underused and they want tanks to take more damage to make their heals relevant lol.

The thing is, with how the devs want savage to be more accessible, you can't really expect stuffs that are actually hard to tank/heal. If you make the mitigation/healing checks too tight we'll get another gordias savage, except people now struggle with different things than dps checks. The only place where we can hope to see actually hard stuffs would be the new super savage or ultimate, whatever they call it, since that fight is tuned for max ilv, so technically the devs can tune it such that you'll need every single mitigation/healing tools you have, including tank stances, to survive.

I honestly think it's pointless to keep tank stance penalties, since this game is centered around vertical progression, so a surplus of mitigation/ehp is guaranteed to exist (raids drop gear that are better than the minimum gear you need to clear them). At higher ilv tanks will need less mitigation to survive, healers will need less healing to keep people alive, so naturally they'll cut off the stuffs that come at a cost (tank stance, gcd heals) as much as they can.

[gti443]

In that case you'll just see a similar thread in the healer forum, where "pure healers" don't like how their healing skills are underused and they want tanks to take more damage to make their heals relevant lol.

Yeah... that genie isn't going back into the bottle. Moreover, there's more times you're not going to need a heal than times when you don't need a tank.

Tangentially, Cleric was like a lvl 12 Conjurer cross skill, where stances are presented as core Job abilities. Like I said in the other thread, a revamp to stances would probably have to be closer to the changes to Bard songs and Machinist turrets.

At higher ilv tanks will need less mitigation to survive, healers will need less healing to keep people alive, so naturally they'll cut off the stuffs that come at a cost (tank stance, gcd heals) as much as they can.

I mean what I'm suggesting isn't intended to kill stance dancing as much as make it higher risk and potentially higher burst, while not inherently making it a DPS loss to stay in stance. It would be a boon to OT as well, but I guess it would pretty much demand dancing for OT busters.

I dunno... I get that people like the "reward" but I don't think the current situation is tenable and for what it matters from FFXI til now I've basically been a career MMO tank and healer. I guess my horse in this race is that a lot of the current metas are sort of driving me away from both.

[aleph_null]

I dunno, this is honestly my first trinity MMO so I can't really say how good/bad the current situation is comparatively to other MMOs. Even if the devs change stuffs I'll probably just get used to the changes and optimize toward what would contribute the best group dps, even if it means turtle tanking with tank stance or whatever lol.

[shao32]

snip

optimize its not the problem, the problem is something that important like a tank stance loose all value in the current state, whats the point to have It in our desing if loose all value? Tanks stances need to be solid skills and just let stancedance the tanks desing for it not all of It.