Boss Autoattack Damage and FFXIV's Tanking Meta

[Nabian]

So ever since I started playing this game 2 years ago, I've both heard from a lot of people and seen in several videos, that the FFXIV tanking meta is different than most other MMOs. I'm just gonna quote something off of one of Xeno's video, but this is by no means something I've heard just from him:

"The way you tank in FFXIV is completely different than a lot of other MMOs. This game is all about Mechanic Damaging abilities or tank busters. The encounters in this game are very scripted, and the bosses will do massive damage on the tank only for a second, in short predictable bursts. This is mechanic damage. [...] ...If a boss is not hitting you with Mechanic Damaging abilities, then you are just receiving autoattacks - fluff damage. When the boss uses Mechanic Damaging abilities, you mitigate them with a cooldown.The video then goes on to say something along the likes of "if your healers can't heal you through autoattack damage, then you need to get new healers".

Flash-forward to today's raids, where you have:

Alte Roite killing me with random tail slaps (not talking about the one before Twin Bolt/Clamp)
Catastrophe dropping me low enough so that I end up dying to the Dimensional Wave after the first tentacles come out
Halicarnassus doing 17k autoattacks and eventually killing me because they're hitting for 17k when I'm not mitigating

Given the above situations, is it still fair to say the tanking meta remains the same? Like, even during the Alexander raids, I remember being in a couple of situations where my HP would drop very low just through autoattacks, and by the time the healers decided to respond it would be too late.

I mean, just yesterday I was doing V3S, and the boss just randomly ends up hitting me with a 22k critical autoattack, which killed me. I have Vengeance running for the first Queen's Waltz and Dimensional Wave, but it feels like that's more for the autoattack damage I keep receiving. After Vengeance ends, I feel reluctant using another cooldown, because I like having something for after The Game, and have Convalescence up for the next Critical Hit.

But according to all the things I've been hearing about tanking, apparently I shouldn't be having to worry about using cooldowns for autoattacks. What is everyone's opinion on this? Is the meta changing to where tanks should start worrying about autoattacks?

Sounds to me like you need new healers. During this fight I NEVER use Grit after my initial opener, and I rarely, if ever, die from auto attacks unless my healers tunnel or stop paying attention.

[Clicked]

Honestly, I'd like to see someone crunch the numbers. Which is better net party DPS effect? 20% increase of Tank in DPS stance with a healer blowing CDs to heal him. Or a tank in tank stance allowing the healers to DPS more. I say, healers, because it affects both healers

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

This is what I've wondered as well. I assumed the community has concluded that it's better for the tank to be in DPS stance, but tank stance does a decent amount of mitigation/healing that I assumed would help free up the healers to do some damage. Unlike healers, tanks don't STOP doing damage to fulfill their role, they just do less damage. Healers have to stop and heal.

[Canadane]

Honestly, I'd like to see someone crunch the numbers. Which is better net party DPS effect? 20% increase of Tank in DPS stance with a healer blowing CDs to heal him. Or a tank in tank stance allowing the healers to DPS more. I say, healers, because it affects both healers

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

Generally speaking it's the tanks because the healers would be (should be...) DPSing either way, and to replace one single attack with a cure every now and then isn't going to cost them 20% of their DPS. It may be a surprise but you don't need to cure 20% more just because a tank is outside their tank stance!

[Driavna]

Most tanks don't use CDs in DPS stance to mitigate autos better. They see a vid or learn DPS stance is what you do, but not whats behind it. Their CDs just sit while they pew pew pew. Healers either get behind and the tank dies or wastes CDs healing instead of DPSing. Most of the base tries to emulate top groups, but don't play like top jobs.

Honestly, I'd like to see someone crunch the numbers. Which is better net party DPS effect? 20% increase of Tank in DPS stance with a healer blowing CDs to heal him. Or a tank in tank stance allowing the healers to DPS more. I say, healers, because it affects both healers

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

I don't know about DPS numbers but Japan has a higher clearing rates, one of the reasons is because they use more safe tactics (like the tank always in tank stance). Like you say, and this happens in a lot of multiplayer games, the meta does not matter at average game play.

[Clicked]

Generally speaking it's the tanks because the healers would be (should be...) DPSing either way, and to replace one single attack with a cure every now and then isn't going to cost them 20% of their DPS. It may be a surprise but you don't need to cure 20% more just because a tank is outside their tank stance!

You lose more than 20%. For my warrior, the healer loses 20% throughput on heals and I lose ~5% parry on average (which is like 1% mitigation lol), and I cannot use IB which has like a 50% uptime optimally (avg 10% damage reduction there). Plus IB heals you a bit on top of that.

In return I get quite a decent chunk more damage though. So I can see why dropping tank stance is definitely necessary for DPS checks, but other than that I'm not convinced it's a huge difference (and it's not as safe).

[Aana]

If you want to be world 1st, the group has to do DPS far above their ilvl so DPS stance meta is required and they make up the mitigation via skill and ability coordination between the entire party (DPS reducing str for Y timeframe, OT uses X to save MT at Y time. MT KNOWS OT+DPS will cover for Y time and doesn't waste a CD. Etc. Etc.)

When undergeared, theres no way to increase damage. Everyone does the max damage all the time in those HQ groups. So the only way to beat enrages is to DPS stance and the game gives boatloads of survival tools, but many require coordination to use, thus organized groups going ham on damage and using coordination to survive.

That's not your pug. If you have a static then you can take the 'meta' approach because you can coordinate at a granular level. But don't be all sad when you cant just blindly DPS stance all day in some scrubby pug.

[Hierro]

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

You can now check combined tank damage or combined healer damage on fflogs. The number one spot for combined healer damage on neo-exdeath is held by a pair of healers who dealt with a tank who sat in tank stance the whole time. However, when you look at the combined damage of both healers and tanks, it falls short of the number 1 combined tank damage placeholders, which is 9.6k and 11.1k respectively.

However, when you look at the number 2 and 3 spots for combined healer damage in neo-exdeath, you will find that they dealt with tanks who never touch tank stance. Those healers may not have attained number 1 spot, but it's not much a difference, while exceeding combined raid dps. that said, you can verify combined dps is at its peak when BOTH healers and tanks are dpsing their little hearts out, outside of tank stance.

[FPZ]

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

In PUGS = No point even assuming, healers & tanks come in all shapes and forms and you can't guarantee synergy between the two roles.

In Organized Raid Group = You can full time DPS stance as a MT in every single turn in a group that has content on farm & is going for optimized kills. I have had healers reach their highest damage potential without the need for tank-stance. Requires planning of cool-downs from both healers and tanks via a spread-sheet list of cool-downs and practice.

Bare in mind your DPS bring a lot of mitigation which should be added into the spread-sheet. (Disable, Paliside, Apoc, Feint, etc.) These all factor in to an organised group looking to maximize their groups DPS.

Your overall hypothesis is false as of this tier from my experience & the various speed-kill logs on FFLogs. It's simply fact that the highest group dps obtainable in the game is via tanks not going into their tank-stance at all.

[Freyyy]

Which is better net party DPS effect? 20% increase of Tank in DPS stance with a healer blowing CDs to heal him. Or a tank in tank stance allowing the healers to DPS more. I say, healers, because it affects both healers

My hypothesis is the net party dps would go up in raid if tanks stayed in tank stance allowing both healers to DPS more.

Firstly, tanks don't lose only 20% of their DPS when they have their tanking stance on. Paladins lose their auto-attack bonus from SwO (which is actually very powerful even if it's only on auto attacks) ON TOP of the 15% damage nerf from ShO. They also spend MP and a GCD to swap stances. Warriors lose access to Fell Cleave and Inner Release, and lose the 5% damage boost from Deliverance, ON TOP of the 20% damage nerf from Defiance. Dark Knights lose access to Blood Weapon ON TOP of the 20% damage nerf from Grit, and they also spend a crapton of MP and a GCD to activate it.
So, their actual DPS losses are closer to the 25%-30% range than 20% when they're in tanking stance.

Healers, on the other hand. Do you really think that one guy in the entire 8-man group taking only 20% less damage from 1 auto every 3 seconds is gonna change anything to the way you're healing during the fight ? Considering that you're gonna have to AoE heal during raid-wide damage, and use oGCDs to heal the tank most of the time, 20% less damage on that guy isn't gonna make a big difference for you, especially when you take into account how scripted and predictable FFXIV's fights are. Every auto-attack is scripted, every ability is scripted. Everything. You're still gonna have to heal the rest of the group the same way, and you're still gonna have to cast roughly the same amount of healing spells on the tank whether he is in tanking stance or not as long as he uses his CDs properly (that's his job as a tank so if he can't do that, that's just a bad tank, tanking stance or not). You might gain one GCD every 4-5 hits from the boss, but it's far from being enough to compensate for the gigantic loss that staying in tanking stance represents.

And believe me, if staying in tanking stance and playing turtle-tank style allowed for healers to gain so much DPS that the party DPS would go up, THAT would be the meta, and you'd see top groups do it all the time. Yet, every top group features tanks with 0 uptime on their tanking stances, going balls deep for the entire fight, while having healers still perfectly able to go balls deep as well.


Proper cooldown and invuln usage allows healers to DPS a lot more and increase the party DPS, turtle-ing in tanking stance doesn't.

[RLofOBFL]

Tank stance drops tank damage by about 1000 dps, with WAR losing the most damage DRK losing the least, but PLD is close. So it's roughly 30% of tank damage, which is a very noticeable chunk of rdps. My healers already do almost 2k dps each and I do over 3k. All the highest healer dps on fflogs have tanks dropping tank stance, that is a fact, regardless of what is believed. The gain on tank dps outweighs the gain on healer dps by a very large margin, so much so that it's more optimal to drop tank stance so it will make the fight significantly faster and raise the entire group's dps overall, as the shorter the fight, the higher the dps.

Tanks lose auto damage, overall damage and specific damage abilities(exc pld) all so the healer can cast ONE more Stone IV every 20 seconds, the trade off is not worth it. The healer will almost certainly heal you the exact same amount whether you're in tank stance or not.

Also Halicwhatever's autos are only 12k out of tank stance <.<