Boss Autoattack Damage and FFXIV's Tanking Meta

[Brannigan]

You can now check combined tank damage or combined healer damage on fflogs. -

Neo Exdeath is an odd case because he doesn't auto attack. You're mitigating everything with abilities regardless, so tank stance affects healing requirements there even less than normal. I (and most people I assume) only use tank stance on him for enmity before the tank attacks, and that's mostly because we don't have a ninja right now.

That's not to say I disagree with the overall conclusion, but that fight in particular is a bad example.

[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.

[Ryugami]

Jesus Christ, there is no such thing as Meta in this game. The Meta is being good at your selected job, and nothing else. As long as you are good at your job, it shouldn't matter what you do as long as it works

[Hruodig]

Jesus Christ, there is no such thing as Meta in this game. The Meta is being good at your selected job, and nothing else. As long as you are good at your job, it shouldn't matter what you do as long as it works

If you're trying to be competitive with speed runs, there absolutely is a 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.

[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.

[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 <.<

[Sarcatica]

Healers with the change to Cleric Stance is like a godsend for them, it enables both healing/dps without even thinking if you CAN go into Cleric Stance or not. Tanks however do have to count how many GCDs they need to dip in their aggro combo before doing more dps. So far the tank busters should already be planned beforehand, tank stances are just used to have that "safety" in either or both aggro/dmg taken spike. The only one encounter since 3.0 I absolutely had to be in tank stance for a few of the tank busters was A8S, back to back flamethrowers into double punch was particularly obnoxious.

It's sad though, seeing people spending most of their time in DPS stance but can't even get a decent number. Looking at you PLD OTs in O4S doing 2k only.

[shao32]

its sad see how the tank stances loose they value more and more every day, really they need to fix that somehow, sacrifice our defense for clunky optimization feels bad.