Boss Autoattack Damage and FFXIV's Tanking Meta

[MauvaisOeil]

what

aggro management being easy isnt the reason tank stance sucks. the reason it sucks is because it reduces DPS. a theoretical threat stat would either be mandatory or 100% useless depending on implementation and neither option is good.

Not only. Tank stances are a failure because they reduce way more dps than they give benefits. The more expansion passes, the more dps you loose for a mere 20%ehp gain, as they bake more and more things into dps stances. If during arr you lost less than 20%dps as a warrior in tank stance due to ib compensating, now you loose what, 30, 35 or even 40% dps by going into defiance ?

[Freyyy]

The thing is that I like stance dancing. A lot. But in my post I also said that it has become completely braindead and I explain why. We don't stance dance anymore, we just go all-out DPS stance all the time because our defensive CDs and healers' oGCDs are far enough to survive everything without having to sacrifice DPS. We just activate tanking stance in two scenarios : 1. When we are still learning brand-new raid tier fights, which is only for a short time before we start optimizing DPS again, 2. When people start fucking up mechanics and healers need some extra safety. This wasn't the case in ARR because we had fewer defensive tools and healers had less powerful oGCD heals.

2) delete tank stance and rename dps stance to tank stance and add a weaker threat modifier on top of a damage taken reduction to it. this suggestion is terrible because in reality low-skill and low-gear tanks use tank stance a lot to compensate. it also gives up on the idea of ever having stance dancing again, which is an incredibly satisfying mechanic for tanks.

I made this suggestion with the intent of making the current DPS-stance tank gameplay the default gameplay for both stances, thus reducing the aggro generation and increasing incoming damage so that our tank duties are still a bit challenging while in tanking stance, unlike how it is right now (tanking stance is basically easy mode). The only part where I agree with you here is about low-skill tanks. Low-gear doesn't matter unless they are violently undergeared (like a level 69 tank still wearing level 60 idyllshire gear, and in that case just put an ilvl restriction to levelling dungeons too.). Low-skill tanks who are constantly in tanking stance as of right now would have a hard time adjusting to my suggestion because it's basically just like being in DPS stance all the time, but I think that tanking shouldn't be such a braindead task; you have 69 levels to learn how to use your mitigation skills and manage aggro properly, but the tanking stance is the exact reason why we see level 70 tanks who never use any CD. My suggestion would force them to learn how to be a good tank, since they'd have to press buttons to mitigate damage instead of just sitting in tanking stance all the time. I don't think that it's a bad thing. It would not reduce the population of people who actually main tanks because they enjoy the tanking duty in MMOs, it might just reduce the amount of lazy players who just occasionally play a tank as their second or third job just to proc queues faster.

I also said this towards the end of my original post :

That way, they could also focus on adding complexity to how tanks play by other means without having to bother with the different stances.

It would require an expansion, but I think that they can totally bring an interesting amount of complexity to the tanks with other means. Stance-dancing is not the only way, and as I said numerous times before and in my original post as well, right now it's only a shadow of what it used to be anyway. It's no longer as interesting as it was. Tanks and healers are too powerful defensively.

[Kerrath]

I made this suggestion with the intent of making the current DPS-stance tank gameplay the default gameplay for both stances, thus reducing the aggro generation and increasing incoming damage so that our tank duties are still a bit challenging while in tanking stance, unlike how it is right now (tanking stance is basically easy mode).

that's the thing: it is easy mode. it exists to shove low-skill players through content. it's not an optimal play, and the optimal way of playing is harder, but it is an option for lower skill players.

ive been tanking since 2004 and i have seen continuous changes to how tanks are build that have progressively made tanking more and more streamlined, more dull, more dumbed-down so that even the absolute most dense moron can win as a tank.

(more below, apparently there's a 1000 character limit)

[Kerrath]

(post 2, thx se for terrifying character limit)
in 2004, tanks did such low threat that it was standard practice for DPS to intentionally throttle themselves so as to not pull aggro off of the tank. literally you were expected to stop casting until the tank had established enough threat for you to continue dpsing. as a result, if you had ever met a tank for whom you did not have to throttle your dps--a tank who, say, had read through 90 pages of MATLAB graphs and had min-maxed to the absolute edge of optimizing their class--you wanted to marry them.

it was great because back then there were so many weird little ways of optimizing your character that you kinda had to be a math major to really get the most out of your tank.

[Canadane]

(more below, apparently there's a 1000 character limit)

Edit you post after making it. No text limit.

[Kerrath]

(post 3)
so while tanking in dps stance isn't as challenging as tactically deciding when you can and can't drop into dps stance based on changing damage income, in my mind, it's more challenging than merely going into tank stance, and i cannot imagine SE EVER offering anything more challenging than just cutting out DPS stance and leaving tank stance as it is, because I have seen the tank meta gutted in MMOs in the name of accessibility too many times to have that much hope.

I think that they can totally bring an interesting amount of complexity to the tanks with other means.

Yeah, but do you have any specific examples of how they could do that?

[Freyyy]

Yeah, but do you have any specific examples of how they could do that?

Right off the bat, no, I don't, and I'm no game developper. But they could for example reduce the amount of passive mitigation we have and replace it with more active mitigation. Tie it to the specific mechanics of each tank. Mitigating damage should feel as engaging as dealing damage. Same for aggro. They could also make tanks' DPS rotations more complex, harder to optimize. They could do all of that without altering the skill floor too much. What I'd like (and I know I'm not alone) is a higher skill ceiling.
Maybe my suggestions aren't the best way. But again, I'm no game developer, I'm just sharing my opinion.

[Kerrath]

Right off the bat, no, I don't, and I'm no game developper. But they could for example reduce the amount of passive mitigation we have and replace it with more active mitigation. Tie it to the specific mechanics of each tank. Mitigating damage should feel as engaging as dealing damage. Same for aggro. They could also make tanks' DPS rotations more complex, harder to optimize. They could do all of that without altering the skill floor too much. What I'd like (and I know I'm not alone) is a higher skill ceiling.
Maybe my suggestions aren't the best way. But again, I'm no game developer, I'm just sharing my opinion.

well, wow has active mitigation. i'd definitely say that ff14's tank meta has a higher skill ceiling by a LONG shot.

edit for clarification: just for how a tank is played. for all other aspects of the game, wow is the more challenging option.

[Freyyy]

well, wow has active mitigation. i'd definitely say that ff14's tank meta has a higher skill ceiling by a LONG shot.

edit for clarification: just for how a tank is played. for all other aspects of the game, wow is the more challenging option.

Yes I know. I used to play WoW in the past and I played plenty of other MMOs. FF14 is by far the easiest to tank (only speaking about the basic tank duties here, so aggro + mitigation, nothing else).

Edit : About WoW, I'll just add that last time I played it was near the release of Cataclysm, so my experience is quite old old old. I'm pretty sure everything has changed since then.

[Kerrath]

Yes I know. I used to play WoW in the past and I played plenty of other MMOs. FF14 is by far the easiest to tank (only speaking about the basic tank duties here, so aggro + mitigation, nothing else).

Edit : About WoW, I'll just add that last time I played it was near the release of Cataclysm, so my experience is quite old old old. I'm pretty sure everything has changed since then.

mists of pandaria was the expansion where active mitigation as a feature was implemented. in short, all they did was make the tanks squisher and give them 1-3 buffs to maintain that make them less squishy. the problem i had with the system was that the requirement to get maximum benefit from the 1-3 buffs was absolutely minimal (e.g. press shield block once every ~10 seconds)