Would Bards and Machinists make good use of Diversion?

[zuzu-bq]

They've two abilities to cut their enmity in half. Its easy to teach a new player to not pull aggro in order to survive but it's harder to teach them how providing others TP and MP is important. SE did a great job merging those things and Diversion would not only be unecessary but break this small detail of the role skills.

As said before in this thread, yes the main reason for the skills are to provide resources, but doing so you're dealing with your threat at the same time. A player that don't understand the resource management of others will provide it to them by caring about theit enmity. So the way those two skills are is entirely fine.

[HyoMinPark]

They've two abilities to cut their enmity in half. Its easy to teach a new player to not pull aggro in order to survive but it's harder to teach them how providing others TP and MP is important. SE did a great job merging those things and Diversion would not only be unecessary but break this small detail of the role skills.

As said before in this thread, yes the main reason for the skills are to provide resources, but doing so you're dealing with your threat at the same time. A player that don't understand the resource management of others will provide it to them by caring about theit enmity. So the way those two skills are is entirely fine.

Asking for Diversion is not game-breaking for either of the jobs, though. It’s giving them an enmity queller all other DPS jobs have access to. Considering BRD/MCH still have some of the strongest burst in the game during their openers, it’s definitely needed.

The majority of the time, a good BRD or MCH is riding a tank for aggro immediately after their opener because they have nothing to quell their burst. Blowing a support skill and putting it on CD for the next three minutes can be problematic when you are progging fights. What if people die? What if the healers Raise a lot, and need MP? What if they die after using Lucid Dreaming and need MP? What if the DPS die, and they either haven’t taken Invigorate, or used it before and it’s still on CD? What if the melee don’t have Goad, or have already used it on someone? And PLDs and DRKs have no option for TP regen when they die, unlike WAR, who can use Equilibrium in Deliverance at least.

When content is on farm, and people aren’t dying, it isn’t that big of a deal when you use them, because you won’t need Tactician for TP regen (Refresh is still needed not only for healer’s MP, but to extend Foe’s Requiem, because it’s more practical to extend it rather than cast it more because the BRD sacrifices a GCD each cast). But for prog, the idea behind Tactician and Refresh is to provide TP/MP regen and support through multiple deaths in order for a group to progress/make it to enrage/clear, not for the BRD or MCH to manage their own hate because the developers couldn’t be bothered to give them a queller like every other DPS job has.

[zuzu-bq]

Asking for Diversion is not game-breaking for either of the jobs, though. It’s giving them an enmity queller all other DPS jobs have access to. Considering BRD/MCH still have some of the strongest burst in the game during their openers, it’s definitely needed.

Yeah but does all other jobs have access to two skills to cut their enmity in a half? This comparison is bad and it's deffinetively not needed.

[HyoMinPark]

Yeah but does all other jobs have access to two skills to cut their enmity in a half? This comparison is bad and it's deffinetively not needed.

All other jobs have access to Diversion, and casters have Diversion AND Lucid—one queller and one dump. BRD/MCH has no queller. Enmity quellers and enmity dumps act completely different from one another.

In order for aggro to be dumped, you have to build it first. When you’re quelling enmity, you’re quelling how much builds up. BRD and MCH can manage 9 to 10k bursts in their openers. A queller would benefit them far more than a dump. They could remove the enmity dump aspect from Refresh and Tactician entirely if they wanted to give ranged physical DPS Diversion. I’d prefer that, to be honest.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah but does all other jobs have access to two skills to cut their enmity in a half? This comparison is bad and it's deffinetively not needed.

It's precisely because the comparison is bad that it shouldn't be necessary. And yet it is. A tank will necessarily struggle to hold hate against a Bard bursting up to 8k even as other DPS bursting over 10k are barely visible on the enmity bars, all so that, as soon as the Bard does rip hate, their enmity is reduced to such a low amount that it'll be several minutes before they'll need a single enmity skill against the same enemy, despite then ripping every add, too. None of that is smooth.

An retroactive enmity dump is no replacement for a present enmity reduction.

And as for the ridiculous, let's note this at least: Diversion, when identical in effect but known simply as Quelling Strikes instead, was a Bard/Archer skill, and even then barely reeled in Bard burst sufficiently.

[KDSilver]

Yeah but does all other jobs have access to two skills to cut their enmity in a half? This comparison is bad and it's deffinetively not needed.

Actually... most of them, yes...
Caster have Diversion(reduce by 90%) and Lucid Dreaming (half enmity)
Dragoon has Diversion (reduce by 90%) and Elusive Jump (half enmity)
Ninja has Diversion, Smokescreen (to reduce someone else enmity) and Silhouette to give its aggro to the tank.

Only Monk and Samurai only have access to diversion, but other dps do have a second or a third way to deal with that.

But for caster, since they have diversion, they don't need to burn their mana refresh to dump their aggro.
And when they'll need that mana refresh, the aggro dump is an extra.

In the end, none of them has to "waste" such ressources for aggro.

Please get some info before saying things.

[Dualgunner]

WAR is a tank, why would they ever need an aggro dampener or dump? Actually scratch that, WAR does have an aggro dump: Shirk, which becomes more useful to MT the more enmity they generated in the first place, so again diversion would be counter-intuitive. Compare to BRD/MCH's burst: nobody benefits from them nearly overtaking the tank every single pull. It means instead of smokescreening a WHM or an AST, the BRD or MCH needs to be smokescreened instead.

Sure, that can also be argued to be the point of Ninja. But for jobs whose entire point is party support, why is so much of their aggro dampening and damage outsourced to other party members? And as has been said by many people, burning one of the aggro dumps selfishly has potential to harm the whole party.

"Playing better" is also the answer to nearly anything to be honest.

[Kurando]

If you’re a caster not making use of both Diversion and Lucid, then you aren’t playing correctly. I’ve seen BLMs use both, even though Lucid is worthless to them in terms of MP regeneration. RDMs use both. SMNs use both. Sure, they can live without one or the other, but they have access to both. And good casters use both. If you aren’t, then you aren’t playing well.

First and foremost, most optimal Caster guides suggest both, though put more emphasis on at least having one. Second, casters generate much higher sustained enmity than ranged whereas the latter only needs aggro cuts in their opener. Basically, it boils down to Diversion is more useful to Bard and Machinist.

I disagree with the first point HyoMin as Bourne had it more on point of the situation with casters. It's easy to assume someone mustn't be playing their job well if they don't have BOTH aggro actions but things are never so black and white. There are some great players out there that can get through content without using either and be on point but doesn't mean they are doing anything wrong though if they are still getting the same result as someone who does use them. Lucid is generally the go-to for SMN/RDM and Diversion BLM (seeing as the latter doesn't need Refresh). It's also very situational and cross roles mean you can't make room for everything so really depends on the content and how you prefer to play.

I'm the end Diversion used to be Quelling and was accessable to BRD/MCH and although things have changed since HW, the need for them still brings more perks than negatives. Tactician/Refresh effects too many players to be used selfishly compared to Lucid.

[ruskie]

Quelling strikes rarely worked as good as just having my enmity cut in half does now. So no I don't want to give up an enmity dump for something that doesn't work as well.

[Shurrikhan]

Quelling strikes rarely worked as good as just having my enmity cut in half does now. So no I don't want to give up an enmity dump for something that doesn't work as well.

90% over 30 seconds would take 54 seconds for a enmity-halving skill to come even against. Noting also that Diversion will be ready for recast in minutes rather than Tactician/Refresh's 3 minutes, those 54 seconds make the skill cut awfully even in total effective throughput in any fight under 7 minutes. When you consider also how valuable that opening half-minute is to overall DPS, and therefore how much effective (tank) DPS can be gained through reduced enmity needs, I'd personally have to consider Diversion the one of greater use even if a tank easily could hold back a Bard's full burst without it -- which, they frequently cannot.

This is less required for a MCH, since at least Wildfire gives more time for the tank to catch up compared to an instantaneous bonus and the turret divert's nearly auto-attack's portion of damage off the MCH itself, but Bard's wholly personal and undelayed enmity, with even more immediate burst if Barraging EA or generating a rapid RA than MCH is enough to make a NIN worthwhile if even just for its enmity tools in the initial burst.