Tank Stance

[Pyro2hell3]

i mean diversions great and all but there are some tanks that are so bad diversion isn't enough

[HyoMinPark]

i mean diversions great and all but there are some tanks that are so bad diversion isn't enough

While that is true, there’s no way of knowing if this tank was one of those tanks, and he wasn’t wrong when he said enmity is the responsibility of the entire party (that would also include himself, but I’m speaking purely on the side of DPS that refuse to use their enmity management skills here). And it doesn’t excuse the fact that OP is still in the wrong for blatantly refusing to use Diversion themselves when aggro was apparently already an issue without it.

[RiyahArp]

As for Cleric Stance, well considering they made healer DPS even easier with Stormblood (no need for stance-dancing; all healer damage scales off of MND now), they already realize that this is a playstyle a lot of players enjoy (which is why they removed it, aside from just making it easier overall).

I'm not sure enjoy is the right word. It's more the battle system for healers is so anemic you need dps for filler than anything. I like healing more outside of normal pve, like eureka or pvp, because the speed of the damage eliminates all the filler dpsing. Spamming stone IV isn't fun gameplay.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm not sure enjoy is the right word. It's more the battle system for healers is so anemic you need dps for filler than anything. I like healing more outside of normal pve, like eureka or pvp, because the speed of the damage eliminates all the filler dpsing. Spamming stone IV isn't fun gameplay.

I’d rather spam Stone IV than be force to stand and wait around for people to take damage, to be quite frank. There’s also more to WHM than just that—you still have DoTs to manage, and the ever-lovely skill Assize to use off-cooldown (unless you’re saving it for an incoming raid-wide damage). Yoshida also explained that the reasoning for removing Cleric Stance/scaling healer DPS off of Mind was because he was aware that people enjoy that gameplay, and wanted to make it simpler (since Cleric Stance was notorious for being over-sensitive to double tapping, and it locked you into it for 5 full seconds). Those were his words, not mine.

Most of the healers that DPS will tell you they do so because standing around and waiting for incoming damage is boring gameplay, and that they actually enjoy contributing to the party in another meaningful way. You’ve read the healer DPS debates. Sure some do to conform to some META, but a lot do because they enjoy it/want to. You’re again applying your definition of “fun” or “interesting” gameplay to everyone—what’s fun (or not fun) for you doesn’t apply to others. Same for what is fun (or not fun) for me. But I’m going off of what countless other healers have said in the myriad of healer DPS debates this forum has seen.

But this thread isn’t about that; it’s about a supposed bad tank who, while he may or may not have actually been bad, was not wrong when he said enmity management is also the responsibility of DPS jobs. Use Diversion. Use Tactician.

[RiyahArp]

I said it because there aren't as many people who like it as you think. Yeah, the game is where everyone has to dps, but I don't think it should be said that it is attractive gameplay to a lot of people. Especially if you come from other games, this game's healing takes a bit of getting used to and is not one of its strongest points.

As for the tank, eh. I'm seen way too many primadonna tanks in DF; usually the first one to abandon anything is a tank, so I kind of lean to the OP a lot more. And again, Lucid dreaming is more valuable for me to restore MP than a enmity down tool, especially if its something where there is a risk of dying or needing to raise others.l The tank if he stays in DPS stance needs to keep an eye on the enmity list and make sure they are using enough enmity combos per the amount of hate the other dps use. If you have to burn tactician early, that means the pty will lose a decent amount of dps too in non-boss situations.

[HyoMinPark]

As for the tank, eh. I'm seen way too many primadonna tanks in DF; usually the first one to abandon anything is a tank, so I kind of lean to the OP a lot more. And again, Lucid dreaming is more valuable for me to restore MP than a enmity down tool, especially if its something where there is a risk of dying or needing to raise others. The tank if he stays in DPS stance needs to keep an eye on the enmity list and make sure they are using enough enmity combos per the amount of hate the other dps use. If you have to burn tactician early, that means the pty will lose a decent amount of dps too.

As I said, I can understand with regards to Lucid, but you also have to consider the alternative, which will result in you dying more than likely. There could be better ways for healer enmity to be managed—right now, it seemed to only be WHM that struggles with it. AST has built-in enmity quelling in their Sects, and SCH doesn’t suffer as bad because their enmity is split between them and their Fairy.

With regards to the opening post/Tactician debate, if you’re dealing with a single-target (as was the case mentioned explicitly in the OP—it was the final boss of Doma Castle), Tactician will not be a DPS loss for anyone. You ripping aggro and dying, however, will be—both BRD and MCH are very burst heavy, especially in their openers, and sometimes you can rip off of even good tanks if they aren’t expecting your burst to be as high as it was (speaking from experience). In trash-pulls, everyone should be AOEing, so TP should not be an issue—you can generally rotate between Invigorate and Tactician between trash pulls. If it is, then someone isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. The only times where I’ve noticed people struggling with TP are instances where they are the only one actually doing AOE damage, while the others are single-targeting.

[KisaiTenshi]

Removing DPS stance in group content will also cause issues in 8-man and 24-man content, as there can only be one Main Tank at a time. What about the OTs? Are they to just not use a stance? They aren’t needed in terms of main tanking, and usually exist for things like tank swaps, adds, shared busters, taking over in the sad even the MT dies (which may or may not even happen), or Provoke+Shirking. Why not let them utilitize a DPS stance since that’s the majority of why they’re there anyways—they aren’t main-tanking, so they might as well deal damage.

As for Cleric Stance, well considering they made healer DPS even easier with Stormblood (no need for stance-dancing; all healer damage scales off of MND now), they already realize that this is a playstyle a lot of players enjoy (which is why they removed it, aside from just making it easier overall). After you’ve established hate and healed all there is to heal, there is nothing better to do than contribute to DPS. You certainly don’t stand around; I don’t know how people can do that because I personally find it incredibly boring to just wait for people to take damage.

The developers intent is pretty clear. They removed Cleric Stance because it was not being used correctly, extremely error prone, not lag friendly, and was a large source of hostility and numerous "lazy healer/heal-only" arguments from players that use raider meta on all content. It was only supposed to be used for Solo play, hence why skills were balanced that way. So when they got rid of it, they rebalanced the healer DPS skills so that they're permanently nerfed relative to a DPS player, and thus playing solo content now takes twice as long, and things like Eureka and PotD are generally a pain to solo. MSQ solo content is balanced against a healer being able to clear it.

The Tank stance is different, the intent is to be able to tank swap. All 4-player content the tank should be in tank stance the entire time, by design. There are practical reasons why you'd want to turn off tank stance, and that is mostly due to overgearing. The tank storylines don't even need you to be in tank stance. For all intents you can play the MSQ exactly the same as a DPS player would, and it would be a faceroll due to wearing better gear.

SE has no way to "get rid of tank stance" like they would cleric stance, because then there would be no way to invoke the tank swap mechanic. Likewise, you can usually get past all trash mobs in duties without the tank by doing babypulls, and some bosses that don't have tankbuster mechanics can be tanked by the healer spamming their basic heal repeatedly, since they will have always have all the enmity without the tank.

What SE could do in the same idea of getting rid of tank stance dance is by removing the ability to switch out of tank stance unless their HP is full (switching into tank stance would always be possible.) That ensures that the player taking damage doesn't turn tank stance off until they've stopped taking damage and another player has taken enmity from them. But that's probably just more annoying than useful.

I said it because there aren't as many people who like it as you think. Yeah, the game is where everyone has to dps, but I don't think it should be said that it is attractive gameplay to a lot of people. Especially if you come from other games, this game's healing takes a bit of getting used to and is not one of its strongest points.

As for the tank, eh. I'm seen way too many primadonna tanks in DF; usually the first one to abandon anything is a tank, so I kind of lean to the OP a lot more. And again, Lucid dreaming is more valuable for me to restore MP than a enmity down tool, especially if its something where there is a risk of dying or needing to raise others.l The tank if he stays in DPS stance needs to keep an eye on the enmity list and make sure they are using enough enmity combos per the amount of hate the other dps use. If you have to burn tactician early, that means the pty will lose a decent amount of dps too in non-boss situations.

This is not a game where everyone has to DPS, that is just raider meta being taken too seriously. The design is pretty clear. Yoshi-P stated that they design every fight without healer DPS taken into account. They removed the bonus points with this intent as well, and the ability to put "wrong materia" on gear was also nerfed so that tanks can't be better DPS.

The worst thing this game did was come out with PotD with no role composition requirement. This has resulted in players being told to level in PotD by DPS zerging their way through the floors and not really being able to use more than their two basic DPS skills since the mobs are all made of tissue paper. Then when it comes to actual content, surprise, they have to do more than press two buttons.

If you're playing the roles as designed, the enmity reduction skills are things that you shouldn't need to use, because you only get to use them once then they're on a cooldown, where as the tank's basic skills all generate more enmity than DPS players basic skills. Hence they are designed for a mechanic where the tank can not get enmity immediately (Eg add phases), and not for the tank to sit there in DPS stance to minmax their DPS. If a tank is telling you to use your enmity reduction skills in lieu of them actually tanking, then the tank is a bad tank. The only bad tanks I run into are those that are undergeared, because, again, PotD.

That's why players need to be careful what they ask for, because if they get it, will come at the expense of a rebalance of their other skills so the net result is no additional DPS. I'm an advocate that players should be allowed to play their roles (eg tank, healer or dps) without having their arms twisted by players who want to minmax their dps. That means that actions that are designed for solo play are not be necessary during party play if players are actually playing their roles.

The minute you start telling players to play a role in a way they didn't sign up for, is the minute they stop playing that content, and hence why there is a perpetual shortage of tanks, and the number of actually good tanks is few and far between (the leveling queue is pretty much guaranteed the worst tanks from players who want to farm cracked clusters.) That minmax DPS meta does not work for tanks, and does not work for healers, and thus if you want a tank or healer in the party, just be quiet and take when you get from the duty finder.

[Reynhart]

The Tank stance is different, the intent is to be able to tank swap.

Actually, I think the stances for tank were designed the same as Cleric Stance. Keeping a somehow low DPS in group content while not making solo content too tedious.

For tank swap, now that you have Provoke, Shirk, and no reason to ever use any enmity enhanced WS when you're not tanking, swapping is not really a problem even if both tanks use their stance.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I have seen far too many tanks get killed in situations where the extra mitigation from tank stance would have saved them.
But nope, it's better to die than to compromise your damage output apparantly.

Those tanks usually messed up their CDs or took avoidable damage. As someone who drops tank stance as early as possible, I've never needed it to survive unless I or someone else messed up.

This is not a game where everyone has to DPS, that is just raider meta being taken too seriously. The design is pretty clear. Yoshi-P stated that they design every fight without healer DPS taken into account. They removed the bonus points with this intent as well, and the ability to put "wrong materia" on gear was also nerfed so that tanks can't be better DPS.

Need I remind you have the Phantom Train run once again? You know, the one where I was literally useless because I did nothing except heal. Intent matters little when gameplay functionality works differently. If the developers truly didn't want healers or tank to deal damage, they should make content so hilariously easy a healer can spend 80% doing absolutely nothing if they aren't DPSing.

If you're playing the roles as designed, the enmity reduction skills are things that you shouldn't need to use, because you only get to use them once then they're on a cooldown, where as the tank's basic skills all generate more enmity than DPS players basic skills. Hence they are designed for a mechanic where the tank can not get enmity immediately (Eg add phases), and not for the tank to sit there in DPS stance to minmax their DPS. If a tank is telling you to use your enmity reduction skills in lieu of them actually tanking, then the tank is a bad tank. The only bad tanks I run into are those that are undergeared, because, again, PotD.

Diversion is an aggro suppression skill, thereby it's only useful when DPS are dealing high amounts of damage. Hence why good players utilize it in their openers, you know, when you're generating the highest enmity possible. Claiming players shouldn't need to use this ability only highlights how little you understand, though that has always been apparent since you don't even do content outside of dungeons. And, of course, any criticism towards your "playstyle" is immediately dismissed as "raider meta" or "toxicity" because the all holy Kisai knows all. You know what takes forever? Standing around doing next to zero damage. How do you manage trials like Lahskmi in 4.1 or the ghosts in Phantom Train?

[MoroMurasaki]

That minmax DPS meta does not work for tanks, and does not work for healers, and thus if you want a tank or healer in the party, just be quiet and take when you get from the duty finder.

It works for me when I'm tanking. Works for me when I'm healing too... Hmm... :thinking:

But honestly - just shut up and accept what you get in the Duty Finder? Cool! Hey OP of this thread, Kisai thinks you should stop complaining and just take what you get from the duty finder!

Frankly I agree. This is stupid. If you used your enmity reduction skills properly and weren't needlessly spamming healing on people who didn't need it then the fault lies with the tank. If you didn't use enmity CDs correctly/at all or spammed heals any time anyone took damage... yeah, then it's your fault if you take a tankbuster to the face.

This isn't rocket science. I don't get why this thread is 9 pages long. Case closed.

I have seen far too many tanks get killed in situations where the extra mitigation from tank stance would have saved them.
But nope, it's better to die than to compromise your damage output apparantly.

Do you understand how WAR tank stance works? It's a bit more health and a passive buff to healing recieved. There is no built-in mitigation. Everything does the same amount of damage to a WAR in Defiance that it would do in Deliverance.