Tank Stance

[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.