Tank Stance Redesign

[Grimoire-M]

Alternatively SE could remove Diversion/Shadewalker and all the non-tank aggro dumps, and improve the auto attack damage of bosses in savage enough that tank stance matters for a significant period of the fight. Currently cooldown management is the only thing required. The emnity required to keep ahead of the DPS and healers would be enough incentive to care regardless, and the extra auto damage would put more pressure on the healers, resulting in more of a net loss in DPS if tanks overstayed in DPS stance trying to get their damage in.

To me, requiring tanks and healers to balance their DPS contributions between each other is more important than letting tanks go full stop on damage. Healers should be hitting harder than tanks by default if left to DPS fully, because tanks will always be dealing damage even in tank stance. The raids put more than enough pressure on the healing side as it is, and not enough on the tanks themselves. That has to change. To me, that means nerfing tank dps (preferably through indirect means, such as forcing stance swapping in order to maintain emnity) and making them care more about mitigation, and increasing healer DPS and giving them more ways to do so that also cost healing resources. The current state has tanks dealing more damage than healers even without factoring in how actual fights play out, and that's not a good state to be in. It's a sign that tanks need more pressure in general, and healers may need less, in order to facilitate spending their resources on damage where possible.

[Marxam]

How did you get that misimpression? How is a simple weak, short duration damage buff equal to an actual stance?

With the changes you suggested it is literally reduced to just that. Instead of burst dps moments we will get burst enmity moments. Using your example for SwO being a passive and ShO being the said buff. It's very similar to how healers utilize their cleric stances, which is not a stance but a cd now (was a stance back in ARR days) to deal damage during certain moments of a fight like pulls or add burns but with tanks it would be for enmity.

Sword Oath
Now a trait. Still deals additional damage with every AA. Doesn't apply when in Shield Oath.

You will see similar changes for every stance. It should work the same way like in PvP. You start in your DPS stance, and only apply your tank stance when needed. Gauge still gains 5 pts every AA as long as Shield Oath is off.

Now if we go to WAR, my main, some of the changes you proposed seem off to me. According to your description Deliverance is now a trait therefore it is a passive 5%, Defiance seems to function the same; turn on/off for enmity (like pvp), Unchained being a buff on top of defiance but shorter and higher potency and Beast Mastery being a trait does what we currently have when in our stances, which is to build gauge when using actions when under Deliverance/Defiance but without having it active? The wording is a bit confusing because if Deliverance is a trait it would always be up and can't be turned off.

Now, you can "charge" your Gauge before Deliverance, and without Defiance.
It wouldn't do anything before using Defaince or Deliverance tho.

Apart from this being very similar to how we have pvp currently it still further sets a precedent that tanks are just dps with higher hp and defensive values. You can't have high enmity tools and dmg potential without messing the balance of the game, which Yoshi seems to be very adamant about despite some classes clearly offering more than others, ex WAR/PLD with party shields and DRK with solo shields.

I went through Seal Rock in 3.0 before the nerfs and WAR's were quite literally what you described them to be. Always started in Deliverance and only used Defiance when needed. High hp with little to no dmg penalty due to Unchained when in Defiance and Berserk when available. I would FC healers to death and dps couldn't lay a scratch on me while I FC them to death. The point being is that I did little of what is expected of my class which is to protect my party and I just FC everything that moved because I can since I dealt as much dmg as the other dps and took much less dmg too. There was also a time when WAR's were nearly matched in dps to other dps in raid content and you would see them in the top 3 spots of rDPS because they had 100% up time on the boss. SE quickly remedied this.

This goes back to my argument that the game design is what makes tank stance useful and I strongly believe if bosses dealt more dmg tanks would stay in their stances more often. I'm all for making tanking fun, accessible and unique but making them glorified dps is not what I and others signed up for. Seeing 0 dmg from Omega's delta attack is just as rewarding as seeing dhcrits deal more than 20k from a FC. There's a reason why tank queues are instant. The responsibility, and consequences are much greater than any other role, not to mention the amount of flak we tanks get in pugs or pf.

A decent party can carry dead dps, a great party can carry dead healers but no party can carry dead tanks.

[ArianeEwah]

snip

It seems you didn't fully understand what effects are included in my suggestions, I will give you more details.

Let's start from top: Job Gauge.

I think Job Gauge should be active once you change/set your job, best example is DRK. DRK doesn't have any stances for their Job Gauge. Yet, PLD and WAR do, and they can actually lose all gauge by turning off their stances. I want to avoid that.

The implication is either have one stance as default, that can't be turned off, or keep the Job Gauge all the time, even despite having no stance used. So I've chosen the 1st option, with DPS stance being the default stance, just as in PvP.

That results in several problems to solve.
WAR doesn't have any "DPS stance" or default stance before level 52, so they shouldn't able to gain any Beast Gauge until then, thus I changed requirements to gain Beast Gauge, and created a trait. Now keep in mind that this Beast Gauge is actually useless below level 52 without being under the effect of Defiance. At level 50 this gives WAR the opportunity to OT, and "burst" by activating their tank stance and dump their Gauge, and turn it off without generating too much enmity.
-That's the best solution imo, although there are other. No Gauge generation without Defiance until 52. Or being able to use Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone without Defiance-
-This problem doesn't affect PLD until 52 when they learn Sheltron-

While in PvP tank stance reduces your damage dealt (and by a large amount at that) I think it would be better to tune down their mitigation value and cancel the damage dealt reduction. I want to see my stances as either damage taken down or damage done up, only buffs, no drawback. Drawbacks never make me want to use it (MNK and SAM wouldn't use their unique enmity dumps neither because their counterpart skill actually does damage).

The damage "buff" from "DPS stance" (default) need to be turned off while under the effect of tank stance, so tanks will lose and gain their respective buffs whenever they turn tank stance on or off.

Also, my suggested tank stances don't have any duration if that is what you thought. They have a RECAST time which means you can't turn off tank stance for x recast time, but their "duration" is still the same as current (an actual stance). Current Defiance and Deliverance also happen to have a recast time, so you can't switch to (or off) your stance before recast time is over.


You said I changed tank stances into Cleric Stance 2.0. Do you mean 4.x Cleric Stance or 3.x Cleric Stance?
If former, then no, that's a simple damage buff that has nothing to do with my suggestions.
If latter, then yes. If Cleric Stance make you "abandon" your role (healer) to change into a DPS, then my suggested tank stances do that in reverse. With a few gimmicks on top to keep diversity. WAR stance are still pretty much the same as before except you "switch to DPS stance", you just turn off your tank stance and gain DPS buff through your trait.


As I am writing this, I happen to think of another option to fix Job Gauge and (accidently) turning off your stance. That would be to have a trait that turns on your DPS stance, as soon as you switch your job (like Gatherers, they automaticly apply their buffs, e.g. Prospect for Miner) and make it impossible to turn off (or trigger) your currently active stance.
I will take my time and rethink the possibilities/changes, and update OP later.

PS: If anything is still unclear, pls point that out and ASK. I wrote my text more or less while being busy with other things. Ask first, judge later!

[Derio]

Can’t completely get rid of it. If they do then enmity will need a complete overhaul. This punishes healers and new players more than anything

[Aquaslash]

REMOVE DPS STANCE

Yes I said it. All this damage blather is half the problem and the main reason that tanks don't feel like actual tanks but just fat DPSes. I'd just merge all the DPS abilities with the tank stance itself and rework encounters so that the tank's primary functions are aggro management and CD usage. To that end, keeping aggro should be a challenge that the tank actively has to work on instead of the brainless one combo job it is now. OTs could simply have a rotation or abilities that keep their aggro down until they need to swap.

Either way, tanking needs a huge overhaul in this game cause it's the most poorly designed role by a country mile

[saltlife]

REMOVE DPS STANCE

Yes I said it. All this damage blather is half the problem and the main reason that tanks don't feel like actual tanks but just fat DPSes. I'd just merge all the DPS abilities with the tank stance itself and rework encounters so that the tank's primary functions are aggro management and CD usage. To that end, keeping aggro should be a challenge that the tank actively has to work on instead of the brainless one combo job it is now. OTs could simply have a rotation or abilities that keep their aggro down until they need to swap.

Either way, tanking needs a huge overhaul in this game cause it's the most poorly designed role by a country mile

I think an overhaul is a bit much, but I say something a bit more exciting than the one button combos could be in order since PLD and WAR are kinda stale. If anything, don't think of them as "Tanks" so much as "support DPS" in the fact that they give room for actual DPS to do damage and ease burden on healers. Everybody likes doing damage. If anything, give tanks a bit more engaging of a rotation to supplement how "brainless one combo"y they are. Nothing too complex that it gets in the way of complicating a rotation along with giving out buffs or CD usage.

OTs could simply have a rotation or abilities that keep their aggro down until they need to swap.

This argument is counter intuitive to your entire statement. They would operate the same way except they would just do less damage which isn't worth doing anything apart from how we have tanking now.

[NyneSwordz]

I like this thread!

But before we get into discussions about skills and traits, could we agree on some sort of format regarding the discussion going forward? That way, we won't get bogged down fighting over the details, and the whole thread could be more constructive as a whole?

I propose this format:

(1) First, we discuss what GENERALLY makes tanking fun and enjoyable. What makes us WANT to be tanks in the first place.
(2) Second, we discuss what makes a SPECIFIC tank fun or enjoyable. That is, what makes a paladin the choice for you? Or what, thematically, makes Dark or War fun? Your discussion, your thematic take on your tank of choice goes here.
(3) Third, we can get into the nitty gritty, and discuss what skills and abilities we think will fulfill the criteria we set forth in part (1) and part (2). In other words, here, we talk about the skills and abilities that will make tanking fun in GENERAL, and make tanking fun as a dark, pld, or war SPECIFICALLY.

What do you guys think?

[Shurrikhan]

I like this thread!

But before we get into discussions about skills and traits, could we agree on some sort of format regarding the discussion going forward? That way, we won't get bogged down fighting over the details, and the whole thread could be more constructive as a whole?

I propose this format:

(1) First, we discuss what GENERALLY makes tanking fun and enjoyable. What makes us WANT to be tanks in the first place.
(2) Second, we discuss what makes a SPECIFIC tank fun or enjoyable. That is, what makes a paladin the choice for you? Or what, thematically, makes Dark or War fun? Your discussion, your thematic take on your tank of choice goes here.
(3) Third, we can get into the nitty gritty, and discuss what skills and abilities we think will fulfill the criteria we set forth in part (1) and part (2). In other words, here, we talk about the skills and abilities that will make tanking fun in GENERAL, and make tanking fun as a dark, pld, or war SPECIFICALLY.

What do you guys think?

Quoting in full because I'd like more to see these questions; they seem highly useful.

(1) I'm not a huge fan of tanking in tab-target MMOs, but in games such as Overwatch I enjoy tanks because there is a very distinct skillset and perspective to combat from such classes in how tightly their synergies work with others and that they have real support mechanisms (as compared to support solely through reconditioning the encounter -- i.e. by intimidating enemies), by which to make space for their party. When combat involves things that must be actively defended against it feels far more tangible to me. The attraction, though, is less in playing a tank -- though I do greatly enjoy doing so when I can make full use of its toolkit -- as the fact that an organically "tank-ish" skillset can be of use. It's the nuance of encounters made possible by the depth of undermechanics that makes that enthralls me. As such, I hate enmity as a rigid metric with a passion, and those who insist on its place in a game without allowing for improvements to its system and its peripheries seem to me only to glorify the basest and cheapest possible form of mob scripting, as if they took pleasure in gutting what more encounters could otherwise be.

(2) I mained a Warrior in ARR, a Paladin in early SB, and most often played DRK in HW, especially before the move from purely STR-based tank AP. That said, I play all three, and enjoy all three for different reasons. Paladin was probably my favorite OT in HW, and DRK my favorite MT, with DRK and WAR tied for favorite dungeon-runner. In SB, all three are quite enjoyable, but I've actually played WAR the least, in dungeons or 8-mans, and run dungeons most often on DRK.

For brevity, I'll pretend I have a favorite -- DRK. In HW I loved DRK because it had a near-constant sense of urgency, and it had ways (like Warrior, but less often dismissed, at least in dungeon-running) by which to gain rDPS through sacrificing offense for defense, namely through DA-DD or DA-DM. I liked that. Perhaps more importantly though, it just felt like bastardish blackguard of a tank, kicking and clawing and decapitating. One of my favorite aesthetics has always been the armored, but still well maneuverable, longswordsman -- best imagined as a cross between some manner of a Witcher without the ridiculous spinning, and something much more likely to kick your knee out its back once your sword's been parried low, and behead you merely as a shortest path to the next parry. DRK couldn't quite provide that, but it came close. And it was a hell of a ride. I felt like we lost a fair bit when SB hit, but I've actually ran into one of my favorite actions since: popping Blood Weapon-Delirium DA-Quietus spams among 12+ targets for 250+ AoE potency every GCD for 10 GCDs straight. Coupled with the ability to freely DA-AD, it has this feeling of going all in. Against more weakly-hitting packs, it is actually safer to drop Grit and simply weave in the occasional massive self-heal than to attempt to ride out the blows with Grit and BP, or especially once BP's about fallen off. And I love that. I like offense sometimes being the best defense. And the fact that it isn't consistently available grants it a very enjoyable sense of punctuation -- things die now (not so well as Berserk-Deci spam, and for no huge bonus elsewhere, but still).

(3) Cover, Intervention, Blood Weapon in combination with Quietus, TBN, and Holmgang. Those are the only truly prominent skills to me.

_______________________

(Hereafter does not adhere to format.)

I honestly think tanking needs a full rework, not (just) via each tank's toolkits, but from the role -- or, better said, the task -- of tanking, itself. Enmity needs to be far less rigid, as to involve far deeper and wider ranges of decisions, participation, and nuance. I honestly believe that PvP becomes most doomed to fail when a game refused to look beyond schedules of raid attacks for PvE design (encouraging only memorization), never touching mob scripts or behaviors (which would encourage rapid acquisition and adaptation). Ultimately, the two paths -- schedules and scripts -- end very similarly, but the linearity of the first forgoes latitudinal decision-making, and in the absence of such a need, toolkits tend to allow for or encourage little of it. When one then reaches PvP, which, simple quality of design to mitigate latency issues and the like permitting, then desires latitudinal decision-making, the PvE systems feel bloated in some regards and badly underequipped in others. It is better then to design for a PvE experience that is at least effectively capable of the sorts of play that one would expect from a compelling PvP experience. And enmity is not part of that. Perceived threat is. One can draw ire from players. One can distract attention away from more valuable targets. But it is no rigid metric. A tank's toolkit, be it in PvE or PvP, ought to be one which can not only influence enemy offensive behavior, but can directly thwart it -- or at least with greater reliability, control, and/or versatility than a class not specialized as a "tank" -- in a way that would work as well on player foes as on mobs.

Once, and only once, that change in design philosophy can be manifest should we then see to polishing out the aesthetics, identities, and internal and external synergies of each tanks' toolkits, providing each with consistently enjoyable but distinct rhythms of play and intuitive ability designs and buttonflows. I suspect that will mean a bit of streamlining, though in a "good" way -- doubling down on the best and most synergetic parts of each identity (Warrior's big numbers, going-ham mode, HP recovery and HP maximum growth, for instance). But I suspect also that will mean a great deal more undermechanical depth, more granular and versatile uses of resources -- be they damage-to-resource mechanics, more to do with job gauge meters, or whatever else -- and perhaps even entire new systems of, say, Suppression, but to me at least it would be more than worth the effort.

[Ekimmak]

I like this thread!

But before we get into discussions about skills and traits, could we agree on some sort of format regarding the discussion going forward? That way, we won't get bogged down fighting over the details, and the whole thread could be more constructive as a whole?

I propose this format:

(1) First, we discuss what GENERALLY makes tanking fun and enjoyable. What makes us WANT to be tanks in the first place.
(2) Second, we discuss what makes a SPECIFIC tank fun or enjoyable. That is, what makes a paladin the choice for you? Or what, thematically, makes Dark or War fun? Your discussion, your thematic take on your tank of choice goes here.
(3) Third, we can get into the nitty gritty, and discuss what skills and abilities we think will fulfill the criteria we set forth in part (1) and part (2). In other words, here, we talk about the skills and abilities that will make tanking fun in GENERAL, and make tanking fun as a dark, pld, or war SPECIFICALLY.

What do you guys think?

(1)
Generally, the first thing (shamefully) is always the queue times. I enjoy being in demand.

But more importantly, I like the fun of tanking in the really hard fights. Each fight is a memorisation task: I have to learn each moment of heavy incoming damage (not just tankbusters, Kefka Savage will teach you the danger of unrelenting auto-attacks when he isn't casting telegraph hell), and the proper rotation of cooldowns to ensure I can respond properly. I've tried DPS'ing, and I cannot that complex a rotation. But for some reason, it works for tanking.

(2)
Specifically? I like WAR and DRK, but can't really say why. I can say why I dislike PLD though: it just feels so useless. I don't read parse numbers, it's too depressing for me. But with PLD,the majority of my power comes from the very simple rotation of 1 goring blade, 2 royal authorities. That's it. Their "burst" phases are fairly unimpressive. They don't feel rewarding for pulling off, like I'm doing anything significant by saving up MP for spamming Holy Spirit, or using Fight or Flight period. I may be awful at DRK, but it feels satisfying to squeeze in Plunge+C&S during blood weapon, or using a Dark Arts/Dark Passenger. It would be nice if there was something to vary the Soul Eater spam, but for the most part, it *feels* like I'm doing something significant when I play right.

I suppose that's the same reason I like War. I understand it enough that it feels like I'm doing something significant when I time all my cooldowns to ensure I get the optimal DPS.


As for (3)... beats me. I guess TBN feels good because it means I still contribute to MT survival even as an offtank. People like to rag on DRK for not being able to group shield, but after a few runs of O10S, I can see the weakness in WAR from not having a partner support skill. That said, the group shield skills (and reprisal) also feel good to use, because I always time them for raidwide damage, and knowing that I've contributed to reducing that feels nice.

Other things enjoyed: timing Vengeance/Blood Price for rapid attacks, since that means I get rapid amounts of MP/counterattacks: being able to take solo Ultimate Embrace by piling on every cooldown (excluding the death immunities)... I think if we want to make Tank Stance useful, I'd personally make it more mitigation focused. So going into Tank Stance makes everybody tougher, not just you. Whether that would be by introducing a damage debuff to it overall, or buffing reprisal, or what... I think people would be a lot less inclined against it in new learning content, and I feel like that's where it's most important.

[NyneSwordz]

Here, I'll start off. I hope this catches on, and I hope we get good feedback from the community to the point where the developers will take notice (and perhaps comment!).

(1) I love tanking because I like getting into the thick of the fight! More specifically, I enjoy the responsibility of controlling the boss. I enjoy having to move or position the boss. This is essential. Without this duty to control or position the boss, tanking is just utterly boring to me. I can't stand STANDING in place and tanking. I need the challenge of knowing when to move the boss this way, or when to turn the boss this way or that way.
To that end, I REALLY WISH interrupting was a thing for tanks again! I want brutal swing back for my War! And I want fights to be designed so that I will need to use it at key points to avoid a tank buster. Please make this a thing. Perhaps add in like a marker to indicate when you need to stun even (Although, I prefer no marker, but a marker is okay too if the devs think this is needed help those who aren't so into being super alert during the fight). Maybe a giant "!" mark on the monster's head? I don't know. I just want to use stuns again.

The second thing that really makes tanking fun for me is being able to time mitigation. I really enjoy being forced to time a holmgang or an inner beast to avoid a tank buster. Active mitigation in the sense that it's timed is really fun. So for this, I'd like to make it so that tanks are encouraged to sit on meter, and challenged to decided when to use it for mitigation versus when to use it for dps. Right now, I feel like cooldown abilities not tied to meter are used for tanking, while meter is pretty much used for dps. To this end, maybe prune the number of cooldown/role action mitigation abilities? And force tanks to use their job specific abilities (which are tied to meter/resources) for mitigation. And then work the encounter so that a skilled tank with great timing can optimize his dps by selectively using meter. Slow down meter usage a bit - instead of building it up then dumping it as fast as possible. Make building it up faster, but make it so that its not bad tanking to sit on meter, but instead, a smart tank knowing the encounter will be able to time his meter usage precisely for mitigation or defense! Maybe make invuln abilities like holmgang tied to meter.

Lastly, tanking is fun because there's a dps component to it. I don't want it to go away. But I want the dps component of tanking to be, like the mitigation part of tanking, timed and not spammy. I like the idea of dps windows. Maybe rework tanking or design encounters so that there are a max number of dps windows open to a tank for any given encounter. So, let's say, for encounter A there's 10 possible dps windows open to a tank given that he perfectly manages meter, manages the generation of meter, manages the use of it for mitigation. So a perfect tank has meter to take advantage of all 10 dps windows. A less skilled tank who inefficiently uses meter for mitigation might only be able to take advantage of lets say 7, and down we go.

So, to this end, I guess what I'm advocating is against tanks always in dps stance (unless theyre off tanks). I'll leave it at that.

(2) I'm a War. So I'll talk about War only. For me, I like War because he tanks with a big 2 handed weapon, and he hits HARD. Also, I like War, because he HAD this berserker vibe, where he heals BY DOING DAMAGE. The sacrifice for greater dps, or greater burst dps, is that he doesn't have as much mitigation as a paladin. Right now, Wars have a ton of cooldown defense abilities, but most don't fit him at all thematically. That alone makes them less fun to use. I don't know what the proposed change would be, maybe like the OP suggested, merge the old bloodlust into unchained? That would be cool.

Maybe allow for rage generation outside of battle again? And then tie the new bloodlust/unchained to meter? Create some kind of tension/choice between the new unchained for steady, moderate over-time sustain versus the high mitigation but low duration of inner beast v fell cleave spam for dps? Something like that would be cool.

(3) Well, I kinda didn't stick to the format I laid out because I mentioned skill changes above. But I hope this was somewhat constructive.

Let's keep the suggestions rolling. I hope this becomes a good thread.