Can we remove Tank Stance?

[Arkdra]

Making tank stance bonuses permanent would be mechanically the same as removing damage penalty. Lack of damage stance bonuses is part of that penalty. If you can stay in damage stance while keeping exactly same passive mitigation, hence not hindering the healers even if you don't know what fluff cds are, then it is no longer a reward.

So what? Do you really feel like stance dancing is a reward? More than anything, I don't feel like I am being rewarded for being in damage stance, I feel like I am being put upon when I have to be in tank stance. I also feel annoyed when I queue as not a tank and get some nerdo who spends the entire dungeon in tank stance. Or conversely, queue into a real low level dungeon and get some sprout who isn't using it.

The only compelling argument for tank stances I've seen so far are the people who are so on the ball that they occasionally swap to it for extra mitigation for tank busters or when healers are under too much pressure. I don't think leaving in this fiddly mechanic for those people to eke out a couple percents worth of effectiveness through clever play is an effective counterweight to the never ending pile of tanks that clown it in either direction. There should be better, more interesting means for skilled players to show off than this.

Plus, removing stances is two more free buttons for new abilities.

[AxlStream]

In the case of Warrior you free no buttons as you would need to split Decimate and Fell Cleave from Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast.

[Arkdra]

Why does tank stance exist? So that newbie tanks and people doing blind prog can put their "training wheels" on. This makes the role that people are already afraid of easier to get into and lets you learn fresh content with less wiping(because let's be real, no death screws up the raid as a tank death, especially when there's forced tank swaps involved).

Why does tank stance need the damage penalty? So that once you learn to plan your mitigation correctly, you can get rewarded for it with more damage - same as healers get rewarded with more damage gcds once they plan out their heal cds. It adds more room to improve your gameplay.

Counterpoint: All of this would still be true if the defensive and enmity bonuses of tank stance were always on.

[shao32]

Why does tank stance exist? So that newbie tanks and people doing blind prog can put their "training wheels" on. This makes the role that people are already afraid of easier to get into and lets you learn fresh content with less wiping(because let's be real, no death screws up the raid as a tank death, especially when there's forced tank swaps involved).

Why does tank stance need the damage penalty? So that once you learn to plan your mitigation correctly, you can get rewarded for it with more damage - same as healers get rewarded with more damage gcds once they plan out their heal cds. It adds more room to improve your gameplay.

I highly disagree, tank stance penalty don't exist to create any artificial reward by not using tank stance, yoshi and the devs claim more that one time tanks are mean to tank in tank stance and they are dissapointed by how tanks avoid complety the tank stance plus they concerns about by result of all of this claiming tank damage its too high, at the same time i disagree tank stances exist to carry bad-new players, we have it bcs we are supose to stay on it, but the current desing and the poor sinergy betwen tank stances and everything in the game make it just a mere pull tool like the agro combo wasting a lot of space in our skill bars for anyone that care to use the jobs properly.

Tank stances right now create a gap betwen good tanks and bad/diferent ideology tanks, any tank who stay on tank stance for whatever reason are hurting himself and they party performance much more that one who never use it and use they kit properly to solve any kind problem in duty by a huge margin, it's a huge waste of potential specially since the tank role is pretty easy, agroo is not only a tank stuff its almost faceroll, everything hits like a wet noodle outside of TB and don't improve you gameplay at all since the "im a tank not a dps" and the lazy ones that don't care to use they skills will just sit on it and rolling around doing severely less that a bad dps or a bad healer.

[Melichoir]

I highly disagree, tank stance penalty don't exist to create any artificial reward by not using tank stance, yoshi and the devs claim more that one time tanks are mean to tank in tank stance and they are dissapointed by how tanks avoid complety the tank stance plus they concerns about by result of all of this claiming tank damage its too high, at the same time i disagree tank stances exist to carry bad-new players, we have it bcs we are supose to stay on it, but the current desing and the poor sinergy betwen tank stances and everything in the game make it just a mere pull tool like the agro combo wasting a lot of space in our skill bars for anyone that care to use the jobs properly.

Tank stances right now create a gap betwen good tanks and bad/diferent ideology tanks, any tank who stay on tank stance for whatever reason are hurting himself and they party performance much more that one who never use it and use they kit properly to solve any kind problem in duty by a huge margin, it's a huge waste of potential specially since the tank role is pretty easy, agroo is not only a tank stuff its almost faceroll, everything hits like a wet noodle outside of TB and don't improve you gameplay at all since the "im a tank not a dps" and the lazy ones that don't care to use they skills will just sit on it and rolling around doing severely less that a bad dps or a bad healer.

The issue is that the way teh current game is balanced, you can tank effectively outside of tank stance without it being an issue. Players learned that optimization allows for it so there is no real need for you to stay in a stance that hits you with a 20% damage penalty. If the devs want us to stay in tank stance, they need to change optimization by either hurting how much healers can heal, or raising boss Auto damage (or similar damage sources) so substantially that it is not viable to tank outside of tank stance when main tanking. In the former, youre gonna piss off healers cause it shoe horns them more into just being heal bots and less gameplay options, and in the latter it comes across as an arbitrary punishment for the main tank to take that DPS hit. Its not strategy or skill to turn a tank stance on or off.

This is why Im under the impression that MAYBE it might be better served as a oGCD defense CD that increases enmity and reduces damage while it is active for a brief period of time. Then its more about using it correctly. That or you tie more skills into the stances (like you can only voke while in tank stance as an example).

But these are all small minor things. Really, the concept is clunky, but tis not game breaking or that hard to work with. PLD probably gets it the worst of the 3 tanks, but again, this isnt some huge "Lets change this cause its bad" thing.

[shao32]

The issue is that the way teh current game is balanced, you can tank effectively outside of tank stance without it being an issue. Players learned that optimization allows for it so there is no real need for you to stay in a stance that hits you with a 20% damage penalty. If the devs want us to stay in tank stance, they need to change optimization by either hurting how much healers can heal, or raising boss Auto damage (or similar damage sources) so substantially that it is not viable to tank outside of tank stance when main tanking. In the former, youre gonna piss off healers cause it shoe horns them more into just being heal bots and less gameplay options, and in the latter it comes across as an arbitrary punishment for the main tank to take that DPS hit. Its not strategy or skill to turn a tank stance on or off.

that's basically my point, the current use of tank stances are not intented and creates problems betwen the comunity and how devs view the balance of tanks.

but apart of that i don't agree, if you use you skill set you dont make you healers work harder, tank stance mitigation is overrated, and yeah being force to keep tank stance and eat the penalty in the MT spot is not fun.

This is why Im under the impression that MAYBE it might be better served as a oGCD defense CD that increases enmity and reduces damage while it is active for a brief period of time. Then its more about using it correctly. That or you tie more skills into the stances (like you can only voke while in tank stance as an example).

But these are all small minor things. Really, the concept is clunky, but tis not game breaking or that hard to work with. PLD probably gets it the worst of the 3 tanks, but again, this isnt some huge "Lets change this cause its bad" thing.

reworking or removing tank stances with proper ajustments of course its what we need, it will be infinitely better have a oGCD that i use constantly in combat rather that have 3-4 skills in my bar that have just 1 or even zero use in the entire encounter.

[Bright-Flower]

I highly disagree, tank stance penalty don't exist to create any artificial reward by not using tank stance, yoshi and the devs claim more that one time tanks are mean to tank in tank stance and they are dissapointed by how tanks avoid complety the tank stance plus they concerns about by result of all of this claiming tank damage its too high, at the same time i disagree tank stances exist to carry bad-new players, we have it bcs we are supose to stay on it, but the current desing and the poor sinergy betwen tank stances and everything in the game make it just a mere pull tool like the agro combo wasting a lot of space in our skill bars for anyone that care to use the jobs properly.

Tank stances right now create a gap betwen good tanks and bad/diferent ideology tanks, any tank who stay on tank stance for whatever reason are hurting himself and they party performance much more that one who never use it and use they kit properly to solve any kind problem in duty by a huge margin, it's a huge waste of potential specially since the tank role is pretty easy, agroo is not only a tank stuff its almost faceroll, everything hits like a wet noodle outside of TB and don't improve you gameplay at all since the "im a tank not a dps" and the lazy ones that don't care to use they skills will just sit on it and rolling around doing severely less that a bad dps or a bad healer.

Ideally tank stance would be used when tanking and dps stance would be used when OTing, soloing, or during phases where there's nothing to actively tank. Sadly with the way the game's designed, everything is pushed towards 'bare minimum mitigation/healing then all out dps.'

[loreleidiangelo]

Sadly with the way the game's designed, everything is pushed towards 'bare minimum mitigation/healing then all out dps.'

As much as I think this game's tanking and healing jobs are designed like garbage, every MMO is honestly played with this goal in mind; all that changes is the ratio. The ratio is what's messed up about DPSing as a non-DPS role in FFXIV (arguably), not the fact that you do it in general. In the earlier example I gave about Method, even their Shaman pushed his Flame Shock button from time to time, it just didn't comprise over 50% of his gameplay like it does for healers here.

Tanking is harder to solve tbh because unless you turn mitigation into something more engaging than just "push button, reduce damage" all you're really doing by forcing players to sit in tank stance more is making their gameplay arbitrarily weaker for no real increase in APM.

[Satarn]

So what? Do you really feel like stance dancing is a reward? More than anything, I don't feel like I am being rewarded for being in damage stance, I feel like I am being put upon when I have to be in tank stance.

What I feel like is that I have no idea why would you ask me this question, considering I have never mentioned stance dancing.
What I said is: tank stance is training wheels and dps stance is a damage reward for when you graduate off the training wheels and actually menage your cooldowns correctly.
And yes, I do feel rewarded when I can reach high dps due to full time out of tank stance, while still requiring little healing due to mitigating all damage well.

I also feel annoyed when I queue as not a tank and get some nerdo who spends the entire dungeon in tank stance. Or conversely, queue into a real low level dungeon and get some sprout who isn't using it.

You can't reasonably use bad players as an argument to dumb things down like this. By that logic we should also remove all damage spells from healers because some of them might tunnel-vision dps without even putting regen on tank. We should replace all damaging actions with a single AoE button because bad DPS players don't understand they should use AoE on trash packs or even comprehend what a rotation is. Yes it is a hyperbole, but it's the same exact principle. "This rando in a dungeon didn't play to my standards, woe is me, lets dumb things down".
Also who even cares about a tank sitting in full time tank stance in a stupid dungeon, it's probably still gonna waste less time than what an average DF dps player is capable of.

I highly disagree, tank stance penalty don't exist to create any artificial reward by not using tank stance, yoshi and the devs claim more that one time tanks are mean to tank in tank stance and they are dissapointed by how tanks avoid complety the tank stance plus they concerns about by result of all of this claiming tank damage its too high

Citation needed. I have seen Yoshi say tanks do too much damage, but I have yet to see him saying he’s “dissapointed” in players tanking out of defensive stances. He didn’t even care about nearly everybody abusing WAR strat in o5s.
Even disregarding that, just because something wasn’t intended, doesn’t mean it’s bad and should go away. Housing glitches were certainly not intentional design, but they’re the main thing that keeps the system interesting.

Tank stances right now create a gap between good tanks and bad/diferent ideology tanks

That is the point. Having this gap is what having room for improvement means.

[shao32]

Citation needed. I have seen Yoshi say tanks do too much damage, but I have yet to see him saying he’s “dissapointed” in players tanking out of defensive stances. He didn’t even care about nearly everybody abusing WAR strat in o5s.
Even disregarding that, just because something wasn’t intended, doesn’t mean it’s bad and should go away. Housing glitches were certainly not intentional design, but they’re the main thing that keeps the system interesting.

im trying to find it, but to be more precise yoshi answer was around WARs don't using defiance

That is the point. Having this gap is what having room for improvement means.

you don't get it, the tank stance gap make bad/turtle tanks being worse that they currently are just bcs the damage penalty, there is not real skill by having it off or turning it on since what the tank stance offers you isn't need it outside the pull and don't really change you gameplay having it on/off.

Then explain why tanks cannot beat Stone Sky Sea for EX or Savage in tank stance at ilv. I mean they won't even come close, you literally can't do it.

SSS was created by the devs, tailored individually to each class, intended to show whether or not you have the recommended dps for your class. EX and Savage bosses, which have tight enrage timers, are designed with the assumption that both tanks spend the maximum time possible in dps stance.

The current use of stances is not only intentional, it's mandatory to beat the hardest content.

melichoir say everything what i want to say, even with the MT always on tank stance fight mechanics force you to swap with you co-tank so you obviously turn you tank stance off and hit harder, you don't really estay 100% of the encounter in tank stance and SSS reflect that, since they calculated the dps you are supose to push on those moments.