Removing Tank Stance Argument

[FallenWings]

The only combat role the tank can claim sole responsibility of in this game now is add interception.

Everything else that used to be the sole realm of tanks have been part and parceled to every other job to share in or gets automated.

I didn't participate in Stormblood but I heard that boss auto positioning was pretty bad. Maybe the only solution left is to delete tanks altogether and have a controllable pet to tank. That'll fix tank population.

[Lyth]

I don't think this is something that is solved by the presence or absence of tank stance, however.

How do you make tank positioning and movement matter? You design fights where it matters. The devs have done it before (A7S was the last memorable example). The problem is that it's easy for us to get caught up in playing as a sort of melee dps, such that we don't really notice that we're not actually doing any positioning work ourselves. The only way that we're going to see a change is if we make it clear that we don't want fights designed for just dps. We want fights designed for tanks.

How do you make mitigation matter? You design fights where it matters. Have more than 4 tank busters, such that you're used to use something different than an Invuln, Invuln, Supercooldown, Invuln rotation. Throw out punishing cleaves that force us to memorise subtle timings with resource-based cooldowns. Maybe this is just a confidence thing, but I seem to remember that raid bosses used to be much, much scarier.

It's okay to have a bit of 'optional' shared responsibility. It actually makes dps jobs more interesting to play if you can actually help your healers and tanks out. By that token, nothing is truly done by any one person, even snap enmity. Behind every well optimised add pick up is a NIN donating Shadewalkers and Smokescreens. The more prevalent these tools are, you give dps players the opportunity to feel like team players as well.

Right now, the gameplay surrounding tank stance is a bit of a distraction from these bigger, underlying problems. Only when you remove it will it become obvious how much has been stripped from tank gameplay due to underwhelming fight design. We need fights that are built around whether they're fun to tank, not just around whether they're fun to dps.

[Rollout]

I had a shower thought the other day that they could maybe remove tank stance if they changed all mitigation skills (Rampart, Sentinel, Vengeance, Shadow Wall) to increase the amount of enmity you generate while they're active. 10-20 seconds of constant enmity generation on autos, weaponskills and abilities would be a substantial enough enmity lead for tanks to hold the enemies and bosses.

[Novak_04]

My initial thoughts:
(Hear me out) At this point, most of the people I see that are oppose to tank stance are those who do savage and extremes. This is a very small population of the game as a whole, however the vocal majority of the forums. All too often, the dps-centric meta is thrown in our faces. You have dps with high hp, dps, and dps with healing capabilities. There is nothing else. Due to this, there has become a sense of blurred lines between the roles. Tanks focus more on damage output than mitigation. Healers prioritize their globals on damage rather than healing... there aren't definitive roles. I believe that in order to truly fix the tank stance debate, this should be addressed.

My proposed solution:
Give tanks a reason to use tank stance -- even if it's primarily used for the main tank: make auto-attacks hit harder, make tankbusters threatening, give tanks a reason to be tanks. As it stands, they just keep aggro and let their health pools do all the work while using the occasional defensive CD.
Give tanks a personal responsibility on encounter dynamics. It was mentioned earlier that many of the bosses reposition themselves throughout the fight. They're too scripted.
Give healers a reason to heal. I understand that one of the alluring aspects of healing for top-tier players is that they're not healbots. I want to stress that I'm not vying for that design. That said, most of the healing done is tied to oGCD abilities such as Lustrate, Indom, Earthly Star, Tetra, etc. That's not to say that GCD heals are non-existent, rather, they're less common. As with much of this post, I will share an unpopular opinion: I think heals should be less strong. Currently, healers can top a tank off with little-to-no effort. Cure II can hit for 35k+ on a 76K tank. That's almost 1/2 the health bar... Regen can crit for over 10k. Earthly Star can hit for 20K+ on everyone, Cure III can lolbenediction the entire party under the right circumstances... because of this, healers have so much downtime that all they can do is dps: maintain one or two dots and spam Stone IV, Malefic III, or Broil II.

My theory behind all of this is that it's a consequence of the 2.5 sec GCD. Because we are gated behind how often we can act, incoming damage has to be more scripted... it has to be manageable within a 5 second window (the time it takes to use an ability, then be able to reuse another ability). This has had a huge impact on macro gameplay (macro meaning large-scale in this case). Heals are absurdly strong, damage is less intense. Tanks can disregard their tank stances because they know that the next Essential Dignity will heal them for 40K. If they insist on keeping tank stances, they should make it such that they're actually needed... otherwise, they might as well rename them Tether... they're just as useful.

I mean no disrespect to any of the fellow forum posters. We may share a difference of opinion, but I want it to be known that my opinion is not any more or less important than yours. I value this discussion and all ideas and thoughts associated with it. Regardless of the path Square Enix takes, we're all going to reap the consequences. I hope, for all our sakes, it's for the better.

[Cabalabob]

I don't think SE wants tanks to have their dps stance damage at the same time as having the tank stance boost to enmity and defense.

I wouldn't particularly mind myself, but it would require additional changes. PLD oath gauge is gained differently depending on which oath we have active. Dark Knight has some abilities that are only active, or work differently, depending on if Grit/Darkside or both are activated. I'm not sure about warriors but I think they have changes too between stances.

So they could in theory strip away tank stances and say give tanks a passive trait that boost their defense and their enmity at all times, but it would requite more work tweaking the tanks, war and drk especially, without it. And then there's the question of damage. Do you let them keep the damage they get from dps stances? Because the whole point of these stances is to nerf their dps and buff defenses/enmity when tanking, so if you let them keep the damage with no tradeoff, the question is does that make tankes too powerful, having so much defense and keeping their dps stance dps? Or do you lock their dps at tank stance levels and make solo play more frustrating?

IMO, I'd rather they either increase boss damage output so that tanks need to consistently be in defensive stance rather than just needing it for an early enmity lead, or just leave it as is, than have their damage nerfed locked in for solo content.

Off the top of my head? The idea would be something like PLD: shield oath and sword oath removed. Oath gauge changed to be 1 gauge per auto attack and 10 for a block both available at all times. Add some enmity increasing abilities as mentioned before. Grit and darkside removed from DRK, blood price and blood weapon tweaked to offer different yet comparable benefits on a shared cooldown. Enmity is already baked into DRK through dark arts. WAR: keep defiance and deliverance but all benefits and drawbacks removed, making it purely about changing your moveset.

Then add a role skill to tanks like berserk (just change WAR’s version to be inner release from the start). Basically make it a dps stance that increases damage dealt and damage taken by 25% while reducing enmity generation by half.

With that, when tanking you’d just not have a stance, tanks are just naturally tanky. When OTing or solo you’d turn on the dps stance and become another dps with some OT utility. You wouldn’t be able to use it while tanking because the hit to enmity generation and massive increase to damage taken would make it impractical.

My proposed solution:
Give tanks a reason to use tank stance -- even if it's primarily used for the main tank: make auto-attacks hit harder, make tankbusters threatening, give tanks a reason to be tanks. As it stands, they just keep aggro and let their health pools do all the work while using the occasional defensive CD.

Something you’ve gotta keep in mind is the balance issues this would cause for other jobs.

If you start making monsters hit absurdly hard, what does that mean for dps/healers getting hit? If the tank dies, does the monster then proceed to run around 1 shotting everyone else while the tank is revived? If it’s hitting so hard that it requires tank stance, keeping in mind tanks already have higher hp and defence/m.defence, no one else will stand a chance.

Same goes for healing to a lesser extent. If you make the heals weaker, it’s not just the tank that’s going to require more GCD healing, the rest of the party will too. Both monsters hitting harder and heals being weaker combined? Stress on the healers would skyrocket and fights would become basically unrecoverable if the tank dies.

Nobody reasonable would say that tanks should do absolutely zero damage. That's just silly. However, dealing damage shouldn't be nearly as big a priority as it presently is.
If I was standing in front of a cyclops the size of a building with an uprooted tree in its hand, my first thought would not be to throw my shield to the ground and try to poke it in the jugular. Especially when there's 4 other people in my party who are (A) infinitely more efficient at poking it in the jugular and (B) aren't about to get smashed with a freaking tree

In my opinion, the best compromise would be to rebalance the tanks so that achieving max DPS also achieves max survivability. That way you'd still have incentive to optimize your deeps without abandoning what the role is supposed to be about.

I agree with this. They could make tanking far more interesting if they made it so that our mitigation and our damage dealing are one and the same.

We already see this in certain aspects of the tanks. Vengeance adds mitigation while also dealing more damage. Thrill of battle buffs upheaval. Blocking with sheltron or bulwark gives you shield swipes.

If they doubled down on this duality they could make tanks more actively use their mitigation so that they can achieve their maximum dps. And this would also help with killing off tank stance. Something I’ve noticed is a lot of newer players will sit in tank stance and not use any mitigation, which basically equals the same as a tank without tank stance that does use mitigation, only the former is contributing far less to the party. I’d much rather see players learning to use their skills properly than relying on tank stance to do the work for them.

[Kalise]

Then add a role skill to tanks like berserk (just change WAR’s version to be inner release from the start). Basically make it a dps stance that increases damage dealt and damage taken by 25% while reducing enmity generation by half.

That wouldn't work.

People would just find a way to tank with it active.

Because DPS is KING.

Also, since the majority of damage comes from Tankbusters, most of which are immuned by Holmgang/Living Dead/Hallowed Ground as well as the majority of Enmity being from Circle-Shirking, you already have grounds for ignoring the downsides of this.

If you start making monsters hit absurdly hard, what does that mean for dps/healers getting hit?

It means:

HEAL THE TANK GODS DAMMIT

If the tank dies, does the monster then proceed to run around 1 shotting everyone else while the tank is revived?

No... It's would proceed to start smacking the OTHER Tank.

Since, most content with actual difficulty utilizes Full Parties, which include 2 Tanks whom are normally the top 2 spots on enmity.

Same goes for healing to a lesser extent. If you make the heals weaker, it’s not just the tank that’s going to require more GCD healing, the rest of the party will too. Both monsters hitting harder and heals being weaker combined? Stress on the healers would skyrocket and fights would become basically unrecoverable if the tank dies.

One thing to remember is that the majority of damage to other party members comes in the form of partywide skills. Which means the use of AoE healing, which will also be healing the Tanks.

In addition, without heals being jacked up to 15, there would be more room to get more mileage out of TANKS ability to aid the party - Skills such as Reprisal, Shake It Off, Divine Veil and Passage of Arms as well as Tank Limit Breaks are all ways a Tank can mitigate damage dealt to the party.

Currently, these things are mostly overshadowed by a single Medica II/Aspected Helios which can easily replenish everyone's life by the time the next Raidbuster occurs. If the thing wasn't eaten by a Critlo + Deployment or Succor shield...

But it could very easily be a thing where the Tank in the OT position (Or rather, the one that's not currently Tanking the boss) could have some responsibility to manage tools like these to help mitigate damage to the party. Instead of right now where the current role of the OT is to just roll your face across your DPS rotation, unless you're Paladin where you can sometimes use Cover/Intervention to help soak a Tankbuster without needing to swap.

[Lyth]

...

The discussion regarding tank stance has nothing to do with players wanting to do more dps.

Tank stance does not make you into a tank. It's not some kind of special ID badge that indicates to the world that you aren't a blue dps. Other roles do not require stances to perform their primary functions. DPS players do not toggle between a "damage dealing stance" and an "AFK stance" depending on what their priorities are. Healers got rid of their stances last expansion, to the betterment of all. If you wanted to push your dps on a healer before, you still do now. If you wanted to be an ever-so-pure healer, you still have the option to RP that in raid.

This isn't about tank damage output. This isn't about mitigation, or enmity. This is a discussion about whether it is necessary to have stances purely for the sake of having stances, especially when said stances are poorly implemented and are more detrimental to some jobs than others.

You could create a permanently active tank stance if you want. Congratulations, now everyone is a "tank". But that's functionally identical to removing stances altogether and just nerfing tank dps by an equivalent amount through gear. So why not just do the latter and save yourself the hotbar space? I mean, I know you swore an oath to your shield and all, but could we not just move that off into the traits section? "Trait: is actually a tank".

There are plenty of ways of designing both tank jobs and fights such that positioning and mitigation become more interesting. But that's a tangent for another day. The presence or absence of stances has nothing to do with this. If stances do something interesting as far as gameplay is concerned, then go ahead and make as many stances as you like. MNK seems to have gone this route. But don't introduce stances just for the sake of introducing them.

[Canadane]

My initial thoughts:
(Hear me out) At this point, most of the people I see that are oppose to tank stance are those who do savage and extremes. This is a very small population of the game as a whole, however the vocal majority of the forums.

I heard you out but I have multiple issues with this statement. I wanna say the vocal majority is absolutely not raiders, but at the same time the advice given by raiders is repeated rhetorically.
Tank stance is an absolutely wonderful thing that nobody else has had since the removal of the old Cleric Stance. Allow me to explain. Tanking is, for some, a rather stressful position. Getting your tanks stance as a new player is empowering you to do your job significantly easier, and you can worry about your own safety a bit less. While levelling it gives you that extra umph when needed until you become confident in your role before you start using more dps stance. But that isn't to say it's a newbie clutch. It's used by endgame raiders just the same. It's an extra defensive cooldown, it's your enmity snap, it's your way to go from unstoppable force to unmovable wall. They really bring out the role of tanking.

There's just a large misunderstanding about how the stances are used. People repeating advice they don't fully understand.

In my personal opinion, old Cleric Stance should come back too, as it was effectively the exact same thing. Healing was a lot more fun back then.

DPS should have some sort of on-the-fly stance change too. Something in regards to status effects vs raw damage, perhaps. Swapping on the fly is really fun and adds some nice complexity to an otherwise exceedingly straightforward game design.

[Big-Isaac]

Something you’ve gotta keep in mind is the balance issues this would cause for other jobs.

If you start making monsters hit absurdly hard, what does that mean for dps/healers getting hit? If the tank dies, does the monster then proceed to run around 1 shotting everyone else while the tank is revived? If it’s hitting so hard that it requires tank stance, keeping in mind tanks already have higher hp and defence/m.defence, no one else will stand a chance.

It would not cause any issues whatsoever. Sure, a DPS or healer getting hit by a tank mechanic would get pounded into mulch, but they aren't supposed to get hit by those in the first place. Obviously, the massive damage buffs should only be applied to mechanics exclusively aimed at tanks, like auto attacks, tank busters and tank debuffs
And if nothing else, buffing the damage done by enemy auto attacks would teach ninja-pulling DPS some humility

Same goes for healing to a lesser extent. If you make the heals weaker, it’s not just the tank that’s going to require more GCD healing, the rest of the party will too. Both monsters hitting harder and heals being weaker combined? Stress on the healers would skyrocket and fights would become basically unrecoverable if the tank dies.

Heals shouldn't be made weaker. Damage overall should simply increase, so healers are forced to engage in actually healing for the majority of the fight.

I agree with this. They could make tanking far more interesting if they made it so that our mitigation and our damage dealing are one and the same.

We already see this in certain aspects of the tanks. Vengeance adds mitigation while also dealing more damage. Thrill of battle buffs upheaval. Blocking with sheltron or bulwark gives you shield swipes.

If they doubled down on this duality they could make tanks more actively use their mitigation so that they can achieve their maximum dps. And this would also help with killing off tank stance. Something I’ve noticed is a lot of newer players will sit in tank stance and not use any mitigation, which basically equals the same as a tank without tank stance that does use mitigation, only the former is contributing far less to the party. I’d much rather see players learning to use their skills properly than relying on tank stance to do the work for them.

IMO, active mitigation is the best possible way to handle tanking in an MMO. If you play well, you take vastly reduced damage, and if you mess up, the boss rips you to pieces. It makes tanking infinitely more engaging than playing the undertuned DPS jobs we have masquerading as tanks right now

[Shurrikhan]

Heals shouldn't be made weaker. Damage overall should simply increase, so healers are forced to engage in actually healing for the majority of the fight.

I'd be fine with either one. The main difference is simply how long one can has to do that healing. If damage is increased, tanks are the ones most directly affected; they have fewer seconds of effective HP. If healing is nerfed, then it's healers; it takes more seconds of healing to restore a tank to full HP. When a tank needs to be topped off soon, there is no difference between the two, but for the majority of the time, it affects the degree to which a healer can partake in any action other than healing. If a healer must be constantly pre-casting and overhealing on the off chance that an auto-attack may two-shot a tank immediately after a cast-less special without a consistent timer, then even if most of that healing goes to waste numerically, it would also be wholly necessary, and the healer would have very, very little sense of agency in the fight. Decreasing healing itself, on the other hand, allows for a bit of leeway as not to reduce the healing experience to bar-watching. Of course, with too much lenience, the fight becomes unengaging, but I'd wager you'd get a better experience favoring reduced healing over increased damage, maintaining initial (or, from full %HP) eHP nearer to how it is presently.

IMO, active mitigation is the best possible way to handle tanking in an MMO. If you play well, you take vastly reduced damage, and if you mess up, the boss rips you to pieces. It makes tanking infinitely more engaging than playing the undertuned DPS jobs we have masquerading as tanks right now.

I don't particularly mind being a "blue DPS", but I'd certainly prefer for the tanking itself to be engaging enough that that the term wasn't so applicable.