My thoughts on the new Tank Roles

[PretzJG]

Hello, first off I know I'm going to get blasted for my views but I guess I'll put it out there cause I feel the odd one out. I for one enjoy the new Tank setup for my Paladin, I use to always use the Shield Oath and threat rotation cause I do know many DPS who wouldn't use Diversion until they saw the red icon. Now I can say I like it cause they gave an AOE rotation that feels and looks fun instead of just spamming 1 AOE threat skill and 1 AOE damage only skill. As for how Tanking is feeling in the group dynamics, here is where I get some hate, I feel that it works if the Healer and DPS remember what a Tank and do and let them do it instead of trying to just smash every skill and only look at the DPS meters. Tanks have the longest stuns in the game, sure they are single target but now with the enmity changes tanks can actually focus on using the stuns in rotation as a form of mitigation.

Now if you look at it, a PLD has Shield Bash, it's stun is 6 seconds, the diminishing returns that FFXIV uses gives 3 total Stuns and then it's Fully Resisted. This means that a PLD can use Shield Bash for a 6 second, 3 second, then 1 second stun. If you leave it to the tank to use them on the timer and let them all go through till the next is used, that's 10 full seconds of 0 damage given. Now yes other DPS have a Stun in some of their rotations, looking at you Monks, and Healers have some as well, looking at you White Mages.

However with the kit changes making it where you don't have to keep spamming your enmity rotations and can very safely use other rotations while holding threat it frees up the use of Stuns in trash pulls to let the Healers put up DoTs and do a bit of damage. However what I keep seeing when I get WHM healers, I pull the group, instantly see the WHM Holy, then Holy, then Holy, then Holy, and finally throw out a heal when HP is about 15% cause they used up all the stuns in just 3 seconds. When you use a Stun during a Stun already in effect it overrides the previous stun, meaning that if you spam Holy 3 times, and the DPS uses a Stun, then you can make something Fully Resisted to Stun within 3 seconds.

Now for the other part of the Tank Role, I do enjoy having the Interrupt for when it is a boss that is Stun Resistant. It is sadly on a 30 seconds CD so it is something you have to time with the correct skill. The loss of the extra mitigation CDs was something I was worried about but with how they made the Oath Gauge fill up quickly enough, I'm seeing my Sheltron up enough to help out with that. So once again get the shields with a high Block Amount since you can keep Sheltron up quite a good bit. Previously I was looking at keeping the higher Block Rate to have the OGCD Shield Slam that only was usable after a block, and to fill the Oath Gauge faster.

[PretzJG]

I also like the MP setup, so far at my lvl 61 PLD I only have 1 spell and it's a heal so the MP regen that they have on 2 of my most used skills really doesn't do much but I feel like I can use that heal in downtime, like when the boss jumps out of screen for a big attack, to top myself off without worry that it'll hurt my threat gen. As previously we used MP on Flash and if you spammed it too much you didn't have any MP left.

I do like the feeling that Tanks are actual Tanks again, if you don't use Iron Will (tank aura) then it really is hard to get threat on anything as you now only have 1 skill, Shield Lob, that has enmity generation on itself. DPS and Healers also feel like they have more a focus on their own roles. DPS have felt like, and some friends who parse have shown the numbers as well, that they are doing more damage to make up for Healers having to focus more on their healing spells and not able to get in as much of their DPS rotation as they use to. Also with Tanks now having their kits setup the way they are they are contributing more in the way of damage and DPS without losing threat or having to balance mitigation and DPS. It overall feels like all 3 roles are going into good directions for being different styles of play instead of having everyone solely focused on DPS.