Can we please get aggro management back?

[Claire_Pendragon]

Because for some reason I cannot tell the difference between "was" and "is." My bad.

Im still confused, but np lol.

[Melichoir]

Considering it takes all of 1 milisecond for someone to realize a 10x enmity multiplier on a tank stance would completely annihilate any output a dps can do gives a pretty big insight into what they desired in this system, and how its most likely a huge success for them. If it was at like 4x I'd be more inclined to think on your lines, but the 10x multiplier was extremely intentional. In their eyes, they extremely got it right, as the system is acting perfectly as intended, regardless of how each individual player views it.

Also, the identity thing is honestly an opinion. When I look at WAR, I still think 'berserker with immensely powerful skills', even in 5.0. I still see PLD as the holy shield knight that protects the weak, which several of its mitigation abilities (Intervention, Cover, Clemency) attribute well to its identity. When I play DRK, I know I'm playing a DRK thematically, just as I know when I'm playing a WAR. Job identity goes far beyond than just a few key skills being homogenized; the aesthetics of their skills, their AF, and their flavor CDs are all extremely unique to give each a powerful identity.

You dont have a unique identity when you have other classes copy you. Beyond that, my point was that just cause the implement something that 'works' doesnt mean its great for hte game. Pagos worked when they put it into the game...it was widely hated. Diadem worked andd....was widely disliked. If they gave a boss the ability to reduce your HP to 1, then immediately follow up with an instant raid buster that bypasses shields it would be working as intended... and people wouldnt probably be all to happy.

It working as intended doesnt say anything beyond the devs "Designed something to do a specific thing, and it's doing that specific thing". Im not saying it's not working as they designed, Im saying its a poor design choice. Yeah, 10x threat modifier works great at tank keeping threat, except in that same breath there is no longer any thinking required to Tanking. It literally is "Press x to tank". That isnt a system. That isnt an improvement. Devs literally gutted an aspect of tanking, one of the few we have as a role identity, to pretty much be "LoL, Whats dps threat". Having the tank managing threat and balancing that against DPS threat output was part of the role. You may like the fact that you press x to tank, but I certainly dont. I understand Im a minority but frankly it's not cause the system was cancer - it was casual player base couldnt be bothered to learn how to tank. Call it elitist, but raiders knew how, and midcore could do it. The people who struggled with it predominately was the casual base. And you know what is bothersome? It sets the precedent that if something is just to hard for the casual base - nerf it. And you know what I typically see the casual base struggle with right now? Managing mitigation CDs.

WAR was dominant for many primary reasons beyond that:
-Unchained giving WAR the highest aggro gen bar none with the smallest damage loss, to the point it was a raid dps gain to bring a WAR over PLD/DRK combo due to the dps the other two would lose from having to secure aggro, ESPECIALLY PLD.
-(HW only): Storm's Path had a 10% all damage down debuff on it, which meant that not bringing a WAR to raid automatically meant your whole party took 10% more damage from EVERYTHING in the encounter. When there were extremely powerful raid busters floating around (J-kick, J-storm, Mortal Revolution, whatever the heck Allthink's electric raid buster was, Cascade, Whirlwind(?), Mega Holy, etc.) on top of giving a free 10% mitigation to your co-tank whenever they had aggro meant WAR was almost mandatory for low week prog, and gave healers extra offensive GCDs from less damage having to be healed across the entirety of the fight. WAR was increasing a lot of people's dps inadvertedly while also being the highest damage tank.
-WAR was the only tank to give slash resist, meaning you increased NIN dps due to them putting up slashing is a dps loss. And if you had some weird comp like PLD/DRK/no-nin or no-SAM? yeah, your whole raid suffered.
-(HW only): Equilibrium giving TP recovery every minute making WAR impossible to bottom out, where a PLD was basically out of luck after 2 minutes without BRD/MCH/NIN intervention and DRK would eventually lose the war of TP attrition even with blood weapon.

WAR was a case where it's one minor weakness (The fact defiance doesn't give you the effective 20% mitigation immediately due to needing to be healed first, where Grit/Shield Oath did) was effectively eliminated or a non-issue at all, leaving a job with no weaknesses competing against two jobs with much larger weaknesses. Which is reflected well in its active play statistics, but also in how Square homogenized certain abilities so that one tank wasn't completely annihilating the others due to some trick/synergy within its toolkit vs fight design.

That's fine, but all of those are more specific to HW than SB, particularly with the introduction of Shirk and Ultimatum in the latter. The PLD issue was mainly on the pull - so in Omega youd have the DRK or War Pull, but you could still bring a PLD and be fine. Was the system perfect? No. Definite room for improvement, but that doesnt mean "Oh system isnt perfect, TEAR IT ALL DOWN!!!!!!!" is a good solution.

It was a number's issue, and the devs gutted design to fix that issue. And likely they see it as a success cause "Well more people tank!" all because they threw up their hands and said "F it, balance and math is hard. Just make threat irrelevant!" Cant wait till 6.0 when they gut how mitigation works cause that's also to hard to manage.

[Morningstar1337]

It sets the precedent that if something is just to hard for the casual base - nerf it. And you know what I typically see the casual base struggle with right now? Managing mitigation CDs.

I argued that ship sailed with Titan HM...to Pharos Sirius

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I argued that ship sailed with Titan HM...to Pharos Sirius

Amdapor keep, the bees on demon wall.

Also, I timed out in aurum value back during launch....

People couldn't do qarn. Etc.

[Thayos]

If you're old enough to have played FFXI, then you'll agree with me here...

The issue was never that "stance dancing" was fun or interesting. The issue is that this game makes it impossible for DPS to rip hate away from tanks as long as the tanks are using baseline tanking abilities.

In FFXI, yes, good tanks mattered -- but agro management was often less about the tank and more about the DPS riding the line between "elite" and "stupid." That was the balance, and that's what made it fun! A good tank allowed more DPS, but really agro management came down to DPS being smart and not just mashing buttons.

This game simply doesn't have that and I've lost faith that it ever will.

[NanaWiloh]

If you're old enough to have played FFXI, then you'll agree with me here...

The issue was never that "stance dancing" was fun or interesting. The issue is that this game makes it impossible for DPS to rip hate away from tanks as long as the tanks are using baseline tanking abilities.

In FFXI, yes, good tanks mattered -- but agro management was often less about the tank and more about the DPS riding the line between "elite" and "stupid." That was the balance, and that's what made it fun! A good tank allowed more DPS, but really agro management came down to DPS being smart and not just mashing buttons.

This game simply doesn't have that and I've lost faith that it ever will.

Thats the issue people have with the old system though. Its the job of the tank to hold and maintain threat, the old system just passed the job off to someone else. The current system problem is that it gives too much Enmity it needs to be reduced to a point that tank have to intergrate Enmity abilities in to their dps rotations. Rather then one and done with threat abilites like the old days and now, you would have to work to maintain enmity throughout a fight. While still mitigating damage and dps'ing.

[Cabalabob]

Personally I really liked aggro management in Stormblood. The tank dps meta had firmly taken hold and it became a lot more widely accepted that aggro management was a group activity and not just the tank’s problem. It gave something else for the other roles to do other than pump out the most damage and made it so there was something that could separate a good dps from a great dps.

I’d also like to point out that enmity tools are useful outside of normal group content. For example undersized duties without a tank where you didn’t want your WHM tanking everything or you needed to do a “tank swap” you could have a dps cut their enmity so the second dps could take over. The party pretty much has no control over enmity anymore other than making sure a tank has it.

[Melichoir]

Thats the issue people have with the old system though. Its the job of the tank to hold and maintain threat, the old system just passed the job off to someone else. The current system problem is that it gives too much Enmity it needs to be reduced to a point that tank have to intergrate Enmity abilities in to their dps rotations. Rather then one and done with threat abilites like the old days and now, you would have to work to maintain enmity throughout a fight. While still mitigating damage and dps'ing.

Exactly. There should be nothing wrong with tanks having two damage combos - one that produces threat and one that produces raw damage. What mightve been a solution is to REMOVE tank stance all together and Jack up threat generation on things like Rage, Butchers, and HardSlash to the point that if you did nothing but those combos, you wouldnt lose threat, ever, and the balance then becomes how often you can use the Damage combo before you have to use that threat combo to stay top dog. Push comes to shove, you can have dps have 1 threat mitigator on a 3 minute CD so that incase you need to reset it, you can, but you shouldnt be incorporating it into your kit as a must do X. If not, just take it out entirely and have threat be a tank issue and work the numbers around that.

There are a lot of ideas I think that would work for threat management but they didnt do that. They went to press x to tank, and it works. It's just a bunk system.

[NanaWiloh]

Exactly. There should be nothing wrong with tanks having two damage combos - one that produces threat and one that produces raw damage. What mightve been a solution is to REMOVE tank stance all together and Jack up threat generation on things like Rage, Butchers, and HardSlash to the point that if you did nothing but those combos, you wouldnt lose threat, ever, and the balance then becomes how often you can use the Damage combo before you have to use that threat combo to stay top dog. Push comes to shove, you can have dps have 1 threat mitigator on a 3 minute CD so that incase you need to reset it, you can, but you shouldnt be incorporating it into your kit as a must do X. If not, just take it out entirely and have threat be a tank issue and work the numbers around that.

There are a lot of ideas I think that would work for threat management but they didnt do that. They went to press x to tank, and it works. It's just a bunk system.

They really could just remove Tank stances as they are just enmity boosters now. Put threat combo's back but balanced around actually being used more then once during a fight, encourage tanks to tab target and watch their enmity meters. I just started focusing on my dark knight and noticed I only had one button dedicated to enmity gen, I knew enmity was instant but one enmity gen button is just insult to injury.

[Fynlar]

In FFXI, yes, good tanks mattered -- but agro management was often less about the tank and more about the DPS riding the line between "elite" and "stupid." That was the balance, and that's what made it fun! A good tank allowed more DPS, but really agro management came down to DPS being smart and not just mashing buttons.

I'm not sure FFXI is the best example to cite with regard to tanking. I don't know how it is nowadays, but for the longest time, tanking in XI was complete garbage.

The hate ceiling was ridiculously low and ridiculously easy to hit, meaning it wasn't long before hate was ping-ponging no matter what a tank did to try to bring it back under control. In addition to this, almost everything that mattered had a means of hate reset anyway.

There's a reason why many groups in FFXI eschewed tanks and simply just followed the "whoever does the most damage is the 'tank'" mindset. There's also a reason it was often joked that the best way to control your aggro as a DPS was to let yourself get killed.