An idea to add/return some identity and complexity to tanks

[Rongway]

Tanks should absolutely not have actions that spend enmity in exchange for increased damage. The rest of us have no enmity management actions anymore. Even back when we did have enmity management actions, I could use Diversion and Dreaming on cooldown and still steal aggro five minutes into a raid/trial. I shouldn't have to play my job worse in order to avoid getting killed, and that's what I'll have to do if tanks get actions to spend their enmity in exchange for more damage.

[Snek]

My biggest problem with this suggestion at the moment is flavor. What's the the thematic reason that doing those actions makes you lose aggro? How would you explain it lore wise? With the aggro gaining actions we used to have, you can kind of make sense of it that they're actions that might provoke enemies in a certain way, making them aggro to you more but how would you make sense of a DPS ability that makes you lose aggro? You instill fear or something to the enemy? It'd be a little weird but probably doable, just personally cant make sense of it yet because they are the actions that do most DPS.

I do agree that the enmity burning it doesn't make sense in that way. I'm not saying it's a perfect idea, but I think it is a unique enough mechanically and one that can be iterated upon uniquely enough to significantly distinguish the tanks and make them very varied in how they balance the parties enmity. I'm also sure it can be written in to make sense lorewise (you're no longer doing taunting-like maneuvers to maintain the bosses interest, and he's just noticed his rear-end is being sliced in two by a much squishier samurai).

Because no game does this for a reason. They either have the raid group manage thier hate, or have the tanks be so far ahead on hate its not an issue. One of the most undesirable aspects of tanking would be managing hate when before managing it with aggro combos actually got IN THE WAY of how the jobs would flow and were counterproductive (IE not gaining any MP as a DRK, or being a beast guage generation loss as a WAR). Tanks would clamour/demand for the return of hate management skills for other jobs again, and I would be doing the sme with the system you have brought forward. Hate management is the one part of tanking that is never/has never been 'fun' for anyone to deal with. It's an annoyance.

But why would you want to build an extreme amount of enmity and lower your damage instead of keeping it as low as you can to maximize your damage? The idea here is to make the management not annoying but a mechanic that's integral to the job. The entire job can have skills around managing enmity (such as oGCD skills, and GCD skills that grant you a huge amount of enmity thus actually being a DPS plus to use). Instead of having it as an annoying extra GCD combo, something I think should be avoided.

For example: Think of healers. You can keep HPs full all the time and overheal like crazy, or heal just when necessary to make sure nobody dies to damage/tankbusters/etc. This way you maximize your damage output and avoid using GCD heals. This is the idea I'm trying to pull into tanks. Sure you can build enmity into the sky like you can now, but then you're going far overboard and not maximizing your damage output as you would if you floated just above the next persons enmity. If anyone who isn't a tank gets an enmity control tool it should be hold a serious downside. Like vercure. It's something you never want to need to use, but can in an emergency.

Clarification on what seems counterproductive: DRK gains the same enmity it does not via its normal combo (and the mana from blood weapon/syphon strike). Since you gain a lot more aggro a lot quicker than any DPS, you cast Dark Arts to lower your enmity but refresh your mana on demand, meaning if you do a lot of damage and try to maximize your enmity generation, you get more mana and do more damage. Since you have an oGCD skill that gives you a huge flood of mana but sets your enmity just 1 above the next person in the list, you want to make your enmity as low as possible before casting it to maximize how many Dark Arts you got off, thus maximizing your mana gained. A mana management system tied into their enmity management system. Sorta the same idea for WAR except the idea is a "gain as much enmity as humanly possible in 80 seconds then explode for an insane amount of damage". Kinda like it is now but more interactive. Build around the mechanic.

Tanks should absolutely not have actions that spend enmity in exchange for increased damage. The rest of us have no enmity management actions anymore. Even back when we did have enmity management actions, I could use Diversion and Dreaming on cooldown and still steal aggro five minutes into a raid/trial. I shouldn't have to play my job worse in order to avoid getting killed, and that's what I'll have to do if tanks get actions to spend their enmity in exchange for more damage.

If you can rip aggro off tanks now they're very much not in tank stance or not hitting the enemy at all. The idea is that tanks have sorta the same aggro generation as they do now (maybe a tiny bit less), but have spenders. Thus if you, at any point, rip aggro off a tank it means they're playing very poorly and not doing their job. That scenario would be the equivalent of having a healer who refuses to heal nor raise anyone in a dungeon. Think glare only healers. Sure we'd have more terrible tanks, but we'd also have some insanely good tanks and they'd have unique methods to maintain their job mechanic.