Opinions: Should tanks work for aggro?

[Mikey_R]

It's not a misguided notion, but yours is a disingenuous one. Like, yes, we're always doing the, "Maximize DPS" because that's what combat games are, conceptually. But maximizing damage was never the same as maximizing enmity while enmity combos and enmity mitigators were still in play in FFXIV. This is why tanks could and would lose aggro.

By removing enmity combos, they removed something that a lot of players had trouble managing/didn't want to manage. This is evidenced by nearly every tank and their mom wanting to pawn off enmity responsibilities onto the Ninja in HW and then to every other party member with the Ninja in SB. Like, sure, it was an optimization thing and easy, but it was still a facet of the job. It was also incredibly relevant in every single fight that had enmity resets(see: Not many).

What you also have to take into account is the fact it always felt awful to use your enmity combo, and not just because that combo had lower potency, it also had an impact on the rest of the rotation for the rest of the fight. Paladin lost MP gain which delayed Requiescat/Holy Spirit, which could also cause delays to Fight and Flight, Warrior lost beast gauge gain and depending on timing, could drop maim and/or the slashing debuff, Dark Knight lost Blood and MP gain. I suspect this also played a role in wanting the DPS to use their enmity reduction tools.

In theory, you could solve that by having the enmity combo also generate the resources for each job, they would just have weaker potency. At this point, I would start to question why have the 2 different combos in the first place, but others might have a differing opinion.

Theres another exception to this, which its too late for FFXIV to adopt but woth pointing out: Games where the tanks are the selfish dps.

They've got the big numbers and need to use those big numbers to keep threat off the party, the "DPS" roles in those games then have supporting buffs/debuffs and maybe even some healing, and in the case of casters they could have superior area of effect damage, whilst bringing up similar ish damage to the tank, making their "rdps" as it were higher than the tanks. Never seen an mmo take this approach but it could work in a settings where you can only take one tank.

This is the issue with this system. Only one tank. This means, you have to design content that only allows for one tank. If a boss has adds? the DPS has to be able to survive them, so they will be weak. Make them strong enough that a tank has to pick them up, then you run into other restrictions, being damage taken, boss positioning being messed up because of picking up this add etc. It sound like a limiting system, but others might disagree.

[ReiMakoto]

Damn, up until the end there I was going to ask what game, because that does legitimately sound like an interesting concept for an MMO.

Well to an extent I can think of an MMO that does it which I've been playing recently, but its not a trinity system tab target mmo so I didn't count it. PSO2.

Hunter (and to a lesser extent hero) the main tank class of that game breaks your statement of " roles with superior defense can't have equal damage to damage-focused roles, otherwise the damage role is pointless." With the right setup (HU/ET) Hunter can have a 80+% passive damage mitigation, whilst also automatically healing itself when it drops below half HP, whilst also dealing competitive levels of damage (not absolutely on par (but still very close) with other full focused damage optimised builds, its competitive enough for hunter to be able to pass any dps check/ time trial in the game). It also has the ability to take other sub classes for even better damage at the cost of some passive DR, the ability to become invincible on demand if you get good at guard cancelling. It need to use its aggro generating tool to maintain optimal damage and needs to be consistently parrying attacks to keep up its damage buffs, so it is very much the case I layed out above of swinging around its heavy damage to maintain its aggro which allows it to do even more damage because now the enemies are targetting it, it can parry more leading to a feedback loop of more damage. In fact Sword Hunters most powerful attack comes from parrying and iirc people were saying in a perfect scenario where you could maintain high blaze parry uptime, Sword hunter would easily out dps the other classes, problem is its very hard to do that with bosses moving/ timing constant blaze parries being hard.

Hero achieves this to a much lesser extend, whilst having a similar aggro tool to hunter, its defence is actually very squishy, because its a dodge tank, but its the same concept of use aggro tool to gain attention, and with that attention proc more counters, which then keeps attention on you due to the high damage nature of the counter.

The only reason I didnt use this as my intial comparison is because content in PSO2 doesnt require you to take tanks, its merely an option for optimisation, but when you do have one theyre basically unkillable juggernaughts who keep aggro and have a decent chance of out dpsing most of the party, provided they do their job as a tank well and maximise parries.

[ItMe]

At this point, I would start to question why have the 2 different combos in the first place, but others might have a differing opinion.

I'm with you on this.

It sound like a limiting system, but others might disagree.

I agree here too.
Actually, I find your posts are generally pretty on point~
It's just frustrating that they're using the leas limiting system... but not flexing it. They're not as limited and not taking advantage of it : (

[ReiMakoto]

This is the issue with this system. Only one tank. This means, you have to design content that only allows for one tank. If a boss has adds? the DPS has to be able to survive them, so they will be weak. Make them strong enough that a tank has to pick them up, then you run into other restrictions, being damage taken, boss positioning being messed up because of picking up this add etc. It sound like a limiting system, but others might disagree.

Your add argument isnt that good, most adds in ffxiv could be picked up without messing with positioning (provoke has a long range and is off global), and adds having to be handled by the MT would add another layer to cooldown planning and healers breaking from glare spam.
Honestly I think a shift to one tank in stuff like savage wouldn't be a bad direction to go, currently in a lot of savage the off tanks feels completely vestigal outside of occasional mechanic checks such as a forced swap (which can be almost immediatly swapped back in most cases), a splitbuster or the occasional OT mechanic. Most of the fight youre a budget dps. Swapping to a single tank would add some more complexity in cooldown planning (as you no longer have 2 invulns to work with) without taking much away from a fight as most "OT" mechanics other than holding an add for 30s are just positioning based, so could be done by a dps (raiden comes to mind here, without its TB it could easily be a ranged kiting mechanic, actually making use of their mobility, it could even be faster in this scenario)

Ultimates really do justify the use of 2 tanks, having both of them utilise their kit a lot, this expacs savage fights however have been lacking on that front.

[DaulBan]

I have been seeing this theme come up alot. The question of aggro, and the changes from HV - SB, the difficulty, the strategy, and skill ceiling.

I wanna hear your thought on tanking. and the philosophy of working for aggro as a tank.

Pretty much all 'versions' of aggro management are perfectly reasonable concepts. I vastly prefer the HW/SB version to the way it is now, but the different eras of tanking all have their merits. If there was ever HW or StB classic aggro management definitely wouldn't be something I'd complain about.

[Dogempire]

Honestly I kind of liked the old aggro system since it added another element of uncertainty to the already heavily scripted fights, what with good dps being able to rip boss aggro from the tank if the tank doesn't carefully watch the emnity meter and make use of their aggro combo enough, and as a dps it was kind of fun ending up accidentally taking aggro from the tank because the tank wasn't doing enough to keep the boss on them.

Heck it's kind of realistic that a tank would need to actively work to make sure that the boss sees them as the primary threat and not the dps hitting them much harder in the back. (I know realism has no place but it's kind of fun for RP purposes)

That being said, I'm fine with tanks not having to work for aggro but more uncertain gameplay makes encounters more interesting overall, instead of what we currently have where there's no risk of dps generating more emnity than tanks provided the tank doesn't decide to take a nap mid-fight.

[S-C-R-Y-E]

If we're going to be "realistic" about it, healers would have aggro all the time if facing intelligent mobs, dps would have aggro if facing mobs that act on instinct, and tanks well they would just run around trying to get in the way when the mob goes charging after said dps or healer. A system where tanks didnt have traditional aggro but instead had to cycle a series of stuns, interrupts and block actions that would lock a mob(s) in place for those precocious few seconds long enough for the dps or healer to scamper out of the way or drop a heal would certainly be more exciting. Give tanks a few more damage mitigation or crowd control skills to play with to offset the stuns and you could have a whole new way to play tank.

Unfortunately, such a system isn't feasible given that the game currently runs off a series of dps checks. Healers would have to heal more if tanks were not "holding" aggro which would negatively impact their damage, and tanks would have to adopt a more reactionary style of gameplay since they would be focusing more on interrupts and positioning to try and offset the damage as much as possible. Actually most of these mechanics already exist in the game in the form of the holy or repose, but for whatever reason they decided to give them to the healer classes and not the tanks. Cover and passage to arms are paladin skills but they took away the damage mitigation on cover and POA doesn't allow dps while in use so it doesn't get used very often except on specific encounters.

[Marxam]

What you also have to take into account is the fact it always felt awful to use your enmity combo, and not just because that combo had lower potency, it also had an impact on the rest of the rotation for the rest of the fight. Paladin lost MP gain which delayed Requiescat/Holy Spirit, which could also cause delays to Fight and Flight, Warrior lost beast gauge gain and depending on timing, could drop maim and/or the slashing debuff, Dark Knight lost Blood and MP gain. I suspect this also played a role in wanting the DPS to use their enmity reduction tools.

In theory, you could solve that by having the enmity combo also generate the resources for each job, they would just have weaker potency. At this point, I would start to question why have the 2 different combos in the first place, but others might have a differing opinion.

Tanks do this right now in ShB. With the exception of DRK, the 2 combo paths devolve into either a dmg/buff or dmg/job utility. WAR has SE for dmg buff and SP for self heals. PLD has RA for SO procs and GB for dot. GNB has SB for power charges and a second combo path for dmg. Enmity combos came from a gameplay era of "trade-offs" that is non-existent in most modern games today. People want everything to be impactful and want all their buffs now. Back then you had to choose to either get the aggro asap or risk losing it to a DPS or healer to set up your buffs first. It was clunky in its implementation but the idea is sound and a proven one in any RPG. It's just most people don't appreciate it like they used to, though I personally enjoy dancing between losing aggro and keeping it because it keeps me on my toes and makes it more interesting but others may disagree.

They "solved" that in ShB where each combo path benefits the tank by simultaneously providing enmity and buffs, though at the cost of having the tank stances lazily reworked into an enmity buff and nothing more. However, it would be interesting to see if enmity gain, in its current state, would work if they put it back on the ranged/aoe weaponskills and the main combo path; i.e. Storm's Eye, Royal Authority, Souleater, Solid Barrel. It could allow the return of job exclusive tank stances and add some of that "tank identity that players have been asking around these forums.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Tanks do this right now in ShB. With the exception of DRK, the 2 combo paths devolve into either a dmg/buff or dmg/job utility. WAR has SE for dmg buff and SP for self heals. PLD has RA for SO procs and GB for dot. GNB has SB for power charges and a second combo path for dmg. Enmity combos came from a gameplay era of "trade-offs" that is non-existent in most modern games today. People want everything to be impactful and want all their buffs now. Back then you had to choose to either get the aggro asap or risk losing it to a DPS or healer to set up your buffs first. It was clunky in its implementation but the idea is sound and a proven one in any RPG. It's just most people don't appreciate it like they used to, though I personally enjoy dancing between losing aggro and keeping it because it keeps me on my toes and makes it more interesting but others may disagree.

They "solved" that in ShB where each combo path benefits the tank by simultaneously providing enmity and buffs, though at the cost of having the tank stances lazily reworked into an enmity buff and nothing more. However, it would be interesting to see if enmity gain, in its current state, would work if they put it back on the ranged/aoe weaponskills and the main combo path; i.e. Storm's Eye, Royal Authority, Souleater, Solid Barrel. It could allow the return of job exclusive tank stances and add some of that "tank identity that players have been asking around these forums.

Tank Stance was not job identity for 2 out of 3 of the tanks mate, they were an atrocious mess of a system that benefitted only 1 tank, as far as I'm concerned the old stance system can stay in the ground where it belongs.

[Takamorisan]

Tank Stance was not job identity for 2 out of 3 of the tanks mate, they were an atrocious mess of a system that benefitted only 1 tank, as far as I'm concerned the old stance system can stay in the ground where it belongs.

I wouldn't mind having the stance dance back to WAR, but indeed hope we are done with homogenization everywhere and give the other tanks their own system to deal with.