DPS stressors vs. Mitigation stressors

[Crossu]

I like the idea of good mitigation prompts a reward. It's simple and could make for a happy medium to tenacity not making hardly any difference. But if tanks were rewarded for basically taking damage i.e. The Blackest Night style gameplay. Then I would be more apt to saving that proc as long as I can. Dark Knights results in a one to punch style. Large mitigation of damage = a damage proc.

Paladin used to be shield swipe. Block an attack you were granted a fair damage proc, but the cooldown was horrible. I like the idea behind this since shield swipe is gone and paladins really don't use their shields for anything else visually besides an interrupt. Perhaps something separate from oath gauge? Where your oath is for defensive abilities, but maybe something akin to sword oath stance. But this gauge only fills up by blocking, and would push paladins to use Shelton effectively. Once full they can execute a large DPS or something.

Warrior used to have wrath but with deliverance gone, should SE delve back into the DPS area of warrior? Or should it reach into mitigation with and make something completely different. Warrior feels super comfy now, and I would really like to keep that going into 6.0, but just expand it some with perhaps a proc skill to weave within my simple rotation. I really have a hard time thinking where warrior will go in 6.0. There isn't that much to improve on and tweaking something might upset it's delicate life steal gameplay. Warrior has ALWAYS been a Pandora's box job.

We can think of this rewards as Pitch perfect from Bard or something like that. You can "spam" it to get a consistent damage or save it for a really strong attack, maybe even a gauge fills and depending how well you mitigate you get more charges per skill.

[Leiron]

...

This occurs in WoW as well, the only difference is that the mobs are given instant cast abilities to compensate. Any mobs with a cast will cancel if you step out of range, where as in FF, once the cast is done, it will hit. The only reason ranged mobs do it as maxed range, is simply because they are programmed to cast as soon as possible. So they won't get any closer to compensate, which is why LOS is so effective. The only difference in terms of autos is that it looks smoother, but you'll find the damage from mobs as you drag them is still rather consistent because of the programming.
As for WoW, the reason bosses cast their moves without issue is simply because they are given infinite range, OR, instant cast abilities. It is how the devs overcome those issues, which also cause a number of issues.
Regardless though, this is less tank/heal and more of an encounter matter in which case, i do agree WoW does do it in much more interesting ways.
As for Brewmaster, tis is ONLY for progression, at which point, you swapped to Warrior/Paladin, or whatever did the most damage because you could get as much damage as possible.

Tanking is legitimately the easiest role in WoW, because survival just isn't hard at all.

Ultimately, WoW only succeeds in terms of how they design encounters which are interesting, but in terms of tanking balance, FF wins and allows you at least the opportunity to play a different class.
WoW has issues where some tanks are just completely unviable in content because of those encounters, but outside of going the FF route, its hard to balance

[Lyth]

No, stutterstep jank is unique to FFXIV. When I say 'casts', I mean pretty much any action taken by a mob, irrespective of whether it's a spell or not. This is how it gets described in the in-game text combat log. If you take a mob and start backpedaling, it has to stop the instant it tries to do anything to you, auto-attacks included. Once the "cast" starts, it's effectively locked on. Even abilities that are supposed to be "instant" cause a stutter, because the boss has to be briefly stationary for their activation. This is also why that embarrassingly bad spin-to-win bug is even a thing.

LOS works in FFXIV as well. That's a good thing. Otherwise you need a 'draw in' effect to group up casters.

Responsive mobs allow for more complex positioning mechanics. You have to be able to 'pilot' them around the arena to reposition your team out of mechanics. If. The. Boss. Stops. Every. Two. Seconds. For. An. Auto. Attack. This. Doesn't. Work. Out. So. Well. There have been some valiant attempts (A7S). But FFXIV has largely just given up since Stormblood and made the bosses move for you. So now you're a lower damage output melee dps that occasionally eats a tankbuster with an invuln. Ye olde 'Move boss out of permanent puddles that gradually shrink down the arena' is pretty much a primary school level tank check, and yet FFXIV is utterly scared of that sort of fight mechanic because it highlights the m-m-m-m-m-movement jank so badly. Warcraft doesn't need to design brilliantly creative fights to outshine fights on rails with pre-programmed boss movement and timestamp locked abilities. They just need to design minimally competent ones.

I don't think that every tank needs to be able to clear every fight. I know that paying customers are entitled to raid glamours, much like paying customers are entitled to mogstation stuff. But that's what difficulty settings are for. Let glamours come out of the easiest difficulty setting. It's okay for a raid wipe to happen because a tank fails to position or mitigate appropriately. If it's too hard, just pick an easier difficulty setting. Let everyone be able to find a difficulty level that suitably challenges them.

[Ultimatecalibur]

No, stutterstep jank is unique to FFXIV. When I say 'casts', I mean pretty much any action taken by a mob, irrespective of whether it's a spell or not. This is how it gets described in the in-game text combat log. If you take a mob and start backpedaling, it has to stop the instant it tries to do anything to you, auto-attacks included. Once the "cast" starts, it's effectively locked on. Even abilities that are supposed to be "instant" cause a stutter, because the boss has to be briefly stationary for their activation. This is also why that embarrassingly bad spin-to-win bug is even a thing.

No. "Spin to Win" happens because the mobs vulnerable to it have AI scripts that prioritizes facing their targets with very narrow targeting LoS cones and would not interrupt their current action if movement or distance prevented them from attacking their target. The mob's AI gets stuck and would therefore not progress as long as the current target could move faster than the mobs turning speed. This was fixed for the most part by massively widening and lengthening the targeting cones and attack ranges as well as changing the AI script priorities so that they would no longer get stuck. This is also why most enemy's single target casts can no longer be LoSed and so many fights now start with a Raidwide or Omnidirection/distance tankbuster.

The stuttering happens because of animation lock. Most of the games' mobs can't actually move and attack at the same time without "gliding" across the floor in a similar manner to our characters when they are doing actions with long animations.

Responsive mobs allow for more complex positioning mechanics. You have to be able to 'pilot' them around the arena to reposition your team out of mechanics. If. The. Boss. Stops. Every. Two. Seconds. For. An. Auto. Attack. This. Doesn't. Work. Out. So. Well. There have been some valiant attempts (A7S). But FFXIV has largely just given up since Stormblood and made the bosses move for you. So now you're a lower damage output melee dps that occasionally eats a tankbuster with an invuln. Ye olde 'Move boss out of permanent puddles that gradually shrink down the arena' is pretty much a primary school level tank check, and yet FFXIV is utterly scared of that sort of fight mechanic because it highlights the m-m-m-m-m-movement jank so badly. Warcraft doesn't need to design brilliantly creative fights to outshine fights on rails with pre-programmed boss movement and timestamp locked abilities. They just need to design minimally competent ones.

Wrong. They don't do it anymore because they are more focused on maintaining fight consistency over multiple attempts. Stationary and self-positioning bosses are really easy to make consistent as you don't need to worry if the boss being in a slightly different position or facing a slight different direction would make a mechanic extremely easy or impossible to deal with.

[Masked-dingus]

Stationary and self-positioning bosses are really easy to make consistent as you don't need to worry if the boss being in a slightly different position or facing a slight different direction would make a mechanic extremely easy or impossible to deal with.

Positioning the boss correctly at any moment is part of what a tank should be able to do without having to be assisted

[ItMe]

No, stutterstep jank is unique to FFXIV. When I say 'casts', I mean pretty much any action taken by a mob, irrespective of whether it's a spell or not. This is how it gets described in the in-game text combat log. If you take a mob and start backpedaling, it has to stop the instant it tries to do anything to you, auto-attacks included. Once the "cast" starts, it's effectively locked on. Even abilities that are supposed to be "instant" cause a stutter, because the boss has to be briefly stationary for their activation. This is also why that embarrassingly bad spin-to-win bug is even a thing.

Its true.
It's an unfortunate hold over from the fact that 1.0's beta had a menu based battle system.

[Satarn]

Positioning the boss correctly at any moment is part of what a tank should be able to do without having to be assisted

This so much. Before SHB we still had a bunch of mechanics where it was up to tank to make sure the boss was in the right spot for said mechanic. You didn't get the stupid "teleport to mid" bullshit for any of the Forsaken or Hello World like you get with Light Rampant - you had to place the boss' ass there yourself and you didn't need to keep them in place if moving around was more beneficial to uptime and whatnot.

You could actually see difference in tank skill based on how consistent they were with repositioning and if they came up with more optimal uptime spots without having to be told by the disgruntled melees. Even with the jank movement in XIV it was still possible to have at least some of that instead of what we get right now and I don't recall the fights exploding or being trivialized due to being "inconsistent" - you just wiped if you screwed up, which is how it should be.

They don't do it anymore because they are more focused on maintaining fight consistency over multiple attempts. Stationary and self-positioning bosses are really easy to make consistent as you don't need to worry if the boss being in a slightly different position or facing a slight different direction would make a mechanic extremely easy or impossible to deal with.

If a mechanic being "impossible to deal with" was such an issue, then by that logic every major mechanic should auto-rez your whole party, as plenty wipes happen due to just not having enough people alive at the time to execute things. I'm pretty sure you can see how stupid that would be.

[Vahlnir]

Positioning the boss correctly at any moment is part of what a tank should be able to do without having to be assisted

Yeah...this I can agree with at the very least. Memoria Misera Ex makes tanks do this in the 2nd/3rd phase a bit, but I think it should just be a standard practice to figure out where to move the boss and when. Admittedly I did not tank much of Memoria Misera Ex, but that was because I was sick of failing the dps checks or wiping at 1% because all the dps were dead. lol But I know how it works. I used to tank once upon a time, and my muscle memory still says "okay, gotta move them here..." only to see the boss yanked backed to the center. It throws me off a bit when it happens even though I'm expecting it, because it goes against my instincts.

[Leiron]

No, stutterstep jank is unique to FFXIV. When I say 'casts', I mean pretty much any action taken by a mob, irrespective of whether it's a spell or not. This is how it gets described in the in-game text combat log. If you take a mob and start backpedaling, it has to stop the instant it tries to do anything to you, auto-attacks included. Once the "cast" starts, it's effectively locked on. Even abilities that are supposed to be "instant" cause a stutter, because the boss has to be briefly stationary for their activation. This is also why that embarrassingly bad spin-to-win bug is even a thing.

LOS works in FFXIV as well. That's a good thing. Otherwise you need a 'draw in' effect to group up casters.

Responsive mobs allow for more complex positioning mechanics. You have to be able to 'pilot' them around the arena to reposition your team out of mechanics. If. The. Boss. Stops. Every. Two. Seconds. For. An. Auto. Attack. This. Doesn't. Work. Out. So. Well. There have been some valiant attempts (A7S). But FFXIV has largely just given up since Stormblood and made the bosses move for you. So now you're a lower damage output melee dps that occasionally eats a tankbuster with an invuln. Ye olde 'Move boss out of permanent puddles that gradually shrink down the arena' is pretty much a primary school level tank check, and yet FFXIV is utterly scared of that sort of fight mechanic because it highlights the m-m-m-m-m-movement jank so badly. Warcraft doesn't need to design brilliantly creative fights to outshine fights on rails with pre-programmed boss movement and timestamp locked abilities. They just need to design minimally competent ones.

I don't think that every tank needs to be able to clear every fight. I know that paying customers are entitled to raid glamours, much like paying customers are entitled to mogstation stuff. But that's what difficulty settings are for. Let glamours come out of the easiest difficulty setting. It's okay for a raid wipe to happen because a tank fails to position or mitigate appropriately. If it's too hard, just pick an easier difficulty setting. Let everyone be able to find a difficulty level that suitably challenges them.

Yar, its because of what I said earlier. Its mostly different scripting and how the game handles attacks. THey've improved it by increasing the auto range of mobs but I get how the lack of smooth movement is annoying.
On that note, my cat just hid inside of a drawer, must save him

[Ultimatecalibur]

Positioning the boss correctly at any moment is part of what a tank should be able to do without having to be assisted

I agree. I don't like it but SE's design formula favors consistency for the dps over fun for the tanks. Fights with a fair amount of repositioning are enjoyable to tank but are a pain for melee dps and stationary casters.

You could actually see difference in tank skill based on how consistent they were with repositioning and if they came up with more optimal uptime spots without having to be told by the disgruntled melees. Even with the jank movement in XIV it was still possible to have at least some of that instead of what we get right now and I don't recall the fights exploding or being trivialized due to being "inconsistent" - you just wiped if you screwed up, which is how it should be.

If a unintended strat emerges that does not completely trivalize the fight or a mechanic for some reason ends up trickier than intended SE leaves the fight alone and then designs future fights to account for the problem.

If a mechanic being "impossible to deal with" was such an issue, then by that logic every major mechanic should auto-rez your whole party, as plenty wipes happen due to just not having enough people alive at the time to execute things. I'm pretty sure you can see how stupid that would be.

There is a difference between "this mechanic needs X players alive to complete" which is consistent through each attempt and "having the boss 1/2y north of the intended position or canted by 5 degrees to either side will cause the safespots use to dodge the floor AoEs to be smaller or in different spots" which can mean the strategy used to handle the mechanic is not consistent.