DPS stressors vs. Mitigation stressors

[Sqwall]

I have been wondering what everyone's thoughts are about tanking direction in 6.0 and what it's going to be like.

With the changes that came in 5.0 to tanking and many believing tanking is "braindead" I wonder is that so bad? I believe it's the content that is braindead and not the job you play.

Warrior is comfy as hell with 5.3 changes, but players say it's SOOO braindead now compared to Stormblood Warrior iteration. To me it's fun now more then ever as all I have to do as a Warrior is play the game, and don't have to worry to much about my rotation. Where it's a large part of my job, but not the end of the world if I mess up an Eye buff.

Holding hate is no longer an issue and good riddance to stance dancing. So the DPS stress is no longer there for tanks, but is a factor in high end content?. I believe as tanks we should have this stress pushed from DPS to mitigation. Tank Mitigation Checks should be a measure of a tanks survivability. Much like a DPS check is the measure of a parties DPS capabilities, and if not met enrage occurs.

Proposals:
-More lethality in the boss mechanics for the tanks. 1 tank buster every phase is not enough. Having a tank stack direct hit makes no sense when we should stack tenacity and tenacity needs to be impactful in mitigation.

-Keep the enrage timers but make all DPS do way more damage in 6.0, and since holding hate is easy this shouldn't be an issue for DPS pulling hate from the tank.

-Mitigation checks. Tanks need to be able to mitigate a large hit and survive, and this tank check needs to involve BOTH tanks. Where if a boss hit's x2 in a row that would kill a tank, but if a tank stacks mitigation over damage he will survive. If he dies on the first hit....the second hit goes to the next tank...and if they dies....well. E3S is good example of this, but I survive even though I have Direct Hit melded which is just backwards of tanking. This is Tank Check

-Raid wide boss AOE's should be more lethal also and require tanks to use there party mitigation together in prep for healers spamming AOE heals. This already done, but nearly EVERY high end content but as scripted events. These need to take place during the battle and be almost to strong for healers to heal through, they need tank party mitigation to curb the damage. This is Heal Check

I'm trying to tease more focus on more team oriented gameplay then just simply "DPS the thing until win". The Braindead isn't the dumbing down of jobs...it's the braindead content that only challenges one aspect of the game. DPS and the ever looming enrage.

Rather it should be TANK, DPS, HEALS strong enough? Not everyone does Savage, and SE still calls it casual and everyone can do it? And the measurement on doing Savage is your DPS high enough? Just backwards thinking. There should be a tank mitigation dummy and a healing dummy to test out savage content.

DPS isn't everything, unless your a DPS.

[Lyth]

Mitigation checks should not be a measure of whether you picked the 'tank stat' over the 'dps stat'. It should be a measure of how well you use active mitigation tools to keep yourself alive on a moment to moment basis.

Warcraft soundly thrashes this game as far as tanking and healing gameplay is concerned. They've appropriated everything that has historically made this game worthwhile, and improved on it. Only selling point at the moment here is the story, and that's variable. Tanks need to start feeling relevant again, and fast.

[Sqwall]

Mitigation checks should not be a measure of whether you picked the 'tank stat' over the 'dps stat'. It should be a measure of how well you use active mitigation tools to keep yourself alive on a moment to moment basis.

Warcraft soundly thrashes this game as far as tanking and healing gameplay is concerned. They've appropriated everything that has historically made this game worthwhile, and improved on it. Only selling point at the moment here is the story, and that's variable. Tanks need to start feeling relevant again, and fast.

I agree to a certain degree here. I too have come from WoW style of tanking and agree with the sentiment. However, think you misunderstood what I meant by mitigating damage vs. melded mitigation. Or maybe I didn't explain well enough so for that I admit.
Example: Tank buster incoming. I would use Rampart or Sentinel, Vengeance, Shadow Wall, Nebula, etc., to counter the damage. Yes I would take a percentage off the amount of the tank buster, but's it's not enough. Let's say a tank's mitigation tools are good for reducing damage, but they aren't enough to ward off the damage of a high end raid boss tank buster. You need something else to get you over the mitigation check. More HP? Possibly, but VIT melds are gone and potions/food only get you so far.

That is where Tenacity comes into play. Tenacity should provide a much larger bonus to tanks ability to mitigate incoming damage taken.
Let's say this tank buster does 100,000 damage and compared to my stats let's say for math sake I have 100,000 HP. If I didn't use Vengeance (-30% damage taken) I would be one shot, but I use vengeance anyway.
I take 70,000 damage. Leaves me with 30,000 HP remaining. Not bad

But let's put that tank buster into a whole new light. Let's say it does 125,000 damage and I still have 100,000 HP. Uh oh, that's going to most surely kill me. We HAVE to use vengeance and reduce the damage taken again to prevent dyeing. This is a tanks job!
125,000-30%=87,500 damage HP of 100,000-87,500= 12,500! OK I LIVED! phew! Glad I have those cooldowns that I need to time correctly, and use effectively to stop that damage form killing me. No amount of DPS would have saved me.

But this is unrealistic, since we have inherent damage reduction modifiers. Defense, VIT, tenacity, block, parry, and not to mention healing shields. The list goes on. Just how much damage would a raid boss need to do to fully DESTROY a tank with everything used to prevent death?

[Jukebox12]

the Mitigation is good we don't need more mitigation it will make the game way to easy. the only way that tanks need to mitigate more and the healers to heal more is when ff14 up the difficulty to at wow or near wow. if they did that tanks and healers would need to complete rework and i don't think that will happened anytime soon

[Equitable_Remedy]

With the changes that came in 5.0 to tanking and many believing tanking is "braindead"

As a general rule, don't take what people say on the internet too seriously—especially when we're talking about gamers on a forum or Reddit.

[ADVSS]

As a general rule, don't take what people say on the internet too seriously—especially when we're talking about gamers on a forum or Reddit.

It is very braindead, you dont fight for aggro and as long as tank stance is up you can tank an entire dungeon with just aoe 1 followed by aoe 2. Compared to 2.x or 3.x tanking, it is pretty non existant, or braindead. But this isnt really a big problem, as that aggro management was just simulated difficulty. Theres many other aspects that make it even more dumbed down than its ever been. No more procs on a parry, no more skills that reward mp/resources for getting hit, none of anything thats reactive like shield swipe, etc. That is why its braindead, not that you can hold hate easilly. you dont get rewarded much for paying attention, because theres nothing to react to. pop a cd, cool now you can stand in aoes and keep doing 1 followed by 2 More battlefield control would make it more interesting, but what little we had in 2 and 3.x they got rid of as well, so thats about all we are going to get. What really is even all that fun about tanking, when you know your damage is arbitrarily nerfed because your role says so, but your role really doesnt do anything else in any meaningful manner?

[Hierro]

WAR's improved from Stormblood. It's far more engaging than it was back then, and it's great. DRK, on the other hand, needs to go back to those golden days where high APM defined the job. IN my opinion, the biggest issue is that it doesn't feel I contribute enough for the amount of effort I put in. Our slice of the DPS pie has gotten smaller, and I don't like that one bit. Give me a bigger slice and you won't hear me complain.

[Sqwall]

It is very braindead, you dont fight for aggro and as long as tank stance is up you can tank an entire dungeon with just aoe 1 followed by aoe 2. Compared to 2.x or 3.x tanking, it is pretty non existant, or braindead. But this isnt really a big problem, as that aggro management was just simulated difficulty. Theres many other aspects that make it even more dumbed down than its ever been. No more procs on a parry, no more skills that reward mp/resources for getting hit, none of anything thats reactive like shield swipe, etc. That is why its braindead, not that you can hold hate easilly. you dont get rewarded much for paying attention, because theres nothing to react to. pop a cd, cool now you can stand in aoes and keep doing 1 followed by 2 More battlefield control would make it more interesting, but what little we had in 2 and 3.x they got rid of as well, so thats about all we are going to get. What really is even all that fun about tanking, when you know your damage is arbitrarily nerfed because your role says so, but your role really doesnt do anything else in any meaningful manner?

Just so everyone understands...i'm not changing the jobs in anyway. I want the content to be harder. Dungeon trash, dungeon bosses, trials, 8 man raids, 24 man raids. I never said change the tanks playstyle. I want the content to lean more into what we already have at our disposal. Timing your CD's just right, having your co-tank use intervention or heart of stone not because they can, but because they must to just get past a tank buster.

[Sqwall]

WAR's improved from Stormblood. It's far more engaging than it was back then, and it's great. DRK, on the other hand, needs to go back to those golden days where high APM defined the job. IN my opinion, the biggest issue is that it doesn't feel I contribute enough for the amount of effort I put in. Our slice of the DPS pie has gotten smaller, and I don't like that one bit. Give me a bigger slice and you won't hear me complain.

I find your last statement concerning. Your a tank...your contributing the fact your eating the bosses DPS. The point of this thread is to understand what tanks should be doing from a HOLY TRINITY stand point.

HOLY TRINITY:
Tanks: hold boss agro and use your defense to stay alive and keep others alive. This is a contribution to the party
Heals: Heal party and remove debuffs to keep tank and DPS alive. This is a contribution to the party
DPS: Kill enemies more efficiently while avoiding taking damage or hitting enrage timer. This is a contribution to the party

FFXIV HOLY TRINITY:
Tanks: Hold boss agro, use your cooldowns so the healer can DPS more and not heal you (DPS), perfect your rotation so your not a scrub tank (DPS), don't move the boss ever so the DPS can perfect their rotation (DPS). Have high enough DPS in S,S,S to enter.
Heals: DPS until tank is at 10% HP, use insta heal, continue to DPS.
DPS: Your rotation is the only thing that matters, it's the healers fault you died, it's the tanks fault you were cleaved.


This is just sad when you think about it. I want the content to harder and more compelling to get through. I keep coming back to dark souls as a reference, and how great it felt when you finish a boss that took you weeks. Then you level up and get into new game plus and you truck that boss with OP damage. This is where we are at with FFXIV...there isn't anything that makes people work together unless your DPS is high enough.

The HOLY TRINITY of classes should be keeping each other from dyeing, not DPSing the fastest to avoid death. That's not compelling. I would MUCH rather fight a boss that took 30 min of hardship with a team, then pug a boss for 10 min with people i'll never see again.

The party finder is getting to the point of the dungeon finder in WoW....completely pulling the team work out of the game unless your in a static party. If statics are good...and they are...then SE should implement a static group manager for the game and a calendar scheduler.

Content needs to be harder...making classes hard to play is the wrong answer.

[Vahlnir]

The HOLY TRINITY of classes should be keeping each other from dyeing, not DPSing the fastest to avoid death. That's not compelling. I would MUCH rather fight a boss that took 30 min of hardship with a team, then pug a boss for 10 min with people i'll never see again.

Since the beginning of the game it has ALWAYS been about dps, from dungeons to raids to Fates. There was a bit less of a focus on it for tanks from ARR to Stormblood though but that never stopped them from trying. With Shadowbringers the dev team owned it, and here we are. They know people like pushing out decent numbers, and they also know that the player base has been going for max dps in all content despite the focus on mitigation for tanks, which was evident by the "stance dancing" that occurred. At the end of the day, the player base asked for this through their approach to any and all content. Welcome to the modern era of tanking. Personally, I'm okay with it.