Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Sauteed]

I think the game moved past the point of 2.0-4.2 tank design. At this point I would just like to see auto cleaves from bosses again to teach dps to respect the front of the boss and to teach tanks how to face the boss away from the party.

Indeed it moved "past" that.. or regressed. But semantics.

Onto the 2nd thing you mention here.. I actually would like to see more non floor marked bosses like pre-nerf coincounter from Aurum vale but the fact they implemented a "nerf" to him like like 8 years later tells me it's "cool" to blow engaging content that makes you desire to pay to attention out the window for the sake of people who are going to play the game for a month and unsubscribe because random "asian mmo grinder" came out and MMORPG.com said it's the greatest thing they ever got a chance to play because screenshots. With double thumbs up editor approval.

I'd like to see more bizarro "boss" encounter design. Don't be afraid to get a little weird. And when I'm saying weird, imagine having to fight a kraken style boss underwater, and people that are sufficiently leveled as monk get the ability to use specific actions to restrain tentacles, so the dps have an easier time dps'ing.. or things like that.

Instead what we get is extremely telegraphed hur durr yawnfest for 7-12 mins per "queue". yeah occasionally I derp step into yellow markers in the floor after drinking like 9 beers or something on the weekend but, they willingly show they gut content that's been there for nearly a decade just totally randomly and out of the blue, while going forward and making everything in a dungeon as extremely boring as humanly possible. This trend will continue, and people like me will continue to bitch. Nothing will change except some new tier of making this the most mind numblingly dumb ass experience possible will come to fruition. And people will continue to praise the 'accessibilty" of the game. I mean if I wanted mind numbing non-interactivity I'd watch CSI or something dumbassness on the tele. I want to be mentally stimulated and engage in "content" if i'm gonna play a video game. Not laugh because I didn't move out of an aoe and took like 7% overall health damage from the main boss of a dungeon.

[Shurrikhan]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

I mean, I'd go for that anyways. One less button-press of bloat outside of multi-tank content in which I'll have more burst than the other tank but don't actually want to tank for... reasons? (And even that could just be handled with Provoke leaving a persisting enmity modifier, with only one instance of the debuff possible per target. Voila.)

Generally, we'd less often have reason to have our enmity mods off than on, so making the more commonly useful state the passive and the more situational the choice seems plenty reasonable.

[MerlinCross]

I mean, I'd go for that anyways. One less button-press of bloat outside of multi-tank content in which I'll have more burst than the other tank but don't actually want to tank for... reasons? (And even that could just be handled with Provoke leaving a persisting enmity modifier, with only one instance of the debuff possible per target. Voila.)

Generally, we'd less often have reason to have our enmity mods off than on, so making the more commonly useful state the passive and the more situational the choice seems plenty reasonable.

I don’t agree with the sentiment, but I agree currently there’s no point anymore. Just put the fork in it and call it.

I mean at this point we only have this pseudo aggro because “oh we need to make sure the tank is the one eating damage, cause trinity”.

Through if they make the stance give increased DPS like what Marxam suggested, haven’t we just Gone in a circle somewhat? Both tanks are going to slam that DPS gain MT or OT so why have the stance at all?

[Zairava]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if in future expansions, enmity was just baked into the tank mastery trait and they changed tank stances to be DPS stances because newer players can't seem to grasp the idea of pressing one button to gain aggro.

I think the game moved past the point of 2.0-4.2 tank design. At this point I would just like to see auto cleaves from bosses again to teach dps to respect the front of the boss and to teach tanks how to face the boss away from the party.

Multiple things are to blame with how easy and simple tanking has become at the cost of accessibility but I think better tool tips would help as the first step. An instance at like lvl 30 that "tests" you current job role would go a long way in acclimating newer players. Nothing crazy just a simple game of hold aggro and keep mobs away from a target.

I think I would prefer them to do that than actually bring back old enmity management, and in hindsight, would've been a much better way to go about it imo. I'll take back dps stance back with open arms. We have shirk and provoke if we need to pass it to another tank (bearing that in mind, would be nice if we could use shirk on other tanks in alliance raids...)

I agree on bringing back auto cleaves too, I've started to see dps stand with me more often now and get erased in certain dungeons/raids and not others...it would be a welcome return to let dps know as far as I'm concerned.

[Zairava]

Tell that to cure 1 spammers who still insist Freecure is good.

Gives me conniptions.

Do they even have a reason they keep Freecure in the game instead of just evolving Cure I to Cure II?

[Atreides]

Why is this in the tank forums? Aggro management belongs into the DPS forums because it was hardly our responsibility in endgame content. By removing that they made it easier on the DPS and tanks don't suffer from bad DPS not knowing how to use it anymore.

This is coming from someone that has played Ninja in ARR/HW and MT since end of HW until today. I had more responsibility on Aggro when I played NIN than I had ever on tank.

[MerlinCross]

Why is this in the tank forums? Aggro management belongs into the DPS forums because it was hardly our responsibility in endgame content. By removing that they made it easier on the DPS and tanks don't suffer from bad DPS not knowing how to use it anymore.

I could give you reasons but I’m just done.

If people hate aggro, care only for DPS, the bosses do most the tank work by themselves now, and DRK is still held up as best tank but weakest at it; why does the tank role exist?

Because DPS can’t? Weeeee. Riveting experience for all.

I’ve brought this up before; remove Trinity, make it a free for all rocket tag dodge style system. They won’t of course, if for no other reason than Healers must heal it seems.

But Tanks must tank? Show me how we do so, please. I’m missing where the tanks are.

[Atreides]

snip

I don't know what kind of content you've been doing but tanking has it's own responsibility, position bosses, tankbusters aswell as mitigating AoE damage, FFXIV has plenty of mechanic heavy fights that keep you busy, granted aggro management is not a big concern unless you bork a tankswap somehow...

But this thread is named "bring back..." there is nothing to bring back outside of ressource management, because other than that aggro was a group efford not a tank efford, we had aggro combos yes but we did it maybe once in our opener and thats it. DPS had to use Diversion, Shadewalker etc... to funnel us with enmity. So bringing back aggro management implies to bring back DPS responsibility for aggro. That would require a huge rework yet again.

Other than that, yes I couldn't care less about aggro management, if it's there I deal with it, if it's not then I have no issues either. I can adapt, the reason they made aggro so easy is mostly because others tried to mimic the good tanks and tried to deal more damage but failed. SE doesn't want to cater to the few good players but casuals.

[eagledorf]

Yes, please bring back aggro. It's incredibly stupid now, you can often grab aggro with Aurora as long as you're in tank stance, you have to intentionally do nothing to lose aggro now.

Also please bring back:

Positioning the boss

While there are some clever positioning things tanks can do to improve party DPS like tanking the boss at the edge on P4S, SE clearly intends for bosses to just sit in the middle with no tank decision making involved whatsoever. P4S for example the boss frequently cast locks so in some cases (like after Setting the Stage) how far the boss moves depends on the sever refresh rate, which wouldn't be the case if SE thought tanks might actually move the boss. P1-2 the boss actually puts itself back in the middle for you automatically, and don't even get me started on bosses like Zodiark that literally can't move!

In fact, I think the only positioning that's intended and not automatic is after Gloryplume and before Dark Fire in P3 and after Pinax and Act 3 in P4S when you get the exciting task of...going to the middle. This is trivial for any even slightly experienced tank, and a slightly good tank will know to position it until it's cast-locked. This is compounded by fewer positionals and so many instant casts that LoS and angle only matter anymore if you are spinning the boss like a fool.

Something for OT to do:

Despite all the complaints about DRK, DRK remains perfectly viable in this raid tier even in PF. That's because as long as they OT, they never have to tank. Literally whenever I run with a DRK in PF, they want me to tank 100% of the time except for brief moments when they Provoke for a tank buster mechanic and then Shirk it right back.

Other than these occasional gimmicks, there is no reason to have two tanks in any of the current raid contents because there's no adds (except the birds in P3, but they don't spawn when the boss is up) or anything that requires actually tanking. Yes there's the tethers in P3 and P2, but other than hitting hard there's no reason that mechanic couldn't have been designed for a DPS to do instead.

Also, speaking of EX content. Hydaelyn doesn't require an OT at all even in the base tome gear, I've literally always done it as solo tank.

Synergy with healers:

Many of the tank skills work against instead of with healers now. For example, Heart of Conundrum just lowers the potency of Essential Dignity, Clemency is just annoying to healers who have been saving an oGCD to top you, Equilibrium guarantees Excognition never procs, etc. Other than the occasional coordination of raidwide mits, tanks and healers barely feel like a team anymore, just green support DPS and blue support DPS.

Decisions (other than delaying DPS rotations):

Used to be Paladins needed to decide if they want to Flash to refresh Blind on trash pulls or do DPS. WARs had to decide if they wanted to use IB for mitigation or Fell Cleave for DPS. While some of these were dumb (like IB/FC, because IB almost never got chosen over 'yell at the scholar'), having some degree of technical play was way more interesting than the 1-2 of tanks now, especially on trash pulls. There's got to be some way to reach a compromise that is not so punishing to DPS that nobody will use it or so trivial like timing Divine Veil that it barely matters.

Hard autoattacks

Tanks don't need to rotate cooldowns or self-heal to survive anymore, even in Savage content. All they need to do is push the button when the cast bar starts. Optimizing cooldown rotations still has some benefit, but frankly it's pretty small with how weak damage on tanks between busters is compared to AoE damage. The only actually remotely interesting autoattacks are the OT damage in P3 and P4 part 2 when they continue through mechanics.

I incidentally do agree savage raids are fun and busy enough, but it is not really much to do with tanking.

[baklava151]

Bumping an old thread since it seems like an appropriate spot for it

I joined during ShB so I didn't get to experience old tank stance and enmity management, but the general idea sounds like it could be interesting and give tanks more to think about during a fight. Just from what I'm reading it sounds like good tanks would use tank stance once during their opener to get aggro and then ignore it the rest of the fight, I guess between doing high damage and DPS using their enmity tools. I wonder if they could have tweaked some numbers, possibly remove DPS enmity tools, to make it mainly the tank's responsibility to maintain aggro and they had to swap between stances throughout the fight to hold aggro. I also see reading old guides that DRK and PLD would get increased defense when they had tank stance on, and WAR increased health and healing received with Defiance, maybe they also could have also played with mechanics where you had to be in tank stance to survive or just generally give bosses harder hitting autoattacks (if that wasn't the case already).