Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Malthir]

I've been moaning with alot of other Drks on this forum lately but I've come to realise that really what most of us are talking about, boring mechs and tanking no longer being fun is IMO cause by a lack of responsibility and consequences.

Aggro
Originally Dps could pull aggro off a bad tank, not all moves gave enmity and if I remember correctly most of those moves only gave enmity while in tank stance. This added consequences to the game, DPS and healers had to use moves to lower their aggro.

Tanks stance wasn't perfect, and at high-end ARR the meta was to tank without it. However removing it was a terrible plan IMO. Instead they should have made aggro gain more difficult if you weren't stance switching, made tank stance OGCD and then in each expansion they could have focused each tank classes mechanics around their stance and subsequently TP which I'll get onto next.

Resource
TP while not brilliant was better than our current system of spam all you want you have unlimited resources. Originally players had to think about their rotations, every weapon skill cost TP and speaking from the tank side that was always present in mind. It wasn't too hard for low skill players to handle (I should know I was/am one) and removing this lowered the skill ceiling not the skill floor.

Movement
Sprint used to cost TP, this used to wind me up back in ARR but I've come to realise that If you need to sprint in combat, you messed up, and therefor you get punished. The problem was that it only punished melee and tanks and not magic users.

Imo they should bring back a cost of using sprint while in combat via some form of debuff "less x done for X seconds" making it class specific for example, tanks have lowered resistance for X seconds or even making it slow you for X amount of seconds after use while in combat. It wouldn't fix wall to wall instance pulls but it would certainly go along way towards reducing it.

I realise this was our fault. We as tank players moaned about difficulty or the tediousness when really the difficulty and taking your time is what made the game fun and gave us the sense of achievement. The devs clearly have had to lean into the wall to wall instance design, if you look at all the recent expansion instances, it's two mob packs, boss room, two mob packs, boss room. Even the boss fights had to go to AOES everywhere turning boss mechanics into dance dance revolution, because we can sprint without consequence in combat anything short of a room full of AOE's wouldn't even graze us and since tanks never have to worry about loosing aggro the only mechanics they can do is don't step in stuff.

IMO to get tanking and in general combat mechanics back to a fun and health place, first we need to bring back consequences of us playing badly, be more unforgiving for our mistakes.

[Danelo]

I’m not saying this is a bad idea, especially considering that I for one thought getting rid of stances/aggro would lead to a more in depth DPS rotation since tanks didn’t really have to worry about enmity anymore… I was wrong… buuuut sQEX wants to simplify the role and adding enmity management as it was previously won’t happen. I will hold my breath for a mid-expansion rework to DRK before seriously considering aggro management is coming back.

[Cabalabob]

I miss aggro management, especially from the stormblood era where it really felt like a team effort to let tanks stay out of tank stance and use less enmity combos.

But I have to say no to resource management. Or rather, we still have resource management, it’s beast gauge, black blood, cartridges, shield gauge and MP. They got rid of TP for a reason, it was a bad mechanic. It wasn’t something you managed yourself, it was just a resource that ran out and then you had to sit there picking your nose until it built back up again and it wasn’t even your fault when it happened, it’s not like MP on current DRK where if you don’t have MP for TBN it’s because you spent too much on edge of shadow, if you ran out of TP it was because you had been doing your regular rotation but the BRD or MCH forgot their tp regen.

[AziraSyuren]

Aggro management was terrible. Awful. No good. I could write an entire thesis on why it's an awful idea.

I don't really care about the rest, but fuck aggro management.

[aveyond-dreams]

There is a reason why the game is no longer the way it used to be back in those days, and we're better off for it. If tanking was still in the state that it was back in Stormblood I would not even consider touching the role at all, whereas these days I'm comfortable running things as a tank. Having tanks yell at me to use Diversion was also something I won't miss, and TP gating not only sprint but massively hindering melee aoe attacks was extremely unfun.

General combat is the best it's ever been because we are no longer punished so severely for the mistakes we make. If you want hard and unforgiving stakes, savage and extremes are right there as an option.

[Seraphor]

Nah.

Insufficient aggro generation meant dps needed to use aggro dumps.
That removes agency from the tank. It's no longer your fault, or within your control, if the dps steal aggro.
And if aggro management ever conflicted with optimal dps output, as it did with the old tank/dps stances, then it becomes an obsolete system.

[LittleImp]

Aggro management was a pointless mechanic. It wasn't even remotely relevant in skilled groups who could pull off the incredible maneuver of pushing 1 oGCD every-so-often. It basically just became an annoyance in bad groups, where you had moutbreathing dps that didn't have diversion on their bar and would hit you with the amazing "I shouldn't have to use it, just do more aggro combos".

[Nepharius]

Imo aggro should not be a battle amongst your fellow party members but instead a battle with the enemy. Aggro resets, powerful adds, rapid aggro degeneration, debuffs to building aggro, are all ways of keeping threat management a PVE endeavor and not a source of toxicity. Imagine relative threat based damage, a tank far and away with enmity would be killed where another juggling their stance would not. Or building aggro through other means, like killing an add, attacking the boss' summoner/master, proximity, or simply being in the boss' line of sight passively generates it.

I agree aggro management should play a larger role but the HW method, despite the tools given to us did not feel cooperative. At best it was a chore and at worst it tore apart groups.

[DarkDredgen]

I'm torn between it too, kinda fun as a tank I guess, pain in the arse as a DPS/Healers.

Every now and then, I still begin pulling aggro on blm now, in 90 dungeon wall to wall too. Often see yellow and sometimes orange. If we had the old aggro mechanisms in place those would be mass pulls for sure.

I think it allows for synergy between new players and old players in the more mundane duties, which I am thankful for. Stops the dungeon turning into a complete cluster...you know what, and allows people to just get on with it.

[Hysorn]

I mean, I would take anything that made tanking less of a chore in dungeons and raids/trials once you are past the learning mechanics part.
Tanks have by far my favorite class fantasies in this game, but god damn, after a while it gets boring being a glorified DPS with a simpler rotation. The more exciting moment of any fight as a tank is when tank buster is about to come out and even then it's just a fleeting and superficial moment.

Unfortunately from what I understand their vision for tanks right now is to make them even more homogenized and simpler to play due to the mystical "Tankxiety" that I have no idea why people even have in this game considering the only difficult stuff you'll do is meant to do with friends.