Tanking in Endwalker: Steps Forward and Backward in Fight Design

[ArtoriasDS1]

I will start off by saying that I have seen improvements overall in fight design around tanking in Endwalker compared to Shadowbringers, but not a 100% improvement. Tankbusters are much more interesting now than they were before since they happen much more frequently and apply more DoTs. I really feel like I need to plan which mitigations I have available to make sure my healer is not overworked. At the very least, I need to use my cooldowns frequently. I am also glad that more tankbusters are not able to be invulned to just cheese a mechanic. This is much better than in Shadowbringers where I felt that I barely needed to plan around my mitigations at all. They were always up when I needed them to be. I also want to highlight that shared tank autos are an interesting concept that I would like to see more of.

That being said, there is a problem that started in Shadowbringers that has only gotten worse in Endwalker: boss positioning. I am sure there are plenty of posts mentioning that boss hitboxes are too large, making it too easy to maintain uptime on bosses. This is absolutely true and is certainly part of the problem, but there is one more aspect that impacts this. Bosses re-center themselves too often.

As a tank, I feel like I never have to do ANY positioning anymore outside of maybe a run to a corner and back in P5S. Looking back at Stormblood, (nearly) every fight had some kind of positioning for a tank to do. In Shadowbringers, there were a few bosses that required positioning, but most wanted to stay in the middle. When hitboxes were small, that was okay because managing to keep the boss in the middle when you as the tank need to move is also a skill. Now that hitboxes are giant AND the bosses want to stay in the middle, my job as a tank is now only to get hit. This would be okay if the jobs were more complex, but they are also being streamlined at the same time, leaving tanking less interesting.

Ironically, one of the best fights to tank in years was P3S (I know everyone, get out your pitchforks). But really, the boss hitbox was just the right size, there were frequent busters for BOTH tanks, and a good tank could position the boss very well to give everyone uptime. At the same time, the boss didn't need to be moved SO much that the Main Tank couldn't do their rotation at all. It had a nice balance between the two.

Looking at new Paladin (and the old one a bit), the fact that it has a much more flexible rotation and a lot of ranged options is fantastic...if fights required us to disengage from or pull the boss places. That quality of life is lost when it never needs to be used. I would love to optimize where I use my holy spirits, or feel rewarded for choosing to bring paladin into a fight because of its ranged utility, but that has only mattered for P3S and Pinax in P4S this entire expansion.

Tanking is more than just taking damage. It's controlling the boss.

[Jeeqbit]

Tankbusters are much more interesting now than they were before since they happen much more frequently and apply more DoTs.

I agree. Tank busters were this boring thing before where you just press Rampart + short mit and done. You still had to plan which ones to use (example in Shadowbringers I saw someone use Hallowed Ground and Sentinel together and they had nothing later on and died), but they didn't do them in all the different ways they do now. Tethers, knockback+away or stack, shared TBs, double TBs, double-swaps, RNG on which type of TB, dots, they are putting more thought into the nuances.

As a tank, I feel like I never have to do ANY positioning anymore outside of maybe a run to a corner and back in P5S.

As you said, it's still a thing in P5S (unless you want to annoy the melee DPS while they try to stand in the circles, or have the boss all the way in the corner for the stack-spread mechanic). But it's actually a bit of a thing in P6S as well because you have to run to the corner sometimes, and after the first Choros Ixou, you've got to get back in quickly or gap close, otherwise the boss runs up to you.

It's also a bit of a thing at the start, because some tanks just gap close in and tank it all the way up north until it repositions and that just means the melee DPS have to do that as well.

one of the best fights to tank in years was P3S

I agree, so between P3S and P5S there is still hope that positioning is a thing in certain fights when it's not a wall boss, but we'll have to see how that is in the future.

In Shadowbringers, there were a few bosses that required positioning, but most wanted to stay in the middle.

I agree that positioning is part of being a tank, but I want to say that I didn't like E2S where it didn't reposition at all. That was annoying, because if you tried to reposition it, it would just start casting more mechanics while doing it and it would end up you were spinning the boss. So part of the difficulty was preventing the boss moving from the center in the first place, while still moving back just enough to avoid mechanics. It's alright and even useful for it to reposition once or twice, just not all the time.

Looking at new Paladin ... a lot of ranged options is fantastic...if fights required us to disengage from or pull the boss places ... that has only mattered for P3S and Pinax in P4S this entire expansion.

When running to the corner in P6S and in Barbaricca when it's cleaving the middle or we have dropped baits. Holy Spirit is great there, or should I say was, because now that you want to save Divine Might for the burst, it creates a dilemma of using that or the low potency shield lob.

[Packetdancer]

Tankbusters are much more interesting now than they were before since they happen much more frequently and apply more DoTs. I really feel like I need to plan which mitigations I have available to make sure my healer is not overworked. At the very least, I need to use my cooldowns frequently.

As a healer, I also appreciate that we have more interesting stuff to deal with. So, consider this a +1 on that.

I do think there's one (minor) downside, inasmuch as it magnifies the existing flaws in the current server tick system; I can be in a fight with my static (so same people, same gear, same strats) and like 1 out of every... say, 12 pulls, we'll hit the timing JUST right so that the first post-tankbuster auto and the first DoT tick happen simultaneously, and the tank's health just evaporates.

Right now this doesn't generally lead to a death, because my co-healer and I know to watch for it. But it just gives me this faint worried feeling of "hmm, I can see this might become a serious problem in some future fight."

That being said, there is a problem that started in Shadowbringers that has only gotten worse in Endwalker: boss positioning. I am sure there are plenty of posts mentioning that boss hitboxes are too large, making it too easy to maintain uptime on bosses. This is absolutely true and is certainly part of the problem, but there is one more aspect that impacts this. Bosses re-center themselves too often.

I think this is partly a result of them focusing more and more on mechanics that require precise positioning; if the mechanic needs to line up with marks on the floor (P1S Intemperance, P6S Polyominoid, basically the entirety of P8S phase 1, etc.), they seem to want the boss to be positioned appropriately to let the party focus on the mechanic. There are exceptions -- I feel like P6S lets the boss get dragged around the arena during a surprising number of mechanics, even if she resets to center to start the mechanic -- but in general, they seem to want to shift back to center and lock there.

(As opposed to older fights, where... well, we've all seen what happens if a tank pivots Calofisteri the wrong direction in Weeping City, causing a "half room" cleave that renders ~97% of the room uninhabitable.)

I do rather suspect that if they didn't do this, of course, we'd have a half-dozen threads on this forum complaining that tanks are terrible at positioning the boss in P8S phase 1 and you can't keep uptime and so can't make the DPS check, or tanks complaining that DPS checks need to be lighter or mechanics less unforgivingly one-shot so that there's a little leeway in positioning, etc.

But in the end, I agree with you that it's less interesting. And more to the point, it also gives a tank less options to help optimize for others; in current fights, a tank basically has responsibility to mitigate and hold aggro, and to execute mechanics alongside the rest of the party. Whereas in older fights, a good tank can often position things cleverly to speed the fight up for everyone, like how you can help folks not have to do the mechanic by pivoting Calofisteri the correct direction in Weeping City (and cleaving only off outside of the arena).

[ThaCa]

If there's not going to be Tank positioning they should bring back threat management. If they are sticking to current system, then strip the tanks further down of Tank abilities and make them full fledged DPS.

[AnnRam]

I dropped totally the Tank role after Shb. Being OT sucks so bad it feels like a wasted slot instead of bringing another DPS/Healer.

I don't know about Savage/Ultimate but those skills that reduce magic damage feels like bosses now deals 900 damage instead of 950.

[KageTokage]

I feel like the ARR style of forcing tank swaps where stacking debuffs allow for flexibility in when the swaps happen is inherently more interesting then the currently popular "swap or get one-shot" style.

[Jeeqbit]

I feel like the ARR style of forcing tank swaps where stacking debuffs allow for flexibility in when the swaps happen is inherently more interesting then the currently popular "swap or get one-shot" style.

It is. Doing ARR extremes is like playing an entirely different game. Whenever I've done old shiva and titan it's like a completely different game because tanking just hasn't been like that for most of the game's history after that. They changed it to just "this cast is a tankbuster" instead of watching for animations, phases or the right situation to figure out the right moment to swap.

[Eorzean_username]

The problem with bosses not re-centering is that it creates more opportunities for players to get mad at each other, and for players to feel intimidated or discouraged because they can't do something the "ideal way".

I am not advocating for or against this, because if I had my way we'd all be back to HW style mechanics and design and everyone would hate me for making the game a giant inconvenient PITA again with bowmages and Geirskogul eating Blood timer and Darkside sapping MP and so on.

But what I am saying is that, realistically, given the way the game is now, the developers are clearly trying to avoid situations where players get bullied for not knowing obscure tricks or unintuitive optimizations.

Especially with how infuriatingly-unresponsive a lot of bosses are to moving and positioning in FFXIV's engine, proper boss positioning becomes something of an exercise in either being psychic, or memorizing the entire encounter pattern(s) and reacting very quickly and precisely in the narrow windows that you actually have before a boss cast-locks itself into position for another exasperating 30 second span.

That leads to people being intimidated about tanking, and also getting a lot of heat from frustrated other players for positioning "wrong". Even if the Tank is trying to position correctly, it can become impossible if you don't know the exact moment a boss is moveable, or you don't know the exact pattern ahead of time (and can thus preposition before anything even appears).

Case in point — the ability for well-meaning but unpracticed Tanks to turn Califosteri into a murder-fest by making her Haircuts undodgeable if they spin her the wrong direction when she jumps to the edge of the room.

Having bosses just put themselves in the correct location makes the Tank role a much more accessible experience in the "Mario Party" system of FFXIV Roles, where everything is hypothetically intended to feel equally-comfortable for players.

It's another situation where a minority of players (dedicated Tank mains) love a certain feature of a class or role, but it becomes a turn-off and stressor for the majority of players. So it gets excised or watered-down in order to try to drive up minority participation numbers, and reduce stress/complaints from those trying to fill the role.

Same as removing positional mitigation — it used to feel pretty clever to use Raw Intuition correctly, or kite around carefully so you still got Blocks in. But it was a PITA for controller-users and awkward in general with XIV's engine, so we ended up getting omnidirectional mitigation in order to increase accessibility.

Is this kind of design shift good? Errrr ehhh I'm not getting into that... it's the usual can-of-worms, with subjective opinions on both sides. But I think the autocentering simplifying Tank positioning is very much intentional, in order to try to reduce the "bad vibes" that less hardcore Tank players receive from other players. You know — taps forehead You can't blame someone for not knowing all the positioning tricks, if there's no positioning tricks to know.

[True-to-Caesar]

Not just bosses but if you notice trash mobs from Shadowbringers to Endwalker, they now have the nasty tendency to get behind you, no matter how you reposition yourself. Unless you hug a wall (great for the camera…) some mobs will then spread their aoe telegraphs on the team, so your positioning is almost made useless in those dungeons and a lot of people will just think it’s you not repositioning yourself but it won’t help the situation anyway.

I wish they fixed that.


For bosses, I wish they go away from the template : start of a fight > aoe or tank buster > actual mechanic. Wish it was more spiced and different from a boss to another. Then again I think they did that so even if you don’t remember a fight, you already know the basics.

[Jeeqbit]

The problem with bosses not re-centering is that it creates more opportunities for players to get mad at each other, and for players to feel intimidated or discouraged because they can't do something the "ideal way".

That is true, but you can make that argument for anything that involves skill, which explains why skill is being removed from most content, as much as it can.

But extreme and savage are meant to be challenging, so it should remain in this content. If a tank isn't skilled enough to learn how to position a boss then maybe the content isn't for them.