Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Lyth]

I recently learned that WoW went through the same debacle 8 years earlier. Ghostcrawler (a very vocal dev on the WoW team at the time) explained some of their reasoning in a blog post that's now gone. But I found it copied in a reddit comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...usses_massive/

This is a misinformed comparison. This is not a new development, nor is it a debacle. Tanks in FFXIV have always been focused on dealing damage. This partially comes down to the fact that FFXIV is much less gear dependent than World of Warcraft, and being gear gated in newly released content hasn't really happened outside of Manipulator. There was no iteration of this game in which you were valued for stacking parry and turtling up. As such, there has always been pushback from the community against gameplay decisions that restrict tanks' damage output.

Even in Heavensward, which was over eight years ago now, groups were using effects like Shadewalker and Smoke Screen to negate the need for stance-based enmity. And Stormblood really drove this point home, with the addition of Shirk as a tank role action. The changes to tank stance and built in enmity in Shadowbringers were a natural extension of this, and the biggest reason why they were changed was because the stance system preferentially benefited one tank job over all others (guess which one). No, this is not a new concept, nor is it a borrowed one.

Tanks want to do more damage. We demanded it.

[Khalithar]

No. The new system and the change made to Provoke has made tank enmity feel great. I don't want it to change.

[Nestama]

Let's bring TP back while we're at it, too.

/s

[Tint]

The old enmity system was more an illusion of complexity than a real complex system.

Which I actually like.

But you basically did one aggro combo and that was it.

The burden of the enmity management was on the shoulders of the DDs and healers and tanks were exploiting the Shirk skill. Tanks stayed out of tank stance and were avoiding using aggro skills.

That's not the enmity management I would want to have back.

Enmity control is a part of tank gameplay and should not rely heavily on DDs and healers. So what really would change? That tanks have to use an aggro combo again, and more often during the fight and lose damage because of reasons? Shirk has to be removed of course. Why would we want to have enmity management back just so we can use an exploit to circumvent managing aggro?

No I don't think enmity management should come back. Not with the dps focused gameplay we have.

[Post]

The current state of Enmity is such that tanks don't even realize when they're not top or second on threat because it's such a non-factor.

But, the fact that so many tankbusters just automatically target the tank role regardless of their aggro is all but an admission that ShB change to Enmity didn't fix everything for the players they were trying to make the role more approachable for.

I don't know that they'd be any more aware if Enmity generation wasn't AS extreme, but at the very least what I miss most from StB were tools that allowed non tanks to manage their Enmity. Call it selfish, but being able to drop half my threat every 30 seconds as a DRG or give threat to an oblivious tank as a NIN was rewarding. Those things didn't have to go away.

Now, it's like you're completely at the mercy of some player that thinks fell cleave fell cleave fell cleave is too engrossing a rotation to put on their stance or remember to provoke after they're raised. At least with oblivious healers you have SOME survivability tools, but most jobs aren't surviving a tankbuster.

[Shurrikhan]

The current state of Enmity is such that tanks don't even realize when they're not top or second on threat because it's such a non-factor.

But, the fact that so many tankbusters just automatically target the tank role regardless of their aggro is all but an admission that ShB change to Enmity didn't fix everything for the players they were trying to make the role more approachable for.

I don't know that they'd be any more aware if Enmity generation wasn't AS extreme, but at the very least what I miss most from StB were tools that allowed non tanks to manage their Enmity. Call it selfish, but being able to drop half my threat every 30 seconds as a DRG or give threat to an oblivious tank as a NIN was rewarding. Those things didn't have to go away.

The only one among those I found at all worthwhile was Shadewalker, and even it felt like a waste of the name. They also didn't make us any less at the mercy of tanks needing to use Provoke after a rez, etc. They were little more than trifles useful only on the pull and for maintenance thereafter, for eeking out a tiny, tiny bit more tank rDPS.

[Supersnow845]

If we are gonna talk about fights where you have to stop DPS’ing to make certain things work 14 has its own example of that type of fight (well technically 2) and it was a damn infamous fight in it’s time

Let’s not pretend like 14 is “better” than these problems

[Post]

Here's a short list of examples of encounter design space lost because of Enmity's changes in FFXIV:

T9 golem phase screwed any overzealous healer for Stardust damage if they didn't manage their Enmity or didn't heal efficiently; you could get too much aggro on golems or even the boss while tanks couldn't get any more themselves. Generally they just don't ever have the boss come back swinging like Nael, though.

Moggle Mog extreme threat drops as a tank check; as it is now tanks won't even notice something happened much less lose aggro because aggro is not a consideration unless they need to swap and shirk is on cooldown

o4s dropped aggro every Grand Cross, attacks that would frequently require lots of healing and boss would frequently tankbust afterwards

It's a pretty short list outside of the general places that this change impacted, but the thing is they barely take advantage of where it does help make the role more approachable:


Tankbuster swaps. You have to swap more often in older boss fights because older bosses tankbust more often. Generally, since Shirk was added in StB you probably won't to swap more than once a minute because Shirk has a two minute cooldown. Compare Golbez Extreme to Sophia Unreal, they're both .4 extremes. Shirk is ready for every Golbez tank swap, even if you don't actually change who's main tanking.

Any fight where adds show up while the boss is attackable. Rare now, aggro being easier to manage for tanks makes them EASIER to deal with, yet despite this freedom they don't exist anymore.

They don't use quality of life to iterate on design ideas or space, they just remove Enmity and if there's something uniquely in the tank role to be done to make a fight more manageable it's by pure happenstance, not by battle design.

[HappyHubris]

I would split the difference.

Lower the multipliers so holding threat requires some sort of execution, but there's no need to have a tank stance.

[Sazuzaki]

I started in Shadowbringers but quickly realized how dull tanking can be in non-raid encounters. From what I've read, I would like it back only if it was exclusively the tanks responsibility. As a tank-exclusive responsibility, it could make so many dull encounters somewhat fun again since all the tanks now have to constantly manage their aggro rather than be a gimped DPS.

The main thing I wish I got to experience from the old enmity system are tank stances, as juggling between maintaining aggro and maximizing DPS seems to be very fun and dynamic. I'd like it back with some revisions; rather than having 2 separate combos, just change the main combo between the DPS combo and enmity combo depending on which stance you're in to nullify button bloat. It might also be good to make all the stances stay an oGCD so it feels smoother to stance-dance, unlike the old system where only WAR could smoothly change stances. I could go on, but you get the picture.

TL;DR: I'd like it back with revisions made to it so it's a tank exclusive responsibility.