Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Casualty]

I think I said this in another thread before but I would return stances back to tanks, just with a different approach.

Make the DPS stances provide a stacking benefit the longer you can stay in the stance (obviously with a cap) and the tank stance provide mitigation benefits.
Then cut down on tanks' mitigation cooldowns so you can't simply 30%+30% or 20%+10%+30% every buster, make tank stances a necessity to survive mechanics at some point.

Then it becomes about deciding when to use your defensive stance to survive and when to use your defensive cooldowns so you can stay in DPS stance.
Enmity doesn't even factor in here, because the most interesting part of old stances were the job mechanics attached to them.

What this will look like in practice is the tank stance will only be used when busters are completely unsurvivable without the mitigation provided by the tank stance and ignored the remainder of the fight. The stacking damage cap will be the baseline damage and the tank stance will be in effect a toggle-able mitigation cooldown with a damage down debuff baked into it. It will be worse than the old tank stances that reduced damage dealt, because it will take time to ramp back up again.
There were no significant mechanics with the old stances, as virtually no one used them outside of the first few GCDs of the fight, and that was only to secure initial enmity.



Speaking in general regarding the thread - I don't want enmity management back, no. It was never a significant part of content, even with aggro resets like in Neo Ex-Death. It only served as a checklist of skills for the MT to use at the beginning of the fight that sat there unused, cluttering hotbars after that. I would rather be more responsible for shielding/covering allies, picking up adds/controlling the layout of the arena through positioning, while still contributing meaningfully to actually defeating the boss/fight. I think that the boss teleporting to the middle for the party to do dance mechanics is overdone. However, if they are going to change it, they also need to address bosses pausing during each auto-attack. It makes movement janky and unfun.

[DRKoftheAzure]

So this thread got completely off topic due to what I assume is people starting a fight for no reason, and never actually giving a detailed opinion on why they don't want enmity management to come back/be meaningful, and then decided to throw in gearing up problems because they play tank to gear up their DPS/Healer which raises the question; Why aren't you gearing up tank first if you're playing tank...? It makes no sense to NOT gear up your tank first if you're playing tank...

I gave a detailed explanation of not only why I want it to come back and gave detailed explanation of how enmity combos can co-exist with the current tank stance system, but also made sure to that enmity combos were going to be hypothetically DPS neutral in case enmity combos did come back because there is no other way to balance enmity combos in both single target and AoE other than outright remove them...

And then someone commented on how Yoshi-P wanted to a avoid a toxic environment, and that toxic environment already happened REGARDLESS if Yoshi-P and team removed enmity management or not, ASSUMING this information is true, a damned if you/damned if you don't scenario, because the exact same people who don't want enmity management to come back are probably the same people who wanted it gone in the first place and don't want to have the entertain the possibility of why people want this to come back or even entertain the idea of enmity management coming back in a meaningful way, all because they didn't want to be responsible for for their own bad behavior...

It would also help if the devs balanced bosses properly instead of being "do this thing right or you/the whole party dies and you have to start over from the beginning" for their boss fight designs... players are gonna get hit one way or another, this is a fact, sometimes it's a skill issue, sometimes it's just someone having a bad day and need to have some fun to try and make the day better but it doesn't always go according to plan...

[Hammerhorn]

Holding threat doesn't create better gameplay somehow, currently I like how in Raids you can pass the threat around with your co tank its like a "high Five Bro" moment. I've been a tank in various games for around 20 yrs I enjoy FF14s take on threat.

[Mikey_R]

So this thread got completely off topic due to what I assume is people starting a fight for no reason, and never actually giving a detailed opinion on why they don't want enmity management to come back/be meaningful, and then decided to throw in gearing up problems because they play tank to gear up their DPS/Healer which raises the question; Why aren't you gearing up tank first if you're playing tank...? It makes no sense to NOT gear up your tank first if you're playing tank...

I mean, talking about gear and how that will affect the tanks ability to hold enmity is crucial when deciding if the system should be worth coming back, but only AFTER a baseline of an enmity system has been established.

I gave a detailed explanation of not only why I want it to come back and gave detailed explanation of how enmity combos can co-exist with the current tank stance system, but also made sure to that enmity combos were going to be hypothetically DPS neutral in case enmity combos did come back because there is no other way to balance enmity combos in both single target and AoE other than outright remove them...

If you have 2 combos, one that is just made for damage and the other that builds enmity, but they are DPS neutral with each other, what is the point of the damage combo if the enmity combo does that, and more, which is something I addressed in post #10.

I want enmity management to come back, but at this point I think Dark Knight and Warrior should be the only tanks with enmity combos, even if it is just lip service and the enmity combos are DPS neutral.

Reasoning for this?

Gunbreaker was clearly not designed with enmity combos and I'm okay with at least 2 tanks not having enmity combos, but I'm also okay with enmity toggles existing for all tanks so long as tanks that are the main tank know how to use Shirk on the off tank in case main tank dies... and therein lies the problem, most tanks don't know how to do that, and instead wait for the off tank to turn on tank stance once the main tank has established enough aggro, which usually means A.) never, B.) until the main tank dies, and by that point all the raisers are dead or C.) both...

This took a little while to parse in my head, but to lay it out clearer, you want all tanks to have an enmity toggle (what is what we have now), however, you also want to give DRK/WAR an enmity combo that is DPS neutral with their damage combo, making the damage combo redundant, but you also want them both to be responsible for keeping the off tank second in enmity, despite the fact they have enmity toggles to keep their enmity high. Does that sound about right?

And it's clear that most players don't know how to use Shirk as main tank when in a group with a second tank, and off tanks are afraid of hitting provoke without tank stance out of fear for either A.) cleaving someone(usually an off tank positioning problem but still) or B.)the healers or DPS yell at them for using Provoke(again, usually an off tank positioning problem) and with close friends this not too much of an issue since they're just messing around having fun, but anything outside of that is a recipe for disaster...

In the current climate, all it takes is the off tank to turn on tank stance after the main tank has established an enmity lead.

Dark Knight and Warrior can still have Provoke for forced tank swaps, Shirk for enmity dump while main tanking in case off tank doesn't have enmity combo AND forced tank swaps, and tank stance for just main tanking, while having enmity combos that are DPS neutral for off tanking...

So, what happens when you have both a PLD/GNB? or are you forcing a paradigm where the group will have WAR/DRK and PLD/GNB?

Sorry, you claimed that this is a 'detailed explanation', but it is far from it. You firstly haven't provided a clear explanation as to what your goal is for each tank, I had to read between the lines to get out what I did. You also haven't said why you want to limit Provoke and Shirk to only DRK/WAR and why only they get enmity combos. From there, how does the enmity combo behave with the enmity toggle? Can they hold enmity without it? Do they still need it? I already addressed what the point of the 2 combos are if they are the same, but nothing here seems to make sense.

As for PLD/GNB, why do they NOT get enmity combos in your theoretical example? Why do they not get enmity manipulation in Provoke and Shirk? Is their only way to control enmity via the enmity toggle?

Speaking of enmity toggle, that is exactly what we have now. Does your proposed idea change it in any way (except for maybe a reduced multiplier on the enmity)? If not, does it then not seem redundant having both enmity control via combos AND the toggle?

Again, I fail to see how this was a 'detailed explanation' when there are so many basic holes that need to be filled. It just seems like you want to take current enmity and change it up for no reason, whilst ignoring the reason why people want the old enmity system back in the first place.

[Absurdity]

What this will look like in practice is the tank stance will only be used when busters are completely unsurvivable without the mitigation provided by the tank stance and ignored the remainder of the fight. The stacking damage cap will be the baseline damage and the tank stance will be in effect a toggle-able mitigation cooldown with a damage down debuff baked into it. It will be worse than the old tank stances that reduced damage dealt, because it will take time to ramp back up again.
There were no significant mechanics with the old stances, as virtually no one used them outside of the first few GCDs of the fight, and that was only to secure initial enmity.

Yes you will only need the tank stance if you don't have cooldowns to survive but this still involves decision making on when to use said stance specific to the fight you're doing.

And if you think trying to maximize the %crit increase from Deliverance through proper gauge management or dealing with the MP drain from Darkside weren't mechanics then idk what to tell you.

[Dzian]

The problem is if you envison the combat system as a lovely bowl of delicious stew. then what the devs have basically done over the years is take all the ingrediants out.

emnity may have been the potatoes,
TP the carrots,
MP the leaks,
Debuffs, the beans,
old ast cards the lentils,
cleric stance the onion.
etc etc. All added together made a fairly nice tasty stew.

what the combat sytem has become in recent XIV is nothing more than a bowl of water.. and if all they did was add emnity back then it becomes just a rather boring bowl of boiled potatoes and still lacking all the other ingrediants that made it tasty and flavoursome.

any one ingrediant on its own doesnt make or break a combat system it's how they all work together. and you can't make a delicous bowl of stew without a delicious mix of ingrediants.

[Burmecia]

I wouldn't mind having it back, since I do miss it, sometimes.

[DRKoftheAzure]

snip

I play on the Crystal Data Center and... let's just say that the players there are "special" and that's the nicest way I can put it...

And I think you have to play on Crystal Data Center for long enough to even understand why I would want enmity management to come back...

The problem is if you envision the combat system as a lovely bowl of delicious stew. then what the devs have basically done over the years is take all the ingredients out.

enmity may have been the potatoes,
TP the carrots,
MP the leaks,
Debuffs, the beans,
old ast cards the lentils,
cleric stance the onion.
etc., etc.
All added together made a fairly nice tasty stew.

what the combat system has become in recent XIV is nothing more than a bowl of water.. and if all they did was add emnity back then it becomes just a rather boring bowl of boiled potatoes and still lacking all the other ingredients that made it tasty and flavorful.

any one ingredient on its own doesn't make or break a combat system it's how they all work together. and you can't make a delicious bowl of stew without a delicious mix of ingredients.

In regards to the food analogy, I would have gone with the "you ask for the chef to make grilled cheese sandwich and they make a culinary monstrosity instead" but the Stew analogy works too... though old AST cards coming back would need their own separate thread(if one doesn't exist already) on the healer forums, same with Cleric stance, which then raise the question; what part of the game is the meat and what kind of meat...?

[Casualty]

And if you think trying to maximize the %crit increase from Deliverance through proper gauge management or dealing with the MP drain from Darkside weren't mechanics then idk what to tell you.

Neither of those were the tank stance, and no, there was not a giant interplay. You were not holding max stacks of deliverance and overcapping to benefit from the crit rate. Darkside, although requiring management, was not like Deliverance. It was not the opposite stance of grit, it was a self buff.

If we are talking about the tank stances, Grit and Defiance, again, I am going to say there was no management. You turned them on before the pull, used a combo (WAR wasn't even penalized for this because they had unchained) and then turned it off for the remainder of the fight. They had mitigation attached to them, and no one used them for that.

The part you are doubling down on (the reduced damage) was one of the biggest complaints from this entire forum from DRK/PLD players. You could achieve a higher level of decision-making by keeping current skills and giving more things outside of ultimate to mitigate, whether that be more busters, or overall higher damage.
Tying X% damage to not using an ability, an ability that you really probably won't have to use outside of savage/ult, would likely make it a dead skill for people who don't do that content as they adjust to having just one less tank cooldown. To me, it makes more sense with a powerful cooldown to not make people actively avoid using it until they can't get away with it, but rather give multiple reasons to use it and you have to pick and choose which is the best situation to do so.

[Rithy255]

In regards to the food analogy, I would have gone with the "you ask for the chef to make grilled cheese sandwich and they make a culinary monstrosity instead" but the Stew analogy works too... though old AST cards coming back would need their own separate thread(if one doesn't exist already) on the healer forums, same with Cleric stance, which then raise the question; what part of the game is the meat and what kind of meat...?

The Meat of the combat system would obviously be the rotations and stuff, that we still have in game but the meat on its own isn't as good with the ingredients added in, also the meat is left overs from shadowbringers a bit stale... and did i find a fly in the meat??? aka the 120 raid buff system and burst meta.

But what we need is fresh food, a new take on combat is strongly needed, not just tank aggro management but in general we need those ingredients that make the combat actually enjoyable, Tanks need more Varity and just more to do other then being defensive DPS, healers also need varity but in the opposite direction more buttons to press! old astro or at least something similar...

Personally I hope we don't get more leftovers from shadow bringers, SHB was fun! But a watered down version of the same thing gets stale and boring really quickly, Right now i See they either double down on the SHB "leftovers" or actually make us something fresh and new.