Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Mikey_R]

If the tank is doing damage, they're 60% of a DPS. Say them doing the agro rotation makes them 55%. Meanwhile, your BLM gets the gear and is doing 115% of the damage they were doing before. Tank -5%, BLM +15%, party net +10%. The group damage output is still greater.

The issue here is you are using arbitrary numbers to prove a point, whereas in reality, this isn't even close. Now, whilst I do not have numbers, upgrading your gear is going to be closer to ~1% damage increase, which is all you needed to theoretically bump your damage high enough to pull enmity.

To put some numbers to the potency loss for PLD to do their enmity combo, here are the numbers:

RoH = 640 total potency
RA = 760 total potency

This means, for every RoH combo you do, you reduce your damage by 26% for that one combo. Obviously, this isn't realistic, so, add in the good old GB + 2 combos from back in SB, and the nubmers change as follows (as a reference GB is 1090 total potency):

GB + 2*RA = 2610
GB + RA + RoH = 2390 (5% reduction)
GB + 2*RoH = 2370 (10% reduction)

So, increasing a DPS's damage by a few % can have lasting detrimental effects. This is before we then start taking other things into consideration, like the lack of recourses, the fact it took PLD 1 GCD to swap to tank stance and another to go back to DPS stance, which also both took MP in a time where PLD's MP was so finely tuned, you had to rely on the passive MP regen over a minute to ensure you had 10000 MP for Req. And then, to top it all off, being in tank stance cost you 20% of your damage and you pretty much had to be in tank stance if you needed to build up any reasonable amount of enmity, as your enmity combo in DPS stance did not build up much at all. It was a very similar situation on the other tanks, with Warrior being one of the better ones due to oGCD tank stance swapping and access to Unchained to mitigate the damage loss (though they still lost access to Fell Cleave).

However, irregardless of this all, it still felt bad for you to be actively punished because the DPS was playing well. It could have theoretically been a DPS gain for the party in some circumstances, however, it doesn't change the fact it felt bad to do and THIS is the core reasoning why the tank stances were bad, especially in SB.

Though, if I recall correctly, you only needed 4 Riot Blades per minute to reach 80% MP (alternating 4 and 5 RBs/min to maintain 80+%)?... Which meant you could still spend the majority of the time between Goring Blades on Savage-Halone and your MP still would be fine?

Your aim was getting back to 10000 MP every minute (since HS cost 2000 MP then), in order to get that MP, you had to Riot Blade every time, so, with 3 GB and 4 total RA combos, that is 7 total Riot Blades per minute and even then, you had to rely on the natural MP regen on PLD in order to only just get back to 10000MP before Req came off of cooldown. This could be supplemented by Sheltron giving back some MP when hit, but by doing that you also 'wasted' a defensive cooldown. Things were tight back then.

[Shurrikhan]

Your aim was getting back to 10000 MP every minute (since HS cost 2000 MP then), in order to get that MP, you had to Riot Blade every time, so, with 3 GB and 4 total RA combos, that is 7 total Riot Blades per minute and even then, you had to rely on the natural MP regen on PLD in order to only just get back to 10000MP before Req came off of cooldown. This could be supplemented by Sheltron giving back some MP when hit, but by doing that you also 'wasted' a defensive cooldown. Things were tight back then.

At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. Holy Shock cost 1440 MP. Riot Blade generated 600 MP and Shelltron generated 960. Under Sword Oath, each Holy Shock and auto-attack generated 5 Oath, together granting enough for almost 3 ~2.5 Shelltrons per minute. Passively, you generate 40% of max MP per minute. If you never used Shelltron, even just to "waste" it for the free MP from OT position, you needed to actively generate 3288 MP, alternating 5 and 6 Riot Blades per minute. If you didn't perpetually overcap your Oath Gauge, however, you needed only actively generate 1368 MP, barely over 2 Riot Blades per minute. The 4 Riot Blade value before was assuming you, for whatever reason, were only able/willing to use Shelltron once per minute.

Things were not particularly tight back then. If not overcapping your Oath Gauge in any fight with even just 3 raidwides per minute (or if you just... at least occasionally used actually tanked), you could refill your MP completely off 2.28 just Riot Blades per minute, which you did anyways just from maintaining Goring Blade.

However, irregardless of this all, it still felt bad for you to be actively punished because the DPS was playing well. It could have theoretically been a DPS gain for the party in some circumstances, however, it doesn't change the fact it felt bad to do and THIS is the core reasoning why the tank stances were bad, especially in SB.

I'm not sure why Tank Stances as they were would even play into this conversation. They're not at all mentioned in what you're quoting, and Ren, too, said that SB Tank Stances were bad. No one's been advocating for the thing you're now critiquing. He said only that the general "IDEA" of them "has merit" -- something clearly very different from pre-ShB Tank Stances.

Which then can only leave us with the High-Enmity Skills themselves... and nor do I know why you'd consider using Enmity skills --at least up until the portion one can no longer maintain their less frequently available effects (Storm's Eye, Goring Blade, etc.)-- as being "punished".

Like GCD heals, those high-Enmity weaponskills would only ever be used in the first place they were a net gain to be used, which then means that your "punishment" is just to have a higher cap on that more-efficient resource whose limitation is just that it has a cap to its usefulness. This would be like complaining that a fight has damage enough that it's finally worth it to GCD heal because it "punishes" the healer's own DPS (despite that the fight is tuned accordingly).

If so much of the role's gameplay is spent on the role-specific stuff that there's no room to, say, maintain DoTs or other added complicators, sure, that'd be an issue. But a tank or healer losing some direct damage of their own to generate greater net damage for the party... is neither a problem nor "punishment", I would think?

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. Holy Shock cost 1440 MP. Riot Blade generated 600 MP and Shelltron generated 960. Under Sword Oath, each Holy Shock and auto-attack generated 5 Oath, together granting enough for almost 3 Shelltrons per minute. Passively, you generate 40% of max MP per minute. This meant that, if not overcapping Oath Gauge. If you never used Shelltron, even just to "waste" it for the free MP from OT position, you needed to actively generate 3288 MP, alternating 5 and 6 Riot Blades per minute. If you didn't perpetually overcap your Oath Gauge, however, you needed only actively generate 1368 MP, barely over 2 Riot Blades per minute. The 4 Riot Blade value before was assuming you, for whatever reason, were only able/willing to use Shelltron once per minute.

Things were not tight back then. You could manage off 2.28 Riot Blades per minute, which you did anyways just from maintaining Goring Blade.

Holy Spirit generated 10 guage in Shield Oath, only Auto Attacks generated 5 guage in Sword Oath.

[Mikey_R]

At the time, 7080 was your maximum MP; MP wasn't standardized until Shadowbringers, after Enmity was basically removed from the game as a mechanic. ...

Yup, definitely misremembered, however, doing a bit of research, there are still some things you got wrong.

Natural MP regen is 141 per tick (I verified this with a video), over a minute, that is 2820 MP regened naturally, or just under 40%. No issues there. However, this means you need to build up 4260 MP in order to get back to max MP. With 7 Riot Blades at 600 MP each, that is 4200 MP restored, which technically leaves you with a 60 MP deficit. But that isn't quite true either, as PLD's rotation was closer to 63 seconds (26 GCDs in total with a GCD of ~ 2.45), which meant another MP tick, which does indeed build up enough MP for PLD's rotation....just about. MP from Sheltron shouldn't be considered as, if you are an OT, you cannot guarantee you can proc it.

Though, an interesting thing I did note, since it takes 1440 MP to cast Holy Spirit, you cast it 5 times for a total of 7200 MP, and your max was 7080 MP, it did mean you relied on the MP ticks to complete your Req phase.

So... I'm not sure why Tank Stances as they were would even play into this conversation. Ren, too, said that SB Tank Stances were bad. He said only that the general "IDEA" of them "has merit" -- something clearly very different from pre-ShB Tank Stances.

Which then can only leave us with the High-Enmity Skills themselves... and I'm not at all sure why you'd consider using Enmity skills, at least up until the portion one can no longer maintain their less frequently available effects (Storm's Eye, Goring Blade, etc.) as being "punished".

Like GCD heals, those high-Enmity weaponskills would only ever be used in the first place they were a net gain to be used, which then means that your "punishment" is just to have a higher cap on that more-efficient resource whose limitation is just that it has a cap to its usefulness. This would be like complaining that a fight has damage enough that it's finally worth it to GCD heal because it "punishes" the healer's own DPS (despite that the fight is tuned accordingly).

If so much of the role's gameplay is spent on the role-specific stuff that there's no room to, say, maintain DoTs or other added complicators, sure, that'd be an issue. But a tank or healer losing some direct damage of their own to generate greater net damage for the party... is neither a problem nor "punishment", I would think?

To be honest, I think I just see too many people mention tank stance, with the implication of the old ones I just jumped to an assumption, however, in regards to enmity skills, they would have to be exactly the same as your main rotation, just less damage and more enmity. That is just a button for the sake of being a button, especially when you have to press it just because a DPS happens to be better geared than you. Yes, it is a net gain for the party, but would it really feel good to use something that is weaker just because of an arbitrary value.

As for comparing it to a healer using a GCD heal, whilst it is similar, there is a very distinct difference. In the tank case, you use your enmity combo when the party is doing well. You get punished with weaker damage because everyone else is doing better, however, in the healer's case, the healer gets punished because of the mistake of the other player. This is also a sliding scale. You don't necessarily just straight to the GCD heal, you use other resources you might have at hand such as oGCDs to bring them back up. So, they are similar, yet opposing issues.

[Shurrikhan]

Again, I don't think discrete Enmity skills are a good idea. I'd much rather just have positioning and timing fill those functions, likely to greater available complexity. I'd remove Shirk as is and combine Provoke and current <Tank Stance>. I just don't think your particular critique earlier made sense.

As for PLD, I don't think it makes sense, either, to exclude significant resources just because they could require taking a physical hit. That'd be like saying Third Eye is never worth considering as a source of damage. Worse, if one is refusing to tank for more than a minute at a time, they and their cotank are actively wasting rDPS by leaving one's defensives to overcharge.

[Absurdity]

Though, an interesting thing I did note, since it takes 1440 MP to cast Holy Spirit, you cast it 5 times for a total of 7200 MP, and your max was 7080 MP, it did mean you relied on the MP ticks to complete your Req phase.

I'm not actually sure about that one because Divine Magic Mastery reduced the MP cost of your spells by 50%. Although I can't quite remember if that cost reduction was already applied to Holy Spirit's cost of 1440, but I also remember not needing MP ticks during Req when I played Paladin, provided I had full uptime.


*edit* Nevermind, the 1440 MP already include the 50% cost reduction, you were correct.

[Renathras]

Hey everyone! I appreciate all the discussion and feedback, It’s been interesting to hear everyone’s perspective on the matter. My observation so far is that most don’t want it back, some would be open to it as long as it’s not the same as StB, but majority would much rather focus on defending allies, boss positioning and the like. Anyway just wanted to chime with that observation and a little appreciation, please feel free to continue

I think this is a pretty good summary.

Many don't want enmity back at all, some want it back the way it was before, others want it back but not as it was before (they don't think the way it was before was really the best way the mechanic could be implemented);

...but pretty much everyone wants there to be more to do for Tanks. Most who don't want enmity want positioning and defending allies to be more important. But most who want enmity ALSO want this. So there's an overlap of the Venn Diagram circles there.

It's like 45/20/35 on no enmity/exact as before enmity/new version of enmity, but also 90/10 (so lots of overlap) want more to do defending, positioning, etc.

EDIT:

Again, I don't think discrete Enmity skills are a good idea.

The way I would think is most likely/functional if we WERE going to implement it would be to have either a side ability (e.g. Shield Lob already does this) or a branching combo, like Fast Blade -> Riot Blade -> Royal Authority (damage) OR Rage of Halone (agro). This way, it makes enmity relatively straightforward and doesn't require a huge change to the rotation. The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone. In effect, agro becomes an "upkeep buff". We already have this same system in the game for WAR with Storm's Path/Storm's Eye where they use the latter in an upkeep capacity. They could also do something like have Halone generate a small potency heal to be a rotational sustain tool (right now, PLD doesn't have one until level 84 when Holy Spirit starts healing them) if they wanted, but it's really not too complicated with a system like this.

Whether it would be engaging or not is an exercise for the reader, but there's no reason such a system HAS to be as clunky as SB's stance swap and separate rotation where the -2 and -3 steps were both different. All of the Tanks had branching combos at the -2 step (like SAM) and that ended with ShB. Even when PLD had Goring as a rotational DoT, they removed the -2 step to get there (I think there was a third one...maybe it was just for Halone?) to where it's also unified to Riot, just like WAR's "branching" combo is.

If only the third step branches, then it doesn't require a massive disruption to the rotation, you just swap the finisher if you need to pull ahead in the agro race. Or, again, spam Shield Lob, but that's less interesting. Still a backup, considering I think it generates more agro than Halone did while doing still less damage.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I don't miss enmity management at all. That said, I do miss having something else to occupy my brain while tanking. As bad as enmity was, it was still something to think of from time to time and they didn't add anything in its place. Slightly more focus on mitigation or something like that? Deeper rotations would always be nice.

[Shurrikhan]

The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone. In effect, agro becomes an "upkeep buff".

Can't say I see the appeal, if that's all its going to be? I wouldn't outright hate it, but it'd have no optimal timing, virtually no optimization beyond maintenance, no way to waste it so long as you minimize excess Enmity by the time it dies. And you wouldn't even have an AoE means of controlling aggro without it costing yet another button.

For context, here are some examples of fairly simple things (typically outright reverts) that would, imo, add more engagement than a return of the earlier enmity system (even if in far less bloated form)....

For now I'll stick to just Warrior for those examples, since these days it would usually seem the most oonga boonga of all tanks:

• Old Storm's Eye / Mythril Tempest / Surging Tempest (non-stacking).
• Old Overpower, so that one actually has to target and may even need to move a bit in AoE situations.
• Inner Release not adding excessive duration of Surging Tempest.
• Old Nascent Flash (%dmg-to-healing instead of flat healing per hit).
• Raw Intuition again only mitigating to the front.
• Having defensive options like Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone opposite Fell Cleave and Decimate, with low enough other sources of sustain relative to incoming damage that they'd be worth using at least occasionally.
• Upheaval and Onslaught consuming gauge.
• Old Inner Release (split from Berserk for separate mini and full burst windows, and maybe with gauge generation also doubled).
• A revision to Equilibrium imitating its old balance.
• Berserk incurring periods of downtime in which one cannot use GCDs for sustain, increasing its risk, but perhaps with Berserk being extendable (with proportionate downtime after).
• Gauge spenders generate stat resource (e.g., Crit and Speed or Tenacity and Leech, depending on type), which fades over time and generates increased effect via Determination and per the multipliers of Direct Hits and Crits. These are set up to offer synergy between each other.

That said, again, a reinvigorated Enmity system that offers far more gameplay opportunities, considerations, and nuances, and pushes us away from the "Whatever maximizes overall DPS (while scarcely even needing to think contextually)"? I'd be all for that. I just doubt it'd be, then, a system that'd vibe with the simplifications everywhere else, so it'd probably need a lot of less jarring stepping-stone/surrounding changes first.

[Mikey_R]

The smart Tank will look at their enmity list in the party to see if someone's at risk of overtaking them, and if so, they swap out the next Royal for a Halone.

Problem, the enmity gains you get, relative to the enmity meter, vary throughout a fight, which makes it difficult to judge when you can effectively just keep up the damage or you need to swap to the enmity combo.

To keep things simple, imagine enmity combo is 100 enmity and DPS combo is 50 enmity. Early on in a fight, if you have, say, 1000 enmity, your enmity combo is 10% of the enmity bar and your DPS combo is 5% of your enmity bar. Get later into the fight, where your enmity is closer to 10,000, that 100 enmity is now only 1% of your enmity bare with the DPS combo being 0.5%. This makes the margin for being able to know when you can enmity and when you can DPS much smaller to the point where you cannot effectively judge whether you can risk it, or you absolutely have to build more enmity.

A potential claim would be that it takes a skilful player to know what they can get away with. However, with the vast amount of variables coupled with the relative enmity issue, chances are you aren't choosing to use your enmity combo based on any rational thought process and more using it 'just to make sure', which, in my opinion, isn't a sign of skill. Skilful play would be being able to hover that line between keeping enmity and losing it based on the information you have, we just do not have the information to make that decision (and I believe there is no effective way to easily visualise that data to allow snap decision making).