Quote Originally Posted by Onisake View Post
Stat priorities in FFXI were FAR simpler. every DD class was STR/DEX/ATT that was it
False. The reason sushi was so popular was because you needed the accuracy percentage boost to reach hit cap. Prior to sushi accuracy on gear was and even now continues to be expensive. Your e-peen stacked STR for WS and Attack for white hits meant nothing if your accuracy was crap, especially so in the hopefully never-to-return days of overhunting where you needed those high values to beat out level correction.

so no. it was not pointless in FFXI. i wonder if we played the same game. when you say oyu want to remove stat budgets the way you're saying it, all I see is 'I'm lazy. dumb it down for me'
You do know this all was possible only through abusing gear swaps, right? Something that we can't and hopefully will never be able to do here. Attempting to accuse me of lazyness does little to add to the discussion.

they are different games. different mechanics. talking about them does not improve the level of discussion about enmity in FFXIV. I'm not getting into this. it is irrelevant. WoW and FFXI are fundamentally different than 14. do not bring them to this discussion.
As I said, one is the template, the other is SE's version of the template. I have issues with SE's version of the template when it plays in an inferior manner, and as such I wish it could be corrected in a way that the job's design and gameplay makes sense. Removing WoW from the conversation, I can list my problems with PLD.

1) Low base weapon damage (class-inherent): This would be fine, if both tank classes in this game were designed to do low damage. That's not the case, as we both know. If one was designed around big hits but infrequent hits, and the other was designed around more special attack/ability spam (netting both similar DPS in the process), you might be on to something. They've tried to compensate for this by allowing sword weapon skills to ignore mob defense, which only circumvents the problem instead of fixing it.

2) Lack of inherent enmity modifiers (applies to both tanks, actually): This gives way to the stupidity of +/- Enmity on gear and materia (which is a waste of stats in the greater picture). In case you forgot, SE even decided to buff enmity on materia to make it more appealing and look like less of a waste. Of course, things sadly went in the other direction and now the things' are pricey as hell. That part of the item budget could go into other things, too.

3) AoE damage/aggro (or lack thereof): The original reason why people pissed all over PLD, and the thing the current design is trying to allow in the form of "niche" gameplay. Instead of addressing this (notice how some of us want Circle Slash back and a shorter cooldown on War Drum?), they chose to up shield block chance and make sword WS ignore mob defense to create an excuse for people to not ignore PLD.

4) Poor job direction: Putting healing on a tank for survivability is one thing. Designing the tank to encourage them to heal others is asking for trouble. As you seem to ignore this over and over, I'll say it again - the tank has plenty to worry about, and should not have to bother looking at other people's lifebars, as their job is to hold mob aggro and not die, not do part of the healer's job.

And I very much doubt encounter and boss mechanics are going to stay exactly as they are right now. You're not going to have time to heal others if you're switching hate with another tank, avoiding environmentals hazards, jumping or doing other things to prevent debuffs from stacking, kiting walls of fire while trying to stay alive, avoiding poison geisers, chaining debuffs on the boss and much much more. At most you might get a chance to toss around heals during air phases, but even then that's tertiary utility. If my wanting more movement and more action in tank gameplay and encounters in general makes me lazy, then I am guilty as charged.

Damage=hate. if you do no damage, the multiplier does nothing.
Guess you forgot that baseline enmity modifiers in tank classes work in tandem with any built-in enmity bonuses abilities and attacks have and are not standalone. You can have abilities that do low damage but have high enmity modifiers on their own BEFORE factoring in aggro bonuses inherent to being a tank. It's legacy tank design from before the "tank DPS matters" idea caught on. Phalanx plays into this because it is smack in the middle, which is not a good place to be when you take into account that reactionary abilities should be worthwhile rather than just there until you complete Parley on High Ground (still LFG for that one, btw).

we don't need boosters to our current actions, we need more actions to do period.
If nothing else, you and I agree on this point.

Of course, I mention class-inherent enmity boosts in context of removing "+/- Enmity" from the game. If you entirely remove +/- Enmity gear and materia from the game, you need something to fill the gap. Where you want VIT and MND being enmity modifiers for everything, I say just give the classes a native enmity multiplier and build/balance each class' abilities around that. If only because I don't think enmity modifiers should be tampered with by stats.