Talent tree (spec) suggestion

[Carighan]

Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down

That did not work while "more damage = more good" remains true. There is no incentive to be outside of high-damage-mode, ever, it's a crutch because you, your gear, your group or the fight is bad and mean to you. As soon as you can, you go damage-mode-only. Because the boss being dead is the best mitigation possible. And at that point, you might as well just not have the second stance and all the smoke&mirrors making you believe having two stances and the emnity-dance from them matters, no?

... ah yeah, that's why it works the way it does nowadays. xD

[dspguy]

Unless tanks are top DPS, I don't see how they maintain hate without tank stance on, at least a little bit. So, they'd have to enmity dance.

[Connor]

I always loved the idea of skill trees or anything that gives the player some kind of agency with their character’s growth. Sadly I don’t imagine we’ll ever get anything even remotely close to that. SE literally doesn’t even trust us to meld our own materia - hence why every stat that’s not crit or direct hit is worthless. Because SE genuinely thinks we’re so stupid we wouldn’t be able to decide what to use if there were more than 2 options.

If we got a ‘skill tree’ it would just be a literal ladder upwards and not a tree, so it would be a complete waste of resources over just making us learn those skills normally through levelling.

Plus the community would ruin it anyway because it wouldn’t matter how perfectly they balanced the ‘tree’, people would parse the absolute fuck out of the skills to determine which is mathematically superior and you’d be forced to get them or get kicked which cannot happen in FFXIV (see: cross classing lol). This is why we can’t have nice things lol

[Mikey_R]

Instead of a talent tree, I'd rather see SE demand more "talent" by the player. Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down.

Tank stances didn't work as intended and were more of a punishment for tanks rather than a benefit. All I will say on Cleric stance is that as a less than average healer, I didn't enjoy Cleric Stance.

Take tank stance for a second. Enmity is a resource. A tank keeps hate whether they are 1 "unit" of enmity above #2 on the hate list or 1 million "units" above. This resource should have value. We should be able to turn off our ability to accrue hate at an absurd rate (and it IS absurd) and increase our damage instead.

You never said how you wanted to increase damage damage, so, how?

When it comes to enmity, it is possible to do tank swaps while one of the tanks has NO idea what they are doing. Let's say MT is clueless - MT takes the tankbuster with debuff... OT provokes. Takes the hit. OT Shirks. Hate is back on MT. MT does nothing.

Let's say OT is clueless. MT takes the tankbuster and the debuff. MT Shirks. OT takes the hit. MT Provokes. Hate is back on MT. OT had to do nothing.

For the vast majority of tank busters, once the cast starts, it isn't changing target. Plus, any content where a tank swap actually matters (Extreme and above), the tanks should know how to tank swap, making this a non issue.

And while they are at it, they shouldn't have changed accessories. HP is another resource. You are alive whether you have 1 HP or 200,000 HP. If you don't need 200,000, exchange some of that HP for more STR (and more damage). Change the damage formula again and let tanks use STR accessories and meld STR.

Then it just comes to finding the minimum VIT needed to survive and using enough accessories to hit that limit. This is basically how accuracy worked in the past, and that wasn't generally liked.

None of this will ever happen of course. The game is simplified in almost every way imaginable. But, a return to ARR tank stance and healer stance would demand higher skill by the playerbase.

No it wouldn't. Tank stances never achieved what people thought they did. It was always, tank stance > enmity combo, go to DPS stance and stay there for the rest of the fight. It would be the same now. There are so many other things I won't go into except 1. How would you accurately track how much enmity you have relative to everyone else so you can min/max as much as possible.

[Carighan]

Yeah this sounds to me like "game is too simplified" just is meant to mean "please re-add all the menial busywork that had 0 complexity or difficulty and was just a long, annoying, checklist to go through but it filled my evening and needed no thought"?

And even that we still have! Farm mats for buff food! Craft buff food! You can still do this menial work. We even still got gear-checkpoints like specific amonts of SKS or SPS. You can do it!

[dspguy]

You never said how you wanted to increase damage damage, so, how?

Tank stance up - damage down, enmity up.
Tank stance off, damage up. No enmity. Just like it was back in ARR.

For the vast majority of tank busters, once the cast starts, it isn't changing target. Plus, any content where a tank swap actually matters (Extreme and above), the tanks should know how to tank swap, making this a non issue.

That's the whole point. The way tanking is designed right now, the tank counterpart doesn't have to know anything. I've tested this on EX3 as noted in my previous post. So it's a double tankbuster with a debuff (pretty standard stuff). MT would get hit first, OT vokes during first tankbuster and then eats the second tankbuster. I can Voke/Shirk or Shirk/Voke without the other tank even having to do anything. Because managing enmity means nothing anymore.

Then it just comes to finding the minimum VIT needed to survive and using enough accessories to hit that limit. This is basically how accuracy worked in the past, and that wasn't generally liked.

Yes, it does come down to finding minimum VIT needed. At least there's something to think about. I was a fan of accuracy - gave us something to think about gear-wise instead of it simply being "highest iLvl with least Skill/Spell speed." How engaging...

No it wouldn't. Tank stances never achieved what people thought they did. It was always, tank stance > enmity combo, go to DPS stance and stay there for the rest of the fight. It would be the same now. There are so many other things I won't go into except 1. How would you accurately track how much enmity you have relative to everyone else so you can min/max as much as possible.

The built-in hate meter? Right now, it has zero value. MT is always full with an "A". Everyone else is empty with 2-8, with the caveat that if you have an OT they are likely almost full at #2. If anything, the hate meter has no value right now. No one needs it. It is one of the reasons some players utilize damage meters so they can see "how" far ahead they are, since it isn't like you can tell by using the enmity meter.

It's ok to disagree. Some players like things having flavor (stance dancing), some complication (gear selection) and some collaboration (tank swaps). In the current game, we have essentially none of that. I'm not saying everything they changed since ARR was bad. They did a lot right. But oversimplifying almost every aspect of the game takes much of the joy and satisfaction out of an achievement.

[dspguy]

Yeah this sounds to me like "game is too simplified" just is meant to mean "please re-add all the menial busywork that had 0 complexity or difficulty and was just a long, annoying, checklist to go through but it filled my evening and needed no thought"?

And even that we still have! Farm mats for buff food! Craft buff food! You can still do this menial work. We even still got gear-checkpoints like specific amonts of SKS or SPS. You can do it!

To each their own I suppose. While there was much wrong about how tanks played in ARR and HW (such as losing your WAR gauge when changing tank stance), it made for something to think about it.

As it stands now, you see the red circle for tank buster. You hit a button, you live. Before, you had to time (for example), when to switch to tank stance to either build up your gauge before the tank buster (if Infuriate isn't up), and to time that 10s CD to put Defiance back up, etc etc.

I know in the end we are just clacking away at our keyboards and spamming the mouse button (or controller buttons), so it is all menial work no matter how you look at it - but if actually having to "think" about your job was menial work, then clearly we should just play those "tap the screen" games that my kids play on their phones.

[Mikey_R]

That's the whole point. The way tanking is designed right now, the tank counterpart doesn't have to know anything. I've tested this on EX3 as noted in my previous post. So it's a double tankbuster with a debuff (pretty standard stuff). MT would get hit first, OT vokes during first tankbuster and then eats the second tankbuster. I can Voke/Shirk or Shirk/Voke without the other tank even having to do anything. Because managing enmity means nothing anymore.

But you won't get away with that every fight, which I did allude to. However, doesn't stop the fact it is literally a non-issue (not to mention it would work exactly the same if tank stances were involved).

Yes, it does come down to finding minimum VIT needed. At least there's something to think about. I was a fan of accuracy - gave us something to think about gear-wise instead of it simply being "highest iLvl with least Skill/Spell speed." How engaging...

Getting to a required minimum isn't much more 'engaging' either. It would just be a case of, put the stats into a calculator, and it spits out your BiS.

The built-in hate meter? Right now, it has zero value. MT is always full with an "A". Everyone else is empty with 2-8, with the caveat that if you have an OT they are likely almost full at #2. If anything, the hate meter has no value right now. No one needs it. It is one of the reasons some players utilize damage meters so they can see "how" far ahead they are, since it isn't like you can tell by using the enmity meter.

This next bit should have followed on if you had actually properly responded to what you quoted and that was the fact you wanted to use enmity as a resource (of which you responded with how tank stances worked in the past, which is irrelevant). The point here being, if you want to use enmity as a resource, which implies you want it to be expended in some way, you need to be able to accurately track how much you have. Not just that, how far ahead of second place you are. I was curious about how you would solve that problem, which would also highlight how much thought you put into the idea.

It's ok to disagree. Some players like things having flavor (stance dancing), some complication (gear selection) and some collaboration (tank swaps). In the current game, we have essentially none of that. I'm not saying everything they changed since ARR was bad. They did a lot right. But oversimplifying almost every aspect of the game takes much of the joy and satisfaction out of an achievement.

If 'flavour' is use tank stance to get an enmity lead, then swap to DPS stance for the rest of the fight, then that is a very low bar. Gear selection complication? Not really. Tank Swaps? Already done, though apparently not so much on DT so far. But, how many of these things are actually solved by tank stances? 1. The whole stance dance thing, which, again, wouldn't accomplish what you wanted. I have made many, many posts that are way too long going over all the details of the old stances and how they didn't accomplish what people wanted from them, and how they were a punishment for the tank, rather than a reward. If you want to make a similar system, you need to rework it into something better.

[Carighan]

I know in the end we are just clacking away at our keyboards and spamming the mouse button (or controller buttons), so it is all menial work no matter how you look at it - but if actually having to "think" about your job was menial work, then clearly we should just play those "tap the screen" games that my kids play on their phones.

Yeah it's a lot of personal perspective, to me the rigid nature of combat design in FFXIV reduces all these things to menial work. I'm not thinking when to swap stance or press a button. I don't need to see that red circle on myself. I know I do it 3 GCDs after ability XYZ dealt raid damage. Because that's how things align.

Of course, if fight design were entirely more random and fluid, we'd have significantly less balance and the playerbase would riot, but in that case I can see a lot of mechanics being reactionary in nature and hence requiring active attention.

Come to think of it, that's a good way of putting it anyways: Even mechanics designed to be reactionary (like pressing an invuln) have become proactive due to the way fight design has coelesced into a strict ordered checklist over the years, making complexity on the character's side automatically add 0 depth and hence be complexity just for complexity's sake. It could work, but not while the fight design precludes depth in character design.