Ditch the Tank Stances and fit enmity management into active gameplay

[Kowaeru]

Since the "Increased enmity" Additional Effect got introduced to the AoE combos of every tank job, it could also be used as a way to ditch the Stance system, since they are a passive component and oftentimes a hindrance (such as having to toggle it on when level-synced or stealing aggro from the Main Tank when your damage output is far greater as an Off Tank).
My suggestion is to introduce a combo finisher for every tank job that has the Combo Bonus: Increased enmity. It should not deal less damage than other finishers and should leave the player with the option of using Provoke as an alternative.
Another suggestion to complement this addition would be to make an AoE version of Provoke, it could even use the same animation as the PvP action Rampage.
To my understanding, the "increased enmity" passive on the AoE combos was a response to the discrepancy in initial damage output from some DPS jobs, which would generate more enmity than a tank with Tank Stance on while pulling in dungeons. This demonstrates a fundamental flaw in Tank Stance's purpose. An AoE version of Provoke would likely avoid problems like this, depending on how much enmity is coded into the ability.

Some nuances of the proposed Increased enmity combo finisher:
This finisher has more potency than other finishers.
For Paladin, it grants Atonement Ready, but not Divine Might.
For Warrior, Storm's Path "Combo Bonus: Restores own HP" gets moved to the Increased enmity combo finisher. Storm's Path still increases Beast Gauge by 20, Increased enmity combo finisher increases it by 10, like Storm's Eye.
For Dark Knight, Souleater's "Combo Bonus: Restores own HP" gets moved to the Increased enmity combo finisher. Souleater still increases Blood Gauge by 20, Increased enmity combo finisher increases it by 10.
For Gunbreaker, Brutal Shell's "Combo Bonus: Restores own HP" and Barrier gets moved to the Increased enmity combo finisher. It doesn't add a Cartridge to the Powder Gauge.

Considerations:
Since I cannot iterate on these proposals in gameplay, it comes to question whether this proposed idea would be considered fun. Ideally, it would add nuance and differentiate playstyles between Main Tank and Off Tank in content that require multiple tanks and add active gameplay input in dungeons where pulling mobs and maintaining aggro is essential to not let damage fall upon allies. The proposed combo finisher depriving the Tank from potential damage output can also be called into question, as it would be the key difference between Main Tank and Off Tank gameplay.

[Reginald_Cain]

Adding aggro to the aoe combo is fine but while i want tanks to have more combos I'm not a fan of enmity combos that slow down my gauge generation or healing. waiting till the thrid gcd in my combo to get that aggro gen sucks dude. if we do aggro combos then it should be its own full combo with huge aggro on each gcd and give full gauge+brutal shell type effects. Let me use the basic combo for off tanking.

The biggest issue is stances make tank swapping much more intuitive. without them you'd have to lower the cd of shirk to be closer to provoke.

Wanting to make aggro something to regularly manage again is fine but don't make the dps have to use shirk type abilities again. Stormblood dps could steal aggro really easy. Especially bard with foes requiem.

[Reginald_Cain]

Also aoe provoke once existed and it was called ultimatum.

[Supersnow845]

I don’t think anyone wants an agro system back where the person who controlled the agro was the NIN.

I think everyone would agree that if active agro management came back it should 100% be designed around only the tanks actually engaging with the system and its success being reliant on the tank, not whether the BRD pressed quelling strikes

[Valence]

This isn't to take shots at your post, because in essence I ultimately agree. Bring back enmity management, make it matter again. Perhaps make it more accessible with good visual UI too while we're at it.

- As pointed above, Ultimatum used to be a role action you could pick and acted as an AoE provoke.

- Current Provoke has been made braindead because it instantly adds +2k aggro potency after putting you at the top of the aggro table (+20k when used under tank stance due to the x10 multiplier). It used to have more synergy with stuff like Shirk for example for tank swaps, although Shirk didn't even exist before SB and tank swaps were already a thing, so Shirk was mostly QoL.

- The "increased enmity" on AoE combos is a remnant of the past when AoE combos for tanks didn't have a distinction between power potency combo and enmity combo like the single target variants: the ST variant enmity combos also used to have "increased enmity" to actually manage aggro outside of tank stance, but they got removed. The reason that "increased enmity" modifier existed was because tank stance wasn't an aggro stance primarily, even if it helped (x 1.7 aggro), but a defensive stance (+20% mitigation, now baked into Tank Mastery). They could remove it today and it wouldn't change anything, much like the ST filler combo is already affected by the modern tank stance anyway (x10 enmity). Same shit with the ranged attacks. Anything you hit as a tank will get a ludicrous aggro multiplier from the stance today so aggro management has essentially become a binary "did you hit something with tank stance on or not".

I too would love seeing a return to more organic aggro management, and I think the old system worked fine enough. Some things could always be made better, and I'm pretty neutral on whether or not the rest of the party should partake in it a little or not, the main issue was mostly that pressing an aggro button on cooldown was hardly enthralling, and giving to NIN such a meta tool like Shadewalker/Smokescreen and not to anybody else was also a recipe for meta disasters. I'd be actually fine with a lot of roles having access to it, if just rphys actually (because of its stated identity and because we're still looking for justification for the ranged tax).

[Kowaeru]

Wanting to make aggro something to regularly manage again is fine but don't make the dps have to use shirk type abilities again.

I think everyone would agree that if active agro management came back it should 100% be designed around only the tanks actually engaging with the system and its success being reliant on the tank, not whether the BRD pressed quelling strikes

I too would love seeing a return to more organic aggro management, and I think the old system worked fine enough.

I'm glad we are on the same page. I'm not an old player by a mile, started playing at the final patches of Shadowbringers (and haven't stopped ever since), so I'm not familiar with the old style of enmity management, my suggestions are based purely on the lack of friction I've felt ever since I started playing (I like playing tank in most if not all games that have this role).
The idea of DPS roles being involved in enmity management is alien to me and doesn't seem like a good time. In my opinion, Tanks should be about mitigation and enmity management, Healers about damage prevention and HP restoration, and DPS about rotation execution and careful positioning, even when the loop of damage dealing is an universal constant. Of course, it doesn't take into account the developers' intention, as it is what, in fact, dictates game design decisions.

[PyurBlue]

Enmity from attacks never made sense to me. Logically enmity attacks are not different from other attacks yet they make enemies focus on you for some reason and in gameplay they're not much different in use from regular attacks, although they at least require some player thought in choosing which attack to use. If an enmity system came back I think it should revolve around tanks disrupting enemy offense instead of being a second set of tank attacks. Some examples would include a tank building enmity by using Reprisal and stunning enemies out of attack with abilities like Low Blow or by shielding allies. This creates a more sensible reason for enemies to aggo on to the tank and also centers tank gameplay around something that is more unique than DPSing with different buttons.

[Valence]

The idea of DPS roles being involved in enmity management is alien to me and doesn't seem like a good time. In my opinion, Tanks should be about mitigation and enmity management, Healers about damage prevention and HP restoration, and DPS about rotation execution and careful positioning, even when the loop of damage dealing is an universal constant. Of course, it doesn't take into account the developers' intention, as it is what, in fact, dictates game design decisions.

In reality it wasn't that much of a problem, it just made things more organic in a way. If you had DPS players not pressing their aggro mitigation button on CD, the tank would just have to perform more aggro combos than normal, since the whole game for tanks was to balance between aggro combos and power combos, out of tank stance if possible. And then came Ninja that offered aggro management tools to support the tank and you essentially ended in raiding/optimized setups with tanks not needing to do a single aggro combo except at the start, which played into the job being too meta already, and kinda negated the purpose

[Reginald_Cain]

In reality it wasn't that much of a problem, it just made things more organic in a way. If you had DPS players not pressing their aggro mitigation button on CD, the tank would just have to perform more aggro combos than normal, since the whole game for tanks was to balance between aggro combos and power combos, out of tank stance if possible. And then came Ninja that offered aggro management tools to support the tank and you essentially ended in raiding/optimized setups with tanks not needing to do a single aggro combo except at the start, which played into the job being too meta already, and kinda negated the purpose

This why despite wanting more combos I don't want them strictly tied to enmity. If an entire combo is only used once a fight there's no point.

[Carighan]

For my end, mostly I'd want the tanks to have fundamentally different ways they generate their aggro.

That is, the x10 aggro modifier on the stances can stay, so long as it affects something different on each class. For example, Warrior should get a massive (x50 or so) boost to threat generated, but only on healing they cause, no matter on whom they do the healing. So all their self-healing is also how they do aggro, enraging the enemy with the fact that this unarmored 10 IQ doofus wearing just a loincloth won't die no matter how many planets they throw on their heads.

Meanwhile say Gunbreaker generates aggro every time they use Continuation, again no matter on what and maybe it's even a fixed amount that pulses in an AoE instead of based on the damage/effect of the specific continuation. Not sure what I'd do about Paladin and Dark Knight.

It's mostly flavor of course since over X minutes of fight it needs to be roughly the same threat total, but I'd love for the flavor and the profile of threat-generation to feel different between classes.