Breaking the Tanking mechanics - once again

[Lyramion]

First thanks to http://kanican.livejournal.com/ for testing out all the stuff!


Today my WHM/NIN was easily pulling hate from our Aegis PLD and NIN/DRK at Tiamat. Sure you might think I just spam Curaga and Flash. That sorta works but doesnt draw enough hate alone - especially when your NIN/DRK has a Fire Setup and your tanks blink well on the ground.



So while we had 3 WHM around and I came WHM/NIN I went over the Enmity List ( http://kanican.livejournal.com/13848.html ). Slow Silence Para... not the most practial options. Going further down I found my Holy Grail - Barspells.

80 VE per person I hit. If I hit 5 people I get 400 VE. Elemental Barspells have litterally no cast time and next to no recast...and there are 6 of them. 4 quick casts for example make up for a Last Resort or Soul Eater activation.


So what I was doing was letting Barfire up while Tiamat was in the air - it would be just foolish to take hate over a NIN/DRK in full fire gear. On the ground Barfira is not that important so I started spamming away Flash combined with Barspells. It worked so well I even took a roar into my face towards the end - saving our NIN and PLDs hate


Long story short... almost everything can tank fine nowadays and most HMN fights are easy when your ally has a clue whats going on. The usual NIN and PLD...RDM/NIN...or more exotic things like DRK/NIN to just name a few. Now just WHM can do it, too - and not perform bad!

While I am sure you could tank Tiamat from 100-0% with just WHM/NIN tanks i see my role as a buffer between the Tanks and the rest of the ally. When one Tank gets roared you make your hate explode to help our the remaining tank.


If you want to tank you need to build up your CE first. Flash and Cure get the job done just fine but are slower than Dispel spam. When your CE is hanging around near the cap, Barspells will show their real fury in the VE sector.


The same is true for RDM or /RDM. When you got your CE near the cap with Dispel - spam Barspells for VE hate. Single target Barspells are 300 VE but only 6MP and thus a very efficient way to spam hate. I will try it on my NIN soon and I bet the usual Dispel spam combined with Barspells will just glue the hate to me and make PLDs cry.



Advantages:
- Unlimited Amounts of VE as long as MP lasts
- No waiting for recast timers
- Does not UP any resists of monsters as STUN or SLEEP do in certain fights

Backdraws:
- Slightly higher MP cost than Flash Stun Dispel
- Unpractical when you want/need to have a single type of Barspell up
- Spell Spam might lag people

[Lordwafik]

hot! nice info.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Backdraws:
- Slightly higher MP cost than Flash Stun Dispel

Anyone else catch that?

[Max™]

Nin/Rdm, Barfire, Baraero, Barwater, Dispel, Slow, Blind, etc...

Hmmm, pretty interesting.

[SeraphusRagnarok]

I kinda knew this for a while, I used to spam barspells for hate when PLing parties...

[Max™]

I kinda knew this for a while, I used to spam barspells for hate when PLing parties...

You notice it on Drg/Whm in a small party too.

Dia=You get a HB.

Barfira=You get whacked like you just voked it, and a HB.

[Lokim]

FM white mages: tanking better than our paladins since 2004.

[Max™]

FM white mages: tanking better than our paladins since 2004.

I think it was Lordender who told me that White Mage is the best DD in the game, because after Blood Weapon wears, it is the White Mage's MP that is getting converted into damage with Kclub spam, so White mages can equip Kraken Drk's for zerging.

[Tyche]

Lyra and Def tanking Vrtra lol. Why did we upgrade aegis again?

[Ohemgee]

ugh time to rebuy gear

[Lyramion]

Lyra and Def tanking Vrtra lol. Why did we upgrade aegis again?

So our BLM - trying to get a pic for their signature - have a harder time killing the PLD when he gets charmed.


P.S. I am even more excited for the WHM sleep now. My bet is it will have a good amount of enmity generated - this could open some sick enmity whoring.

[Stolin]

I've heard of a whm/nin tanking with barspells before, never seen it myself though. Surprised it never got popular after reading this. RDM/NIN is still probably better though.

[Kaeko]

I actually use a spreadsheet to keep track of everything outside of the LJ right now and I include a lot of more tank oriented, calculated stats. Some obviously ones would include things like CE per MP used. One of these is what I call "net VE gained". Basically since you lose VE at -60VE/sec, you have to incorperate the casting time into spells when considering how useful a spell is for VE. For instance, Stoneskin takes so long to cast, you actually lose VE casting it overall assuming you weren't at 0 VE.

Based on this stat, Barspell (and -ga version) as well as Blind are very potent. While the numbers are low, the recasts and MP efficiency are high. For instance, Blind and Absorb spells have the same CE/VE stats, but Absorb spells aren't viable tank spell rotation spells because of the casting time and MP cost.

From what I've seen so far on the numbers, a tank based on RDM or /RDM seems particularly viable due to just the high number of MP efficient, fast casting spells - in addition to the fast cast trait and MDB. Obviously a RDM/NIN is known to tank well, but something like NIN/RDM may trump it in certain situations - especially when it comes to enmity gear access.

This is only talking about "standing" fights though - you can get creative for things like kited fights. Remember that barspells are SELF-TARGETED, so you don't even need to be in range of the mob to get more hate. You can simply build VE casting on yourself. Would just need to know the "fringe distance" at which CE/VE can be added.

Glad people find the info useful, and I'm sure there will be more creative tanking/kiting ideas coming out soon.

[Churchill]

The only thing I have to say is, all the work being done on emnity is awesome but as well as I can tank (and pretty much anything at that) on NIN/DRK-WAR-RDM etc...people still choose PLD cause it takes less work from lazy backline

[Belkin]

NIN/RDM also gets Stoneskin NOMNOMNOM. But yeah, there are a lot of viable tanks out there, just people don't really choose to expand upon them because well, they never really looked at their job as a tank before. Just gotta get the right gear and maybe some experience in pressure situations. I'd still take a RDM/NIN or PLD/NIN in most situations because unless you suck, your mages (or melee) aren't getting a shred of hate anyway, "why deviate from something that works effectively" kinda thing.

[Kaeko]

Most of this really comes down to where the VE cap is, if it exists. I've already started to analyze how the main tanking styles in game have worked - PLD/WAR, NIN/WAR, NIN/DRK, PLD/NIN, and RDM/NIN. From what I can tell, there is a lot of room for improvement as far as VE is concerned, especially the way RDM/NIN is currently played.

If you just take a look gat the RDM/NIN hate cycle, it usually consists of a heavy dose of Sleeps and Dispels. Neither of these are efficient at keeping consistant VE. I think the typically RDM/NIN style right now doesn't even break the 3600VE/sec decay required to hold high amounts of VE consistantly - this means the tanking scheme is tanking based almost entirely off CE. Just changing the strategy from the normal rotation to a VE heavy rotation once the cap has reached (by say using blind and barspell), the effectiveness of this 1 style could be improved a lot.

Sure you don't see a lot of situations where capping VE and CE is important - usually CE is enough; however, for very heavy DDs, this could be useful. I think the concept of reaching "perfect hate" is interesting, and very possible now. By reaching the "cap" set by the game, not just player limitations, you can truly go all out on DDs without worrying about hate. I think its one of those things a lot of people don't realize will make a difference because of the way things are currently done. Theoredically, it may be possible for a "perfect tank" at capped enmity to keep hate off a KC DRK, relic SAM using 2hr, etc. I think it would take more research first (namely, we have to know how damage factors into enmity), but the concept itself is interesting.

[Genosync]

Gonna tank sometime on SAM/RDM or something because it'll be entertaining.

[Lyramion]

Gonna tank sometime on SAM/RDM or something because it'll be entertaining.

Too much EXP buffer?

[Delekii]

The problem with capping VE is that you can't concentrate solely on capping VE, if you get what I mean. You have to concentrate on cure and utsu as well to simply stay alive, as well as keeping your CE capped, all the which time VE is slipping. Poison is a great spell for slowly building VE, 300 VE or so and the recast is pretty much instant (meaning a gain of about 180VE per recast), but it's not really realistic to spam forever, and when you aren't your VE slips. As well, assuming getting hit knocks your VE off too, its like 2 steps forward 10 steps back every time you get hit..

BLU/NIN can do it well, but the problem with BLU, which we found today tanking JoL, is that it is INCREDIBLY MP expensive.

[Kaeko]

You have to look at another efficiency, which is how many actions it took to gain XXX amount of VE. When you look at this, things like Stun and Flash really shine because you gain so much VE for just 1 very fast action.

I think something like Barspell really shines when you don't have hate but need to catch up or try to even things out. Duo tanking is much easier when dealing with only VE differences since the decay rate will balance things out on its own - the player without hate simply has more time to cast VE gaining spells.

The problem with the current RDM/NIN tanking method, which is built on sleeps, dispels, and cures, is that most of these are high CE only. I think finding a balance can be complicated, but based on the #s, the currently RDM/NIN style can be improved with regards to VE. I think Blind is probably the best spell to work with, but Barspells are pretty useful as well.

The key is to break that -3600VE/min decay rate. If the tanking style cannot do this, then their TE will always be limited to 10000-13600. For a lot of endgame tanking situations, especially manaburned ones, this is fine. However, once you start using heavy melee DDs, which can produce tremendous spike damage, 13600 TE may not be sufficient to avoid turns on decked out melees going all out.

If you look back at tanking progression, the old PLD/WAR and NIN/WAR styles could not even max CE easily, which led to a lot of issues in longer fights, especially for BRDs and healers. The newer styles like RDM/NIN could cap CE, which allows for all support to be fully safe, but crazy DD spam could still overtake this; I think this is where we are right now and most seem content with this. The next step, however, would be a style that easily breaks the VE decay rate, allowing for even the best of DDs to do things in 100% safety.