Dev Tracker

[Churchill]

Ignoring the fact they would never hold hate, even with uncapped enmity

[Damane]

Ignoring the fact they would never hold hate, even with uncapped enmity

well uncapped enmity would help more then the current enmity cap, just due to the fact that /drg and /thf would have greater impact there. But then again, with all the hate reset moves that exist, it would be pointless.

[Churchill]

Just speaking Ninja in general, the mob would need to be weak enough for them to do enough damage to hold hate by themselves or you'd need to gimp everyone's damage output to win. Ochain/Aegis are much different now, if you had uncapped enmity they would do a much better job with the refresh that's available now by just spamming cure4/sentinel etc

[Lordender]

Think one of the major culprits with the tanking system is that it was never designed around the fact that DD's one day would eventually have ridiculous amounts of haste. You can constantly beat the shit out of stuff as a ninja and do large amounts of damage unless it has a hidden counter attack like Tiamat or crazy spikes like some mobs in abyssea had where you'd just drop dead crazy fast.

Thinking about back in the day mechanics, you had thf to plant hate onto say a drg who could shed the hate or plant it onto the tanks during a time where the pace of battle was slow, took time to set up things, haste gear was pretty limited at the time. This is why SE is so damn hesitant to put haste spells/gear into FFXIV, they probably realize it would fuck up the hate system there too.

[NeoForte]

It's also entirely possible the hate mechanics could change in the transition to 14 2.0.

[arus2001]

Haste is a weird thing. In FFXI it's almost needed because the game isn't very twitchy. Meanwhile, I can't say I like Haste's effects in something like, say, Aion. There it not only shortened the time between normal attacks, but hastened the animations of your various active abilities. However, it was also possible to practically be using an ability every second for a good string of time. To that end, I'd say Haste is less needed in games like that. Were XI more ability-based, I'd probably think similarly. Come to think of it, I think Rift has avoided the Haste stat outside of, I think, a timed ability from Chloromancer, but I could be wrong since I haven't leveled a mage there, myself.

[Churchill]

Think one of the major culprits with the tanking system is that it was never designed around the fact that DD's one day would eventually have ridiculous amounts of haste. You can constantly beat the shit out of stuff as a ninja and do large amounts of damage unless it has a hidden counter attack like Tiamat or crazy spikes like some mobs in abyssea had where you'd just drop dead crazy fast.

Thinking about back in the day mechanics, you had thf to plant hate onto say a drg who could shed the hate or plant it onto the tanks during a time where the pace of battle was slow, took time to set up things, haste gear was pretty limited at the time. This is why SE is so damn hesitant to put haste spells/gear into FFXIV, they probably realize it would fuck up the hate system there too.

14 could sustain haste as a spell, but not with timers limiting combo cooldowns.

[Prothescar]

Could be AOE cover but could also simply be a move that heavily reduces damage taken for all PT members. I was going for concept rather than all out idea. Namely, you have a class that offers relatively little melee advantage but allows your PT to survive AOE moves. Throw in a rage timer to avoid Tank + healer onry, high damage AOEs, anti-zerg moves (Immune to stun/AOE terror), and other goodies to make the fight interesting.

Didn't they mention that Rune Knight will be able to put Magic Barriers on party members?

[Taruking]

Could be AOE cover but could also simply be a move that heavily reduces damage taken for all PT members. I was going for concept rather than all out idea. Namely, you have a class that offers relatively little melee advantage but allows your PT to survive AOE moves. Throw in a rage timer to avoid Tank + healer onry, high damage AOEs, anti-zerg moves (Immune to stun/AOE terror), and other goodies to make the fight interesting.

Technically speaking a job that does that can only be described as a support job, and we already have a close winner i.e. SMN with PD, earthen ward etc.

The main role of a tank job is to soak up damage and keep mobs from killing healers. Any heavy DD tank with a decent HP pool will be able to fill that role just fine. Unless SE nerf DD hate/ make mobs hit harder, PLD and NIN tank will always be ignored.

[Prothescar]

Something that functions like Guild Wars 2's Guardian would be ideal.

[Raen Ryong]

Haste is a weird thing. In FFXI it's almost needed because the game isn't very twitchy. Meanwhile, I can't say I like Haste's effects in something like, say, Aion. There it not only shortened the time between normal attacks, but hastened the animations of your various active abilities. However, it was also possible to practically be using an ability every second for a good string of time. To that end, I'd say Haste is less needed in games like that. Were XI more ability-based, I'd probably think similarly. Come to think of it, I think Rift has avoided the Haste stat outside of, I think, a timed ability from Chloromancer, but I could be wrong since I haven't leveled a mage there, myself.

Rift doesn't have a Haste stat as such, but the rate at which you can attack is limited by your GCD (Global CoolDown) and your energy/power (on Rogues/Warriors) and mana (on Clerics/Mages). Rogues have a 1s GCD and the rest have a 1.5s GCD (although Mage Pyromancer has a trait which reduces it to 1s and is generally considered an obscene boost to DPS/HPS since it's basically like adding 33% Haste in FFXI). You are probably thinking of Living Energy on Chloromancer (like Anthem of Fervor on Bard) which reduces Energy/Power/Mana costs by 10% (12% in Fervor's case when fully trained) which is like adding Haste to the melees at the very least since it reduces downtime due to Energy/Power issues.

On topic of the tanks, there are two approaches. FFXI/FFXIV has favoured the approach where the tank is like a DD with extra defensive abilities. This means that with enough support, DDs can tank content fairly productively (and often better than the dedicated tank jobs). The model employed by other MMOs is having your tanks be leagues more durable than your DPS/heals/etc and therefore ensuring they are the only option to tank. The former has more flexibility but often leads to dedicated tanks being obsolete; the latter requires a tank in every major battle which can be an irritation sometimes since less people tend to play tanks than other roles, but it means that as a tank you will always be extremely valued. I prefer the latter personally.

[nekura]

Would Archon's Burning Purpose count as a Haste-like increase? :b I also would not be surprised to see a Haste stat come to Rift eventually.

[arus2001]

Well, main point was hinted through the GCDs and such. Games like Aion and Rift and have plenty of abilities to mess around with, often with sub-30s recast timers. Even if Haste is present in some form, it usually doesn't affect these timers. While Haste doesn't affect XI's JAs, the game sort of has the problem where jobs are actually JA bare + long/prohibitive timers leaving the TP phase as the only major part of the interactive process in just keeping your eyes on your TP to WS. FFXI without Haste would be a pretty fucking boring game, but I'm also inclined to say that perhaps SE took it too far even after adding the cap while letting other attributes not hold as much weight to compensate for a potentially lower cap. Oh well, unlikely to change this far into the game's life.

[Yugl]

Technically speaking a job that does that can only be described as a support job, and we already have a close winner i.e. SMN with PD, earthen ward etc.

The main role of a tank job is to soak up damage and keep mobs from killing healers. Any heavy DD tank with a decent HP pool will be able to fill that role just fine. Unless SE nerf DD hate/ make mobs hit harder, PLD and NIN tank will always be ignored.

The three issues you have seem to be 1) this new idea would stomp on the role of support classes, 2) content is not designed to make PLD tank, and 3) the role of a tank is to soak damage and keep mobs from killing healers.

Most support classes offer superior offensive buffs. The exception to this rule, as you mentioned, is SMN. The solution: Make SMN a tank class. Next, I agree that current content is not designed in favor of tank classes, which is why I mentioned including batshit crazy NMs with later content. There is no feasible way to include tanks within current content because we already fight most NMs without tanks.

As for the "role" of tanks, I'm proposing a change with their function due to enmity limitations. Namely, instead of making them a class that "soaks" damage, simply have them mitigate damage. The idea is that the reason you include a tank is to reduce an enemy's damage output. Traditionally, reducing an enemy's output requires the enemy to focus on the tank. That is an impossibility with the current enmity system. Fixing the enmity system requires SE to focus their attention on this specific issue and only this issue. However, if we deviate from traditional thought and simply focus on mitigating damage, we can find ways to make tanks effective without requiring that they have enmity. Doing so will require a new tier of NMs with high AOE damage capacity and adjustments/additions to tanks that will enable them to mitigate damage taken regardless of who has hate. Unlike a change to the enmity system, however, doing so works hand-in-hand with what SE will inevitably need to do. SE will inevitably need to add abilities and changes to classes (This includes tanks). SE will inevitably need to add new NMs. Thus, they do not deviate from normal activity and fix tanks simultaneously.

[Chamaan]

What, like auras? So then it'd be a... melee-range supporting-tank class? Something that focuses less on trying to hold hate and instead just reduces everyone's dt% just by being there? That'd actually be pretty cool.

[Yugl]

Could be AOE or even single target, but ya, that's pretty much what I have in mind.

[Taruking]

The three issues you have seem to be 1) this new idea would stomp on the role of support classes, 2) content is not designed to make PLD tank, and 3) the role of a tank is to soak damage and keep mobs from killing healers.

Most support classes offer superior offensive buffs. The exception to this rule, as you mentioned, is SMN. The solution: Make SMN a tank class. Next, I agree that current content is not designed in favor of tank classes, which is why I mentioned including batshit crazy NMs with later content. There is no feasible way to include tanks within current content because we already fight most NMs without tanks.

By definition, tank must be able to draw mob's attention and mitigate damage (somehow). A SMN can never be a tank job because it's supposed to excel in hate-free actions. Don't forget SMN do have some offensive buffs too (including hastega). RDM on the other hand, has no real offensive buffs beside haste (and Dia III but SMNs have access to debuff BP too).

Enmity was never the issue. Dedicated tank jobs are made osollete because DD jobs are able to generate large amount of enmity without getting themselves killed (healers have access to bottomless MP pool). Giving PLD/NIN/rune knight powerful aoe buffs will only turn those job into support class, because DDs will still be tanking the mob.

[Lordender]

By definition, tank must be able to draw mob's attention and mitigate damage (somehow). A SMN can never be a tank job because it's supposed to excel in hate-free actions. Don't forget SMN do have some offensive buffs too (including hastega). RDM on the other hand, has no real offensive buffs beside haste (and Dia III but SMNs have access to debuff BP too).

Enmity was never the issue. Dedicated tank jobs are made osollete because DD jobs are able to generate large amount of enmity without getting themselves killed (healers have access to bottomless MP pool). Giving PLD/NIN/rune knight powerful aoe buffs will only turn those job into support class, because DDs will still be tanking the mob.

I think thats just why the tanking is so fail in this game. You get hit, you lose enmity, DD's have tons of haste gear at their disposal now that they didn't back in the day and are hitting the crap out of the mobs, its a domino effect, melee DD's gain tp so fast and pop off WS's so much faster than what a PLD can keep up with.

When the game was sorta new, this is why the enmity worked "fine"

You had a thf controlling enmity, back when THF was *more than just TH* at events.
Pace of battle was slow.
Merits didn't exist, players weren't nearly as powerful.

Now the gear as improved so much, people are merited out the ass, enmity system has stayed the same = problem.
The pace of battle simply got so much faster than what the system can handle. The game went away from hate control by abilities being primary to holding hate by doing extreme damage which any DD can do these days.


The Enmity system was never adjusted to fit faster paced combat, it was built for everything to slowly happen, thats not how the game has been played for years though.

[Genosync]

I think thats just why the tanking is so fail in this game. You get hit, you lose enmity, DD's have tons of haste gear at their disposal now that they didn't back in the day and are hitting the crap out of the mobs, its a domino effect, melee DD's gain tp so fast and pop off WS's so much faster than what a PLD can keep up with.

When the game was sorta new, this is why the enmity worked "fine"

You had a thf controlling enmity, back when THF was *more than just TH* at events.
Pace of battle was slow.
Merits didn't exist, players weren't nearly as powerful.

Now the gear as improved so much, people are merited out the ass, enmity system has stayed the same = problem.
The pace of battle simply got so much faster than what the system can handle. The game went away from hate control by abilities being primary to holding hate by doing extreme damage which any DD can do these days.


The Enmity system was never adjusted to fit faster paced combat, it was built for everything to slowly happen, thats not how the game has been played for years though.

This, a million damn times over. Enmity worked for a very long time--2305023 mp/tick Refreshes and super strong DD killed it.

Only way I can imagine it getting fixed to fit the current game structure is a combination of single target direct damage, along with a system where specific actions (for every job) increase hate over the maximum value. That way the tank (or tanks) has to continue to do said specific actions and not get interrupted/etc and everyone else has to judge and balance their enmity at the same time.

So let's take CE and VE both at 10000.....



wait

why am I even thinking about this?

Just increase direct damage auto attacks done by mobs to insanely high numbers for non-heavy defensive sets, and uncap VE and maybe CE too. PLDs can go back to tanking and be useful again, RDMs will still cry but at least it would fix something

[NynJa]

Just increase direct damage auto attacks done by mobs to insanely high numbers for non-heavy defensive sets,

So fix the attack/def formula?