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Tanks need plenty more to control than just threat
Tilley53
Member
I would say I enjoy holding threat to a certain degree.
Why do I say this? I don't mind grabbing threat and keeping threat up but I don't want me entire gameplay to be based around threat. I would like for the tank to have the option for more group oriented stuff. I would love to see tanks being able to give shields to party members. Or if they can place a shield in a certain area that last for 3-4 seconds, and everyone who walks into it will be protected from damage or gain damage mitigation. Even a tank swap ability would be a cool mechanic. If an ally has threat of a mob/boss, the tank can swap places with the ally and gain threat by trading spots. This allows tanks to protect allies and still maintain control.
I'd like for tanks to have more than just threat generation. I think a good reference would be something like the anime "rising of the shield hero." Who was a tank but had a lot of ways of protecting allies in the anime.
I think it would be more interactive to have threat mechanics throughout combat rather than just at the start of battle
Why do I say this? I don't mind grabbing threat and keeping threat up but I don't want me entire gameplay to be based around threat. I would like for the tank to have the option for more group oriented stuff. I would love to see tanks being able to give shields to party members. Or if they can place a shield in a certain area that last for 3-4 seconds, and everyone who walks into it will be protected from damage or gain damage mitigation. Even a tank swap ability would be a cool mechanic. If an ally has threat of a mob/boss, the tank can swap places with the ally and gain threat by trading spots. This allows tanks to protect allies and still maintain control.
I'd like for tanks to have more than just threat generation. I think a good reference would be something like the anime "rising of the shield hero." Who was a tank but had a lot of ways of protecting allies in the anime.
I think it would be more interactive to have threat mechanics throughout combat rather than just at the start of battle
3
Comments
Oh! Taunt-based abilities could have a diminishing return, with weaker and weaker effects proportional to mob's HP. So this would provide natural danger to the party the lower the mob goes, even w/o giving the mob an "enrage" mechanic. And then the tank could regain their agro by protecting others with particular abilities.
This is fine, but still flawed, the abuses are not all powerful, but they are numerous and relatively easy.
This is one of the ways that weird implementation of Provoke actually achieved a meaningful goal effect the proper way.
If only the FF11 Devs had told anyone that was how it worked instead of letting the community argue about it (and therefore Tank balance) for multiple years...
I remember you saying that FF11's classes could tank just through a proper build and party play. Did the tank classes had any way to bring back their aggro in a non-taunt way? Or was that the exact issue and the reason for poorly perceived balancing?
The main reason is that FF11 only has one true taunt.
Without getting too deep into that system, the short version is that there are two components to the Threat/Hate Meter, one that decays fast over time and the other that only drops when the target takes damage or an ability is used.
Provoke only raises the first, (bears repeating if I said it before). It boosts it to max the moment after use, and it falls off by the time you can use it again. It's a true Taunt, it is for 'getting a mob's attention' but without you doing something else to that mob, it will not hold it, it will wander off toward anyone who so much as breathed on it, within 30 seconds, in an 80s TTK vs harder mob game.
But the result in terms of what you are saying was:
Players would build up a lot of the non-decaying type, only the Tank is getting hit, after all. Eventually, the ratio of 'amount of hate others have' vs 'amount of hate Provoke generates' would get smaller and smaller. So a 'Tank that just stands there and Provokes every time they can' will eventually become unable to turn the enemy using it, but if they use the rest of their kit (generating the main enmity type) then simply having more HP and mitigation would help them keep up with the mob.
You'd just time your 'main enmity' spikes to be 'when Provoke was wearing off' depending on the mob and whether you wanted to let someone else take a hit or not.
As for your other minor question, the concept of a 'Tank Class' in FFXI is a little complicated for that reason. Generally, of the three 'easily viable', one of them keeps hitting very fast and takes very little damage if done right (or everyone takes damage at once and they stay on par), one of them can heal self and blocks with shield, and the last is able to debuff the enemy and do tremendous damage under the right conditions if the enemy has nothing like massive "Evasion Up" or 'debuff current target strongly'. Or, if the team was quickly ready to remove such a buff or debuff, and the player was aware enough to time their abilities to those windows.
Tanking is a mechanical flow to us, not a 'class', I only bring up all this because you as usual mention something that solves a problem in a way I'm already familiar with.
EDIT: The balance issue (there was no issue, people just thought there was) was that a lot of people misunderstood Provoke and therefore were upset when it would eventually stop working, but because they would generally only test on their own build, you had one large group that thought it worked perfectly, and another that thought it was broken and useless.
And then the tank would have to use several protective abilities to regain the aggro for the final %s of HP.
FF11 let you use other abilities in the mean time, while I want those abilities to only keep the taunt, while the protective abilities would generate general threat at a properly balanced rate. Ideally the mob would also randomize their aggro between the other partymates rather than just hitting the next one on the list, cause, as you said, this would be easily exploited.
Yes, that is what I'm familiar with.
The final 20% of a boss in FFXI if our Paladin is tanking is a dance of 'making sure to have the Thief drop hate onto them whenever possible', 'having other classes shed hate however they can', 'increasing the Tank's damage and preparing for others to take a few hits if they are tough enough to do so', and 'the squishies getting behind the Paladin on non-cleaving enemies so that he can use Cover and take the damage directed at them outright'.
Other options are the usual. Shield Bash to CC things that you don't want to 'allow to hit', Flat Blade as a TP option for the same, Flash spell for situations where the enemy buffs their attack or is about to do a big Accuracy dependent physical one, Sentinel to protect self right after Provoke or Flash to keep going.
It's... sort of like a ' built in phase change' as you noted, though it can be more gradual, and Tank-skill dependent. But FFXI usually has 'offtanks' too, DPS with shorter-duration defensive abilities, or who boost the Tank's ability to generate threat.
You can probably see why I had such a rose-tinted perception of what Ashes was going to be like.
But overall then we pretty much agree on a better design for tanks rather than a super simple tank and spank. Whichever form that takes is a whole different discussion and probably one for a later date (if it even happens in Ashes at all).