Dear Square Enix..Follow

Please, for the love of all that is good, don't mess up the enmity formula update.

Why must a job like paladin be a fallback job instead of an actual tank? Why does the job need amazing gear in order to stand out against actual damage dealers?

I would LOVE to be an awesome tank like that paladin in the anime Sword Art Online and block stuff like a PRO instead of watch as the bst with a fully merited axe weapon skill tanks by swapping enmity with his pet.

Also make enlight, the additional effect from excalibur or enspells in general add additional hate--or reduce hate for endark if there is a way for that.

The monks, ninja's, wars, or any DD that could stay alive long enough to be cure bombed and outdamage paladin have shone in the spotlight for way too long.

Heck--just add an ability that guarantees the mob is facing your general direction for 15 seconds, or keep the new 1hr ability as an enmity builder as was originally planned.

Other rants Please do the absolute inverse of what I just said for ranger.

Edited, Dec 29th 2012 2:50am by Thelastremainingintime

Needs a trait that allows it to surpass the CE cap imo, that way other jobs can't steal hate once it gets capped out...unless the PLD is taking lots of damage, or there are hate reset moves. I think the biggest problem PLD's face is that all the other jobs hit the CE cap too pretty easily and then it has no real way to tank other than relying on VE which isn't really great for holding hate over long periods, and is generally only decent for grabbing initial attention, or reasserting attention when a mob turns.

Edited, Dec 29th 2012 12:39pm by rdmcandie

I agree nerfing DD is not the solution, but this is a little bit exageratted no? NIN had a pretty good period of time where it was the top choice, RDM was there for a year or so, PLD only really became a mainstay after ToAU.

Nerfing DD doesn't fix the problem, all it does is reduce its likelihood of arising. The only way to really fix PLD is to give it the default ability of being the best at establishing Enmity, if this means more enmity per attack or breaking the current Cap it doesn't matter, but the enmity system is provably faulty and does require attention.

I don't think a straight up reduction is needed. Perhaps a sliding scale reduction based on the total HP of the monster. So on HNM fights where you'll be doing less damage even as a top tier DD, the amount of enmity generated is significantly lower. If you WS for 2,000 against an HNM that has 150,000 HP, there's no reason to get any more than a fraction of the enmity you normally would because the total damage you did as a percentage of the mob's HPs is so low. On the other hand, doing a WS for 5K on a mob with only 10K HP should still yank you to max CE, since you just basically chopped the mob in half :P

Really what other hate tools are there?

If you reduce the values of CE accrued through Damage and Healing that leave PLD with Sentinel Shield Bash and Flash (as well as a couple other spells) as CE generators. The issue is Melee DD are hitting the CE Cap, and PLD shares this Cap. In the old days PLD was able to stay above the DD because we had DD who pulled hate turn their backs. The problem has always persisted...the problem is that now it is happening in a few minutes, which is essentially negating the fact that PLD could spam cheap VE moves (flash/sentinel/shieldbash some other lesser ones) and keep the mobs focus long enough to hit the CE cap and then tank via VE and recapping CE from there.

With DD's hitting the CE cap faster PLD looks worse, but reducing the CE generation of heals and damage is detrimental to PLD being able to generate its own CE, essentially nothing changes and once CE is capped then it is essentially a PLD hoping that he doesn't get hit in order to keep hate. (which is why evasion tanking was so dominant)

PLD either needs to be able to generate much more enmity (CE and VE) in order to cap faster and continue to keep the hate, or it needs to be able to break the CE cap so it has the buffer there so it doesn't get smacked for a couple hundred and instantly lose hate to the DRK who is now the CE leader spamming its own VE heavy abilities alongside its considerable damage advantage.

Heck RDM back in the day was a better tank then a PLD in longer fights because it could cap CE very fast, and then hold mobs with a sufficient arsenal of VE stocked spells. But that no longer applies as these were all heavily nerfed in terms of hate tools...no CE is bad for the tanking business.

Reducing the VE generation of damage and healing though is a possible solution, as it would allow a PLD to resestablish hate at the CE cap using VE, but its easier to just let them break the current cap, and then their ability to tank becomes entirely their ability to negate damage, and replensih CE with VE acting as an attention grabber only if the mob lands a crit or something that pushes them under the cap.

Edited, Dec 29th 2012 6:48pm by rdmcandie

But you still encounter the issue with the CE Cap. Once this is reached the only hate tools that allow a PLD to generate a lead in hate are those which supply VE. However they do not account for the PLD taking consecutive hits which reduces the CE value. DD's who are not the target of attacks maintain their capped CE, and continue to generate VE as well, meaning the TE generated by the PLD is not sufficient to maintain the attention of the mob.

This is the problem we have always faced with PLD but instead of taking 7-8 minutes to notice deteriorated hate control, it happens in the first couple minutes of an engagement.

Alternatively you could use THF's to act as Enmity control specialist (old SATA tanking style) to help PLD keep their enmity values higher than the DD, but the very design of current endgame events restricts the available utility slots in a party, and the time limits imposed limit viability of "gimping" your DD in order to enhance tanking ability.

Long Story short the only way to really address the issue is reducing VE generated by Damage, Allowing PLD to break the current CE cap, or a combination of both (which would likely be the best route as even with a CE advantage PLD still has to deal with limited VE generation outside of damage and healing.)

It's too easy nowadays for any DD to cap CE and VE, resulting hate bouncing between them.

They should make an array of new PLD abilities that raise PLD's CE and VE cap temporarily. This way, they have to to juggle between these abilities to keep monster's attention on them. But still, they need all the requirement to keep thei CE and VE the highest in the group.

That is ultimately the problem. Damage generates so much hate that absolutely nothing in the game can possible overcome it. You can give PLD a JA that gives them 10,000 CE + 10,000 VE and put it on a 30s timer. They still won't be tanking for two reasons.

#1 Any DD can easily hit 20,000 TE within seconds.
#2 Once everyone is at the cap the target will be the last to do an action to the NM. DD's are wearing haste and receiving haste buffs, they will always be hitting faster then the PLD and thus always be on the top of the list.

Now to those who still haven't really grasped how hate works. Absolute values for CE/VE do not matter, they could be 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 or 100,000,000 (assuming such was possible). What matters is relative values. Nerfing the CE/VE produced from damage would not hurt anyone's tanking ability provided there was an equivalent nerf to cure hate as well. You would still generate the same relative hate as before, the only two differences being.

#1 Abilities that are primarily focused on hate generation become much more powerful as their hate generation is higher relative to damage. This is hinged upon SE altering them to provide a meaningful boost to CE.
#2 Hate reduction from damage stays the same or similar such that taking damage will actually reduce your hate by a meaningful amount.

Trying to give PLD a "higher hate cap" is gimmicky and won't actually fix the core hate mechanics. Why even bother bringing a PLD when a DD can hit the same hate and do 10x more damage. There needs to be a fundamental change in the nature of hate in FFXI, it needs to be centered on special purpose abilities rather then pure damage output. This issue isn't just FFXI, all MMO's run into the problem eventually where the DPS jobs are putting out so much damage that the system needs to be rigged in the tanks favor.

Two other changes I'd like to see for PLD would be having cover altered to force the NM to attack the PLD for it's duration and PLD being given a tool that lowers all entries (except the PLD) on the target monsters hate list.

Ohh and RDD, Shield Bash never was and never will be "hate tool", it has pitiful enmity values. PLD's only real hates tools are Flash and Sentinel, though they also get Provoke from /WAR. Self curing was only acceptable in very bad XP parties, on NM fights the healer will be keeping the PLD topped off to prevent high damage moves from killing them. For PLD's it's pretty much cycling Flash / Voke while trying to hit as fast / hard as possible and mitigating CE bleed via damage intake.

Problem is degree of scaling. Our damage output jumped 300% or more from 75 to 99, Ability hate would have to jump by an identical amount. In the future if some ability / gear was introduced that had a DD's damage go up by another 10~15%, the Ability hate would also have to be able to jump that much. Eventually you run into a situation where the scaling is uneven, hence my recommending to reduce the hate from damage.

FFXI's hate system was balanced around level 50, serious on that. Build a theoretical level 50 party and you can see that it's possible for the "tank" to maintain hate via current hate mechanics, DD's won't be dealing the damage needed to overcome hate tools. Step it to level 60, things got much harder but still possible. Step it towards level 70~75 where we're not "tanking" anymore on XP mobs due to the hate mechanics being what they are, we still "tank" on NM's by lowering our DD's damage output. Step to 99 and suddenly no amount of lowering will possibly make a fight "tankable". The balance between hate tools and DD output has grown so disproportionate that nothing short of a complete overhaul will make it feasible. We're talking a 1000% change needed towards hate tools / abilities compared to raw damage.



Well covers recast is such that there is no way to keep it up full time. 3 min recast with a 15s base duration, VIT can get you to 30s and merits to 50s. 50s out of 180 isn't going to make anything more tankable but it does serve as a ohh sh!t button, or as a strategic move which I'll explain. Give the PLD a JA that sheds all other hate off the target monster (reduces everyone but the PLD's hate) and use it in combination with Cover. It would be part of a planned rush tactic where the melee's pop their abilities and go nuts for the 50s that cover is up, then afterwards the PLD initiates the shedding and everyone backs down and the tank + spank continues.

This is more a result of the developers not keeping damage on a leash when they had the chance. I also don't think they balanced hate generation around gear swaps performed by everyone else in the party back when they originally put PLD together.

Ranking is out of the question given that XI's combat system doesn't support it. Scaling with level might work, but I fear someone would cry that it's too easy or something. Then we get to scaling with stats, which might work but would require the devs to redo the formulas for PLD's hate tools and add more if necessary.

On your suggestion, it could go hand-in-hand with something else, but I doubt it would fix anything on its own. If you did baseline hate reduction on all damage, maybe inherent bonus enmity generated by the tank, and proper scaling of hate tools, then you have something to work with. Of course, this all assumes the developers would keep damage in check and toy around with itemization to kill/de-emphasize swaps (because like it or not, you're not going to get balanced DPS with swaps still in the picture).

In another MMO I played (TOR), the tank job of that game (Jedi Guardian) had an ability called Taunt which allowed them to force themselves at the top of the hate list and stay there for 30 seconds with no decay. While this is a gimmick, I do believe some things like this should be added (jumping on the hate list, forcing others to the bottom), instead of relying solely on numbers.

Why should a class whose main function is to tank monsters have to have a special ability enabling them to do so? Adding another ability for the broken class to manage because its current arsenal is not adequate is not very good design.

Awww come on guys, SE's solution to PLD (and RDM) is Runefencer.

;)

Love the mechanics ideas.

Atonement is a waste, even if they had a burtang @99. Use CDC or KoTR (99 version) instead, it'll create more damage and that's the greatest current source of hate.
Provoke is 1 CE 1800 VE for example. A 1500 damage WS would be approx 1500 CE and ~4500 VE. That WS created more "hate" then all the other PLD's abilities together. Sentinel is interesting because it's +100% enmity generation, so that same Provoke is now 2 CE 3600 VE, that same WS is now 3000 CE 9000 VE. There is a trick amongst PLD's where they do Berserk -> Sentinel -> WS -> Voke -> Flash and ride Berserk out until Sentinel is finished (manually cancel berserk out). If they have a super shield then they could most likely just ride Berserk the entire time, the shield's doing all the defensive work. Anyhow the hate system itself needs reworking as right now it's pretty much impossible to "tank" unless your dealing large amounts of damage.

I've never been in favor of raising the enmity cap for one job because it might actually make tanking too easy. Let's say PLD gets their enmity cap doubled. You'd have to take roughly 11.11 times your max health in damage just for your CE to drop 10k from cap to reach other's cap. Let's say you raise PLD's enmity cap 10%; they still have to lose 55.5% of their HP instantly for the mob to look away from them, but they generate that amount with just ~650 damage.

Let's say you give PLD just a TWO PERCENT increase in enmity cap. They still have to take 11% of their health in damage, or about 200 damage, without generating any CE at all, and still only have to deal 130 damage (one hit?) to be back to their exclusive cap again.

So no. Raising PLD's enmity cap doesn't solve the problem, it just flips it completely around and PLD will be the only thing in the game able to tank. Great for PLD, bad for NIN, BST pets, DNC, evasive THF... you give PLD some silly treatment and leave every other plausible and effective tank out in the cold.

Enmity needs a hard rework. Period.

Edited, Jan 1st 2013 8:34pm by Raelix

SE has clearly recognized the problem as the PLD AF3 is about reducing enmity lost from damage. A job that is taking hits in order to generate enmity, is going to lose in any scenario without a buffer.

And this is not new, PLD has always had issue with the hate cap, in todays game it is just far more pronounced. Those other jobs you listed are not privy to the same discussion because they are entirely based around not taking damage (exception BST pet) which means not bleeding enmity every 3 seconds on average. It also allows these jobs to gear more offensively and produce larger numbers. Largely because of Utsusemi, and how brokenly awesome it is as a tanking tool (25 CE is nothing compared to what PLD loses).

It is why NIN was awesome, and its why it usurped PLD for many years, it wasn't until AOE spam came in that PLD regained its roll, and now the same problems are arising, yet in a much faster time frame, and in events where we can't ask DD to turn their backs, because we are no longer competeing with a mob in a game, but a time frame in which to do it.




Edited, Jan 2nd 2013 1:35am by rdmcandie

Edited, Jan 2nd 2013 1:35am by rdmcandie

Perhaps they should up the tanks damage?

Really? Guess I was that good then.

Ive played Ninja tank all my life but I absolutely agree with your post. Its time for tanks to be tanks again, specially PLD.

Eventually people would be willing and it would probably be fun.

But so far "having to be more tactical" as you ask for has been entirely defined as "change your job to something that can complete the content". Sometimes this was even done via Pet Linkshells or BLM Linkshells. Ironically, even during the often hailed dreaded "zerg" days of Abyssea, I never heard of a DD Linkshell.

Or you can just fix the enmity system so it isn't totally ruled by damage dealt instead of f*cking with six or seven different jobs.

It should rule enmity, but in FFXI right now it might as well be the only factor. Damage is the largest source of CE when really it should be mostly shifted to VE so DDs can actually shed hate by turning around.

Trying to arbitrarily assign roles to classes is the wrong way about it, because then you get surprised by things like NIN tanking. This is part of what ruined Fourth Edition D&D, really.

If SE moved all damage dealt/taken to VE and raised the VE cap, like doubled to 20k, but left healing and whatnot on CE, then you have capping CE by healing and other wankery as an option to put yourself ahead of at least half the group, then you only have to keep up about half as much damage as everybody else to stay high enough on VE to hold hate. That's the best concept for 'softening' the system without completely digging into it and dicking with every little thing that I've put together.

This also raises the 'instantly capped VE' damage value from to 5000 damage, a bit further out of reach of current WS, but puts the 'tick down' time around 2 minutes 45 seconds if the 120 per second decay isn't changed, so enmity from damage is still retained for some time. Meanwhile CE should slowly creep up for DDs, making it harder and harder for them to stay on the mob and gives actual use to enmity reduction abilities as a longer-term solution.

Simple solutions duder. Mine is a five minute change, yours is a five month snafu.

Edited, Jan 2nd 2013 5:28pm by Raelix

Changing damage to VE would actually work out well, though they'd have to remove the x3 CE modifier obviously, maybe on the order of 1DMG = 1VE.

The decay rate is 60 per second not 120. Provoke is 1 CE 1800 VE and at 60 per second it's hate is entirely gone in 30s. That's why it becomes useless for tanking at higher levels in favor of things like flash / stun or bind / blind spam (before nerfage).

They would have to change things like Provoke / Flash and other hate tools to generate large amounts of CE instead of VE, this would go in line of *tanks* tanking through CE while DD's would occasionally grab spike hate.

All values on a computer have a maximum number it can hold before it rolls over. An 8-bit value can hold a number as high as 255, add one more and it becomes 0. A common failure amongst programmers is the failure to check that a value is reasonable before attempting to use it. There must be a "cap" to enmity, whether it's 10,000 or 4,294,967,295 makes no difference. A higher cap actually cause's a bigger issue as enmity from damage outstrips everything else. A DD will hit 4,294,967,295 enmity a few hours (days?) faster then a "tank" will.

Edited, Jan 4th 2013 1:54pm by saevellakshmi

Technically, it doesn't have to have a cap assigned. It's piss poor programming but it doesn't technically *require* an officially assigned cap. As far as 10K it's simply arbitrary and more inline of keeping with their small values philosophy back when the game first launched.

I wonder if it would be possible to change the way -/+ enmity values worked. Currently they just affect the amount of hate you generate, but what if they could also affect that and/or the ability to affect the rate at which VE diminishes? Enmity- would increase the rate of degeneration and Enmity+ would slow it. Or it could actually do both. It could be on a linear fashion (which with decay would end up working better in regards to VE than scaling) and be something as simply as 1 Enmity is -/+ 1, 2, or 5 VE.

Granted, that's a bandaid fix and I've never seen -/+ hate values on gear to be anything more than a copout (despite being told I was an idiot for thinking so for almost a decade in regards to this game and that it had the best hate system of any MMO...), but it could be part of a long-term overhaul fix. The problem is pretty much anything decent beyond 75 cap has very little of anything regarding enmity.

As much as I hated the design shift and is part of the reason I left it, I'm beginning to wonder if the 800lb gorilla was thinking in terms of wasted development time when they made threat irrelevant, and just assigned tanks the role of staying alive and managing their cooldowns. I don't like it, but it certainly prevented issues of tanks being completely useless (like they are mostly now in FFXI) :\