Stance mastery now MANDATORY?

[SilentTrouble]

<p>So I did some testing on well the test server <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /> and this is what I have noticed</p><p>I do like some of the changes as far as guardians are concerned but off stance has a huge drawback. I dont like that you cant tank easier content in offensive stance. I could really get past this as usually its not an issue.</p><p>The biggest problem I have is I duo some solo quests and writs with a RL friend as a way to "hang out" since I moved away. These are solo mobs and hes a squishy mage, and Kunark is proving to be pretty harmful to his health if he takes agro. So I currently tank them in offensive, but as it looks the changes will make him instantly take agro and get dead real fast putting a stop to that.</p><p>Most of the arguements  for the off stance is for raid or solo content where you need not worry about agro. However that is just not entirely true if your doing solo content with perhaps one other person. Which leaves you with a change just for the raiders. And changes for one type of player is never a good idea, lets tweek it abit.</p><p>Perhaps remove the inverse hate idea and just leave a decreased hate gain and make it a tiny bit more severe say 15% give or take. And instead of consolidating everything lets make a new skill that inverses your hate gain as an option. I cant see this killing balance as its complementary to offensive stance for raiders and fighters that want to dps but the more severe penalty will mean its not going to just hand over all agro so they can do whatever they want.</p><p><span style="color: #ff6600;">[LASTLY the Warrior AA line with end abily "STANCE MASTERY" says it removes all penalties from stances... is this going to be the EVERYONE MUST HAVE ability? Is that intended to change on test? If its going to change it has some problems associated with it which I did /feedback for perhaps could be discussed further in here as well] </span></p><p>This is what I send /feedback</p><p><em>The "Stance Mastery" last ability of the warrior wis line is not fully functioning with the changes. When looking at the DEF stance Armored the pentaly of melee damage multiplier is not being undone. The skill decreases are working as they are intended but the melee penalty is still there. Where as with the offensive line the hate gain and threat gain affects of it are more considered a benefit rather than a penalty so I would say its working properly. Is this working as intended?</em></p>

[Noaani]

<p>Unfortunaly Stance Mastery does not remove all penalties of stances, and probably needs to be either reworded or replaced (I vote for the latter).</p><p>As to your specific situation with your mage friend, switch to def stance. You will deal less damage, but your amge friend is able to do enough for both of you if he is not getting hit. In def stance you should be able to hold aggro off him without issue.</p>

[katalmach]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Unfortunaly Stance Mastery does not remove all penalties of stances, and probably needs to be either reworded or replaced (I vote for the latter).</p><p>As to your specific situation with your mage friend, switch to def stance. You will deal less damage, but your amge friend is able to do enough for both of you if he is not getting hit. In def stance you should be able to hold aggro off him without issue.</p></blockquote><p>Going into defensive stance for easy duo content is not an answer - at least not a satisfactory one. Let's imagine that me and my duo partner (healer, fighter) encounter an even con ^ mob. This mob is going to die. There is literally no chance that this mob will beat us - the only difference is how fast it's going to die. Currently, my tank can go into offensive mode and we will beat the mob in a quick, intense and high-paced fight (fun). With these changes to offensive stance, my tank is going to be *forced* into defensive mode (if he is going to hold aggro and if he wants any buffs at all - which of course he does), *forcing* us to spend twice the amount of boring, slow time killing a mob that IS GOING TO DIE.</p><p>Making certain setups, whether it be AA or stances , be mandatory in certain situations is absolutely  wrong. In my opinion, it's stifling the game, and  for my duos, making a game that they have been fu nctional in for four years, unplayable.</p>

[Glerin]

<p>go stanceless.</p>

[JinjAB]

<p><cite>SilentTrouble wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Most of the arguements  for the off stance is for raid or solo content where you need not worry about agro. However that is just not entirely true if your doing solo content with perhaps one other person. Which leaves you with a change just for the raiders. And changes for one type of player is never a good idea, lets tweek it abit.</p><p>Perhaps remove the inverse hate idea and just leave a decreased hate gain and make it a tiny bit more severe say 15% give or take. And instead of consolidating everything lets make a new skill that inverses your hate gain as an option. I cant see this killing balance as its complementary to offensive stance for raiders and fighters that want to dps but the more severe penalty will mean its not going to just hand over all agro so they can do whatever they want.</p></blockquote><p>Overall I like the stances in the full group/raid situations. However I agree with the OP as to the siphoning out of "fun" in the solo/small group scenarios. Solo I am going to take more damage = longer downtime between fights = less fun. Small group = defensive to hold agro = longer fights = less fun.</p><p>The idea of removing the inverse hate has merits.. for OT'ing and for a chance at generating sufficient agro on easy mobs.</p>

[Pins]

<p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>go stanceless.</p></blockquote><p>The problem with going stanceless is with spell consolidation and how you actually lose buffs by doing so.  Buffs that you had in the past.</p>

[SilentTrouble]

<p>the day after i post this devs make changes to AA lines and such lets go see what they are... im dling the content now</p>

[Maroger]

<p>I thought when they merged the buffs into the stances that we were to get the highest level of the spell. -- i.e. if our Buffs were Master I and the stances only Adept III, then the stances would be set at Master I.</p>

[SilentTrouble]

<p>That is the case but its based on tier</p><p>so if you have the tier 6 buff your T6 stance will be master not your higher ones or lower ones</p><p>this is confirmed as I have teh master T8 stances that i dont have on live</p>

[Wolphin]

<p><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I thought when they merged the buffs into the stances that we were to get the highest level of the spell. -- i.e. if our Buffs were Master I and the stances only Adept III, then the stances would be set at Master I.</p></blockquote><p>this is being discussed in another topic.. maybe you meant to post it there, cause it has absolutely nothing at all to do with this topic....</p>

[Elanjar]

<p>The Stance Mastery, as is, will be even more useless come release. Currently the line is worthless but the end ability is decent. Afterwards no.</p><p>All it removes are the -s/c/p from defensive, and the -def/parry from offenisve. It DOES NOT remove the 0.5 damage reducer, or the 10% reduced hate gain/taunts are detaunts. I consider both of those huge negative effects...</p>

[SilentTrouble]

<p>Well that was my point about stance mastery... it should also remove the .5 damage reducer.</p><p>however teh 10% reduced hate gain in offensive can be considered a benefit rather than a penalty as defined by the AA ability.</p>

[Elanjar]

<p>I'd prefer it remove the hate gain / taunt issue that the .5 damage thing.</p>

[cr0wangel]

<p><span >What they will do with the WIS AA line? I am using that line and VERY disappointed to see that the ability doesn't remove the penalty. </span></p>

[SilentTrouble]

<p>elanjar that circumvents their entire theory behind why they are doing this... my proposal was to keep their desires for what they wanted to accomplish while maintaining usefulness.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><span style="color: #993366;">That's still usefull, if it removed all the penalties it would be completly OP.  You should be happy to even get the option of removing skill penalties.</span></p>

[SilentTrouble]

<p>its not worth the rest of the crappy line of 22 points just to get it, and its not working as it is worded therefore it either needs to change or be fixed.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>SilentTrouble wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>its not worth the rest of the crappy line of 22 points just to get it, and its not working as it is worded therefore it either needs to change or be fixed.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #993366;">It needed to be re worded... I don't know about the rest of the line I haven't looked at it for a very long time, all I know is I would kill for stance mastery.</span></p>

[Glerin]

<p><cite>Pinski wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>go stanceless.</p></blockquote><p>The problem with going stanceless is with spell consolidation and how you actually lose buffs by doing so.  Buffs that you had in the past.</p></blockquote><p>i didnt say it was a good solution, just that it was~</p><p>some of the spell consolidation seems stupid, but i -guess- the reason they are doing it is because they have added more items with effects that take conc. slots</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Pinski wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>go stanceless.</p></blockquote><p>The problem with going stanceless is with spell consolidation and how you actually lose buffs by doing so.  Buffs that you had in the past.</p></blockquote><p>i didnt say it was a good solution, just that it was~</p><p>some of the spell consolidation seems stupid, but i -guess- the reason they are doing it is because they have added more items with effects that take conc. slots</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #993366;">The buff consolidation is a bad idea.  If the conc slots were a problem they could have just taken the conc slot requirement of some of the buffs.  If their justification for the consolidation is to prevent "in correct" usage of stance then that's unneccisary since the new penalties are enough to make it not so great to tank in offensive.</span></p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Possumu@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Unfortunaly Stance Mastery does not remove all penalties of stances, and probably needs to be either reworded or replaced (I vote for the latter).</p><p>As to your specific situation with your mage friend, switch to def stance. You will deal less damage, but your amge friend is able to do enough for both of you if he is not getting hit. In def stance you should be able to hold aggro off him without issue.</p></blockquote><p>Going into defensive stance for easy duo content is not an answer - at least not a satisfactory one. Let's imagine that me and my duo partner (healer, fighter) encounter an even con ^ mob. This mob is going to die. There is literally no chance that this mob will beat us - the only difference is how fast it's going to die. Currently, my tank can go into offensive mode and we will beat the mob in a quick, intense and high-paced fight (fun). With these changes to offensive stance, my tank is going to be *forced* into defensive mode (if he is going to hold aggro and if he wants any buffs at all - which of course he does), *forcing* us to spend twice the amount of boring, slow time killing a mob that IS GOING TO DIE.</p><p>Making certain setups, whether it be AA or stances , be mandatory in certain situations is absolutely  wrong. In my opinion, it's stifling the game, and  for my duos, making a game that they have been fu nctional in for four years, unplayable.</p></blockquote><p>To be clear, we are talking about duoing solo content, but presumably at a faster rate than a soloer.</p><p>The OP, the person I was replying to, the person with a specific set of issues, would be better off post update to go to defensive stance for his duo. I did not say, nor did I imply, that every fighter in a duo should do so.</p><p>If your duo'ing with a high DPS class as a fighter, DPS is not an issue. Stopping your DPS friend from dying, however, is. The best way to do this is to simply not let him get hit, and the best way of doing that is by holding aggro off him, which is easiest to do in defensve stance. I really didn't think any of that needed to be spelt out so bluntly.</p><p>From that, its not hard to understand that a fighter duo'd with a healer could easily go offensive to deal more DPS, and have the healer only heal the tank and do minimal DPS (easy to hold aggro off, even in off stance). If that healer happens to be a high DPS healer, then treat the situation as per being grouped with a DPS class.</p><p>If you are in a duo with 2 fighters, you could have the higher DPS fighter go offensive with the other in defensive.</p><p>Seriously, its not hard to look at a duo with a fighter and decide if you need more DPS or if you need to hold aggro. If someone is unable to figure out which of these a duo needs, and is unable to work out how to accomplish that need with stances as a fighter...</p><p>I can't even finish that sentance, its so pathetic.</p>

[Prrasha]

<p><cite>Lethe5683 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #993366;">The buff consolidation is a bad idea.  If the conc slots were a problem they could have just taken the conc slot requirement of some of the buffs.  If their justification for the consolidation is to prevent "in correct" usage of stance then that's unneccisary since the new penalties are enough to make it not so great to tank in offensive.</span></p></blockquote><p>Simple-as-heck fix for buff consolidation/"tanking-in-no-stance" issue.</p><p>1) Un-merge the buffs again.</p><p>2) Put an effect on them so they stop working in the "wrong" stance, kinda like how the priest "Litany of Combat" AA stops working when you go into your 182-AA "healing stance".</p><p>Now you can tank in a duo again, by using your old buffs with no stance.</p>

[Aeralik]

<p>I adjusted the wording on this so that it reflects exactly the penalties it is removing.  It is still meant to reduce the skill reductions on the stances but not to counter any of the new penalties that have been added.  The newer penalties need to remain so that 2 classes don't escape them while the other 4 still need to endure them.  However, if you are worried about the skill reduction then you can still choose this ability to negate the skill reduction effects.</p>

[Appollyon]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Possumu@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Unfortunaly Stance Mastery does not remove all penalties of stances, and probably needs to be either reworded or replaced (I vote for the latter).</p><p>As to your specific situation with your mage friend, switch to def stance. You will deal less damage, but your amge friend is able to do enough for both of you if he is not getting hit. In def stance you should be able to hold aggro off him without issue.</p></blockquote><p>Going into defensive stance for easy duo content is not an answer - at least not a satisfactory one. Let's imagine that me and my duo partner (healer, fighter) encounter an even con ^ mob. This mob is going to die. There is literally no chance that this mob will beat us - the only difference is how fast it's going to die. Currently, my tank can go into offensive mode and we will beat the mob in a quick, intense and high-paced fight (fun). With these changes to offensive stance, my tank is going to be *forced* into defensive mode (if he is going to hold aggro and if he wants any buffs at all - which of course he does), *forcing* us to spend twice the amount of boring, slow time killing a mob that IS GOING TO DIE.</p><p>Making certain setups, whether it be AA or stances , be mandatory in certain situations is absolutely  wrong. In my opinion, it's stifling the game, and  for my duos, making a game that they have been fu nctional in for four years, unplayable.</p></blockquote><p>To be clear, we are talking about duoing solo content, but presumably at a faster rate than a soloer.</p><p>The OP, the person I was replying to, the person with a specific set of issues, would be better off post update to go to defensive stance for his duo. I did not say, nor did I imply, that every fighter in a duo should do so.</p><p>If your duo'ing with a high DPS class as a fighter, DPS is not an issue. Stopping your DPS friend from dying, however, is. The best way to do this is to simply not let him get hit, and the best way of doing that is by holding aggro off him, which is easiest to do in defensve stance. I really didn't think any of that needed to be spelt out so bluntly.</p><p>From that, its not hard to understand that a fighter duo'd with a healer could easily go offensive to deal more DPS, and have the healer only heal the tank and do minimal DPS (easy to hold aggro off, even in off stance). If that healer happens to be a high DPS healer, then treat the situation as per being grouped with a DPS class.</p><p>If you are in a duo with 2 fighters, you could have the higher DPS fighter go offensive with the other in defensive.</p><p>Seriously, its not hard to look at a duo with a fighter and decide if you need more DPS or if you need to hold aggro. If someone is unable to figure out which of these a duo needs, and is unable to work out how to accomplish that need with stances as a fighter...</p><p>I can't even finish that sentance, its so pathetic.</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #888888;">What makes you think it’s easy to hold aggro in offensive stance? With the changes the offensive stances not only has hate reduction procs and lowers hate gain and it also turns all taunts into de-taunts. How are you supposed to hold aggro when you’re constantly lowering hate whether you use taunts or not? So duoing in offensive stance and holding aggro don’t go together which means it is not going to be easy if not impossible especially if you’re with a DPS. Even healers are going to pull a good amount of hate since they will be healing more since the stance lower defense. Also hate gain (de-taunt in off stance) has been added to more CA’s so DPS is going to suffer and with the de-taunt proc and lowered hate gain the increased DPS alone won’t be enough to hold aggro.</span></span></p>

[Elanjar]

<p><cite>SilentTrouble wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>elanjar that circumvents their entire theory behind why they are doing this... my proposal was to keep their desires for what they wanted to accomplish while maintaining usefulness.</p></blockquote><p>The entire "theory" behind these changes is flawed in the first place. A tank should NEVER, let me repeat that, <span style="font-size: large;"><strong>NEVER</strong></span> reduce agro. PERIOD! end of story. The fact that I can now reduce hate better than any dps class is completely messed up.</p>

[Elanjar]

<p><cite>Aeralik wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I adjusted the wording on this so that it reflects exactly the penalties it is removing.  It is still meant to reduce the skill reductions on the stances but not to counter any of the new penalties that have been added.  The newer penalties need to remain so that 2 classes don't escape them while the other 4 still need to endure them.  However, if you are worried about the skill reduction then you can still choose this ability to negate the skill reduction effects.</p></blockquote><p>maybe we should just do away with those penalties then...</p>

[Ouchy Dathurts]

<p>I think the point is for those people complaining about "zomg i cant hit anything in def stance to tank!" can pick it up if it effects them that much. If you can't hit anything in defensive stance then I guess the AA isnt that bad. That SHOULD be the entire point of AAs, got a problem? There's an AA to fix it, its all about choices. Purhaps the line needs a boost along the way so the entire tree doesnt stink though.</p>

[JinjAB]

<p><cite>Aeralik wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I adjusted the wording on this so that it reflects exactly the penalties it is removing.  It is still meant to reduce the skill reductions on the stances but not to counter any of the new penalties that have been added.  The newer penalties need to remain so that 2 classes don't escape them while the other 4 still need to endure them.  However, if you are worried about the skill reduction then you can still choose this ability to negate the skill reduction effects.</p></blockquote><p>Thank you for the clarification Aeralik.</p><p>Could you tell us about the other concern in this thread and your vision of it, namely soloing/duoing?</p>

[Junaru]

<p><cite>Aeralik wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I adjusted the wording on this so that it reflects exactly the penalties it is removing.  It is still meant to reduce the skill reductions on the stances but not to counter any of the new penalties that have been added.  The newer penalties need to remain so that 2 classes don't escape them while the other 4 still need to endure them.  However, if you are worried about the skill reduction then you can still choose this ability to negate the skill reduction effects.</p></blockquote><p>If any class "needed" the stance mastery is would be the Brawlers. The - c/s/p hurts us while tanking more then other tanks. The fact that we need to hit a mob in order to taunt it while the 4 other tanks just need to be hit to taunt. Is there any way to have Monk Mongoose stance changed to something like this and maybr give the Bruisers the same ability?</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Appollyon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #888888;">What makes you think it’s easy to hold aggro in offensive stance? With the changes the offensive stances not only has hate reduction procs and lowers hate gain and it also turns all taunts into de-taunts. </span></span></blockquote><p>Re reead what I said.</p><p>It is easy to hold aggro AGAINST A HEALER in offensive stance. You will do this with auto attack. If you cast a detaunt while attempting to hold aggro in off stance, then yeah...</p><p>If you are playing with a healer, one that has low DPS, go offensive stance, hold aggro, he can heal you to make up for the extra damage you are taking, and you can deal enough DPS to make it worth the healer not DPSing. if you have a high DPS healer or a DPS class, go defensive and hold aggro off them so they can DPS.</p><p>I spelt this out in the last post, the one you quoted. The fact that I have to spell it out again (practically annunciating each letter for you to write down and take notes about) has me worried abou the state of tanks in this game.</p>

[Prrasha]

<p>You're still missing some of the offensive stance problems, for a paladin at least.</p><p>All our attacks (even our kick) do Divine damage.  We have one divine-damage debuff to help us deal damage.  It's attached to our group (de)taunt.</p><p>Half our skills are interruptible spells.  We use stuns to prevent interrupts while using them.  Two of our three stuns are now taunts, and thus detaunts in offensive stance.</p><p>So... to maximize our own (pathetic) DPS, we more-or-less need to use 3 of our 6 taunting skills.  (we can skip the basic taunt and Amends line and circular smite without losing anything.)</p><p>Further, as someone who is often decrying the dumbing down of the game, I don't understand why "just ignore half of your skills, and stand there and autoattack" is now a respectable technique.  And even if it is respectable, it's waaaay not fun.  And this is still a game.</p>

[Morrolan V]

<p><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aeralik wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I adjusted the wording on this so that it reflects exactly the penalties it is removing.  It is still meant to reduce the skill reductions on the stances but not to counter any of the new penalties that have been added.  The newer penalties need to remain so that 2 classes don't escape them while the other 4 still need to endure them.  However, if you are worried about the skill reduction then you can still choose this ability to negate the skill reduction effects.</p></blockquote><p>If any class "needed" the stance mastery is would be the Brawlers. The - c/s/p hurts us while tanking more then other tanks. The fact that we need to hit a mob in order to taunt it while the 4 other tanks just need to be hit to taunt. Is there any way to have Monk Mongoose stance changed to something like this and maybr give the Bruisers the same ability?</p></blockquote><p>QFE - this is one of the biggest issues for brawlers holding aggro now, and it will likely only get worse with the the changes.</p>

[Matia]

<p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Pinski wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Glerin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>go stanceless.</p></blockquote><p>The problem with going stanceless is with spell consolidation and how you actually lose buffs by doing so. Buffs that you had in the past.</p></blockquote><p>i didnt say it was a good solution, just that it was~</p><p>some of the spell consolidation seems stupid, but i -guess- the reason they are doing it is because they have added more items with effects that take conc. slots</p></blockquote><p>No. According to Aeralik in an earlier post somewhere around here, it was to help make buffing easier. And other classes can look forward to the same thing in the future.</p><p>After all, it was so difficult before.... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Spe]

<p>Yes, looks like LU51 is for tanks who have troubles even with buffing =)</p>