FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Enmity and What Evolves Around It

Enmity - A Short Introduction

Keeping aggro is the tank's job, however it is a meaningful metric to every player to avoid chaos. As of 5.0, DPS and healers no longer have the ability to reduce their enmity, so keep this in mind.

As soon as you're focusing on playing in parties, enmity is a general thing. It affects which mobs target which player. Every action you use will generate enmity against one or more mobs, given they have already been engaged. Even self-buffs or simple Esunas generate enmity (+70 enmity pre-5.0 regardless of the situation or the gear)

Some actions generate more, some less enmity.

As of 5.0, all enmity modifiers for actions have been removed and strictly scale with damage only. The exception to this is provoke, see Provoke section for details.

How To Read Enmity Gauges And Indicators.

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Targeting Tethers

The first thing you should try to notice is targeting tethers. These arrows tell you what's targeting who, on the fly. It's a very simple and snappy system but can be subtle, so let me point it out here.

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Enemy to target tether

Player to target tether

As you can see, the arrows are subtle, and when you see them in-game they travel very quickly. You shouldn't use this as your sole indicator, but it helps to see if there's a sudden change you might not otherwise see.

*Use sound cues and mob movement as your first hints that something has shifted.

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Enmity Gauges

This is the important part.

Every tank must know this, otherwise they are the actual definition of a bad tank. Every DPS should know this so that they know when to stop or switch targets. Every Healer is generally afraid of this.

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Mob Enmity Glancing

Let's talk about these images in order.

1: This image is the Mob Enmity glance tab. You literally just glance at this tab to see where you stand against these specific enemies.

Red Square - All yours

Orange Triangle - Eyes up, caution.

Green Circle - It doesn't know you exist.

2: This is the mob you see highlighted as a Red Square on my bar, if you click the monster's name on the enmity glance tab it'll target it for you (in-game).

3: This mob has never seen my face, so he isn't represented on the glance tab. Without healing the target that is engaged in combat with a monster, debuffing it, or dealing any sort of damage to it, it doesn't register on your glance tab.

To sum up the Enmity glance tab,

Red means all

Green means none

It tells you a rough enmity estimate of each enemy you've got the attention of.

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Enmity Gauge

In this image, you see 2 arrows pointing to the two highest enmity players in the party.

First, note that the tank has all of the enmity and such a huge lead that the little "1" was replaced with a large "A".

Second, the black mage has dealt the most damage to it and therefor has the most enmity of the party.

This only tells you the specific enmity levels of you and your party-mates on the enemy you currently have targeted.

Now let's note the bars underneath the player-class icon.

The tank has a full solid white bar, this means he has all the enmity.

The black mage has about a fifth of the enmity, and so his bar is only a fifth filled.

It's a very straightforward gauge.

To sum up the enmity gauge,

It tells you how much enmity everyone has on the thing you currently have targeted.

It tells you the order of enmity from most to least via numbers.

It tells you if you have the most by replacing the number with an "A".

How Enmity Is Generated - DPS

DPS have the easiest way to determine the enmity they generate:

For every 1 damage you do against a mob you will also have 1 enmity on the same mob. When using aoes, you will generate enmity for every mob equal to the amount of damage dealt against this mob.

Basicly speaking: If you generate more aggro than other damage dealers, you're also dealing more damage than they are (minus some exceptions due to behaviour of DOTs).

There used to be two tools for enmity management for dps: A buff to cut upcoming enmity into half, and an ability to cut all previous generated enmity in half. These buffs, however, have been removed with the release of 5.0 and it is no longer possible for DPS to reduce their aggro without also reducing their damage dealt.

How Enmity Is Generated - Tanks

As I said before, it is the most important part about the tank class. When you join an instance and you're the main tank (short MT, given there are 2 tanks), it is your job to make sure all mobs are attacking you instead of your dps or healers.

Similar to DPS, the enmity you generate is also dependant on your damage. More damage means more enmity for you as well. With the release of 5.0, the actual enmity you create is no longer dependant on which skill you use, but only how much damage you deal.

First of all, with the release of 5.0 Shadowbringers, tanks no longer have a "tanking stance", only an "aggro stance". Their ability to mitigate damage has been added as a trait, without its previous damage penalty.

The aggro stance only serves one purpose: To increase all enmity you generate, at no other disadvantage. This means: If you're tank, you want this on at all times.

The only exception to this is when you are the second tank in a party, offtanking.

5.0 also removed all enmity modifiers from actions, meaning there is no longer an "aggro combo". Whichever rotation deals the most damage is your best way to build aggro from now on.

How Enmity Is Generated - Healers

Since healers are mainly healing people, their enmity generated is a little different, but easy to understand.

Basicly speaking, if you heal a person who has aggro on any mob (even body-pulled mobs), you will generate enmity for every mob he has aggro on. The amount of enmity generated is 0.5x hp healed lower than 0.5x hp healed (current value from 5.0 unknown at this time). This will go against all the mobs that are on your target.

If your target body-pulls mobs and you heal him for 1hp+, they will attack you for generating more enmity. You need to make sure the tank has generated enough enmity before you can safely heal him without stealing aggro.

Especially Regen or similar abilities with HOT effects can be a pain as it heals the tank over time and will generate aggro on pulls when you don't want it. Have him click it away or avoid casting Regen before he pulls the next bunch of mobs to avoid chaos. Only apply Regen after aggro has been established, or if your tank knows what's up.

Actions such as Stoneskin or the shield of Adloquium (Galvanize, not the healing part) will only generate 1 enmity.

Due to this, a White Mage will always generate more enmity than a Scholar would, even if they effectively "healed" the same.

Self-healing, however, will not generate any enmity against mobs.

Provoke - How To Use It Properly

With the release of 5.0, Provoke has received a slight overhaul. Unlike what people think, Provoke used to -not- give you more aggro. This has been changed in 5.0 and Provoke now adds a small amount of extra aggro when you use it, additionally to its previous, main effect.

Provoke, simply speaking, will put you first on aggro on the mob you hit with it.

This means it now does the following: Your enmity = top enmity + 1 + ?, the ? being a placeholder for its actual 5.0 value (currently unknown).

Say player A has 8000 enmity on the mob. If you now use Provoke on the mob, regardless of your own enmity, your enmity = 8000 + 1 + ?. This way, you will be first on aggro but by whatever little bonus you got from using Provoke.

Engaging a new mob with Provoke is generally not advised, as using your offensive abilities correctly is more important to maintain aggro. It is, however, useful for tagging one of multiple mobs of a pack if you missed it with your previous attack and your global cooldown is not ready yet.

Keep Provoke as your trump card for when you actually lose aggro, need to tank-swap with the MT or tag a body-pulled mob when your GCD is not ready. Only use it when you are sure it comes off cooldown when you need to react to mechanics like tankswaps.

Therefore you should primarily use Provoke when you intend to take a mob off another player, but not to build additional enmity on an already engaged enemy.

This doesn't work with Hunt or FATE mobs, as they are immune to this to avoid exploits in rewards.

To ensure the best take-over from, for example, the other tank during a tank-swap, it is recommended you build a combo before using Provoke to make sure you can immediately use your strongest hit to gain a lead on aggro after you Provoke it.

Example: 1st Combo Hit > 2nd Combo Hit > Provoke > 3rd Combo Hit

After hitting the third combo hit you will have a good enmity gap between yourself and the ex-MT.

This is also where the ability Shirk comes in handy. Shirk transfers 25% of your current enmity on all mobs to another player, ideally the upcoming MT. If you are MT during a tankswap, ideally you want to use Shirk on your OT right after they used provoke. This will give them a significant lead in enmity, so you can keep going ham on the boss without risking aggro issues. Just make sure to use Shirk after they used Provoke, otherwise it's useless. When both players are using Shirk when they are MT during a tankswap, there is no need to build a combo as Shirk will give you a greater enmity lead than any combo would.

Note that with the release of 5.0 "aggro stances" are a thing, which are also handy for tankswapping. The OT should not have their aggro stance on unless there are other mobs to be tanked by the OT. During a tankswap (or upcoming tankswap) the OT should enable their aggro stance, while the MT disables theirs to ensure a smooth takeover.

A Small Note About FATE And Hunt Participation

Again, unlike what people think, it's not the damage you do in a FATE or on a Hunt mob that counts for the contribution, it's the enmity generated against the mob / in the fate.

For a DPS, doing more damage means more enmity, however they are the worst option for a good contribution in a bigger party.

Tanks are the best option for aggro in smaller parties due to their ability to generate more enmity. Healers still rule when it comes to parties of 8 players though, as nothing beats the spam of AOE heals on 8 players when it comes to aggro.

For example, if you take an 8 player party with 1 WHM and 7 other classes that are attacking the mob, if they all stack up and the healer casts Cure III which hits for say 10k on all players, the enmity generated will be 7x10000x0.5 (old multiplier for now) = 70000 per cast. No one else will be able to outperform this kind of "contribution".

Coming To An End.

By now, you should've understood the most essential part about enmity, how to generate and hold enmity, and what it's good for. I created this guide because many people have no clue about what they're doing, and I hope most of them will find this guide and read it thoroughly.

Since you're already here, I want to thank you for reading my guide and ask you to share and rate it up if you liked it.

If there is anything I forgot to mention or you would like me to add, feel free to comment on this guide.

- Akio Mitsuko (Omega EU)

Edit #1, 19th Jan 2015 - Updated enmity values for some tank skills after some more research.

Edit #2, 28th April 2015 - Added a short note in the Provoke section.

Edit #3, 2nd July 2015 - Added information about the Dark Knight to the tanking section. Also added 3.0 changes to tanking stances.

Edit #4, 7th July 2017 - Added Phleet as a contributor to the guide.

Edit #5, 9th of July 2017 - Added Enmity gauge section - Phleet,

Edit #6, 28th June 2019 - Made initial corrections to prepare for 5.0 Shadowbringers update and their massive changes (oversimplification) to enmity.

Edit #7 4th November 2019 - Slight adjustments to the Provoke section.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=334890030

Enmity and What Evolves Around It