After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

Utility buffs on supports are an arms race, because all mitigation checks in this game are pass-fail and nobody wants to be left behind. This leads to mitigation inflation over time, where more and more of the support toolkits get stuffed with powerful mitigation tools.

Players flock to jobs that offer bigger rewards for less effort. These popular jobs then tend to retain their advantages because of a vocal fanbase. Powerful jobs traditionally get stealth nerfs at the start of expansions, when nobody understands the significance of any of the potency values. Those jobs then get progressively more buffs and return to their former power over the course of the expansion as players complain. This happens because SE doesn't like to be seen to nerf jobs, and tries to maintain the illusion of an upward balance.

This is what happened with WAR as well this expansion. The complaints only stopped when WAR pulled ahead in dps, in addition to the utility and mitigation advantages they had over other tanks. I doubt SE will change their balancing approach and perform an open nerf. What is more likely is that we eventually will get a hammer tank to split the WAR fanbase alongside stealth nerfs, which will allow them to definitively bring them in line. That's their standard approach, and we've seen it a few times before.

While I can understand why you weren't able to post this in the tank forum, I don't think that tanks are the reason for devaluing healers. Healers are doing that to themselves. I think the core audience is split between demanding DPS-lite gameplay vs. Sylphie gameplay. All the while, nobody seems interested in looking at introducing actual resource management or innovative utility/support actions. You're deskilling your own role.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Utility buffs on supports are an arms race, because all mitigation checks in this game are pass-fail and nobody wants to be left behind. This leads to mitigation inflation over time, where more and more of the support toolkits get stuffed with powerful mitigation tools.

Players flock to jobs that offer bigger rewards for less effort. These popular jobs then tend to retain their advantages because of a vocal fanbase. Powerful jobs traditionally get stealth nerfs at the start of expansions, when nobody understands the significance of any of the potency values. Those jobs then get progressively more buffs and return to their former power over the course of the expansion as players complain. This happens because SE doesn't like to be seen to nerf jobs, and tries to maintain the illusion of an upward balance.

This is what happened with WAR as well this expansion. The complaints only stopped when WAR pulled ahead in dps, in addition to the utility and mitigation advantages they had over other tanks. I doubt SE will change their balancing approach and perform an open nerf. What is more likely is that we eventually will get a hammer tank to split the WAR fanbase alongside stealth nerfs, which will allow them to definitively bring them in line. That's their standard approach, and we've seen it a few times before.

While I can understand why you weren't able to post this in the tank forum, I don't think that tanks are the reason for devaluing healers. Healers are doing that to themselves. I think the core audience is split between demanding DPS-lite gameplay vs. Sylphie gameplay. All the while, nobody seems interested in looking at introducing actual resource management or innovative utility/support actions. You're deskilling your own role.

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I'd agree for the most part on all of this if i hadn't run into WARs on more than one occasion that say they can do the healers job better than the healers. I've been asked to sit out of bosses so a WAR can try to run all 3 roles at once. I don't really believe healers are devaluing themselves entirely when SE put a class into the game that actually invalidates the need for healers at all.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Utility buffs on supports are an arms race, because all mitigation checks in this game are pass-fail and nobody wants to be left behind. This leads to mitigation inflation over time, where more and more of the support toolkits get stuffed with powerful mitigation tools.

Players flock to jobs that offer bigger rewards for less effort. These popular jobs then tend to retain their advantages because of a vocal fanbase. Powerful jobs traditionally get stealth nerfs at the start of expansions, when nobody understands the significance of any of the potency values. Those jobs then get progressively more buffs and return to their former power over the course of the expansion as players complain. This happens because SE doesn't like to be seen to nerf jobs, and tries to maintain the illusion of an upward balance.

This is what happened with WAR as well this expansion. The complaints only stopped when WAR pulled ahead in dps, in addition to the utility and mitigation advantages they had over other tanks. I doubt SE will change their balancing approach and perform an open nerf. What is more likely is that we eventually will get a hammer tank to split the WAR fanbase alongside stealth nerfs, which will allow them to definitively bring them in line. That's their standard approach, and we've seen it a few times before.

While I can understand why you weren't able to post this in the tank forum, I don't think that tanks are the reason for devaluing healers. Healers are doing that to themselves. I think the core audience is split between demanding DPS-lite gameplay vs. Sylphie gameplay. All the while, nobody seems interested in looking at introducing actual resource management or innovative utility/support actions. You're deskilling your own role.

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Yeah, i think i'm just dropping tank in DT. Kinda just holding out for DT but i have very low expectations in regards to tank balance.
I don't feel like tank balance is done in good faith. There's a clear winner across the patches that blatantly receives preferential treatment. They refuse to apply the same logic to Warrior that they apply to literally every other job in the game.
They would never let Summoner do more damage than Black mage, because like literally every other job in the game besides Warrior, it gets it's damage taxed for it's utility and accessibility.

I don't want to play Warrior, and i don't want to play a job that's strictly worse than Warrior in every way just so i don't have to play Warrior.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

They would never let Summoner do more damage than Black mage, because like literally every other job in the game besides Warrior, it gets it's damage taxed for it's utility and accessibility.

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I wouldn't say this is strictly true. If I recall correctly, SMN was very close to BLM at expansion release and SMN was stomping RDM into the ground until RDM got buffed 2 patches ago despite SMN being way easier to use while bringing roughly equivalent utility.

That said, WAR and PLD were also taxed on expansion release, though a bit overtaxed. But the solution wasn't to swing WAR from bottom dps to near the top.

I think the idea with WAR is that it's supposed to be a bit more squishy than the other tanks, but compensate with self healing... Rather than having as much defensive options as other tanks, they'd have more ways to heal themselves. But aside from dealing with magic damage, they basically have as much defense as DRK or GNB does.

Perhaps the take home message is that having the same job perpetually on top of a role across multiple expansions creates a bad atmosphere for players and makes them lose interest? It doesn't really matter if you justify dps discrepancies on the basis of 'job difficulty' or 'utility'. Players just get tired of it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Perhaps the take home message is that having the same job perpetually on top of a role across multiple expansions creates a bad atmosphere for players and makes them lose interest? It doesn't really matter if you justify dps discrepancies on the basis of 'job difficulty' or 'utility'. Players just get tired of it.

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Nah, it worked fine for BLM. Job perceptions of that job is still at an all time high as it ever was. People who played the job still enjoy it.

We have to look at different examples that received changes in its complexity like SMN, SAM, MNK, AST, and WHM after. It might mean skill ceiling and skill complexity is directly correlated to the role's performance and job fantasy.

Though WAR's case might be more complex than that. WAR has all those things without significantly high skill ceiling or skill complexity, but also goes beyond the bounds of their role significantly that it's memed quite often as a blue healer.

Really? BLM is one of the jobs that most frequently gets cited in terms of developer bias, especially because of its association as Yoshi-p's main. There was even a public apology statement in 6.1 and response from the Producer regarding BLM's PvP balance because the dev team were called out on blatant favoritism. That's the one job that they have to be the most careful about public perception, and casters would benefit tremendously if Pictomancer displaces BLM even if only for a single expansion.

Public perceptions about job complexity have more to do with how many people are playing a job rather than any objective measure of gameplay. A popular job is going to tend to be perceived as more complex, simply because perceived depth correlates with time played. Even WAR was lauded as 'the most complex tank' for a time in Stormblood. It wasn't actually, but you had a vocal playerbase insisting that it was. I would take any claims made about job complexity with a grain of salt. It all comes out in the wash anyways if you balance based on averages, and a mediocre player playing a theoretically mechanically complex job doesn't deserve to do additional damage purely based on job selection.

Warrior has always been about Damage to HP so as it is now I think it's in a great shape.

Personally I thought PLD was good until the recent change. I actually hate new PLD. You still need to drop Atonements so the rotation makes even less sense than it used to. Boring Blade is terrible, and we know its just going to get an aoe version in DT. Req Cast being a melee move still baffles me to this day. Cover is shocking. Clemency shouldn't exist or at least change it to an OGCD with a non spammable or lower potency.

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Originally Posted by Asako

Warrior has always been about Damage to HP so as it is now I think it's in a great shape.

Personally I thought PLD was good until the recent change. I actually hate new PLD. You still need to drop Atonements so the rotation makes even less sense than it used to. Boring Blade is terrible, and we know its just going to get an aoe version in DT. Req Cast being a melee move still baffles me to this day. Cover is shocking. Clemency shouldn't exist or at least change it to an OGCD with a non spammable or lower potency.

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What “damage to HP” they just have cost less heals that basically amount to overpowered (even by healer standards) heals you just press on CD