Tank balance and what CBU3 wants to do with job balance

One thing that I find interesting about the changes is the discussion around aDPS last tier. Tank rDPS last tier was probably the closest that it has been in the history of the game. The argument was made that aDPS should also be taken into account because rDPS does not capture differences in burst, and that DRK had an unfair advantage due to this. This perception was probably exacerbated by the fight-specific Everburn buff in P8S part 2. In short, you should not have an advantage in both rDPS and aDPS at the same time.

Yet this is what we currently see with WAR, SAM, and BLM. Part of this goes back to their longstanding development philosophy around making balancing decisions purely to mollify players, rather than balancing to achieve a level playing field where skilled players excel regardless of job. Why does it matter if the DPS subforum is flooded with complaint threads because SAM is not a mandatory pick? Let them simmer for a while. Eventually, the flavor-of-the-month players will just switch, and balance will be as it should be. If you don't, you perpetuate a cycle where it's the same few jobs that are perpetually at the top in every expansion. I'd love to see them actually stand up to the playerbase and quite literally level the playing field across the board. No special concessions. If vociferous sorts demand a dps advantage because they think their job is 'more challenging' than everyone else, give them the Kaiten treatment and then enforce parity. It's cruel, but a fair game is better for everyone in the long run.

Self-healing is another issue altogether. The primary reason why it exists is that most casual content is designed so that individual failures do not set back the team. You don't even start to see true 'raid-wipe' mechanics start to appear until Extreme trials, which is essentially the transition point away from that approach. It's the same reason why we have raises, in the event that you get two healers that just don't know how to do a fight. The problem is that instant, on-demand healing and regens do not really allow you to display your skill as a tank. If you want to see lifesteal done well, look at Death Strike. The amount of healing depends on the damage you've recently taken in the past X seconds. That's what tanks do, predict damage patterns. Without it, self-sustain becomes as mindless as sitting behind a chest-high wall recovering health in a cover-based shooter.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

One thing that I find interesting about the changes is the discussion around aDPS last tier. Tank rDPS last tier was probably the closest that it has been in the history of the game.

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That's because rDPS, again, is irrelevant to tank balance. None of them have buffs. All of them exploit buffs.

Were this the likes of any DPS but MCH, BLM, or SAM, you would have to look at both to get their full measure, because they both exploit and grant buffs.

That's not the case for tanks, though, for whom there is only one metric that is actually a representative measure of their offensive contribution (and does so in full, because they have no buffs): aDPS.

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In short, you should not have an advantage in both rDPS and aDPS at the same time.

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Agreed. Which does indeed make WAR, BLM, and SAM a bit problematic right now.

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If you want to see lifesteal done well, look at Death Strike. The amount of healing depends on the damage you've recently taken in the past X seconds.

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Aye. Or any other way in which something may be used/banked deliberately for context-dependent effect.

Even the original Inner Beast had this to an extent, as you'd be sacrificing your increased healing intake and crit chance in order to deploy the 900-1089 potency self-heal.

I will say that right now, WAR really feels like an Omni-Job to me. Damage was the one thing it didn't have, now that it does its feels like its the optimal job in all forms of content.

I don't even really see how they plan on fixing this because I'd honestly rather see Tank sustain nerfed than it handed out to the absolute absurd levels that are Nascent/Bloodwhetting/Shake, playing the job this savage tier has shown me how hilariously effective (and free) it is just to make a Nascent Flash Macro and mash it on cooldown is when you're not needed. P11s is particularly guilty for this.

Not really sure what (if anything) is going to be done about it but it is disheartening

Mitigation vs sustain. Simple as that. If TBN was a cure potency with crit value. One example is P10s with the multi hit tank busters. Blood whetting is going to have more value over TBN simply because TBN will cover you for the first hit, thats it. Blood whetting will provide sustain and mitigation for the majority of the tankbuster. HOC does the same thing. The reason DRK doesnt have self sustain with its short cooldown is because of its high damage which we saw has been invalidated by this recent patch.

Right now WAR is god tier tank levels and considering there are no more ultimates until next expansion this will probably be the current balance because tanks are all still within 500 dps from the highest to the lowest.

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Originally Posted by Derio

The reason DRK doesnt have self sustain with its short cooldown is because of its high damage which we saw has been invalidated by this recent patch.

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Except, it had competitive or greater sustain back when it also had the highest MT damage and was about tied for overall damage. So that explanation doesn't quite fit the job's actual history. It's kind of like blaming TBN for DRK's lack of self-healing; DRK had the greatest self-healing (such as in being able to afford DA-AD spam via self-refunding and MP-instantly-refilling Blood Weapon + Quietus spam)... in the same expansion that introduced TBN at its most powerful.*

* It was a 12s CD with 20% shield --proportionately less HP but therefore that much easier to break-- and 50 Blood rewarded on break (at a time when Bloodspiller dealt considerably more damage over average ppgcd than the potency-value of its MP cost -- 140p via DA, making TBN a slight damage gain).

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Mitigation vs sustain. Simple as that. If TBN was a cure potency with crit value. One example is P10s with the multi hit tank busters. Blood whetting is going to have more value over TBN simply because TBN will cover you for the first hit, thats it. Blood whetting will provide sustain and mitigation for the majority of the tankbuster. HOC does the same thing.

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Likewise... not really the crux of the issue.

First, sustain is anything that keeps you alive longer. Nominally, healing - overhealing + damage nullified. (Technically, it's contextual, effective damage nullified or recuperated. If you self-heal before being one-shot or before the likes of a Holmgang where more than the damage difference, it didn't add sustain. If you self-shield and don't consume the whole thing, the remainder provided no sustain. If you survive 1.99 hits, technically, that remaining .99 did not add sustain.)

The simpler difference is simply that unless one would be one-shot by the difference in max eHP increase, Bloodwhetting individually has greater sustain than TBN. 25% of a tank's HP is usually equal to about 1200-1300 sustain potency. Bloodwhetting does 2000 sustain potency atop its 20% mitigation for the first 4s and 10% for the remaining 4s of duration.

Now, when adjusting for the 40% greater frequency and Oblation being available per 4th use even at maximal TBN uptime (unrealistic, but hey), yeah, they hit rough parity.

But the difference isn't one of mitigation vs. sustain or even particularly content-scaling (%mitigation) vs. gear-scaling (self-healing/shielding and %HP shielding). It's just that one is clearly designed to be about half again as strong at its base and then has that context-scaling atop all that.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Except, it had competitive or greater sustain back when it also had the highest MT damage and was about tied for overall damage. So that explanation doesn't quite fit the job's actual history. It's kind of like blaming TBN for DRK's lack of self-healing; DRK had the greatest self-healing (such as in being able to afford DA-AD spam via self-refunding and MP-instantly-refilling Blood Weapon + Quietus spam)... in the same expansion that introduced TBN at its most powerful.*

* It was a 12s CD with 20% shield --proportionately less HP but therefore that much easier to break-- and 50 Blood rewarded on break (at a time when Bloodspiller dealt considerably more damage over average ppgcd than the potency-value of its MP cost -- 140p via DA, making TBN a slight damage gain).

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Sure, but it only lasted for one expansion, if that, and we're still being punished for it...

Considering the entire DA/Abyssal spam took 3 skills, one of which had a longer cooldown than Bloodwhetting I personally view what WAR is doing now to be even more absurd than what DRK used to do with that.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Considering the entire DA/Abyssal spam took 3 skills, one of which had a longer cooldown than Bloodwhetting I personally view what WAR is doing now to be even more absurd than what DRK used to do with that.

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It is, definitely. But at the time, DRK's mass-AoE self-sustain was the most ridiculous among the tank role.

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Originally Posted by Luizgazen

Sure, but it only lasted for one expansion, if that, and we're still being punished for it...

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But, again, what possible warrant is there for that assumption?

You had both together, and it was considered fine, since it relied on a CD and high mob counts. Only after every tank's entire defensive kit was reworked did that go away, without any mention of it having specifically been a problem before, just like there was no mention of Requiescat affecting Clemency's healing having been a particular problem (yet it was removed), or Inner Beast / Steel Cyclone themselves self-healing (yet their healing was removed).

If A and B both existed just fine together, how could B possibly be given as the reason for removing A?

That'd be like saying the Oath Gauge killed Requiescat-Clemency or that the Beast Gauge cost Warrior its being able to heal directly from Wrath skills.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Considering the entire DA/Abyssal spam took 3 skills, one of which had a longer cooldown than Bloodwhetting I personally view what WAR is doing now to be even more absurd than what DRK used to do with that.

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DRK could keep the DA Abyssal spam up like forever with Hard Slash > Syphon Strike > Dark Arts > Abyssal Drain > repeat.

Sure the dps were low, but you could keep aggro and do massive pulls even when everything was on cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Tint

DRK could keep the DA Abyssal spam up like forever with Hard Slash > Syphon Strike > Dark Arts > Abyssal Drain > repeat.

Sure the dps were low, but you could keep aggro and do massive pulls even when everything was on cooldown.

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You could actually just do TBN (to get 50 Blood on barrier break) > DA > Abyssal until your MP ran low > Blood Weapon > Delirium and watch your MP go back to full to continue the DA > Abyssal spam.

Old Blood weapon gave you MP for every enemy hit with physical damage, so a single Delirium was enough to instantly get your MP back up.


Sure it required more button inputs but unlike Bloodwhetting you could keep it up for pretty much the entire pull.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

You could actually just do TBN (to get 50 Blood on barrier break) > DA > Abyssal until your MP ran low > Blood Weapon > Delirium and watch your MP go back to full to continue the DA > Abyssal spam.

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Well I wasn't that comfortable with tanking big trash pulls without my tank stance on :x

And of course that 3 step "combo" for using DA Abyssal wasn't my usual way of play, but it was something I could use when I ran out of other options.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Old Blood weapon gave you MP for every enemy hit with physical damage, so a single Delirium was enough to instantly get your MP back up.

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I think you're referring to Quietus here? Delirium just granted immediate MP and extended either Blood buff's duration (they were mutually exclusive in Stormblood).

And the funniest feature, imo, was that Blood Weapon also gave 5 Blood per hit, so against 10+ enemies, its use refunded itself, allowing one to DA-Quietus as long as Blood Weapon was up (with whatever portion of DA-ADs added in for self-healing, and ofc, up to another 50 per 12 seconds via popping Stormblood TBN, which was usually how you'd jump-start it in the first place).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I think you're referring to Quietus here? Delirium just granted immediate MP and extended either Blood buff's duration (they were mutually exclusive in Stormblood).

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Yeah, I did mean Quietus.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Well I wasn't that comfortable with tanking big trash pulls without my tank stance on :x

And of course that 3 step "combo" for using DA Abyssal wasn't my usual way of play, but it was something I could use when I ran out of other options.

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I didn't start out with dropping Grit either, until I realized that DA Abyssal easily generated enough enmity that I would never have to worry about mobs running off and I really didn't need the 20% passive mitigation with all the selfheal. And you could always just throw in a Dark Passenger to generate more enmity than you'd ever need or even DA it for extra mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I will say that right now, WAR really feels like an Omni-Job to me. Damage was the one thing it didn't have, now that it does its feels like its the optimal job in all forms of content.

I don't even really see how they plan on fixing this because I'd honestly rather see Tank sustain nerfed than it handed out to the absolute absurd levels that are Nascent/Bloodwhetting/Shake, playing the job this savage tier has shown me how hilariously effective (and free) it is just to make a Nascent Flash Macro and mash it on cooldown is when you're not needed. P11s is particularly guilty for this.

Not really sure what (if anything) is going to be done about it but it is disheartening

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It is what the streamers fought for. ''The healing doesn't matter bro'' When it clearly does. As a Dark knight, my mitigation isn't leaps ahead to where i don't need a healer. I can pop 4 mits and i'll have maybe 10% more hp than a Warrior would, after which Warrior still has a hilarious amount of healing they're still sitting on. The job is simply overpowered now that it is also the highest damage tank on top of having the best of everything else.
Best partywide, best sustain, best invuln, best damage. The job needs to be nerfed.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

It is what the streamers fought for. ''The healing doesn't matter bro'' When it clearly does. As a Dark knight, my mitigation isn't leaps ahead to where i don't need a healer. I can pop 4 mits and i'll have maybe 10% more hp than a Warrior would, after which Warrior still has a hilarious amount of healing they're still sitting on. The job is simply overpowered now that it is also the highest damage tank on top of having the best of everything else.
Best partywide, best sustain, best invuln, best damage. The job needs to be nerfed.

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Said streamers are now fighting that WAR should have more raw mitigation as well, so expect Bloodwhetting to get bumped up to 30% mit next patch. Maybe even throw some on thrill of battle because thats an incredibly niche skill apparently.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Said streamers are now fighting that WAR should have more raw mitigation as well, so expect Bloodwhetting to get bumped up to 30% mit next patch. Maybe even throw some on thrill of battle because thats an incredibly niche skill apparently.

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Please tell me you're being sarcastic..

The real question is why choose any tank class at all between them when they have all been watered down to essentially the same job

But hey, that's what you get when people just blindly praise a game, you get this disfigured husk of a parody of its former self

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Said streamers are now fighting that WAR should have more raw mitigation as well, so expect Bloodwhetting to get bumped up to 30% mit next patch. Maybe even throw some on thrill of battle because thats an incredibly niche skill apparently.

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If they give warrior lower then Paladin damage I'd be fine with this.

It's time to hope some changes.

Seems to me DRK are salty since they been on top since start of expansion....now that warrior finally get comparable dps at the END (like always) of expansion when it no longer matters other tanks are crying.

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Originally Posted by ValkyrieL

Seems to me DRK are salty since they been on top since start of expansion....now that warrior finally get comparable dps at the END (like always) of expansion when it no longer matters other tanks are crying.

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Comprable is a bit disengenous considering its doing more than GNB right now, and second I think people would rather see DRK's other issues fixed than just boring potency bumps.

The potency adjustments were made at the start of the current raid tier, which is actually the last time that it matters this expansion.

DRK is the least represented tank in raid content this tier. WAR is the most represented tank in raid content this tier (and the second most represented job overall), at nearly double the numbers. We went from near rDPS parity last tier to an unambiguous advantage in both rDPS and aDPS for WAR, simply because the devs listened to poorly thought out complaints about aDPS numbers, that were themselves inflated due to the P8S Everburn mechanic. And this was done while ignoring longstanding issues raised about discrepancies in self-healing and mitigation.

At the next Q+A opportunity, someone needs to raise the question of why certain jobs like WAR receive preferential treatment from the development team across multiple expansions. It's boring seeing them in every comp across 10 years. I'd like to see the dev team commit to being fair to all jobs within the role groups going forward.

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Originally Posted by ValkyrieL

Seems to me DRK are salty since they been on top since start of expansion....now that warrior finally get comparable dps at the END (like always) of expansion when it no longer matters other tanks are crying.

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I think it's great personally, shows how little DRK actually has going for it once it stops having a commanding DPS advantage.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

I think it's great personally, show's how little DRK actually has going for it once it stops having a commanding DPS advantage.

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That's basically what everyone even remotely familiar with pre-ShB Dark Knight and current Dark Knight has been saying for close to 4 years. Design-wise it is an utter mess and the only remaining grace was that it performed well.

Not like CBU3 has ever listened to it though.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The potency adjustments were made at the start of the current raid tier, which is actually the last time that it matters this expansion.

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Kinda? I'm always going to say that the fact that balance starts and ends with week 1 savage clears specifically is really dumb. Especially considering EW just introduced a new savage this patch today in the form of Criterion Savage, a mode where you either have a limited ammount of revives via an action, or no revives at all.

And yet jobs who are penalized with a dps loss for having a res, still have that in content where they're not allowed to use said res. Given no one complained about this in 6.2, so no one is going to care now. Its just really dumb to me that other content isnt even considered with balancing.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Comprable is a bit disengenous considering its doing more than GNB right now, and second I think people would rather see DRK's other issues fixed than just boring potency bumps.

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potency bumps are just band aids. I always knew WAR was strong since EW, it just didn't have the potencies where it mattered. Sure the increase to SE/SP was nice and the QoL to IR was also good but if they only buffed FC/IC/PR from 30-60 potency it would have been comparable the entire expansion. Not top of the charts but enough to keep it away from the p8s fiasco. It also got "buffed" with the changes to direct hit but that is a stat that should have been dps exclusive to begin with though I digress.

The irony is that this version of DRK emulates what 4.0 DRK did, which imo was peak DRK. Both were "speed focused" tanks that had heavy ogcd spams however, 4.0 had synergy whereas 6.0 didn't. DA was the cornerstone ability that glued all of DRK's tool kit together. It's like a more cohesive version of infuriate, which in itself also synergizes with WAR's toolkit. The devs spent all this time trying to "fix" DRK when all the needed to do was expand on DA and reduce what it affected but increase the effectiveness of those few skills it did.

WAR and DRK could have acted as two sides of the same coin making balancing easier as they would have a clear vision in mind outside of just give them high potency ogcds. WAR is the gcds focused self healer. DRK is the ogcd focused self sheilder. If they just focused around this theme (or just being consistent) I'm sure DRK would not be in the situation where it is now. Chasing trends and changing meta while WAR never changes.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

potency bumps are just band aids. I always knew WAR was strong since EW, it just didn't have the potencies where it mattered. Sure the increase to SE/SP was nice and the QoL to IR was also good

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I actually despise the "quality of life" to IR, because it removed any remaining interaction with warrior's kit besides "hurrdurr spam Fell Cleave".

I miss making sure Berserk went in a 2nd weave slot so I could get one more GCD under it.

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Originally Posted by vetch

I miss making sure Berserk went in a 2nd weave slot so I could get one more GCD under it.

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I miss Berserk feeling at least a little like I was Berserking, as per its old cleansable Pacification debuff days. Heck, I'd almost be willing to accept some borderline ridiculous flavor effects.

Spitball Examples:

Let's say, for instance, we add three things:

1. Some considerable WAR undermechanics such that its defensive capacities can ramp from its offense, such as by overhealing from damage dealt briefly increasing (the addition fades rapidly) current and maximum HP or Defense. This is to compensate for the flavorful downsides of Berserk such that WAR has some slightly unique optimizations and feels more distinct.
2. Some reason for other players to be near the WAR. This wouldn't likely be a change to Berserk itself, but perhaps instead a passive War Cry mechanic that can affect Infuriate, Thrill of Battle, etc.
3. Penalties (not net penalties, just... in itself) for using Berserk. Ideally, by having Berserk, say, gradually build up towards Havoc (your attacks have a chance to partly cleave nearby allies) or even outright Bloodlust (like Confusion, but with bonus attacks against friends and foes alike; no real penalty if you're the last alive, haha). Perhaps gain Wrath (Beast Gauge) from damage struck, but also increase the chance of being critically hit by enemy attacks while Berserk is active (again, the WAR-specific flavorful forms of mitigation as tied to offense would be enough to compensate for this).

Voila: You'd actually feel like you're going Berserk. You could maybe have Equilibrium help with this in some way, or revert Shake it Off while giving it a second charge and maybe some synergy in form of a CD or passive granting damage-delay (a portion of damage taken is instead divided up to tick per second over 4 seconds).