Fine, Bloodwhetting is too OP

No one has debated whether it's currently too strong in AoE situations (except through whataboutisms reliant on dungeons always being dogwater), but simply whether any element of flavor of its healing-per-hit should remain. I have argued it should, since it's iconic to Warrior, but at diminished returns (directly, as per a modifier after the first enemy struck, or indirectly, as by healing for a % of damage dealt).

Scaling factors and tuning are not the same thing. Yes, Bloodwhetting is presently just slightly overtuned for all content and overperforms greatly in dungeons because its per-target scaling is so excessive, but those are separate issues. Were its initial tuning better, by nature of offering the smallest increase to max eHP of any of the on-demands, it would have room at least for some degree of unique perk or feature. It just can't be so ridiculously strong as to have a 500% bonus across an entire content type.

And yes, Holmgang shouldn't be any more than 2min shorter a CD than Hallowed, especially if Holmgang's core benefit across typical content that would benefit from an invuln of any sort is just the death prevention, not the healing spared.

They could just add a moderate regen to Bloodwhetting if you take damage, and then add the life steal effect to Chaotic Cyclone, and Inner Chaos. That way, the heal potency can be a bit more fine tuned for single target vs. aoe.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

They could just add a moderate regen to Bloodwhetting if you take damage, and then add the life steal effect to Chaotic Cyclone, and Inner Chaos. That way, the heal potency can be a bit more fine tuned for single target vs. aoe.

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I wouldn't mind seeing much of that sustain (especially, healing) moved back towards our largely-bankable GCDs as per Stormblood.

Would probably want to rename Bloodwhetting at that point, though. I mean, it's pretty much "sharpening one's weapons on/via the blood of thine enemies".

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No one has debated whether it's currently too strong in AoE situations (except through whataboutisms reliant on dungeons always being dogwater), but simply whether any element of flavor of its healing-per-hit should remain. I have argued it should, since it's iconic to Warrior, but at diminished returns (directly, as per a modifier after the first enemy struck, or indirectly, as by healing for a % of damage dealt).

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It's a pretty common problem in game design to have the class fantasy/theme/flavor clash with balance and game mechanics, and I would typically err on the side of fantasy if that fantasy supports a cool niche. That said, you can excuse pretty degenerate gameplay with class fantasy: like should something called "assassin" be able to one-shot kill people out of stealth in a PvP game? Is a niche fantasy creates still a niche if it translates to "I'm the best at doing the thing everyone else in my category is supposed to be good at"?

Putting aside the question of why Warrior even is the signature self-healing tank in the game and not, say, the Paladin, I'd argue it would be healthier in the short term for WAR to lose it's multi-target scaling altogether. If it's balanced in AoE scenario it will be weak in single target, if it's strong in single target it will be broken in AoE. You can't really escape that problem unless, as said before, you make the multi-target scaling completely cosmetic at which you might as well just remove it.

My issue with BW isn't even that it's overpowered or that it makes Warrior the best dungeon tank by a mile. It's the self-healing arms race. Why does Holy Sheltron and Heart of Corundum need any healing at all? Why did PLD get 400p heals on Requiescat combo in 6.1? DRK is now very likely to get more self-sustain not because the job needs it to clear any content (you can MT Savage or run an expert dungeon with 3DPS as DRK already), but because other tanks have it, and other tanks have it because WAR has it in excess.

We have well meaning community videos like this one where the author says: "you can not put The Blackest Night and Bloodwhetting in the same sentence", and he isn't wrong, except that TBN is not the problem ability here. As much as tank self-sustain creates a larger problem in the game (trivializing content, healer strike, etc.), Bloodwhetting is such an extreme outlier here that was allowed to exist through the entirety of Endwalker and now early Dawntrail, it has completely skewed people's perception of what tank performance should even look like.

Yes dungeons are meant to be easy, yes 100% of the playerbase should be able to be able to clear them, but why even have the option to do single pack pulls if anyone with room temperature IQ can go on a Warrior, pull wall to wall, press two buttons and never be at risk of needing a single heal?

That's true. But it's also a deliberate change in the design direction for the role.

FFXIV is not a fast game. You're not reacting to split-second tells and timing frame-perfect parries and dodges in the likes of Elden Ring. Instead, it's about memorization and preset patterns. Everything is scripted, everything happens on timestamps. You can quite literally pop Rampart 18 seconds before a tankbuster and land it perfectly every time, run after run. It's that predictable. No crystal ball is needed.

Historically, there was an expectation that tanks play proactively rather than reactively. There was no point in using Rampart at 10% HP. You were just done at that point. This served as an intrinsic skill check to the role. I think a lot of people find this too difficult and want to be able to play completely reactively. The short recast cooldowns facilitated this somewhat, although they historically were a lot more interesting (timing Sheltron against untelegraphed Fluid Swings, for example). But this is also what's driven the shift towards so much self-healing on tanks. It's primarily a shift to reactive gameplay, rather than proactive (and also because some people just can't tolerate being at less than 90% HP.)

The end result is that tanks have encroached heavily on healing, simply because tanks are suddenly putting out fires instead of preventing them.

To be honest, I'm still at a bit of a loss as to what the current 'target audience' for tanking is looking for as a challenge. What's your proposed skill check? How do you differentiate a skilled tank from an entry-level tank? It's not DPS, because tank DPS is underwhelming and most of your hotbar space is dedicated to defensives. It's not timing mitigation, because you invuln-swap everything and have on-demand burst healing. It's not positioning, because a lot of fights are self-positioning and your melees probably already have learned how to compensate for your positioning errors even in the few cases where the game even allows you to make them. It just feels like a lost cause at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Terhix

My issue with BW isn't even that it's overpowered or that it makes Warrior the best dungeon tank by a mile. It's the self-healing arms race. Why does Holy Sheltron and Heart of Corundum need any healing at all? Why did PLD get 400p heals on Requiescat combo in 6.1? DRK is now very likely to get more self-sustain not because the job needs it to clear any content (you can MT Savage or run an expert dungeon with 3DPS as DRK already), but because other tanks have it, and other tanks have it because WAR has it in excess.

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It's a bit more naunced than that. Before 6.X PLD had 0 selfhealing in any normal situation, which wasn't nearly compensated by the slightly higher mitigation, and didn't feel very good imo. This was the state of PLD sustain in 5.X https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...unt&metric=hps, and for dungeons https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ps&class=Tanks Like always it's a balancing act. PLD sustain now to strong, but it did actually warrant some buffs after 5.X.

Removing healing from the Requiescat combo and Holy Sheltron would feel a bit jarring when you level up. At level 84 you finally get some much needed self healing. But a few levels later, that would be significantly reduced against when you switch from Requiescat > Holy Circle/Spirit spam (with selfheals), to the level 90 Requiescat combo (without selfheals). For PLD selfhealing nerfs I'd remove healing from all attacks, and increase the healing from Holy Sheltron a bit.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

That's true. But it's also a deliberate change in the design direction for the role.

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It is a change in the design of the role, sure, but I don't think you can say it's deliberate without a direct quote from a dev saying such. To me it looks much more as a side-effect of always balancing jobs upward, which is also a relatively new position for SE, they had no issues gutting Abyssal Drain in the past, and despite all the disgruntled Stormblood DRK mains I think the game got healthier now because they did it.

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Originally Posted by aiqa

It's a bit more naunced than that. Before 6.X PLD had 0 selfhealing in any normal situation, which wasn't nearly compensated by the slightly higher mitigation, and didn't feel very good imo. This was the state of PLD sustain in 5.X https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...unt&metric=hps, and for dungeons https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ps&class=Tanks Like always it's a balancing act. PLD sustain now to strong, but it did actually warrant some buffs after 5.X.

Removing healing from the Requiescat combo and Holy Sheltron would feel a bit jarring when you level up. At level 84 you finally get some much needed self healing. But a few levels later, that would be significantly reduced against when you switch from Requiescat > Holy Circle/Spirit spam (with selfheals), to the level 90 Requiescat combo (without selfheals). For PLD selfhealing nerfs I'd remove healing from all attacks, and increase the healing from Holy Sheltron a bit.

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I have no idea how you can look at that healing graph and see anything but like every tank graph since ShB launch WAR is overpowered in self sustain

1.6k
1.8k
2.2k
3.4K

Yeah it’s definitely the 1.6 that’s horribly underpowered

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Originally Posted by aiqa

It's a bit more naunced than that. Before 6.X PLD had 0 selfhealing in any normal situation, which wasn't nearly compensated by the slightly higher mitigation, and didn't feel very good imo. This was the state of PLD sustain in 5.X https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...unt&metric=hps, and for dungeons https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ps&class=Tanks Like always it's a balancing act. PLD sustain now to strong, but it did actually warrant some buffs after 5.X.

Removing healing from the Requiescat combo and Holy Sheltron would feel a bit jarring when you level up. At level 84 you finally get some much needed self healing. But a few levels later, that would be significantly reduced against when you switch from Requiescat > Holy Circle/Spirit spam (with selfheals), to the level 90 Requiescat combo (without selfheals). For PLD selfhealing nerfs I'd remove healing from all attacks, and increase the healing from Holy Sheltron a bit.

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To be clear I'm not suggesting they remove any healing from PLD, at least not a the state the game is in today, we need a major balance patch that takes a good hard look at all tanks to actually fix the situation we're in, and I have no expectations of that happening before 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I have no idea how you can look at that healing graph and see anything but like every tank graph since ShB launch WAR is overpowered in self sustain

1.6k
1.8k
2.2k
3.4K

Yeah it’s definitely the 1.6 that’s horribly underpowered

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Even when completely ignoring WAR, 37% behind the tank (DRK) that people geneally considered properly balanced is a bit weak yes. And that was in a good situation for PLD. In dungeons it had about half the sustain. You can't balance content properly if tank A has half the sutain of tank B.

I guess it mostly depends on the target you set for balance. If you set your prefered target as pre-6.X PLD, pretty much any healing from all tanks is to much. And even DRK would need a big nerfs. My prefered sutain is about DRK levels, or slightly higher. To reach that level PLD very much needed some improvements.

So yeah, very easy to see more then "omg WAR OP" in those graphs.

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Originally Posted by aiqa

Even when completely ignoring WAR, 37% behind the tank (DRK) that people geneally considered properly balanced is a bit weak yes. And that was in a good situation for PLD. In dungeons it had about half the sustain. You can't balance content properly if tank A has half the sutain of tank B.

I guess it mostly depends on the target you set for balance. If you set your prefered target as pre-6.X PLD, pretty much any healing from all tanks is to much. And even DRK would need a big nerfs. My prefered sutain is about DRK levels, or slightly higher. To reach that level PLD very much needed some improvements.

So yeah, very easy to see more then "omg WAR OP" in those graphs.

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DRK sustain wasn’t considered poorly balanced in ShB though, everyone agreed that TBN was strong but that DRK had relatively weak sustain outside of that. If anything people point to ShB DRK as an example of what modern tank sustain should look like

So if we take ShB DRK as the peak, or somewhere around it you could maybe argue PLD is slightly weak but it more shows that WAR even then was too strong

DRK is only considered bad now because every tank has gotten TBN but better with less cost and they also have more alternate sustain as well

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Originally Posted by mallleable

They could just add a moderate regen to Bloodwhetting if you take damage, and then add the life steal effect to Chaotic Cyclone, and Inner Chaos. That way, the heal potency can be a bit more fine tuned for single target vs. aoe.

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Would love to see them lean more towards making WAR the regen tank:

Instead of a flat heal by storm path, let it grant a minor heal buff that you maintain (lets say 100 potn), which can by maintained also by mythril tempest

BW/RI grants stacks of another regen buff (120 potn/10 sec), each attack grants another stack and refresh the duration, but the maximum stacks are limited to 3 only

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

BW is terrible design.

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You're right. It needs to be upgraded to BW2 and AoE heal. If the same reskinned dungeon pulls aren't changed or that aspect of the gameplay updated, I could care less if they gave me 3 stacks of it so I never needed a healer in dungeons again. Most dungeon healers are dps mains trying to level their healer for the new achievement mount, so they don't know how to heal anyway. So many complaints about dungeon BW when dungeons are all just one-way hallways people spam for xp. BW is balanced in raids and works great in tandem with OT HOC or TBN so healers don't run out of mana trying to babysit auto-attacks, that's all that really matters at the end of the day. Good design unlike Cure 1, Freecure, and Glare spam :p

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Originally Posted by Lyth

To be honest, I'm still at a bit of a loss as to what the current 'target audience' for tanking is looking for as a challenge. What's your proposed skill check? How do you differentiate a skilled tank from an entry-level tank? It's not DPS, because tank DPS is underwhelming and most of your hotbar space is dedicated to defensives. It's not timing mitigation, because you invuln-swap everything and have on-demand burst healing. It's not positioning, because a lot of fights are self-positioning and your melees probably already have learned how to compensate for your positioning errors even in the few cases where the game even allows you to make them. It just feels like a lost cause at the moment.

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It could be that you're at a loss simply because it doesn't exist. My interpretation is that they make most of their decisions based on mass appeal, which would make the target audience potentially everyone.

I don't know how accurate it is but I heard this savage tier's clear rate is somewhere between 4-10%. There was no discussion about participation rates, but assuming this is close to true that would indicate the vast majority of players aren't looking for a challenge at all, and that at this point XIV is pretty much a casual/social MMORPG. There is a small carve out for the people seeking more of a challenge, but it's very unlikely that those extra components ever establish a prominent role outside of savage/ultimate content. (dps checks, mit checks, etc).

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

It could be that you're at a loss simply because it doesn't exist. My interpretation is that they make most of their decisions based on mass appeal, which would make the target audience potentially everyone.

I don't know how accurate it is but I heard this savage tier's clear rate is somewhere between 4-10%. There was no discussion about participation rates, but assuming this is close to true that would indicate the vast majority of players aren't looking for a challenge at all, and that at this point XIV is pretty much a casual/social MMORPG. There is a small carve out for the people seeking more of a challenge, but it's very unlikely that those extra components ever establish a prominent role outside of savage/ultimate content. (dps checks, mit checks, etc).

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Tbf, it can also have a lot to do with the source or manner of that difficulty. I love challenge when it comes from tanking, coordination, twitchy adaptation, etc. I just don't care for script-memorization or DDR.

And so I'll use WoW for challenge and here for story, visuals, and maybe the occasional PuGed Savage or some Extremes. Because, with brief outliers like pre-nerf Pharos Sirius, certain Extremes, and healing the more eventful of past Alliance Raids on their launch days with weirdly few (thereby overgeared) raiders, the types of difficulty I enjoy just scarcely exist in this game.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Or how about ppl playing healer do a better job at healing so stuff like this doesn't happen lol

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This person is absolutely right. The reason tanks are as strong at mitigating now is because at the normal level, garbage healers have always been rampant. The power of tanks improves the power fantasy the tank role offers and reduces toxicity by preventing runs they go like my m3 normal last week where neither healer could top off my themselves or the party for heal checks. If tanks can't carry normal content the game would be objectively worse. And no i dont mean soloing bosses over 20% hp that's cringe and disrespectful if its like the final xpac boss. Tanks should be courteous and healers shouldn't destroy other roles to feel relevant. Healers have been the least fun role since Shadowbringers for me. The dps "rotations" make normal mode content incredibly dull and scholar is a husk of my once favorite healer. Try actually doing healerless runs of challenging content outside of an organized premade and tell me you don't wish you had a healer. Heck most people can't unsync old ex trials cleanly without one.

the problem is of tanks get that good how to you expect the trash healer to get better? like at that point it's a vicious circle that good healers pay the price for sadly and if they could rework sage a bit to be more DPS heal related the DPS main could LV it and main it to make it easier for themself

I honestly don't like the theme of warriors, insofar that while I enjoy the idea of a tank so angry they ignore that they ought to be dying right now, the current system does not truly implement that for me.

That being said, I would not even want to do some massive changes to every abiltiy to facilitate what I feel would be a better theme, but rather just one "big" change: Other than Equilibrium, everything now shields instead of healing. Stackable shields, too. So that, numerically, the EHP is ~same, but for feeling/style reasons, Warriors now ignore damage instead of taking it and then re-healing afterwards.

This might be a person thing, but this healing-from-dealing damage I associate with a drain tank, or maybe even a drain healer like the Blood Mage of Vanguard. And drain tanks always have a bit of a necro feel to me, I could see Dark Knight being that lore-wise, or I could see a Reaper have a lot of drain self-healing as a DPS, etc. But a Warrior, an unstoppable berserker, I would associate mentally with flat out shrugging the incoming damage off instead of healing themselves by draining HP. Dunno, just not a good lore-fit IMO, although I grant that since I intentionally would not want it to mess up the current balance much - that'd be a separate step then - it would not be a change in how the job plays, except for some ability timings (since you'd stack shields before the hit, Bloodwhetting for example might need to be inverted in some regards).

A more extreme variant of that would be:

* Damage of most abilities reduced.
* Healing or shielding added to ~all attacks.
* All defensive CDs changed to provide variable amounts of damage increases for either a certain time or a certain amount of attacks. Some of these also increase the % of damage that heals/shields.
* Net result: Comparable damage and survivability as now, but the latter is more spread out.
* Bloodwhetting would become a way to briefly "spike" the healing or shielding in anticipation of bursts. Holmgang as invuln remains of course. Thrill of Battle remains as another "true" defensive CD, plus it already increases healing taken so the numbers just need to be adjusted.

Like the shields-instead-of-healing, this would feel "more fitting" IMO, as it would even more so lean into the berserker-tank, not even having any real defensive CD, just going wild and smashing the enemy's face, and the harder they do, the more damage they can shrug off.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Other than Equilibrium, everything now shields instead of healing. Stackable shields, too. So that, numerically, the EHP is ~same, but for feeling/style reasons, Warriors now ignore damage instead of taking it and then re-healing afterwards.

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When considering whether Warrior ought to have healing or not, it's worth considering that HP is, at least as presented in-game, at least as correlative with Stamina/Vigor/Will as with become a blood splatter/corpse.

Players and party characters reaching 0 HP is more accurately a "knockout" than actual "death", hence the ability to Raise downed allies in-game yet not the actually resurrect those who have actually been truly killed.

Similarly, it makes more sense to be a sliver from being knocked unconscious and yet at full strength than to be a sliver from death.

What then gives Warriors the will to fight on? Slowing a one-sided attrition by ignoring any bits at a time of would-be loss to vitality/vigor/stamina/health, or counterattacks that let them fully feel the thrill of the fight?

One last note:
The main benefit of fully ignoring damage is that you can make debuffs conditional to having done so. But... ought Warrior be able to outright prevent the application of debuffs --as if a separate shield had fully countered the mechanic-- rather than being better at pressing through them?

i think holmgang is way more op

to me bloodwhetting is not op

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Originally Posted by Lyth

To be honest, I'm still at a bit of a loss as to what the current 'target audience' for tanking is looking for as a challenge. What's your proposed skill check? How do you differentiate a skilled tank from an entry-level tank?

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Mainly LB usage to save your party, cover/tbn/bw/hoc/clemency to save a party member/prog further
aside from the classic "good dps, consistency, fast learning"

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's not DPS, because tank DPS is underwhelming and most of your hotbar space is dedicated to defensives.

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For instance I dont find DRG/RPR/VIP harder or easier than GNB or DRK in terms of dps optimization

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's not timing mitigation, because you invuln-swap everything and have on-demand burst healing.

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I invite you to clear DSR P7 as a tank, or TOP P6, or even any criterion savage dungeon

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's not positioning, because a lot of fights are self-positioning and your melees probably already have learned how to compensate for your positioning errors even in the few cases where the game even allows you to make them. It just feels like a lost cause at the moment.

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Yeah that's fair, a good tank should care about positionnals but dps also have tools

The main way in which tanks differentiate themselves currently is positioning. I know that many tanks go through a phase of being convinced about the overwhelming significance of their DPS contributions, but nobody else shares that perception. This is just common sense - less of your toolkit is dedicated to doing damage because of mitigation bloat (taking up more than 1/3 of your actions) which in turn makes your rotations intrinsically simpler. Your contributions are evaluated and weighted by the devs at significantly less (in part because they want you to be able to fully concentrate your mental energy on invuln-swapping the 4-5 fixed-timestamp tankbusters without dying and accidentally causing a raid damage loss through a swiftcast-raise). In return, you can feel super important in dungeon content and not have to worry so much about vuln stacks on failed mechanics. You can be the big fish in a small pond. That's likely the main reason why some people still defend the progressive gameplay simplifications to the role instead of speaking out against it. Which is a shame, really, because you should want to encourage competitive-minded players and give them a skill differential to distinguish themselves for good performances.

Mitigation checks are pass-fail. A good mitigation check will make you ration out your cooldowns, and historically you wouldn't have needed to draw on end phases of ultimates for outlier examples of that. That's not entirely expected, however, because most players aren't interested in sitting around on their hands watching a support prog their mitigation strategy. You're largely interchangeable with a lot of other tanks equally capable of doing the exact same check at the same level of consistency (especially if you're on a half-decent DC). I think invulns are a big part of the problem, since they generally let you remove a tankbuster of your choice from the equation and let you bypass swap/split mechanics. Holmgang's recast in particular is much too low, even after being raised to 4 minutes. At minimum, the recasts should all be longer (probably in the range of 6 minutes). Alternatively, they should find a way to phase out invulns with a tier of high level mitigation (i.e. something in the 80% range) so that you're still forced to do mechanics and ration out cooldowns, although that may require revising some damage numbers on older content. Another option would be to routinely incorporate debuff effects that make incoming damage just flat out ignore invulns and force swaps.

I think the current tank approach to self-healing also detracts from your mitigation experience because all the emphasis gets placed on all or nothing tankbuster-level damage. Many of the pre-Creator fights had a lot of outgoing damage in autos and cleaves that would flat out just kill you if you didn't work as a team with your healer (or perfectly time short mitigations on unmarked cleaves, like on A3S). Part of the tanking experience involved sitting at extremely low health totals and knowing whether the next auto would kill you or not if it crit (as well as knowing the precise timing of said auto). These built-in rotational regens and on-demand burst heals are just there to comfort new tanks (especially the type of player who tends to chant at their healers to 'HEAL' when they drop below 90% HP) and make tank gameplay more or less stress free.

No, positioning checks are the last bastion for tanks, and Criterion does have some decent examples of this (especially Rokkon). I get the feeling that the fight designers mostly gave up on manual positioning after Midas, but you do see some moments of brilliance every so often. This is a much better soft check because you're trying to maintain uptime for both yourself and your DPS while anticipating mechanics. Incorporating more random elements (bees/cats/bouncing metal balls) represent another way to keep this fresh and interesting and introducing some moment-by-moment tank decision-making, but my feeling is that they will always hold back massively on difficulty when it comes to random elements like that (even ones that can be baited).

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

For instance I dont find DRG/RPR/VIP harder or easier than GNB or DRK in terms of dps optimization

I invite you to clear DSR P7 as a tank, or TOP P6, or even any criterion savage dungeon

Yeah that's fair, a good tank should care about positionnals but dps also have tools

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I can't stress that enough, before claiming not being able to see a job responsibility, one should always experience the game as that role before making any claims on it.
Imagine if people started to downplay the difficulties of jobs such as garbage collector because they "only collect garbage and put them on a truck".

I've played Reaper and Viper in high-end content, I can confidently say they don't feel harder than any tanks.
Mitigation timing is important especially with the 15s long mitigation that can cover many hits. In Savage it's a bonus, in Ultimate it's necessary.
Bonus, in M3S and M4S, you can have your melees greed safely GCDs by putting short cooldowns on them, see the Divebomb or when M4S breaks the platform.

Positionning shouldn't be downplayed, I've seen too many tanks who have no idea about positionning and thinking "it's not important the melee can deal with it anyway".

Also you:

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

The Coil (hunter & swiftskin) have side and back positionnal but are both green.
To be fair I'm being massively skill checked by the positionnals I wish at least it would be easier to read if we're going to end on a side or back positional. I know it depends on the GCD you start but after a burst, you can easily forget with what you started.

Viper feels completely different between Extreme 1 and 2, but I'm fine with not playing perfectly.

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It's important to play to your strengths. Tank gameplay was never going to be about engaging DPS rotations. That's just a game design consequence, because you're playing with only half the action set of an actual DPS job. You're misleading yourself if you think that getting to be a pretend DPS on training wheels in any way compensates for what the tank role has lost over the past few expansions.

Instead, look at where tank gameplay has been eroded: in snap enmity, in positioning, and in mitigation. The first two are generally fight design dependent, but without significant revisions to both the power and availability of mitigation tools (and self-healing), tanking is going to feel less satisfying in a lot of content.

What you need is a change in design philosophy, and I hope that the discussion around potential 8.x reworks highlights this. The problem is that there are a subset of tanks who thinks that excessive defensive power = better, when the focus needs to be on creating more gameplay opportunities for tanks to demonstrate skill through good positioning and well-timed mitigation. And sometimes scaling back power creep and mitigation inflation creates those opportunities more effectively than adding to it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Also you:

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You're really never going to let go of this specific quote aren't you?
Remember when it was? 2 months ago? It's time you move on.

Guess what, things changes and people get better. Because I acknowledged I got skilled issue by the positionnals I exactly knew what to improve.
Yeah, might surprise you but it works like that. Admitting your weakness is the first step to tackle them.

It was the same thing with any jobs, I learned where I would fail and aim to correct them.
Your behavior is exactly why people don't want to share their struggles and people have a problem when being told they get a case of "skill issue".

I dislike how much the positioning-game got trivialized because ~all bosses teleport back to the middle and re-orient for ~all mechanics.

It's so lame.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

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I can recall what people said on this forum ten years ago. Don't worry, you're not the only one. But I'll be reading your words back to you every single time that you make a 'confident' contradiction. Judging from the trends around the length of expansions, I expect we'll get a good three years or so out of this quote.

But it's not really a competition between roles. If your goal was to absolutely push the limits of DPS optimisation, you'd be maining an actual DPS job. That's just common sense. It's good to broaden your experiences, but at the end of the day there's always an opportunity cost involved with how you invest your time. What I'm questioning is how we can make tanking worth that investment again. That means playing to your strengths. How can we make mitigation more engaging? How can we make positioning more engaging? Are there elements of enmity generation (especially snap enmity) that can be used to keep tanks engaged? It's the combination of these things that makes tanking unique. Without it, you're just left with a third-rate DPS subcategory on training wheels. You might as well get rid of the role altogether at that point.

I want tanking to have a skill differential again because I want the role to be worth going back to. I've watched them progressively rip out everything from the role that I once was passionate about, only to replace it with this auto-regen, on-demand burst healing nonsense that caters to the lowest common denominator. Let's bring skill expression back to tanking. Part of this is encounter design dependent, I get it. But a really good starting point would be to rebuild how defensive toolkits are put together from the ground up. And I think actions like Bloodwhetting, Shake it Off, and Holmgang are at the epicentre of this defensive powercreep.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I dislike how much the positioning-game got trivialized because ~all bosses teleport back to the middle and re-orient for ~all mechanics.

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100%. That was probably the final straw that wore me down, personally.

There's some hope here, though, because the past tier was a little better than most. I'm hoping that they'll continue to improve in future encounter designs.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I can recall what people said on this forum ten years ago. Don't worry, you're not the only one. But I'll be reading your words back to you every single time that you make a 'confident' contradiction. Judging from the trends around the length of expansions, I expect we'll get a good three years or so out of this quote.

But it's not really a competition between roles. If your goal was to absolutely push the limits of DPS optimisation, you'd be maining an actual DPS job. That's just common sense. It's good to broaden your experiences, but at the end of the day there's always an opportunity cost involved with how you invest your time.

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"I won't do it because I don't want to invest time."
But you have the time and energy to remember what people say on this pointless forum 10 years ago?

If you rely on ad hominem instead of hard facts and experience, your arguments lack a foundation.
Beyond your opinion you've exposed no facts that can contradict anything.

Opinions aren't facts. I don't want to run in circle again because you have confidence in your missplaced opinion.

As for mitigation, it's fine. What we have currently with physical/magical split is better as we just brainlessly used them on every raidwide. It's good that for once, they're not the same used everywhere.
If you want "something else" it's the game that requires more combat mechanics. As long as XIV remains a number game where only damage and HP matters, we'll always run to the same problem.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

??

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No matter how 'confident' you are in your abilities, being good in one role is always going to come at the cost of being even better at another. It's called deskilling, and it's true of any procedural task. If you want to be the best DPS player you can be, then you have to invest your time into playing DPS and maintain that focus. The same is true for tanking.

Currently, it's not worthwhile to be a skilled tank because the game does not reward it. It is, however worthwhile to be a skilled DPS.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

No matter how 'confident' you are in your abilities, being good in one role is always going to come at the cost of being even better at another. It's called deskilling, and it's true of any procedural task. If you want to be the best DPS player you can be, then you have to invest your time into playing DPS and maintain that focus. The same is true for tanking.

Currently, it's not worthwhile to be a skilled tank because the game does not reward it. It is, however worthwhile to be a skilled DPS.

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"however worthwhile to be a skilled DPS" in what way

Greater total contribution.

Because so much of tank sustain in 8-man content goes to waste (no reward in additional healer attacks, since they're already typically capped on offensive uptime), there is too little difference between a mid and great tank in total contribution from particularly good use of defensives to make up for the greater difference in total contribution between a mid and great DPS in damage dealt than between a mid and great tank.

As such, DPS more rewards your party for placing its skilled players in that role -- or, more rewards players for becoming skilled in that role (as compared to tanks or healers).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

????????????
I can press question mark too

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"It's not worthwile to be a skilled tank, however worthwhile to be a skilled DPS".
"Currently" with the current jokes of DPS check.

I've read nonsense but this one takes the cake. And of course still no facts, numbers to back up that claim.
I've seen enough, thanks for the good laugh.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

...

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The question marks were for you putting forward a quote that was never stated in the thread. Unless you were quoting yourself, of course.

So long as you have a group of eight players able to play team jumprope, raid DPS is the only thing that matters. Even after you make the check, having higher DPS totals means that you bypass mechanics and clear more efficiently. Tanking, as it stands, confers next to no additional benefit for skilled play. So long as someone can press the invuln button at the correct timestamp, it doesn't really matter who you have in that role. That's the problem with tanking. And doubling down on bad design choices and overpowered mitigation/sustain tools is what's reinforcing this status quo. Tanking has become a culture of mediocrity.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Greater total contribution.

Because so much of tank sustain in 8-man content goes to waste (no reward in additional healer attacks, since they're already typically capped on offensive uptime), there is too little difference between a mid and great tank in total contribution from particularly good use of defensives to make up for the greater difference in total contribution between a mid and great DPS in damage dealt than between a mid and great tank.

As such, DPS more rewards your party for placing its skilled players in that role -- or, more rewards players for becoming skilled in that role (as compared to tanks or healers).

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In a good group, dps do 12% (brd-dnc)-15% of the damage, tanks do 10%-12% of the damage, I dont feel more useful parsing 99 on drg rather than on gnb ?
And even the high end optimization is not that hard on most dps classes, i'll argue that the 6-2 drk rotation is harder than at least half of the dps classes ?

I dont understand ?

Monowheel is listed just before the primal mounts, by the way.

In a good group, tank damage isn't overlapping with physical ranged. Tanks haven't had competitive damage output since early Stormblood, and it's just gotten worse with every expansion. I'm sorry to say, but this game is definitely biased towards DPS.

Out of curiosity, though, after DT's MP nerfs DRK is down to 7.2 spenders every two minutes. Is it really accurate to still call it a 2/6? It's more like a 2/5 now.

As if the mount meant anything.
Anyone can clear savage, including casuals. Especially this tier, I've been helping casual groups on various jobs.

Lyth, with all respects, you have no interest in playing tank or motivation as you've shared with us.
And since you want to play the post history game, perhaps you should try to apply your own words:

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The way I see this escalating is that you will see more and more people trying to sabotage other players' job designs to get ahead. SE should start actively screening feedback based off of who actually plays the jobs in question.

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With all due respect, I've cleared raid content on WAR and DRK for much longer than either of you. I don't need to submit my curriculum vitae to post in here. We're also talking about role design rather than job design. Feel free to point out what competitive edge you think I would gain out of seeing these changes. If anything, I'm telling you outright that DPS offers significantly more raid value, and that I want this to change so that tanks can offer more impact.

If you still have something of substance to offer on the discussion points at hand, by all means. The current design of tanking is poor and offers little in the way of skill expression. Progressive inflation of mitigation and sustain toolkits is trivialising encounters. The focus should be on making button presses more meaningful and more nuanced. If anyone can do it, it's not worth doing. The status quo needs to change.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

With all due respect, I've cleared raid content on WAR and DRK for much longer than either of you. I don't need to submit my curriculum vitae to post in here..

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You don't need to post your curriculum vitae but for some reason you feel you need to hide it.
This is quite hypocritical after digging in player profile and post history.

A long experience doesn't equal a good experience. You can play for 20 years without ever pushing your capacities but one guy with 1 year of experience can outclass you.

Your opinion is flawed as long as you lack critical knowledge of tank role and gameplay.
Play tank in DSR/TOP, that's where the value of Tank skill will be highlighted the most.

I've noticed that every time the discussion around Bloodwhetting comes up, you seem to go out of your way to try and shut down the discussion. You were doing this as well in the Warrior Rework discussion thread last week until everyone else had enough with it. Even to this day, your contributions amount to simply 'nerfs are bad' and 'tanks are fine'.

If you still have points to discuss around why you think Bloodwhetting, Shake it Off, and Holmgang are acceptable in their current form, then by all means. Tanking and healing will not improve until the design philosophy changes and the defensive powercreep gets reined back.