How do we feel about tank damage right now?

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

You are not wrong, because i gave up playing tanks due to the reasons given in this thread, they are worthless jobs and progressing them feels like going backwards.

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Too bad giving them a bump on the rainbow bar doesn't fix that.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

People do the exact thing you are writing about, and the consequence of that is DPS queues are long as hell.

And you are inherently wrong, tanks are supposed to be damage dealers, their dps is taken into consideration when designing high level content, like it or not dps is the only measure which we use to determine how good each job is. So how do you know SE doesnt want them to deal damage? Where did you got that info from?
Read again what you have wrote because it sounds absurd, what "enmity management" do you actually mean? There is none, stance dancing? What stance dancing? lol

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I've been playing since the game launched. Every time tanks found a workaround for doing damage it was nerfed. At the beginning accessories weren't locked by class. So tanks wore dps accessories. Next expansions, accessories became class locked.
Afterwards tanks used crafted tank accessories and penta melded STR. SE changed the damage calculations to reduce the effect of STR and next expansion made basic stat (ie STR) melding have no effects.
Tanks would turn off tank stance (it had a -20% damage debuff) in order to increase damage. Next expansion the damage debuff was removed but overall damage output was reduced (ie you got the -20% on your base damage).
So I assume the devs don't want the tanks to do damage.

Enmity management and stance dancing were things that people did before the Stormblood and Shadowbringer tank changes.

Tanks and healers are role most people don't like to play. That's a fact. And unless they go full hybrid like GW2 people will not play those roles, unless they give them damage on par with damage dealers. At that point they are not tanks and healers, they are damage dealers that can heal or tank.

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Originally Posted by Ivellior

I've been playing since the game launched. Every time tanks found a workaround for doing damage it was nerfed. At the beginning accessories weren't locked by class. So tanks wore dps accessories. Next expansions, accessories became class locked.
Afterwards tanks used crafted tank accessories and penta melded STR. SE changed the damage calculations to reduce the effect of STR and next expansion made basic stat (ie STR) melding have no effects.
Tanks would turn off tank stance (it had a -20% damage debuff) in order to increase damage. Next expansion the damage debuff was removed but overall damage output was reduced (ie you got the -20% on your base damage).
So I assume the devs don't want the tanks to do damage.

Enmity management and stance dancing were things that people did before the Stormblood and Shadowbringer tank changes.

Tanks and healers are role most people don't like to play. That's a fact. And unless they go full hybrid like GW2 people will not play those roles, unless they give them damage on par with damage dealers. At that point they are not tanks and healers, they are damage dealers that can heal or tank.

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Tanks found these "workarounds" because quite simply with the way that square enix deigns encounters we do not need the extra vit and defence the tank stance provided and doing more damage had more impact. Now we are locked into not having it and the result is that damage overall is just underwhelming, we still dont need the massive amount of defence and vit we have access to, but now we dont get an option to trade it in for some more damage. Most people I see here do not want tanks to deal the same damage as a dps, 75% seems like the most reasonable number. Sure as Kabooa points out for some people that won't feel like a difference cos boss health would likely be adjusted to accomodate for that, but for others it does make a difference. For some the knowledge that you're doing more adds enjoyment. Obviously gameplay overhauls would be ideal, but no one has put forward a way to change tank gameplay to not be dps oriented that at least I would consider to be fun. When I first got into tanking back in heavensward, I thought it was so awesome that tanks in this mmo could trade defence for damage and still be good at tanking if they were good at the game, you dealt a significant portion of the damage pie too. Now I feel like the game is actively pushing for tanks to dps more than ever, whilst lessening the impact of that dps to almost irrelevant levels.

If you want them to change the encounter design, why not just make the boss do more damage so that having vitality and defensive stats actually matter? Tanks are supposed to be mitigating damage to the best of their abilities. It would also make healers work more. You get to feel more like a tank without doing extra damage.
When I ask people why they aren't asking for more boss damage, they will reply that it doesn't change the way they play. Seeing bigger numbers will not change the way tanks play in raids.

Also if tanks did 75% of dps numbers people would just go with full tanks instead of dps and simply ignore mechanics.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

When I first got into tanking back in heavensward, I thought it was so awesome that tanks in this mmo could trade defence for damage and still be good at tanking if they were good at the game, you dealt a significant portion of the damage pie too. Now I feel like the game is actively pushing for tanks to dps more than ever, whilst lessening the impact of that dps to almost irrelevant levels.

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Tank damage won't be irrelevant until it's down to the 20% or under range. It's currently 55-60%.

Anyone who thinks that's irrelevant should take a long walk along a long pier, because it's a nice day today and they need it.

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Originally Posted by Ivellior

If you want them to change the encounter design, why not just make the boss do more damage so that having vitality and defensive stats actually matter? Tanks are supposed to be mitigating damage to the best of their abilities. It would also make healers work more. You get to feel more like a tank without doing extra damage.
When I ask people why they aren't asking for more boss damage, they will reply that it doesn't change the way they play. Seeing bigger numbers will not change the way tanks play in raids.

Also if tanks did 75% of dps numbers people would just go with full tanks instead of dps and simply ignore mechanics.

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Sure if they could rework the design to account for that that'd be cool but they'd have to rebalance how cooldowns work. I'd have to see how that rework would work, but with how the combat is paced I can't see it working too well. Also if the dps checks were tuned right people wouldnt do that. In alexander you could clear with a party of 8 tanks and regular parties weren't replaced, also we have the diversity bonus in parties now to fight against that. Also if the dps checks were tuned right and the diversity bonus didn't exist, bringing all tanks instead of all dps would still be a net loss of one whole damage dealers worth of damage minimum, which would essentially be like trying to pass dps checks with a party member permanantly dead.

@Kabooa, irrelevant is probably the wrong choice of words, what I meant was the difference between a tank pulling out all the stops to do more damage vs a tank thats kinda average or coasting by isn't as vast anymore so it feels bad to get such diminishing returns on optimisation

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

@Kabooa, irrelevant is probably the wrong choice of words, what I meant was the difference between a tank pulling out all the stops to do more damage vs a tank thats kinda average or coasting by isn't as vast anymore so it feels bad to get such diminishing returns on optimisation

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This isn't unusual among the jobs in general.

Basic understanding of rotation as well as maximizing uptime will land most jobs in the 80-85% range of maximum potential (Note - Not the 80-85% range of comparative performance)

Chasing that last 15% of a job's maximum potential is where almost all of the optimizing is.

Tanks inherently had limiters that you could not bypass without certain jobs, such as threat for Ninjas, and physical only boosters like Red mage and Monk.

This created a much wider range of performance (Those who had and those who didn't), along with the rampant padding of Stormblood. Almost all of these issues were magnified further in regards to Heavensward, where you had the "Trap" limiter of accessories and more physical-only buffs. A tank wearing fending threw the band downward more, while Tanks who wore strength threw it up more - And lets not kid ourselves, any stress wearing Strength brought about was almost entirely passed on to the healer. It's not like the tank could do anything about it.

Shadowbringers is an entirely different beast from both developer design and community metric focus - Much of the above does not exist anymore, credit is given to those who bring buffs, and the band for tanking is much tighter because of it - All of those artificial influences are no longer present.

During the patch this thread was created, I pointed out the error in using log comparisons without adjusting them, and even did the work for them. The difference between 4.4-5 and 5.0 was extremely small once it was all said and done.

As it stands now, as they've opted for more circular potency buffing, an upwards adjustment of around 2-3% is fine - As long as people realize there's no reason the healers shouldn't get one as well. (By comparison to the upward adjustment of 12-15% this thread first asked for)

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Tank damage won't be irrelevant until it's down to the 20% or under range. It's currently 55-60%.

Anyone who thinks that's irrelevant should take a long walk along a long pier, because it's a nice day today and they need it.

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Back in heavensward, tanks weren't far behind the DPS. Heck, a good tank could do about 85-90% of a NIN's DPS of similar skill. Now you're saying we should be content with 55% at the lowest when this is what we've known in the past? Well I suppose it's all fine and dandy for you when you yourself stick to DPS this expansion, no?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This created a much wider range of performance (Those who had and those who didn't), along with the rampant padding of Stormblood.

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What padding, the two instances of O5S and O3S? Out of twelve tiers, two fights including adds created rampant padding? Let's be real, no one in their right mind would use those fights to get a gauge of what tanks were performing in those times. There are still a handful of fights where you could analyze skill and proper DPS disparities like O8S, O12S and so on, and you will find that the tanks weren't that far behind either like today.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This isn't unusual among the jobs in general.

Basic understanding of rotation as well as maximizing uptime will land most jobs in the 80-85% range of maximum potential (Note - Not the 80-85% range of comparative performance)

Chasing that last 5-10% of a job's maximum potential is where almost all of the optimizing is.

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Hang on, I'm not explaining myself that well I don't think. I know that about optimisation already, I'm somone who chases 95+%s (or at least try to my gear rolls have been aweful this tier so far). What I mean was back when tanks dealt a bigger portion of the pie, you were more rewarded for your optimisation, as there was a much larger varience in damage potential, so being a tank who would optimise thoroughly would gain you proportionally more for your team. But now not only is the portion of the pie lowered, but the effort needed to get to the higher end is lesser than before, theres less room to express mastery. I know in general there is not that much room, and Im not kidding myself by saying before tanks were some high art of dealing damage (optimisation was kinda easy in stormblood) but now its even easier and there has been nothing to fill the gap. I'd love for tanking or dpsing mechanics to be more engaging, my issue with tanking mechanics requiring more is it becomes harder to quantify performance and be skillful (as mentioned earlier, tanking is a binary pass of fail, whereas damage is scaling). This is why I'd prefer for tanks to deal more damage and by extension have more in depth damage kits, because what we have as a framework for tanking now, defensive cooldowns, invulns, positioning (sometimes) feels kinda fine to me, they make you feel like a tank and have appropriate uses and pass/fails, so then expanding on the damage dealing kit alongside it is a best of both worlds and makes tanks feel powerful, whilst still keeping dps players necessary.

That went into sorta ramble by the end there, I apologise. TLDR: any rework would be appreciated as long as it has measurable and scalable skill expression, and IMO damage is easier to scale as well as the fact I personally like being a tank that can dish out a reasonably high amount of damage (which is why i stand by 75%)

EDIT: current tanking has appropriate pass fails most of the time, this tier as an off tank it does not feel like one of those times I barely have to make use of my tanking kit at all and my healers are still able to pump damage.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Back in heavensward, tanks weren't far behind the DPS. Heck, a good tank could do about 85-90% of a NIN's DPS of similar skill. Now you're saying we should be content with 55% at the lowest when this is what we've known in the past? Well I suppose it's all fine and dandy for you when you yourself stick to DPS this expansion, no?

What padding, the two instances of O5S and O3S? Out of twelve tiers, two fights including adds created rampant padding? Let's be real, no one in their right mind would use those fights to get a gauge of what tanks were performing in those times. There are still a handful of fights where you could analyze skill and proper DPS disparities like O8S, O12S and so on, and you will find that the tanks weren't that far behind either like today.

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https://www.fflogs.com/reports/x6ajk...pe=damage-done

Convert it to RDPS and get back to me.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...Any&dataset=99

That also doesn't look like 90% to me.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/x6ajk...pe=damage-done

Convert it to RDPS and get back to me.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...Any&dataset=99

That also doesn't look like 90% to me.

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1, i'm not about to do your own homework for you

2, good catch. i should have elaborated. I'm talking about gordias savage tier when tanks were allowed str accessories.

I could care less about how much damage I’m doing as my DRK. What I do care about is HOW I’m doing said damage, our skills are so straight forward and dull.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

1, i'm not about to do your own homework for you

2, good catch. i should have elaborated. I'm talking about gordias savage tier when tanks were allowed str accessories.

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1. I've already done it, I just thought maybe you'd want to, you know, back up your statements instead of hoping I'm too lazy to do it. You can check in the thread, it's probably around page 60 or so.

2. Seems to me as early as Midas, they too decided Gordias was a dumpster fire. Gordias's closest contemporary is Deltascape, and by the time Sigmascape came around, that was no longer the case.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Back in heavensward, tanks weren't far behind the DPS. Heck, a good tank could do about 85-90% of a NIN's DPS of similar skill. Now you're saying we should be content with 55% at the lowest when this is what we've known in the past? Well I suppose it's all fine and dandy for you when you yourself stick to DPS this expansion, no?

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To be fair, Ninja's been knee capped for most it's existence to deal less damage. Why? Because people valued Trick Attack so much. Stormblood didn't fix it's damage, just merely gave it more utility to the point it was almost an auto include.

Only now with it's Raid Utility stripped have the devs allowed it to get more damage. Also tanks had to make their entire right side STR based which is debated to this day so it wasn't as clear cut as you seemed to make it.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

That went into sorta ramble by the end there, I apologise. TLDR: any rework would be appreciated as long as it has measurable and scalable skill expression, and IMO damage is easier to scale as well as the fact I personally like being a tank that can dish out a reasonably high amount of damage (which is why i stand by 75%).

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Frankly I would like more meaningful Don't-Die-Do-Kill trade offs. It doesn't need to be a harsh stance system, though I would like one represented on one job.

The choice should be do damage, or don't die. Not do damage and still be hit less than every other archetype because the tank role is more bloated with passive stats than a whale that's been in the sun too long.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the tank archetype dealing high damage, but there is something inherently wrong with wanting our current version of them to do so.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Sure if they could rework the design to account for that that'd be cool but they'd have to rebalance how cooldowns work. I'd have to see how that rework would work, but with how the combat is paced I can't see it working too well. Also if the dps checks were tuned right people wouldnt do that. In alexander you could clear with a party of 8 tanks and regular parties weren't replaced, also we have the diversity bonus in parties now to fight against that. Also if the dps checks were tuned right and the diversity bonus didn't exist, bringing all tanks instead of all dps would still be a net loss of one whole damage dealers worth of damage minimum, which would essentially be like trying to pass dps checks with a party member permanantly dead.

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And yet if it was the safest, easiest option for a bunch of random to go and do the content, an all Tank as damage dealers would become the meta.

We saw this with Rathalos on it's EX at first. It was simply easiest to bring 3 tanks and a healer, as the tanks could still pump out enough damage but also not instantly die to messing up mechanics. Sure as people got used to the fight, and gear came up, you started seeing more DPS in that duty but I still see to this day 3 tanks 1 healer.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

And yet if it was the safest, easiest option for a bunch of random to go and do the content, an all Tank as damage dealers would become the meta.

We saw this with Rathalos on it's EX at first. It was simply easiest to bring 3 tanks and a healer, as the tanks could still pump out enough damage but also not instantly die to messing up mechanics. Sure as people got used to the fight, and gear came up, you started seeing more DPS in that duty but I still see to this day 3 tanks 1 healer.

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Rath EX is different as it was literally designed to be beaten by any team comp and the nature of WARs burst made it the best choice combined with its defence. In anything with a meaningful enrage you would get issues taking multiple tanks

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Rath EX is different as it was literally designed to be beaten by any team comp and the nature of WARs burst made it the best choice combined with its defence. In anything with a meaningful enrage you would get issues taking multiple tanks

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Now, yes.

If people get the Damage numbers they seem to want, and the balance isn't taken into account, how would that shift the meta? Yes Rath EX was designed to be beaten by 'any comp' but Tanks became the preferred choice.

Look we have 2 endings here; 1) Tanks get their much demanded damage and fights aren't changed leading to Tanks possibly taking DPS slots because why wouldn't they if they do enough damage and are safer, or 2) Tanks get their much demanded damage and Fights are changed, making the enrage checks even tighter to compenstate for the new expected damage numbers or just giving the boss more HP, which makes the 'feel good damage numbers' basically a band aid.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Frankly I would like more meaningful Don't-Die-Do-Kill trade offs. It doesn't need to be a harsh stance system, though I would like one represented on one job.

The choice should be do damage, or don't die. Not do damage and still be hit less than every other archetype because the tank role is more bloated with passive stats than a whale that's been in the sun too long.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the tank archetype dealing high damage, but there is something inherently wrong with wanting our current version of them to do so.

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That would just mean OT would be always on Damage mode. Plus, we would just figure out like in Stormblood how to stay in DPS mode.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

There is nothing inherently wrong with the tank archetype dealing high damage, but there is something inherently wrong with wanting our current version of them to do so.

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There might not be anything wrong with either version, but the truth of the matter is that this high-damage tank hero is what we've been given for most of this game's life now. It's what we've come to expect, and that's what has drawn so many tank players such as myself to the role. Had we never known the other version, sure, 60% sounds like a delight and might be in comparison to other games. But that's not the case. We've been given this expectation and now it's been robbed of us, and is being robbed of us even further with the passage of time. That's why a good number of us are unhappy.

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

That would just mean OT would be always on Damage mode. Plus, we would just figure out like in Stormblood how to stay in DPS mode.

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I think it's a worthwhile schemata to look into, and I have no issue at all with OT/MT's having two distinct roles, rotations, and supporting abilities, doubly so if we can fit them onto each singular tank.

The only reason that the DPS MT could exist is that the design allowed it to exist. You wouldn't "stay in DPS stance" if you end up in the floor two autos later.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

That's why a good number of us are unhappy.

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Hey man. I feel for that.

Hence why I said our "current version".

I think the worst I've said of the Heavensward stat situation is that it was a false choice, but conceptually, giving up 25% of your defense for +25% damage is fine. It's a stance swap where you can't change it during a fight.

That's the crux of the issue. Tanks are not weak right now. They're the most bloated they've ever been - It's just not in their beat stick. Relative corrective adjustments are fine. The Ranged are looking to receive one fairly soon, it looks like, so a corresponding one for the tanks and potentially healers would be appropriate.

The kind of sweeping boost that is being asked for requires trimming the fat by a proportional amount, or you're just going to get monkey pawed again.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Now, yes.

If people get the Damage numbers they seem to want, and the balance isn't taken into account, how would that shift the meta? Yes Rath EX was designed to be beaten by 'any comp' but Tanks became the preferred choice.

Look we have 2 endings here; 1) Tanks get their much demanded damage and fights aren't changed leading to Tanks possibly taking DPS slots because why wouldn't they if they do enough damage and are safer, or 2) Tanks get their much demanded damage and Fights are changed, making the enrage checks even tighter to compenstate for the new expected damage numbers or just giving the boss more HP, which makes the 'feel good damage numbers' basically a band aid.

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The only slot a tank would ever take is the flex dps slot otherwise you lose the party diversity bonus and even by taking that one extra tank you are going to make the fight harder in some instance as mechanics that would normally target one of the dps would now target one of the 2 tanks without aggro randomly meaning instead of consistency you have to adjust around rng. And if we go with the 75% figure, sure some parties would take a tank there, the problem is the parties that would feel the need to take a third tank are likely the parties that won't be clearing anyway as they would be missing dps and one person not dying as much isn't going to help that. So there's your first scenario basically debunked, sure some would take extra tanks, and either lose thier diversity bonus which tanks everyones dps or make the fights mechanically more challenging.

Scenario 2, well if they inflated the boss health to match the new tank dps, you'd see no difference, unless you were bad at your job and the new expanded tank dps makes your numbers even worse by comparison. Im also kind of fine with tighter dps checks anyway unless you're doing week 1 prog the dps checks arn't stupidly tight anyway adjusting up a small amount to account for new tank dps won't make or break a party, unless again your party isn't that great, demanding your tanks have better rotational execution isn't much of an ask when its probably currently the easiest job to optimise dps on.

In my opinion tanks need 2 things right now:

1º more dps: it's unrreasonable have healers breathing at our necks when we are supose to be much more agresive than them and our contribution to the raid it's frankly low.

2º more complexity: the role feels empty and to simple to be considering fun, heck even the JP forum are disscussing about this too, the quality of the role has been decreased despite of the necesary changes on the role, we need more skill ceiling and more mechanics to be worry about in all encounters, using simple rotations and use a defensive or 2 to survive it's feel lame at best, we should have stuff that reward you for proper use and optimization of our jobs and feel impactful to the party.

it's hard to belive since i was one that wanted the tank stances changes and the acc ones too but all the changes around it making agro meaning less, defensive skills optimization a joke and our impact to the party insuficient make me wanna go back to stormblood without any doubt, this amount of oversimplification has been gone too far.

just my 2 cent.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Tanks are not weak right now. They're the most bloated they've ever been - It's just not in their beat stick.

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I would argue that they're NOT particularly strong in their mitigation either. Fact is, this entire expansion has been a relative joke in terms of mitigating damage. Before, tank swaps were near really common as tanks had to supercooldown and invuln several times in a fight, and swap to their co-tank to do the same and use their tools as well. the most swapping seen was in leviathan and that wasn't really all that intensive or required as much planning like O10S did. Now that fight required extensive CD planning to make sure you could cover all bases if you were unlucky enough to MT the entire latter half of the fight.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

The only slot a tank would ever take is the flex dps slot otherwise you lose the party diversity bonus and even by taking that one extra tank you are going to make the fight harder in some instance as mechanics that would normally target one of the dps would now target one of the 2 tanks without aggro randomly meaning instead of consistency you have to adjust around rng. And if we go with the 75% figure, sure some parties would take a tank there, the problem is the parties that would feel the need to take a third tank are likely the parties that won't be clearing anyway as they would be missing dps and one person not dying as much isn't going to help that. So there's your first scenario basically debunked, sure some would take extra tanks, and either lose thier diversity bonus which tanks everyones dps or make the fights mechanically more challenging.

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I don't see how it's debunked. If the damage a tank is given allows the team to STILL Clear, a DPS slot is going to be taken, how is this hard to understand? If you can still clear with a third tank, why would you not take it instead of say, MNK, or at this point Ninja which was the lowest DPS I saw for a bit. Yes I'm taking into account Party Diversity Bonus for this. If you can clear with 3 tanks, why would you not take 3 tanks? People will use the easiest, most practical, and most consistent way to beat a fight; that's just how things are. Look at people complaining about the DPS teir lists and BLM being basically a must pick these days because the math shows it's good so the community follows. I've already covered this before, people will follow the math.

And if the math ever comes up that 3 tanks is better, safer, and more consistent way to clera; guess what the meta becomes. I don't think this is hard to understand; if there's little to no difference between the end result, a tank is a better choice as it can eat a DDR mess up and not instant die.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Scenario 2, well if they inflated the boss health to match the new tank dps, you'd see no difference, unless you were bad at your job and the new expanded tank dps makes your numbers even worse by comparison. Im also kind of fine with tighter dps checks anyway unless you're doing week 1 prog the dps checks arn't stupidly tight anyway adjusting up a small amount to account for new tank dps won't make or break a party, unless again your party isn't that great, demanding your tanks have better rotational execution isn't much of an ask when its probably currently the easiest job to optimise dps on.

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Look I don't think either of us want to go through FAUST again, regardless of your skill level. I do agree that tanks are currently in the easiest time to DPS. Healers might actually be even easier given their heals are so strong they can find more than enough time to DPS, which is part of their problem but that's a separate problem. But no, we can't have Healers deal more damage than us because the Devs messed their role up, we simply need add more damage to Tanks because that's the only acceptable solution. No Healer should out damage us!(sarcasm).

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Originally Posted by shao32

1º more dps: it's unrreasonable have healers breathing at our necks when we are supose to be much more agresive than them and our contribution to the raid it's frankly low.

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Something people don't seem to understand is that Healers out damaging us is more a problem on the Healer end than on the Tank end. I'm pretty sure the Devs didn't go into this expansion with the idea of making Healers out damage us, no the idea was different if I recall. The idea was to make their damage skills hit harder to make up for the fact they'd be healing more often. More damage, over less hits. That was the intent I believe which if I'm wrong, I'll own up to that but that's how I absorbed that info.

And we all know they messed that up. Being higher on the damage chart is a by product of the devs not understanding what to do with Healers. Put a different way; how many people would actually be happy if Healers were nerfed into being below us either by fixing their game play(Having to use more GCD heals) or just lowering the damage numbers? Would people still be asking for Tank Damage buffs?

We all know the answer here which is Yes. So quit blaming it on the Healers.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

I would argue that they're NOT particularly strong in their mitigation either. Fact is, this entire expansion has been a relative joke in terms of mitigating damage. Before, tank swaps were near really common as tanks had to supercooldown and invuln several times in a fight, and swap to their co-tank to do the same and use their tools as well. the most swapping seen was in leviathan and that wasn't really all that intensive or required as much planning like O10S did. Now that fight required extensive CD planning to make sure you could cover all bases if you were unlucky enough to MT the entire latter half of the fight.

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Doing a little testing.

Naked Tanks take less damage than fully armored casters and about the same as fully armored dragoons. Their innate trait bonus is -20% damage taken (I've seen varying accounts, so went for the quick and dirty check). Their armor at the current tier appears to put them around an additional 37% on top of that, plus whatever small amount tenacity adds. Comparatively, sigmascape armor appears to have been around 37%.

Skill consolidation and changes vary by jobs, but co-tank skills were markedly improved and expanded at large, so any losses in the other skills are generally covered here, likely with fights like O10s in mind when the boss determines whose face is getting beat.

Transitioning from StB -> ShB is a net gain in mitigation. Whatever amounts that were trimmed down between cooldowns is made up in excess via the tank trait and every tank having a short cast Co-tank ability.

Fight design not pushing that is a separate issue.

Edit: Excluding the paladin, who probably has a net neutral change with Sentinels retuning and Shield changes.

Edit 2: Wrong armor values for edenchoir gear

Discussing how much each role can passively mitigate deliberately distracts from the issue. Does it matter?

Even in a situation in which losing enmity causes the boss to run around one-shotting everyone else, it just means that having a tank is mandatory, the same way that having a healer is mandatory. Ooh! You take less damage than everyone else! And you generate more aggros than anyone else! Isn't that exciting. Surely everyone will flock to the role now.

Likewise, shaming tanks for wanting to do more damage isn't any more subtle. Damage is where the raid value is at the moment. Which is why it's under discussion.

If you want to change that, you actually have to change fight design such that tank positioning and movement are essential to maximising raid dps. Fix one, fix the other, or better yet, fix both. But do neither and you're not providing much incentive to tank.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I don't see how it's debunked. If the damage a tank is given allows the team to STILL Clear, a DPS slot is going to be taken, how is this hard to understand? If you can still clear with a third tank, why would you not take it instead of say, MNK, or at this point Ninja which was the lowest DPS I saw for a bit. Yes I'm taking into account Party Diversity Bonus for this. If you can clear with 3 tanks, why would you not take 3 tanks? People will use the easiest, most practical, and most consistent way to beat a fight; that's just how things are. Look at people complaining about the DPS teir lists and BLM being basically a must pick these days because the math shows it's good so the community follows. I've already covered this before, people will follow the math.

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Youre setting up a ridiculous standard, untraditional party comp runs have ways been a thing (solo heal ect), if youre saying that a party could clear with 3 tanks then thats enough for it to be to much then that is ridiculous, we probably already can do some fights this tier with 3 tanks and i dont see the rush to do so. Also as i mentioned before losing diversity bonus and dps players will likely make the fight harder not easier due to less consistent mechanics and even less health and damage. Theres also the fact that being a tank wont help in most cases either, unless you die to unavoidable mechanics extra defence wont let you live binary pass fail mechanics like most are in this game

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Discussing how much each role can passively mitigate deliberately distracts from the issue. Does it matter?

Even in a situation in which losing enmity causes the boss to run around one-shotting everyone else, it just means that having a tank is mandatory, the same way that having a healer is mandatory. Ooh! You take less damage than everyone else! And you generate more aggros than anyone else! Isn't that exciting. Surely everyone will flock to the role now.

Likewise, shaming tanks for wanting to do more damage isn't any more subtle. Damage is where the raid value is at the moment. Which is why it's under discussion.

If you want to change that, you actually have to change fight design such that tank positioning and movement are essential to maximising raid dps. Fix one, fix the other, or better yet, fix both. But do neither and you're not providing much incentive to tank.

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I don't care 'bout none o'dat. I just wanna be a rockstar hero tank again. Fight design, boss positioning, it's all means to an end: the spotlight. Is it self-centered and conceited? Sure, but it doesn't matter cause it feels good.

LET ME HAVE THAT AGAIN!

No. You can be goalie. Except that the shots on net are completely predictable and happen at fixed timestamps.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

No. You can be goalie.

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As long as I get to be SCOTT. STERLING.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I don't see how it's debunked. If the damage a tank is given allows the team to STILL Clear, a DPS slot is going to be taken, how is this hard to understand? If you can still clear with a third tank, why would you not take it instead of say, MNK, or at this point Ninja which was the lowest DPS I saw for a bit. Yes I'm taking into account Party Diversity Bonus for this. If you can clear with 3 tanks, why would you not take 3 tanks? People will use the easiest, most practical, and most consistent way to beat a fight; that's just how things are. Look at people complaining about the DPS teir lists and BLM being basically a must pick these days because the math shows it's good so the community follows. I've already covered this before, people will follow the math.

And if the math ever comes up that 3 tanks is better, safer, and more consistent way to clera; guess what the meta becomes. I don't think this is hard to understand; if there's little to no difference between the end result, a tank is a better choice as it can eat a DDR mess up and not instant die.

Something people don't seem to understand is that Healers out damaging us is more a problem on the Healer end than on the Tank end. I'm pretty sure the Devs didn't go into this expansion with the idea of making Healers out damage us, no the idea was different if I recall. The idea was to make their damage skills hit harder to make up for the fact they'd be healing more often. More damage, over less hits. That was the intent I believe which if I'm wrong, I'll own up to that but that's how I absorbed that info.

And we all know they messed that up. Being higher on the damage chart is a by product of the devs not understanding what to do with Healers. Put a different way; how many people would actually be happy if Healers were nerfed into being below us either by fixing their game play(Having to use more GCD heals) or just lowering the damage numbers? Would people still be asking for Tank Damage buffs?

We all know the answer here which is Yes. So quit blaming it on the Healers.

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Just some points which address your contributions in this thread

1 - Tank damage needs to be halfway between DPS and Healers. Before any discussions about making tanks more engaging (which needs to be had), there needs to be a base to work from. Healers are doing more damage that tanks now, and it's only going to get worse next tier. This isn't about tank pride or wanting big numbers. Healers doing more damage breaks the game. There are already technically times where a PLD using clemency is an overall rDPS gain, and more scenarios where things like this happen are only going to get more prevalent the higher iLvl gets. At an extreme level, it gets to the point where you wouldn't take a tank at all, because letting a DPS take a buster and raising them with weakness will be an rDPS gain. This will happen if tank damage is not addressed.

2 - Enrage timers now are not tight, outside of the first 2 weeks. I don't know who's been telling you for 3 expansions otherwise, but they're wrong.

3 - The fact you have to use Rath EX as an example to attempt to prove your points speaks for itself. This is a fight deliberately designed to NOT be a normal FF fight and to be as close to a monster hunter fight as the the battle system allows. It is completely irrelevant in any discussion about job balancing whatsoever.

4 - The majority of people in this thread are talking about endgame tanking, have extensive experience of it, and I know in the case of some, contribute to theory crafting on the subject. The likes of Rei and Shao are good tank players who actually have knowledge of endgame tanking so I'd say their opinions hold a bit more weight.

5 - Stop contradicting yourself. Shao did not "blame" healers anywhere. "Healers out damaging us is more a problem on the Healer end than on the Tank end", "quit blaming it on the Healers". Make your mind up.

6 - I'm pretty sure you could clear any of the fights with 3 tanks now. But people don't. Because it's quicker not to. In fact, I see people attempting to solo tank fights way more often. If you are at the point where you need to take 3 or more tanks because the only way you can clear is tank privileging mechanics, then you don't deserve to be challenging that content.

Between this thread and Silverquick in the other DPS thread, what is it with the trend on this forum of people having an opinion on savage content balancing, when they don't have any experience of it?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Discussing how much each role can passively mitigate deliberately distracts from the issue. Does it matter?

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Yep.

It's almost like a role's overall strength has to take everything into account.

Butyouknow.

Lots of people trying to justify why or why not.

How about some ideas of how to do it?

It's about what value you, as a player, bring to the team to change the outcome of the fight.

If the reward of tanking is that you passively take less damage than other players and can press a button once every few minutes to mitigate a tankbuster, then you can stick anyone in that role, including an AI. What's the benefit of being good?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's about what value you, as a player, bring to the team to change the outcome of the fight.

If the reward of tanking is that you passively take less damage than other players and can press a button once every few minutes to mitigate a tankbuster, then you can stick anyone in that role, including an AI. What's the benefit of being good?

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You can't value success without the ability to fail, and guess what a flat potency boost doesn't do?

It doesn't reward you for "being good".

You mean a relative potency boost. A flat potency boost is irrelevant if you boost everyone by the same amount. And it does. Change the weighting, change the impact the player has. At the very least, it means that having a tank with good uptime is somewhat important to clearing.

Granted, it is unfortunate that the primary way that we can impact fight outcome at the moment across roles is through dps. But that's why it's not the only thing that needs to change.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You mean a relative potency boost. A flat potency boost is irrelevant if you boost everyone by the same amount. And it does. Change the weighting, change the impact the player has. At the very least, it means that having a tank with good uptime is somewhat important to clearing.

Granted, it is unfortunate that the primary way that we can impact fight outcome at the moment across roles is through dps. But that's why it's not the only thing that needs to change.

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A flat potency boost as in "Every GCD gains 30 potency", not "Everyone gains 30 potency."

It doesn't. Tanks only gaining a potency boost just changes the tuning down the line. This is why you rarely see potency changes between the start of the tier and the start of the catch up patch.

If you're expected to hit 100, and maximum potential is 130, then getting a 10% boost means you're expected to 110, and maximum potential is 143.

If nothing else changed, then this is your new baseline. 110 is your new 100, and 143 is your new 130. Wherever you landed before, you're going to land in the same spot after.

And Neo-Shiva would have 73.69m health.

You're either not getting it, or deliberately obfuscating to protect your status quo. The actual numbers are irrelevant without a context to interpret them with.

When your latest and greatest Fellest Cleave is doing half the damage of the weakest dps doing a pirouette next to you, that relative difference is what you're going to base your interpretations of what 'strong' is. The devs want to sell tanking with these flashy appearing 'big damage' moves, but relegate you to afk punching-bag duty when you enter raid content. The balance has shifted way too far the other way.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You're either not getting it, or deliberately obfuscating to protect your status quo. The actual numbers are irrelevant without a context to interpret them with.

When your latest and greatest Fellest Cleave is doing half the damage of the weakest dps doing a pirouette next to you, that relative difference is what you're going to base your interpretations of what 'strong' is. The devs want to sell tanking with these flashy appearing 'big damage' moves, but relegate you to afk punching-bag duty when you enter raid content. The balance has shifted way too far the other way.

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All tuning for savage is based around the combined damage contribution of an assumed average party at a certain iLevel. 2 tanks, 2 healers, and some assortment of 4 dps (Some would argue 2 melee, 1 caster, 1 ranged). I can't tell you what that ilvl is, we can only extrapolate from what they say and see if it matches up.

Increasing tank damage just means further content is tuned with this new standing in mind. There is certainly a thresh hold where it's too low, but there is also a thresh hold where it's too high.

We sit on the higher end of that in-between point.

Tanks are not weak.

I'm yet to mention a number.

Again, it doesn't matter if you raise tank damage output, or you lower dps damage output, so long as the relative contributions of tanks increases in relation to dps players. It's your percentage contribution that determines the weighting of your actions. The lower the relative weighting, the less influence you have over the fight outcome. So in a world where you do significantly more damage than a tank, it means that you become much more important to the team's success. That may be convenient for you, but it doesn't suit us, black mage.

There is a balancing point at which both roles have something to contribute and be valued for.