Have Tanks been dumbed down to much?

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Originally Posted by kidalutz

As a healer I can only say this would be a terrible idea at least 70% of my runs I'm stuck trying to keep up a tank that already dont know how to use a cooldown for defense so they dont pop like a water balloon I can only imagine how bad it would be if they had to stance dance as well.

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"Tank what are you doing? Tank plz... TANK STAHP!" x10

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

You serious? Stormblood gutted DRK far worse than in shadowbringers. In SB we said goodbye to delirium, shadowskin, dark dance, bloodprice+bloodweapon big pull combo, low blow/reprisal procs, scourge, and any sort of "difficult" and thoughtful management only to be stuck with mindlessly spamming dark arts and then built up blood to mindlessly spam dark arts even faster and longer with the occasional not-fellcleave on the side. Heavensward DRK had a lot more original mechanics than just mindlessly spamming dark arts and you clearly say you mained it in HW so you should know what I'm talking about it. You can hate shadowbringers DRK all you want and I agree with some of your points, but don't sit there and try to say SB DRK was loyal to HW's identity because it was long dead once the expansion came out.

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to SB we only lose the parry mechanics aka dark dance and reprisal with in some degree was necesary bcs lock DRK in the MT spot, we lose delirium as a combo and scourge, the rest of the skills stay with changes of priority like blood price or dark arts but they all still stay in the game. in resume we only lose a combo finisher a dot and the parry mechanic in practice.

on SHB we lose the entire dark arts mechanic no more enchance skills, we lose the other combo we have, we complety lose blood prize, we lose dark passenger, we lost most of out MP spenders, we literaly lose blood weapon and delirium and get a verion of infuriate and inner release, we did lose everything, i don't say it for exagerate, SB lose little mechanics and adds new ones and certain skills were just placed on other stuff like blood price but our aoe mechanic remain being as rewarding as always, what SHB bring? over simplified single target rotation, oversimplified aoe rotation, we complety lose too the mass puling self regen, we did lose sole survivor and other stuff, yes dark skin hurts but rampart is the same, i firmly consider we lose much much more this expansion but it can be debatable.

about the DA spam it's just taste i gues, i kinda like it and find it challenging stay all the time controling my MP and blood, it was really complex sbut i was fine if this expansion just keep the mechanics and tune down a bit the span and adds new options to spend you MP like edge but with a recast or something, this was just overkill.

Why do people still falsely claim tanks have been "dumbed down"?

If anything, they require slightly more skill to play now since we're taking more damage and need to use our CDs more efficiently.

Literally the only thing tanks "lost" was a combo that was only ever used maybe once or twice a fight. That's not "dumbing down".

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Why do people still falsely claim tanks have been "dumbed down"?

If anything, they require slightly more skill to play now since we're taking more damage and need to use our CDs more efficiently.

Literally the only thing tanks "lost" was a combo that was only ever used maybe once or twice a fight. That's not "dumbing down".

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Because Dark Knight doesn't have the absurdly busy rotation it did back in HW, and 4.2 Warrior only got amplified. Beyond that, tanks are pretty much what they've always been. Aggro management hasn't been an issue since 2007, so I don't see why people complain about that.

It's pretty funny that this thread went from "tanks are dumbed down because I can't needlessly spam the rage of halone combo for max threat gainz" to "well tanks are dumbed down because one out of four is, in theory, easier than it was four years ago" the second people pointed out that aggro generation in stormblood endgame content basically boiled down to "are your dps players using diversion" rather than to any skill on the part of the tanks.

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Originally Posted by kidalutz

As a healer I can only say this would be a terrible idea at least 70% of my runs I'm stuck trying to keep up a tank that already dont know how to use a cooldown for defense so they dont pop like a water balloon I can only imagine how bad it would be if they had to stance dance as well.

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So the "solution" is to dumb everything down so the bottom of the barrel players can cope with it ? Come on.

Other than that, stick to [Loot][Duty Complete] runs, though those can be trappy as well.

Have they been "dumbed down"? I mean... sorta. They removed choices that bad tanks would make. All the tanks play very similarly to how they did before, even with the stuff removed. People might point out DRK but honestly its still a matter of mana management like it's always been. All the tanks are more complex to play in AOE situations (possible exception being DRK since I and most people really enjoyed their aoe kit before).

If I had a complaint it would be the relative strength of our short CD abilities (sheltron/TBN/etc). I feel like DRK got the best deal on that one by a mile. Overall though, I think the tank changes were a definite step up.

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Originally Posted by Steelbreeze

Have they been "dumbed down"? I mean... sorta. They removed choices that bad tanks would make. All the tanks play very similarly to how they did before, even with the stuff removed. People might point out DRK but honestly its still a matter of mana management like it's always been. All the tanks are more complex to play in AOE situations (possible exception being DRK since I and most people really enjoyed their aoe kit before).

If I had a complaint it would be the relative strength of our short CD abilities (sheltron/TBN/etc). I feel like DRK got the best deal on that one by a mile. Overall though, I think the tank changes were a definite step up.

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I really don’t consider it MP management anymore though.We only have three skills that draw from our MP and none of them are particularly hard to juggle or keep track of as long as you are not just haphazardly pressing buttons. Maybe this view stems for the fact that I’ve been playing DRK since HW which, IMO, required far more MP management.

Gimping Abyssal drain was one of the worst decisions they ever made along with nixing Blood Price in its entirety. Unleash + Stalwart just feels awkward to use (and doesn’t replenish a satisfying amount of MP either).

TBN is incredibly strong but it can sadly (a lot of the time) lead to a DPS loss when something doesn’t break the barrier.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

I really don’t consider it MP management anymore though.We only have three skills that draw from our MP and none of them are particularly hard to juggle or keep track of as long as you are not just haphazardly pressing buttons. Maybe this view stems for the fact that I’ve been playing DRK since HW which, IMO, required far more MP management.

Gimping Abyssal drain was one of the worst decisions they ever made along with nixing Blood Price in its entirety. Unleash + Stalwart just feels awkward to use (and doesn’t replenish a satisfying amount of MP either).

TBN is incredibly strong but it can sadly (a lot of the time) lead to a DPS loss when something doesn’t break the barrier.

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They just wanted to finally kill DRK's self sustain in dungeons is all. I mean it was ridiculously OP (and fun) but you know only healers are allowed to heal. It seems like they just exchanged our self sustain for more damage, but we need a bit more mana regain to spam flood of shadow/dark more. I would be happy if they just gave us some charges on abyssal drain. But I don't see them changing abyssal drain to how it was.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

I really don’t consider it MP management anymore though.We only have three skills that draw from our MP and none of them are particularly hard to juggle or keep track of as long as you are not just haphazardly pressing buttons. Maybe this view stems for the fact that I’ve been playing DRK since HW which, IMO, required far more MP management.

Gimping Abyssal drain was one of the worst decisions they ever made along with nixing Blood Price in its entirety. Unleash + Stalwart just feels awkward to use (and doesn’t replenish a satisfying amount of MP either).

TBN is incredibly strong but it can sadly (a lot of the time) lead to a DPS loss when something doesn’t break the barrier.

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Well, it's certainly not complicated now, but it wasn't particularly complicated before either. I like that aspect of TBN though, makes it more important to get the timing right and even sometimes having it not pop due to pure rng is ok with me, adds spice.

Tanks are fine, DRK just has lackluster options when it comes to doing damage when their best options are just "hit thing hard" and "Hit everyone with a wet noodle."

They could use a stacking dot with their spenders or at least have a chance to proc dark arts.

Isn't the only worthwhile mana management DRK's have is pooling for trick attack windows and keeping 3k in the pool for a TBN if needed? That seems like the opposite of worthwhile resource management since you're doing nearly the same thing every situation. I'm only 72 and haven't experienced any raid encounters, but assuming TA windows are the big burst windows, you'd have no incentive to use MP outside those windows unless it's to avoid overcapping or for a TBN. Adding to a lack of management is the darkside mechanic, which is a mechanic in name only. They could slap a 10% potency gain on every ability, remove darkside, and there wouldn't be a change in game play at all.
I would guess depending on the encounter there will be times when dps is needed now and a TA burst window isn't going to be used, but that seems like the extent of decision making that goes on with mana management.

1. Keep 3k in the pool if a TBN may be needed in the next 30 secs.
2. Pool mana for TA windows.

dumbed down, yeah. Kinda. I like the idea of mainly have a set rotation and not having the enmity combos. The only issue is that the rotations are rediculously easy and not engaging. I speak mainly from a DRK main prospective. It's a clone of WAR and ruled by the recast timer instead by personal decision making about resources. It's not fun, it's lazy design to reskin war as a DRK. The things that worked previously did so bc there was ample choice about how to gain mp and how to spend it within the kit. Now there's one - BW - and it's ruled by the timer. Now it's a budget war with def ability tied to mp but few abilities to bring you back to utilize the same resource pool for damage.

I understand from a business prospective why most jobs have been dumbed down but to clone DRK after war? You might as well have three tanks.

If SE wants to have classes accessible to the average player that have a low skill ceiling and perform well then I'm totally cool with that. At the same time there should still be classes that have a high skill ceiling and low floor and reward you for mastery and punish you severely for bad gameplay in addition to your knowledge of the fight. DRK, if it's the pure resource tank it was originally designed as, should and would fulfill that niche for the player base.

I know it's a tall order to balance the effort put into a high demanding job verses a low skill job but surely SE can figure this one out.

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Originally Posted by Ivellior

There are 2 categories of people in this thread:
1. People who like dpsing and they think tanks this expansion are fun.
2. People like tanking and they think tanks this expansion are not fun (they are boring, dumbed down etc.)

My only question to the 1st category of people is why do you play a tank instead of dps?

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Tanking has been basically just DPS that hold hate since 3.0. They buffed threat to the point where you didn't need your tank stance and the damage you took in Alexander Savage was the same or in some cases actually lower than the damage you took in regular Binding Coil of Bahamut so mitigation didn't matter except for like the beams with a super long cast.

Really, it stems from the original failed WAR design (if anybody remembers, there was a time when WAR had virtually no mitigation because it was a "DPS/self-heal" tank) that made it useless on hard-hitting content. Square Enix fixed WAR, but in 3.0 they made DRK a magic tank and PLD a physical tank so damage on the tanks had to be made low enough to survive without a cooldown to avoid the 2.0 WAR problem again. Finally, they've "fixed" it by just making the tanks DPS with like 5 mitigation skills that are all the same and eliminating threat as a mechanic entirely.

Having said that, I do like the changes to tanks:

I do miss a lot of things that separated good tanks from bad like deciding when to use Inner Beast or Fell Cleave with Wrath/Beast Gauge, rotating the Blind with Flash with the Stun from WHM's Holy, or deciding when to use MP on The Blackest Knight. Now you just mash your DPS rotation mindlessly and pop one of your cooldowns sometimes. The support skills all the tanks have are cool, but they're no different from the ones DPS have.

I don't miss TP as a limiting resource. It made sense for DPS AoE, but not for Overpower or ranged attacks. I don't miss PLD having no AoE DPS ability. I don't miss Silence/Stun/Provoke being role skills you have to choose between. I don't miss mashing Dark Arts every few skills...I mean why was that ever a mechanic? So many things have been fixed it's hard to complain.

Something I do find frustrating is they've homogenized the rotation and mitigation for all the tanks, but they still have DRK = Magic Tank and GNB = physical tank. PLD and WAR mitigation works on everything. I swear, they're just being stubborn about admitting gimmicky "uniqueness" in mitigation was a mistake.

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Originally Posted by Ivellior

There are 2 categories of people in this thread:
1. People who like dpsing and they think tanks this expansion are fun.
2. People like tanking and they think tanks this expansion are not fun (they are boring, dumbed down etc.)

My only question to the 1st category of people is why do you play a tank instead of dps?

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Or may be there are third type of players who dislike the blue dps mentality since HW and feel it get worse in SB, and finally found out ShB have fully accepted the blue dps fate and start enjoying it

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Originally Posted by Ivellior

There are 2 categories of people in this thread:
1. People who like dpsing and they think tanks this expansion are fun.
2. People like tanking and they think tanks this expansion are not fun (they are boring, dumbed down etc.)

My only question to the 1st category of people is why do you play a tank instead of dps?

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This is one hell of strawman argument. The majority of people don't fit into either of these categories. I enjoy tanking and hate playing DPS classes, and I find tanks in this expansion satisfactory. Nothing behind the methodology of tanking has changed since HW, SE has just removed some of the un-needed fat. I re-iterate: Aggro management was never a concern because it came down to DPS pressing the right button, and use of tank-stance dropped the further on things went.

In this thread, tanks are too dumbed down. In another thread, tanks have too many abilities and want a 1 button combo.

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Originally Posted by IBLazORI

In this thread, tanks are too dumbed down. In another thread, tanks have too many abilities and want a 1 button combo.

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Well for people that think having more then one button to push is clearly playing the wrong game. That why a lot of people left World of Warcraft. Sadly I feel FF14 is taking the wrong idea's from WoW.

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

Or may be there are third type of players who dislike the blue dps mentality since HW and feel it get worse in SB, and finally found out ShB have fully accepted the blue dps fate and start enjoying it

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That would be me. I mean it would be nice if Paladin, Warrior and Dark Knight did not play so similar to each other.

With all their tools they have. They had to give both Paladin and DRK Warrior beast gauge. I could go into a go rant on why the three older tanks play the same.