How do we feel about tank damage right now?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Not one of those examples are uniquely tank mechanics or responsibilities. The exact same mechanic is done by all other roles, only in different fights and with different stack-anchors.

That's... kind of the point. Tanking right now is almost devoid of... tanking. At most, we hit a damage-intake CD between our damage-output CDs, or divert the aim of a boss. That's literally it for our uniqueness (and technically not even the mitigation is unique, given the physical ranged role). There's nothing to build towards for mitigation. The use of any given skill allows for no impact on or integration with our survival beyond "Did you press it in time last time and, given that, did you press it in time this time?"

But, that doesn't have to be the case. It just takes more than a bean's worth of imagination and not pandering to a lowest denominator.

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Unfortunately they probably want tanking to be more new player friendly, it reeks of this idea from them with all the changes to tanks. Now look, I appreciate the hate change, it made this wierd dycotimy where DPS/Healers had to actually cooldown/watch their own personal hate and tanks basically shirk'd to keep ahead while also making Ninja more MANDATORY of a pick in most cases for shadewalker. I honestly hated the forced 'meta' to always have a Ninja in the group during SB, but it was necessary because a Tank had a gimped opener if they didn't because they had to throw in an aggro combo to establish hate leading to borked openers. Unfortunately the affect on tanking has resulted in the loss of stance dancing which is a high skill technique when progging and even doing ultimate content. That got chucked out the window (it also nerfed WAR as it was one of their strengths being the best tank to stance dance).

So, if SE wants us Tanks to be able to be new player friendly to get more players to try tanking, fine by me. However, they need to have more engaging OT mechanics at the very least in the last 2 encounters of these tiers, I shouldn't be basically twiddling my thumbs waiting for the forced tank swap for me to do what my role is, and make these rotations at least somewhere closer to DPS. I mean jesus, DRK/WAR are starved for offensive skills. Bring back our old skills if you have to, bring back Scourge, give WAR some OGCDs to make us more involved with our Beast Guage, give Paladin some sort of way to dump our oath guage (cause you only use shelltron with it and intervention, which means just use our guage on Tankbusters) and give GNB another resource to play with. I mean all GNB does is build up two charges and that's it. Thier job guage feels unfinished.

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

Unfortunately they probably want tanking to be more new player friendly, it reeks of this idea from them with all the changes to tanks.

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Which really bugs me...A "new player" doesn't start at level 80 in Eden Savage, so why tanking at this level should still be "new player friendly" ? Even if you start at level 60 with the Gunbreaker (Which, IMO, is still a wrong move), you should have these 20 last levels to learn how to deal with advanced tank skills and/or mechanics.

And if you bribe your way with a potion, then it's on you to make up for what you missed.

Tank stance was never a skill check. It just separated out tanks into players who were 'in the know' from people who weren't. The latter category progressively shrunk over the course of ARR to Stormblood as the issues around tank stance and tank gearing became basic knowledge in raiding. The term "stance dancing" is a complete misnomer.

Enmity is a proxy for actually doing damage. Do you know what's less exciting than just doing damage? Just doing fictional damage. No, the enmity and stance changes were incredibly good changes for the role.

But by cutting out the fluff, we've also exposed the underlying problems.

Positioning is my biggest gripe at the moment. This has never really been FFXIV's strongest suit. But by Stormblood the fight designers had became so enamoured with their own fight choreography that they just took player agency out of it with auto-positioning bosses. This might be my rose-tinted glasses, but this is one area of fight design that Warcraft devs seem to (at least historically) have understood better.

Raiding is filled with all-or-nothing checks. During progression, a single mechanics error from a single party member is (theoretically) supposed to trigger a wipe. If dps players can cause a wipe by not moving their icons to the correct places at the correct times, surely we can trust our tanks with genuinely threatening mitigation checks? It seems like most of the relevant damage in any given fight is on the raid, rather than on the tank.

It's like your tank isn't even there.

I think the concept of "carry potential" is an important factor in drawing skilled players to a role. If the work that you do doesn't carry an impact, then why invest effort to get good at it? With tanks, you have a role that is paradoxically intimidating to newer players (in dungeon content), yet leaves more experienced players with less opportunity to impact their team (in raid content).

And yet we seem surprised at tank numbers.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yeah, but that really doesn't have anything to do with increasing damage.

It's already been stated here that the end goal is more damage. The method it gets it doesn't matter, but if the method itself changes while the damage goal doesn't, then they don't want it.

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This, exactly. While it's true a few have mentioned wanting increased complexity/engagement in tanking that doesn't necessarily mean a change to how we deal damage, the main thrust of this thread is that a some people believe tanks should do more damage because they don't think tanks are doing enough damage right now, and to hell with game balance (both between the three roles and among the tanks).
Now, this isn't to say a damage increase for tanks isn't warranted, but if one were to happen it would certainly be small. Something on the order of 1-2% of total, not the 12-15% that has been suggested elsewhere in the thread.

Now, while an argument could certainly be made that tanks could use more "stuff to do" outside of the normal rotations, I think the better way to go about it is not just adding a bunch of dps, (either in the form of potency boosts or additional combos) but also considering how to encourage and reward tank-like behavior. Something new and different, like maybe TBN could apply a stacking buff to the DRK each time it's broken, and upon the 4th time it's broken (so functionally about a low 60's CD) the DRK gets some kind of noticeable dps boost, either via a powerful oGCD move, or a new combo being unlocked, or what have you. The DRK is actively encouraged to use TBN to protect not only himself but his allies, with a commensurate payoff at the end that keeps in line with the feel of the job. Much preferred to just tacking on "1k dps" and calling it quits. Add a hedge in there such that if TBN isn't broken, progress is still made towards the goal by an equal % to the amount of damage TBN absorbed. This way no TBN is "wasted" so to speak; you'll always get something out of it, and it should be powerful enough that a DRK would actively look forward to using it as much as possible. It wouldn't refresh Darkside, so Flood/Edge still have their place, and now it's more of a game to balance the MP usage such that you don't drop Darkside inadvertently while you try to maximize TBN usage.

Obviously just an idea, and I'm sure there are problems and holes in it, but it's leaps and bounds more interesting than "1k dps" or "another combo." There's loads of potential among the tanks for tank-like stuff that could result in a noticeable (but minor) increase in damage. Something that will make people "feel" like they're contributing more (because they are) but also making it so said contribution isn't focused around dealing damage. Yes, damage becomes a reward, but it's a reward that comes from playing in a tank-like manner. You get rewarded for reducing damage. I see so few tanks use their "helper" abilities despite the great power they have that it's honestly quite sad. They're literally throwing free complexity out the window, and it's not like there isn't an upside to it either. A well-timed helper buff can save a vuln'd or low-life dps, and even if no one is actively at risk, damage mitigated is damage that doesn't have to be healed, giving healers more leeway to do other things (mostly nuke I'd imagine). Ok, so that stuff isn't immediately noticeable, I get it. Then let's make it noticeable. Let's lean on *that* to add complexity, and in the process sure, beef up tank damage a bit when it's done correctly.

But please, please....don't just sit here and advocate for a blanket damage increase like that's going to solve anything. Suggest ideas for better tank complexity that focused on tank-like behavior, even if those ideas are ridiculous at least they're better and more interesting than a potency boost.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's like your tank isn't even there.

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To be fair, apart from pushing phase transition, most of the fights unfold like the whole party isn't even there. It would be more interesting to have less scripted sequence, and a somehow logical use of skills.
For example, in E2S, you mostly know in advance what kind of Doomvoid move it will do, even if your positionning will make it useless way before the cast.

In my opinion, it would be much more interesting to have more "feedback" from the boss (i.e, the DPS are really hurt so I'll do that big AoE to kill them instead of doing a tankbuster on a target with full health) or a little bit of random so that you'd have to react on the fly (i.e attacks have their own cooldown and the boss will pick one among those that are ready).

The discussion around tank damage is just about letting tanks feel relevant. It's the only meaningful way of differentiating between tanks of different skill levels in game at the moment. If you continue to de-emphasise that, we have nothing.

Why scupper your only stopgap solution? You need more reasons to make good tanking valuable, not fewer. Absolutely fix the other issues, but don't continue to sabotage the one part that's keeping everything afloat.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's the only meaningful way of differentiating between tanks of different skill levels in game at the moment.

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Not to sound like a broken record, but "differentiating tanks of different skill levels" is, again, completely unrelated to how much damage tanks do compared to DPS and healers.
Basically : 99th percentile = good, 5th percentile = bad.

The relative damage determines the impact of your performance. The wider the gap, the less value that 99% percentile performance carries to your team as a whole. Your team is better off moving a less competent player into the tank slot and having you switch to dps.

The people who seek out support roles (tanking and healing) do so to bring value to their team. If you devalue these roles, they become superficially more 'accessible', but you also end up driving away the very sort of personality type who seeks them out in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Your team is better off moving a less competent player into the tank slot and having you switch to dps.

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Unless :

• You're not as skilled as a DPS compared to the DPS job of the less competent tank
• Your DPS is not geared properly because you use the weekly rewards to equip the job you like
• The less competent tank might have tanking problems putting your party at risk
• You're less accustomed to the mechanics for a DPS and thus have a greater chance of failing them
• You don't want to raid as a DPS
• The less competent tank doesn't want to raid as a tank

So, basically, you need an 8 planet alignment for asking a competent tank to switch...and all of those would have been the same in previous expansions.

FFXIV's job system is designed around you being able to swap jobs and roles at a whim. I understand that some people identify as career 'tanks' and 'healers'; these players won't change up what they do regardless of how the game is designed (unless they find a different game that gives their role more interesting gameplay). Roleplaying considerations aside, dps is the role which has the greatest carry potential at the moment. If you can't trust your tank to press the invuln button at four pre-ordained timestamps in a 10 minute fight, they're not going to cut it as dps either.

Personally, I think a well designed MMO should aim for the reverse: tanking and healing should be your most reliable teammates, because that's what your typical type A tryhard wants to be: in-front of the boss, coordinating the team, or controlling the flow of the fight. Not watching the fight unfold on auto-pilot or pressing the occasional oGCD heal with a paperweight sitting on the Stone keybind. I feel like the past two expansions have progressively taken steps in the wrong direction.

Most people naturally migrate towards dps, and most people also want to fly under the radar. Let them have that, and let it be nice and low impact (but look flashy and important).