Tank adjustments we can agree on?

If I were given free rein to try balancing out the tanks, I think the goals would be

-establish a strong playstyle & identity for paladin
-bring paladin and dark knight to warrior's level
-relax group composition requirements

So global changes:
-STR down and INT down are changed to damage down (for dragon kick as well). Some boss attacks slightly weakened to compensate.
-Parry stat needs to be revamped entirely, not sure what would be best at the moment
-Fending accessories also need to be changed

Paladin specific:
-Shield Swipe changed to 160 potency and combos into every paladin WS. Pacification removed. Can be used after blocking.
-Sword Oath damage lowered to compensate for Swipe changes
-Savage Blade and Halone enmity modifiers increased
-Enhanced Awareness rolled into base ability
-Enhanced Shield Swipe added at level 44, gives Shield Swipe a 20% chance to be usable when you or a party member takes magic damage.
-Sheltron activates Shield Swipe upon taking magic damage.
-Divine Veil recast to 90 seconds
-Tempered Will recast to 2 minutes, also reduces TP cost of Weapon Skills by 100% for the duration
-While in Sword Oath, Covered damage is reduced by 20%
-Clemency cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds.
-Shield Bash TP cost reduced to 40, leaves debuff that increases TP cost of Shield Bash by 165 for 15 seconds.

It's kind of a lot, but it's all centered around getting swipe procs. This lets you increase your damage by using swipe at the right time. Paladin is still weaker against magic damage than the other two tanks, but with no INT/STR debuff any more the gap isn't as bad. Paladin's physical superiority is also slightly decreased by the elimination of STR debuff.

The Cover and Tempered Will changes are there to make them more universally useful, and the Shield Bash change is to avoid a situation like A4S, where bringing a paladin means that you're forcing your DPS or other tank to do stun mechanics (or throwing away 90 TP every 30s). It still breaks combos and takes a GCD, however. Veil and Clemency are straight buffs, because they need it.

Warrior changes:
-They don't really need this, but I think it would be "neat" if Bloodbath was 30 seconds without the trait, and the Blood Shower trait made your Bloodbath heal nearby party members as well.

Dark Knight changes:
-Sole Survivor restores 200 TP as well when its requirements are met.
-Reprisal changed to: Parries the next physical attack and retaliates with a 210 potency attack that lowers the target's damage dealt by 10% for 20 seconds. 30 second recast.
-Dark Arts Power Slash modifier increased.
-Dark Arts Scourge: Decreases the target's slashing resistance by 10% for 30 seconds.
-Salted Earth: also restores (5-10 TP, haven't run numbers) every tick to party members who are standing in it.

Trying to address any lingering TP or utility issues as well as allowing drk/pld to become available without a ninja. The Reprisal change would let them mitigate physical attacks at the same frequency as paladin and warrior, if not at the same potency, and makes their raid utility less reliant on RNG (though I think current reprisal is fine).

Anyway, that's just me. What I expect will actually happen is:
-enmity modifiers increased for paladin
-potency boosted on shield swipe
-divine veil recast reduction
-royal authority potency increase
and they'll call it a day.

I know a lot of people like this idea of Swipe comboing into a finisher and I also think it would be fun, but I'm also not entirely sure about a mechanic as twitchy as this that only increases DPS for a tank. I would rather they just increase the potency and keep the added enmity from it low to ensure Goring Blade, Halone, and hate all remain high priorities priorities even when it procs so that tanking remains the primary concern. It would be fantastic if the Pacification actually did something so it regains its original interest entirely. (You also have to consider, if you got a proc after the first step of your combo with your adjustment you wouldn't really use it so this still means Shield Swipe is very situational compared to just a strait-up potency buff. Depending on when you got it it would be used, ignored, or held one GCD.)

I quite like the Shield Bash idea. It's a clever way to make Shield Bash more usable without making chain-stun any cheaper than it currently is. However, for it to really be optimal to use it shouldn't cancel combos. A cancelled Royal Authority is a potency loss of 230 so a Monk has to hold their Steel Peek for the entire 40 seconds before it's better for overall DPS to have the Paladin cancel their combo (it's like 55 seconds if you just divide potencies, but assuming Monk potency is worth like 15-20% more than Paladin potency in Sword Oath it's like 40).

The Sole Survivor idea is also clever and I like it in that it would be a fun mechanic. I don't know that your idea would be perfectly balanced (maybe it should only regen TP in Grit since DRK already has Blood Weapon for when OT), but it's a neat solution to DRK's TP issues.

The Salted Earth idea means double DRK would give basically unlimited free TP for all melee so it's not a good idea at all since you basically use it on cooldown anyway.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

(You also have to consider, if you got a proc after the first step of your combo with your adjustment you wouldn't really use it so this still means Shield Swipe is very situational compared to just a strait-up potency buff. Depending on when you got it it would be used, ignored, or held one GCD.)

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I think that's good, though. Every class should have ways it can screw up its execution and ways it can succeed. Plus, you have Sheltron and Bulwark to force out procs when you want them sometimes. I hadn't really considered double dark knight with salted earth, but I guess if they just got the slashing debuff that would be enough utility along with reprisal.

My over complicated fix for living dead

Type Weaponskill
Acquired Level 50 Dark Knight
Requires DRK
TP Cost 0
Cast Time Instant
Cooldown 300s
Range 0y
Radius 0y
Description Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead. Living Dead Duration: 10s
Walking Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, HP remaining will change to a negative number equivalent to maximum HP, the HP bar color will turn red to signify Walking Dead status. Any healing done will lower the negative number closer to a positive threshold and any damage taken will increase the negative threshold(capped by 0 HP and maximum HP respectively) After 10 seconds walking dead status will end and the remaining negative HP will be subtracted from the Dark Knight's Maximum HP.

I.e. 10000/10000 DRK takes damage reducing it past 1 they enter Walking Dead status, HP bar turns red and HP turns to -10000/10000 , gets cured for 4000 between Soul Eater and a Cure I, HP now equals -6000/10000 (the amount healed would also be shown as blue in the HP bar so in this scenario about half the bar is red and half is blue) If the duration of walking dead ends with the DRK at -6000 they would have 4000 HP left when the duration ends. If the 10 seconds ends with the Negative HP / Maximum HP equaling out to zero i.e.-10000/10000 then the Dark Knight would die. Damage can still be taken during Walking Dead status however most Attacks will not kill the Dark Knight.

To Further expand on that, If you are hit for 13k and you are Walking Dead and your maximum HP is 7000, then your HP would go back to -7000/7000 untill you are healed. Attacks will not push you beyond negative maximum HP and healing will not bring your Walking Dead HP past 0.

Personally I don't wanna see any major changes to the tanks we have now. I feel it has more to do with SE and Yoshi's team not delivering well thought out mechanic driven raids.
There should be parts of a fight that only a PLD excels at, parts where only DRK excels, and parts where WAR is needed for more than just massive dps spikes. But no one mechanic/enemy should force a certain party makeup in order to clear. Meaning that all tanks are viable and due to the raid design a party can be encouraged to experiment with multiple different party makeups.
I understand why we don't want homogenization between any of the party roles, but having all these varied discussions encouraged developers to please everybody. We should be calling for redesigned raid mechanics not redesigned classes/jobs.
I'm not sure how many others will agree, but I hope anyone who read this took it with a grain of salt because we all know what opinions are like.

The negative HP thing makes living dead a greater liability as once you get back up to "even" you are effectively susceptible to a one hit kill which isn't the case now. It sounds like it would be worse than it already is. I've never really even needed to use living dead at this point and have been raiding savage for like 2 months now.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

The negative HP thing makes living dead a greater liability as once you get back up to "even" you are effectively susceptible to a one hit kill which isn't the case now. It sounds like it would be worse than it already is. I've never really even needed to use living dead at this point and have been raiding savage for like 2 months now.

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When the duration ends Walking Dead HP is subtracted from Maximum HP, So after 10 seconds if you're healed to 0 an you have a maximum HP of 14000 ,14000 - 0 would be 14000, so you'd have 14000 HP.

The only way you could get 1 hit killed coming out of walking dead state would be if the healers only healed you for a small amount and a tankbuster is coming.

It's basically just a gimmicky holmgang to match the thematic of the class.

It's better thematically (that's literally how I thought LD would work when I first heard about the skill), but I think it would actually be a nerf compared to now. For example, Benediction only heals you one full HP bar worth so it would not top you up from negative HP.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

It's better thematically (that's literally how I thought LD would work when I first heard about the skill), but I think it would actually be a nerf compared to now. For example, Benediction only heals you one full HP bar worth so it would not top you up from negative HP.

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Yeah it's actually how I thought it would work originally too. I'm not sure mechanically how it would work(ideally bene would just put you at zero but you wouldn't need to waste benediction on walking dead anymore either) but it was just kind of one of those things where I wanted to try to throw something out there to keep with the theme but sort of fix its issues. Because the main issues with Living Dead in my opinion are 1) The CD is too long for the effect it gives which 2) isn't exactly lasting. You get 8 seconds of Invincibility if your healers are doing math or saving a CD to heal you at the right time or you get to eat 1 fatal attack before they panic and bring you back to full effectively wasting the entire duration of the skill.

There's also the chance that if you have a notification and they see you use living Dead they'll just panic heal you right away instead of taking the time to DPS freely causing you to waste the CD which then takes a whopping 300 seconds to come back.

I think with how not effective Living Dead is the 300 s CD is kind of terrible.

The funny thing is Living Dead is extremely effective in PVP as you can't die once you're in Walking Dead state and you can self purify it around 9 seconds. But it's nowhere near as powerful in PVE.

Living Dead is actually pretty much equal to Hallowed Ground in A4 Savage because the tank buster lasts 12 seconds. It's actually a bit better with the shorter cooldown.

Holmgang is pretty crippled in A4, but the short cooldown still makes is a good skill. The "oh F*ck" button is pretty well balanced already. It would maybe be good if Living Dead triggered a sound effect or something to make it more obvious to DF healers.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

-Savage Blade and Halone enmity modifiers increased
-Sheltron activates Shield Swipe upon taking magic damage.
-Divine Veil recast to 90 seconds

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You have to bundle enmity bonuses with Shield Oath, because OT PLD will destroy a MT if they get more enmity on their main DPS combo in 50-cap content. The only useful arrangement that wouldn't be fighting for threat constantly is PLD/PLD.

The other suggestions, I don't mind so much. Divine Veil I can't comment on, but its description doesn't look that impressive for how long its CD is. Sheltron should give you one guaranteed block of whatever the next incoming damage is, irrespective of whether it gives you a Swipe proc or not.

I think the biggest change I want before all others is for them to simply remove the damage penalty incurred from having a defensive tank stance up. Make VIT the damage modifier instead of STR and too and we can reduce some of rather large difference between MT and OT damage.

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Originally Posted by Kiri_Tqnikaze

There should be parts of a fight that only a PLD excels at, parts where only DRK excels, and parts where WAR is needed for more than just massive dps spikes. But no one mechanic/enemy should force a certain party makeup in order to clear. Meaning that all tanks are viable and due to the raid design a party can be encouraged to experiment with multiple different party makeups.

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I agree with the other part of your post about making all tanks viable, but making them more niche isn't the way to go about it. The more niche they get the higher the chance of having an odd man out which is the situation we currently have now. Both PLD and DRK need tool kits that are spiritually more like WARs-able to adapt to a multitude of situations. If that leads to some homgenization then so be it so long as its about bringing the player and not the job.

Yeah, making the next raid cater to Paladin is not what I want to happen. I want Paladin and Dark Knight to just both work properly. The change I suggested to DRK and parry would increase their parry rate with DA substantially so Reprisal should be a reliable enough form of mitigation for physical tank busters. I don't know if it would be enough to be honest, but I'm sure it's a good change and it's hard to judge if more is needed or not until another raid drops.

I would honestly be extremely angry if the next raid had a Flatten mechanic every 30 seconds that just wrecked DRK and was perfect for PLD and they didn't bother to fix the tanks at all.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

snip.

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Hallowed Ground is full invincibility, Holmgang stops hp reduction past 1, Living Dead instantly ends the moment you are healed to full regardless of 10 seconds happening or not. Hallowed Ground is just better than Living Dead, Living Dead is worse than holmgang. Holmgang has a shorter CD than living dead and doesn't kill you after its duration if your total HP wasn't healed and it still stops reduction of HP past 1.


Hallowed Ground can be used in any situation, DF, PUG, Static
Holmgang can be used in any situation as well.
Living Dead can not be used with twitchy healers in DF/or PUG groups. Effectively even if your healers wait to heal you for Living Dead you only get 9 out of 10 s for the duration because if they try to heal you up at 10 you'd be dead. Living Dead is nowhere near comparable to Hallowed ground or holmgang. Even still its much closer to holmgang than hallowed ground and with a much longer CD.

As for a sound effect I just use a macro
/micon"living dead"
/ac"living Dead"
/p (Living Dead)(Just used it.)<se.7> HP:<hp>

On a side note despite this showing my remaining HP and spamming it at 1+duration ending I've still had a healer let me die before

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

Yeah, making the next raid cater to Paladin is not what I want to happen. I want Paladin and Dark Knight to just both work properly. The change I suggested to DRK and parry would increase their parry rate with DA substantially so Reprisal should be a reliable enough form of mitigation for physical tank busters. I don't know if it would be enough to be honest, but I'm sure it's a good change and it's hard to judge if more is needed or not until another raid drops.

I would honestly be extremely angry if the next raid had a Flatten mechanic every 30 seconds that just wrecked DRK and was perfect for PLD and they didn't bother to fix the tanks at all.

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Please look forward to it.

Though in all honesty, if the next alexander series has a tank buster every 30-50 seconds that's physical, they better make tome gear equip across all classes so the paladin can swap to dark knight when the final Alexander raid series is magical again.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Please look forward to it.

Though in all honesty, if the next alexander series has a tank buster every 30-50 seconds that's physical, dark knight's are out in favour of paladins, ez.

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PLD would be better on farm for certain. This would depend heavily on whether or not the next phases are giant DPS checks again.

I guess we'll see.

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Originally Posted by karateorangutang

PLD would be better on farm for certain. This would depend heavily on whether or not the next phases are giant DPS checks again.

I guess we'll see.

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Not really. If you're clearing it w/o PLD during progression to farm status it means you don't need PLD when it is on farm status. As farm status means you've got the fight 100% down and the chances of you losing are considerably low.

But in either case I still don't see PLD really making that huge of a come back even during physical tank busters unless for RoH. Tank Swaps and possible WAR MT is how I see groups getting around this.

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Originally Posted by Seku

Not really. If you're clearing it w/o PLD during progression to farm status it means you don't need PLD when it is on farm status. As farm status means you've got the fight 100% down and the chances of you losing are considerably low.

But in either case I still don't see PLD really making that huge of a come back even during physical tank busters unless for RoH. Tank Swaps and possible WAR MT is how I see groups getting around this.

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Don't really dissagree. I just knew in the past theres more room for error with PLD and with gear levels being high then DPS were doing more dmg than needed to be done so a couple tanks I knew preferred PLD to farm because the dmg wasn't needed. Could just be that the outgearing let them play their preferred class.

Not that it matters at all. /shrug.

If they bring back legitimate physical tank busters (the kind that do more than twice your HP at progression gear in all VIT) every 30 seconds, Paladin will make a huge comeback because they will have 50% damage reduction before you pop any of your cooldowns from Halone, Shield Oath, and Sheltron alone while DRK will be out because they won't have 50% damage reduction even if they pop Shadow Wall and will just barely have it if they also get Reprisal, which depends on a proc (and Dark Dance is only a 20% increased chance for that proc).

That's how bad the tank design is right now before we even begin to talk about DPS (which is currently the most important issue), stance dancing, or even include WAR in the equation. The gap between physical and magic for Paladin and Dark Knight is literally that big. It wasn't so noticeable this time around because the only actual tank busters this raid were in A1 and A4 and because long-time PLD players are skilled enough to compensate, but they've written themselves into a corner where they can never have threatening tank busters again or they will make at least one tank so undesirable that they're essentially unusable.

^ @eagledorf

Yep, I've said this since Alexander Savage came out from what I felt from my gut. Tank design in FFXIV is currently broken all over the place with zero design philosophy for actual pure tanking in mind. Instead we are given this system where DRK is OP against a lot of magic dmg, PLD is OP when there is a lot of physical dmg, WAR can eat all dmg fine as the next unless a lot of dmg comes at a very fast pace in huge amounts, and they are also OP with dmg/party dmg utility.

It really isn't a issue anymore to just buff PLD anymore imo. But tanking as a whole in this game needs to be rebalanced/adjusted. Some people call it homogenization while I call it balance. Each tank can still have thier own unique type of play style, and special skill sets they can bring to a party, but yes as tanks they do need to have similar dps/def capabilities. One class can still be better then another in those areas, but it shouldn't really be very noticable to the point one class is required over another where one is just left out, and seen as a burden to a party.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

snip

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Not to mention that while paladin's can take magic attacks....reasonable well (w00t HG) , Dark Knight's will be absolutely massacred by physical.

At the moment with a Hive Shield, my block % is 27% reduction, no sure for the 210 shields but it's not hard to see shelltron being a 30% reduction before 3.2 is released, in which case it's a more useable cooldown than Dark Mind (due to lack of prerequisites), with half the cooldown, for physical tank busters.

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Originally Posted by Isius

It really isn't a issue anymore to just buff PLD anymore imo. But tanking as a whole in this game needs to be rebalanced/adjusted. Some people call it homogenization while I call it balance. Each tank can still have thier own unique type of play style, and special skill sets they can bring to a party, but yes as tanks they do need to have similar dps/def capabilities. One class can still be better then another in those areas, but it shouldn't really be very noticable to the point one class is required over another where one is just left out, and seen as a burden to a party.

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Agreed. The devs are using the wrong aspects of job design to try to differentiate the tanks. PLD can still be a traditional MMO tank, WAR can still be about active mitigation, and DRK can be all about Dark Arts, but the three need to be interchangeable.

As I said before, something needs to be done because otherwise this same problem will repeat itself when the next new tank is introduced.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Dark Knight's will be absolutely massacred by physical.

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DRK isn't that far below PLD for physical damage mitigation. Almost everything PLD has about physical mitigation is RNG or unreliable (the shield, Bulwark, and even Sheltron since it's eating an auto attack almost everytime). The RoH debuff can be replaced by Reprisal (which is also bringing raid wide mitigation at the same time, which RoH does not), Bulwark by Dark Dance even if it's a bit less powerful. You can time Dark Dance in order to have a parry before the physical tank buster for Reprisal. The only thing they don't have is a Sheltron equivalent, but they still have Shadow Wall, Shadowskin and Living Dead which can be rotated for tank busters. PLD for magical damage only has Rempart, Sentinel and HG with no such things like Dark Dance or Reprisal. I think people are exaggerating a lot when it comes to judging the physical mitigation of a DRK vs a PLD. PLD has a real problem dealing with magic, where DRK still has tools against physical, it's not the other way around at ALL, unless you're a bad DRK.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

If they bring back legitimate physical tank busters (the kind that do more than twice your HP at progression gear in all VIT) every 30 seconds, Paladin will make a huge comeback because they will have 50% damage reduction before you pop any of your cooldowns from Halone, Shield Oath, and Sheltron alone while DRK will be out because they won't have 50% damage reduction even if they pop Shadow Wall and will just barely have it if they also get Reprisal, which depends on a proc (and Dark Dance is only a 20% increased chance for that proc).

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Mitigation doesn't add up like that. It's not 20% from Shield Oath + 10% from STR debuff, +20ish% from Sheltron block. For example on a PLD with Shield Oath, the damage you take are already reduced by 20%, so a thing like Rampart will mitigate 20% of damage which has already been reduced by 20%, so it's equivalent to 16% damage reduction. And the more you add, the more the gap between what you believe and what it actually is is wide. A DRK using Grit + Shadowskin + Shadow Wall + DA Dark Mind + Reprisal + Delirium on something like say Hypercompressed Plasma (so 20% + 20% + 30% + 30% + 10% + 10%), you'd say it's 120% damage reduction, it's like super overkill and you get healed when you receive the attack ! But that doesn't work like that at all, and I'm not a math-guy enough to know how to calculate how much it really is but it's far below 120% since even with all of this up you still take several thousands of damage if not shielded by your healers.

And Dark Dance is 30% parry chance and it's not that low. I was thinking it was shite some time ago now but since I MT A3S I can guarantee you that parry happens really really frequently with these "only" 30% more parry. Dark Dance is amazing and you WILL get the opportunity to use Reprisal when you have it up.

Uh, mitigation works exactly like that. Halone+Sheltron+Shield Oath means you take 80% of 70% of 90% so you take 50% of the damage you would have taken without any buffs (.8*.7*.9). Sheltron is already about 27% so it will almost certainly be about 30% in the next tier of gear.

Sheltron is only unreliable if you're bad or if they drastically change their system so auto-attacks aren't scripted.

Regarding Reprisal you just have to crunch the numbers again. For example, with a boss with a 10% crit rate if Dark Dance brings you up 30% to a 50% parry rate, there's a 10% chance you'll fail to parry 4 times in a row. It's much more likely that you'll get Reprisal than not, but it's still reasonably likely that you'll get screwed if you actually needed Reprisal in those 4 or 5 parries. Luckily, there's no turn right now where you need it because the tank requirements are tuned so loose.

Now, if it were possible to parry critical damage, that would reduce that chance to just over 6% so it's a pretty dramatic difference. If you adjusted Dark Dance like I suggested on top of that, that chance would fall to about 2%, which is an acceptable risk.

For PLD on magic damage, you have to keep in mind that Sentinel is 33% better than Shadow Wall. If you do the math, PLD is only about 5% behind DRK on a mechanic like the A4 cleaves where you can have all your buffs every time. On top of that, Convalescence is traited on PLD so you get a bigger Adlo, and you have Stoneskin so overall you can have something like 5100 HP shield without the Adlo critting. PLD still has trouble with mechanics like the A1 tank buster if you hit enrage, but its defensive capabilities are actually rather well designed for every mechanic currently in the game if you look at PLD in a vacuum, likewise with WAR. (There's some problem when you look at WAR and PLD, but that's another matter). PLD's main issues are DPS and lack of flexibility.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

Uh, mitigation works exactly like that. Halone+Sheltron+Shield Oath means you take 80% of 70% of 90% so you take 50% of the damage you would have taken without any buffs (.8*.7*.9). Sheltron is already about 27% so it will almost certainly be about 30% in the next tier of gear.

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Okay I assumed that Sheltron would only reduce around 20% since 27% is only with a tower shield ATM. The only tower shield except the Ravana shield is the Gordian one and I believe that the Gordian shield isn't BiS because it gives parry + skill speed which is terribad.

Because of the addition of Sheltron and the currently Crit>Block mechanic, tower shields are pretty desirable.

With the new stat weights being like 90 secondary stat for 1 weapon damage, there's very little difference between the shields otherwise, though the Eso one is technically better DPS.

So you want shield oath and grit to be on demand 20% dmg mitigation ability without any penalties? Then they will need to make it that defiance also restores the hp you get so it would also work. The healers need to heal the warrior when he switches to defiance. He can't use defiance mid cast of a tnk buster won't do much good.

"Tank changes no one can agree upon"

I just want to add that I have had literally one instance out of over 100 where dark dance did not proc reprisal before the time I needed it and also want to add there is literally no damage in the game that would require such a thing and there never has been. It's merely padding for your healer and a total non issue. Hypotheticals without any real supportive evidence aren't a valid argument in a debate.

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Originally Posted by KinSlayer009

So you want shield oath and grit to be on demand 20% dmg mitigation ability without any penalties? Then they will need to make it that defiance also restores the hp you get so it would also work. The healers need to heal the warrior when he switches to defiance. He can't use defiance mid cast of a tnk buster won't do much good.

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I'm also of the opinion that the core of the problem is about giving the players agency and make every tank sufficiently viable, so that they can come through by means of actual effort and skill, without losing their approach to the fight and respective appeal because of a lapse in design - in broader strokes, this extends to DPS jobs and their utility as well.

Tanking might just use some upkeep, and retooling those PLD skills is only part (I'm saying this as someone who plays all three, btw) of the issue. As such, I'd like to thank Eagledorf for opening this thread... hopefully, the dev team will get back to us with some measure of feedback. I think Isius said it best:

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Originally Posted by Isius

It really isn't a issue anymore to just buff PLD anymore imo. But tanking as a whole in this game needs to be rebalanced/adjusted. Some people call it homogenization while I call it balance. Each tank can still have thier own unique type of play style, and special skill sets they can bring to a party, but yes as tanks they do need to have similar dps/def capabilities. One class can still be better then another in those areas, but it shouldn't really be very noticable to the point one class is required over another where one is just left out, and seen as a burden to a party.

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I partly agree with you on the skill speed/spell speed issue, but instead of changing spells to work with skill speed, I think skill speed and spell speed should just be removed and replaced with just plain speed.. It's not like many classes use both magic and weaponskills other than paladin and dark knight, and like you said it's just annoying to have spells on a job with no spell speed gear.

I wouldn't want healing abilities to get buffed by healing increase moves, because that would also mean they'd get nerfed by healing decrease moves.
In other words no more lustrate/equilibrium/Tetragrammation through infirmity or ramuh's overcharged lightning debuff.

I also don't agree dark dance should be changed, evasion should be changed to be viable (30% evasion should mean you have a 30% chance of dodging an attack) since evasion isn't a stat we can see or change outside of a few cooldowns anyway and evasion fits with DRK because you can dodge magic.

Tempered will needs more adjustment than what you suggest in my eyes. For its 3 min cooldown it should have far more application than what it does, in my opinion it should work more like fealty from ffxi, adding a warden's paean effect for the duration (preventing all enfeebles still including knockback and draw in) prevent interrupts like you suggest and keep its current effect of removing heavy and bind.

I don't agree on removing wrath from RI and vengeance, cause like you said it's a part of WAR's style, having to know whether you'll need the defences soon or if you should use them for quicker wrath for more offense.

As for an offensive spell for pld, I'd personally be perfectly happy with banish as a clemency counterpart, high MP cost high damage spell possibly with 25y range for pulling very distant targets without provoke.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

I partly agree with you on the skill speed/spell speed issue, but instead of changing spells to work with skill speed, I think skill speed and spell speed should just be removed and replaced with just plain speed.. It's not like many classes use both magic and weaponskills other than paladin and dark knight, and like you said it's just annoying to have spells on a job with no spell speed gear.

I wouldn't want healing abilities to get buffed by healing increase moves, because that would also mean they'd get nerfed by healing decrease moves.
In other words no more lustrate/equilibrium/Tetragrammation through infirmity or ramuh's overcharged lightning debuff.

I also don't agree dark dance should be changed, evasion should be changed to be viable (30% evasion should mean you have a 30% chance of dodging an attack) since evasion isn't a stat we can see or change outside of a few cooldowns anyway and evasion fits with DRK because you can dodge magic.

Tempered will needs more adjustment than what you suggest in my eyes. For its 3 min cooldown it should have far more application than what it does, in my opinion it should work more like fealty from ffxi, adding a warden's paean effect for the duration (preventing all enfeebles still including knockback and draw in) prevent interrupts like you suggest and keep its current effect of removing heavy and bind.

I don't agree on removing wrath from RI and vengeance, cause like you said it's a part of WAR's style, having to know whether you'll need the defences soon or if you should use them for quicker wrath for more offense.

As for an offensive spell for pld, I'd personally be perfectly happy with banish as a clemency counterpart, high MP cost high damage spell possibly with 25y range for pulling very distant targets without provoke.

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I think Tempered Will should Drain your Mana.

Makes you unstoppable and drains your Mana, no CD or Reuse.

Maybe a small autoattack buff like 25 potency for every auto-attack. Maybe 10% attack speed. Maybe 5% damage reduction.


What I mean is, can't be knocked back or down or anything.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

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Assuming 15% parry before Dark Dance & 8 or more incoming attacks during, Reprisal has a 100% chance to proc.(Not really, but if your Reprisal fails to proc you may want to get checked for tumors) I do agree that single hit "high damage" tank-busters are a waste at this point. They're forced to weaken them to levels where WAR has better mitigation than either PLD or DRK due to HP buffers, or the job(PLD/DRK) with the weakest mitigation can't survive it. They should bring back mechanics from Turn 13 & Turn 2 if they want to keep this resistance split. I particularly like multi-hit abilities that go beyond a single IBs duration.

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Originally Posted by Disc

I do agree that single hit "high damage" tank-busters are a waste at this point. They're forced to weaken them to levels where WAR has better mitigation than either PLD or DRK due to HP buffers, or the job(PLD/DRK) with the weakest mitigation can't survive it. They should bring back mechanics from Turn 13 & Turn 2 if they want to keep this resistance split. I particularly like multi-hit abilities that go beyond a single IBs duration.

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My favourite tank busters so far are swarm and bahamut's claw. They make moves like bulwark worth using as your chance to proc a block is so high you're basically bound to block at least one of the hits. I agree I'd like to see more moves like this in the future where it's less damage over a longer period rather than all the damage in 1 second, making IB less effective and bulwark and dark dance more effective.

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Originally Posted by Disc

I particularly like multi-hit abilities that go beyond a single IBs duration.

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I'm torn on these. The magic one in A4 Savage is frankly annoying and it seems like the devs bent over backwards to make a mechanic that disadvantages WAR and caters to DRK (WAR can tank these, of course, but they perform so bad compared to DRK or PLD that you would never want them to).

I would rather the damage on the tank always be high. Bahamut Prime did enough sustained damage that having a cooldown that lasts a long time (from Megaflare through the last Flare Breath) was a significant advantage, yet a WAR could still have IB on demand for every actual tank buster if you wanted a WAR to tank it. In that case, each toolkit had its strengths and weaknesses, but neither tank was overwhelmingly bad.

Right now an extended physical mechanic would probably favor WAR because of Raw Intuition and then PLD second with the right shield.

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Assuming 15% parry before Dark Dance & 8 or more incoming attacks during, Reprisal has a 100% chance to proc

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Well, it has a 98% chance to proc. That means every 50 times or so you should expect it to fail to proc. The chance of this happening is higher than the chance of getting crit twice in a row, but it seems like that happens all the time.

Right now Reprisal is used whenever it procs, it has over 60% uptime and no endgame mechanic actually requires you have it up so you just don't worry about it falling off too soon and use it ASAP for the DPS.

However, let's say you want to do T5 in i70 gear again, what would your cooldown rotation look like on DRK?

Keep in mind, it was impossible for a PLD to survive Death Sentence without extra mitigation even with Halone and Foresight up. Let's say that you just make your rotation flexible so that you use Foresight right away when Reprisal procs to extend it. For example:

Shadowskin->Foresight+Reprisal (heals carry me)->Shadow Wall->Shadowskin->Living Dead->Foresight+Reprisal (carry me)->Shadowskin->Carry me for realz

This rotation actually isn't bad at all. Let's compare to WAR:

IB->IB->IB...

or PLD

Sheltron->Sheltron->Sheltron...

Now imagine DS was magic damage:

DRK: DM->SS->DM->SW->DM->SS->DM->LD->DM->SS...

WAR: IB->IB->IB...

PLD: R->S->HG->R->Stoneskin+Convalescence (carry me)->carry me even moar->restart


There's no mechanic like this in the level 60 content, but the point is they can never make content like that again because of how they've boxed in PLD and DRK. Every tank buster, physical or magical, has to either come so far apart you can have a million buffs for it or be so weak the tanks can just AFK in DPS stance.

To be honest, it's not a huge deal as long as they keep designing content so that all the tanks can handle it, but it's not a very good approach imo.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

Well, it has a 98% chance to proc. That means every 50 times or so you should expect it to fail to proc. The chance of this happening is higher than the chance of getting crit twice in a row, but it seems like that happens all the time.

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Negative Ghost Rider. 15% Parry from base & gear(low estimate with current parry heavy gear) + 30% from Dark Dance = 45% Parry rate, or 11/20 chance of failure to parry on each attack. If we assume enemies have base GCD for auto-attack rate & no extra abilities that's 8 attacks during the duration of Dark Dance.

(11/20)^8 = 0.00837; or 0.0837% chance of failure on all eight attacks in a row.
lim x→0 for (11/20)^x = 1; Chances of failure go up exponentially with each attack you can't parry
lim x→∞ for (11/20)^x = 0; Chances of failure go down exponentially with each extra attack

This also does not account for the final seconds before the ability goes off at base parry rate, if you popped it early knowing that you could store it for a couple seconds. Also does not include physical abilities such as Plummet.

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Right now an extended physical mechanic would probably favor WAR because of Raw Intuition and then PLD second with the right shield.

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If it was 8+ they would at least be required to pop off two IBs in a row, which would substantially reduce their DPS just to be on par with PLD/DRK base mitigation. If it was mixed damage they would lose out on mitigation during magic portions while PLD still got their Sheltron mitigation.

Turn 9 & 13 are great examples of this.

Ravensbeak - Large upfront physical damage you can parry, 13 seconds later you're hit with large magic damage.

Flatten + Flarebreath - One massive physical attack, followed by an increasing number of magical attacks.

Akh Morn - Large magic attacks increasing in number/duration. Early clears saw well beyond the realm of safety for IB & Holmgang, you used a PLD for massive mitigation & Hallowed near the end.

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However, let's say you want to do T5 in i70 gear again, what would your cooldown rotation look like on DRK?

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I would put a Salted Earth down and walk into Conflag.

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Originally Posted by Disc

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No, I'm assuming that future bosses will continue to have a 10% crit rate or so (for example, Living Liquid and the Manipulator and dolls seem to be somewhere between 5% and 10%, though these numbers are with Awareness being used so the base crit rate is probably a bit higher than you'll see in any real run) and currently critical damage cannot be parried.

So 15%+30% means you actually have a 40.5% chance to parry a given blow (0.45*0.9). That gives you 59.5%^8=>1.6% chance you'll fail to parry 8 blows in a row. With a 5% crit rate it should be about 1% chance. Of course Twintania doesn't crit at all so she's actually a bit of a special case.

Every other Dark Dance, you can fix this with Awareness. Most bosses auto every 3 seconds (Oppressor, Living Liquid, Phoenix...) so Awareness can last you through 5 autos if you time it well.

Actually, if you look at a typical 20s period in most boss fights, you only get around 5 autos because they stop for cast bars (Sluice or something) so a well timed Awareness can entirely eliminate crits. These days they also seem to like gimmicks like crit phases (the bow stance for Shiva or the hand phase for A3S) so you may not necessarily choose to stack them like this, but it's an option.

One thing I will point out to play devil's advocate is that there is also a chance the tank buster itself will be parried if it's physical for 20% reduction so there's an extra little cushion against RNG at the end.

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I would put a Salted Earth down and walk into Conflag.

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You can't do that except in the second phase. More realistically, you would OT and let a WAR or PLD MT or do tank swaps if you have double DRK.

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No, I'm assuming that future bosses will continue to have a 10% crit rate or so (for example, Living Liquid has just under that and the Manipulator and dolls seem to be somewhere between 5 and 10%, though these numbers are with Awareness being used so it's probably actually a bit higher.

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You kinda got me, I didn't bother to count crit rate into it. However, going to need some citation on your crit rate. My records put Living Liquid & most other raid boss auto-attacks at 2%. You may be thinking of your outgoing or the healers crit rate. Other than that, Awareness will cover every other Dark Dance & Abilities cannot crit.

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You can't do that except in the second phase. More realistically, you would OT and let a WAR or PLD MT or do tank swaps if you have double DRK.

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At i70 with a WAR OT I would just do tank swaps after each death sentence to boost healer & tank DPS. I'm not disagreeing with your point that both WAR & PLD would handle it better than DRK. The tank-busters I favor were developed in Second & Final coils. I just wanted to point out the actual benefit of Dark Dance, you went into the realm of hyperbole describing DRKs weakness to physical.

My crit rates come from a place where you can see...ff logs

Oppressor has a very low crit rate, but if you look across the fights for enough parses most of them are between 5 and 10% (it can be hard to judge, but I'm pretty confident it's in that range and Awareness should have...what like a 20% uptime between two tanks if you're doing swaps?) As you say, the weaponskills can't crit and the magic and cast-bars can't be parried so it varies a bit for the fight.

As for DRK and physical and PLD and magic...assuming Reprisal is up every time for a minute just so we can leave that argument behind us, just consider for a moment.

For physical busters, PLD's rotations are literally exactly the same as a DRK, except with 30% damage reduction on top of DRK's mitigation every 30s, 10% on top of that every time you use Sentinel instead of Shadow Wall, plus a better Convalescence and the ability cast a shield on themselves. WAR can have IB and Path every time, plus one of Raw Intuition, Thrill, or Vengeance every 30 seconds and they can Holmgang like 5 times in a 13 minute fight (compared to 2 HG and 3 LD respectively).

For magic busters, PLD will just run out of cooldowns if they occur too frequently (A1S, for example). The rest of their tookit can help the healers carry them successfully once it happens, but the PLD's ability to handle it by themselves is gone. DRK is just like a PLD with a with an extra cooldown that allows them to handle them easily. WAR doesn't change from physical except for the loss of Raw Intuition.

I'm not saying that there's an issue right now. SE was very careful not to make any damage on the tanks threatening at all so it doesn't matter. I'm just saying there's enough discrepancy in the design of the tanks that they can't make a mechanic that pushes the limits of any one tank anymore without making it virtually impossible for at least one of the other tanks. A huge magic attack every 60-120s that's hard for a DRK to survive would ruin PLD and a huge physical attack every 30-60 seconds that's hard for a PLD to survive would ruin DRK. There's no getting around that fact.

WAR's only real weakness in all this is SE can make it awkward for them if they set out to make that their goal in life by making extended magic tank busters. They can adapt to any other situation very well (extended physical tank buster, physical tank buster, magic tank buster) and they can even handle a long magic one quite well if you factor in Infuriate and how short their cooldowns are. PLD, on the other hand, is extremely disadvantaged with magic tank busters that come too frequently with only a small advantage over WAR for the other three situations. Likewise, DRK has a fairly substantial disadvantage compared to WAR for both frequent physical tank busters and extended physical tank busters with a minor advantage for frequent magic busters and an admittedly reasonably big advantage for extended magic busters.

I think the ideal is for everybody to be ok at everything and good at one or two things. Right now everybody has one or two things they're actually bad at in comparison with the possible exception of WAR

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

My crit rates come from a place where you can see...ff logs

Oppressor has a very low crit rate, but if you look across the fights for enough parses most of them are between 5 and 10% (it can be hard to judge, but I'm pretty confident it's in that range and Awareness should have...what like a 20% uptime between two tanks if you're doing swaps?) As you say, the weaponskills can't crit and the magic and cast-bars can't be parried so it varies a bit for the fight.

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FFLogs is a pain to navigate. Your link is a small sample size that puts it at roughly 5~8%.

Some mergers as DRK.
A1S Oppressor: 3,415 auto-attacks; 3% crit(awareness with Dark Dance before missile)
Living Liquid: 7,044 auto-attacks; 3% crit rate(awareness saved until double hands to ensure up at start of DPS check)
It's possible the difference in crit rate is caused by the lack of value some tanks place on Awareness.

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I'm just saying there's enough discrepancy in the design of the tanks that they can't make a mechanic that pushes the limits of any one tank anymore without making it virtually impossible for at least one of the other tanks.

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We agree on that, I have stated so twice already. This is the third time in four posts I'm telling you that I agree with you.

Hm, interesting. I know that my own rate of crits received for Living Liquid is much higher than yours (In the last two months, it's never been under 5% on the PLD and it's usually around 7% on the WAR) and I use Awareness for the first time at about the same time (I use it when the hand phase first starts because he crits for like 13k then, but either way we only get one before the add phase) so it should have similar uptime.

Actually, it should be up even more for me since it lasts 10 seconds longer on PLD.