Tank adjustments we can agree on?

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Originally Posted by Teiren

It feels like you're not supposed to always know exactly when something like, for example, Royal Fount (that's the laser cone in Alexander 1, right?) is going to hit. It's supposed to look sporadic. But true, when you do something to death, you're going to eventually learn patterns, especially in a game with a somewhat slower pace like this one.

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It's a good thing that you mentionned A1S and Royal Fount. Look at this :

http://i.imgur.com/Csnxu1p.png

These are the precise timers for every single attack and mechanic for the entire fight. Even Royal Fount is in there. ALL damage are completely scripted. For example, I have the same thing for A3S :

http://i.imgur.com/EJXEalr.png

And it has been the case for all raid fights since the beginning of ARR.

With enough experience you can see the fight in advance like with Sharingans because of that. Combine that to the fact that damage are low enough to be completely survivable in DPS stance, and that tank busters are even weaker than what they were before 3.0 (look at T13 pre-echo, you'd never want the MT to be in DPS stance in that fight, not only for Flatten, but also for Flare Breaths + auto-attacks which were threatening enough).


Edit : I want to add that these images were not made by me, I found them, but kudos to the crazy guy who took the time to do this.

Ironically, if Sword Oath didn't exist then PLD DPS wouldn't be so extremely behind in Shield Oath because then the potencies could all be tuned higher. Oh well, this is why people are asking for actions only usable in Shield Oath.

Edit: Ah, my first instinct is to criticize one that analyzes something so much to the point of making such a list, but I know that's silly. If that's how the game works, why wouldn't someone do something like that? It's only annoying because playing video games should always be about learning, which includes reacting intelligently, and it feels like that's kind of sapped by something like that. But it is the game designers' fault for letting that happen, I know.

It's just that creating something like that for WoW would be utterly ridiculous even though it obviously had scripted fights too, as any MMORPG would. Was it really just because its GCD is nearly half of FFXIV's? I wonder. After all, the GCD dictates the pace of a game.

That is very interesting to hear that the final Turn had incoming tank damage that high. I never got to see that, something I'll always regret. I'm seeing more and more why Warrior is perhaps way overpowered at near-top/top levels of play.

Anyway, thank you everyone for patience and understanding. I've also been posting in hopes that this specific thread's feedback gets back to the devs as virtually every suggestion on the front page is extremely good and sensible for the game.

PLD is to op and needs to be left as is says all DRK and WAR players.

because only two tanks needed for any duty so why go low DPS PLD WHEN you can go WAR/WAR or WAR/DRK?

common sense people :P

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie-Amber

PLD is to op and needs to be left as is says all DRK and WAR players.

because only two tanks needed for any duty so why go low DPS PLD WHEN you can go WAR/WAR or WAR/DRK?

common sense people :P

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Who hurt you? :(

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Ah, but you see, you're looking at DRK and PLD in a vacuum. What you need to do is look at them in a toaster, then you'll see where the balance comes into play.

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It all makes sense now, I've seen the light!

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Originally Posted by Teiren

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Yes, basically the damage on the tanks in Alexander is a joke even out of the tank stance. It's a direct consequence of how they've designed Dark Knight (as opposed to PLD) and will probably continue until they abandon their entire philosophy surrounding DRK/PLD. If you watch my video of A4, you can see that the tank buster even with no cooldowns, in STR gear, and in Sword Oath leaves me with 7k HP or something while the autos are barely over a Fairy heal+Regen tick unless they Crit. The only time the tank is in any real danger is if the party is taking heavy damage and the healers are ignoring them. A2 is actually an exception for about 20 seconds right at the end, but that's about it.

Tank DPS is usually higher priority right now than healer DPS for a few reasons. One is that once a healer has their DoTs up, they're spamming low potency and high MP filler spells. Another is that stance dancing cancels your combo on PLD or DRK, which has the potential to be a major potency loss on top of that while healers can swap out and in perfectly smoothly (even smoother than WAR). The final one is that tank DPS is reasonably higher than healer DPS on single target (PLD included). It would require substantially more punishing content for mitigation to be worth it since healer DPS is higher than what is lost from being in the tank stance so if it starts becoming a question of if they can swap into Cleric and apply their DoTs or not it is better to play defensively.

As Freyy pointed out, it was like this prior to 2.0. It's a problem SE made for themselves with 3.0

@Freyy

The idea of Sole Survivor giving TP is a good one so I mentioned it in my OP post. The two issues I see with it are that it wouldn't help if there are no adds that MT can target shortly before they die and that if it works out of Grit it has the potential to be poorly balanced since DRK gets some TP regen already from Blood Weapon. I suppose the former isn't so bad since in the worst case scenario DRK still has Unmend and the latter probably wouldn't be too bad either (and easily fixed if it is).

I don't know if I missed something, but the biggest reason for why tank DPS is favored over healer DPS is not mentioned. It's because tanks have significantly higher DPS up-time. Healers actually have to heal. Even SCHs. Outside of a few, rare mechanics, tanks are almost always hitting the enemy and with 100% accuracy. So, any raid adjustments you make to accommodate tank DPS has much better returns.

For example, you could have a tank slap on some extra fending / melded right sides to give your healers a larger HP buffer to DPS. You could have them stay in tank stance more. You'd only see that benefit for the periods where the healer can DPS. If you had that tank slap on slaying / melded right sides and stay in DPS stance for longer, you would enjoy the benefit for the entirety of the time the tank is hitting the boss. It's logic.

Also, the tank has better proactive control over their damage intake. They can plan to go DPS, adjust their dCD rotation accordingly, and nullify the loss of their tank stance while in DPS stance. Healers need to rely on tank coordination to increase their DPS up-time. While this is more a mere matter of teamwork and practice, it is something.

Of course, this is all predicated on the notion that tanks can get away with it. In current content, where you know how hard you're going to get hit and when you're going to get hit, surviving tank busters and general damage is not an issue. Even in the hypothetical situation where they changed encounter design to force tanks to be tankier, groups would eventually reach comfort thresholds and do the exact same thing they're doing right now. We saw this happen in 2.X. We are seeing it happen in 3.X. The difference is people are much better at doing it now and have a precedent to work from.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

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^ This. The only thing that could force us to keep the tanking stance on all the time when tanking a boss would be making the bosses hit a lot, LOT harder and increase the gap in tankiness between a DPS stance and tanking stance tank. But I have to confess that it would not please me because stance dancing brings a whole new level of flavor to tanking in this game and I love it. I don't want to see it change.

Nah, it's more complicated than uptime, that's only true assuming both can go DPS stance pretty much all the time. A healer's DPS is about 75-80% of a tank's and the DPS loss from turning on your stance is just over 20% (well, ~30% on PLD) so you only need to gain about 30% uptime between both healers for healer DPS added to overtake the DPS added by being in DPS stance while tanking. Since the high potency DoTs are 1.5-1.8x filler spells, we're probably actually only talking ~10% uptime for each healer if they're healing most of the time (maybe even less), while if they're using filler spells it would require very high uptime increase for the gain to be worth it.

That's why in 2.0 healer DPS was preferred. The problem now is you can have both most of the time, then when you have to choose between losing one or the other the penalty for losing the tank DPS is higher. On top of that the vast majority of the heal checks that will force your healers out of Cleric Stance are party-wide damage, which being in your tank stance doesn't help at all for so you don't gain anything for turning it on.

It's not just the up-time, but that is the biggest reason why. Of course the other factors also matter.

And, you explain why in your opening sentence. The entire point is that both can't go DPS stance pretty much all the time -- hence the difference in up-time. I think it's flawed to include the co-healer's contribution into the comparison in the first place because they are not the one primarily healing the MT or forced into the trade-offs involved. If you want to view healers collectively, then you should view tanks collectively. And, when you extend the comparison to include both tanks, then this isn't even close.

You should be looking at the gains in comparison. So, if you need 60% up-time between both healers for healer DPS to overtake the gains in DPS tanking, then you need to begin with asking if there is even 60% more up-time for healers to gain. The reality is one healer is basically already DPSing for a significant portion of fights even with a DPS tank. So, where do you get 60% more? The main-healer?

Uh, no. One tank is MT so you're comparing the DPS gain for him being in the DPS stance (20% gain) vs any healer DPSing (the other tank is in DPS stance by default so nothing changes except for adds or if they design more fights where both tanks tank most of the time). You can alternate who DoTs and who heals MT so you need to factor both healers in so the total uptime gain isn't 60%, it's only some amount between 20 and 30% for both combined or like 10% for each healer.

The problem is not that you can't all DPS, the problem is that you can. If healer DPS uptime is 0% and then turning on your tank stance lets the healers trade off applying DoTs, it's better to turn on the tank stance for DPS. The problem is right now healer DPS uptime is like almost 100% during the early phases so you gain little uptime for turning on your tank stance and that uptime is probably a low potency filler spell which can miss.

If you adjusted incoming tank damage so that it's almost impossible for healers to DPS, healer DPS will be higher priority than tank. It doesn't matter that the tank has 100% uptime, if the Scholar can apply Bio II and Bio every 30 seconds and the WHM can apply Aero III and Aero II every 30 seconds that would likely be better than the gain from turning off Grit 100% of the time (even more so for AST, since Combust can't miss and is quite high potency).

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

Uh, no. One tank is MT so you're comparing the DPS gain for him being in the DPS stance (20% gain)

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A tank being in DPS stance doesn't only gain 20%. There is the loss of the tank stance penalty combined with the gain of the DPS stance benefit. It's roughly in the 30+% range for every tank. For PLD you have to take SwO auto attacks into account, for WAR you have to count 5% from Deliverance + increased crit chance from growing Abandon stacks, and the gain of Fell Cleave/Decimate, and for DRK you have to count Blood Weapon which not only increases attack speed but grants you the power to use Dark Arts a LOT more, and by a LOT I mean like a LOT LOT more. While MTing it's kind of outrageous to see how much MP you gain with both Blood Price and Blood Weapon on. For example in A3S I'm in the situation where if I don't DA my 2nd Dark Passenger, my next Syphon Strike is gonna give me wasted MP (and I use DA Souleater every 2 combos).
So no, a MT in DPS stance doesn't only gain 20%.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

It doesn't matter that the tank has 100% uptime, if the Scholar can apply Bio II and Bio every 30 seconds and the WHM can apply Aero III and Aero II every 30 seconds that would likely be better than the gain from turning off Grit 100% of the time (even more so for AST, since Combust can't miss and is quite high potency).

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??? I think I'm misunderstanding something here because I don't know how you could be seriously thinking that.
How 2 DoTs every 30 seconds could outDPS the gain of a tank going DPS stance 100% of the time ? I don't understand your logic at all. The less the healer can DPS, the less the DPS gain from the tank being in tank stance can be, since the healer doesn't have any real window to DPS anyway. In cases like that, it would be much more profitable to let the healer focus on healing and the tank go DPS stance.

Even not considering DPS stance/Blood Weapon gains, a paladin or dark knight turning off shield oath/grit is actually increasing their damage by 25% because of math. Either way, I don't think the whole "time spent in tank stance = more healer DPS" thing really plays out that often in actual encounters. Tank stances aren't that strong.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

^ This. The only thing that could force us to keep the tanking stance on all the time when tanking a boss would be making the bosses hit a lot, LOT harder and increase the gap in tankiness between a DPS stance and tanking stance tank. But I have to confess that it would not please me because stance dancing brings a whole new level of flavor to tanking in this game and I love it. I don't want to see it change.

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This is a fair sentiment, but when it starts leaking from one tank to the others, there's a serious problem and it needs to be dealt with.

I'm not opposed to a tank designed around stance-swapping, as long as that gameplay is limited to that class alone and not trickle to the other tanks nor lead to situations where the other tanks have to emulate that one tank to remain competitive.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

How 2 DoTs every 30 seconds could outDPS the gain of a tank going DPS stance 100% of the time ?

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You just have to try it. Go to a dummy and apply Bio (though Shadowflare is 10 more potency than Bio =x) and Bio II (and auto-attack if you like since...technical reasons) and watch the ticks and add, keeping them up all the time (so every 30s) then do the same with AST and the Combusts. The damage is very substantial! This is less true on WHM since you miss a fair amount (but you do have to consider they give MND buff to their co-healer)

So consider DRK and Blood Weapon. Blood Weapon itself is about a 3.8% in combo and AA DPS (10% ~37% of the time, excluding all off global and DoTs) and replacing every Delirium with Souleater is 15%, but your combo is only about 50% of your DPS on DRK so unless you're trying to say DRK can never Souleater with Grit on...no even then DRK will not gain 30% DPS by turning off Grit. Even if for the sake of argument we say you do lose 30%, each healer needs to gain like 150-180 DPS, which is entirely possible with just DoTs.

My Scholar almost makes that much DPS with only his DoTs that can't miss already and he's i124 (without Foe, MND pot, or party MND buff. Though he has a nicer weapon than the rest of his gear to be fair) On the other hand, 2 Broils every 30 seconds is only like 40-50 DPS so it doesn't make much difference at all. So if you gain DoTs it's a big DPS increase, if your DoTs are up anyway 2 extra fillers is basically worthless.

The problem is, right now you have phases where the healers can almost exclusively DPS so all you would gain is that worthless filler. Even in later phases when healers can't DPS very much, turning on your tank stance won't let them fit in anything since almost all the dangerous damage is on the party (Cascade, Discoid, Nisi, Splash, Protean Beam...). Since you're out of your tank stance then you also lose a GCD or two stance dancing, which negates most of the potency a healer puts out anyway.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

This is a fair sentiment, but when it starts leaking from one tank to the others, there's a serious problem and it needs to be dealt with.

I'm not opposed to a tank designed around stance-swapping, as long as that gameplay is limited to that class alone and not trickle to the other tanks nor lead to situations where the other tanks have to emulate that one tank to remain competitive.

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Why should it be limited to one tank though? Even if it doesn't come exactly as "stance-dancing", should only one tank be allowed to sacrifice mitigation/restoration for extra dps? This could be something like Rampart and Flight or Fight being buffed but sharing CDs - it could be letting your mitigation combo fall off in order to get in an extra dps combo, but to a more significant extent. It's the option of taking advantage of windows of opportunity for increased dps when mitigation/restoration needs are reduced or less rigid - what we'd typically just call adaptability in a healer, etc.... Should that really be job-unique?

Edit: Though I will admit, with as huge as the difference in dps from stances are, it would be pretty-hard to compete via other methods without substantial revision, so improving stance-dancing for PLD and DRK would seem the most pragmatic solution. That said, I feel there are still plenty of ways to keep each job very unique in the ways they stance-dance, if people would just stop asking for transfer of, rather than equality to, WAR's oGCD stance-dancing benefits (which, given Defiance's ramp-up or potential health-loss in swapping to Deliverance, is still not as great as people make it out to be).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Why should it be limited to one tank though? Even if it doesn't come exactly as "stance-dancing", should only one tank be allowed to sacrifice mitigation/restoration for extra dps? This could be something like Rampart and Flight or Fight being buffed but sharing CDs - it could be letting your mitigation combo fall off in order to get in an extra dps combo, but to a more significant extent. It's the option of taking advantage of windows of opportunity for increased dps when mitigation/restoration needs are reduced or less rigid - what we'd typically just call adaptability in a healer, etc.... Should that really be job-unique?

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See, we're looking at it from different perspectives. You're thinking of a singular tank swapping for higher DPS/something while the others lag behind forever. What I'm thinking of is a tank that has to master swapping in order to perform up to par with its counterparts. It's an element of gameplay just like different resources (rage vs runic power vs energy vs chi) or specific ability synergies. The class built around this would be able to stand out from its counterparts while providing gameplay options, which is something this game needs more of.

Okay, so the reason my question was so flawed was because I thought healer DPS was a lot more than tank DPS and limited only by how much time they could get away with not healing, but I see now that I was completely misunderstanding why healers DPSed in ARR.

But still, the current design doesn't make any good sense to me. It's a LOT riskier for a healer to DPS than a tank, right? It is "easier" because it's just one Ability with virtually no cooldown and healers are all ranged, but I still think risk should equal reward. Right now that doesn't seem to be the case for either tank or healer; it's just...reward, in large part due to the demands of the fights. Though I have to admit, it would make tanks feel pathetic and lame if they did less DPS than healers because of the traditional portrayal of healers in MMOs. :/

Oh well, just ended up restating the same things. I should stop being so obsessed with forcing pigeonholed roles anyway. It's just that it causes certain things to break down, and I think it's a shame. If they're going to make defense almost not matter, which is a perfectly fine design if that's what they and especially the players want, then they can't just leave PLD behind like this. Or, I think a non-defense focused tanking system would be more fun anyway. I certainly loved it in WoW.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

See, we're looking at it from different perspectives. You're thinking of a singular tank swapping for higher DPS/something while the others lag behind forever. What I'm thinking of is a tank that has to master swapping in order to perform up to par with its counterparts. It's an element of gameplay just like different resources (rage vs runic power vs energy vs chi) or specific ability synergies. The class built around this would be able to stand out from its counterparts while providing gameplay options, which is something this game needs more of.

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Ahhh. I get what you mean then. And I'd love to see a tank that works that way -- especially seeing as stance-dancing really does equate more or less directly and solely to damage-prioritization currently, even for WAR (apart from a bit of resource management via Deliverance-Equilibrium and Blood Weapon).

A Wrath Protection Warrior without the Warbringer talent (or better yet, imagine if Arms could tank) or Wrath-era Frost DK tanks with minimal stamina, or Blood or Feral DPS as snap-tanks, are probably the only decent examples I can muster for this, though, and even they used such elements far less than I'd like.

This is kind of what I'd always hoped Samurai would be the master of, though through slightly softer/vaguer 'stances', but also hoped to eventually see brought more into the tanks we already have.

Pipedream : Would also like to see a lot of tanks eventually able to use either Tank-tier, where their counter and stance-dancing damage is still damn good, or DRG-tier armor, where they specialize as dps and snap-tanking, getting closer to DPS-level dps, but with certainly less durability even if slightly higher evasion rates and enemy-manipulation). ...largely because I want Samurai, Templar, and the like to truly have either option (supportive [coordinating/specialist] DPS or a highly tactical and fluid Tank)

Darkside adjusted to 18.75% whilst in grit to negate its penalty in Grit?

Which means it would still be 15% extra damage.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Darkside adjusted to 18.75% whilst in grit to negate its penalty in Grit?

Which means it would still be 15% extra damage.

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Or, if possible, could redo stance calculation priority so it acts additively, rather than multiplicatively, with positive percentile effects like Darkside, Maim, or Fight or Flight (reaching only 5% dps loss under Darkside or Maim from Grit/Defiance, and retaining at 10% bonus from FoF, instead of 8% or 10% loss and 4% bonus respectively [3%/5%/6% difference])?

But then again do we really want to be close the MT-OT gap for all tanks, or just bring Warrior down a little?...

I've added a sort of idea for shuffling buffs around that I actually think might work well in small print.

Basically it's:

Delirium, Rage of Halone=>Damage Down 10% for 20s (can't stack)
Royal Authority=>Slashing Resistance Down 10% for 24s (can't stack with NIN)
Reprisal=>STR down 10% for 10s (might need to extend the proc window or remove entirely)
Spirits Within=>Silence 1s, INT down 10% for 10s
Storm's Eye=>STR down 10% for 20s (Can't stack with Reprisal)
Storm's Path=>INT down 10% for 20s (Can't stack with DK or Spirits Within)

So PLD and DRK get opposite the debuff of their unique cooldown (Dark Mind or Sheltron) while WAR gets essentially the unique ability to debuff both STR and INT, but not another debuff on top of that since IB works for all damage types. It doesn't quite fix things between DRK and PLD (for example, it doesn't help in A4 since you can't debuff most of the INT-based damage)

It would all fall to hell if they add a 4th tank, but it seems to me it would work quite well now. To make it future-safe the only real way would be to really homogenize the tanks, but they can always do that when the time comes I think...I dunno, does anybody have an interesting opinion?

I'm totally on board with this and think it's pretty much perfect, but I have a few things to address:

EDIT: Nevermind on these two points because it's no different from requiring a WAR right now for Slashing Resistance Down and Damage Down. I wasn't thinking.
-First, the idea here is that Damage Down continues to stack with STR and INT Down, right? So wouldn't this new setup require a WAR in a serious raid group? This may be a level of min/maxing that doesn't matter, and besides, it's a good thing to encourage Job diversity because that makes everything more interesting and fun.
-Second, do you mean to replace Storm's Eye's debuff with STR Down or add the effect to the current Slashing Resistance Down debuff? If this was a replacement, then, considering a Ninja never wants to use Dancing Edge (godawful design flaw), DRK would never be taken on min/maxing raids because you'd need PLD for Slashing Resistance Down & Damage Down and WAR for STR Down & INT Down. Again, could be an irrelevant level of min/maxing.

-Third, it'd be fun to also add 4s of Pacification on Reprisal to really hammer in that it's the Spirits Within equivalent. Removing the reactionary component would additionally do that, but it would ruin the theme and name. Oh well.
-Fourth, a lone PLD or DRK would have a very slight, if questionable, edge. Is the point of this to make up for DPS stance discrepancies with WAR?
-Fifth, and least importantly, this could increase a WAR's DPS a very tiny bit because now they have no reason to ever use Storm's Path on an enemy with no magic damage or when a MNK is present. But this is probably irrelevant because raid damage is almost exclusively magic and an infrequent 20 Potency (270 vs. 250 Potency) is nothing anyway. Could make the same argument about a Ninja infrequently gaining 60 Potency (260 vs. 320) when they don't have to use Dancing Edge.

As for a fourth tank Job being added to the game: They could just give it a single weaponskill that applies STR & INT Down in one to have it match WAR, and then it's 2:2 for types of tank debuffs. After that, yeah, they'll probably just remove stat reduction debuffs and move to Damage Down debuffs globally, which is what WoW did. I don't know if they should do that, but I think it's likely.

Speaking of that, has there ever been any math done to calculate how much damage reduction STR or INT Down is? Does STR Down really reduce physical damage dealt by the enemy by 10%? Is all physical/magical damage really controlled by STR/INT respectively? Well, that second theory is impossible to answer conclusively, but it's something to consider.

Anyway, I think your ideas are all great in the end, and they would be interesting to see.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

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To be honest, I have no interest in Warrior suddenly losing its offensive debuff combo, or in tanks receiving no way to apply Slashing debuff prior to PLD level 60. Overall this seems largely over-complicated, while messing with offensive rotations for little value. Worse, when slightly gear-starved, a PLD might not even be able to keep up the slashing debuff at present, due to low enmity mods on its Halone combo; it or GB will have to drop if he needs to use RoH more often than every third combo.

Warrior has been set as the brawler tank from day one. Removing its slashing debuff to give it two defensive debuffs just do to what it was already capable of is almost certain to piss off more than a few tanks. Current defensive debuffs may ensure that Warrior is one of the two tanks present, but they do at least also ensure that it is only one.

If you want to remove magic/physical niche-ing, and reduce the relative strength of Storm's Path, simply make RoH, Delirium, and SP all reduce damage by 10%, but stack at half value or so (e.g. 10%/15%/17.5%), while the same debuff still replaces older iterations (SP replaces SP, etc.) This will provide nearly the same mitigation against multi-damage-type enemies, remove fight-specificity, and still prevent class-stacking. (And with the reduced stacking value, even with all three debuffs up 25-mans still won't be nerfed to a cake-walk.)

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Originally Posted by Teiren

Snip snip because it's long and stuff =s

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The idea is that damage down does stack with STR and INT and that WAR loses the slashing debuff completely.

So WAR's utility would be that it gets to keep them up 100% of the time, but DRK+PLD would have them 33% of the time each so the disadvantage for that pairing is small, especially with a Monk. This is way better for class diversity than the situation now where WAR has a totally unique defensive buff 100% of the time. The main problem is that Reprisal requires parrying if you want your DRK to OT, so as you say it's probably just best to remove the parry proc from it completely, at least when Grit is off.

Removing Reprisal's parry proc also boosts DRK OT DPS a tiny bit, which would make tank DPS more balanced if you move the Slashing Debuff from WAR to PLD. PLD would have slightly lower DPS in exchange for the slashing debuff and WAR and DRK would have slightly higher DPS.

And yes, having a MNK would slightly boost WAR DPS (very slightly), but I think it's not a bad thing. In addition, DRK would boost PLD DPS, PLD would boost NIN DPS, NIN would boost DRK/WAR DPS and potentially even PLD DPS (if they ever make Shield Swipe worth using). Of course it might require a bit of tuning, but I think this would also be a good thing in the end.

I also thought about Pacification being added to Reprisal as part of these changes. I think one of the reasons Pacification has to be completely worthless right now is Paladin is the only one that has it, so this would probably open up doors for future content. Even if it doesn't, it's just flavor then.

The only real issue is I don't know what would happen to DRK in terms of party utility, but the unique utility PLD and WAR would bring would be fairly weak actually so it may not be a problem (PLD would have Divine Veil, WAR would have a persistent STR debuff. Everything else overlaps with other jobs).

(The STR and INT debuffs are known to reduce damage by 10%. I don't know that it'is been tested if the STR debuff reduces all physical damage, but I imagine it does. It's a bit suspicious if it's working with the trash archers you sometimes see that use Hawks Eye, but it works for the bosses in the game I think.)

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

snip cuz characters

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I do agree that they need to shuffle around debuffs with combo's, but the thing I noticed with your setup is it still only give one tank job the ability to apply slashing down. Putting that on PLD wouldn't really help anyone. It would devalue WAR a bit ( although not significantly) and still wouldn't fix alot of things with PLD ( which you stated). If something like this happened the tank scene wouldn't change much as this wouldn't take away the fact that WAR would still outdamage a PLD in tank stance. All it would really do is make NIN a recquired raid slot.

DPS are so balanced right now, doing something like this would upset the balance of the DPS.

Just my 2 cents.

The thing is, whoever has that slashing debuff needs to do less DPS than the other tanks by a small margin or you have a problem where that tank will be mandatory. You would still have to have PLD's DPS be within <5% of the other tanks (probably like 2% or something) and have DRK and WAR have equal DPS for it to work well.

The other alternative is to just nerf WAR DPS to be the weakest of the tanks by several % and leave the debuff with them and figure out another way to shuffle things around. Or honestly the best would be to make NIN another damage type entirely and balance tanks and DPS separate from one another.

The DPS currently are not balanced well at all. MNK is the highest DPS, but NIN riding off a WAR is close enough that it's still higher DPS because of Trick Attack. To be properly balanced, MNK needs to consistently be able to pull like 100-200 DPS more than NIN in the course of a real encounter and a bit over 100 DPS more than a DRG, which only happens in extremely AoE-heavy fights. MNK and DRG are close to balanced with 1 bard (not quite, but maybe close enough since MNK gets a bit more utility), but NIN is actually ahead of both of them right now and brings good utilitiy of its own (not that NIN doesn't also have some issues, like TP drain).

You could, I suppose, just remove the slashing debuff from the tanks entirely and factor in the DPS from the slashing debuff when balancing NIN DPS, but then class balance will shift as you gain gear and tanks can do more DPS.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

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Or you could give tanks a stacking debuff, but it needs to be on at least 2 of the 3 of them. Putting that on a single tank is a recipe for disaster. One that we have right now.

I'm actually fine with WAR losing it. That doesn't bother me at all, but DRK and PLD would both have to have access to it for it not to be a party composition issue. I really think that all tanks should have access to it, but this wouldn't solve alot of problems of PLD being passed over. Doing this in combination with other fixes though would put the tanks on a more level playing field.

Change storm's eye to 5%, give delirium 5% and give royal authority 5%. Make it stackable up to 10% with NIN overriding both.

That's actually an interesting idea to give each tank 5%.

TBH, I find it a problem that NIN DPS requires not using their debuff and that that causes TP drain, but if we're looking strictly at the tanks your idea works well. In that case its much simpler since you can just homogonize tank DPS instead of trying to juggle debuffs and things and getting unintended consequences.

I mean, I know it may seem really casual and too "easy" that Dragon Kick and Disembowel's debuffs are automatic, but that's just the kind of game that it started as and I think should remain as. So I can't believe they never fixed Dancing Edge, just leaving one Job out in the cold related to this. Maybe that's because it only seriously affected the Ninja itself in the past, and so they viewed it as a rotational maintenance thing like Chaos Thrust or Twin Snakes, something that still increases overall DPS.

But now, tank damage has become a much more serious thing at the same time that people have gotten a lot better at utilizing it, virtually out of necessity for Savage's requirements. Because of this confluence, I think they have some stark choices to make about how to move forward with the relation between tanks and DPS.

And yeah, my posts always creep up in volume, haha. Thanks for reading it though. It seemed like you got what I was saying, and I better understand where you're coming from too.

The difference between Dancing Edge and Disembowl is:

WAR buffs a NIN's DPS as the only tank with the slashing debuff so using NIN to replace WAR isn't viable.

and

NIN's TP values are balanced assuming you use Dancing Edge.

NIN has always had this problem. It probably would help with both DPS and tank balance if they just reduced Aeolian Edge's potency by 30-40 and adjusted the TP cost to be ~55 for both, but you still have the issue where NIN loses one of their timers to watch in their rotation.

Huh...I was assuming Dancing Edge was 60 TP like Aeolian Edge, but I completely forgot it's 50.

I disagree with homogenizing damage across the three tanks to such a small difference. I like the setup of DRK does 200 DPS more than PLD and WAR does 200 DPS more than DRK. It makes a clear trade off between damage and defense as their should be. The real problem is that current encounters don't require a lot of damage mitigation and only have massive DPS checks. They need to force tanks to tank more and have more interesting mechanics than do this much damage before you die. If you homogenize damage across tanks with such a small 5% difference, then when a tough fight to tank comes around everyone starts saying why ever bring a WAR and the problem is reversed as it was before the expansion. The best way to fix it is to have balanced encounters.

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Originally Posted by Cirdan-Faust

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Nope. People would still not bring PLD. It's utility kit is dead too atm and imo is a bigger issue than it's lack luster damage. Also forcing tanks to take more damage still wouldn't bring PLD back to raiding either, both WAR and DRK can effectively turtle up for long periods of times if they really need to and can probably do it while still throwing out larger amounts of damage while in the MT spot and provide better raid utilization.

The only thing PLD will excel at is physical fight mitigation, being user friendly to cover up mistakes made by the PLD, and Hollow Ground.

DRK will probably have some similar issues in physical fights that PLD is having now for mitigation, that being it runs out of CD's if Tank busters are consistent, but I don't think it will be as bad if a DRK player learns to up their chances of getting reprisal to pop up and using it for incoming tank busters. That and as long as the boss doesn't split into two, Tank swapping is always an option.

As long as all 3 tanks deal different damage, one composition will always deal higher DPS than the others and therefore allow for kills with less gear. It's basically as simple as that unless either the DPS checks aren't so tight or the DPS difference is so minimal that it doesn't matter in which case it would be balanced. Not the case currently with PLD, and especially not with PLD + DRK.

Right but its so bloody boring to have 3 classes that are the same with different names for the same thing. Paladin should have the damage they have now with much greater utility. Stronger heals that can support group healing and maybe some interesting buffs. That should be the trade off to allow healers an easier time and give them freedom to buff and DPS.

Its similar to what they are doing with AST - SCH - WHM. A gradient from Utility to DPS.

This is all assuming that raids stay DPS based. If they change that direction they can do different things.

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Originally Posted by eagledorf

The difference between Dancing Edge and Disembowl is:

WAR buffs a NIN's DPS as the only tank with the slashing debuff so using NIN to replace WAR isn't viable.

and

NIN's TP values are balanced assuming you use Dancing Edge.

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Outside of that, Disembowel is "automatic" because you *have* to put it up to get to Chaos Thrust, which is one of DRG's strongest Weaponskills. They don't really have the option to drop Disembowel the way NIN can drop Dancing Edge.

I agree with pretty much all of this, especially the Pld stuff. I only wish SE would take notice.

Personally, I love that shield swipe provides enmity (even at the cost of some dmg potency), because it does wonders for Mob aggro without having to resort to a flash spam that both reduces the Pld's outgoing dmg as well as increases the mob's incoming dmg (because less rotated RoH on targets due to increased Flash casts = ouch). With Bulwark up, I can rotate an RoH combo with shield Swipes mixed in to hold maximum aggro without even bothering to use Flash (depending on the size of the mob, obviously). Shelltron helps, but Bulwark is far more useful... or would be, if I could reliably use it instead of waiting for it to get off it's lengthy cooldown.

Also, any time a Pld OT's or runs MT in Sword Oath stance they are made painfully aware of just how crippling that dmg nerf is when in Shield Oath. It's nice that Pld moves have more raid utility (like cover or shield veil), but in the age where SE has adopted the mentality where "Difficulty" somehow equals "big Dps checks with minimal mechanics," Pld's feel the crunch more than anyone.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Outside of that, Disembowel is "automatic" because you *have* to put it up to get to Chaos Thrust, which is one of DRG's strongest Weaponskills. They don't really have the option to drop Disembowel the way NIN can drop Dancing Edge.

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Drg's have a pretty rigid rotation that doesn't allow for a lot of flexibility... which is why boss mechanics that make bosses un-target-able and force them to drop BoTD are all that much more frustrating to them.

What if DRKs get an oGCD defensive ability like Sheltron that it is a guaranteed Parry on the next attack but let's say... on a 45-sec cooldown?? That will make their damage down debuff more reliable, is it not?

As for PLDs, would it be too much to ask for Fight of Flight to be up 50% of the time. If its cooldown was cut to 60 secs, then it's as good as Maim or Darkside. While Darkside is gated by MP management, and Maim is gated by a combo, I guess ours will be just a click/button pres away since our main selling point is simplicity.

WARs? Do they really need more buffs? I guess I would ask for a longer Inner Beast duration... 5 seconds, for me is too short. :D