How do we feel about tank damage right now?

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Originally Posted by SleepyNeko

As a tank main I always support more damage on a tank, mainly because it lessens the chance of enrage on bosses when dps dies and pulls you down from clearing the boss.

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It doesn't, though. As they say, "There's no free [buff]," except where specifically meant as a nerf to all relevant content.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

PLD stance dance was a bit wonky, but I'm pretty sure players didnt want the entire stance mechanic removed.

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There was a loooot of threads since Alex Savage arguing that tank stance was a bad mechanic and should be removed.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Hell I dont even remember dps complaining about tank dps that much.

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You're right, DPS don't complain about tank DPS...in fact, no one complains about tank DPS except tanks. A strange pattern to complain about the size of your DPS when all your partners are fine with it as long as you're skilled :p

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Yes, it would, because healers would steal the primary focus of DPS. As long as healers are required to heal, DPS are required to kill and tanks are required to survive, then the only focus should be to do the best you can for your role, regardless of others. Pushed to the extreme, tanks and heals could do literraly 0 DPS in group content that parties would still take them.

And in that specific situation, tanks doing less DPS means that DPS have now a bigger role in killing the ennemies.

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This guy gets it. Just scaling the mob hp to compensate doesnt mean 'nothing changes'. The bottom line is that every role has an impact on the party and how large or small that inpact is matters. Every tank cpuld do 500 dps but when the raid is doing 75k dps the quality of the tank no longer matters because the impact is so small. Similarly in my triple damage healer example, the healers carry the entire fight on their backs. If they are poor the entire raid fails. If they are great they carry the entire team on their backs wholesale. The impact would be far to high in a team game. This is before we get into replacing dps woth healers or tabks with dps, etc. I use those extreme examples to make the point that the impact of a role (measured in dps in this case) is not just bars on a graph in a 3rd party program. They impact the agency of plahers to impact their surroundings and that is an important part of a team game and it is a SLIDING SCALE. If dps can both be to low or to high relative to other roles, then any change affects this to a smaller degree. To have to much or to little impact affects players and their experiences. It informs strategies, metas, compositions, solo, low man and party play.

Imagine another scenario. All tanks passive mitigation is increased dramatically and the active mitigation skills are toned down to very small (5, 10%) amounts. You could argue tanks take the same damage, but the impact of the player is reduced. Just standing there is nearly as effective as perfect play. Balancing the agency and impact of a player is a core part of the game in all aspects.

Ultimately, the impact of tanks on content of all types has been toned down in ShB. Its not to the point that it is blatently terrible, and you could argue that it may have been to high before (there have been times tanks rivaled low tier dps.) But it DOES matter where it lands. Tanks have less agency than before. The question is, is that a good or bad thing, and that is fairly subjective. If its a bad thing then it needs to be changed. But regardless, the role damage ratio absolutely does matter as it is the impact and agency that players have and that is important.

one idea I have toyed with for a while that would boost every bodies importance is if they removed hard enrage mechanics from most fights altogether. this would mean that even if 5 team members died, if your tank and healers were good enough at mitigating damage and using their tools to survive mechanics, you still had a chance. just like fighting any really hard enemy in any other game, it's not over until the entire team is dead or the enemy is. IMO too many hard enrage mechanics is just bad design and puts DPS within a certain time frame being the determining factor of winning 95% of fights. when this ends up being the case, of course players are going to complain that they can't contribute what they are good at to that.... can I tank a fight to end sooner? can I heal a fight to end sooner?? no, I cannot.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Whether the tanks are, from a design standpoint, better or worse is subjective at best,

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True enough, and if many seem to feel it's worse then I'd say that's worth consideration.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

-and not solved by boosting their damage-.

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The fact that you feel comfortable stating this as if it's a definitive fact while acknowledging the subjectivity in your above statement is puzzling. Seems for many of us, it would in fact solve the problem. Like I've stated if the design of the job is going to emphasize damage as the primary method of tanking, it should do a good bit more than a job that emphasizes healing and deals damage with a one-button rotation. Increasing the damage of tanks solves that particular issue.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

And stop saying "What we had in Stormblood".

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What we had in Stormblood was damage distribution that did not allow a healer job to consistently do more damage than tanks at any level of play. A healer flat out should not be doing more damage than tanks or even breathing down their necks, period. That should not be happening.

Anyway, whether or not the damage increase is significant depends on relative values. And given the current damage values of the roles, a 1k bump in (yes, average) dps would be solid for the tank role while not eclipsing the dps role by any means.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

True enough, and if many seem to feel it's worse then I'd say that's worth consideration.

The fact that you feel comfortable stating this as if it's a definitive fact while acknowledging the subjectivity in your above statement is puzzling. Seems for many of us, it would in fact solve the problem. Like I've stated if the design of the job is going to emphasize damage as the primary method of tanking, it should do a good bit more than a job that emphasizes healing and deals damage with a one-button rotation. Increasing the damage of tanks solves that particular issue.

What we had in Stormblood was damage distribution that did not allow a healer job to consistently do more damage than tanks at any level of play. A healer flat out should not be doing more damage than tanks or even breathing down their necks, period. That should not be happening.

Anyway, whether or not 12-15% is significant depends on relative values. And given the current damage values of the roles, a 1k bump in (yes, average) dps would be solid for the tank role while not eclipsing the dps role by any means.

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Whether Hard Slash shows up at 4700 or 5700 doesn't matter. It doesn't make Warrior less boring rotationally, it doesn't fix the issues people have with Dark Knight, it won't make Paladin less static, it doesn't make Gunbreaker more flexible, and it -doesn't change what they do at all-. It's a number shift up. No different from a number shift down. It'll quiet your grumbling for a little, and then you'll be back here, because the fact is you're ultimately unsatisfied with the design of tanks.

And at the very end here, about the healers.

Why?

Why shouldn't they? What reason could you possibly offer here that couldn't be matched by one from the healers?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Whether Hard Slash shows up at 4700 or 5700 doesn't matter. It doesn't make Warrior less boring rotationally, it doesn't fix the issues people have with Dark Knight, it won't make Paladin less static, it doesn't make Gunbreaker more flexible, and it -doesn't change what they do at all-. It's a number shift up. No different from a number shift down. It'll quiet your grumbling for a little, and then you'll be back here, because the fact is you're ultimately unsatisfied with the design of tanks.

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That's not what a fact is. That's an assumption. And a wrongful one at that. I'll give you an actual fact: I was satisfied with tanks in Stormblood and I am unsatisfied with them now. My issue is precisely with the numbers. For current tank gameplay the numbers are low.

Sure, it's possible a complete overhaul to the gameplay for tank jobs could address this instead, changing the moment-to-moment gameplay of tanks to justify the low numbers. But I'm not here to entertain that discussion because it's unrealistic and unnecessary, especially when it's not entirely preferable.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

And at the very end here, about the healers.

Why?

Why shouldn't they? What reason could you possibly offer here that couldn't be matched by one from the healers?

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I've already answered this as well, and I'm pretty sure it was in a previous response directly to you. But to quote myself, if managing my damage rotation is going to be 99% of my gameplay, then I'm going to need to do more damage than a healer role who gets all these powerful heals and then has a one-button rotation for damage.

Dealing damage IS the gameplay of tanking in FFXIV. Mitigation is largely passive (through damage reduction and high health pool) and occasionally pressing a button every 60-90 seconds. A job that presses one button repeatedly should not be matching tank damage, especially when that job has a suite of powerful healing tools they get to use in addition to their damage.

Other games seem to understand that roles with powerful healing should not have as much damage as tank roles, and I'm surprised people could actually think that's okay. If a job spends all of its time dealing damage it's going to feel less impactful than a job that can do the same damage, but much easier, while also pumping out powerful heals that an bring the entire party from 1hp to full in a matter of seconds.

So that brings us back to the above. To address that we have the options of 1) increasing tank damage or 2) overhauling the tank jobs entirely while also adjusting healers and all of the game's content. And we're not going to sit here and pretend like option #2 is ever going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

one idea I have toyed with for a while that would boost every bodies importance is if they removed hard enrage mechanics from most fights altogether.

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I think the soft enrage mechanics on certain fights are much better than hard enrage because good healers/tanks can gain a little extra time for the DPS to finish killing the mob.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

That's not what a fact is. That's an assumption. And a wrongful one at that. I'll give you an actual fact: I was satisfied with tanks in Stormblood and I am unsatisfied with them now. My issue is precisely with the numbers. For current tank gameplay the numbers are low.

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And again, without a 3rd party information, you wouldn't see the actual numbers of your whole team to have such a feeling.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

But to quote myself, if managing my damage rotation is going to be 99% of my gameplay, then I'm going to need to do more damage than a healer role who gets all these powerful heals and then has a one-button rotation for damage.

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I'm hardly a professional healer, but to push your damage, you need a very good understanding of the fight, knowing how much GCD you can spend on doing damage and healing, how to make your HoT the most efficient, etc...it's hardly "just press one-button for damage". Doing the most damage as a tank have absolutely no impact on how much you survive, while healers doing the same can lead to not enough healing and some deaths, it's a much bigger gamble for them. And finaly, healers having more room to heal can also be tied to how much group mitigation tanks can offer, thus pushing more emphasis on actual tank main focus.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

So that brings us back to the above. To address that we have the options of 1) increasing tank damage or 2) overhauling the tank jobs entirely while also adjusting healers and all of the game's content. And we're not going to sit here and pretend like option #2 is ever going to happen.

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Except this only shows your own inexperience with how the healing role works in this game. Dealing damage -IS- the gameplay of healers in FF14. They actively seek to minimize their healing, to reduce overhealing (and achieve greater efficiency) so they can -deal more damage-.

"Managing your rotation" doesn't come near the amount of hurdles Healers jump through. They not only deal with greater variance due to factors outside their control (RE: Dumb teams), they have to deal with mechanics that they are ill equipped to maintain uptime with, while nearly every basic PF strategy prioritizes melee and tanks. Single button rotations -sounds- easier until you start putting the constraints in context, as well as its multibutton competitors, which for the tanks, are largely linear button strokes, with perhaps the exception of Warrior and Dark Knight by the barest qualifiers of being resource central classes.

Tanks by your metrics don't deserve more damage. They barely deserve equal damage. But even if we were to consider your "99%" to be of greater value, then we still wouldn't increase tank damage, because healers deal damage for nearly equal stretches of time.

You might be dealing damage '99% of the time' but the healer aims for the same goal with infinitely more in their way, so when they can achieve their own fabled maximum damage uptime, despite what obstacles we put in their way, they should certainly be, at the bare minimum, equal to a tank.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I'm hardly a professional healer, but to push your damage, you need a very good understanding of the fight, knowing how much GCD you can spend of doing damage and healing, how to make your HoT the most efficient, etc...it's hardly "just press one-button for damage".

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Except this only shows your own inexperience with how the healing role works in this game. Dealing damage -IS- the gameplay of healers in FF14. They actively seek to minimize their healing, to reduce overhealing (and achieve greater efficiency) so they can -deal more damage-.

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You've both unknowingly highlighted the issue I describe. I'm not going to entertain the idea that when actually doing damage, it's some difficult thing to do. It's not. I am as familiar with healing in this game as I am with dps and tanking. I play them all fairly equally. But yes, you do work to get as much damage as possible while fulfilling your responsibilities as a healer and that is where we get our optimization and the complexity/difficulty in the role.

Which is exactly the problem. Healer has actual responsibilities aside from dealing damage. Active, powerful contribution that does NOT include pressing their damage button repeatedly. Fulfilling your job as a healer is rewarding. You have powerful heals that you use consistently during content that have an immediate and gratifying effect on gameplay.

Then we switch to tank and find that we spend all of our time dealing damage and for our actual "tanking" role we will hit that mitigation skill every 60-90 seconds. All of that time dealing damage only to barely deal more damage than the healer (or potentially even less damage) when that is not only more of the active gameplay, but more involved as well. Yet there's no alternate reward equivalent to the powerful heals that healers have to keep the party alive.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Tanks by your metrics don't deserve more damage. They barely deserve equal damage.

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Yeah that's going to be a hard disagree. The healer role should not be doing more damage than any other. The reward for healing is getting to use your active and powerful heals to keep the party alive and doing damage as best you can. It should not be dealing more damage than another role with less active non-dps contribution on top of that.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

You've both unknowingly highlighted the issue I describe.

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Editing this: You've humored me enough so I should be kind enough to do the same.

You keep saying you're satisfied with how tanks play, and claim it's only a numbers issue preventing your enjoyment, yet we still get posts like this where you highlight how little there is to do other than mindlessly punch out the tank damage rotation.

I'll clarify and say none of the 'rotations' themselves in this game are that complex. The most demanding of them belong to the Ranged role generally, as they're dynamic and priority based, so what you need to do at any one point can shift.

You heavily misrepresent your tanking responsibilities even in the current tier of raids. It's not just a 'mitigation button', but for the most part, it is fair to say that tank specific responsibilities have been reduced.

The thing is, I place that blame squarely upon threads like these, where the community gives voice not to more demanding tank mechanics, but to -more damage-. And not even more damage in give-and-take manners. Not in ways that expand the Tank's moment to moment gameplay.

Acceessories. Accessory scaling. Tank stance penalty. This thread.

For all the talk of how SE doesn't listen to the playerbase, they ignore how often SE eventually caves - And how little things actually change, insidiously clever as they can be. So I haven't taken you at face value. For that I'll apologize.

Your issue of active vs passive contribution is one of perspective. There is no effective difference in you hitting rampart and the white mage hitting Tetra. You hitting Living Dead and them Benediction. The claim that healers are rewarded with big heals is misguided, because it's not big heals that the healers are rewarded with, it's the opportunity to do damage.

Their primary function is to heal. By succeeding at their primary function, -the party lives-. By excelling at their primary function, -they have to do the primary function less-. Nowhere in this reward schemata is the Heal itself the reward or the incentive to heal better. It's the ability to deal damage without risking the party. They cannot live harder if the healer heals harder. At some point it's waste. The task is to heal. The better they heal, the more damage they get to do.

The tanks primary function is to control the encounter. By succeeding at their primary function, -the party lives-. By excelling at their primary functions, -they enable the party-. While responsibilities have been minimized (Again- I blame threads like these), to completely leave them out and say "tanking is just hitting a mitigation button" is disingenuous at best.

Both the tank and the healer have primary objectives that -are not damage-. Both the tank and the healer have a -very high second priority- in dealing damage.

There's no objective reason they cannot be shoulder to shoulder. Tanks and healers are both indispensable to the success of the party, and however little you feel you contribute, you get four slacker tanks and healers, and everyone's feeling the stress that brings, no ifs ands or buts about it.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Yet there's no alternate reward equivalent to the powerful heals that healers have to keep the party alive.

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If there was an equivalent reward, it shouldn't take the shape of more damage but more optimized mitigation. Which is probably the reason why some people said that, to be more, engaging "tanks don't simply need +1k DPS". SE should make "actual tanking" more engaging.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

The reward for healing is getting to use your active and powerful heals to keep the party alive and doing damage as best you can.

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One more time "as best as you can" shouldn't be compared to "as best as DPS can" but "as best as other tanks can". That's why I said that raw numbers don't matter much as ceiling within your role.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The tanks primary function is to control the encounter. By succeeding at their primary function, -the party lives-. By excelling at their primary functions, -they enable the party-. While responsibilities have been minimized (Again- I blame threads like these), to completely leave them out and say "tanking is just hitting a mitigation button" is disingenuous at best.

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A long time ago, I suggested than enmity should be a thing you had to manage. Basically, I imagined two situations.
1) The DPS should do waaaaaay more damage, but woud have to hold back their full potential if the tank wasn't able to build enough aggro, or they'd risk being targeted.
2) High enmity shoud put a debuff of the target so that it would take more damage from your party members. I called it 'Tunnel vision' and explained it as the monster being so focused on you, it has a higher chance of taking critical/direct hits from other party members. And the wider the gap in enmity, the higher the effect of tunnel vision.

But now that enmity is basically gone, there could be something tied to "optimal" mitigation. You could "build" something based on the damage you negated/reduced that could either be used to enhance your DPS (But it wouldn't be a flat potency increase) or, again, make the target more vulnerable to your party members.

On a sidenote, one thing that separates Healer from Tanks is that healers both use GCD to heals and do damage (Even if they have several oGCD). Thus, they have to judge which GCD to put where. There are no mitigation skill on GCD, so you all your GCD are aimed at doing damage. Maybe that could be changed, like Block/Parry not being a passive skill but a GCD.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The thing is, I place that blame squarely upon threads like these, where the community gives voice not to more demanding tank mechanics, but to -more damage-. And not even more damage in give-and-take manners. Not in ways that expand the Tank's moment to moment gameplay.

Acceessories. Accessory scaling. Tank stance penalty. This thread.

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I'll buy that. Granted, I think a LOT of it simply comes down to the devs' vision for the game, regardless of our own voices, but apart from the rapidly partisan "I want more tanking in my tank" threads that rapidly, and often deservedly, turned into "Stop wasting damage in your wholly unnecessary tank stance" retort threads we've been slow to talk seriously about tank gameplay, instead focusing almost solely on tank damage and advantages.

The devs don't even have to ignore issues that are so rarely discussed in depth as tanks' actual gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The thing is, I place that blame squarely upon threads like these, where the community gives voice not to more demanding tank mechanics, but to -more damage-. And not even more damage in give-and-take manners. Not in ways that expand the Tank's moment to moment gameplay.

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Where you place your blame on the direction of the roles is not my responsibility or concern. I'm fine with the moment-to-moment gameplay of tanks. Could the role change? Sure, but I don't think it's necessary.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

There is no effective difference in you hitting rampart and the white mage hitting Tetra.

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The difference is in the frequency of use along with the variation of healing and mitigation abilities. Healers are rewarded with having an impactful non-damage performance. Healers are rewarded with being able to keep party members alive through the frequent and active use of their healing abilities. Healers actively heal, far more than tanks do anything to tank that isn't dealing damage.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Both the tank and the healer have primary objectives that -are not damage-. Both the tank and the healer have a -very high second priority- in dealing damage.

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Yes, and the tank accomplishes its primary objective by dealing damage.

And while it's not relevant, I find ranged dps to be the easiest of the damage roles by a country mile. The most difficult aspect of dealing damage by far is maintaining uptime and adjusting to mechanics while keeping your rotation aligned. This is almost a total non-issue on ranged physical.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If there was an equivalent reward, it shouldn't take the shape of more damage but more optimized mitigation. Which is probably the reason why some people said that, to be more, engaging "tanks don't simply need +1k DPS". SE should make "actual tanking" more engaging.

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An opinion I can understand but one that I don't share. I think more damage would be adequate and, even if the the role was to change significantly, it would be an appropriate solution until such a time that the adjustment is implemented.

Because who knows when or if that will actually happen.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Yes, and the tank accomplishes its primary objective by dealing damage.

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Not really. Or at least, not by optimizing damage. I'm not sure about the enmity modifier for Shield Lob/Tomahawk and such, but you could probably gain more "enmity" by spamming it than by doing a correct GCD rotation. But enmity not being an issue, I think it's more important to focus on the other primary objective of tanks, which is surviving, and it just so happens that surviving is almost completely unrelated to doing damage.

That's the big difference between healers and tanks, and, in my opinion, the thing that should be adressed. Like I said, you could have mitigation GCD, so that you'd have to properly balance your GCD usage...Or, tanks' rotation could give them some mitigation buff so that optimizing damage would actually make you more tanky. Instead of the passive damage reduce of Tank Mastery, PLD's rotation could give a damage reduce, WAR's a max HP/Healing received bonus, GUN's a cumulative barrier and DRK's a Dread Spike effect. Maintaining those by a proper rotation would make tanking more engaging in my opinion. For example, Storm's Eye and Darkside could have those effects instead of both being flat damage increase.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

I think more damage would be adequate and, even if the the role was to change significantly, it would be an appropriate solution until such a time that the adjustment is implemented.

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I think not, because it puts your more into DPS territory, and lessen their responsibility. If it was the opposite, would you find it adequate that a DPS optimizing its rotation gain more self heal or more mitigation ?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Not really. Or at least, not by optimizing damage. I'm not sure about the enmity modifier for Shield Lob/Tomahawk and such, but you could probably gain more "enmity" by spamming it than by doing a correct GCD rotation.

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Well the point being made is that tanks maintain enmity by dealing damage. The ranged attacks deal damage as well. You could spam it you want, but you'd still just be using a damage skill repeatedly and fulfilling your primary role by doing so.

I think your ideas for how tanks can be more engaging are interesting, but you're still talking full rotations and dealing damage here. I don't think it's surprising that people don't want to have a full damage rotation only to deal as much or less damage than a healer that mostly uses one or two damage skills. So what we're reallly talking for a tank rework is at most a 2-3 skill damage rotation accompanied by a plethora of personal and party mitigation skills that are as necessary as the healer's heals for the party to stay alive.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I think not, because it puts your more into DPS territory, and lessen their responsibility. If it was the opposite, would you find it adequate that a DPS optimizing its rotation gain more self heal or more mitigation ?

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I don't agree that it would significantly lessen their responsibility. All roles in games will almost always deal damage, because it's an expected form of engagement. The only question is how much more damage should the designated dps role deal, and I disagree that a 1k or so increase in tank damage would encroach on DPS role territory when it would still have far more damage.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Well the point being made is that tanks maintain enmity by dealing damage.

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But, like I said, optimizing enmity is not technically the same as optimizing damage. And, frankly, this line was only to point out that enmity is barely something tanks have to focus on :p

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

I think your ideas for how tanks can be more engaging are interesting, but you're still talking full rotations and dealing damage here.

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If we want to dive a little deeper, it's more complicated than that.
If you replace the damage buff of Storm's Eye by the old Defiance effect, failing to maintain Storm's Eye could have a huge impact of your survivability since you'd instantly lose up to 20% of your HP, and the healing benefit that SCH loved. So, managing your rotation would not simply be a goal to do the most DPS (Especially since, without the damage buff, using Storm's Eye would be a slight DPS loss compared to Storm's Path). As for Darkside, I think the duration should be lowered to, at best 20s, (15 could be doable, I think) so that refreshing it too soon would lead to a situation where you can't recover MP fast enough to keep it. And if the Darkside effect was a Dread Spike, letting it drop would suddenly prevent you from leeching HP and thus taking hits full force. So, again, dropping it could have a heavy cost on your tanking capability, even though you'd do the same DPS as now.

Here's an example of how bad things are. Had some recent runs of E2S. Healers and tanks did job to the best they could, group saw hard enrage at 10:30. Doesnt sound too bad right? Well, each dps died at least one time each and were only a couple levels above minimum. The boss had about 35% hp left. Why not remove most hard enrages and actually give healers and tanks a challenge. We had zero problem surviving all the soft enrages to that point. Dps were all still punching out more damage than the tanks and healers. Problem is you can survive great and heal great all you want, you will NEVER clear a fight at item level if all 4 dps die one time. The dps of tanks and healers should equate to the level of 50% damage of dps damage+5% of whatever dps is required to clear fights with hard enrages. So E2S that would be a bump of about 810 for each healer and tank. Dps get battle raises, heal buffs, and damage mitigation tools. Healers get damage mitigation tools as well. No reason tanks and healers cant have a tiny bit of dps carry potential. As it stands, fights at item level requirement have almost ZERO room for dps error, while a healer or tank dieng in savage content is easily recoverable (oh tank died before tank busters in E2s? Let me just cover+hallowed+tank cds. A healer died? Guess that healer that was mostly dpsing before can just take over healing for a second until a raise goes out)

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Where you place your blame on the direction of the roles is not my responsibility or concern. I'm fine with the moment-to-moment gameplay of tanks. Could the role change? Sure, but I don't think it's necessary.

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This is just where I'm coming from. To me, this thread is no different from tanks asking why their accessories came with Vitality instead of Strength, and I doubt the outcome of it, were it in the thread's favor, would lead to anything significantly changing.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Yes, and the tank accomplishes its primary objective by dealing damage.

And while it's not relevant, I find ranged dps to be the easiest of the damage roles by a country mile. The most difficult aspect of dealing damage by far is maintaining uptime and adjusting to mechanics while keeping your rotation aligned. This is almost a total non-issue on ranged physical.

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The tank accomplishes the primary objective by literally hitting any button. The tank stance modifier is so absurdly dumb that you can basically just spam your combo opener, let alone the absurd threat the ranged attack will do doubling up its own threat modifier.

If Tank stance was -sane-, something like 1.7x or 2.0x, I'd have agreed wholeheartedly with you. It would then require a tank that is -just as good- as your DPS, and then damage concerns might be valid. It would require far more threat management with your off tank.

Regarding ranged, I'll just go with the usual, but true, cop out.

Every role has their own challenges, every job has their own challenges, when optimizing.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'll buy that. Granted, I think a LOT of it simply comes down to the devs' vision for the game, regardless of our own voices, but apart from the rapidly partisan "I want more tanking in my tank" threads that rapidly, and often deservedly, turned into "Stop wasting damage in your wholly unnecessary tank stance" retort threads we've been slow to talk seriously about tank gameplay, instead focusing almost solely on tank damage and advantages.

The devs don't even have to ignore issues that are so rarely discussed in depth as tanks' actual gameplay.

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Honestly, and this is something I kept trying to hammer home, the Devs themselves are fairly consistent. When it comes to the numbers, they know exactly what they're doing, it's when it comes to comparative design that we run into issues.

One need only look at SSS dummy values and note that their own calculations are fairly spot on. Warriors after their Unga Bunga retooling went up above other tanks by an average of around 8-10%. How much was their SSS dummy compared to others? 8-10%.

The primary reason I don't buy into this thread is because I, as a little homework to myself, went back and took a few logs from Omega and a few from Eden, and starting converting both against each other, attempting to shift Omega's PDPS to RDPS and compare to Edens, and then taking Edens and seeing where Tanks might sit were they the ones getting tethers, Dancer Buffs, Astro cards.

Obviously I'm not a raid app, my math can be subject to error, and it's a small sample size, but double checking it several times, my conclusion I've repeated several times.

Tank "contribution" hasn't changed drastically. The amount of damage they bring now is comparable to Omega, primarily because Tanks, other than Warrior, brought no RDPS buffs, and Warrior itself would be 'sharing' its Slashing contribution with up to two others, and most of the time at least 1. Most of this is covered by the party stat boost they contribute to (Upwards of 900-1000 in good parties), and the rest of the discrepancy can be chalked up to RNG or the fact that tank stance no longer has a penalty.

What it comes down to is DPS is king and all else is just support to that. Not really fun though wiping over and over and over X100 because of....once again...dps issues. Think of every wipe you all have ever seen
How many of those are due to healers and tanks? Now how many of them are due to lack of damage or dps error? I love being able to do my job in dire situations with only 3 players alive, using tools to keep the healer shielded or protected until they try to get the rest of the team revived. Problem is, we already know at that point we dont have a chance of clearing because 5 minutes from now we will all die due to lack of damage. That is my biggest gripe.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Here's an example of how bad things are. Had some recent runs of E2S. Healers and tanks did job to the best they could, group saw hard enrage at 10:30.

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Let me get this straight: All your DPS failed in savage content and your conclusion for hitting enrage is that tanks and healers don't do enough damage ?!

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Think of every wipe you all have ever seen

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The extreme majority of the wipes I've experienced are not on an enrage, so, have absolutely nothing to do with DPS numbers.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Dps get battle raises, heal buffs, and damage mitigation tools. Healers get damage mitigation tools as well.

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You realize that DPS have far less than half the healing and mitigation potential of tanks and healers ? And that healers have less than half the mitigation of tanks ? DPS already share their responsibility with us much more than tanks and healers do.

So, please, keep my DPS low, so that DPS won't blame me when they can't do their only job.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

What it comes down to is DPS is king and all else is just support to that.

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No, tanking and healing are the twin kings. Dps comes after the tanking and healing have been successfully established. Not to say dps isn't important, but it's not the priority, just a very close second.

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Not really fun though wiping over and over and over X100 because of....once again...dps issues.

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True. It's frustrating knowing the errors of others are keeping you from clearing. Not much to do for it but hope that they git gud; asking for more tank damage is just trivializing what dps do, and in the process you end up ruining it for the good dps out there. It would be no different than if you gave dps the ability to survive damage like a tank. Sure, it would be nice for those dps who aren't shit to not be held back by a shitty tank, but then you ruin it for all the good tanks out there. At some point in time it's legitimate and encouraged to tell someone "no, the problem is you, you need to get better." The lack of skill on the part of other players isn't a reason to blanket buff a job or role.

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Think of every wipe you all have ever seen
How many of those are due to healers and tanks? Now how many of them are due to lack of damage or dps error?

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Truth be told, it's probably about equal. Sometimes I die because I tunnel vision and miss a mechanic (Shadoweye + stack + prey in E2S is something that still gets me from time to time when I'm MTing), and sometimes I'm sitting there, watching the tank buster cast while I'm at 40% life with no invuln up (because we planned ahead and used it earlier) while both my healers are Glaring and Broiling. And then sometimes my BLM best friend plays a little fast and loose with Aetherial Manipulation and ends up eating Pure Light or Temp. Current, or my MNK buddy shoulder charges off the edge to his doom, or our BRD's toe touches an aoe and she gets one-shot. I've had occasional parties where it was possible to isolate a single player and be like "yes, this guy is holding us back" and they've more often been a dps, but that's only because I play tank, so the likelihood of 1 of the 4 dps being the problem out of 7 people is higher than it is for the 1 other tank or 2 healers.

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I love being able to do my job in dire situations with only 3 players alive, using tools to keep the healer shielded or protected until they try to get the rest of the team revived. Problem is, we already know at that point we dont have a chance of clearing because 5 minutes from now we will all die due to lack of damage. That is my biggest gripe.

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And it's a valid gripe. It should be talked about more. SE needs to be made aware that the brain-dead aggro systems and somewhat-sparse non-attack options that tanks have are not enough. Tanks want to do tanky stuff. We want to mitigate, we want to be rewarded for controlling the boss appropriately, and we definitely don't want to be reduced to "tanky dps."

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Here's an example of how bad things are. Had some recent runs of E2S. Healers and tanks did job to the best they could, group saw hard enrage at 10:30. Doesnt sound too bad right? Well, each dps died at least one time each and were only a couple levels above minimum. The boss had about 35% hp left. Why not remove most hard enrages and actually give healers and tanks a challenge. We had zero problem surviving all the soft enrages to that point. Dps were all still punching out more damage than the tanks and healers. Problem is you can survive great and heal great all you want, you will NEVER clear a fight at item level if all 4 dps die one time.

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Yes, FF14 expects more from its dps than the average mmo (specifically WoW, but others as well) has typically expected.

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The dps of tanks and healers should equate to the level of 50% damage of dps damage+5% of whatever dps is required to clear fights with hard enrages. So E2S that would be a bump of about 810 for each healer and tank.

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Again, for what reason? Because dps players can be shit? There's already a good bit of wiggle room, even at min ilvl. Buffing a job or set of jobs because the players on another set of jobs might be terrible is a bad idea. You can flip the logic and say that dps need more self-sustain and personal mitigation in case they come across a shitty tank or healer and it makes just as little sense.

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Dps get battle raises, heal buffs, and damage mitigation tools. Healers get damage mitigation tools as well. No reason tanks and healers cant have a tiny bit of dps carry potential.

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AST and SCH fit that bill just fine, and WHM makes up for it with higher raw damage potential and the best healer defensive cooldown in game. You could add some kind of dps raid buff to tanks, but it would have to be equal across all tanks or else you create a drastic imbalance; better to always bring the tank with the dps buff than not. We'd just have a repeat of 3.0 WAR where you always wanted that Storm's Path debuff because -10% damage to everything the boss does was so strong you were stupid not to bring it.

Now, to be clear, I'm not shitting on the idea per se. I've actually advocated for something similar back when we had aggro combos. Kabooa even suggested a modification of it, something like 1% increased damage taken, stacking up to 4 times, but each tank could only apply 2 stacks maximum, with further re-application just refreshing those stacks. So you not only have incentive to use an aggro combo every X seconds, but both tanks have that incentive, making threat management something that's just a tiny bit more interesting than it was at the time. The point being, it was a universal tank buff that would have increased tank combo complexity (since it gave aggro combos an important purpose beyond simply aggro) while also providing a useful boost to the raid.

Most people shat on the idea. These same people also complained about tank homogenization. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.

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As it stands, fights at item level requirement have almost ZERO room for dps error, while a healer or tank dieng in savage content is easily recoverable (oh tank died before tank busters in E2s? Let me just cover+hallowed+tank cds. A healer died? Guess that healer that was mostly dpsing before can just take over healing for a second until a raise goes out)

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Outside of that PLD-specific situation, you would have a drastically different result, as a dps or healer would eat the second tank buster and then the whole thing would start to collapse from there. Not that it would be irrecoverable, just that you'd now have a helluva hurdle to jump in order to beat the enrage.

Personally, I don't like the idea of hard enrages, but I understand why SE has them. I like the softer stack-style enrages more, something akin to Nidhogg's Akh Morn's, just getting more and more powerful until eventually the damage curve outpaces the ability of healers to heal and tanks to mitigate. To a degree, it is what it is, and again, I understand why SE does it even if I don't like it myself. Still, worth talking about the benefits of a soft enrage-style approach instead of the purely hard enrage stuff that happens. SE does need some kind of hard enrage qualifier in there though, if only as a means of countering botting. Yes, it sounds far-fetched, but if it was possible to throw 6 healers and 2 tanks at a boss and successfully beat it via attrition, then you'd see an explosion of those "selling X/Y/Z clears!" in party finder, at which point you devalue the effort and work that goes in to clearing those fights the real way.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

snip

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During progression the distribution of wipes is going to make you think that it's mostly a damage problem because those issues come when you've reached the enrage and are trying to scrape by with as much damage you can get to beat the enrage. However, I would say that in general, wipes due to tanking and healing errors occur just as much in the time leading up to the final push while healers and tanks figure out how hard things hit and how much mitigation and healing they need to get by.

I don't really see your gripe as anything different than players who are mechanically consistent getting frustrated with other players who are taking longer to become consistent enough to clear. In your groups you might find that the tanks and the healers are doing a lot of work while the dps are struggling but there are just as many groups where the dps are on point and waiting for the tanks and healers to figure it out. Just as you might be frustrated at performing your role well and keeping things rolling while dps are falling over, dps can be equally as frustrated with a tank that misses cooldowns or a healer who is inconsistent with their healing.

To your point though, the groups who have consistent dps players might find their path to clearing easier because the dps requirements are balanced less on tanks and healers and therefore a solid dps group can make up for healer and tank errors. That is the role of the dps though and is why tanks and healers aren't weighed as heavily; they require an enrage to create a minimum standard to fulfill their role. The only way to spread out the responsibility of damage to all roles is to have tighter and tighter checks. The only places you're ever going to remotely find that now is during week 1 savage prog and ultimates. But if you really want to experience the pinnacle of shared damage responsibility, take a time machine back to Alexander Gordias and watch how much fun people were having with that.

I suppose from the perspective of somebody that grasps things quicker it seems more of a dps problem. I didnt think groups had too many problems with tanks too often but I'll keep that in mind. I think if they start making more nidex styled fights or lengthen fights like E2S I would not have too much of an issue. I have always liked the mentality of having a chance no matter what, but most fights you can tell by about partway in whether you have a chance or not which is just sad.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

But, like I said, optimizing enmity is not technically the same as optimizing damage. And, frankly, this line was only to point out that enmity is barely something tanks have to focus on :p

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I get you, but we weren't discussing optimizing enmity. Even so, I'd say that optimizing enmity does not mean stacking as much enmity as possible, because that would be the same as saying optimizing healing is pumping as much healing as possible, all else be damned.

Optimizing would mean doing as much as is necessary to establish and maintain enmity while also dealing as much damage as possible. So much to the contrary of your statement, optimizing enmity is exactly what tanks focus on, because optimizing damage is exactly that. The only separate action from strictly dealing damage tanks need to do do for optimizing enmity is turning on tank stance.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

I suppose from the perspective of somebody that grasps things quicker it seems more of a dps problem. I didnt think groups had too many problems with tanks too often but I'll keep that in mind. I think if they start making more nidex styled fights or lengthen fights like E2S I would not have too much of an issue. I have always liked the mentality of having a chance no matter what, but most fights you can tell by about partway in whether you have a chance or not which is just sad.

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We've all been there man. Not to toot our collective horns, but I honestly believe as a tank (and healer as well) a person just becomes used to having more on their plate in a moment-to-moment situation. So it gets frustrating to see people who literally only have one job fail to do that job, and you naturally want to be able to affect the outcome of a fight more than you already are.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

If Tank stance was -sane-, something like 1.7x or 2.0x, I'd have agreed wholeheartedly with you. It would then require a tank that is -just as good- as your DPS, and then damage concerns might be valid. It would require far more threat management with your off tank.

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I agree that the hand-holding of tank stance is pretty ridiculous. That said, who did it punish to take away what little agency tanks had when it comes to managing enmity and give less damage in return? Because in my opinion it only punishes those tanks who DO perform just as well or better than the dps. SE decided no one likes tanking so felt it would be good to make it super accessible and remove some of what little non-damage engagement the role had in the process.

SE: "Ohhh hey we're going to have to change up tank stance so that you never really have to worry about enmity anymore"

Player: "Ah okay, well I guess I did just use tank stance to establish enmity and turn it off as soon as possible, so it's not a uh... bad thing I guess? Any actual tank-oriented engagement we're getting in return?"

SE: "Nah."

Player: "I see. Well, the enmity is one thing, but what about the defense?"

SE: "It's passive! :D"

Player: "Oh uh-okay... well I guess I can at least I can focus on doing good damage and feel rewarded for that"

SE: "Yeahhhhh we're also going to have to take some of your damage too"

Player: "...allllright. So what ARE we getting?"

SE: "Here's a couple more damage attacks you can use to feel better!"

Player: "....I'm getting more damage attacks to deal comparatively less damage?"

SE: "What was that? Btw healers are getting more actual heals, and they get to match or even exceed your damage at the same time!"

Player: "..."

SE: "Please look forward to it!"

The only tank that even gets a defensive ability past level 70 is WAR with Nascent Flash. Well, I guess we could count DRK's Dark Missionary if we really want, which is hardly as useful or necessary as healer role's heals. The role is simply not designed in the same way as healers. It's a watered down dps that just tries its best to deal damage only to be matched in damage by a role that has far more to do which doesn't include dealing damage.

So if nothing else it seems many agree that something needs to change, and it boils down to two ideas. The first is that current gameplay is fine but the damage needs to be higher. The second is that the current damage is fine but the gameplay needs to be adjusted to give tanks less damage skills and more non-damage role abilities.

I'm obviously in the first camp and think that it is the best solution, and that even if SE were to decide to change tanks it's still the best solution until that happens. Because there's no way a complete redesign of the role along with and adjustment to all of the game's content is happening anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

I get you, but we weren't discussing optimizing enmity.

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We were discussing primary focus. And since tanks have two focus, to keep monster on them and to survive, I simply made sure that enmity was a not non-issue to focus on the surviving part, which, again is almost completely unrelated to how much DPS you do.

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Originally Posted by Bravely_Default

Here's an example of how bad things are. Had some recent runs of E2S. Healers and tanks did job to the best they could, group saw hard enrage at 10:30. Doesnt sound too bad right? Well, each dps died at least one time each and were only a couple levels above minimum. The boss had about 35% hp left. Why not remove most hard enrages and actually give healers and tanks a challenge. We had zero problem surviving all the soft enrages to that point. Dps were all still punching out more damage than the tanks and healers. Problem is you can survive great and heal great all you want, you will NEVER clear a fight at item level if all 4 dps die one time. The dps of tanks and healers should equate to the level of 50% damage of dps damage+5% of whatever dps is required to clear fights with hard enrages. So E2S that would be a bump of about 810 for each healer and tank. Dps get battle raises, heal buffs, and damage mitigation tools. Healers get damage mitigation tools as well. No reason tanks and healers cant have a tiny bit of dps carry potential. As it stands, fights at item level requirement have almost ZERO room for dps error, while a healer or tank dieng in savage content is easily recoverable (oh tank died before tank busters in E2s? Let me just cover+hallowed+tank cds. A healer died? Guess that healer that was mostly dpsing before can just take over healing for a second until a raise goes out)

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It seems like its a time to install a parser again and kick away dps that does +/- only 50% more damage than a tank (instead of 90-100% more) because like that they are at the bottom of the dps chart for their job.
If they are the role to deal damage then i will just kick them away if they wont deliver. This is what developers apparently want us to do, to put stress on dps, so let it be.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

We were discussing primary focus. And since tanks have two focus, to keep monster on them and to survive, I simply made sure that enmity was a not non-issue to focus on the surviving part, which, again is almost completely unrelated to how much DPS you do.

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We all know that mitigation is another aspect of tanking, but that's not the point being made here. The point of the discussion was that tanks focus on dealing damage as a primary objective of their role. Dealing damage is exactly how they maintain enmity, and so damage is an essential element of tanking. It must be done, and is in fact most of tank gameplay.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Dealing damage is exactly how they maintain enmity, and so damage is an essential element of tanking.

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Oh, so you really were taking about keeping enmity as a "primary focus" o_O
So, again, keeping enmity is only very loosely based on how much damage you actually do. By that, I mean that you could be absolutely horrendous at dealing damage that you would still be top enmity, simply be being in your tank stance. So, that whole "I'm min-maxing my rotation and it should reward me more than healer pushing one button" is completely irrelevant there.

So, I'll say it again, optimizing your damage has nothing to do with any primary focus of a tank, be it keeping the enemy on you or surviving attacks. And they pretty much don't interfere with each other, as opposed to healer who need to "sacrifice" some GCD to deal damage, and could potentially not heal enough if they're too greedy. That's why it make more sense to me that a healer who take that kind of risk should achieve higher numbers than us, since we don't sacrifice anything to push our damage. Funnily enough, if you look at the graphs that were posted on this very thread, tanks in SB were far above healers when it comes to DPS, and they had to sacrifice something for that, namely, their tank stance.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Oh, so you really were taking about keeping enmity as a "primary focus" o_O

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Uh, yes. Tell me how well it works out if you use your mitigation skills without dealing any damage to the boss.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

So, I'll say it again, optimizing your damage has nothing to do with any primary focus of a tank, be it keeping the enemy on you or surviving attacks.

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You're subtly shifting your wording here. My statement was that dealing damage is a primary focus of tanking. Your response is basically "but you don't have to optimize tho you just gotta hit stuff". I mean, sure, you technically don't have to optimize properly on dps role either, but the role is intended to do so. Tank is as much intended to perform its rotation properly, which is why tank damage is taken into consideration when it comes to encounter design. Tanks are expected to contribute an appropriate amount of damage at all times.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Uh, yes. Tell me how well it works out if you use your mitigation skills without dealing any damage to the boss.

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Again, you were the one speaking of being "rewarded for your effort". Do you expect to be taken seriously if you claim that keeping enmity requires any effort ?

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

My statement was that dealing damage is a primary focus of tanking.

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No, your statement, in the sense of this very thread you created, was that you didn't felt rewarded as a tank by your DPS number. The thing is that whatever primary tank focus you use as a metric, which are enmity and survival, that DPS number is all you need to perform optimally and without any risk.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Again, you were the one speaking of being "rewarded for your effort". Do you expect to be taken seriously if you claim that keeping enmity requires any effort ?

No, your statement, in the sense of this very thread you created, was that you didn't felt rewarded as a tank by your DPS number. The thing is that whatever primary tank focus you use as a metric, which are enmity and survival, that DPS number is all you need to perform optimally and without any risk.

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My statement was that tank accomplishes its primary objective by dealing damage. I'll quote it for you.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Yes, and the tank accomplishes its primary objective by dealing damage.

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You decided to interject with semantics that "enmity" shouldn't be considered a primary focus because you don't have to optimize damage to keep enmity. It doesn't matter. You DO have to deal damage to tank. You WILL spend most of your time dealing damage. Tank ARE designed to deal damage and ARE intended to optimize their damage by the devs' own admission, and doing damage DOES require effort.

I don't care if you want to call it enmity or not, nothing you have said or can say will change that damage is absolutely a primary and necessary function of the role.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Tank ARE designed to deal damage and ARE intended to optimize their damage by the devs' own admission, and doing damage DOES require effort.

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Again, optimizing your damage as a tank is unrelated to how much damage you do compared to DPS or healers, but to your fellow tanks. You can coat it with whatever noble goal of doing your job you want, but in the end, what bugs you is that you deal low damage compared to DPS. Increasing that number without any additionnal effort (Which is what potency increase would be, since I don't remember you asking for a more complex rotation) would change absolutely nothing on how well you tank, or how optimized your rotation would be.

I can't really guess what tank you played since this character seems to be your alt, but since you mentionned being more rewarded in SB, it should also be noted that optimizing DPS in ShB is much much easier than it was in SB, so it makes totally sense that the reward would be lower. Healers, on the other hand, have the exact same gamble to make than in past expansions.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Again, optimizing your damage as a tank is unrelated to how much damage you do compared to DPS or healers, but to your fellow tanks.

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You suggested that damage is not a primary objective of tanks and we've established that it is. You even argued that "optimizing enmity" would be spamming shield lob repeatedly, which is wrong. I've already said my piece about the impact of roles within a given damage distribution and why it matters multiple times within the thread, so unless you intend to object further that damage is not a primary function of tanks we can dead this particular discussion.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Increasing that number without any additionnal effort (Which is what potency increase would be, since I don't remember you asking for a more complex rotation) would change absolutely nothing on how well you tank, or how optimized your rotation would be.

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I'm looking for more impact from what I spend my time doing, which is damage. And since you can't remember, let me remind you with my post below:

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

I'm not sure I get what you're suggesting, but if I understand then there are ultimately two options if you allow more room for tanks to "excel" in damage.

1) Tanks who "excel" are able to do more damage than now, solving the issue of tanks being very low impact compared to the other roles. This would be good

2) Tanks can "excel" in their role but the damage ceiling remains the same, and bad tanks do even less damage. So tanks doing their job properly end up working harder for the same contribution.

The second scenario is unacceptable. The first is good, but this is essentially a roundabout way of saying that tanks need more damage, and I'm not really concerning myself with the how right now. Whether they change the rotation, adjust the formula for tank damage so that we get more out of the current rotation, or just straight up increase potencies, doesn't really matter. If tanks get more damage out of it, then that's fine.

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As you can see, I'd be perfectly fine with an upward adjustment in the rotation that allowed tanks to have more damage with more effort. Keep in mind that doing so would not make actual "tanking" particularly more effective what with enmity and mitigation largely being non-factors, but it would make the role more impactful and engaging.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

Uh, yes. Tell me how well it works out if you use your mitigation skills without dealing any damage to the boss.
.

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This was already done in SB, a paladin did nothing but spam flash and kept aggro just fine.

You could also spam 1 or first aoe move and probably keep aggro against most players

Even flash was nice to have since it, you know, blinded things. This mitigated damage and contributed to being a tank. Honestly I think they should bring flash back as an OGCD with a 30S CD that makes it reduce enemy damage dealt by 5% due to being blinded. Hell make it an AOE too for dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

This was already done in SB, a paladin did nothing but spam flash and kept aggro just fine.

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Only bad tanks spammed flash, you used it only once per group.

Shb is a total lie for everyone who played a tank in SB.
They streamlined our gameplay, especially murdered DRK and WAR in dungeons, those two are shadow of their former self.
They took that little enmity management away from us
They took away a lot of our role CD's that were useful
We supposed to be more DPS focused in this expansion, but no one was expecting to do less damage than healers and a lot less dmg in comparison do dps.

No wonder why tanks are still in demand if they play like crap, like poor man version of dps, and 4 jobs neither a good balance between them is helping, healers are more numerous despite having 2 playable jobs and 1 underwhelming one, i guess why.
I should have played shb on other roles.

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Originally Posted by J-Reyno

So if nothing else it seems many agree that something needs to change, and it boils down to two ideas. The first is that current gameplay is fine but the damage needs to be higher. The second is that the current damage is fine but the gameplay needs to be adjusted to give tanks less damage skills and more non-damage role abilities.

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If I may posit a third position: The number of damage skills is fine, but there needs to be more non-damage skills against which they can be balanced in their opportunity costs, with the non-damage skills still being viable at the highest levels of play (such as by making their mitigation scale with tank gear or cost less when mitigating the attacks relatively weakened by simple a party's gear progression), such that tank complexity increases, with greater depth in most outputs and greater breadth across all types of outputs.

An extreme of said position: Passive mitigation should likely be reduced in favor of frequent (or even consistently available) means of active mitigation. If needed, tank combos can be reworked to conserve button count, trading a pretense of complexity for actual complexity.