Feedback for tank changes as tank player for Patch 6.08 and beyond

Hi, I am Archie i would like to share my feedback regarding on tanks for Endwalker.

I really enjoy playing every single tank jobs in FF14 and i personally would like to give some feedback for tanks in EW, i will go in for each tanks mostly will talk about the playstyles.

Gunbreaker
GNB changes were pretty good in EW. The one thing that I'm having problems when main tanking as GNB is that moving boss while Continuation is difficult. The reason is because the range for Continuation is too short which leads to me having to stop the boss while moving it this especially in raids like P3 or 89 ex trial. While as other tanks, i can use abilities such as Upheaval, Req, etc between GCDs from a distance while moving. This is not the same for GNB which has busy rotation.

My suggestion: Buff Continuation's range just like what the team did for Samurai in the very recent patch.

Warrior
Warrior in EW has been an absolute blast to play. The only problem i have with WAR is that if i use Inner Release and the boss forces me to move away and i use Tomahawk, Tomahawk will crit and consume 1 IR for some reason, i'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional but DRK's Delirium can be activated early and use anything else and it will not use Delirium stacks

My Suggestion: Make IR not consume any stacks if the player is forced to use other abilities than Fell Cleave or Decimate

Paladin
Paladin is absolutely amazing in EW, maybe potency adjust, that's it.

Dark Knight
Dark Knight I really how its looks but personally i'm not having fun playing DRK this expac compared to SHB I feel like there's a lot of problems that need to be addressed for DRK. I understand it has the current highest damage of all tanks but i do not enjoy it's playstyle and how it tanks in content. Personally, some abilities should be changed. Another wish is that, i wish the 123 combos animations were change because currently I find the animations to be very slow and not flashy compared to other tanks. Some players even expressed that HW animations were the best for DRK compared to now, I would also love to see Delirium changed to something else like maybe make it that DRK goes crazy like Guts from Berzerk, while also giving bonuses such HP or mana regen. This will justify why DRK has the highest damage.
While i don't see any reworks for DRK being in this coming patch, i would like to see it in 6.1+

My suggestions
-Change BW to 5 stacks, now it is hard to get 5 uses of BW
-Dark Mind should be combined with Oblation, this will free up hotbar be useful for magic damag
-Change LD so that healers will have less problems, i personally think DRK dying should be removed because it gives healers more burden than benefit. Holmgang and Bolide got updated 10 secs while LD isn't changed
-Any sustain can be good without making DRK OP in raids. Maybe Edge/Flood gives HP?

I hope the team can see this!

Thank you!

Atonement could be a DirectHit or a DirectCrit. if they don't want to buff potency too high.

Sheltron's oath cost could be halved. If not change the resolve timer to 8s from 4s.

Cover removed from oath cost and changed to charge(s).

Confiteor combo should have a lower GCD since its a spell and not affected by skill speed in anyway.

Intervention could be changed, the 4s buff of resolve is too short. or oath cost reduced.

Really though they are pretty well kitted out. Reducing oath cost would be great.

Only slight increases in potency are needed.

The whole point of the new skills like Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting and Heart of Corundum is that they offer strong mitigation on a very short cooldown but also with a very short duration. The 4 seconds are entirely intentional, you're supposed to time them properly for a single big hit.

Increasing the timer from 4 to 8 seconds defeats their intended purpose.

Greatly agree with your take on the Gunbreaker, should be an easy fix to do, as for Dark Knight I honestly think they could take some sustain ideas from the pvp kit and be more creative with the animations overall, I think (played only pld,gnb,drk didnt touch war ever) that DRK has the least variation on its attacks, they either 1-2-3 or bloodspiller, maybe having an alternate 3 (maybe Shadowbringer becomes a GCD and a 3 on the combo, i like the animation but it gets lost as an OGCD) and this combo gives something different like a haste buff! would be cool, and then u go full berzerker unga bunga, would be lovely, DRK lacks that satisfying feedback like the PLD confiteor combo has, it deperately needs something to spice things up I agree on that

Not sure about other tanks not spend much time in this expansion but GNB... really needs "Continuation range". Everything else good enough please don't break it :3

Wow, thank you for the DRK and WAR changes SE!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by archiegamez

Wow, thank you for the DRK and WAR changes SE!

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well, they definitely took your suggestion to "fix" Inner release; while I welcome the change, I don't think what we had before was in any way broken or even strictly worse than what they changed it too. I haven't played DRK yet and i heard it come up often in talks about IR, so I guess the stack system was a change wanted by most anyway. I didn't mind having to really think about my IR uses, wasting it on an inner chaos felt fair for not managing the already insultingly simple rotation

The real problem is how they butchered WAR Overpower for literally no reason at all. They really needed to go in the opposite direction - give all four tanks the clearly superior cone AoE , so they would actually learn to tank packs of mobs properly.

In general I have not liked the changes they made to the game after Shadowbringers and tanks are only a part of the entire problem. They made it so that everything end game hits like a dump truck and expect every single role to be using mitigation effectively, which put more pressure on healers who already had pressure on them to keep people alive. It's sort of like your HP is really an arbitrary number of hearts in some Legend of Zelda game, and even though you got 20 hearts, one hit from Ganondorf does scales something like this depending on role:

DPS: You lose 15 hearts on a light hit and 20 hearts on a hard blow. Mits reduce it to 12 and maybe 19 hearts if you are lucky.
Tanks: You lose 10 hearts on a hard hit and 17 hearts on a hard blow. Mits reduce it to 6-7 hearts on a light blow and 13-15 on a heavy. Kind of varies.
Healers: You're in the same bucket as DPS but at least you can heal yourself after a near death experience.

And of course the game is hiding all of this under stat bloat due to the power creep of the gear at end game. At least in normal mode everything is more within reason. Like a tank buster only does 8 hearts or something so there is time to recover with GCDs. End game they hit you so hard in anything that is meant to provide a challenge it just gets stupid real fast.

Of course, then you have people who are doing normal content and are saying tanks are OP, who have zero idea WHY tanks are so OP right now. Namely, if the tanks weren't as tough and enduring as they are no one would get past the stuff they are throwing around in Pandemonium Savage.

I suppose I feel like right now Gunbreaker and Dark Knight kind of need more bandwidth for mitigations given the current design. Not saying they aren't able to mitigate effectively, but their rotations feel like they got less room specified for doing something like a mit than on warrior or paladin.

+1 on extended range for GNB, it's pretty annoying.

I am also a Dark Knight main and i feel like Dark Knight has had some very uninspiring and lazy changes. Especially since every other tank got HUGE buffs to their main mitigation skill while dark knight got.... nothing? It feels a little strange.
Why did they give us Oblation instead of just merging TBN+Oblation together like every other tanks core mitigation skill?

Salt and Darkness is just a meme addition. I have always felt like Salted Earth was a lame skill. It feels very underwhelming for a 90s CD skill. I would have enjoyed it if they reduced its CD to 60s or perhaps made it slow enemies slightly, or something, anything other than how bland it feels now. A better version would be a slightly weaker, shorter duration version that only has 45s cooldown. And when its duration ends, it explodes into Salt and Darkness. This way you get to use it on every pull, you aren't punished so hard if a boss walks out of it for an attack, and you are still rewarded for timing it properly if you manage to keep a boss inside for its entire duration.
Another option is to keep it at 90s, but merge it with Abyssal drain, so it Heals you for each tick of damage it does to enemies inside of it. That way it actually feels like a tanking tool and has some utility rather than a 90s DPS button. It also would help catch Dark Knights up with Warriors and their unbelievable Bloodwhetting power.