A PSA to all concerned tanks

Hey everybody!

So I've seen a pretty incredible amount of complaints and rage posts about the way that tanks are liable to be adjusted in 4.0. I've seen a huge number of my fellow WAR players voicing complaints about an extreme overhaul that can be seen as a nerf in a lot of different ways, I've seen Paladins worry that their new toys are simply band-aid fixes that won't let them compete with the more expanded competition, and I've seen Dark Knights worry that their niche will have vanished, and that they no longer have a focus, or a role in the team. Another huge point of contention has been the talk about how our primary stats scale, with us scaling dominantly off of STR but being VIT locked.

All I ask is that everybody please just take a moment to calm down, take a deep breath, and relax. This is a video game, you do not pay $15 a month to be this negatively impacted. There's a ton of information we don't have about each of the tanks and their playstyles, or how they plan to scale. Nothing stated in the liveletter indicates that they are going to be removing our attack scaling off of Vit, only adding more value to Strength. In the event that they do make us scale exclusively off of Strength, rest assured that I will be among the first to voice my complaints about what would be an awfully thought out, unfun change that pushes a lot of people from the role.

There's a lot we don't know, and while speculation and the voicing of concern now is totally valid, I'd ask that we all please hold off on calling a job 'dead' before we even see their entire toolkit for the new expansion. Nothing is certain, anything is possible.

Another thing to bear in mind is that if you have complaints about tanking, or you feel that the changes that will be made will push you from the role... Simply don't play it. For me personally, the information I've seen has led me to believe that I'm very likely to remain a dedicated DPS player for the new expansion, without returning to tanking. The devs have access to data and statistics for their playerbase, if you don't like the changes they make, it's as simple as leaving your tank at level 60.

If that means playing a new job, a new role, even unsubbing... Whatever form that takes, please take it. I don't think anybody should feel handcuffed to a job or feel a responsibility to level it out of job loyalty. Simply do what's best for you. If enough of the playerbase share's your sentiments, action will be taken. After all, can't do content without tanks, and I've seen a ton of tanks that don't entirely feel like tanking anymore since the liveletter. I know that for me personally, the liveletter didn't do a lot to reassure me that my own concerns will be addressed. Because of that, if 4.0 launches and doesn't amaze me, all 3 of my tanks are very, very likely to remain 60 for the duration of Stormblood.

TL;DR - Everybody just calm down and remember that the dime stops with you. Don't like the changes, don't level the job. Be a statistic! Either you'll be happier for it by doing something you enjoy, or the game will change.

EDIT: So I was wrong, new info just came from the translation about the way that the Vit to Str conversion affects our damage output. Again, I'm gonna hold my breath until early access, but if it's true, this doesn't bode well at all.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Regarding the discussion on the tank damage formula (which happens at around 4:20:00 in the Live Letter), the changes will "restore" it to its previous state. An analysis of the translation can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...damage_change/

Attack power will no longer scale with vitality. In addition, when discussing role-locked accessories, tanks were described as "Vitality Main", implying that the accessories will be vitality only and will not contribute to your dps outside of secondary stats.

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Originally Posted by SargentToughie

TL;DR - Everybody just calm down and remember that the dime stops with you. Don't like the changes, don't level the job. Be a statistic! Either you'll be happier for it by doing something you enjoy, or the game will change.

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Bards can attest, this eventually works. Goodbye cast bars.

While I understand, its a game, etc.

It is disheartening to see tank damage getting nerfed yet again. The removal of VIT scaling to attack power, combined with the job locked accessories is a tremendous hit to us. To those saying it will not be that bad, I mean, we all saw the Fell Cleave damage in the live letter video. That was a level 70 warrior, in i290 gear, and the damage on them was outright pathetic.

I mean, a good number of us freaked out seeing 5 of them in a row, but when the strength of them is less than half what it used to be, whats the point? Its unfortunate, I really liked the way warrior played, it felt powerful, and it was nice to contribute to the outgoing damage like that. It seems that isn't going to be possible any more.

As to picking another class, I enjoy the tank roll, I like being able to take hits, dish it out in return, etc. I don't want to play another role, nor could the game really afford to loose more tanks at this specific point.

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Originally Posted by XoanGrahm

It is disheartening to see tank damage getting nerfed yet again. The removal of VIT scaling to attack power, combined with the job locked accessories is a tremendous hit to us. To those saying it will not be that bad, I mean, we all saw the Fell Cleave damage in the live letter video. That was a level 70 warrior, in i290 gear, and the damage on them was outright pathetic.

I mean, a good number of us freaked out seeing 5 of them in a row, but when the strength of them is less than half what it used to be, whats the point? Its unfortunate, I really liked the way warrior played, it felt powerful, and it was nice to contribute to the outgoing damage like that. It seems that isn't going to be possible any more.

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The Fell cLeaves in the LL were unbuffed and just around the damage a non-BiS-ilvl270-WAR would do...
By this it is natural that the damage is lower by expecting a fullVIT tank from the past before the prior change to tank damage from STR->STR/VIT.

The even bigger problem i see is how it will shift the lower levels, cause the prior shift killed just like 40% tankdamage and enmity in low level dungeons and this can hurt the tank community even harder while disheartening new tank players even harder than now.

You're 100% correct that the damage for them unbuffed is roughly the same as it is unbuffed now, but you also have to consider that the effect of berserk is being lowered as well. From its current 50% down to 30%, and that isn't even considering what other abilities might be adjusted or outright removed. This is also a 10 level gain and a 20 ilevel gain for the same damage we can do currently.

You're also correct that the issues of scaling, which S.E. actually pretty much seems to have issues with regardless, might be the bigger concern here. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As I said, as a whole rather disheartening.

Not concerned at all, I in fact eagerly await 4.0 for my Paladin I know for sure that the class as finally been given the TLC it so badly needed. Now I need to play 4.0 changes to my PLD to see what I need to get my current tanking level in par with the new skills from 4.0 and see the changes it will bring to the opening pulls, positional play etc.

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Originally Posted by XoanGrahm

You're 100% correct that the damage for them unbuffed is roughly the same as it is unbuffed now, but you also have to consider that the effect of berserk is being lowered as well. From its current 50% down to 30%

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Just woke up so can't write a long explanation, but there's a few things to consider: We get 6 FCs under Berserk now every other Zerk, we have access to the uppercut now (which is oGCD and costs 20 rage while dealing BB-equivalent damage), Infuriate's CD now gets reduced by 10s(5? can't remember) every time you use a rage-related move, and while Zerk is losing 20% of it's attack power buff it's CD is also being reduced by 30s and no more pacification with or without a Bard.

Also iirc we're getting 5 abilities in the expansion and we've only seen 3 (uppercut, shoulder tackle, release the beast) so those missing 2 could do any number of things.

Personally, though, my main concern is that the overall tank meta will remain to be staying in DPS stance for 99% of the fight and continuing to occasionally hit defensive CDs. I still prefer how WAR plays in tank stance and I feel like we'll never get back to that. Also losing Bloodbath sucks, but I'm not too hung up on that since I dunno what our missing 2 abilities do (plus we get Rampart, which is p crazy even if our self healing isn't as great now).

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Originally Posted by XoanGrahm

You're 100% correct that the damage for them unbuffed is roughly the same as it is unbuffed now, but you also have to consider that the effect of berserk is being lowered as well. From its current 50% down to 30%, and that isn't even considering what other abilities might be adjusted or outright removed. This is also a 10 level gain and a 20 ilevel gain for the same damage we can do currently.

You're also correct that the issues of scaling, which S.E. actually pretty much seems to have issues with regardless, might be the bigger concern here. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As I said, as a whole rather disheartening.

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Now hold on. Berserk isn't getting nerfed, unlike what you think. The removal of the pacified effect and the lower cooldown means you can do it more often and not have to worry about being unable to use abilities for 5 seconds afterward either. The increased use more than makes up for the 20% loss

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Originally Posted by SargentToughie

Nothing stated in the liveletter indicates that they are going to be removing our attack scaling off of Vit, only adding more value to Strength. In the event that they do make us scale exclusively off of Strength, rest assured that I will be among the first to voice my complaints about what would be an awfully thought out, unfun change that pushes a lot of people from the role.

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Regarding the discussion on the tank damage formula (which happens at around 4:20:00 in the Live Letter), the changes will "restore" it to its previous state. An analysis of the translation can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...damage_change/

Attack power will no longer scale with vitality. In addition, when discussing role-locked accessories, tanks were described as "Vitality Main", implying that the accessories will be vitality only and will not contribute to your dps outside of secondary stats.

Before you launch a campaign on our behalf, however, I think there's a few points worth mentioning. Switching to a Vit-only damage formula would require going back and changing every piece of left-side tank gear that has been released thus far. It would also mean that, if you were deciding on tank HP values for a new raid tier, you would not be able to independently control tank dps. You'd have to change the multiplier for attack power with every new tier of gear.

My main worry isn't the potential damage nerf. It's the damage scaling on tank accessories. If there's no STR on your accessories, then the only difference between tiers will come from secondary stats. This could work if tenacity is weighted highly enough. But overall, I think the best solution would be to have the accessories be VIT + STR (although the STR could be set significantly lower then the amount found on melee dps accessories, to achieve whatever balance they were aiming for). You want your group to be at least somewhat excited when tank accessories drop on the first floor of Omega. Not annoyed at it.

Another damage nerf would really lower my enthusiasm for tanking. I don't like the idea of spending the beginning of the new expansion leveling and gearing up just to be doing around the same damage we were at the end of HW. Maybe it's partially due to the last nerf not being implemented all that long ago, but the prospect of having to spend the beginning of SB with a weaker character might make me consider switching roles for my main job this expansion.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

Another damage nerf would really lower my enthusiasm for tanking. I don't like the idea of spending the beginning of the new expansion leveling and gearing up just to be doing around the same damage we were at the end of HW. Maybe it's partially due to the last nerf not being implemented all that long ago, but the prospect of having to spend the beginning of SB with a weaker character might make me consider switching roles for my main job this expansion.

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tanks are doing to much dmg imo , they should be always lower then actual dps ^^

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Originally Posted by Khemorex

tanks are doing to much dmg imo , they should be always lower then actual dps ^^

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We already are lower than actual DPS, though.

These are the forums, people will complain about everything and anything. We haven't even tested the jobs, so the fears are based on nothing but speculation and conjecture which shouldn't be taken seriously. To address the points:

WAR: Anyone who didn't expect a nerf or overhaul to WAR has been living under a rock regarding the issues that it caused to the tank meta and how broken its design was.

PLD: PLD got a lot of good stuff, and all of our complaints were addressed in some shape or form. I understand the fears considering how bad we had it in Heavensward, but without testing the toolkit within the new battle system, all we can do is trust that the changes to magic mitigation and damage output are enough.

DRK: This one likely stems from the job action trailer and lack of information, which I noticed myself. We don't actually know a whole lot about new DRK so we should treat that as a gap in knowledge rather than seeing the job as having lost its niche.

Basically, everyone calm down because your fears are grounded in speculation and missing information.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

We already are lower than actual DPS, though.

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Usually. It's not something that they'll solve by nerfing tank damage, though.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Usually. It's not something that they'll solve by nerfing tank damage, though. Only by buffing dps players' understanding of their rotations.

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Yeah, you can basically only work with the average a DPS player should be putting out since theoretically a DPS player could also just hit no buttons at all and do 0 DPS. :P

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Originally Posted by Lyth

My main worry isn't the potential damage nerf. It's the damage scaling on tank accessories. If there's no STR on your accessories, then the only difference between tiers will come from secondary stats. This could work if tenacity is weighted highly enough. But overall, I think the best solution would be to have the accessories be VIT + STR (although the STR could be set significantly lower then the amount found on melee dps accessories, to achieve whatever balance they were aiming for).

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The reversion is actually part of what is letting them force more Tanking in tank stance as apposed the tanking in DpS stance that happens currently.

Str accessories during 3.0/3.1 and the Str+Vit meta during 3.2-3.5 were part of what let us get away with DpS stance tanking as the Tank output vs Dps enmity output ratio didn't require tank stance to keep ahead.

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You want your group to be at least somewhat excited when tank accessories drop on the first floor of Omega. Not annoyed at it.

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Omega tank accessories will still be BiS/Near BiS for tanks. Accessories in A1S only where non-drops/annoyances because no one wanted Vit accessories as A1S Str accessories and Pentamelds were BiS for tanks.

They'll be BiS for tanks because they're mandatory, yes. But I'm talking about it from the standpoint of group dps, not personal benefit. A tank drop always sets your group behind compared to a dps drop. The 3.2 tank stat changes somewhat ameliorated this, but we're looking at something similar to before.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

They'll be BiS for tanks because they're mandatory, yes. But I'm talking about it from the standpoint of group dps, not personal benefit. A tank drop always sets your group behind compared to a dps drop. The 3.2 tank stat changes somewhat ameliorated this, but we're looking at something similar to before.

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Thanks for your insight earlier! I'll edit the OP with the link you gave when I get home. For now... Yeah, that's really not a good decision. Not only does it inhibit group damage a lot, make some drops less exciting or just outright dead, but it also handcuffs tanks to a slower damage scale than everybody else. Tanks get stronger slower with this change since we lose out on more and more main Stat every gear tier, which sucks big time.

If that's the real deal, I'm not going anywhere near my tanks for a while. I'll let all 3 be level 60 on the dev team spreadsheets

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Originally Posted by Lyth

They'll be BiS for tanks because they're mandatory, yes. But I'm talking about it from the standpoint of group dps, not personal benefit. A tank drop always sets your group behind compared to a dps drop. The 3.2 tank stat changes somewhat ameliorated this, but we're looking at something similar to before.

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Which is a flawed standpoint. More DpS is only better when the gain in dps increases your survival chance (i.e. lets you pass a dps check, push so a phase skip happens or makes the difference between hitting and not hitting a hard enrage), but is useless when the barrier to completion is tied to the tank surviving an attack/series of attacks.

Having enough DpS to clear a fight at 6 minutes is meaningless when you die at 5 minutes just like being able to survive 8 minutes is meaning when you need dps to pass a dps check at 7 minutes.

Also isn't it worse to get an Int drop when you have no Int users? (same for Dex and Str) Getting an Vit drop will be useful to all comps unless they have already gotten 2 of that drop.

Well, I'm obligated to level my Warrior and Paladin since I don't want my only combat retainer to stay at 60 forever. I'd been thinking of dropping the tank weapons to learn/level Samurai though, so I have options as of yet regardless.

As long as DRK doesn't lose Blood Price or Carve and Spit, I'll be pretty happy. I can get over the whole low blow/reprisal thing. Even IF sb turns out to be the meta where drk happens to be "unwanted" I'm still most likely going to play it. It's the funnest tank, imo.

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Originally Posted by SargentToughie

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We'll see what they do. I think it will depend in part on how effective Tenacity is. I still think the role will be fun to play, regardless. I do think the concerns are worth bringing up, though.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Which is a flawed standpoint. More DpS is only better when the gain in dps increases your survival chance (i.e. lets you pass a dps check, push so a phase skip happens or makes the difference between hitting and not hitting a hard enrage), but is useless when the barrier to completion is tied to the tank surviving an attack/series of attacks.

Having enough DpS to clear a fight at 6 minutes is meaningless when you die at 5 minutes just like being able to survive 8 minutes is meaning when you need dps to pass a dps check at 7 minutes.

Also isn't it worse to get an Int drop when you have no Int users? (same for Dex and Str) Getting an Vit drop will be useful to all comps unless they have already gotten 2 of that drop.

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Gear gates aren't great design in general, but a eHP-based gear gate is worse than a dps one, because you can't cross-compensate. You're playing one in four odds until your tank gets the drops they need to allow your group to progress.

The issue isn't whether or not Tank accessories should improve your eHP. They're going to do that regardless. It's a question of whether tank enmity and dps should also improve with getting higher tier accessories, as they have been, albeit weakly, for the past two raid tiers.

Also, according to the letter from the Producer Live XXXV (the one before the most recent one), there's a proposed change to drops in which you're guaranteed a drop for one of your participating jobs. So gearing up should be simpler, and it addresses the issue of getting drops outside of your raid comp. It doesn't address the issue of tank accessory drops being significantly worse than a dps or potentially even healer drop (seeing as their dps now scales with MND). You should get a meaningful sense of improvement with each tier of gear.

Tanks are worried about dps, when healers are going to fall further behind than the tanks come stormblood. (DPS Ceiling nerf to cleric stance, Loss of virus, loss of spammable Blizzard II aoe for SCH, loss of Aero for SCH.) Let's cry together in stormblood as we begin our new paths as SAM/RDM mains. :p

If Tank accessories don't contribute to DPS save for substats, we might be seeing BiS builds with pentamelded crafted accs more often than the full IL ones. This ofc unless the additional Vit is absolutely necessary to survive an eHP check, but that seems unlikely? With how many mitigation tools are being spread out among the DPS classes plus healer barriers, I find it implausible that tank eHP would be a gated threshold.

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

Tanks are worried about dps, when healers are going to fall further behind than the tanks come stormblood. (DPS Ceiling nerf to cleric stance, Loss of virus, loss of spammable Blizzard II aoe for SCH, loss of Aero for SCH.) Let's cry together in stormblood as we begin our new paths as SAM/RDM mains. :p

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Loss of spammable AoE? Do you mean Blizzard II? Cause if Holy and Gravity are going away I foresee a lot of good healers never doing dungeons again :'D

Also, I was concerned about Aero for SCH too, but now that we're (likely) getting Broil II, it is very likely that Aero's potency would be a DPS loss in comparison, so I'm not too concerned about it. Of course, Aero + Energy Drain would still likely be a DPS gain, but that'd be a marginal increase in potency compared to Broil II, I'd like to believe.

calm the hell down.

Look at this as a good thing. Making ap scale from vit was an experiment. A failed one because people still chose str accessories based on what had parry to avoid.
Step 1. Force the vit accessories.
Step 2. revert to str only scaling
Step 3. replace parry and accuracy with tenacity increasing damage there
Step 4. balance it.

You do not have all the info yet. You have no idea how the end product will turn out. So chill the hell out. Stop comparing your tank dps to damage dealers. Compare to other tanks. Instead of hoping for big numbers, hope for balance while maintaining the ability to stance dance at higher skill levels.

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Originally Posted by Edewen

You do not have all the info yet. You have no idea how the end product will turn out. So chill the hell out. Stop comparing your tank dps to damage dealers. Compare to other tanks. Instead of hoping for big numbers, hope for balance while maintaining the ability to stance dance at higher skill levels.

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They're disincentivizing stance dancing as well, though, or did you miss that it now costs resources to do so (at least on war/pld, drk doesn't seem to spend resources for grit iirc).

We don't have the info yet, and it's possible that we're all mistaken and tanks are gonna be great, but from what we've seen it doesn't look like a really great change and I think people are within their rights to be worried.

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Originally Posted by jazzcatte

They're disincentivizing stance dancing as well, though, or did you miss that it now costs resources to do so (at least on war/pld, drk doesn't seem to spend resources for grit iirc).

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Unless things change, Dark Knight spends 20% MP going into Grit. Unless they're dropping MP costs on Dark Knight skills it's still a pretty heavy resource cost.

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Originally Posted by XoanGrahm

You're 100% correct that the damage for them unbuffed is roughly the same as it is unbuffed now, but you also have to consider that the effect of berserk is being lowered as well. From its current 50% down to 30%, and that isn't even considering what other abilities might be adjusted or outright removed. This is also a 10 level gain and a 20 ilevel gain for the same damage we can do currently.

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While not necessarily a fan of Tank damage going back to scaling on STR (hey, at least it gives us something to meld? :/), I would point out that none of the other jobs did significantly more damage in the LL either, so I suspect the new formulas simply result in lower overall damage for the level / ilvl than what we have now.

I can live with STR being the only source of ATK damage again and being locked into VIT acc as long as we can advanced meld STR again.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

Unless things change, Dark Knight spends 20% MP going into Grit. Unless they're dropping MP costs on Dark Knight skills it's still a pretty heavy resource cost.

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As far as I'm aware we haven't seen anything about DRK's MP usage in the 4.0 stuff they've shown us. I was referring to the blood gauge with my comment, I agree with you that the MP cost is likely to remain.

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Originally Posted by Falar

I can live with STR being the only source of ATK damage again and being locked into VIT acc as long as we can advanced meld STR again.

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Not happening. Pentamelded accessories are never again going to be that good.