Tank Balance Achieved?

As it stands WAR are back to top self DPS king PLD and DRK needing slashing Debuff to keep or do more/less I think darknight might need a slight defense buff and maybe some damage but not so much. I've seen any party workout perfectly with any tank composition and as expected coming from a paladin main ( paladin utility doesn't really chage much in savage fight ) maybe it does but so far v1 and v2 doesn't really help much outside of fuck ups and progression.

Now remeber this is not about how each class feels but how each class perform in savage.

so maybe I'm just crazy or I'm missing something lurking on the forums and it's just me but what are your opinions on the matter, Have we achieved Tank Balance?

disclaimer (I'm using my girlfriends account so she doesn't have any tanks lvl up to 70)

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Originally Posted by MyaValentine

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The answer is no. WAR has no utilities except its own damage output(which matches normal PLD AND DRK damage output overall), and what's more WAR has to work harder to match them as well!

If anything, WAR can't 'Shake It Off' because of a 120s timer and their DPS abilities being locked to Deliverance.

Yeah, tanks sure are balanced when there are only 3 WARs in the top 20 Neo Exdeath groups on FFlogs, and when the highest DPS (a WAR) is only 50 DPS ahead of the second (a PLD).

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

The answer is no. WAR has no utilities except its own damage output(which matches normal PLD AND DRK damage output overall), and what's more WAR has to work harder to match them as well!

If anything, WAR can't 'Shake It Off' because of a 120s timer and their DPS abilities being locked to Deliverance.

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What utility can you give war that doesn't involves buffing the rest of the PT overall dps? I can agree than war maybe need just a pinch more of dps since they require more practice to pull the same numbers as paladin but other than that War is on a good position right now. I think the one that needs more help right now Is DRK since is currently doing less damage than pld and war and it has the worst cooldowns of the 3 but still at this moment there's no reason to bring a tank over the other all 3 tank do roughly the same damage mitigate and do the content on the same level. That to me sounds balanced maybe tone pld dmg down a bit? other than that there's no Gordias lurking around and any tank composition works.

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Originally Posted by Launched

Yeah, tanks sure are balanced when there are only 3 WARs in the top 20 Neo Exdeath groups on FFlogs, and when the highest DPS (a WAR) is only 50 DPS ahead of the second (a PLD).

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while I understand you want warrior to be top dps, at this moment your party doesn't get affected by any composition of tanks you might bring, they can maybe buff war a bit more and drk or nerf pld dmg a bit, but other than that you can take any tank and get the same result aslong as the player is good enough.

Well, no. Not yet.
PLD is head and shoulders ahead DRK and WAR. It got the best utilities, can do basically as much DPS as a WAR while being far less punishing in their burst window, and is also the best defense wise. WAR got a slightly better DPS if played optimally, but it's harder to be at a decent level, and they have no utility. DRK is the weakest tank DPS wise, and the weakest tank mitigation wise. Their redeeming grace is TBN, which while being good is not that strong. Omega also got many magic damages, which explain why they're not that bad, but on physical fights, DRK is really gutted.

We can't say tanks are balanced if one Tank is better at everything. It was the same in HW with WAR. The only thing keeping people to run two PLD right now is the LB penalty.

My opinion is... its really, really close, but not QUITE there. The problem with War is its skillcap/effort put into its dps rotation is disgustingly high compared to the other two (and very easily screwed over by mechanics), and for this reason along with lack of utility, they should ideally be the highest dps of the 3 (not by much, but by like ~200-300 dps). Drk needs a bit more damage to be a little closer to War (they bring slight utility and their damage is significantly easier to apply in raid settings) and Pld should sit on the lower end as its utility is highest (again, not by much).

Alternatively, give all 3 tanks some unique utility buffs (like Pld mitigation for Passage of Arms, War gives group HP/healing, Drk gives group shielding) and put all the tanks' damage/skillcaps in a similar spot. Which would probably result in tanking being a bit more boring due to war skillcap lowered rather than pld/drk skillcap raised.

Well, lets look at the facts to answer this.

DPS:
WAR has the highest personal DPS, yes, but with the slashing debuff applied, all 3 tanks roughly do the same damage. So yeah, one could say in this pure metric, the tanks are balanced.
The only thing to note here is that WAR heavily relies on his IR+Zerg burst window to keep his DPS up, missing fellcleaves results in a heavy damage penalty overall.
DRK and PLD have more sustained DPS, and with the current raid design, WAR seems to have gotten the short end of the stick for progress groups.
So I'd say DPS wise, WAR is currently in a bad position, despite his high personal DPS.

Mitigation
For single enemy fights, I see no big issue with either tank really. DRKs TBN is hella useful, PLD has shelltron and WAR can easily switch to Defiance for IB thanks to 4.05.

In a group pull, thanks to the changes in blocking (now possible from all sides), PLD has a huge amount of passive mitigation always up, and the cooldowns to improve on that.
Close behind this is WAR, who can easily combine his CDs to be more effective, though, the loss of bloodbath is definitely felt.
DRK however has a very weak mitigation kit, relying a lot on TBN, which does not really help for group pulls. It has gotten a bit better with the buff to quietus, allowing you to DA-AD more often.

Utility
The real issue arises now. As you can see above, PLD already has a slight edge over WAR and DRK, however, nothing to severe and definitely within the scope of reason. However, WAR brings no utility for the rest of the group, and DRK only brings TBN every 15 seconds, while a PLD can cover, intervention, clemency and passage of arms to prevent damage to his teammates or heal them up if required. DRK and WAR both lost their utility (Delirium and Storms Path), and have gained nothing in return. This is severly unbalanced when acknowledging the difference in possibilities (or lack thereof) in the mitigation and DPS capabilities of the tanks, as this means there is no objective reason not to pick a PLD over one of the other two classes.

Gameplay
This is highly subjective, but should be considered as well. IMHO, PLD is the easiest tank to play, with 2 burst windows alternating every 30s, a clear cut rotation and steady damage. WAR and DRK seem to have a much higher skill floor that needs to be reached in order to perform close to what PLD can bring. This too should be considered when talking about balance, because as it stands now, PLD bringst the easiest gameplay, the easiest DPS, the highest mitigation and the most versatile utility kit.

Conclusion
There is simply no objective reason not to play paladin, and that is because the tanks are, currently, still not balanced. However, I hope square acknoledges that and pushes out fixes in 4.1, because I really, really want to see any kind of tank combination desired for any kind of fight.

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Originally Posted by MyaValentine

As it stands WAR are back to top self DPS king

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On WHAT planet?
It's like a 5% difference and yet they bring absolutely NONE of the utility.
Also, WAR can't MT AND do damage in savage at all unless you want to give your healers headaches, because the vast majority of their damage can only be achieved in DPS stance. About 30-45% of their damage comes from Fell Cleave.
Plus, the bulk of their damage is funneled into their Berserk windows. Meaning you get punished extremely hard if mechanics require you to move away from the boss, or if you fumble an input.

Wait

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Well, lets look at the facts to answer this.

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Can't help but to agree with this, expect for the statement " there's simply no reason to not play pld" while currently they are at the top of the dos chain, their utility really doesn't do much as people paint it (on savage) the mitigation is very sly and is not worth wasting a GCD 15% dmg reduction whe you have your healers with the only 2 utility been intervetion and divine vail been good because they don't cost you a dps loss and even that only on very specific situation you might really need that and all it changes is probably save the healers an extra GCD.

PLD utility is exelente but not as godlike as people think they only issue right now is him doing more damage and I can agree with that, but then looking back to my previous statement while easier and less punishing your group does not get affected by bringing any party composition unline HW that if you didn't had a warrior it would be a massive DPS loss. this time around all tanks can perform at the same line.

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Originally Posted by Lumadurin

On WHAT planet?

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In planet earth my friend WAR currently has the highest self DPS of the 3 PLD and DRK get a boost with slaying Dbuff from PT which makes them to equal or slightly more dmg, and yeah they are more punishing and requires more "skill" to pull off. which is why most people agree it needs either more damage or pld needs a dmg nerf. But if you put all 3 tanks on a dummy tanks does more damage than the other 2. I think there was a threat about it around here you can use as source.

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Originally Posted by MyaValentine

IBut if you put all 3 tanks on a dummy tanks does more damage than the other 2.

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Dummies don't have mechanics that can interrupt your rotations.

The only thing that WAR leads in currently is that it has arguably the best personal cooldown spread of the three tanks.

• 20% mitigation on a 90s CD. (Rampart - Universal)
• 20% more healing on a 120s CD. (Convalescence - Universal)
• 20% max HP on a 120s CD. (Thrill of Battle)
• 30% mitigation + 50 potency retaliation on 120s CD (Vengance)
• 20% physical mitigation on 90s CD (Raw Intuition - goes extremely well with Awareness)
• "Panic Button" (Holmgang) on 180s CD, so it can be used more than once per fight.

But that doesn't matter when you won't be MT-ing outside of normal content currently anyways (unless your healers don't mind you entering DPS stance).

I'm just gonna put it out there, I think War's are actually really solid MT's. While the IR/Zerk windows are pretty eggshelly/punishing in their OT role, it actually makes MT'ing and maintaining moderate damage pretty clean. Especially with 4.05; it's fairly easy to build up safely in tank stance, expend gauges in short, controlled burst windows, and resume safety in tank stance again. It also outlines tanking in 4 distinct patterns, varying in overall dps from anywhere to 1.5k up to 2.7k as a MT (realistically, not with padding or pure DPS stance nonsense, just good ol' stance dancing). Realistic range to expect from a War MT in relevant content: 2.2-2.6k dps while maintaining high defense capability/low heal stress. Idk about the other 2 tanks, but that just feels like a good number range to me.

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Originally Posted by Lumadurin

Dummies don't have mechanics that can interrupt your rotations.

The only thing that WAR leads in currently is that it has arguably the best personal cooldown spread of the three tanks.

• 20% mitigation on a 90s CD. (Rampart - Universal)
• 20% more healing on a 120s CD. (Convalescence - Universal)
• 20% max HP on a 120s CD. (Thrill of Battle)
• 30% mitigation + 50 potency retaliation on 120s CD (Vengance)
• 20% physical mitigation on 90s CD (Raw Intuition - goes extremely well with Awareness)
• "Panic Button" (Holmgang) on 180s CD, so it can be used more than once per fight.

But that doesn't matter when you won't be MT-ing outside of normal content currently anyways (unless your healers don't mind you entering DPS stance).

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Dont forget 20% mitigation on 50 gauge cost :p possible upkeep of up to 70% if you forego any and all dreams of doing real damage for whatever purpose.

I would say no. WAR in many respect's is like a dumb'd down SAM, where both have the highest personal dps among their jobs but in a party composition won't matter as much. However SAM was much better designed in that it fully committed to being the highest melee dps, though this may have changed in current raid tier given the major importance to party utility over personal utility and fight design.

As someone who had WAR at 70 three days into EA I can say that it's in a better spot than launch but it's still lacking the party utility it used to have and the dps it should have had. SE just had another knee-jerk reaction to a job being tuned perfectly as usual. It either needs to be a minimum of 150 dps above PLD/DRK with slashing or give it a utility that can help another party member. I compare WAR and PLD to black and white people in America. WAR's have to work three times as hard to achieve the same results a PLD can do with ease.

The others have already said this, but it's an overwhelming no from anyone who has any sort of extensive and in depth experience with all three tanks. Both in paper and in practice Paladin is noticably better at everything, Dark Knight literally only has TBN, and Warrior brings nothing to a group other than splitting hairs over a very minor DPS difference that technically we're not supposed to even know about.

Please don't be fooled by the fact that any tank can successfully tank. "Not being uselessly broken" is the baseline and not a success in and of itself.

I run DRK/WAR combo for V1s. Plunge and onslaught cheese the ice mechanic so good. When I had a PLD with me, it felt so awkward

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I compare WAR and PLD to black and white people in America. WAR's have to work three times as hard to achieve the same results a PLD can do with ease.

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ikr, the NBA needs to start giving white people a chance, clearly biased

It seems to be taken as a given most places, but I find it highly unlikely that Warrior is putting in so much more work than the other tanks. If you look at FF logs for Susano/Lakshmi runs, Warrior is well ahead of the other tanks in every percentile except >90% for Lakshmi and >80% for Susano. If the bottom 80% skill Warriors out-DPS other tanks in the same skill bracket, I really doubt they are working so much harder than them to get that lead. Let's not pretend that Warriors are chosen only by professionals. At the end of the day, you're just pressing your buttons in a certain order like everyone else. You shouldn't be making balance decisions based on how tough you think your class is to play. Those logs are also mostly pre-4.05 logs, so it would be even more skewed towards Warrior if we started over.

if they gave warrior 5% more damage in deliverence id take it over utility

I'd say tanks are pretty balanced... If you ignored PLD. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

simply put?

PLD is fine.

DRK NEEDS more defensive cooldowns and survivability. right now it relies heavily on TBN which is not great honestly because you wont have it ALL the time due to it costing MP and even then its only a 5k shield on the OT or a 10k shield on you which basically ammounts to "its only really useful on the caster in raids". DRK needs something like a 10% damage reduction added on to blood price or something as has been suggested.

WAR i cant comment on much as im only lvl 66 on it but the general consensus is that it needs even just a tiny bit of utility. now i don think personally bringing back the old stroms path effect is the answer but if the added *something* to say onslaught then it might make them slightly more desirable while also having the utility whatever it may be cost gauge .

Not really, Paladins offer too much by comparison and they beat out dark knights in pretty much all aspects as judging by the new logs they even do more damage. The Blackest Night is really useful for bursts but it's reduced their ability to have steady mitigation. Also seriously, can't say it enough, fix dark passenger, make Shadow Wall a lower CD, and give us some extra mitigation anywhere (blood price is the one a lot of us look at). If not that, at bare minimum we shouldn't be last on the dps list or have something extra in our rotation to up the skill floor.

Posting again to also echo that Paladin itself is perfectly fine. It's just Warrior and Dark Knight are too weak in certain ways.

Ahahaha god no. Not even close. Like everyone else has said, paladin blows the other two tanks out of the water, and it's not even close. Warrior is piping hot garbage right now, and Dark Knight's only advantage is that it's slightly better than the LB penalty you'd take for having two paladins. Warrior's DPS relies entirely on its IR and berserk window lining up. Along with having pretty much the same DPS as the other two tanks under ideal conditions, Warrior also has zero utility.

Then you have Dark Knight. Luckily the quietus changes make it much more sustainable in dungeons, but it's in desperate need of an additional short cooldown mitigation ability. Overall not the worst, but then there's paladin.

So there you have it. Warrior is useless, Dark Knight isn't much better, and Paladin can do everything they can do, better than them, more often than them, and bring things that neither of them can even hope to get.

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Originally Posted by MyaValentine

Can't help but to agree with this, expect for the statement " there's simply no reason to not play pld" while currently they are at the top of the dos chain, their utility really doesn't do much as people paint it (on savage) the mitigation is very sly and is not worth wasting a GCD 15% dmg reduction whe you have your healers with the only 2 utility been intervetion and divine vail been good because they don't cost you a dps loss and even that only on very specific situation you might really need that and all it changes is probably save the healers an extra GCD.

PLD utility is exelente but not as godlike as people think they only issue right now is him doing more damage and I can agree with that, but then looking back to my previous statement while easier and less punishing your group does not get affected by bringing any party composition unline HW that if you didn't had a warrior it would be a massive DPS loss. this time around all tanks can perform at the same line.

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Im afraid you might have misunderstood me, or I worded my post wrong. Apologies if I did.
See, no one says that PLDs utility is godlike or OP. But PLD has utility, which nicks him an almost guaranteed spot in any static, a situation that we had with WAR in 3.x and that we wanted to avoid. Objectively, there is no reason not to bring a PLD, because it objectively does everything best and has next to no drawbacks. Im glad that PLD is in a good spot atm, and Im happy for them, I just dont see why SqEx had to butcher the other 2 tank classes really.

When looking at the changes, there is one thought that kept repeating itself in my head - those people (the devs) dont know their own game or anything about balancing.

That or every class had their own team dedicated to the changes, but none of the teams communicated with each other. Because balance wise, 4.0 was a mess. Heres hoping for further fixes in 4.1 in 2 months.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Im glad that PLD is in a good spot atm, and Im happy for them, I just dont see why SqEx had to butcher the other 2 tank classes really.

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The hilarious thing to me is that the current PLD is extremely well balanced with 3.x WAR and DRK. 4.x WAR/DRK though, not so much.

While it's not really balanced, I think it's still a lot better than 3.x tank balance though, which means they're at least going in the right direction.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

The hilarious thing to me is that the current PLD is extremely well balanced with 3.x WAR and DRK. 4.x WAR/DRK though, not so much.

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Honestly, I dont know wether to laugh or cry about that fact. Square tried so hard to achieve tank balance that they yanked the pendulum too far to the other side.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

I'd say tanks are pretty balanced... If you ignored PLD. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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I would actually agree to this. PLD is pretty much the best in every practical aspect, except maybe hitting a dummy.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

The hilarious thing to me is that the current PLD is extremely well balanced with 3.x WAR and DRK. 4.x WAR/DRK though, not so much.

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I think Storm's Path and Storm's Eye in 3.x context would still have edged out PLD utility.

I think SE expected PLDs to make much more use of their utility skills as a some of those mean trading in damage (clemency, PoA)
On the other hand DRK and WAR have basically no utility at all.
the overall plan of SE remains to be unclear.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

While it's not really balanced, I think it's still a lot better than 3.x tank balance though, which means they're at least going in the right direction.

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I can't really say I agree with this. Their solution was to not make any tank mandatory, and instead make one obscenely better than the other two. Overall, I think we took one step forward and two steps back.

That said, I think they did take PLD in a good direction. DRK still needs the rework it deserved in 3.0, but TBN is great. WAR doesn't need TOO much more to be great. It's pretty close, so we'll see what they do. I'm hoping now that they've spent so much time on PLD, maybe they'll actually give the other tanks, DRK specifically imo, the much needed attention they deserve.

It seems the common theme of this thread is that PLD is in a much better spot than the other two tanks. I am sure since we can come to that conclusion, SE will make some changes in the future to better balance the tanks. I agree with a lot of the ideas as well giving the weaker tanks more utility while as well as continuing on balancing damage and consistency. Discussion like this is a great way to work out the problem and give feedback so SE can hopefully find a solution moving forward.

As for my opinion I really enjoy how WAR plays and like the fact its skill ceiling is higher than the other two, which is probably the reason why I decided to play WAR over the others. But with that I would like to be greatly rewarded for putting the effort to play a more difficult job if I try to work at playing at that higher level, nothing crazy though. I don't believe that the PLD job should be nerfed in anyway because I think it plays really well and does it job well. The other two tank jobs should be buffed to make it more appealing to take into harder content like savage while keeping a similar play style (at least for warrior imo.)

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Utility WAR brings no utility for the rest of the group, and DRK only brings TBN every 15 seconds, while a PLD can cover, intervention, clemency and passage of arms to prevent damage to his teammates or heal them up if required. DRK and WAR both lost their utility (Delirium and Storms Path), and have gained nothing in return. This is severly unbalanced when acknowledging the difference in possibilities (or lack thereof) in the mitigation and DPS capabilities of the tanks, as this means there is no objective reason not to pick a PLD over one of the other two classes.

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except that any PLD that uses clemency or passage is doing it wrong, those are skills that sacrifice a lot of damage which no PLD will ever do. divine veil is extremely overrated, and cover is still trash. The only useful utilty PLD has is intervention. If they gave WAR passage of arms WAR would still cry, you know why? because the skill sucks, overrated and useless.

The question is: what is balance to you?

same damage output with different utilities? or different damage with same utilities?

same tanking results with easy mode, normal mode, hard mode keyboard pressing or with same braindead 123?

To me personally I just play the job I identify and be able to casually played....

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Originally Posted by Stormbrand

except that any PLD that uses clemency or passage is doing it wrong, those are skills that sacrifice a lot of damage which no PLD will ever do.

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I would just like to elaborate on this, it's not that using them is bad, it's that it's very unoptimal. The only times I seriously use PoA when I could do damage is in O3S when it's the adds+aoe spam and that was by request of the healers. O4S on meteors (haven't been to neo yet) again by request of healers.
The only time I've done clemency was in O4S when trying to just push as far as we can to see what's happening in the fight.

As everyone gets more gear and we get more familiar with fights I of course will be phasing out the PoA and Clemency usages to gain myself more damage.

Edit: Further comments about PLD utility.
Divine Veil is nice, it replaces a deploy adlo, but at a 5k shield every 2 minutes its nothing game breaking.
Cover is still mostly useless, only having found one use, that being preventing our BRD from getting knockbacked by Vacuum Wave in O4S
Intervention is... okay?. It will only ever be 10% because you need to use your own cooldowns for mitigating the damage you take, exception being maybe O1S for Twin Bolt. And the problem with a 10% reduction, if it makes the tank live in a case they shouldn't have, the Tank and/or Healers made a mistake. Other than that, taking 3k less damage isn't allowing the healers to heal less, they will still heal using the same GCD heals and the same OGCD heals. The difference it makes is a regen tick, which ticks anyway. So intervention is doing practically nothing.

So we've come down to, 3 bits of utility in undergeared content that is done by the request of healers (PoA, Clemency and Intervention) , 1 still extremely niche skill that sees almost no use (Cover), and 1 skill that is actually worth something (Divine Veil).

And btw.... I still want to point out: HOW does paladin has "best" utilities when those skills have the SAME SAME SAME mitigation nature compared to 3.x?!?!????! They were considered trash even I tried to defend their usefulness...now I don't even need to...every non pld main is saying pld's utilities and quote SAME utilities are the best......ppl... decide.....

Clemency is not selfsustain, Pld has NO selfsustain, it's a SPELL like those healer have!! it's on gcd and can't do other thing when casting it......

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Originally Posted by Stormbrand

no PLD will ever do.

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If I poke around on youtube I am hard pressed to find a group clear of O3/O4s from last week that didn't feature a PLD using PoA at least once. So I think outside of people that have to wait until they overgear the content, you're wrong.

Also PLD isn't taken for PoA, its taken for Cover and Intervention, meaning a PLD OT can basically hand a free Rampart to their co-tank for 6-12s every 2 minutes or every time their gauge hits 50 (every 25-30s), so essentially, about 5 times every 2 minutes, which is bananas, plain and simple.

0s Cover -20%
30s Int+Ramp -20%
60s Int+Sent -30%
90s Int -10%
120s Int+Ramp -20%
150s Cover+Int -28ish%
180s Int -10%
210s Int+Ramp -20%
240s Int+Sent -30%
270s Cover+Int -28ish%
300s Int+Ramp -20%

Basically a PLD OT is like having an extra -20% cooldown on a 30s recast that occasionally fluctuates down to 10% or up to 30%. What even is tank stance at that point?