A history of our beloved tanks, and moving forward. [5.0 wishlists]

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I made these little report cards that demonstrated my opinion of the tanks throughout the years. It was to help me visualize where the tanks have grown, where the tanks are weak and where the tanks can improve. What do you guys think, and what do you guys want fin 5.0 for the tanks?

Also if you feel like I didn't accurately score a tank in a certain category, let me know and I'll update it.



For 5.0, I'd like to see:

For ALL tanks:
-some older skills being pruned once again to make way for new skills
-reconsideration of skills in the role actions (things like an anti knockback across all 3 tanks would be lovely, as it's already the case with Surecast and Arm's length)
-Consider a trait among ALL tanks to be allowed to use long range enmity attacks (Shield lob, Tomahawk, Unmend) in place of Fast blade, Heavy swing and Hard slash respectively for combos. So basically, you can pull the boss with Tomahawk, then go straight into Maim, or you can pull an add with Tomahawk and go straight into Maim or Skull sunder.

For PLD:
-PLD is already pretty damn strong and doesn't need much more. I think PLD is the one tank I'd like to see have the most skills removed. ( Tempered will moved to role actions for example)
-Shield bash changed into Shield Charge ( Gap closer)
-PLD has had poor Aoe for a very long time and while it got better in SB, I think Holiest of Holy is a must have for PLD at this point. Using your MP for Aoe DPS seems like a no brainer with the existance of Holy Spirit being your MP dispenser for single target
-oGCD stances. Unchained and Equilibrium cancel out both weaknesses of Defiance. Even if the Oaths were oGCD, that would be cancelling out just a SINGLE weakness but the trade off that every time you use a tank stance, you get the immediate effects without Equilibrium. Which would be a boon for PLD's snap aggro issues.
-100% block chance Bulwark

WAR:
-I'd like more to do in between Inner release windows. Maybe a new skill to spend gauge on Aoe pulls that deals massive damage
-Relook into the mitigation kit. Holmgang is extremely powerful and on a very short cooldown.
-Ways to help your co-tank like how PLD has intervention and DRK has blackest night
-Remove Raw intuitions downside

DRK:
-Less Dark arts please
-PLEASE rethink the blood weapon/blood price exchange
-Remove Delirium and add another DPS buffing move. Very pointless skill and doesn't feel nearly as fun as other DPS buffs like Blood for blood or Requiescat
-Add some oGCD gauge spenders akin to Onslaught and Upheivel
-More buttons in general
-Burst phase to be more synergistic with group bursts
-Raid wide utility
-Reconsider Dark art's negative effect of not being allowed to gain MP outside of your own sources. If PLD can gain extra Holy spirits from mana shift/ Refresh, DRK should be able to as well. Adjust the potencies of Dark arts moves to not make this broken obviously

Instead of "holiest of holy" maybe "holy flash " and its a trait for base flash turning it into unleash type of aoe with the blind effect then gets a massive power boost with requiscat
Also if its just a trait helps with paladins massive button bloat
(Maybe even if they could learn this around same time as holy Spirit just to help with aoe department in the 60's)

Far as I remember, if you pair Awareness with Raw Intuition, it negates the crit damage taken penalty, and the Awareness buff lasts longer than Raw Intuition's. If SE 'fixes' that I'm probably gonna cry.

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Originally Posted by Cincierta

Far as I remember, if you pair Awareness with Raw Intuition, it negates the crit damage taken penalty, and the Awareness buff lasts longer than Raw Intuition's. If SE 'fixes' that I'm probably gonna cry.

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It is a neat synergy for sure, however while awareness is longer than Raw intuition, they do not have the same CD. It makes using Raw intuition awkward without awareness because you're used to having awareness up, so once you start seeing those crits with a standalon raw intuition (even a single crit) you get worried that your positioning is bad so you adjust yourself only to receive more crits. Sometimes, I'll click off Raw intuition because I realize I used it poorly in those scenarios. It doesn't exactly take skill to use when most of the time, youll pair this skill with awareness. So I say cut the fat and let it be.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

For 5.0, I'd like to see:

For ALL tanks:
-some older skills being pruned once again to make way for new skills
-reconsideration of skills in the role actions (things like an anti knockback across all 3 tanks would be lovely, as it's already the case with Surecast and Arm's length)

For PLD:
-PLD is already pretty damn strong and doesn't need much more. I think PLD is the one tank I'd like to see have the most skills removed. ( Tempered will moved to role actions for example)
-Shield bash changed into Shield Charge ( Gap closer)
-PLD has had poor Aoe for a very long time and while it got better in SB, I think Holiest of Holy is a must have for PLD at this point. Using your MP for Aoe DPS seems like a no brainer with the existance of Holy Spirit being your MP dispenser for single target
-oGCD stances. Unchained and Equilibrium cancel out both weaknesses of Defiance. Even if the Oaths were oGCD, that would be cancelling out just a SINGLE weakness but the trade off that every time you use a tank stance, you get the immediate effects without Equilibrium. Which would be a boon for PLD's snap aggro issues.
-100% block chance Bulwark

WAR:
-I'd like more to do in between Inner release windows. Maybe a new skill to spend gauge on Aoe pulls that deals massive damage
-Relook into the mitigation kit. Holmgang is extremely powerful and on a very short cooldown.
-Ways to help your co-tank like how PLD has intervention and DRK has blackest night
-Remove Raw intuitions downside

DRK:
-Less Dark arts please
-PLEASE rethink the blood weapon/blood price exchange
-Remove Delirium and add another DPS buffing move. Very pointless skill and doesn't feel nearly as fun as other DPS buffs like Blood for blood or Requiescat
-Add some oGCD gauge spenders akin to Onslaught and Upheivel
-More buttons in general
-Burst phase to be more synergistic with group bursts
-Raid wide utility
-Reconsider Dark art's negative effect of not being allowed to gain MP outside of your own sources. If PLD can gain extra Holy spirits from mana shift/ Refresh, DRK should be able to as well. Adjust the potencies of Dark arts moves to not make this broken obviously

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I could not have said it better for PLD wishlist changes except Flash gets upgraded into an instant cast AoE damage spell. And just combine stances into 1 stance that have both stances effects but no damage penalty(also applied to WAR and DRK).

WAR however... less lifesteal on WAR and moar big numbers unga-bunga on WAR, also remove AoE shield from Shake it Off, have Inner Beast and Fell Cleave be part of a 5 tier combo every time you use Storm's Eye/Path or Butcher's Block combo and have Steel Cyclone combo into Decimate.

And as for my favorite tank to main; more lifesteal effects on DRK, more offensive oGCDs, 5 tier combo, and 3 tier line AoE spell combo(Unleash, Dark Passenger, Abyssal Drain), and buff Sole Survivor with 3% increased damage dealt to target and reduces target's damage dealt by 20%, and if target dies with the debuff Sole Survivor recast is reset.

https://i.imgur.com/NWZyAKR.jpg

I also made one for 5.0. I wanted to make all tanks excel at 3 categories while being weaker in two, that way all tanks feel strong but strong for different reasons.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

https://i.imgur.com/NWZyAKR.jpg

I also made one for 5.0. I wanted to make all tanks excel at 3 categories while being weaker in two, that way all tanks feel strong but strong for different reasons.

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The irony you choose "blue" as your wildcard new-tank slot :D One would think you wish for Blue Mage as a tank.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

The irony you choose "blue" as your wildcard new-tank slot :D One would think you wish for Blue Mage as a tank.

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Or a gunblade would do good aoe damage blasting all over the place

Stances should be a bigger factor to gameplay, instead of just toggable buffs. Grit, Defiance, Shield Oath can basically just not exist, and you'd hardly notice their loss at all, other than having to work harder for your threat. Buteventhenthere'ssomuchthreatcontrolnowwouldyoureally?

Moving forward I'd rather see Tank Jobs differentiate from each other rather than just give them what their kits don't have right now. Numbers are fairly easy to adjust but when 90% of the tank kit feels like the other tank kits, it's hard to get excited about Totally-Not-Legate.

I'd say give WAR get more self-healing again. Or make Defiance's healing bonus work with healing abilities while nerfing Equilibrium's base potency to factor in the bonus. Hell, make Equilibrium restore TP and heal in both stances but give more TP in DPS stance.

In general I would like to see more reasons for tanks to be in tank stance. One thought I had to 'force' it without feeling bad necessarily is to make the DPS stances give aggro reduction, and to reduce the damage penalties of tank stances in general (PLD and DRK in particular could use it more than WAR). Raids would obviously need to change to support this with higher auto attack and buster damage but I agree that if this happens then we need to see all tanks get oGCD stance swaps. It shouldn't cost any resources to do either. Sword Oath may need to get looked at because I can hear people getting mad about dropping free auto damage from swapping in/out already.

Giving tanks more ways to mitigate damage via short cooldowns would also facilitate this but I feel that stance swaps are a better way to go about it. PLD has a lot of ways to do this already so they just need more oath gauge generation and a DPS way to spend it while in sword oath. Perhaps as a way to spend Shield Swipe? Or a new skill that replaces it in sword oath? DRK has TBN but realistically they need more. Probably as debuffs as many people have mentioned.

I kinda feel Shake It Off doesn't make sense in WAR's kit despite being so good to have. I'd consider reworking it as part of a utility trim to make WAR less desirable.

I dislike the knockback immunity skills in general given how they trivialize mechanics and the different cooldowns they all have. Arm's Length is probably the most balanced in that regard. I'd say every class should have access to that and all of them should be 60s cooldowns. Yes, even BRD and MCH should get it. Tempered Will could be the tank Role Action equivalent for sure.

Finally, make Requiescat a ranged attack. PLD doesn't need a gap closer if they can get their Holy Spirit spam window in without needing to be in melee range.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Stances should be a bigger factor to gameplay, instead of just toggable buffs. Grit, Defiance, Shield Oath can basically just not exist

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I feel this is only a shield oath issue

Because the others do effect game play as defiance literally changes moves and effects of equilibrium.
Grit is a big part of aoe kit DRK of since blood price and also soul eater hp recovery.

Of course if they could do more that would be nice but i also think these "buffs' are nothing to ignore .
but shield oath needs some work,
Heal potency from defiance suits paladin more imo.

I am really going to have to disagree with your Stormblood chart in general. I currently play both WAR and PLD in Ex content and this chart absolutely does not match up at all with my findings.

I'd personally knock down DRK AoE in Stormblood a peg. It relies on you banking a lot of your MP in advance. Coming into an adds phase without MP is a legit reason to turn off Darkside, because Blood Price is going to do absolutely nothing if you can't get off several unleashes or abyssal drains.

Good job with the graphic report, its simple and clear with Who is the problem of tank balance.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

I feel this is only a shield oath issue

Because the others do effect game play as defiance literally changes moves and effects of equilibrium.
Grit is a big part of aoe kit DRK of since blood price and also soul eater hp recovery.

Of course if they could do more that would be nice but i also think these "buffs' are nothing to ignore .
but shield oath needs some work,
Heal potency from defiance suits paladin more imo.

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Oh right. Big single target hit and big single target hit. So distinct.

I do think you've overrated paladins mitigation personally.
it's a long way from excellent generally speaking. if you will permit to elaborate:-

Rampart is a given all tanks are equal there. so no real room for comment.

Sentinel though is a bit weird. for what it does its cool down is far to long. there is basically nothing in the game that sentinel is strong enough for but vengance or whatever drk has isn't. that extra 10% just isn't needed and that extra 60 seconds on the cool down is just far too much.

Shelltron too is also weird. at 70 its quite nice in a single target. you can build the guage quite quick but it's problems lie in the fact it's only good for 1 single hit. which makes it far less effective /borderline useless in any group pull or multi hit situation.

Bullwark has been pretty much laughable even before they nerfed sheild swipe and with the way the games mechanics work RNG mitigation is always going to be a joke it's just too unreliable.

Hallowed ground is pretty nice admiteedly but again suffers from a massive cooldown in comparison to holmgang / whatever drks invuln is.

Group mitigation? now yeah paladin is pretty awesome here but all of that is stuff i personally would consider to be under the category of utility.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

I am really going to have to disagree with your Stormblood chart in general. I currently play both WAR and PLD in Ex content and this chart absolutely does not match up at all with my findings.

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That's fine, what do you think would better represent those tanks in each category?

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I do think you've overrated paladins mitigation personally.
it's a long way from excellent generally speaking. if you will permit to elaborate:-

Rampart is a given all tanks are equal there. so no real room for comment.

Sentinel though is a bit weird. for what it does its cool down is far to long. there is basically nothing in the game that sentinel is strong enough for but vengeance or whatever drk has isn't. that extra 10% just isn't needed and that extra 60 seconds on the cool down is just far too much.

Shelltron too is also weird. at 70 its quite nice in a single target. you can build the gauge quite quick but it's problems lie in the fact it's only good for 1 single hit. which makes it far less effective /borderline useless in any group pull or multi hit situation

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When I made this chart, I made it in mind for all tank busters that tanks have taken within that expansion. Also, I took into consideration the strength of each tank in patch 2.5, 3.5 and 4.4. This is important for PLD because as the shields get better, PLD's blocking becomes stronger and more frequent. Right now with an Omega Shield, a PLD can block 30% of any single hit or two hits with 100 gauge. 30% on its own is the same mitigation as WAR's and DRK's strongest standalone mitigators (Vegneance, Shadow wall/Dark mind). Especially in the Omega tier, all of the tank busters are single hits which you can mitigate for a huge portion with just Sheltron. Also, Cover works both as personal mitigation and utility because the skill is affected by your own personal mitigation, and in optimized strategies, a PLD using cover is part of the tanks Cd rotation. For these reasons, I listed PLD's mitigation as excellent.

Also, the only multi hit tank busters in Stormblood are the Flare breaths into Flatten into Flare breaths in Ultimate coil, Ravensclaw in Ultimate coil and Akh morn from Golden Bahamut. In these fights, no single tank takes all of those busters as they can't due to the debuffs put onto them by Nael and Twin. You can map out your CD's to share tank Cds across all of these hits. As for Akh morn, while you can argue that PLD can't block each of these hits, realistically you can use your block to mitigate the first Akh morn, which is by far the hardest hitting one. The rest of the akh morns can be dealt with. On the topic of Akh morn, Hallowed Ground eating a 4 hit Akh morn on its own is really good.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I'd personally knock down DRK AoE in Stormblood a peg. It relies on you banking a lot of your MP in advance. Coming into an adds phase without MP is a legit reason to turn off Darkside, because Blood Price is going to do absolutely nothing if you can't get off several unleashes or abyssal drains.

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I think Quietus and Salted Earth are very powerful tools in Aoe situations. With a blood weapon+ quietus, you're getting a LOT of MP back which then fuels your Blackest Nights which then fuels more quietus and Abyssal drains.

it does take a bit of set up, but I don't think its fair to score DRk's aoe on its worst possible situation when its best possible situation is really good. Also, I think using blood price in aoe makes sense, but in reality, you're going to do better with blood weapon due to the interaction of blood weapon+ quietus. It's unfortunate, but blood price doesn't have a place in aoe pulls at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Finally, make Requiescat a ranged attack. PLD doesn't need a gap closer if they can get their Holy Spirit spam window in without needing to be in melee range.

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YES PLEASE! Why it isn't a ranged attack already is mind boggling. I have to get close to get a buff on my ranged attacks? Why not allow me to get my range attack buffs from a range as well? That makes so much more sense.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

That's fine, what do you think would better represent those tanks in each category?

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Well I would mostly agree with your WAR chart, except that WAR has Godlike Aggro Generation and Excellent Utility as of right now. My snap aggro gen as a WAR is so high that I only need 2-3 entire GCDs at start of pull to get my aggro lead and keep it for the entire fight, as I do with my raid static every week.

I mostly agree with your DRK chart too, though WAR should probably be at Godlike Single Target Damage and DRK be at Excellent. This may sound weird, but DRK actually has better single target DPS than PLD by the same margin WAR has better single target than DRK. If you don't believe me just check FFLogs DPS for this tier right now.

Paladin is where I disagree completely. I love Paladin, but I would like to point out a few things;

Paladin now has the worst aggro gen of any tank. Rage of Halone does not have the massive aggro lead of using a Dark Arts Power Slash, and PLD in general does not have anywhere NEAR the Snap Aggro of WAR.

PLD also has excellent utility, not godlike. I would like to explain this further below.

Paladin has poor AoE damage. Matter of fact the only class that might have worse AoE right now is AST, and I only say that because I do not know the class well enough to say one way or another. Both SCH and WHM can easily out DPS a PLD in an AoE situation. If you are a tank and are losing in DPS to a healer in any category, that category MUST be defined as poor. Their GCD for AoE damage is also extremely TP hungry, and unlike WAR or DRK does not generate aggro.

PLD also has Very Good mitigation at best. While I saw you mention that Blocking becomes stronger as a patch goes on so does health scaling, which both TBN and WAR benefit from greatly. Sentinel, as pointed out by Dzian above, is overkill for anything you would need it for save maybe Suzaku's TB this patch, and even this DRK and WAR both handle that TB fine. The longer cooldown only hurts PLD overall. But speaking of cooldowns, let me explain what I meant by saying PLD Utility is not as high as is first perceived by players.

Divine Veil is considered good Paladin utility, but it requires you either Clemency yourself or you get a tick of healing from a healer to use it, which makes it difficult to use compared to Shake it Off. Additionally cooldowns in a savage environment (where they actually matter) tend to get pre-planned. Veil is good, but clunky. It is going to be hard to use it in a way that saves your Healer or yourself a GCD, which is what would make it good utility. Shake it Off is basically superior in all ways. As such it is a niche cooldown.

Cover is also considered good Paladin utility, but the higher level of content is starting to reinforce the tank swap which makes this less than viable. You NEED to swap your tanks to get best use of both of their cooldowns now. Cover also has to be paired with other cooldowns. If cover was on a much shorter cooldown it might be better, but the last time it was really useful was letting DPS meditate in Tsuki Ex during transition phases. As such this is a niche cooldown.

Intervention and the use thereof is a DPS loss. This is because you need shelltron to proc your shield bash. Additionally Intervention is generally not needed. It, like sentinel, is overkill. It is also like Cover very clunky to use especially for anyone on controller. This becomes an ability that rarely if ever sees use in play. It is a niche cooldown.

Clemency costs you a GCD, and therefore DPS, to heal yourself and potentially another. Healers have tools in their kits to avoid this situation though, and since Tank single target DPS is higher than Healer single target DPS, it is crazy to use Clemency in almost any scenario. Clemency is VERY useful when questing in the overworld, but it just really falls flat in raids. Perhaps if it where moved to be an oGCD and gave it an AoE healing effect akin to how Holy scales downward for extra targets it would be better? But it is not currently.

Finally lets talk about Hallowed Ground. Many regard HG as the "best" tank immunity at first look. This is wrong, and I would go as far as to say it is actually WORSE than Walking Dead. The cast time for it makes it impossible to use in emergencies, the cooldowns insures you are only getting one cast a fight. Compared to Holmgang which has use as simple knockback prevention, or Walking Dead which has a faster cast time and a longer "Grace Period" it doesn't work. We are seeing now in EX and Savage that failing almost ANY mechanic results in a Vulnerability Stack. If HG made you immune to these it would be useful to prevent an unwanted tank swap, or to save you from messing up a mechanic. On a 7 minute cooldown this ability does NOT do enough to make up for what little it provides. It either needs it's CD halved, it needs movement effect immunity added or it needs it's duration extended substantially (20s) and be made an instant cast for it to be on par with the other immunities.

PLD has a LOT of niche use cooldowns. It has a lot of buttons in general, but not very many are applicable in most situations, and this severally cuts it's actual utility in a given scenario.

To take a look at some other cooldowns and problems currently in the PLD kit;

- FoF feels bad to use and does not have a noticeable performance enhancement like it's cousins in Bloodweapon and Inner Release.
- PLD is punished in the extreme for needing to extend their combos, with no way to do it. Performing Bloodspiller does not break DRK combo chain, performing Fell Cleave/Inner Beast does not break WAR combo chain, so why does using Clemency or Holy Spirit break PLD combo chain?
- PLD is extremely reliant on Goring Blade for damage.
- PLD has arguably the most static rotation of any of the tanks, and struggles to try to work with it. This goes back to the above combo chain issues.
- WAR has basically a better PLD Rotation.
- PLD does NOT have Slashing Debuff, which is key utility in the current tank meta.
- Building gauge for PLD can be awkward especially in tank stance.
- Aggro generation can be an issue for PLDs.
- Holy Spirit GCD still scales with SPS for whatever ungodly reason.

Mark my words; if DRK was not such a pain to play and had a single movement immunity on something like Dark Mind DRK would be heralded as a symbol of balance in the community and all the DRK threads would currently be about how trash tier PLD is. PLD is literally propped up on the fact that Dark Arts spam makes people's fingers hurt, and the numbers data for current DRK supports that.

I'm not really sure what I would change about paladin right now. Maybe an offensive move to blow oath gauge on when I don't need any of the two we have now.

I'm very grateful that we got total eclipse in SB, but I don't reel we need more aoe than we have now, I feel like thematically PLD should be the low damage but high defense/utility tank.

Paladin is boring as all hell if I get synced too low in a duty but I like where it is at level 70.

I know this would never happen but I think it'd be cool visual if in Sword Oath we put our shield away and use both hands with our longswoard. But again I don't expect that to actually happen.

Would it be weird for me to want a change to the crystal so at a glance, I can tell how many spells worth of MP I have banked up?

Like, divide the crystal into 3 big segments, and one small segment. Each big segment lit up means I have enough MP for a dark arts: the fourth segment lit up means I've capped MP (and should be ashamed).

It'd give that little crystal some actual use beyond a background for my Blood gauge counter.

as an irrelevant nitpick, HW DRK AoE was just as excellent, if not better than WAR's. In a dungeon setting, WAR had this wind-up time to reach 5 stacks, then use double decimate with overpower, and their Zerk+Bloodbath combo was only available for roughly every other pull.

However, DRK could immediately jump into AD spam, and BP worked outside of grit back then as well. Also, there was the gigantic benefit that DRK was the only tank with AoE damage that could afford to use sprint in dungeons, because TP wasn't used at all for their rotation. Given BP's 40 second CD, you could do this on EVERY pull.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

as an irrelevant nitpick, HW DRK AoE was just as excellent, if not better than WAR's. In a dungeon setting, WAR had this wind-up time to reach 5 stacks, then use double decimate with overpower, and their Zerk+Bloodbath combo was only available for roughly every other pull.

However, DRK could immediately jump into AD spam, and BP worked outside of grit back then as well. Also, there was the gigantic benefit that DRK was the only tank with AoE damage that could afford to use sprint in dungeons, because TP wasn't used at all for their rotation. Given BP's 40 second CD, you could do this on EVERY pull.

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To add to that, they also had decent AoE capability at lower levels when synced down

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

I'm sure 5.0's tank will probably have two 1-2-3 combos, one aggro generating and one dps. One defensive CD that reduces incoming damage by 30%. At least one form of AoE generating skill. An "I pressed this button so that i can't die for x amount of seconds " skill. Blah blah blah etc.

I honestly think SE dropped two DPS jobs in SB because they had no idea how to create a different tank and/or healer that actually plays different.

The gameplay between PLD, WAR and DRK should've been as different as it is between BLM, SMN and RDM. But instead it's mostly clone skills with different names and animations along with some perks unique to that job.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

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The thing about full time buffs is that they are factored into encounters. Having it then vs not having it now hasn't changed a thing, because encounters now are balanced around there not being blanket -10% buffs.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

Well I would mostly agree with your WAR chart, except that WAR has Godlike Aggro Generation and Excellent Utility as of right now. My snap aggro gen as a WAR is so high that I only need 2-3 entire GCDs at start of pull to get my aggro lead and keep it for the entire fight, as I do with my raid static every week.

I mostly agree with your DRK chart too, though WAR should probably be at Godlike Single Target Damage and DRK be at Excellent. This may sound weird, but DRK actually has better single target DPS than PLD by the same margin WAR has better single target than DRK. If you don't believe me just check FFLogs DPS for this tier right now.

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Hm, Alphascape isn't a good place to look at raning currently because some players have weapons while others do not. It's way too early to look at Alphascape. Let's look at Sigmascape. It turns out that the average is the same for both PLD and DRK with PLD being consistantly at 5k on God Kefka where DRK is roughly the same if not a little less.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

Paladin is where I disagree completely. I love Paladin, but I would like to point out a few things;

Paladin now has the worst aggro gen of any tank. Rage of Halone does not have the massive aggro lead of using a Dark Arts Power Slash, and PLD in general does not have anywhere NEAR the Snap Aggro of WAR.

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I originally labeled PLD as "Decent" for enmity, though after careful consideration, I found that PLD's enmity is acceptable because even though they have the weakest after the DRK buffs, there isn't a difference between having a giant aggro lead or a slight lead, because you're still holding aggro. With PLD's enmity as is, PLD can hold bosses well enough. The main issue is that PLD should never pull in Shield Oath or ever enter Shield oath outside of prog because of how penalizing leaving and entering different stances is for PLD. Also, with all DPS having no excuse not to carry aggro tools, it's hard for every tank to not be at least "Good" in enmity. Im willing to back down on this however.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

PLD also has excellent utility, not godlike. I would like to explain this further below.

Paladin has poor AoE damage. Matter of fact the only class that might have worse AoE right now is AST, and I only say that because I do not know the class well enough to say one way or another. Both SCH and WHM can easily out DPS a PLD in an AoE situation. If you are a tank and are losing in DPS to a healer in any category, that category MUST be defined as poor. Their GCD for AoE damage is also extremely TP hungry, and unlike WAR or DRK does not generate aggro.

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I can't disagree with anything that you say. PLD not having enmity on Total Eclipse is a bummer and running out of TP is a reality, however I do think PLD is still above both AST and SCH while only losing out to WHM. I think it's hard to call it poor because really I don't think any job has poor Aoe realistically so long as they have a button they can use for Aoe. Finally, I considered the fact that PLD can double dot targets with Goring blade, and that is actually significant for their Aoe output on two targets. It's much better than what the other tanks can do on only two targets. Niche, as it's only applicable to Nael + Twin from Ultimate, but it is something PLD has access to.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

PLD also has Very Good mitigation at best. While I saw you mention that Blocking becomes stronger as a patch goes on so does health scaling, which both TBN and WAR benefit from greatly. Sentinel, as pointed out by Dzian above, is overkill for anything you would need it for save maybe Suzaku's TB this patch, and even this DRK and WAR both handle that TB fine. The longer cooldown only hurts PLD overall. But speaking of cooldowns, let me explain what I meant by saying PLD Utility is not as high as is first perceived by players.

Divine Veil is considered good Paladin utility, but it requires you either Clemency yourself or you get a tick of healing from a healer to use it, which makes it difficult to use compared to Shake it Off. Additionally cooldowns in a savage environment (where they actually matter) tend to get pre-planned. Veil is good, but clunky. It is going to be hard to use it in a way that saves your Healer or yourself a GCD, which is what would make it good utility. Shake it Off is basically superior in all ways. As such it is a niche cooldown.

Cover is also considered good Paladin utility, but the higher level of content is starting to reinforce the tank swap which makes this less than viable. You NEED to swap your tanks to get best use of both of their cooldowns now. Cover also has to be paired with other cooldowns. If cover was on a much shorter cooldown it might be better, but the last time it was really useful was letting DPS meditate in Tsuki Ex during transition phases. As such this is a niche cooldown.

Intervention and the use thereof is a DPS loss. This is because you need shelltron to proc your shield bash. Additionally Intervention is generally not needed. It, like sentinel, is overkill. It is also like Cover very clunky to use especially for anyone on controller. This becomes an ability that rarely if ever sees use in play. It is a niche cooldown.

Clemency costs you a GCD, and therefore DPS, to heal yourself and potentially another. Healers have tools in their kits to avoid this situation though, and since Tank single target DPS is higher than Healer single target DPS, it is crazy to use Clemency in almost any scenario. Clemency is VERY useful when questing in the overworld, but it just really falls flat in raids. Perhaps if it where moved to be an oGCD and gave it an AoE healing effect akin to how Holy scales downward for extra targets it would be better? But it is not currently.

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I feel like you're only looking at these skills from a farm perspective but not a prog perspective. You also missed out on passage, further making me believe this is the case. While these tools might not seem overly impressive, I think that when you combine them all into one job and also use them as a means of seeing more into the fight to further your progression, or use these tools to save a pull, it is a huge gain for the party. Being able to save people and move forward into your prog thanks to these tools is what makes jobs like RDM so good even though that job only has Verraise and Vercure. I also want to challenge intervention being a DPS loss, because that isnt true. Yes, not getting a shield swipe is bad but you dont need sheltron technically, you just need to block.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

Finally lets talk about Hallowed Ground. Many regard HG as the "best" tank immunity at first look. This is wrong, and I would go as far as to say it is actually WORSE than Walking Dead. The cast time for it makes it impossible to use in emergencies, the cooldowns insures you are only getting one cast a fight. Compared to Holmgang which has use as simple knockback prevention, or Walking Dead which has a faster cast time and a longer "Grace Period" it doesn't work. We are seeing now in EX and Savage that failing almost ANY mechanic results in a Vulnerability Stack. If HG made you immune to these it would be useful to prevent an unwanted tank swap, or to save you from messing up a mechanic. On a 7 minute cooldown this ability does NOT do enough to make up for what little it provides. It either needs it's CD halved, it needs movement effect immunity added or it needs it's duration extended substantially (20s) and be made an instant cast for it to be on par with the other immunities.

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I agree that Hallowed is the weakest of the three, especially compared to Holmgang. There are however things that Hallowed can do that Holmgang cant, like take 4 Akh morns or simplifying a mechanic like the wave cannons in O11s post second Pantokrator where 3 magic vuln markers appear in two sets. You can Hallowed that mechanic to ignore healing on one of the two tanks while also only dealing with two of the three beams. In cases like that, HG has a lot of value. In every other case, yeah HG is much worse than Holmgang. Holmgang is a very overpowered skill that I personally think is the reason for WAR having Godlike mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

PLD has a LOT of niche use cooldowns. It has a lot of buttons in general, but not very many are applicable in most situations, and this severally cuts it's actual utility in a given scenario.

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I disagree. The only two buttons that shouldnt see play during farm are Passage of Arms and Clemency and even that is arguable. In content like Ultimate, you can use Passage as a CD for certain parts or use Clemency to help the healers catch up when things go south. These tools are not meant for abuse, but they are there to help recover a run. For that reason, I think PLD's utility can't be ignored even when it's sleeping.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

To take a look at some other cooldowns and problems currently in the PLD kit;

- FoF feels bad to use and does not have a noticeable performance enhancement like it's cousins in Bloodweapon and Inner Release.
- PLD is punished in the extreme for needing to extend their combos, with no way to do it. Performing Bloodspiller does not break DRK combo chain, performing Fell Cleave/Inner Beast does not break WAR combo chain, so why does using Clemency or Holy Spirit break PLD combo chain?
- PLD is extremely reliant on Goring Blade for damage.
- PLD has arguably the most static rotation of any of the tanks, and struggles to try to work with it. This goes back to the above combo chain issues.
- WAR has basically a better PLD Rotation.
- PLD does NOT have Slashing Debuff, which is key utility in the current tank meta.
- Building gauge for PLD can be awkward especially in tank stance.
- Aggro generation can be an issue for PLDs.
- Holy Spirit GCD still scales with SPS for whatever ungodly reason.

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I agree with everything but the slashing debuff, goring blade being your primary dps output and the gauge building in Shield oath. I think SLashing debuff, piercing debuff and blunt should all be removed from the game. They serve absolutely no purpose except force some jobs to be part of all parties due to how mandatory these debuffs are. Queueing into expert as a PLD or DRK without a slashing debuff provider is awful because you're going into a dungeon missing 10% damage. Which is just dumb. I dont think PLD lacking slashing is a problem as much as slashing debuff being a thing is the problem. As for the gauge in Shield oath, Holy spirit gives 20 gauge per cast. That is a LOT of gauge. Finally, your Holy spirits should deal your highest amount of damage. Maximizing Holy spirits is what nets you the highest DPS, even higher than Sword oath.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

Mark my words; if DRK was not such a pain to play and had a single movement immunity on something like Dark Mind DRK would be heralded as a symbol of balance in the community and all the DRK threads would currently be about how trash tier PLD is. PLD is literally propped up on the fact that Dark Arts spam makes people's fingers hurt, and the numbers data for current DRK supports that.

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Hard disagree. I dont think people find DRK hard to play and I dont think a knock back immune would fix DRK's issue. Theres only one thing that matters for meta comps after prog and that's damage. If DRK outdamaged PLD considerably, you will always take DRK without question. Maybe in a lower level of play, DRK might feel challenging but that could be because people dont play DRK enough. Which is shown from logs.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

as an irrelevant nitpick, HW DRK AoE was just as excellent, if not better than WAR's. In a dungeon setting, WAR had this wind-up time to reach 5 stacks, then use double decimate with overpower, and their Zerk+Bloodbath combo was only available for roughly every other pull.

However, DRK could immediately jump into AD spam, and BP worked outside of grit back then as well. Also, there was the gigantic benefit that DRK was the only tank with AoE damage that could afford to use sprint in dungeons, because TP wasn't used at all for their rotation. Given BP's 40 second CD, you could do this on EVERY pull.

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I agree. I liked how DRK could sprint in dungeons. However, Berserk + Decimates + Vengeance made WAR insanely strong in Aoe, and not every situation would have tank Aoe done in dungeons in HW. Im not opposed to putting DRK aoe in excellent however.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

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Take the encounters during ARR into consideration. A lot of the damage those bosses dealt were physical damage and only the aoe damage was magic. SCH did a great job on its own dealing with Aoe and Rage of Halone did a great job mitigating damage in all of the coils except T8. However, moving into HW, most of the damage became magical including tank busters. Rage of Halone lost a lot of power in HW while Path became MUCH better due to Darkness damage and lack of Physical. Also, WAR became very strong on the physical damage front due to Raw intuition, making PLD's niche as the strong physical tank much weaker.

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Originally Posted by Speaks

Mark my words; if DRK was not such a pain to play and had a single movement immunity on something like Dark Mind DRK would be heralded as a symbol of balance in the community and all the DRK threads would currently be about how trash tier PLD is. PLD is literally propped up on the fact that Dark Arts spam makes people's fingers hurt, and the numbers data for current DRK supports that.

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As the venerable Alexander Hamilton once said, "The masses are asses."

DRK truly IS the symbol of balance! If you were one of the enlightened ones, such as myself, then you would see that DRK already has a movement immunity in the form of a well-timed and well-planned plunge.The busy-work of DA spam is something to be enjoyed, not resent. The "community" may see a lot of what DRK has to offer and claim it is un-parsimonious to good gameplay and effort, and though I will assert it is the simplest tank to play, the satisfaction derived from playing at a competent level surpasses that of an opening Inner Release, and that lends to its fun-factor. At least, that what you would think if you were enlightened like me.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

Snip

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I suppose we will see how Alpha develops over time and if we see DRK remain above PLD for damage this tier or not. SKS on everything arguably hurts PLD the most too, so we may see DRK pull ahead in damage yet. Time will tell.

While it is true that you can stay ahead with RoH on PLD for aggro though, it is the pulling in shield that is the real culprit. It takes a full GCD to get into offense stance if you are forced to pull, and if your co-tank dies and you need to generate snap aggro you are beyond out of luck (as I have had the misfortune of experiencing in a couple Suzaku runs this week.)


About the AoE though; SCH does pull ahead of PLD right now. SCH still has their arcanist DPS tools, and that includes miasma. While PLD can probably out-DPS in 3 or fewer targets, SCH progressively pulls further and further ahead the more targets you have. PLD really needs it's AoE looked at. It is less than half the damage of others tanks while also sacrificing what little damage they have to hold aggro.

I was looking at the skills from a prog perspective too. I didn't mention Passage because passage is actually good, and is more of the utility I would like to see for PLD with 5.0. I never said PLD had poor utility; I said it had excellent. Passage is a big part of that from my perspective. But right now I can get my static further in prog with WAR than PLD, simply because WAR has so obscenely much mitigation. People also underestimate DRK's new mitigation since it was buffed. TBN every 15s and a Dark Mind perma DAd with only it's 60s buff is huge. Intervention is still really not necessary though. I mean you will pretty much 100% be co-tanking with a WAR.

Slashing debuffs, and debuffs in general aside form things like Trick Attack, are something I too would like to see removed going forward. I like playing WAR, but I do NOT want it to be required. We only have 3 tanks, but you basically only have to choice of 2. As for Gauge gen in shield you CAN Holy Spirit, but it would really be better if Tank Stance only reduced physical damage output too. Also this does not solve the issue of Gauge Gen in groups. Shelltron should probably just block hits for like the next 4 or 5 seconds giving mana on the first, this would both help gauge gen and increase adds mitigation. PLD unfortunately has a very strict rotation though, you cannot just throw Holy Spirit out whenever you feel like to generate gauge...

Finally, I never said DRK was hard to play. It is extremely simple. I said it was a pain to play. As in my fingers actually get tired playing it. Besides all that DRK really has good enough self mitigation to already be a good prog tank. I really do think DRK right now is balanced, just not fun.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

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On heavensward storm eye was broken, WAR was the only job that apply the Buff without losing dps, that mean It skyrocket NIN dps bcs more aeolian edge, WAR was mandatory for that betwen other things.

And now in stormblood still have slashing with is not as mandatory as before but still impact on openers and SIO is better that the old path bcs dont cost you dps and is up on every high aoe damage, all being say SIO was a mistake.

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Originally Posted by shao32

On heavensward storm eye was broken, WAR was the only job that apply the Buff without losing dps, that mean It skyrocket NIN dps bcs more aeolian edge, WAR was mandatory for that betwen other things.

And now in stormblood still have slashing with is not as mandatory as before but still impact on openers and SIO is better that the old path bcs dont cost you dps and is up on every high aoe damage, all being say SIO was a mistake.

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War was the ONLY source of slashing in ARR period. That is what mandatory is. Every party, not just some meta comp that not everyone even used. Nin, No nin, it didnt matter. A shield every 90 sec is not nearly as powerful as a 10% all damage down on demand that can be up any time or ALL the time you want.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

Take the encounters during ARR into consideration. A lot of the damage those bosses dealt were physical damage and only the aoe damage was magic. SCH did a great job on its own dealing with Aoe and Rage of Halone did a great job mitigating damage in all of the coils except T8. However, moving into HW, most of the damage became magical including tank busters. Rage of Halone lost a lot of power in HW while Path became MUCH better due to Darkness damage and lack of Physical. Also, WAR became very strong on the physical damage front due to Raw intuition, making PLD's niche as the strong physical tank much weaker.

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Not sure how you can say Path became "MUCH" better because of Drk's lack of physical def and at the same time say halone lost "a lot" of power because it was physical def. That statement doesnt make sense. Either physical debuffs are a good thing or a bad thing for a job that provides them. I would say pld got the short end, but war didnt get better because of Drk's lack of phy def, otherwise you would have to say the same about halone.

There were two sources of Int down. 1 source of Str down. Just like slashing in HW, whe you go from a single job that gives a debuff, going to two jobs for the same debuff does not make it stronger. It makes the benefit weaker.

Raw intuition and tank 'niches' has nothing to do with my comment about War utility. Not sure if that was supposed to mean something.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

Not sure how you can say Path became "MUCH" better because of Drk's lack of physical def and at the same time say halone lost "a lot" of power because it was physical def. That statement doesnt make sense. Either physical debuffs are a good thing or a bad thing for a job that provides them. I would say pld got the short end, but war didnt get better because of Drk's lack of phy def, otherwise you would have to say the same about halone

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Again, take the encounters into consideration. Physical down lost a lot of power because most fights in Alexander did high magic damage but not enough physical damage to warrant rage of halone. Also, darkness/true damage became a thing. path became much better because it was one of the only skills to work on darkness/true damage.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

There were two sources of Int down. 1 source of Str down. Just like slashing in HW, whe you go from a single job that gives a debuff, going to two jobs for the same debuff does not make it stronger. It makes the benefit weaker

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Delirium being added didn't just make dragon kick weaker, it deleted monk. As far as the meta was concerned, delirium was the better int down since it allowed your team to run drg/nin where as with dragon kick, you're forced to take a monk. Also, even though nin and war had slashing, nin never applied it themselves and relied on the war to apply slashing so they could do more aeoleans. Having multiple of the same debuff does not collectively make them weaker, one of them is superior while the other is inferior.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

Raw intuition and tank 'niches' has nothing to do with my comment about War utility. Not sure if that was supposed to mean something

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Tanks becoming stronger on the physical side coupled with less physical damage in raids definately impacted the utility of PLD since it was not as useful as it once was.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

War was the ONLY source of slashing in ARR period. That is what mandatory is. Every party, not just some meta comp that not everyone even used. Nin, No nin, it didnt matter. A shield every 90 sec is not nearly as powerful as a 10% all damage down on demand that can be up any time or ALL the time you want.

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The difference was in ARR WAR slashing buff only PLD and himself before NIN and the debuff don't offer much since the tank dps was poor those days, in heavensward tanks get dps combos/stances raising the value of slashing a lot and compared to NIN WAR apply the debuff without loosing a good chunk of his personal damage increasing even more the raid dps WAR contribute if a NIN was present.

On path apart of being a stolen utility from bard it was a dps lost use it, good WARs just use it only on specefic situations, SIO is better bcs optimally have more use that path and offer much more mitigation since can be buffed all of this without loosing dps.

Comparison Domains
Content-based comparisons work for things like mitigation where there's a specific target, but less well for things like dps, where the goal is to just optimise. I think if your goal is to compare tanks across several domains, the comparison should relative to each other, such that if all three have equivalent performance, then all three are 'average'. Normalise it.

Some of these domains can be expanded out, as they're very different in scope and importance. Utility, for example, can mean a whole lot of things. Does this mean raid dps buffs? Raid mitigation? Self-healing? Mobility tools and knockback negation? Single-target dps is fairly broad as well. Does it mean burst? Sustained dps? Raid dps buffs?

I think the main aim of tank changes going into the expansion should be to make tanking fun for as many different people as possible, and to encourage diverse team compositions.

Raid damage buffs
To this end, the priority should be remove things that force you to pick a particular composition of jobs. The biggest offenders in this regard are 100% uptime raid buffs like Slashing. They do nothing other than reward you for bringing a specific job. Even if you place them on multiple jobs, like WAR and NIN, you should ask yourself why the game needs to be designed such that we always have one of these in our group. What if you want to run PLD/DRK with an all caster party? You should be able to do so without feeling like you're punished for not bringing an already over-represented job.

With regards to the broader issue of raid damage buffs, while I do like the coordination that they bring to raiding, I don't feel that they should be on tank jobs. There are a lot of issues to balance out in tanking, and raid dps buffs can easily push a job into the "must pick" category. Tanks should be balanced based on burst dps vs. sustained dps, such that any one tank is not strong at both.

On a related note, I'd like to see some adjustments to the rate of limit gauge generation as well. If you're going to have certain job-specific abilities impact limit gauge generation (Shake and Veil), then it shouldn't be by an appreciable amount. Either that, or just have damage reduction effects that everyone has access to, like Reprisal, produce an equivalent effect. Otherwise these abilities end up functioning like a hidden raid dps buff.

Role actions
The role action system needs to be reworked into something meaningful. If they're meant to be mandatory abilities, then they should just be selected by default. If they're meant to be situational (i.e. stun vs. silence), then you should be able to toggle between them. I think a talent tree system could work here.

As an example, you could have a set of "common actions" like Rampart, Shirk, and Reprisal which are always available on every tank. Then you could have some choice-based role actions which make you pick one of a set of options on a decision tree (i.e. Low Blow vs. Interject, Provoke vs. Ultimatum, or Anticipation vs. Awareness). Also, given how ubiquitous knockbacks have been this expansion, I think knockback negation should be a baseline part of this common skill set.

We know that the addition of new abilities with every expansion requires the removal of other actions to keep hotbar space requirements more manageable. I'd like to see this done in a more thoughtful fashion this next expansion. Sometimes ability changes and the removal of an ability can have a significant impact on how the job plays, or in the level up experience. You can't randomly rip out parts and hope for the best.

The removal of abilities in Stormblood also left certain jobs at a net deficit in abilities. Jobs should have the same amount of actions, gained at the same intervals. I want to see this remedied.

Job identity
With regards to job balance itself, I don't think the end goal should be for every tank to be equivalent in every area. I do think that each should have their share of strengths and weaknesses. If you're really strong in one area and good at everything else, then that's a big problem. If you want to excel in one area, it should be at the expense of being weaker at something else.

Lastly, I'd like to see some clearly defined identities for each tank. If DRK's lifesteal comes from in-game lore and series lore, strong self-sustain through lifesteal should be a DRK exclusive trait. Remove WAR's lifesteal entirely, and let them work on a different theme instead. If WAR is about heavy burst and enmity generation, then don't try and clone Inner Release on the other tanks. Do something different. If PLD is about strong party support, then don't be giving every tank Divine Veil. Push the tanks in unique directions without giving them a monopoly on something that will make them mandatory.

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Originally Posted by Saeno

DRK:
-Less Dark arts please
-PLEASE rethink the blood weapon/blood price exchange
-Remove Delirium and add another DPS buffing move. Very pointless skill and doesn't feel nearly as fun as other DPS buffs like Blood for blood or Requiescat
-Add some oGCD gauge spenders akin to Onslaught and Upheivel
-More buttons in general
-Burst phase to be more synergistic with group bursts
-Raid wide utility
-Reconsider Dark art's negative effect of not being allowed to gain MP outside of your own sources. If PLD can gain extra Holy spirits from mana shift/ Refresh, DRK should be able to as well. Adjust the potencies of Dark arts moves to not make this broken obviously

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Make DRK even more obviously budget WAR.