SHB itself is fantastic, but I'm not at all convinced on many of the combat changes

Congrats SE.
I think you did a fantastic job with this expansion, as even someone as cynical and jaded as myself has found the latest expansion exciting to play.

I would personally like to commend the additions and adjustments to The Hunt, my favorite aspect of the game.
I would still like to see a level sync implemented for all S ranks but that is a topic for another day.

However, in spite of my enjoyment of the game, some of the combat changes are really making me feel sour.

I feel that tanks and healers were homogenized and simplified in the pursuit of balance and accessibility, and I feel some efforts to that degree were taken too far.

Tanks seem to have lost a lot of identity in regards to skills(E.G. Shield Swipe and Power Slash) and traits(E.G. War's HP, DRK's haste) and while they still exhibit play style differences, they feel a lot more similar to play than I remember in Storm blood.

Additionally, DRK seems to suffer in the balance department.
DRK has lost a lot of it's speed, and MP generation is still a issue that the other tanks don't have.

To be Frank, I also feel the current state of Dark Missionary, Dark Mind and Living Dead are flat out unacceptable.
I don't mind the former two damage migitations being limited to magic only(I'd prefer it honestly in leu of job identity), but they need to have at least some advantage to the other similar cool downs for tanks.
As it is now, DRK is physically weak, and not magically strong.

As for Living dead, I feel a move that out flat out kills you if it's non self-sustainable requirements aren't fulfilled doesn't suit this game, period.

I don't play Healers, but Ilam emphatic to all the complaints I have been hearing.
Designing harder encounters to greater emphasize healing is nice, but I don't feel pruning a lot of DPS options is healthy for the game.

Thoughts fellow eorzeans?
Please discuss.

To be honest, I think we just have to wait and see how this all turns out once we get more content.

I don't think one raid and two primals will tell us everything we need to know yet. Every meta has taken its time to be found out, this one should be the same, maybe a little longer even.

Yeah when i was setting up my tanks i was shocked that they all pretty much had identical keybinds, and the exact same defensives

they homogenized the tanks way too much i think

I'm with you on Living Dead. This has always been an issue, but it seems even harder for a mon WHM to be able to meet the healing requirements.

On AST for example, the aspected spells upfront healing has been pretty much halved, and if Essentially Dignity and Synastry are on cooldown... good luck.

I do like that they've trimmed a lot of abilities away, I just did not like that I had to keep a 3rd hotbar that I exclusively used mouse clicks for. For DRK, I was spamming the Souleater combo most of the time, so it was a little bizarre that I had so many abilities on my hotbars. They could have even trimmed even more abilities in my opinion, I mean take Shadow Wall for instance, great damage mitigation, but it's purpose is nearly identical to Rampart. So might as well just roll both abilities into one spell and give the ability 2 charges, like True North has.

My cousin said the same thing he said the tanks are squishy now, why even have a shield if the shield doesn't block.

Paladin takes massive damage in old 69 dungeon 1 hit almost K.O if paladin didn't have heal it would be in trouble.

I don't think its just paladin but all tanks.

One raid and two primals is already 1/3 of the expansion pack. Surely you can't expect us to "wait and see" that long.

Can someone please explain to me whats up with this "homogenisation" of tanks which i cant really get a grip on?

How they are homogenised and how it is any different from what we had in Stormblood? Because for me it all looks like a complaining for a sake of complaining.
How did DRK lost in balance department if its the second highest (after broken PLD that will be nerfed sooner or later) DPS tank right now?
Also OP is not liking the magic only deffensive cooldown, and asks to buff it in order to put it on pair with other deffensives, isnt it what is called homogenisation? Why would he want DRK to have same stuff as other tanks? Quite the irony.
I fail to realise how power slash was any part of DRK identity, it was almost never used by this job.
Someone need to make a list for each tank of abilities from 5.0 and the previous patch and compare and then play all of them to lvl 80 in order to make such brave statements of all tanks playing the same.
War still rely on heavy damage IR windows, he could heal himself and other with nascent flash he didnt had this before, also he has a exclusive to him and additional infuriate mechanic in which he has 2 charges to use for highest damage skills, he exceeds in the personal deffensivess.
PLD got highest damage from all tanks, a really deadly magic damage combo and cool gauge based burst damage, still has his upper hand in supportive abilities in comparison to rest of tanks.
DRK plays totaly different from the rest by managing 2 resources, with 2 damage dealing windows and strong "dot" damage, his shield is a tank buster eating wall which none of tanks has.
If anything SE did, it was packing more iconic skills into these jobs in place of skills that were just weak and didnt had any large impact on these jobs gemplay (sole survive, shield swipe, old delirium, enmity combo, unchained etc).

I am loving the changes to MCH. Since it's my main, for once, I feel the rotation makes sense and I am dealing powerhouse amounts of damage. Reassemble + Drill for the win! BOOM baby!

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Originally Posted by Sovasin

One raid and two primals is already 1/3 of the expansion pack. Surely you can't expect us to "wait and see" that long.

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Well, do you know how to test, pick and prune data that's relevant to finding out what's optimal, what's worthless and etc because you would be a big help in finding that out because all I see anywhere I look is personal anecdote and no data.

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Originally Posted by CarnivalNights

Well, do you know how to test, pick and prune data that's relevant to finding out what's optimal, what's worthless and etc because you would be a big help in finding that out because all I see anywhere I look is personal anecdote and no data.

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Wrong approach.

The first thing would be to question SQ:

• Why did tanks lose their 2 stances as it couldn't have been challenging to swap them, and instead got a disgraceful "enmity-toggle" in return, which in all fairness could be removed also and the additional enmity could be baked into a trait or something
• Why did WHM lose Aero II?
• Why did AST lose a lot of class identity, as now all your 6 buff cards do the exact same thing?
• Why does GNB play like a mix between all the other tanks, offering nothing exciting in terms of mechanics/skills/combos etc?
• What's the reasoning behind all tanks losing almost every cross-class tank CD without gaining anything in return?
• Why has healing been turned into "Turret healer" instead of "You have the choice if you want to heal or dps"?
  
  I could go on for hours.

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Originally Posted by Millybonk

Wrong approach.

The first thing would be to question SQ:

• Why did tanks lose their 2 stances as it couldn't have been challenging to swap them, and instead got a disgraceful "enmity-toggle" in return, which in all fairness could be removed also and the additional enmity could be baked into a trait or something: The eminity toggle is for OT. So that way the OT doesnt generate as much threat as the MT and pull off of them. Also said eminity combo just attributed to button bloat, if you had to use your emity combo after pull? Something was wrong/
• Why did WHM lose Aero II? Because they went with a more holy thematic. If I had to bet we will see its return with another nature based healer/
• Why did AST lose a lot of class identity, as now all your 6 buff cards do the exact same thing?BEcause Astros complained that pulling cards that weren't balance was disappointing.
• Why does GNB play like a mix between all the other tanks, offering nothing exciting in terms of mechanics/skills/combos etc? As someone who swapped main to Gunbreaker and enjoying it, you are playing it wrong probably. IT has more utility than the other tanks, and has a more sustained damage than a warrior and I find continuation fun to use.
• What's the reasoning behind all tanks losing almost every cross-class tank CD without gaining anything in return? Job based cooldowns.
• Why has healing been turned into "Turret healer" instead of "You have the choice if you want to heal or dps"? Because people would give shit to healers for either dpsing or healing. So because said community was toxic they moved healers to a more pure healing role.
  
  I could go on for hours.

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I answered all of your questions in the quote. Hope that helps, enjoy Shadowbringers!

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

Yeah when i was setting up my tanks i was shocked that they all pretty much had identical keybinds, and the exact same defensives

they homogenized the tanks way too much i think

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Tank main here leveling both DRK and GNB through Shadowbringers. Was a WAR main and only dabbled with PLD in the previous expansion. I'm just not seeing what you're seeing given that the Tanks were pretty "homogenized" in that they all had, generally, the same fundamental setup from the previous expansion. All they did was prune skills that literally no one used across each of the classes--save for a few exceptions.

All a Tank is supposed to do is hold aggro and mitigate damage, which they are able because they all have access to the roughly the same mitigation. However, the mitigation tools that align themselves with their class' identity has their own gimmicks. Aside from that, I can say with absolute clarity that DRK does not play like WAR and GNB does not play like either of those two.

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Originally Posted by ScarboroughFairy

Tank main here leveling both DRK and GNB through Shadowbringers. Was a WAR main and only dabbled with PLD in the previous expansion. I'm just not seeing what you're seeing given that the Tanks were pretty "homogenized" in that they all had, generally, the same fundamental setup from the previous expansion. All they did was prune skills that literally no one used across each of the classes--save for a few exceptions.

All a Tank is supposed to do is hold aggro and mitigate damage, which they are able because they all have access to the roughly the same mitigation. However, the mitigation tools that align themselves with their class' identity has their own gimmicks. Aside from that, I can say with absolute clarity that DRK does not play like WAR and GNB does not play like either of those two.

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Its just people adding to the echo chambers that haven't played the Jobs. GNB is different from any tank I've ever played in any MMo.

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Originally Posted by Millybonk

Wrong approach.

The first thing would be to question SQ:

• Why did tanks lose their 2 stances as it couldn't have been challenging to swap them, and instead got a disgraceful "enmity-toggle" in return, which in all fairness could be removed also and the additional enmity could be baked into a trait or something

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The reason for the enmity on/off toggle instead of turning it into a trait is so that you won't risk ripping hate from the other tank when you don't want too.
For tank swap you turn on enmity buff, you voke and the other tank shirks you and toggles off his enmity buff.

I think a lot of us have seen this from a mile away. Balancing everything out and trying to make everyone happy is a tedious job. But just like we've seen it in other MMOS like WoW, Jobs will lose their identity, combat will become more and more simpler, they will continue to axe away.

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Originally Posted by Sovasin

One raid and two primals is already 1/3 of the expansion pack. Surely you can't expect us to "wait and see" that long.

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Since you have some high expectations I am assured you will help by running the numbers? Adding and removing max materia on every single class and every single job, at your own expense and time?

Right?

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I am loving the changes to MCH. Since it's my main, for once, I feel the rotation makes sense and I am dealing powerhouse amounts of damage. Reassemble + Drill for the win! BOOM baby!

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There are 2 of us!

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Can someone please explain to me whats up with this "homogenisation" of tanks which i cant really get a grip on?

How they are homogenised and how it is any different from what we had in Stormblood? Because for me it all looks like a complaining for a sake of complaining.
How did DRK lost in balance department if its the second highest (after broken PLD that will be nerfed sooner or later) DPS tank right now?
Also OP is not liking the magic only deffensive cooldown, and asks to buff it in order to put it on pair with other deffensives, isnt it what is called homogenisation? Why would he want DRK to have same stuff as other tanks? Quite the irony.
I fail to realise how power slash was any part of DRK identity, it was almost never used by this job.
Someone need to make a list for each tank of abilities from 5.0 and the previous patch and compare and then play all of them to lvl 80 in order to make such brave statements of all tanks playing the same.
War still rely on heavy damage IR windows, he could heal himself and other with nascent flash he didnt had this before, also he has a exclusive to him and additional infuriate mechanic in which he has 2 charges to use for highest damage skills, he exceeds in the personal deffensivess.
PLD got highest damage from all tanks, a really deadly magic damage combo and cool gauge based burst damage, still has his upper hand in supportive abilities in comparison to rest of tanks.
DRK plays totaly different from the rest by managing 2 resources, with 2 damage dealing windows and strong "dot" damage, his shield is a tank buster eating wall which none of tanks has.
If anything SE did, it was packing more iconic skills into these jobs in place of skills that were just weak and didnt had any large impact on these jobs gemplay (sole survive, shield swipe, old delirium, enmity combo, unchained etc).

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They aren't homogenized. Dark Knight feels FAR better now while still retaining what was unique about it. I don't know what people are complaining about.