Further tank homogenization is pushing me away from tanking

Some background info to who I am and when I came into the game for better understanding; I started playing this game as soon as Stormblood began, and what got me to play the game was watching the trailers of Heavensward, the reviews of how awesome DRK was back then. In the Risk versus reward class, I went through Stormblood's savage content as a tank main and did the same now in SHB. Ever since Stormblood, the developers have been moving towards giving every other tank what they had that they didn't, now everyone has a gap closer, and their cooldowns are all the same.

Playing each tank feels too similar, specially DRK and WAR, with delirium being a bad inner release.

During the live letter, the devs said the tanks would be getting some CD in which if you use it at the right time, you get benefits......this sounds precisely like TBN; why is every tank now getting a TBN equivalent? Why does every tank need a gap closer? Why does every tank need an inner release? They don't.

People are always quick to point out that DPS queues always take long, well let me tell you that not having interesting tanks that feel unique from each other will only push the tank mains that have stuck with the role to different roles.

I know they said they don't want to go back to the complexity of the 3.x series. I wasn't there, so I can't say if it were better or not. I am only advocating for more individualism from each.

I know this thread is probably a year late since the changes we've seen are potentially being finalized, and any further changes will take months, if not years, to happen. I feel defeated to know that tanking has only gotten less and less fun with each expansion, and the trend continues.

Goodbye, tanking, my old friend.

Gap closers are fun and help me when I'm pulling multiple packs so I can stay ahead of the party. I don't particularly mind Delirium and TBN is one of my favourite mitigation tools for tankbusters because it then lets me deal free damage. I wish PLD had something similar instead of a useless ability like cover. If anything tanking has improved by being simplified for each expansion because I do not miss the days of tank stance dancing and running out of tp/mana during aoe pulls, or worse the infamous "Flash" ability PLD used to have. There isn't anything wrong with tanks being individualized, but if one has a good ability then I don't see why the others can't have something similar.

Having similar abilities take away from the class that was originally the sole owner of said ability, on your profile, it says you're a BLM. If SMM and RDM got leylines equivalent or even better than the original it would take away from the BLM's identity.

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Originally Posted by kiritolove27

Having similar abilities take away from the class that was originally the sole owner of said ability, on your profile, it says you're a BLM. If SMM and RDM got leylines equivalent or even better than the original it would take away from the BLM's identity.

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Gap closers are not leylines, though. Gap closers are simple things.

What would actually be equivalent would be if all casters got a mana regen tool- oh wait. They do. And that doesn’t take away from their individual gameplay loop. Maybe something else? Maybe if all physical ranged got a damage debuff- oh wait. That happens too. And it STILL doesn’t take away from their individual core gameplay loops.

It is getting pretty bad. But Sage and Reaper are looking really good. I want to see how the queues will be come Nov 19. Its very rare to see adventurer in need be tank for all roulettes for several hours.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

but if one has a good ability then I don't see why the others can't have something similar.

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Then I guess we should give BLM teleport or Fire 4 to all the casters now then. I kid, but it's improved it from a balance perspective. From a gameplay perspective, it really sucks knowing that everything you do, another tank can do as well. Each tank should have it's own strengths and weaknesses that should go further than just "drk has tbn so it cant self heal much".

All tanks have the same 60, 90, 120 secs cooldowns that all do the same thing. How are gap closers simple things that don't add identity? Why can't we have a single mobile tank with gap closers, another with a ranged rotation like PLD? Why do they all need a gap closer? Why can't their CDs have more identity? Tanks don't even need to worry about aggro management anymore, at least give us something more interesting to play around with. IF TANKS ARE TO BE BLUE MEELE DPS THAT TANK DMG then either make their rotations more complex like the melee or put more emphasis on tanking again.

I think tanking is fine to an extent while Delirium and Inner release are similar and they should change them to be a little more unique , we can doom and gloom all we want and simply what we say to "we both 1 2 3" but thats not the case ,
yes circle of scorn and bow shock are the similar but Paladin and Gun breaker still play very differently
putting all four into the homogenization bucket is just not true,
everyone brings up how tanking is uninteresting due to there offensive kit but tanking really gets uninteresting due to encounter design and that we just invuln everything but when ever people suggest to remove them people just whip out the identity card and defend them then wonder why tanking is uninteresting.

I think giving all the tanks gap closer was a good choice because it feels good for the role. However the the physical ranged getting a damage debuff that came at a cost to bard specifically because troubador used to be a really cool mechanic that made you think about which song to use it under. I feel like they could have just made the new damage reduction versions of tactician, troubador and shield samba a roll action. it'd make a lot more sense for abilities like these and free a slot for something that better fleshes out their kit. It seems the endwalker changes to bard may give us a similar mechanic to old troubador so there is some hope. I think the direction they took with all the roles and simplifying them is a good step towards making more interesting ways to make each job special other than restricting fun mechanics to one job for the sake of uniquness. I.e. combat mobility. everyone likes combat mobility to some degree. I would personally like to see warrior and dark knight feel as different as paladin and gunbreaker. forget inner release vs delirium for a second and look at their 1 2 3 combo. paladin's has 2 finishers and a spam ability after one of them, gun breaker gets a FULL gauge stack per 123. warrior and dark knight both do the same slow boring 123 combo way more than the other tanks. really I hated stance dancing and enimity combos too but I liked having more combos to swap from. its why i like melee. Warrior's self healing and berserker playstyle i think should be focused on more while dark knights im not sure what direction would be best. I like how it has a lot to weave in compared to other tanks so maybe just give it the dragoon treatment and transform it's 123 combo whenever you fulfill some parameter. idk maybe if tbn doesn't break then your 123 combo transfrorms to have new animations and gain a potency bonus equal to the free edge of shadow you'd have got from it shattering . that way it does something different if you break it vs not break it. that way people would stop complaining about tbn not popping.

I've actually said this before. This happens because if one job in a role can do something another job can't, people complain that they want their job to have it as well. Then when they get it, they complain that the jobs are too similar.

And here I am, still being sad you don't get to stance dance as a war anymore.

We can do two things, give SE feedback that they'll ignore, for better or worse. Or wait until we actually get to play stuff and then give em feedback again :D

Shb didn't kill tanking and I doubt EW will! If anything, I doubt they can make it worse in the first place, so it's all uphill from here ^^

Gap closers are a bit of an interesting discussion in itself when it comes to homogenization.

Mobility tools are essential for tanking (moreso than any other role, even melee dps). One of the reasons why there were so many problems with gap closers on tanks is because they're all so similar. In ARR, nobody had a gap closer. In HW, only DRK had a gap closer, so everyone else complains. In SB, WAR got a vastly superior gap closer. DRK got a rework to Plunge so that the animation executes more quickly. In ShB, three tanks have identical gap closers which are brought into parity with WAR's with the introduction of the charge system. Now we're going towards complete homogenization, such that nobody can complain. But the problem at the start was partial homogenization, when there's one job that has a clearly better choice for pretty much every situation.

Yet, if you really want to see gap closers done correctly, you need only look at DPS jobs. Some jobs have gap closers that you use on recast as a dps gain, but have charge systems to give you some flexibility. Some have dps neutral gap closers that do damage but break even with their resource costs. NIN has you teleport to a ground targeted location. DRG has a fixed distance gap extender that you can reverse directions on to use as a gap closer. DNC and now probably MNK have fixed distance gap closers that don't do damage but let you 'blink' forward to travel quickly. RPR can teleport and then return to a preset location.

Giving players freedom of movement is a massive incentive to playing a job. I'm personally a big fan of the Tracer style 'blink' system or RPR's portal system. And this is just scratching the surface. Imagine being able to use something like Lost Impetus from Bozja in regular gameplay. What if you could gap close to a party member and shield them? What about a line AoE that lets you dash through mobs enroute to a new location? What about a Holmgang style grapple that pulls mobs towards you (this won't happen until they fix the 1.x bug that cancels mob 'casts' on movement).

And imagine being able to actually move mobs around in raid content, instead of them rigidly following fixed, pre-programmed railshooter movement. Wouldn't that be something.

Either way, it's just funny how much variety you can see with gap closers on DPS jobs without compromising job balance. Just make them unique. If you can't make a mathematical comparison of two effects, then they're going to be balanced. Partial homogenization is the real problem.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Yet, if you really want to see gap closers done correctly, you need only look at DPS jobs. Some jobs have gap closers that you use on recast as a dps gain, but have charge systems to give you some flexibility. Some have dps neutral gap closers that do damage but break even with their resource costs. NIN has you teleport to a ground targeted location. DRG has a fixed distance gap extender that you can reverse directions on to use as a gap closer. DNC and now probably MNK have fixed distance gap closers that don't do damage but let you 'blink' forward to travel quickly. RPR can teleport and then return to a preset location.

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This post is very funny to me because melee dps gap closers are terrible and I wish they were all homogenized.

Sam: Terrible, dps loss, avoid using at all costs.
Drg: Spineshatter dive does damage so you have periods where you're sol and the move just becomes a dps cooldown.
mnk: same problem as drg currently, will have the best gap closer in endwalker though
nin: interesting, probably the best one currently.
rpr: Possibly clunky, depends on if the forward movement is fixed or not.

Really just wish everyone had endwalker monk or current nin to be honest in terms of gap closer..

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Originally Posted by Lyth

DNC and now probably MNK have fixed distance gap closers that don't do damage but let you 'blink' forward to travel quickly. .

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MNK new gap closer is actually like Aetherial Manipulation.. it has to have a target party member or enemy an dose no damage.

That's nice dear.

I took your question on reasoning to be rhetorical, yet it's easy to answer the question by shoving yourself in the shoes of those complaining morons for two seconds.

In their eyes, as someone has already implied; its about having everything others do - because they have no intention of bothering to level/gear or invest in anything outside of their aesthetic preference. If they do at any point; they demand the same there.

I see a connection between their fundamental laziness and selfishness, with elements like 'skip pot' and so on. In the sense that certain features stack up and appeal to their sense of ease and entitlement. Think that before they come to the game - they likely find the idea of having everything available to one character attractive (less effort compared to games that don't); and the thought chain builds from there.

They effectively want it made easier and easier, faster and faster, less and less complex. All so they can reach the end game as quickly as feasible, take a few brag photos for a tweet or two - get bored and quit. In turn this aligns with Yoshi's own philosophy of 'expecting people to take breaks'. Another way at times of saying; 'longevity is not supported, because the content is extremely fast because its casual (in the bad way).

If you summarize all of the above into what we can call the 'knock on effect'. Then you will better understand the different stages of anger, that long term MMO players like myself have been through across the years. Compromise with different playstyles yes - or you end up with Wildstar. But to completely baby-fy the game for the lazy/toddler brain player; its a form of favoritism that intentionally ignores the more invested, or experienced. Thats hardly a promising experience/longevity model now is it.

I honestly can't think of any competent melee dps player who would see a gap closer as a greater dps loss than walking over to a mob. The WAR/SAM complaints about resource costs were penny-wise and pound-foolish. Having a short recast on a gap closer is unbelievably powerful, because extra GCD uptime is worth its weight in gold. It's hilarious seeing the split in WAR players now that they've changed it, when you look at who's thrilled with the change and who isn't. The difference in opinion really does reflect in player performance.

I would personally take a fixed distance gap closer with no target (i.e. Roll/Chi Torpedo, Blink) over anything else, though. They're so versatile and eyeballing the travel distance becomes second nature once you spend enough time using them. They're also just plain fun. It's a bit like giving someone a grappling hook or a jet pack in an open world game. The most entertaining movement action I've seen so far is Lost Impetus with the dash + super sprint effect.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I honestly can't think of any competent melee dps player who would see a gap closer as a greater dps loss than walking over to a mob. The WAR/SAM complaints about resource costs were penny-wise and pound-foolish. Having a short recast on a gap closer is unbelievably powerful, because extra GCD uptime is worth its weight in gold. It's hilarious seeing the split in WAR players now that they've changed it, when you look at who's thrilled with the change and who isn't. The difference in opinion really does reflect in player performance.

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Yes, sure, it's not a dps loss if it keeps your gcd rolling. It is a DPS loss if you could have just walked back in instead and not lost any uptime. Which you usually, though not always, can. Regardless, I'd still be much happier if it was just a 2 stack gap closer with no cost and no damage attached to it.

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Originally Posted by Mindiori

I took your question on reasoning to be rhetorical, yet it's easy to answer the question by shoving yourself in the shoes of those complaining morons for two seconds.

In their eyes, as someone has already implied; its about having everything others do - because they have no intention of bothering to level/gear or invest in anything outside of their aesthetic preference. If they do at any point; they demand the same there.

I see a connection between their fundamental laziness and selfishness, with elements like 'skip pot' and so on. In the sense that certain features stack up and appeal to their sense of ease and entitlement. Think that before they come to the game - they likely find the idea of having everything available to one character attractive (less effort compared to games that don't); and the thought chain builds from there.

They effectively want it made easier and easier, faster and faster, less and less complex. All so they can reach the end game as quickly as feasible, take a few brag photos for a tweet or two - get bored and quit. In turn this aligns with Yoshi's own philosophy of 'expecting people to take breaks'. Another way at times of saying; 'longevity is not supported, because the content is extremely fast because its casual (in the bad way).

If you summarize all of the above into what we can call the 'knock on effect'. Then you will better understand the different stages of anger, that long term MMO players like myself have been through across the years. Compromise with different playstyles yes - or you end up with Wildstar. But to completely baby-fy the game for the lazy/toddler brain player; its a form of favoritism that intentionally ignores the more invested, or experienced. Thats hardly a promising experience/longevity model now is it.

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Pretty much the type of players they love catering to. Let's be all equal, but I'm more equal than you. This type of casual entitlement is practically killing gaming as a whole, and the most ironic aspect in all of this is you don't have to invest hundreds of hours in specific content, but you have a long-term goal you aspire to, while simultaneously increasing rewards and your skill progressively. TLDR; they want it all now, show off what would take a considerable amount of dedication and time, and then just quit once they've exhausted all likes on reddit for their "wholesome post".

To top it off, you're considered part of this "community". Like what? You don't speak for me lol. I feel stiffled by how the game is holding me back recently and aside from Savage and Ultimate, 90% of the game is suffering because of its current design philosophy.

I just absolutely hate what this industry has become. Particularly one of the best MMO's I've ever been invested in. You get the usual: "This game isn't for you!" Well what alternative is there really?

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Originally Posted by Derio

It is getting pretty bad. But Sage and Reaper are looking really good. I want to see how the queues will be come Nov 19. Its very rare to see adventurer in need be tank for all roulettes for several hours.

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Well why play a tank if Sage and Reaper are too good.

Right now sadly the only Tank that feels different is Blue Mage.

Wanting every tank to have functional skills like gap closers is casual entitlement? Missing the days of tank stance dancing? I think we need to take the rose-tinted glasses off.

HW DRK was a fastpaced reactionary Tank. Much more engaging then what we have now. You can argue that all the tanks function like a Warrior when it comes to DPS especially since Tanks are more balanced then ever when you compare and contrast PPS.

Gap closers are fine. But job identity is important and needs to do something another class can't. Which I'm not seeing much of.

I really feel for DRKs considering they were gutted and gave all their utilities to everyone else.

'Stance Dancing', much like 'Fireweaving', is one of those archaic terms that relatively few people actually understand and sounds much more impressive than it actually was in practice.

Rose-Tinted: I weaved between stances every second GCD to survive massive amounts of damage and push my dps while tanking Blaster and Swindler together.
Reality: Tank stance uptime = 0%. Equilibrium on add spawn. Shadewalker please.

On gap closers, it's worth noting that there's always a trade-off between range, recast, target, and so on. Shukuchi is on a 60 second recast, for example, compared to Gyoten or Onslaught's 10 seconds. En Avant has half the range of these on a 30 second recast. Hell's Ingress/Egress is 20 seconds for 15y, with no charges. I think you'll find that each individual player will have preferences with these. Do you want more range? Shorter recast? More charges? Pure utility without the obligation to keep it on cooldown? I love movement actions, so I'll pick the shorter recast every time, and I generally prefer fights where you're not sitting on one target for the entirety. While range and opportunity costs are probably less important for me.

I think that if you pick up a new job, you should miss having certain features available while simultaneously enjoying the advantages that you wouldn't have elsewhere. When you can have two players argue over which job has the better action and not have a mathematical answer, then you've done your job in terms of balance. I think now that they've killed off a lot of historical advantages that were on older jobs back in ARR, the devs can probably start to experiment with these things more and take some risks. The portal system could be clunky in execution, but I don't really care. It's unique and will lead to some clever gameplay tricks.

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Originally Posted by Sazuzaki

Then I guess we should give BLM teleport or Fire 4 to all the casters now then. I kid, but it's improved it from a balance perspective. From a gameplay perspective, it really sucks knowing that everything you do, another tank can do as well. Each tank should have it's own strengths and weaknesses that should go further than just "drk has tbn so it cant self heal much".

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But BLM already has a teleport in Aetherial Manipulation. No other caster would use Fire IV either because RDM already has higher Potencies with everything but Jolt II + they would just burn themselves out of mana and Summoner would be the same, ignoring the fact that the 2.8 sec cast would fuck 'em over.

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Originally Posted by IckeDerTyp

And here I am, still being sad you don't get to stance dance as a war anymore.

We can do two things, give SE feedback that they'll ignore, for better or worse. Or wait until we actually get to play stuff and then give em feedback again :D

Shb didn't kill tanking and I doubt EW will! If anything, I doubt they can make it worse in the first place, so it's all uphill from here ^^

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Ya know i failed to mention that Warrior was the exception for me. It did stance dancing well! Sword oath just felt bad and dark knight was eh

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Originally Posted by kiritolove27

Some background info to who I am and when I came into the game for better understanding; I started playing this game as soon as Stormblood began, and what got me to play the game was watching the trailers of Heavensward, the reviews of how awesome DRK was back then. In the Risk versus reward class, I went through Stormblood's savage content as a tank main and did the same now in SHB. Ever since Stormblood, the developers have been moving towards giving every other tank what they had that they didn't, now everyone has a gap closer, and their cooldowns are all the same.

Playing each tank feels too similar, specially DRK and WAR, with delirium being a bad inner release.

During the live letter, the devs said the tanks would be getting some CD in which if you use it at the right time, you get benefits......this sounds precisely like TBN; why is every tank now getting a TBN equivalent? Why does every tank need a gap closer? Why does every tank need an inner release? They don't.

People are always quick to point out that DPS queues always take long, well let me tell you that not having interesting tanks that feel unique from each other will only push the tank mains that have stuck with the role to different roles.

I know they said they don't want to go back to the complexity of the 3.x series. I wasn't there, so I can't say if it were better or not. I am only advocating for more individualism from each.

I know this thread is probably a year late since the changes we've seen are potentially being finalized, and any further changes will take months, if not years, to happen. I feel defeated to know that tanking has only gotten less and less fun with each expansion, and the trend continues.

Goodbye, tanking, my old friend.

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The devs think that job identity is how the job looks and is defined by the job's animations. The homogenization is here to stay. Get used to it.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

The devs think that job identity is how the job looks and is defined by the job's animations. The homogenization is here to stay. Get used to it.

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Bingo, and I'm with the devs on that one.

Except for DRK. It's about as durable as a dried autumn leaf and can heal itself about as well as one; so in that regard it is quite differentiated from GNB, PLD, and WAR.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

'Stance Dancing', much like 'Fireweaving', is one of those archaic terms that relatively few people actually understand and sounds much more impressive than it actually was in practice.

Rose-Tinted: I weaved between stances every second GCD to survive massive amounts of damage and push my dps while tanking Blaster and Swindler together.
Reality: Tank stance uptime = 0%. Equilibrium on add spawn. Shadewalker please.

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That was only the reality in the best case scenario. If your dps were very good, or you were slightly undergeared, you didn't have access to a NIN (which would happen often in any content outside of Savage, and even then a lot of players weren't consistent with shadewalker usage, because their rotation was a lot to keep up with on its own), if you died at all, if your healer was spamming cure III/Medica II, if adds spawned, if you lost uptime, and probably more I'm forgetting, it was very possible for you to lose aggro and have to swap back to tank stance. No, you didn't swap every other GCD, but simply the fact that it could happen at all gave you a reason to stare at the MNK/BLM's aggro bars.

Oh and you would also sometimes swap for the damage mitigation or HP% increase.

The argument that stance dancing was bad as a concept because in execution it was badly balanced is always confusing to me. The fact that you could remain 99% of the time in offensive stance due to tools like shadewalker doesn't mean the concept is bad: being able to keep an optimal set of abilities by skillful or clever use of tools available, either individually or party wide, is not bad in principle by any means. Remove shadewalker from the game and good luck staying 100% of the time in tank stance with competent dps players in the party. People constantly point at shadewalker like it somehow invalidates the whole concept. And even then, it's just a problem of balance, where shadewalker can be reduced in effectiveness, spread across more jobs or made into a role action, or have similar abilities on other jobs. Not a problem of concept else it's like saying BLM doing garbage damage right now completely invalidates the idea of black mage...

I'm not arguing for the return of that mechanic though. Whether we like it or not for other actual reasons, fair enough.

Stance dancing isn't bad, the problem was it was inescapable for people. Most casual tanks definitely didn't like that they had to learn stance dancing for optimal damage.
There should of been tanks with this function removed and just a basic stance that doesn't take away damage but give the tank a lower baseline damage. It's just like the healer issue in HW/SB, not everyone wanted healers with a lot of management of damage so there should of been options for that.
Also didn't help that ff14 just doesn't have very good servers so your connection jittering could make stance dancing annoying.

You all are responding to posts made around 3 years ago.
Some of those posters don't even frequent the forums anymore.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

You all are responding to posts made around 3 years ago.
Some of those posters don't even frequent the forums anymore.

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Graveyards are cool to hang out in.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

Graveyards are cool to hang out in.

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It's crazy how I was reading this thread and the points being made still make sense for today's DRK, so I didn't even realize I was in a 3-year old thread until I actually checked the dates.