DPS should be WAR > GNB > DRK > PLD

And utility should be PLD > DRK > GNB > WAR as a result to fulfill proper class fantasy.

Change my mind.

An argument made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Why do you think it should be that way?

I would say

DRK = GNB > WAR = Paladin

Less Sustain More Damage

More Sustain Less Damage

Just my opinion.

DPS, utility, and mitigation, and self-sustain should be PLD = WAR = DRK = GNB, unless you feel that your personal shortcomings and insecurities as a player warrant a performance advantage over everyone else. The execution need not be the same, but the capability needs to be on a level playing field. Bring the player, not the job.

Yeah but WAR players really would be upset if we deleted Nascent and Bloodwhetting

All tanks should contribute the same damage with Crit/DH being and player skill level. Tanks all bring virtually the same thing so I don't see the point in the large disparity in DPS between tanks that was experienced this expansion. ShB was the best balance of tanks, and that should be the bare minimum gold standard of balancing among tanks. The self-sustain is negligible at best in the content that matters, and in dungeons, the self-sustain determines how lazy the healer gets to be, but makes no difference long term.

Problem is, WAR has really high survivability with the Bloodwhetting and pretty much has a better Reprisal with the Shake It Off shield / HoT on everyone. I have been told that WAR is doing very well with the damage buffs to Fell Cleave and pretty much is a top damaging tank now. DRK fell off being the one tank with no buffs to damage and everyone else getting attention. It's pretty hard to justify a lower survivability tank to also have lower damage compared to everyone else.

To make your model a reality, Mithron, WAR may have to give up a lot of the self healing utility from Bloodwhetting, Nascent Flash and Shake It Off. The alternative is to give more self heals / mitigation to GNB and DRK while also putting the healers to sleep even further than how it is now for them >.> I was told that I didn't need much heals when I was fresh for Dead Ends as a WAR about half a year ago. I even commented recently how being overgeared for current Expert roulettes legitimately start to drop Regen from my WHM healing for the tanks. The tanks only need it at the start of big pulls now when we are all geared.

As a result, increasing the GNB and DRK self heals would not be recommended if the healers are already starting to drop some of their tools in response to the low amount of heals needed. Yes WAR used to be the DPS tank, but we need to consider if it's worth it to drop our Bloodwhetting, Nascent Flash and Shake It Off down some pegs.

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Originally Posted by Tigore

Problem is, WAR has really high survivability with the Bloodwhetting and pretty much has a better Reprisal with the Shake It Off shield / HoT on everyone. I have been told that WAR is doing very well with the damage buffs to Fell Cleave and pretty much is a top damaging tank now. DRK fell off being the one tank with no buffs to damage and everyone else getting attention. It's pretty hard to justify a lower survivability tank to also have lower damage compared to everyone else.

To make your model a reality, Mithron, WAR may have to give up a lot of the self healing utility from Bloodwhetting, Nascent Flash and Shake It Off. The alternative is to give more self heals / mitigation to GNB and DRK while also putting the healers to sleep even further than how it is now for them >.> I was told that I didn't need much heals when I was fresh for Dead Ends as a WAR about half a year ago. I even commented recently how being overgeared for current Expert roulettes legitimately start to drop Regen from my WHM healing for the tanks. The tanks only need it at the start of big pulls now when we are all geared.

As a result, increasing the GNB and DRK self heals would not be recommended if the healers are already starting to drop some of their tools in response to the low amount of heals needed. Yes WAR used to be the DPS tank, but we need to consider if it's worth it to drop our Bloodwhetting, Nascent Flash and Shake It Off down some pegs.

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We don't actually know what the best tank damage is yet, and likely will not until the end of next week. WAR has always done better immediately after a patch on extreme content than the other tanks, combination of DRK's entire advantage being less in its kit itself and more in its synergy with raid buffs, and WAR not having to spin the wheel as much for crit/dh due to inner release.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

And utility should be PLD > DRK > GNB > WAR as a result to fulfill proper class fantasy.

Change my mind.

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I generally agree, people think Warriors sustain matters? when it really doesn't compared to actual Mitigation.

I'll agree with Paladin lowest if they make the utility better, yeah it has marginally better utility but it's not really that amazing. Things like cover are situational, Clemency is very situational., Ur extra raid wide is a cone so its very fight dependent.
I'd love Paladin to be a massive support unit but lowest damage.

Also I kinda want a Dark Knight rework, to be somewhat more supportive then the other two tanks.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

We don't actually know what the best tank damage is yet, and likely will not until the end of next week. WAR has always done better immediately after a patch on extreme content than the other tanks, combination of DRK's entire advantage being less in its kit itself and more in its synergy with raid buffs, and WAR not having to spin the wheel as much for crit/dh due to inner release.

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We'll find out pretty soon. If DRK ends up below GNB in damage, we may see people drop DRK since GNB would have better damage and better party utility. We already know WAR or PLD will be a shoo-in for the other slot due to their better party mitigation capabilities.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

We'll find out pretty soon. If DRK ends up below GNB in damage, we may see people drop DRK since GNB would have better damage and better party utility. We already know WAR or PLD will be a shoo-in for the other slot due to their better party mitigation capabilities.

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I think it was a mistake to give Shake It Off a Regen to buff up its support game. Essentially, it's a far stronger Divine Veil; except with Regen. It was already doing fine before they tacked that on, but after it's part of the reason why we had a Healerless TOP Clear. While I will say WAR did need the damage, now they have too much utility to compensate. As for PLD, the issue was instead with fight design for a tier that caused it to operate poorly and not fit in well with the timings of raid buffs. It was the only one that did not fit into the 2m buff window compared to other tanks.

Generally, in regards to EX6, there doesn't seem to be any issues for any of the tanks mitigation-wise so it comes to an arms race for DPS. However, staring at the current state of The Site That Shall Not Be Named, it seems GNB has top damage currently, and the buffs put PLD barely over DRK and WAR up quite a bit given their burst window buff; and that's just Week 1. Looking at it on its face, it looks mostly balanced looking at Max, but PLD does worse starting from the 80th Percentile, potentially saying that PLD still is weaker than DRK in some respects unless they play perfectly.

Il just hope this just all leading up to big DRK changes in 7.0

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Originally Posted by Zordrage

Il just hope this just all leading up to big DRK changes in 7.0

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We hoped for the same before EW came out...

The problem with talking class fantasy is your idea of a class fantasy can vary from someone else’s depending on which version of a job’s fantasy you’re looking at.

Let’s take DRK, it’s traditionally a dps that sacrifices HP to deal damage, usually working as a glass cannon dealing massive damage in exchange for being easily killed. So in that respect you’d think DRK should be the highest dps. But you could also make an argument for DRK being a job that mirrors PLD being a utility tank that utilises dark magic instead of light magic, focusing on drains, DoTs and enfeebling spells. This version of a DRK would probably be low dps like PLD due to high utility.

WAR you can look at as the aggressive tank who focuses purely on damage at the cost of defence, or as the tank that focuses on counter attacks, or a tank that strikes a balance between offence and defence. It has been all these things in the past and where you’d place it in damage is going to depend on which of those fantasies you ascribe to it.

GNB isn’t really a job with an established fantasy, being based on squall from ff8 who could do anything depending on how you built him. But if we look exclusively at the weapon, a sword that deals extra damage with accurate trigger pulls, it sounds like a dps to me so I’d place it high up there.

PLD is the only one that is pretty much fighting for bottom in dps, it is the invincible wall that protects the party, but even PLD can be argued to have versions of it appearing as a dps, such as a holy knight that uses light based attacks to deal high damage.

Personally I’d argue it should be DRK > GNB > WAR > PLD. DRK being the high risk, high reward tank, GNB being more well rounded but still having that focus on dps, WAR being the middle ground having an even split between utility and damage and PLD being the utility tank that protects the party but doesn’t bring as much damage.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Personally I’d argue it should be DRK > GNB > WAR > PLD. DRK being the high risk, high reward tank, GNB being more well rounded but still having that focus on dps, WAR being the middle ground having an even split between utility and damage and PLD being the utility tank that protects the party but doesn’t bring as much damage.

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This game's combat isn't good enough in order to realize something like this, its extremely rigid and formulaic. A high risk/reward tank doesn't work simply because if it DOES work then its the only thing that should be brought, everything else can be optimized around.

They're not going to make content too hard for one tank to do, they're going to homogenize everything to a point where every tank can clear every content, which is really disheatening but its why things have gotten as bad as they are.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

This game's combat isn't good enough in order to realize something like this, its extremely rigid and formulaic. A high risk/reward tank doesn't work simply because if it DOES work then its the only thing that should be brought, everything else can be optimized around.

They're not going to make content too hard for one tank to do, they're going to homogenize everything to a point where every tank can clear every content, which is really disheatening but its why things have gotten as bad as they are.

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Oh how I wish they did something like role assignments. In an 8 man party:
- Let one tank be denoted as the "main tank" in the fight. This tank gets some (albeit minor) buffs to their mitigations
- Let the other be denoted as the "off tank" in the fight. This tank gets some (albeit minor) buffs to their damage

It doesn't have to be crazy. They don't suddenly need slightly different animations for abilities and things (although that'd be pretty neat). Tank swaps would give the healers a little extra to do than they have right now, and tanks would need to plan around tank swaps. The main tank would be semi-fine with that tank-buster but the off tank? He doesn't have that nice bump to mitigation that the main tank does; he's gonna need help. That help could come from some healer mit BUT why do that? The main tank got that buff to mitigation! Throw a slightly buffed TBN, Excog, Intervention, Nascent Glint their way. Assist them with surviving the autos until your debuff wears off and you can finally take control and semi-stabilize damage.

MT/OT is an archaic notation, and didn't exist in its original meaning after ARR. You're probably better off calling them T1 and T2.

If you made your two tanks choose between one of them gaining a damage buff and the other a mitigation buff, I can predict what the overwhelming majority is going to be fighting over. It's bad enough when there's forced downtime on a mechanic which affects one tank but not both, because you'll have disagreements over who is forced off the boss.

You can't trade off mitigation against damage output. Mitigation is a pass-fail check. All tanks need to be able to meet the mitigation checks of every encounter, or else they get excluded from content. Anything over that, however, is superfluous. These two need to be independently balanced on all tanks.

As far as dps is concerned, all tanks should have dps parity. People come up with all kinds of clever excuses around why their job 'deserves' to have advantages over everyone else, but it creates boring comps where everyone runs the same jobs for years at a time. We've had this for most of the game's life, and it's a serious design problem.

As far as mitigation, self-healing, and utility effects are concerned, the core problem is partial-homogenization. Complete homogenization of an action can be a bit stale, but it's fine from a balance perspective. Nobody can find a balance problem in Heart of Light and Dark Missionary being identical. The problem is when you have two abilities that you can directly compare, and one is clearly superior to the others. The classic historical example was Vengeance vs. Shadow Wall, when Shadow Wall provided the same effect with a 60 second longer recast (and why does Vengeance still have a thorns effect not present on any of the other 30% DR cooldowns?) You see similar problems with raid mitigation, where PLD and WAR's raidwide mitigation tools are simply superior to DRK and GNB. And that's before we even start to talk about discrepancies in self-healing across all the tanks.

Bottom line, all of these need to be balanced simultaneously.

Who cares about balance if it’s not fun.

Vengeance is exactly the kind of token difference there should be more of. Bump the block rate up for sentinel by a negligible amount. Tack a 50p regen onto shadow wall. Give gunbreaker something thematically appropriate but utterly meaningless too. The one minute cooldowns eq/dm/camo/the pld one also broadly achieve the same outcome through different paths.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Who cares about balance if it’s not fun.

Vengeance is exactly the kind of token difference there should be more of. Bump the block rate up for sentinel by a negligible amount. Tack a 50p regen onto shadow wall. Give gunbreaker something thematically appropriate but utterly meaningless too. The one minute cooldowns eq/dm/camo/the pld one also broadly achieve the same outcome through different paths.

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Short cooldowns, 90 seconds, raid mit, long cooldowns, all different. The only things the same are Rampart, Reprisal and the 2 min (ex Vengeance).

So really, the majority of defensive cooldowns ARE different from each other, with their own flare, however, people concentrate too heavily on Rampart and Sentinel/Vengeance/Nebula/Shadow Wall to notice the rest.

Also, you need to have some semblance of balance otherwise jobs get excluded from content. Why bring Job A if Job B does everything better.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Let’s take DRK, it’s traditionally a dps that sacrifices HP to deal damage.

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DRK is traditionally a solid tank: FF3 and FF4. It wasn't until later FFs they tried to relabel it as a DPS. In original FF3 and NA FF4, they didn't even have HP draining abilities but it still makes sense as a tank who is meant to receive most of the heals.

PLD has always embodied the high defense and healing/utility tank. FF1, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF9.
WAR has usually been high DPS low defense frontline. Berserker in FF5 comes the closest to it.
GNB is more of a modern invention with Squall, who's very well rounded and high damage/VIT. So makes sense GNB would be behind WAR and above DRK/PLD.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

DRK is traditionally a solid tank: FF3 and FF4. It wasn't until later FFs they tried to relabel it as a DPS. In original FF3 and NA FF4, they didn't even have HP draining abilities but it still makes sense as a tank who is meant to receive most of the heals.

PLD has always embodied the high defense and healing/utility tank. FF1, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF9.
WAR has usually been high DPS low defense frontline. Berserker in FF5 comes the closest to it.
GNB is more of a modern invention with Squall, who's very well rounded and high damage/VIT. So makes sense GNB would be behind WAR and above DRK/PLD.

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This is exactly my point, your ideas of what the jobs should be differ from someone else’s. Ask anyone what a DRK is, do you think they’re going to tell you it’s a tank that uses white magic basically just an upgrade to the knight class? Because that’s what it was in the original ff3? No, they’re going to tell you it’s a dps that wears heavy armour and sacrifices health to deal damage, possibly having some black magic like drain spells mixed in.

WAR in ff1 and ff3 was just a fighter that could use most melee weapons, in fact if you’re talking in that most literal sense, WAR should be weaker than PLD AND DRK since knight (knight and paladin being one and the same in the ff series) and DRK in ff1 and 3 were simply direct upgrades to the WAR.

FF3 and 4 remakes remedied this by giving jobs more iconic moves, the warrior and knight were differentiated by WAR having advance, allowing it to do full damage from the backline while only taking normal damage, or do extra damage from the frontline for extra damage taken. Meanwhile knight got the defend command to decrease damage taken further. But if you’re going to take a revisionist view of this version of WAR and PLD you can’t also ignore that they made DRK into it’s more iconic form there too.

As someone who played XI, I was unhappy with 14's DRK at first and how they made it into a tank even though I loved tanking in 14, but when I gave it a fair shot I found I loved it more as a tank and really enjoyed it. In the end, it doesn't matter what our perception is, the devs have intended 14 DRK to be a tank and it will always be that way, so they gave RPR for the "DPS DRK" fans which was really cool.

The most iconic DRK we have in FF is Cecil and no matter how you cut it, he is the designated tank of the party the entire game, especially as a DRK. And I do miss Delirium lowering INT and Rage of Halone lowering STR.

Given how similar these jobs actually play...

GNB = DRK = WAR = PLD.

The weapon is just glam at this point. Pick what you want to wield and hack and slash with similar rotations/mitigation.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Given how similar these jobs actually play...

GNB = DRK = WAR = PLD.

The weapon is just glam at this point. Pick what you want to wield and hack and slash with similar rotations/mitigation.

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yeah but I don't think most people want that.
I do think damage differences shouldn't be that much we're talking about 1-2% at max here.

Personally I want meaningful differences Such Jobs as Tanks/healers should express this in their healing/defensive/utility kits, I rather have a Tank feel different but less "viable" then other tanks then be a reskin that practically plays the same.

Realistically 7.0 is either going to double down on EW design or it's going to shift away from it, all I can hope is for the game to be more experimental with how they balance jobs instead of safe and uninteresting.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

As someone who played XI, I was unhappy with 14's DRK at first and how they made it into a tank even though I loved tanking in 14, but when I gave it a fair shot I found I loved it more as a tank and really enjoyed it. In the end, it doesn't matter what our perception is, the devs have intended 14 DRK to be a tank and it will always be that way, so they gave RPR for the "DPS DRK" fans which was really cool.

The most iconic DRK we have in FF is Cecil and no matter how you cut it, he is the designated tank of the party the entire game, especially as a DRK. And I do miss Delirium lowering INT and Rage of Halone lowering STR.

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If we’re talking FFXI, once again, WAR was a basic job that was the middle ground having both berserk and defender to give up defence for attack and vice versa. DRK and PLD were then advanced jobs that leaned into one aspect of the WAR, DRK being an attacker that gave up mostly on defence, PLD being a defender that gave up mostly on attack.

DRK doesn’t have to be a dps to live up to that class fantasy. Even in ffxiv we can see that same pattern, DRK’s rotation is practically just WARs rotation but with extra attack buttons but less utility. A WAR that has given up on defence for more attack.

And Cecil isn’t really a good benchmark for anything because by that logic PLD should be stronger than DRK as it was his direct class upgrade and was better than it in every way even in the remake.

GNB should do the most dps, because it uses a Gun.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

yeah but I don't think most people want that.
I do think damage differences shouldn't be that much we're talking about 1-2% at max here.

Personally I want meaningful differences Such Jobs as Tanks/healers should express this in their healing/defensive/utility kits, I rather have a Tank feel different but less "viable" then other tanks then be a reskin that practically plays the same.

Realistically 7.0 is either going to double down on EW design or it's going to shift away from it, all I can hope is for the game to be more experimental with how they balance jobs instead of safe and uninteresting.

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I'm not saying it should be like that. I'm saying that's how it is. Given that the toolsets are so similar, they might as well just remove the 4 jobs, replace it with just a single "tank role job" and let you pick your weapon.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

GNB should do the most dps, because it uses a Gun.

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Yeah but only once, since they broke the gun

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Originally Posted by Mithron

And utility should be PLD > DRK > GNB > WAR as a result to fulfill proper class fantasy.

Change my mind.

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War should be botom 2. It already has so much else going.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

War should be botom 2. It already has so much else going.

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Then remove it and make it #1 and give its else to PLD and DRK instead.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Then remove it and make it #1 and give its else to PLD and DRK instead.

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I really can't see the WAR playerbase accepting nerfs to Nascent, BloodWhetting and Thrill.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I really can't see the WAR playerbase accepting nerfs to Nascent, BloodWhetting and Thrill.

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I can't see the War playerbase ever accepting that they might not be the best at everything. The streamers are in charge of the game's balance now anyways.

Well as of now WAR and DRK are more or less tied in DPS with GNB leading and PLD behind everyone. Granted I think the balance will change a bit as we get more clears and burst phases are ironed out for everyone. Warrior is a bit over represented so far compared to the previous tiers at least, but otherwise I am kind of surprised that all the tanks are seeing a lot of play in the savage prog.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

Well as of now WAR and DRK are more or less tied in DPS with GNB leading and PLD behind everyone. Granted I think the balance will change a bit as we get more clears and burst phases are ironed out for everyone. Warrior is a bit over represented so far compared to the previous tiers at least, but otherwise I am kind of surprised that all the tanks are seeing a lot of play in the savage prog.

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More or less tied when one of them does more damage 95% of the time?

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

More or less tied when one of them does more damage 95% of the time?

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More or less tied as in they are around 1% difference right now. I think it will be hard to tell for a week or two until we can have consistent clears and burst windows ironed out to see where the balance evens out to.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

More or less tied as in they are around 1% difference right now. I think it will be hard to tell for a week or two until we can have consistent clears and burst windows ironed out to see where the balance evens out to.

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How much more proof do we need that War is just better than Dark knight in just about everything they both do? If it was just a margin of error we wouldn't be seeing Warrior ending on top in every single encounter.
What does it say about a job when you need everyone else to play around you before you can start having a *CHANCE* at outperforming Warrior in terms of damage *SLIGHTLY* if the fight ends up*RIGHT* after your burst *AND*you had good RNG?
They buffed Warrior too much and they need to start reverting buffs.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

How much more proof do we need that War is just better than Dark knight in just about everything they both do? If it was just a margin of error we wouldn't be seeing Warrior ending on top in every single encounter.
What does it say about a job when you need everyone else to play around you before you can start having a *CHANCE* at outperforming Warrior in terms of damage *SLIGHTLY* if the fight ends up*RIGHT* after your burst *AND*you had good RNG?

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Well, I would like to see balance after more players have cleared savage and the focus becomes maximizing DPS instead of learning and executing mechanics. If it ends up that DRK falls behind after that, sure, but if we knee jerk now when all the tanks are very competitive with each other and we have most players still learning the mechanics it can throw balance off worse in the long run when the fights are being recleared. Like I said, I am not opposed to adjusting after we have a couple weeks of data, I just think with all 4 tanks being competitive that it isn't worth messing with yet.

If you don't do savage or ultimate, balance at the top end does not meaningfully affect you. Normal content parses are so utterly worthless that it's a wonder they're even saved. The chance of you dying to golbez's enrage is so hilariously slim that it'd be an achievement in of itself. Anything below that has even more lenient dps checks. I cannot tell if this is salt that dark knight doesn't have an effortless dps opener or just stirring the pot. Also get over yourself about the kill times, that affects literally everyone. Boss dies just before final sting registers? Tough luck, join the club.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

I can't see the War playerbase ever accepting that they might not be the best at everything. The streamers are in charge of the game's balance now anyways.

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Its looking like this tier WAR is indeed the best at everything though

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Originally Posted by fulminating

If you don't do savage or ultimate, balance at the top end does not meaningfully affect you. Normal content parses are so utterly worthless that it's a wonder they're even saved. The chance of you dying to golbez's enrage is so hilariously slim that it'd be an achievement in of itself. Anything below that has even more lenient dps checks. I cannot tell if this is salt that dark knight doesn't have an effortless dps opener or just stirring the pot. Also get over yourself about the kill times, that affects literally everyone. Boss dies just before final sting registers? Tough luck, join the club.

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It's about not wanting to play worse warrior. It's better at just about everything we do now.