Quote Originally Posted by Reynhart View Post
Take a look at all the threads talking about balancing tanks, and you'll plenty of people keep telling you "not only hardcore raiders care about balance".

Because, believe it or not, in the Party Finder, most parties won't be about Alex Savage. And if, for thoses parties, PLD is the "worst" tank because they want to clear as fast as possible so they focus on more and more DPS, they PLD will be shafted.

In fact, static parties, that is to say parties for which endgame content has been designed, are not where the discrimination is the hardest, since you'll probably accept any job from a person you know and play regularly, as long as he's a good player with this job. As you said, any tank combination can clear Savage, but the misinformed sheep won't take any risk and exclude players for any stupid reason they can.

Those same sheep that REQUIRED a relic weapon to invite you for Titan Hard Mode back in 2.0...
The issue you are angry about then is not class balance but hive mind thinking and narrow-mindedness in the general population. Those are much harder problems to solve and i am afraid it is mostly out of SE's hand.

We are however here discussing class balance. You will never reach a point where all classes are considered as equal to the "hive mind" -- there will always be FOTM classes, so really, trying to balance because of this makes no sense. A month ago it was Drk that were supposed to be so underpowered, and lo and behold, turns out now they are "better than Pld" -- despite exactly zero changes made to any of the two jobs. We are in the exact same situation. And you know what ? By arguing so much about Pld being so weak, you are exactly part of the problem. You reinforce the "hive mind" idea that Pld sucks and can't be used for anything. You are making it harder for Pld around the world to get into groups, no matter class balance.

But class balance, as said, doesn't revolve about what "everyone" thinks. It should be based on optimal play and on the things where it matters. And as has been discussed at length now -- in that regards, Pld are just fine. They have great strengths and advantages, and they pay for it on some other levels, including a very modest reduction in DPS. They COULD use some quality of life changes, especially on shield swipe and clemency, which are both not in a great place at the moment.

But overall dps is NOT one of the issue of Pld at the moment. Period.