Why not just make everyone a DPS?

[Seku]

Izsha says the current meta is a "design choice", not a "design flaw". I counter by saying that the current meta is NOT how the developers actually intended it to be. It doesnt mean it's wrong/bad, but I don't think it was truly their choice how things have developed.

It is a design choice. If SE wanted to strip away or make DPS impossible for Tanks / Healers they could. Increase MP on healer's DPS spells to the point where it takes a lot of MP and would run them dry fast. Throw up a damage taken increased % on PLD's and WAR's offensive stances while tuning bosses and even normal monsters to throw out higher consistent damage that would force them to stay in their tanking stance as well as forcing healers to use their abilities to keep their tanks alive instead of passive healing that allows them to damage. But they don't do this because the game wasn't designed with that in mind and was in fact made for people that like casual play and in reality is mirroring ideas that were set into motion years ago in FF 11 when they started easing up on the games difficulty and borrowing ideas from WoW..

I would add to the counter by also saying it seems to make tanks kind of an afterthought. Right now a "tank" is basically just a dps with defensive cooldowns instead of offensive. To me it's one thing when a game has you swapping a few things to get a bit of extra damage, and another when the tanks are playing and gearing essentially identically to dps.

Every tank that does damage is a DPS with defensive abilities. Even if their doing 1 damage by just poking, their still adding onto raid damage and if their not taking heavy amounts of damage to require them to stay defensive, their always going to ease up on it to increase their dps. Maybe the next tank made will be one that 100% kills off a tanks damage and instead requires them to sit around casting abilities to negate damage and generating threat by casting spells that don't do almost nothing to bosses other than....generate hate.

[Izsha]

The fights are designed with tanks in vit gear. Trouble is we are trying to do them many ilvls short of what they were designed to be. The devs didn't tune A1 to be done at i180 ish, but that's what we were when it was released. So if we are undergeared, then the dps can't meet the dps checks the fight is tuned for. The only way to do it is with min maxing healer and tank dps to augment the crappy ilvl and do it with stuff like penta meld accs and such.

As I said earlier, if you want to turtle tank that's fine, but you will have to sit on you hands until people are at the ilvl the fight is actually tuned for. And considering most players aren't nearly goood enough to beat the fights at the minimum tuned ilvl, you will have to sit around and gear up your team even more to successfully turtle tank with a more avg quality group.

If you want to be part of the elite 1st wave you have to squeeze more out of every job. That means damage. If you have an A rate team you can turtle tank at the designed tuned ilvl. If you're team is of avg level then you will have to OVERGEAR the content to turtle because most people can't hack optimal play.

The fights are designed to be beatable by the best players at a specific ilvl in turtle gear. If you aren't the best team or proper ilvl then tough titties. Get some more gear and/or skills in your team. If you want to push the envelope then you have to lush your own envelope.

If your team is 1 or both of:
*below designed ilvl
*not the best players in the world

Then you will fail dps checks because they are DESIGNED to be harder than what you can muster in that state. The only way to have turtle tanks work in undergearsd/underskilled groups than the fight is tuned to is to soften the dps checks. That defeats the purpose of tuning the fight I'm the 1st place. The tank meta is this way because it's the ONLY way to beat a fight below it's designed tuning. If people don't try fights above their ilvl/skill then you don't have to tank dps. But you can't have it both ways.

[nssixn6]

An all dps game? like PSO2 you mean?

[RapBreon]

snip.

+1.

Not to mention it's been this way in all MMOs with a heavy emphasis on raiding in the first weeks of a hard tier's release (exceptions withstanding, like 1 tank strats or easy tiers). It is simply the nature of a hard DPS check.

[Duelle]

It's not that black and white. The problem isnt that tanks don't find it fun to max their dps - it IS fun, it's part of optimising the class. The problem is that a lot of people who play tanks play it because they love the feeling of being tough and unkillable, and they like gear upgrades to feel like they're increasing their survivability and making them easy to heal.

The current FFXIV tanking meta has tanks tryign to get away with as little health as they possibly can, use DPS accessories rather than tank ones, and spend as much time as possible in DPS stances, forgo tanking debuffs like storms path/rage where possible, all in the name of max DPS. This is what feels UN FUN to me.

I want to do as much DPS as possible, yes, but I hate the feeling that I'm having to make a conscious decision to make myself harder and harder and harder to heal in order to do that. I'd much rather if optimising DPS was done via mastering a complicated rotation rather than making so many tradeoffs on the "power fantasy" that a lot of tanks prefer.

I'm sure most DPS players would hate it if they kept having to sacrifice huge amounts of crit or strength in order to stack Vitality for raiding.

Quoting this for posterity. And I agree 100%.

To all you non-Warriors complaining:

2 months ago, I received a whole new set of abilities focused around a new stance, new combos and synergy to master and explore.
Is it really aftecting you so much that you start a whimper thread about it for me and others like minded to play our new class to its max potential?

Under normal circumstances? You're right in that there's nothing wrong with you doing what you do if you find it fun. The problem is this:

We (the other tanks) are now being compared to you, despite you doing something we other tanks didn't sign up for. You're also necessary for progression, in part because you do what you do. That's where the issue comes from.

Personally, if stance-swaps are to be a warrior thing, that's fine. I have no problem with it since it is in part something that helps set the job apart from the other tanks. Now if they (the devs and the other players) insist on it being a thing for PLD and DRK and whatever other future tank joins us, then we're having a problem. And under that notion, it's easier to knock you down or rebalance you so that stance-swaps and using DPS accessories puts you in a comparable place to the other tanks over the rest of us being turned into some version of you.

[Sapphidia]

Personally I feel like Warriors are superbly well balanced. They're a great class, don't need any nerfs and seem to be really fun for the players who like that kind of aggressive playstyle. They do okayish damage in pure tank stance, can stance dance easily in safer situations to really pump out good tank dps, and in an Offtank role they do just a little bit less damage than the more support-focussed DPS classes. They don't really have any irrelevant or clunky skills. Noone in this thread is calling for Warrior nerfs.

The issue is more that we've been told that Warrior's "niche" is being the tank the does dps. Paladins and Dark Knights have a niche of being able to take more physical or magical damage respectively, although as maths have proven the difference in mitigation is very very little, and is more an ease of use thing. It's fine really, but due to how all the current tough raid encounters are all about hard DPS checks, the stuff that non-warriors bring to the table is basically irrelevant for most raid groups right now. "Don't mind that our MT does 100 less dps, she has Divine Seal!".

To all the people saying that it's about playing your class to its fullest, l2dps and suck it up etc : I get that, and I do. All of us tanks going through Savage Alex right now are focusing on maxing our DPS. We're not being bads, we're not taking a stand and forcing our raid groups to let us tank in vit gear doing 200 dps.

We're questioning why DPS output is the ONLY thing we're being tested in. People say that "we're undergeared" compared to the tuning of the encounter and thus tanks need to step up DPS to help the raid hit targets. I ask this : if we're undergeared for the encounter tuning... why are we not being tested on our ability to TAKE DAMAGE? Why are we not having to weave stoneskins between big boss attacks and keep cooldowns rolling 100% of the time, why are we not dropping dead if a healer spends half their time DPSing? Why are we able to spend half an encounter in Sword Oath and go in with 16k health?

If we can go into current encounters "undergeared", and complete them successfully in DPS gear and DPS stances, all that shows me is that the fights are completely undertuned when it comes to testing the tank's tanking ability, and there's literally zero reason for me to care about my survivability. All i need do is go in like a glass cannon DPS and pop a cooldown at the right moment. Is this bad or wrong game design? Not really, it's just a little unexpected for some people.

Is it fun to max DPS? Yes. It's always fun to push the limits of a class. But where's my incentive to make myself tougher? It's a design decision, and it's one that half the players like, and half the players seem not to. I doubt it will change, and whining about it on the forum wont necessarily do anything. I'm still going to be going into Alex Savage again tonight in strength spec with sword oath readied and a stack of HQ Strength pots. It's fine to have encounters that focus on DPS.

But I'd like one or two that massively test my ability to take damage when undergeared too, please. I guess Alex 2 is kinda close to that, albeit a bit weird due to tachikoma stuns and an ideal want for high AOE dps from tanks too. I hope people know what I mean though. There's only four tough raid encounters in the game right now - I just hope the next set of raids are less like Alex 1/3 as far as tank expectations.

[Reynhart]

Look at all the "git gud" comments on every thread :
What is a good DPS ? Someone who master its rotation so that it can dish enormous amount of damage.
What is a good tank ? Someone who masters its cooldown so that it can dish good amount of damage.
What is a good healer ? Someone who masters its spells so that it can dish good amount of damage.

Isn't something a little bit...off, there ?

[Yorumi]

The fights are designed with tanks in vit gear. Trouble is we are trying to do them many ilvls short of what they were designed to be. The devs didn't tune A1 to be done at i180 ish, but that's what we were when it was released. So if we are undergeared, then the dps can't meet the dps checks the fight is tuned for. The only way to do it is with min maxing healer and tank dps to augment the crappy ilvl and do it with stuff like penta meld accs and such.

It's bad design because only the dps is being tested, not anyone else. Why is the test of a tank how much dps can you do, not how well can you reduce incoming damage? Why is the test of a healer how much dps can you do, not well can you optimize healing output? It's bad design when you have 3 roles and only one of them matters at all in a raid. It's bad design when a tank can gear in tank gear and be told by the community he's bad because he didn't gear in gear that he's not even allowed to roll on.

It goes back to the topic title, if we're going to accept this bad design for encounters then why no just give up this farse of multiple roles and make everyone a dps?

[RapBreon]

But I'd like one or two that massively test my ability to take damage when undergeared too, please. I guess Alex 2 is kinda close to that, albeit a bit weird due to tachikoma stuns and an ideal want for high AOE dps from tanks too. I hope people know what I mean though. There's only four tough raid encounters in the game right now - I just hope the next set of raids are less like Alex 1/3 as far as tank expectations.

Judging by your post you know the answer to your problem. If a DPS check is tight, the value of a DPS centric tank's value increases. You'll then work around their inferior mitigation relying on the skill of your tanks and healers, due to the amount of tools each player has access too. There is no other way to work around a DPS check.

If the DPS check isn't as tight - as in a coordination based fight or mechanically complex fight - you'll take something that stabilizes the group providing a larger margin for error, because there are numerous ways to work around fights like that. If a fight includes both in ample quantities, the DPS check always supersedes any other kind of mechanic due to its binary nature (you meet it and there is only one way to meet it or you lose). Truly difficult fights include both. Therein lies the problem. Square wanted to make this tier 'exceptionally hard'. This means tight DPS checks are a necessity.

But here's the real rub, if you start making tank mitigation super important (even though it is still being checked), WARs will simply take the place of PLDs on the sidelines. You can't win either way. If next tier becomes all tank busters and meh dps checks (an easier tier in general then), it'll be the WARs in here doing the exact same thing (80 DPS shouldn't mean I can't do XYZ). The best Square can do is make a tier that has fights super reliant on a DPS check and some that aren't as reliant (but still important), keeping all the tanks relevant. Unless of course you want to make all the tanks the same. But holy hell, I hate that, rather deal with the imbalance.

The complaining is stemming from the fact there are only 3 real fights known to the public with an overwhelming majority primarily doing the 1st, which favours WARs. Essentially, for most people trying to clear Savage as a non-WAR it boils down to "I don't like this tier/boss, it doesn't favour my play-style", which is fine. Coil didn't favour mine, re-rolled a PLD for Hallowed Ground anyway, still had a blast. Now this tier I get to (or was going to T.T) DPS my little tank heart out. This is what it's like trying to clear content meant to be hard, not fair when ilvls are low. You play optimally, not how you like (which for me, is the same thing! Lucky me!).

Honestly I wouldn't of had a problem with tanks not being able to tank any of Alex Sav without vit gear (stricter healer and tank checks). But I can tell you not many people would have cleared it if that were the case. It would also be a metric shit-ton harder to balance for when you consider all of the utility spells everyone has access to compared to a simple DPS check (possibly not very creative on Square's end). For example; a BLM would all of a sudden become more valuable (possibly mandatory, reminds me of Shadow Priest stacking hahaha) for Apocatastasis on A1 simple because your tanks can't survive the tank buster that now does double the damage it does now.

/procrastination!

[Reynhart]

But here's the real rub, if you start making tank mitigation super important (even though it is still being checked), WARs will simply take the place of PLDs on the sidelines.

You make both mechanics at the same time.

Let's imagine a big boss who create parts of him. Each time one part is killed, he loses a 10% of its life, and you need one tank for the main body and one for the part.
You could have any tank on the main body focused on surviving high damaging moves (So, any tank with high VIT, but "mostly" PLD or DRK, since damage is less relevant), and one tank on the spare part focused on dishing out damage (So, any tank with high STR but mostly WAR since surviving is less relevant)

You could even alter the main target to switch periodically to either physical or magical busters, thus each tank will have its strong and weak points in the long run, and the spare part to switch between physical and magical resistance so that you want to mix your DPS.
For an additionnal mechanic, you could make the body to keep only one type of busters (physical or magical) when it hits 50% HP, thus managing your timing so that the final from better suits the main tank you have.