Tank Balance

[Brian_]

First, enmity wasn't an issue in 2.X because all PLDs did was spam RoH. If all they did was spam RoH in HW, enmity would also not be an issue. That changed.

Second, in 2.X, shield swipe was worth using as a TP conservation skill. With the addition of two higher potency combos in HW, it's a DPS loss now.

Third, Clemency, a skill that gets crapped on pretty hard didn't exist in 2.X.

Fourth, in 2.X, while in Sword Oath, PLDs actually did more damage than WARs. That changed.

Fifth, encounter design in general is different from 2.X. The DPS checks in HW are real and Healers and Tanks are being pushed to deal as much DPS as possible. But, the meta regarding survivability has also shifted. Block and HG in 2.X were much more useful than they've been in HW.

To lack perspective is one thing. To insinuate that people are being disingenuous because of your own ignorance is quite idiotic.

[Phoenicia]

...Otherwise there's not a single button on WAR that goes to waste which is a lot more than what can be said for the other two tanks.

Foresight says hi! ... j/k

Here is what I think about tank balance personally. Apologizing before hand for the wall of text!

Warrior:

WAR is by far the most well designed class in the game.

It started really bad in 2.0 and to fix it, SE looked at every ability they had.

In 2.x WAR lacked an offensive stance and it was kind of funny and made no sense that they lost their highest potency attacks when they tried to DPS instead of tank. People started juggling Defiance + Unchained to increase their DPS, which put stress on their aggro. Ah the times I ripped hate on Nael or Bahamut as an OT without even using BB. lol.

WAR's CD structure is unique and different from PLD and DRK in that it is mainly comprised of 2 minute CDs with some minor CDs on 1.5 minute timers and the rechargeable Inner Beast. The biggest CD in WAR's arsenal being Holmgang is at a 3 minute timer. WAR does not follow the same 90s > 180s > eternity CD structure of PLD and DRK.
WAR's toolkit screams MT and burst mitigation. ToB says I get 20% more HP now so the next attack won't kill me! Inner Beast heals HP and reduces damage further insuring you won't die and Vengeance is the best defensive CD in terms of power and duration (30% for 15s) vs CD (120s only). It was relegated as OT because of the 2.0 stigma. Though it's kinda funny as it was THE tank without a DPS stance.

Heavensward came out and SE looked at each of the two tanks and what they were missing and gave each abilities they were hurting for.

Deliverance (Destroyer in JP, I like that name better! Lol) was what WAR was "missing".

SE probably slightly overdid it with Fell Cleave and Equilibrium. But the result is a tank with a complete set of actions that all have proper and great use.

In the end, WAR's toolkit is too synergistic with itself that any two actions taken affect each other positively. Any two CDs used boost each other massively. Heck, even crossclassed CDs complement the WAR's toolkit at crazy levels (Awareness + RI or ToB + Convalescence).

Paladin:

PLD is kind of the opposite of WAR. It was the "trash tank" in 1.x series because of magic damage being rampant (sounds familiar?) and attacks that couldn't be mitigated. Making the pure high HP tank better.

A lot of PLDs abilities are residual abilities from 1.x and not in a good way. (Tempered Will, I'm looking at you).

In 2.0 PLD became the go to tank because mitigation became more important that large HP pools and bosses were mostly physical, so shield block became valuable.

PLD abilities (all of them) are really good in that they successfully do what they claim to do. There are no conflicting abilities (unless you pop a damage reduction CD during Hallowed Ground).

PLD's situational abilities themselves are good. The problem is SE can't design encounters that rely on those situations for those abilities to be used. Otherwise you are stuck with PLD if WAR/DRK have no equivalent and we have a whole different sea of imbalanced content. Those abilities end up shelved and forgotten. Not because they are bad, but there is no scenario where they are "needed".

Some of these actions are also traditional FF standards and would be a shame to not have them. The Knight always had Cover for example.

What SE could do is add niche benefits to them. Like in T13 and how cover made Earth Shaker drop no puddle, so you can put it on a melee and they would not have to run away, increasing their uptime and preventing DPS loss.

Also for the entirety of 2.x, PLD suffered TP issues. Those were slightly mitigated by using Shield Swipe, which was a slight DPS gain for a slight aggro loss. Shield Swipe was out of option as an OT... Unless you Cover the MT and pop Bulwark for funzies.

PLD OT with Sword Oath did comparable DPS to WAR DPS out of Defiance if the slashing debuff is applied.

With 3.0 coming out, SE gave the PLD additional combo finishers (something they were hurting for) along with Sheltron, Clemency and Divine Veil which added reliability to block and additional utility, great changes, but lots of clunk. PLD TP issues were not addressed. Shield Swipe became a DPS loss. Additional combos means PLD will perform its aggro combo less, this gives an underlying aggro issue.

In terms of DPS, PLD has the lowest MT and OT DPS of the three tanks. Which is fine, since they are considered the defensive-utility tank. PLD also has close to 0 AoE DPS, something that baffled me for the entirety of 2.x. That was one of the first reasons that made me want to try WAR instead. PLD has decent burst utilizing Fight or Flight but due to lack of instant high potency skills, it is still behind WAR. PLD MT DPS is hindered by its lower aggro. PLD is the only tank that is forced to use its weakest potency combo to generate aggro, which also happens to have the lowest multiplier.

So what is wrong with PLD?

Nothing really. The class, on its own, is fine. The problem lies in the current meta. With Alexander Savage, the end-game raid tier that is gated solely behind DPS checks. To top it off, all tank busters are magical. While PLD is still ahead in terms of mitigated damage, a lot of people do not feel it justifies their lack of overall DPS. But SE cannot design content where only PLD can mitigate or the other tanks will be in a worse situation than the current PLD.

What does the PLD need then?

PLD needs enmity multiplier fixes and major QoL changes. It needs fixes to its TP issues (as MT or OT). The class also needs to get rid of the "clunk" in their utility.

Savage Blade is 3x and RoH is 5x. This is 0.5x less than their equivalents on the other classes. It was understandable when it was their only combo in 2.x, but this is not 2.x. Although PLD is the only tank of the three that in its full rotation it uses 2 SBs and 1 RoH. It also includes CoS in its single target which has a multiplier of 3x. The class is still behind the other tanks in term of enmity. SE already said they are looking into this issue (tanks aggro in general), so we will see.

Divine Veil being a major one. If it's such a big CD, why does it not simply apply the shield on use? Why does it need a trigger in the first place? If it must have a trigger, then its CD should be reduced and the ability should be trigger-able by the PLD himself.

Clemency is a good spell. But PLD cannot really utilize this without coordination with the healers. Which is also fine. But as a tank, shouldn't the PLD get a trait to prevent interrupted casts? And if we want to say it's an OT spell, the cast is kind of long and interrupts combos, by the time you get to it the healer would have already got you "covered". (no pun intended)

IF PLD needs to get any changes, the first change is aggro multipliers on their main aggro combo. PLD also needs removed clunk from their utility (mainly Divine Veil) and a means to restore, or otherwise manage, their TP.

Dark Knight:

From the beginning, I'm starting with what is wrong with DRK.

For starters, DRK feels very unoriginal and it's a mishmash of PLD and WAR (more PLD than WAR) with an MP minigame. DRK has the exact same basic CD structure as PLD with some of the minor CDs replaced with more minor CDs. Shadowskin is a rampart clone, Shadow Wall is a weaker Sentinel, Living Dead is the worst I-won't-die CD on a 5 minute timer. The minor CDs are Dark Mind and Dark Dance at 1 minute.

Dark Knight is in a good place only because the content allowed it. The magic heavy encounters in Alexander Savage hide the glaring issue in DRK's physical mitigation. Also DRK's ability to slightly deal more DPS than PLD. It also has Delirium which allowed the parties to drop MNK for the higher individual and raid DPS from DRG + NIN.

DRK has a very sever lack of reliable physical mitigation which will be felt if frequent physical tank busters become a thing again.

DRK's DPS is slightly ahead of PLD but is still behind WAR. DRK can keep its equivalent to Maim (Darkside) up 100% of the time as long as it has the MP to keep it. This makes DRK the class that loses the least when activating its tank stance. DRK has no actual burst other than front loading most of its oGCDs in a small window. Out of the three tanks, DRK's DPS graph is probably the most linear.

DRK also has major TP issues. It can be "managed" but at a slight DPS loss. Still better than PLD that has no means other than to floor and then stand and auto-attack target.

DRK's MP management, while adding interesting gameplay, is just a minigame that makes you feel like you're doing something when you really aren't. We barely use some of our abilities without DA. For example, we will always use Delirium if we do not have MP to DA Souleater. We save DA for C&S or Dark Mind and would not use it on Souleater, so we use Delirium instead. MP management is in no way intergral to DRK's defenses (unlike Wrath is for WAR) so it just feels like an added layer of complexity for the sake of complexity. Not that it's complicated at all. It is down to using the same branching combo over and over.

Unlike PLD, DRK's toolkit is not made to shine on its own, but in conjunction with other abilities. For example Dark Mind which reduces magical damage by 15%, becomes 30% with Dark Arts and is usually coupled with Shadowskin/Wall for added effectiveness.

Speaking of Shadow Wall, Shadow Wall is 25% less effective than its equivalent (Sentinel) at 30% vs 40% on the same obsenely long CD for no practical reason. Some would say Reprisal is there to function with it but they forget that buffs/debuffs stack multiplicatively. With Shadow Wall up, Reprisal is only 7% reduction, not 10%.

Another thing DRK suffers is button bloat. Some of its abilities are more of the same (Unleash and Abyssal Drain... ugh). =

DRK's ability list shows DRK's inner conflict! It conflicts with itself in bad ways! To list a few:

Blood Price being the well known example. DA+DD gives 20% evasion and DA+DP gives Blind, both which mean less MP recovered from Blood Price.
Grit disabling Bloodweapon is just unreasonable. Bloodweapon isn't even that great as a DPS CD.

What does the DRK need then?

Personally I think DRK requires a rework from bottom up. It is not that it's not viable, but as a class it is lacking. The glaring self-conflict and similarities to PLD are killing it for me.

On a more objective level, Dark Dance needs to be relooked into. Maybe change it so Dark Arts make it a 60% chance of parry instead of added evasion.

TP recovery or better TP management is the other thing that DRK needs. Specially with DRK's ability to floor its TP the fastest on single target.

[Cidolfas86]

Dark Knight:Shadow Wall is a weaker Sentinel.

I agree with most of what you said save for this. I know people keep saying this but I still feel like Shadowall is a weaker Vegeance that doesn't even do as much-not weaker Sentinel. Its the same DEF boost that got 60 seconds tacked on to the recast and 5 seconds knocked off the duration. Its kind of weird they didn't add some kind of Dark arts buff to it. It practically screams for one in my opinion and so do a lot of DRK abilities which don't seem to get the same DA treament.

They need to let us do more with Dark Arts. I feel like maybe 2-3 abilities are actually worth using DA on regularly like Carve and Spit, Darkmind, Souleater. The rest are niche use like abyssal drain and Dark Passenger. I don't even DA Powerslash all that often anymore. It doesn't feel worth it a lot of the time unless I'm tank swapping.

Also for the life of me I still don't understand why we have to cast Da to get an ability that has "Drain" in its name to do its function. In my opinion that needs to be our "Clemency/Equalibrium". Change it to single target and let its healing effect be boosted by DA.

[Phoenicia]

I agree with most of what you said save for this. I know people keep saying this but I still feel like Shadowall is a weaker Vegeance that doesn't even do as much-not weaker Sentinel. Its the same DEF boost that got 60 seconds tacked on to the recast and 5 seconds knocked off the duration. Its kind of weird they didn't add some kind of Dark arts buff to it. It practically screams for one in my opinion and so do a lot of DRK abilities which don't seem to get the same DA treament.

Potato potato. Shadow Wall is inferior to both.

Comparing Shadow Wall to Sentinel makes more sense to me because it is on the same CD timer and has the same duration.

Vengeance is a superior CD to both Shadow Wall AND Sentinel because of it being on a lower CD and being 50% longer. Average mitigation of Vengeance far exceeds that of Sentinel. And in any fight, regardless of tank buster timers, you will throw at least 50% more Vengeances than Sentinels. WAR's abilities CDs shouldn't be compared 1 on 1 with PLD CDs because they follow different timers and magnitude of effects.

This was my whole point of WAR following a different CD structure than PLD and DRK. For example, on a 1 minute buster timer, WAR alternates usages of 2 minute CDs (ToB + Convalescence then Vengeance then ToB + conv. again) while PLD follows a more strict rotation like Sentinel > HG > Ramps > Sent > Ramps.

As for the rest with DA, as I said in my post, DRK needs to be reworked bottom up. Abyssal Drain is bloating your list having Unleash doing effectively the same thing.

[Duelle]

A couple of comments:

PLD is kind of the opposite of WAR. It was the "trash tank" in 1.x series because of magic damage being rampant (sounds familiar?) and attacks that couldn't be mitigated. Making the pure high HP tank better.

PLD was the trash tank because shield procs were abysmally low when it was first implemented in 1.0. Combine with that the fact that PLD could not generate and hold the amount of AoE aggro WAR could and that part of its tanking model involved a copied mechanic from FFXI (healing themselves for enmity) while getting constantly interrupted during casts and it was just...bad. That WAR's ability to generate AoE aggro worked incredibly well with endgame at the time (Garuda Hard mode, Moggle Mog, pretty much every dungeon that needed to be speedrun) didn't help.

Divine Veil being a major one. If it's such a big CD, why does it not simply apply the shield on use? Why does it need a trigger in the first place? If it must have a trigger, then its CD should be reduced and the ability should be trigger-able by the PLD himself.

I could live with either of these changes. Divine Veil doesn't really bother me because the good healers know how to recognize it and toss a heal to activate it. Otherwise I use it during phase transitions, AKA the places where I know AoE heals will be tossed to activate the buff.

Being able to just activate it on my own would be awesome, but I have a feeling there's some scenario that I haven't thought of where it could cause some balance issues.

Clemency is a good spell. But PLD cannot really utilize this without coordination with the healers. Which is also fine. But as a tank, shouldn't the PLD get a trait to prevent interrupted casts? And if we want to say it's an OT spell, the cast is kind of long and interrupts combos, by the time you get to it the healer would have already got you "covered". (no pun intended)

This is generally how utility is designed for hybrids (PLD is a tank but the rule also applies here). You sacrifice something to be able to do something else. WoW paladins had to sacrifice damage by using their Art of War procs (25% chance on melee hit, which were spent to use their holy nuke) to make their heals instant cast when called for. FFXIV's PLD sacrifices DPS uptime and combos to toss out a heal, and this is fine.

Strong, easy-to-use heals would make PLD survivability skyrocket, which is also why Clemency is inconvenient to use.

[Faeon]

SNIP.

It almost feels like the whole tank meta, was rushed and not thought of properly. In terms of encounter design ability synergy, how each tank functions with each other and if you have two of the same tank job in a group. the whole it is a DPS, Defense and Magical tank excuse is nonsense when you are gated by encounters that are dps checks, magical dmg with some physical, and require playing your tank offensive and defensively at the same time, while making one tank class skills flow nicely and benefit the group, while the others have issues with resources and feel clunky when trying to-do a similar thing.

I think the design around the tanks was skewed, they put in so much effort into the war, and just slapped things together on the PLD and DRK, not checking does the skills flow nicely, I need to be offensive and defensive, I can't always rely on a MCH or BRD for support like TP or MP re-gen.

The bottom line is they need to look at the synergy between all the tanks, look at what is happening in the communities play style, not there own QA department who works by the book per say.

[Strident]

I want two changes for PLD:

1. Sword Oath and Shield Oath are now on their own, separate 10 second cooldown. Oaths can no longer be dropped and then recasted, but they can be casted alternately outside of the GCD.
Casting Sword Oath grants the buff "Stalwart Sword" for 10 seconds. Auto attack speed is increased, or something like that.
Casting Shield Oath grants the buff "Stalwart Shield" for 10 seconds. Block strength is increased, or something like that.

2. Tempered Will no longer sucks.

And that's what I want for Christmas.

Or Halloween. That's cool too.

[Donjo]

Seriously, what's with all the Tempered Will hate? I already explained how it's the most useful of Paladin's situational skills. Why aren't people attacking Shield Bash instead or something?

[Strident]

Seriously, what's with all the Tempered Will hate? I already explained how it's the most useful of Paladin's situational skills. Why aren't people attacking Shield Bash instead or something?

I would argue Cover is the most useful Paladin situational skill, since you can absorb a single damage type (physical) another player takes for 10 seconds. By popping defensive cooldowns, you also reduce the overall damage inflicted, or outright negate it with Hallowed Ground.

Meanwhile, with Tempered Will, I debate your contention that those described usages are of good design. First, any open world or soloing usage should immediately be discounted as being a valid angle of argument. A situational skill should be empowering and used in often occurring occasions in a raid/dungeon based setting as we are discussing game balance with a focus on team play. Second, I do not believe in the 'safety net' arguments. For fights like Titan, knockbacks basically only have one significant mechanic to them: instant death if not dealt with appropriately. In addition, you take large amounts of damage when hit by them, as opposed to taking large amounts of damage as a direct result of getting knocked back. These cases have an obvious pattern: don't get hit in the first place, because it's suboptimal. Using Tempered Will here brings the benefit of letting you play suboptimally, which is absolutely not what a well designed skill should do.

It would be a different case if the effect of being knocked back leads to a direct disadvantage and said knock back is neigh unavoidable. This is why I can agree with the sentiment that having more uptime on the boss is a good benefit of this skill, but tanking Landslide is a terrible reason why this skill should even exist.

However. This skill is on a 3 minute cooldown, and DRK can just Plunge to get back anyway. PLD's also deal the least damage of the 3 tanks and have nothing that needs to be critically refreshed. Furthermore, there just are not enough of these benefical cases that exist in the game, which leads me to find this skill to be terrible because if it were removed, I wouldn't even notice and would barely be considered a nerf.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

I do not agree that the tank meta was rushed. It's the opposite. Let's look at the history of the two tanks PLD & WAR and then look at the new tank, DRK.

As I said, WAR started bad in 2.0. It had the Wrath mechanic, which was nice for gameplay, but it was clunky. Wrath had the healing bonus, not Defiance. WAR was more often put at the choice of keeping Wrath to receive more healing than spend it to heal itself. Which was counter intuitive. Should I receive more heals, or heal myself?

WAR had lots of clunk defensively. It had no defensive CDs outside of Foresight(lol) and ToB that lasted half what it lasts for now. Holmgang was a horrible version of Tempered Will. Vengeance was just a give me 1 wrath every 2 minutes. Defiance was just 25% more HP at the cost of 25% of your damage. It was oGCD then because it was WAR's only stance and it was really crap. WAR lacked the passive mitigation (no shield) and lacked proactive mitigation (CDs).

When SE decided to fix WAR, they didn't just slap on Rampart or Hallowed Ground on WAR (which was what it needed), instead they looked at their whole toolkit, and gave them fixes here and there, resulting in a more comprehensive toolkit and making WAR an overall better tank. There was an outcry on the forums of how 2.1 WAR was going to be OP and a better MT than PLD, some even provided good math (average mitigation on CDs and IB, eHP analysis, etc) to prove it. But the stigma from 2.0 remained and WAR was relegated to OT.

WAR had offensive Synergy in 2.0, and the class's overall synergy with itself skyrocketed with 2.1 fixes. For whatever purpose you use your abilities, you can make them work together for added benefit. i.e. Even berserk (offensive ability) can be used defensively by providing Wrath to speed up IB, increased heal from IB and Bloodbath, coupled with Vengeance for more damage and Bloodbath drain, and stronger heals from Second Wind and Equilibrium.

On the other hand, PLD was considered "good" from the get-go in 2.0. The main design decision was to drop the clunky heal-for-aggro mechanics and focus on straightforward mitigation. PLD wasn't as well thought as WAR was, but it was better in 2.0. PLD had no need to stance dance as most fights were designed for the tank to stay in tank stance as long as it was tanking. PLD could change stances, and with tank swaps being so prevalent in those days (T2, Titan Ex, Ifrit Ex, etc) PLD losing a GCD switching from ShO to SwO was a good thing as it gave the other tank some time to build aggro right after provoke. That coupled with PLD not needing MP for anything outside of Flash made the MP cost irrelevant. For those reasons, PLD stances weren't considered clunk. It was better than WAR dropping Defiance after swap then popping it (still wouldn't get 25% HP back and required a heal) early to build up wrath in time before they take it back. That or spend Infuriate right after the swap which isn't ideal if boss slapped you with multiple hurt in short periods (T2, Ifrit Ex) as it removed the option of back-to-back IB.

So throughout the course of 2.xx series, SE only looked at PLD for potential enmity issues that arose where people doing more DPS or WAR OTs caused issues. Like my favorite saying: "Defiance or no Defiance, an early BB crit WILL rip hate of the poor PLD". As a result, PLD's early "clunk" was never removed or even considered clunk. PLD wasn't rushed, it always had issues that were overlooked. Now with content being more DPS centric, people feel the urge to "stance dance" and switch stances on the fly for added DPS/mitigation, the overlooked "clunk" started to affect the playstyle. I'm not saying PLD stances should be changed to be oGCDs like WAR, I'm saying it's a design choice that doesn't fit today's meta. The class wasn't rushed, it just suffers from some oversight in its original design.

DRK is more of a PLD clone with WAR slapped on it and feels rushed, so it shares some of the clunk on the PLD's toolkit. Similar tank stance that is also on the GCD? If DRK has 1 stance, why wasn't it oGCD like Defiance? Or is it because it has an immediate increase of eHP and healing by 25% so it is on the GCD? Aside from Grit, why does the toolkit conflict with itself? Heck, Dark Dance conflicts with itself, increasing evasion reduces parry. Yes evasion is better mitigation than parry, but if the skill's main goal is to force more parries, why reduce it by added evasion? The class is so rushed that it doesn't have a base class and has the "extra job" tag!

DRK should've come with a slashing debuff. It made no sense that it didn't have it. I mean if you want "any combination of two" to work, you need to make sure that "any combination of two" has what it needs. PLD/DRK just don't mesh well together other than covering both STR and INT down. It's not even "super defensive" since DRK doesn't add to PLD's defenses like a WAR could. So if WAR provides offensively to the other two, and PLD adds defensively to the other two, DRK adds nothing to the other two. Now we are pigeonholed into taking WAR so it provides offensive and/or defensively to the other tanks. If DRK provided the slashing debuff, then PLD/DRK could work well. Instead of added utility, DRK decided to conflict with MNK by giving INT down without the blunt resist. So unlike WAR providing slashing debuff for NIN increasing its DPS, DRK just doesn't mesh with MNK, you don't want the two in the same group basically. It makes no sense that DRK provides blunt resist down of course. It just proves that DRK was rushed and the INT down was just slapped on its kit as a polar opposite to STR down.

Another thing, INT down should've been on Power Slash (making the skill more useable) and Delirium should've added Slashing down. This way (for balance reasons) all three classes provide their defensive debuff on their weakest combo. Why should DRK be the exception? Power Slash ends up being the least used combo in the game for any class because DRK has no reason to use it outside of initial aggro lead.

Over all, of the three tanks, DRK was the rushed one and has the worst design decisions. Only reason DRK is fairing well is because content allowed it. If DRK dealt the same DPS as PLD, DRK would be the one left aside as PLD definitely mitigates more even in this magic heavy environs. If physical tank busters resurface, DRK's sever lack of physical mitigation will be a problem as well. People already call DRK the worst tank in A2S despite its AoE DPS prowess.

My point: Just because content didn't make a class's glaring flaws show doesn't mean the class doesn't have problems. On the flipside, just because content made a class drop out of favor doesn't mean the class has problems.