Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Freyyy]

It feels like you're not supposed to always know exactly when something like, for example, Royal Fount (that's the laser cone in Alexander 1, right?) is going to hit. It's supposed to look sporadic. But true, when you do something to death, you're going to eventually learn patterns, especially in a game with a somewhat slower pace like this one.

It's a good thing that you mentionned A1S and Royal Fount. Look at this :



These are the precise timers for every single attack and mechanic for the entire fight. Even Royal Fount is in there. ALL damage are completely scripted. For example, I have the same thing for A3S :



And it has been the case for all raid fights since the beginning of ARR.

With enough experience you can see the fight in advance like with Sharingans because of that. Combine that to the fact that damage are low enough to be completely survivable in DPS stance, and that tank busters are even weaker than what they were before 3.0 (look at T13 pre-echo, you'd never want the MT to be in DPS stance in that fight, not only for Flatten, but also for Flare Breaths + auto-attacks which were threatening enough).


Edit : I want to add that these images were not made by me, I found them, but kudos to the crazy guy who took the time to do this.

[Teiren]

Ironically, if Sword Oath didn't exist then PLD DPS wouldn't be so extremely behind in Shield Oath because then the potencies could all be tuned higher. Oh well, this is why people are asking for actions only usable in Shield Oath.

Edit: Ah, my first instinct is to criticize one that analyzes something so much to the point of making such a list, but I know that's silly. If that's how the game works, why wouldn't someone do something like that? It's only annoying because playing video games should always be about learning, which includes reacting intelligently, and it feels like that's kind of sapped by something like that. But it is the game designers' fault for letting that happen, I know.

It's just that creating something like that for WoW would be utterly ridiculous even though it obviously had scripted fights too, as any MMORPG would. Was it really just because its GCD is nearly half of FFXIV's? I wonder. After all, the GCD dictates the pace of a game.

That is very interesting to hear that the final Turn had incoming tank damage that high. I never got to see that, something I'll always regret. I'm seeing more and more why Warrior is perhaps way overpowered at near-top/top levels of play.

Anyway, thank you everyone for patience and understanding. I've also been posting in hopes that this specific thread's feedback gets back to the devs as virtually every suggestion on the front page is extremely good and sensible for the game.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

PLD is to op and needs to be left as is says all DRK and WAR players.

because only two tanks needed for any duty so why go low DPS PLD WHEN you can go WAR/WAR or WAR/DRK?

common sense people :P

[SpookyGhost]

PLD is to op and needs to be left as is says all DRK and WAR players.

because only two tanks needed for any duty so why go low DPS PLD WHEN you can go WAR/WAR or WAR/DRK?

common sense people :P

Who hurt you?

[ArdorGrey]

Ah, but you see, you're looking at DRK and PLD in a vacuum. What you need to do is look at them in a toaster, then you'll see where the balance comes into play.

It all makes sense now, I've seen the light!

[eagledorf]

Snip

Yes, basically the damage on the tanks in Alexander is a joke even out of the tank stance. It's a direct consequence of how they've designed Dark Knight (as opposed to PLD) and will probably continue until they abandon their entire philosophy surrounding DRK/PLD. If you watch my video of A4, you can see that the tank buster even with no cooldowns, in STR gear, and in Sword Oath leaves me with 7k HP or something while the autos are barely over a Fairy heal+Regen tick unless they Crit. The only time the tank is in any real danger is if the party is taking heavy damage and the healers are ignoring them. A2 is actually an exception for about 20 seconds right at the end, but that's about it.

Tank DPS is usually higher priority right now than healer DPS for a few reasons. One is that once a healer has their DoTs up, they're spamming low potency and high MP filler spells. Another is that stance dancing cancels your combo on PLD or DRK, which has the potential to be a major potency loss on top of that while healers can swap out and in perfectly smoothly (even smoother than WAR). The final one is that tank DPS is reasonably higher than healer DPS on single target (PLD included). It would require substantially more punishing content for mitigation to be worth it since healer DPS is higher than what is lost from being in the tank stance so if it starts becoming a question of if they can swap into Cleric and apply their DoTs or not it is better to play defensively.

As Freyy pointed out, it was like this prior to 2.0. It's a problem SE made for themselves with 3.0

@Freyy

The idea of Sole Survivor giving TP is a good one so I mentioned it in my OP post. The two issues I see with it are that it wouldn't help if there are no adds that MT can target shortly before they die and that if it works out of Grit it has the potential to be poorly balanced since DRK gets some TP regen already from Blood Weapon. I suppose the former isn't so bad since in the worst case scenario DRK still has Unmend and the latter probably wouldn't be too bad either (and easily fixed if it is).

[Brian_]

I don't know if I missed something, but the biggest reason for why tank DPS is favored over healer DPS is not mentioned. It's because tanks have significantly higher DPS up-time. Healers actually have to heal. Even SCHs. Outside of a few, rare mechanics, tanks are almost always hitting the enemy and with 100% accuracy. So, any raid adjustments you make to accommodate tank DPS has much better returns.

For example, you could have a tank slap on some extra fending / melded right sides to give your healers a larger HP buffer to DPS. You could have them stay in tank stance more. You'd only see that benefit for the periods where the healer can DPS. If you had that tank slap on slaying / melded right sides and stay in DPS stance for longer, you would enjoy the benefit for the entirety of the time the tank is hitting the boss. It's logic.

Also, the tank has better proactive control over their damage intake. They can plan to go DPS, adjust their dCD rotation accordingly, and nullify the loss of their tank stance while in DPS stance. Healers need to rely on tank coordination to increase their DPS up-time. While this is more a mere matter of teamwork and practice, it is something.

Of course, this is all predicated on the notion that tanks can get away with it. In current content, where you know how hard you're going to get hit and when you're going to get hit, surviving tank busters and general damage is not an issue. Even in the hypothetical situation where they changed encounter design to force tanks to be tankier, groups would eventually reach comfort thresholds and do the exact same thing they're doing right now. We saw this happen in 2.X. We are seeing it happen in 3.X. The difference is people are much better at doing it now and have a precedent to work from.

[Freyyy]

snip

^ This. The only thing that could force us to keep the tanking stance on all the time when tanking a boss would be making the bosses hit a lot, LOT harder and increase the gap in tankiness between a DPS stance and tanking stance tank. But I have to confess that it would not please me because stance dancing brings a whole new level of flavor to tanking in this game and I love it. I don't want to see it change.

[eagledorf]

Nah, it's more complicated than uptime, that's only true assuming both can go DPS stance pretty much all the time. A healer's DPS is about 75-80% of a tank's and the DPS loss from turning on your stance is just over 20% (well, ~30% on PLD) so you only need to gain about 30% uptime between both healers for healer DPS added to overtake the DPS added by being in DPS stance while tanking. Since the high potency DoTs are 1.5-1.8x filler spells, we're probably actually only talking ~10% uptime for each healer if they're healing most of the time (maybe even less), while if they're using filler spells it would require very high uptime increase for the gain to be worth it.

That's why in 2.0 healer DPS was preferred. The problem now is you can have both most of the time, then when you have to choose between losing one or the other the penalty for losing the tank DPS is higher. On top of that the vast majority of the heal checks that will force your healers out of Cleric Stance are party-wide damage, which being in your tank stance doesn't help at all for so you don't gain anything for turning it on.

[Brian_]

It's not just the up-time, but that is the biggest reason why. Of course the other factors also matter.

And, you explain why in your opening sentence. The entire point is that both can't go DPS stance pretty much all the time -- hence the difference in up-time. I think it's flawed to include the co-healer's contribution into the comparison in the first place because they are not the one primarily healing the MT or forced into the trade-offs involved. If you want to view healers collectively, then you should view tanks collectively. And, when you extend the comparison to include both tanks, then this isn't even close.

You should be looking at the gains in comparison. So, if you need 60% up-time between both healers for healer DPS to overtake the gains in DPS tanking, then you need to begin with asking if there is even 60% more up-time for healers to gain. The reality is one healer is basically already DPSing for a significant portion of fights even with a DPS tank. So, where do you get 60% more? The main-healer?