Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Shurrikhan]

Darkside adjusted to 18.75% whilst in grit to negate its penalty in Grit?

Which means it would still be 15% extra damage.

Or, if possible, could redo stance calculation priority so it acts additively, rather than multiplicatively, with positive percentile effects like Darkside, Maim, or Fight or Flight (reaching only 5% dps loss under Darkside or Maim from Grit/Defiance, and retaining at 10% bonus from FoF, instead of 8% or 10% loss and 4% bonus respectively [3%/5%/6% difference])?

But then again do we really want to be close the MT-OT gap for all tanks, or just bring Warrior down a little?...

[eagledorf]

I've added a sort of idea for shuffling buffs around that I actually think might work well in small print.

Basically it's:

Delirium, Rage of Halone=>Damage Down 10% for 20s (can't stack)
Royal Authority=>Slashing Resistance Down 10% for 24s (can't stack with NIN)
Reprisal=>STR down 10% for 10s (might need to extend the proc window or remove entirely)
Spirits Within=>Silence 1s, INT down 10% for 10s
Storm's Eye=>STR down 10% for 20s (Can't stack with Reprisal)
Storm's Path=>INT down 10% for 20s (Can't stack with DK or Spirits Within)

So PLD and DRK get opposite the debuff of their unique cooldown (Dark Mind or Sheltron) while WAR gets essentially the unique ability to debuff both STR and INT, but not another debuff on top of that since IB works for all damage types. It doesn't quite fix things between DRK and PLD (for example, it doesn't help in A4 since you can't debuff most of the INT-based damage)

It would all fall to hell if they add a 4th tank, but it seems to me it would work quite well now. To make it future-safe the only real way would be to really homogenize the tanks, but they can always do that when the time comes I think...I dunno, does anybody have an interesting opinion?

[Teiren]

I'm totally on board with this and think it's pretty much perfect, but I have a few things to address:

EDIT: Nevermind on these two points because it's no different from requiring a WAR right now for Slashing Resistance Down and Damage Down. I wasn't thinking.
-First, the idea here is that Damage Down continues to stack with STR and INT Down, right? So wouldn't this new setup require a WAR in a serious raid group? This may be a level of min/maxing that doesn't matter, and besides, it's a good thing to encourage Job diversity because that makes everything more interesting and fun.
-Second, do you mean to replace Storm's Eye's debuff with STR Down or add the effect to the current Slashing Resistance Down debuff? If this was a replacement, then, considering a Ninja never wants to use Dancing Edge (godawful design flaw), DRK would never be taken on min/maxing raids because you'd need PLD for Slashing Resistance Down & Damage Down and WAR for STR Down & INT Down. Again, could be an irrelevant level of min/maxing.

-Third, it'd be fun to also add 4s of Pacification on Reprisal to really hammer in that it's the Spirits Within equivalent. Removing the reactionary component would additionally do that, but it would ruin the theme and name. Oh well.
-Fourth, a lone PLD or DRK would have a very slight, if questionable, edge. Is the point of this to make up for DPS stance discrepancies with WAR?
-Fifth, and least importantly, this could increase a WAR's DPS a very tiny bit because now they have no reason to ever use Storm's Path on an enemy with no magic damage or when a MNK is present. But this is probably irrelevant because raid damage is almost exclusively magic and an infrequent 20 Potency (270 vs. 250 Potency) is nothing anyway. Could make the same argument about a Ninja infrequently gaining 60 Potency (260 vs. 320) when they don't have to use Dancing Edge.

As for a fourth tank Job being added to the game: They could just give it a single weaponskill that applies STR & INT Down in one to have it match WAR, and then it's 2:2 for types of tank debuffs. After that, yeah, they'll probably just remove stat reduction debuffs and move to Damage Down debuffs globally, which is what WoW did. I don't know if they should do that, but I think it's likely.

Speaking of that, has there ever been any math done to calculate how much damage reduction STR or INT Down is? Does STR Down really reduce physical damage dealt by the enemy by 10%? Is all physical/magical damage really controlled by STR/INT respectively? Well, that second theory is impossible to answer conclusively, but it's something to consider.

Anyway, I think your ideas are all great in the end, and they would be interesting to see.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

To be honest, I have no interest in Warrior suddenly losing its offensive debuff combo, or in tanks receiving no way to apply Slashing debuff prior to PLD level 60. Overall this seems largely over-complicated, while messing with offensive rotations for little value. Worse, when slightly gear-starved, a PLD might not even be able to keep up the slashing debuff at present, due to low enmity mods on its Halone combo; it or GB will have to drop if he needs to use RoH more often than every third combo.

Warrior has been set as the brawler tank from day one. Removing its slashing debuff to give it two defensive debuffs just do to what it was already capable of is almost certain to piss off more than a few tanks. Current defensive debuffs may ensure that Warrior is one of the two tanks present, but they do at least also ensure that it is only one.

If you want to remove magic/physical niche-ing, and reduce the relative strength of Storm's Path, simply make RoH, Delirium, and SP all reduce damage by 10%, but stack at half value or so (e.g. 10%/15%/17.5%), while the same debuff still replaces older iterations (SP replaces SP, etc.) This will provide nearly the same mitigation against multi-damage-type enemies, remove fight-specificity, and still prevent class-stacking. (And with the reduced stacking value, even with all three debuffs up 25-mans still won't be nerfed to a cake-walk.)

[eagledorf]

Snip snip because it's long and stuff =s

The idea is that damage down does stack with STR and INT and that WAR loses the slashing debuff completely.

So WAR's utility would be that it gets to keep them up 100% of the time, but DRK+PLD would have them 33% of the time each so the disadvantage for that pairing is small, especially with a Monk. This is way better for class diversity than the situation now where WAR has a totally unique defensive buff 100% of the time. The main problem is that Reprisal requires parrying if you want your DRK to OT, so as you say it's probably just best to remove the parry proc from it completely, at least when Grit is off.

Removing Reprisal's parry proc also boosts DRK OT DPS a tiny bit, which would make tank DPS more balanced if you move the Slashing Debuff from WAR to PLD. PLD would have slightly lower DPS in exchange for the slashing debuff and WAR and DRK would have slightly higher DPS.

And yes, having a MNK would slightly boost WAR DPS (very slightly), but I think it's not a bad thing. In addition, DRK would boost PLD DPS, PLD would boost NIN DPS, NIN would boost DRK/WAR DPS and potentially even PLD DPS (if they ever make Shield Swipe worth using). Of course it might require a bit of tuning, but I think this would also be a good thing in the end.

I also thought about Pacification being added to Reprisal as part of these changes. I think one of the reasons Pacification has to be completely worthless right now is Paladin is the only one that has it, so this would probably open up doors for future content. Even if it doesn't, it's just flavor then.

The only real issue is I don't know what would happen to DRK in terms of party utility, but the unique utility PLD and WAR would bring would be fairly weak actually so it may not be a problem (PLD would have Divine Veil, WAR would have a persistent STR debuff. Everything else overlaps with other jobs).

(The STR and INT debuffs are known to reduce damage by 10%. I don't know that it'is been tested if the STR debuff reduces all physical damage, but I imagine it does. It's a bit suspicious if it's working with the trash archers you sometimes see that use Hawks Eye, but it works for the bosses in the game I think.)

[karateorangutang]

snip cuz characters

I do agree that they need to shuffle around debuffs with combo's, but the thing I noticed with your setup is it still only give one tank job the ability to apply slashing down. Putting that on PLD wouldn't really help anyone. It would devalue WAR a bit ( although not significantly) and still wouldn't fix alot of things with PLD ( which you stated). If something like this happened the tank scene wouldn't change much as this wouldn't take away the fact that WAR would still outdamage a PLD in tank stance. All it would really do is make NIN a recquired raid slot.

DPS are so balanced right now, doing something like this would upset the balance of the DPS.

Just my 2 cents.

[eagledorf]

The thing is, whoever has that slashing debuff needs to do less DPS than the other tanks by a small margin or you have a problem where that tank will be mandatory. You would still have to have PLD's DPS be within <5% of the other tanks (probably like 2% or something) and have DRK and WAR have equal DPS for it to work well.

The other alternative is to just nerf WAR DPS to be the weakest of the tanks by several % and leave the debuff with them and figure out another way to shuffle things around. Or honestly the best would be to make NIN another damage type entirely and balance tanks and DPS separate from one another.

The DPS currently are not balanced well at all. MNK is the highest DPS, but NIN riding off a WAR is close enough that it's still higher DPS because of Trick Attack. To be properly balanced, MNK needs to consistently be able to pull like 100-200 DPS more than NIN in the course of a real encounter and a bit over 100 DPS more than a DRG, which only happens in extremely AoE-heavy fights. MNK and DRG are close to balanced with 1 bard (not quite, but maybe close enough since MNK gets a bit more utility), but NIN is actually ahead of both of them right now and brings good utilitiy of its own (not that NIN doesn't also have some issues, like TP drain).

You could, I suppose, just remove the slashing debuff from the tanks entirely and factor in the DPS from the slashing debuff when balancing NIN DPS, but then class balance will shift as you gain gear and tanks can do more DPS.

[karateorangutang]

snip

Or you could give tanks a stacking debuff, but it needs to be on at least 2 of the 3 of them. Putting that on a single tank is a recipe for disaster. One that we have right now.

I'm actually fine with WAR losing it. That doesn't bother me at all, but DRK and PLD would both have to have access to it for it not to be a party composition issue. I really think that all tanks should have access to it, but this wouldn't solve alot of problems of PLD being passed over. Doing this in combination with other fixes though would put the tanks on a more level playing field.

Change storm's eye to 5%, give delirium 5% and give royal authority 5%. Make it stackable up to 10% with NIN overriding both.

[eagledorf]

That's actually an interesting idea to give each tank 5%.

TBH, I find it a problem that NIN DPS requires not using their debuff and that that causes TP drain, but if we're looking strictly at the tanks your idea works well. In that case its much simpler since you can just homogonize tank DPS instead of trying to juggle debuffs and things and getting unintended consequences.

[Teiren]

I mean, I know it may seem really casual and too "easy" that Dragon Kick and Disembowel's debuffs are automatic, but that's just the kind of game that it started as and I think should remain as. So I can't believe they never fixed Dancing Edge, just leaving one Job out in the cold related to this. Maybe that's because it only seriously affected the Ninja itself in the past, and so they viewed it as a rotational maintenance thing like Chaos Thrust or Twin Snakes, something that still increases overall DPS.

But now, tank damage has become a much more serious thing at the same time that people have gotten a lot better at utilizing it, virtually out of necessity for Savage's requirements. Because of this confluence, I think they have some stark choices to make about how to move forward with the relation between tanks and DPS.

And yeah, my posts always creep up in volume, haha. Thanks for reading it though. It seemed like you got what I was saying, and I better understand where you're coming from too.