Tank Scaling still a massive issue

[Reynhart]

If you pay attention to any of my posts, you will see that I actually advocate for a REWARDING and IMPACTFUL tank play.

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

[FallenWings]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

I can get behind that. But it'll be funny when the purist healers complain that we're making them bored by being too tanky.

[Reynhart]

I can get behind that. But it'll be funny when the purist healers complain that we're making them bored by being too tanky.

It's like in a couple, you need to find someone with a compatible mindset. If both your healer and your tank are agressive, it will clash at some point.

Why be a turtle that tanks things with his face, when you could just make the enemies not be able to attack you to begin with? If they cant hit you then you never need healing.

I use the term "turtle tanking" for tanks that focus primarly on surviving, even at the expense of damage. But you can have different ways of turle tanking yes. My favorite is self-healing.

I recall something in FFXI that I would have liked to do. Before the last expansion, they created a weapon and a shield that massively increased your self healing. Using these items on top of items that reduced physical damage and items that refills your MP when you take damage, I wondered if you could reach a point where the damage you take give enough MP to cast your Cure spells and your Cure spells are powerful enough to compensate for the damage you took, creating a self-sustained loop. My conclusion was that you could but obtaining all of those items was a real pain...and no one cared since you didn't even needed a tank back then.

[TankHunter678]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage ouput would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

SE could do that with Paladin if they simply removed the CC resistance build up from mobs allowing Paladins to stunlock small groups of enemies.

Why be a turtle that tanks things with his face, when you could just make the enemies not be able to attack you to begin with? If they cant hit you then you never need healing.

That being said, pure turtles are boring as all hell and wont receive play because they are pure turtles. Its why in WoW tanks do such high damage, to get people to play them. Also why in WoW healers ask for damage output buffs because taking 10 minutes to kill a mob that a DPS kills in 10 seconds drives people from playing the class/spec.

[Shurrikhan]

That's why I'd love to have one job (Just one) whose turtle tanking abilities would so drastically reduce the need for healing that healers could do significantly more DPS than when they would take care of aggressive tanks. To the point where the healers' increased damage output would balance with the turtle tank reduced one.

It could be either by personal higher mitigation when main tanking, or high protective abilities when off-tanking.

Sure, as long as they could consistently produce the same output, which will only ever be reduction of clear time (i.e., which until a fight is about, say, topping off the health of a wounded dragon, will only ever be rDPS), and scale as well as anyone else.

I honestly want this. But I worry about what it could force in design, such as requiring the turtle tank to clear at x gear levels, not because it allows more healer DPS at equal cost to its own, but because no other tank has that eHP.

The most likely solution would be quite simply a (self) healer-tank, thereby one that provides the same free healer time and healer-like gear scaling, but without monstrous eHP. But SE purged that concept in 2.1.

[Reynhart]

I honestly want this. But I worry about what it could force in design, such as requiring the turtle tank to clear at x gear levels, not because it allows more healer DPS at equal cost to its own, but because no other tank has that eHP.

Back in Gordias, there was a significant gap in eHP between PLD and DRK if you take all their toolkit, mainly because PLD could not do well against magic damage. So, on top of PLD doing less damage, they also needed more healing.

Right now, PLD is not bad in the self-healing department. And since the tank stance doesn't directly reduce your attack power, you could technically stack lots of STR for stronger Clemencies. Now, we just need ShO effects (postitive and negative) to be stronger.

[Shurrikhan]

Back in Gordias, there was a significant gap in eHP between PLD and DRK if you take all their toolkit, mainly because PLD could not do well against magic damage. So, on top of PLD doing less damage, they also needed more healing.

Right now, PLD is not bad in the self-healing department. And since the tank stance doesn't directly reduce your attack power, you could technically stack lots of STR for stronger Clemencies. Now, we just need ShO effects to be stronger.

If that "turtle" functionality is to be locked behind something that so discourages rapidly adapting to incoming damage or would otherwise prevent making the decision between your own damage and healer damage / healer CD case by case, rather than nearly phase by phase due to its massive opportunity cost (thereby making it a once and done deal), I want nothing to do with it.

I like stances—I really do—but not at such massive opportunity costs for making use of that exact mechanic. Sure, their can be banking involved, time investments, resource building specific to the stance, but it can't have such opportunity costs or clunkiness that it both feels and performs badly.