A history of our beloved tanks, and moving forward. [5.0 wishlists]

[Saeno]

as an irrelevant nitpick, HW DRK AoE was just as excellent, if not better than WAR's. In a dungeon setting, WAR had this wind-up time to reach 5 stacks, then use double decimate with overpower, and their Zerk+Bloodbath combo was only available for roughly every other pull.

However, DRK could immediately jump into AD spam, and BP worked outside of grit back then as well. Also, there was the gigantic benefit that DRK was the only tank with AoE damage that could afford to use sprint in dungeons, because TP wasn't used at all for their rotation. Given BP's 40 second CD, you could do this on EVERY pull.

I agree. I liked how DRK could sprint in dungeons. However, Berserk + Decimates + Vengeance made WAR insanely strong in Aoe, and not every situation would have tank Aoe done in dungeons in HW. Im not opposed to putting DRK aoe in excellent however.

[Saeno]

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

Take the encounters during ARR into consideration. A lot of the damage those bosses dealt were physical damage and only the aoe damage was magic. SCH did a great job on its own dealing with Aoe and Rage of Halone did a great job mitigating damage in all of the coils except T8. However, moving into HW, most of the damage became magical including tank busters. Rage of Halone lost a lot of power in HW while Path became MUCH better due to Darkness damage and lack of Physical. Also, WAR became very strong on the physical damage front due to Raw intuition, making PLD's niche as the strong physical tank much weaker.

[Hierro]

Mark my words; if DRK was not such a pain to play and had a single movement immunity on something like Dark Mind DRK would be heralded as a symbol of balance in the community and all the DRK threads would currently be about how trash tier PLD is. PLD is literally propped up on the fact that Dark Arts spam makes people's fingers hurt, and the numbers data for current DRK supports that.

As the venerable Alexander Hamilton once said, "The masses are asses."

DRK truly IS the symbol of balance! If you were one of the enlightened ones, such as myself, then you would see that DRK already has a movement immunity in the form of a well-timed and well-planned plunge.The busy-work of DA spam is something to be enjoyed, not resent. The "community" may see a lot of what DRK has to offer and claim it is un-parsimonious to good gameplay and effort, and though I will assert it is the simplest tank to play, the satisfaction derived from playing at a competent level surpasses that of an opening Inner Release, and that lends to its fun-factor. At least, that what you would think if you were enlightened like me.

[Speaks]

Snip

I suppose we will see how Alpha develops over time and if we see DRK remain above PLD for damage this tier or not. SKS on everything arguably hurts PLD the most too, so we may see DRK pull ahead in damage yet. Time will tell.

While it is true that you can stay ahead with RoH on PLD for aggro though, it is the pulling in shield that is the real culprit. It takes a full GCD to get into offense stance if you are forced to pull, and if your co-tank dies and you need to generate snap aggro you are beyond out of luck (as I have had the misfortune of experiencing in a couple Suzaku runs this week.)


About the AoE though; SCH does pull ahead of PLD right now. SCH still has their arcanist DPS tools, and that includes miasma. While PLD can probably out-DPS in 3 or fewer targets, SCH progressively pulls further and further ahead the more targets you have. PLD really needs it's AoE looked at. It is less than half the damage of others tanks while also sacrificing what little damage they have to hold aggro.

I was looking at the skills from a prog perspective too. I didn't mention Passage because passage is actually good, and is more of the utility I would like to see for PLD with 5.0. I never said PLD had poor utility; I said it had excellent. Passage is a big part of that from my perspective. But right now I can get my static further in prog with WAR than PLD, simply because WAR has so obscenely much mitigation. People also underestimate DRK's new mitigation since it was buffed. TBN every 15s and a Dark Mind perma DAd with only it's 60s buff is huge. Intervention is still really not necessary though. I mean you will pretty much 100% be co-tanking with a WAR.

Slashing debuffs, and debuffs in general aside form things like Trick Attack, are something I too would like to see removed going forward. I like playing WAR, but I do NOT want it to be required. We only have 3 tanks, but you basically only have to choice of 2. As for Gauge gen in shield you CAN Holy Spirit, but it would really be better if Tank Stance only reduced physical damage output too. Also this does not solve the issue of Gauge Gen in groups. Shelltron should probably just block hits for like the next 4 or 5 seconds giving mana on the first, this would both help gauge gen and increase adds mitigation. PLD unfortunately has a very strict rotation though, you cannot just throw Holy Spirit out whenever you feel like to generate gauge...

Finally, I never said DRK was hard to play. It is extremely simple. I said it was a pain to play. As in my fingers actually get tired playing it. Besides all that DRK really has good enough self mitigation to already be a good prog tank. I really do think DRK right now is balanced, just not fun.

[shao32]

I am curious why you rated War utility as "Good" in 2.0 and jumped 2 tiers to "Excellent" in HW when nothing changed. Path was still path. Slashing was still slashing. There was no change to War's utility in HW so why in the world did it jump up two whole tiers? Then in SB we lost path (10% damage up ALL the time) for a reprisal cross roll thats p 5 sec/min. 10% damage down for the entire fight is WAY better than the same effect for 5 sec/min and a single shield every 90 sec. People really over rate sio. Old path was the best defensive debuff in the entire game.

On heavensward storm eye was broken, WAR was the only job that apply the Buff without losing dps, that mean It skyrocket NIN dps bcs more aeolian edge, WAR was mandatory for that betwen other things.

And now in stormblood still have slashing with is not as mandatory as before but still impact on openers and SIO is better that the old path bcs dont cost you dps and is up on every high aoe damage, all being say SIO was a mistake.

[Izsha]

On heavensward storm eye was broken, WAR was the only job that apply the Buff without losing dps, that mean It skyrocket NIN dps bcs more aeolian edge, WAR was mandatory for that betwen other things.

And now in stormblood still have slashing with is not as mandatory as before but still impact on openers and SIO is better that the old path bcs dont cost you dps and is up on every high aoe damage, all being say SIO was a mistake.

War was the ONLY source of slashing in ARR period. That is what mandatory is. Every party, not just some meta comp that not everyone even used. Nin, No nin, it didnt matter. A shield every 90 sec is not nearly as powerful as a 10% all damage down on demand that can be up any time or ALL the time you want.

Take the encounters during ARR into consideration. A lot of the damage those bosses dealt were physical damage and only the aoe damage was magic. SCH did a great job on its own dealing with Aoe and Rage of Halone did a great job mitigating damage in all of the coils except T8. However, moving into HW, most of the damage became magical including tank busters. Rage of Halone lost a lot of power in HW while Path became MUCH better due to Darkness damage and lack of Physical. Also, WAR became very strong on the physical damage front due to Raw intuition, making PLD's niche as the strong physical tank much weaker.

Not sure how you can say Path became "MUCH" better because of Drk's lack of physical def and at the same time say halone lost "a lot" of power because it was physical def. That statement doesnt make sense. Either physical debuffs are a good thing or a bad thing for a job that provides them. I would say pld got the short end, but war didnt get better because of Drk's lack of phy def, otherwise you would have to say the same about halone.

There were two sources of Int down. 1 source of Str down. Just like slashing in HW, whe you go from a single job that gives a debuff, going to two jobs for the same debuff does not make it stronger. It makes the benefit weaker.

Raw intuition and tank 'niches' has nothing to do with my comment about War utility. Not sure if that was supposed to mean something.

[Saeno]

Not sure how you can say Path became "MUCH" better because of Drk's lack of physical def and at the same time say halone lost "a lot" of power because it was physical def. That statement doesnt make sense. Either physical debuffs are a good thing or a bad thing for a job that provides them. I would say pld got the short end, but war didnt get better because of Drk's lack of phy def, otherwise you would have to say the same about halone

Again, take the encounters into consideration. Physical down lost a lot of power because most fights in Alexander did high magic damage but not enough physical damage to warrant rage of halone. Also, darkness/true damage became a thing. path became much better because it was one of the only skills to work on darkness/true damage.

There were two sources of Int down. 1 source of Str down. Just like slashing in HW, whe you go from a single job that gives a debuff, going to two jobs for the same debuff does not make it stronger. It makes the benefit weaker

Delirium being added didn't just make dragon kick weaker, it deleted monk. As far as the meta was concerned, delirium was the better int down since it allowed your team to run drg/nin where as with dragon kick, you're forced to take a monk. Also, even though nin and war had slashing, nin never applied it themselves and relied on the war to apply slashing so they could do more aeoleans. Having multiple of the same debuff does not collectively make them weaker, one of them is superior while the other is inferior.

Raw intuition and tank 'niches' has nothing to do with my comment about War utility. Not sure if that was supposed to mean something

Tanks becoming stronger on the physical side coupled with less physical damage in raids definately impacted the utility of PLD since it was not as useful as it once was.

[shao32]

War was the ONLY source of slashing in ARR period. That is what mandatory is. Every party, not just some meta comp that not everyone even used. Nin, No nin, it didnt matter. A shield every 90 sec is not nearly as powerful as a 10% all damage down on demand that can be up any time or ALL the time you want.

The difference was in ARR WAR slashing buff only PLD and himself before NIN and the debuff don't offer much since the tank dps was poor those days, in heavensward tanks get dps combos/stances raising the value of slashing a lot and compared to NIN WAR apply the debuff without loosing a good chunk of his personal damage increasing even more the raid dps WAR contribute if a NIN was present.

On path apart of being a stolen utility from bard it was a dps lost use it, good WARs just use it only on specefic situations, SIO is better bcs optimally have more use that path and offer much more mitigation since can be buffed all of this without loosing dps.

[Lyth]

Comparison Domains
Content-based comparisons work for things like mitigation where there's a specific target, but less well for things like dps, where the goal is to just optimise. I think if your goal is to compare tanks across several domains, the comparison should relative to each other, such that if all three have equivalent performance, then all three are 'average'. Normalise it.

Some of these domains can be expanded out, as they're very different in scope and importance. Utility, for example, can mean a whole lot of things. Does this mean raid dps buffs? Raid mitigation? Self-healing? Mobility tools and knockback negation? Single-target dps is fairly broad as well. Does it mean burst? Sustained dps? Raid dps buffs?

I think the main aim of tank changes going into the expansion should be to make tanking fun for as many different people as possible, and to encourage diverse team compositions.

Raid damage buffs
To this end, the priority should be remove things that force you to pick a particular composition of jobs. The biggest offenders in this regard are 100% uptime raid buffs like Slashing. They do nothing other than reward you for bringing a specific job. Even if you place them on multiple jobs, like WAR and NIN, you should ask yourself why the game needs to be designed such that we always have one of these in our group. What if you want to run PLD/DRK with an all caster party? You should be able to do so without feeling like you're punished for not bringing an already over-represented job.

With regards to the broader issue of raid damage buffs, while I do like the coordination that they bring to raiding, I don't feel that they should be on tank jobs. There are a lot of issues to balance out in tanking, and raid dps buffs can easily push a job into the "must pick" category. Tanks should be balanced based on burst dps vs. sustained dps, such that any one tank is not strong at both.

On a related note, I'd like to see some adjustments to the rate of limit gauge generation as well. If you're going to have certain job-specific abilities impact limit gauge generation (Shake and Veil), then it shouldn't be by an appreciable amount. Either that, or just have damage reduction effects that everyone has access to, like Reprisal, produce an equivalent effect. Otherwise these abilities end up functioning like a hidden raid dps buff.

Role actions
The role action system needs to be reworked into something meaningful. If they're meant to be mandatory abilities, then they should just be selected by default. If they're meant to be situational (i.e. stun vs. silence), then you should be able to toggle between them. I think a talent tree system could work here.

As an example, you could have a set of "common actions" like Rampart, Shirk, and Reprisal which are always available on every tank. Then you could have some choice-based role actions which make you pick one of a set of options on a decision tree (i.e. Low Blow vs. Interject, Provoke vs. Ultimatum, or Anticipation vs. Awareness). Also, given how ubiquitous knockbacks have been this expansion, I think knockback negation should be a baseline part of this common skill set.

We know that the addition of new abilities with every expansion requires the removal of other actions to keep hotbar space requirements more manageable. I'd like to see this done in a more thoughtful fashion this next expansion. Sometimes ability changes and the removal of an ability can have a significant impact on how the job plays, or in the level up experience. You can't randomly rip out parts and hope for the best.

The removal of abilities in Stormblood also left certain jobs at a net deficit in abilities. Jobs should have the same amount of actions, gained at the same intervals. I want to see this remedied.

Job identity
With regards to job balance itself, I don't think the end goal should be for every tank to be equivalent in every area. I do think that each should have their share of strengths and weaknesses. If you're really strong in one area and good at everything else, then that's a big problem. If you want to excel in one area, it should be at the expense of being weaker at something else.

Lastly, I'd like to see some clearly defined identities for each tank. If DRK's lifesteal comes from in-game lore and series lore, strong self-sustain through lifesteal should be a DRK exclusive trait. Remove WAR's lifesteal entirely, and let them work on a different theme instead. If WAR is about heavy burst and enmity generation, then don't try and clone Inner Release on the other tanks. Do something different. If PLD is about strong party support, then don't be giving every tank Divine Veil. Push the tanks in unique directions without giving them a monopoly on something that will make them mandatory.

[TaiyoShikasu]

DRK:
-Less Dark arts please
-PLEASE rethink the blood weapon/blood price exchange
-Remove Delirium and add another DPS buffing move. Very pointless skill and doesn't feel nearly as fun as other DPS buffs like Blood for blood or Requiescat
-Add some oGCD gauge spenders akin to Onslaught and Upheivel
-More buttons in general
-Burst phase to be more synergistic with group bursts
-Raid wide utility
-Reconsider Dark art's negative effect of not being allowed to gain MP outside of your own sources. If PLD can gain extra Holy spirits from mana shift/ Refresh, DRK should be able to as well. Adjust the potencies of Dark arts moves to not make this broken obviously

Make DRK even more obviously budget WAR.