Don't repeat the past a third time, Yoshida.

[HyperiusUltima]

This is just an opinion, but I've been looking back on Stormblood as we're moving towards Shadowbringers.

On launch, we got DDoS'd by idiots who wanted to make the launch look worse than it was. That much I'm fine with; however, the big thing I'm worried about is the changes we've seen throughout Stormblood made to tanks in general.

PLD had to get nerfs to make it not so overbearing on the Tank side due to the fact that Holy Spirit very close in damage to WAR's Fell Cleave, but the biggest change that sparked a lot of people's ire was the fact they changed Shake it Off to a Raid Cooldown that provided shields for some odd reason. It's still among the biggest gripes I have to this date since it has solidified WAR ever since the change.

Then we get IR updates so that WAR's skill ceiling is reduced(which, honestly is ok in some manner, but DRK hadn't gotten any significant updates outside of Sole Survivor being useful).

This sounds like I'm ranting about WAR, but it's how SE has been handling tanks in General over the past years from Heavensward all the way to now: It's been a mess. In Heavensward, PLD was shunned because of the fact that it couldn't mitigate magic damage effectively(and let's face it: almost all of Alexander's raids were Magical in nature, even to the auto attacks) whereas DRK was in fact capable of doing both Magic and Physical. Now, DRK is shunned because it is overshadowed by two other tanks who have supreme utilities and damage. They tried to fix it, especially by creating an entire tier almost dedicated to DRK(Sigmascape) but it didn't work out as they thought it'd go. WAR and PLD still reigned supreme in both DPS and Mitigation even after the small changes they made.

What I hope is that going forward they look at all the tanks' capabilities and consider how strong they make them for all raids. Even if we know they playtest them(Yoshida does with his dev team) I think the Battle Team needs to consider where to draw the line between becoming the best Tank in the game like WAR and having a versatile skillset like PLD does so that we can find proper balance because right now there's only two Tanks that I see a majority of in PF: PLD and WAR.

I'm not calling for homogenization, but something needs to define Tanking in general outside of going into Tank Stance just for the pull and then deciding to turn off Grit or swap into Sword Oath/Deliverance...both as a role and for individual jobs so we can have some sort of versatility that defines the job. To call an example, consider DRK back in Heavensward; it was a tank that proc'd off of Parrying for its Low Blow ability(which was a Stun and did 100 potency) and it gave DRK a unique flow to its gameplay that people enjoyed. Even their damage output was great, but it all got neutered in Stormblood.

All I can hope going forward is that the Battle Team and Yoshida consider balance going forward and not repeat the past. I still remember a while back in Heavensward where Yoshida himself said that SCH and WAR are too powerful since they were dominating the slots at the time...and they still are. I want to see that cycle break and open up for more composition choice rather than locking in a sacred trinity of jobs(BRD, SCH, WAR to cite the biggest three jobs that people always bring).

EDIT: Misjudged the potencies on HS vs. FC from 4.0. Thanks for telling me.

Gonna add these. Other than that, I'm really glad that this discussion managed to come about now that we're nearing the end of Stormblood, and patch is only in 6 days. Let's keep the discussion going so that the devs can hear. Thank you to everyone that's participated in this thread.

Quotes worth Noting:

People aren't necessarily mad Warrior received some adjustments. They're upset Warrior got those adjustment almost immediately yet WHM, DRK, MCH, MNK, RDM, BLM and SAM all were left in the dust for months. Case in point, RDMs told the devs for months their damage was far too low but Yoshida insisted Verraise was enough to compensate. Two full tiers later... they finally give in because surprise, surprise, Verraise isn't all that useful unless you're dying to shit you shouldn't be. Speaking of RDMs, they have Tether—a completely useless bind. Going by the WAR standards, if they complained loud enough, SE should change that into 90s Troubadour. That's how absurd the Shake it Off change was.

Assuming we are getting a fourth tank in 5.0 they need to either start pairing tanks, ex WAR/DRK and PLD/TANK, where they would complement each other much better than they would with another tank or make sure that each tank has a baseline. Things like a party shield, self-heal action/ability and offensive cd, for example, each tank would have its version but with different approaches to achieving said results.

Here's the thing. If you want players to play tank, you have to figure out what draws players to the role and what makes them tick. A good tank is a facilitator. We do whatever needs to be done to make the group function more effectively. Sometimes, this means mitigating in a way that assists our healers. Sometimes, this means pushing out more dps so that our damage dealers can make a dps check.

But the most central function of a tank is this: tanks control space. They set up the fight. They control how it unfolds through effective positioning. And they control re-positioning in a way that allows the entire team to maintain good uptime.

You know why tanks care so much about damage? It's because you've given us nothing else to care about. Mitigation is trivial. You have abilities like Holmgang on a 180 second cooldown, which let us negate every second tankbuster. Positioning is trivial. Bosses re-position themselves, re-orientate themselves, and animation lock themselves in place. Your job is to move to where they spawn or jump, and just hold them where they are. It's like the people designing this fights for this game either have never played a tank before, or have no passion for the role. Because content is not designed for tanks, we play like we're a glorified melee dps.

And they're just not listening. With the advent of Stormblood, tank accessories were designed so that they just didn't offer any significant dps progression. So what did we do? We used i270 accessories. That should have been a warning sign in itself. Hey, maybe this design decision isn't what the players want.

You're not going to get us to "play like tanks" by removing the last thing that the role has going for it. The only way that you can do it is by designing content for tanks. Make us position. Give us fights with genuine, unscripted, tank-controlled movement. Make us mitigate.

Even despite the fact that we forced them to make some concessions with our accessory progression, you still hear Yoshi-p mention how tanks do too much damage, as recently as the Las Vegas Fan Fest Q+A. Do you know the one thing that I don't want to hear, as a tank main? I don't want to hear a non-tank main tell me that we're doing too much damage. I want to hear from someone who is equally passionate about tanking. I want to hear from someone who designs content for tanks. And I want to hear from someone who wants to make the tanking experience better for all of us.

People like playing dps, but there will always be a need for tanks. Those new dps players aren't going to want to wait around for hours until they find the odd person still willing to tank for them. You can't bribe us by making WAR into an overpowered supertank. I'm sorry, but Blizzard does barbarians better. This is a Final Fantasy game. Give me my greatsword or gunblade.

Do you know why 1.0 failed? It wasn't because of technical design issues. It was because you failed to listen to the people playing your game. And you're making that exact same mistake again. It's pride and a lack of communication that causes this game to repeat the same mistakes again and again.

[Lumadurin]

was the fact they changed Shake it Off to a Raid Cooldown that provided shields for some odd reason.

Because a self-Esuna was entirely worthless in all forms of content as WAR no longer suffered from Pacification after their burst window, and like 98% of debuffs nowadays are incurable or must be cured through mechanics (getting hit, standing in certain places, healing to full, etc.); with the 2% that are curable being no more than a minor inconvenience at most. It was a flagrant exmaple of an egregious disconnect between class design and gameplay design.
A barrier was the only thing it could be changed to that still made sense thematically. It was either that or creating a completely new ability from scratch.

[Derio]

I sure as hell hope so. When DRK was "revamped" in 4.0 along with other tanks with the role actions I was extremely disappointed due to them gutting the job. I hope the DRK rework in 5.0 makes the job much better or hopefully the gunblade tank will be my new main job in 5.0 assuming its a tank.

[Canadane]

Because a self-Esuna was entirely worthless in all forms of content

You can tell they made content around it, though. Shinryu, Exdeath, etc. They had some raid-wide debuffs going on there for a bit, and the easiest way to remove them was either going to be Selene or a Warrior.

[Chrono_Rising]

A barrier was the only thing it could be changed to that still made sense thematically. It was either that or creating a completely new ability from scratch.

From a thematic stand point making it into something more like a party wide ToB would have been more fitting for warrior, and the game has something like this in one of the bard troubador's. The major issue with adding a shield is that it can be used for limit break charging which solidified Warrior's place in the speed run meta. That and reprisal + free shield for nearly all raid wide aoe's is very helpful for prog.

[HyperiusUltima]

From a thematic stand point making it into something more like a party wide ToB would have been more fitting for warrior, and the game has something like this in one of the bard troubador's. The major issue with adding a shield is that it can be used for limit break charging which solidified Warrior's place in the speed run meta. That and reprisal + free shield for nearly all raid wide aoe's is very helpful for prog.

This I would've liked better at the time. Party-wide Thrill would be nice, but wouldn't be too powerful so as to make Shields a huge thing. Though...I still think just giving them party-wide for just about anything just solidified them regardless. My initial thought was giving WAR an ability that gave it Free Beast Abilities for a set amount of time at the time when we had to line up IR with the rest of our rotation...but they baked it into IR regardless. It still would've thrown DRK out the window given they're a rather selfish Tank that only has a single on-demand Shield as utility as well as the rest of their kit not lining up very nicely for groups.

[Marxam]

raid mechanics will always dictate party comp. No skill is useless but the content in which they are put in makes them so. SiO is a great idea in execution, a self esuna and even worked on things like doom in exdeath but content was created so you couldn't ignore such debuffs and thus made SiO useless and changes were made. Assuming we are getting a fourth tank in 5.0 they need to either start pairing tanks, ex WAR/DRK and PLD/TANK, where they would complement each other much better than they would with another tank or make sure that each tank has a baseline. Things like a party shield, self-heal action/ability and offensive cd, for example, each tank would have its version but with different approaches to achieving said results.

I feel that they need to stick to the lore of the job and work around that. That is the only way to make jobs feel different while still being homogenized. PLD has always been the shield of the party protecting others and have skills like PoA and Cover. WAR is a berserk, beast that you had to harness and control and have skills like IR and FC. DRK has always been about inner conflict and eternal struggle with a focus on life-steal and have skills like Blood Weapon and TBN. I feel like all three tanks achieved this in 4.0 though DRK definitely got the short end.

[Deceptus]

The shake it off thing was so . . . dumb.

The Magical DPS have Erase. Which is essentially a targeted Shake it off (but only for damaging debuffs) .

Bards have Troubadour, which is essentially a pre-Esuna, for anything.

Healers have Esuna. . .

And they gave tanks a self Esuna why? So many cleanses in the game and they decide "Why not more!" It's similar to the combat team giving everyone a bind despite no one really wanting them. Or stuns on dps abilities that screw with the stun DR.

[colorbanditblk]

This is actually really brilliant, heck I can see that pairing idea working with the healers as well. At the moment, there’s always gonna be 1 tank (e.g. DRK) or 1 healer (e.g. WHM) left out of the meta, so having two pairs of jobs that work well with everyone but better with each other can do wonders for the meta and help boost morale of players who main them.

[Lyth]

...

Most jobs have at least a few abilities which are incredibly situational in PvE. Why does WHM still have Repose? What is BLM supposed to do with Freeze? The original version of Shake it Off had more widespread application than either of these actions.

To make matters worse, at the launch of Stormblood, between the knockback negation effect of Inner Release (on a 120s recast) and the status effect removal of the original Shake it Off (on a 60s recast), you had a vastly superior form of Tempered Will (bind/heavy removal + knockback prevention, on a 180s recast). Did PLD players complain about Tempered Will being completely outdone by these two new actions?

There's this bizarre mindset amongst a small, but extremely vocal minority of the playerbase. If an ability isn't usable in every circumstance with twelve different functions, then it's worthless. If WAR doesn't have an answer to every single situation that is at least on par with the second strongest tank, it's an unfair disadvantage. No other part of the playerbase has this pathological mindset.

And the worst thing is that the devs are listening to them. Never, in the history of this game, has anyone gone back to the devs with a newly designed action, and demanded a refund, simply because it wasn't good enough to be a WAR ability.

Do you know what the devs should have done? Change Shake it Off, into a completely new action, as they did. And then re-implement a 10 second pacification debuff at the end of IR that can only be cleansed by the player themselves. Call it "Shake this Off," and add in the tagline "Be careful for what you wish for."