I'm thinking Dark Knight's rework will be more extensive than I initially thought.

[Kalise]

Not only are our tank stances heavily penalized, our enmity combos are too.

Actually, this is not technically true.

In terms of combos, WAR's Enmity combo is actually higher potency than its "DPS" combo.

Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block is 160 > 210 > 300 potency.

Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path/Storm's Eye is 160 > 200 > 280 potency.

Just, Storm's Path randomly gives 20 Beast Gauge instead of Storm's Eye and Butcher's Block's 10. So more Gauge means more 520 potency Fell Cleaves (Which means more Infuriate which in turn means more Fell Cleave...)

DRK and PLD have DPS combos that deal more damage than their Enmity combos thanks to Royal Authority and Syphon Strike (Rage of Halone combo out damages the direct damage of Goring Blade and Power Slash is equal in damage to Souleater, Syphon is just the major culprit with not only dealing more damage than Spinning Slash, restoring MP for more Dark Arts and thus more damage but it benefits from DA itself to boost its damage)

As for the game forcing tanks to use tank stances... I talked about it in a post on another thread (Maybe this one? Too lazy to look for it). The damage pattern being predictable means we will never need our tank stances.

That's why change is suggested.

It is not the healers' output that is overpowered in this game, as a matter of fact, healer's maximum HPS to the DPS's maximum DPS ratio in this game is quite low compared to other MMOs (1~1.5 times the DPS of a BLM). Our mitigation is bonkers.

Comparing healers output to our DPS output is meaningless. You have to compare healers output to NPC output. As, in PvE you're not taking the damage the BLM is dishing out, you're taking the damage the BOSS is dishing out.

In any case, it's a mixture of both the output of healers and the passive mitigation from tanks.

Tanks take so much less damage passively compared to other games. In addition, healers have such massive outputs that they can easily heal large chunks of a Tanks health with 1-2 heals.

Also, if we're comparing CD's, let's not pick the classes that notoriously have few CD's:

DK:

Anti-Magic Shell: 1 minute CD (Can be talented to 45s CD) absorbs 30% of your max health worth of magical damage.

Vampiric Blood: 1.5 minute CD increases max health by 30% and healing/shielding received by 30% for 10 seconds.

Dancing Rune Weapon: 2 minute CD 40% increased parry rate (Parry in this game is also 100% damage mitigation, not just 20%)

Icebound Fortitude: 3 minute CD 30% less damage taken for 8 seconds.

Purgatory: 4 minute CD upon death instead gain healing absorb shield equal to the amount of overkill damage for 3 seconds. If this isn't healed off then you die.

Vs FFXIV:

Rampart: 1.5 minute CD 20% less damage taken (For 20s)

Anticipation: 1 minute CD 30% more parry chance for 20s (Parry only being 20% damage reduction not 100% damage reduction)

Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall: 2 minute (3m for Sentinel) CD for 30% damage reduction (40% for Sentinel)

With then Equilibrium/Shake it Off/Raw Intuition/Bulwark on top.

Really, the only really notable thing with CD's is Holmgang being a complete tankbuster ignore with only a 3 minute CD (Hallowed Ground is less obscene given it has a 7 minute CD)

But even then, they're matched by WoW Paladin with Ardent Defender's 2 minute CD 20% less damage taken, if you are killed while active you're instead healed to 20% max life, Divine Shield 5 minute CD immunity for 8 seconds and taunt all nearby enemies to attack you for 8 seconds and Lay on Hands 10 minute CD 100% max health heal.

The major difference between FFXIV and WoW tanks is that WoW tanks need to be constantly using active mitigation with often a dedicated "Tank Healer" providing them with continuous healing in order to survive to the tankbusters which require them to have a big CD available for (Or a healer has to have a big CD available to mitigate damage for them)

As opposed to FFXIV where damage is basically non-existent except for these tank busters where you're practically free to use any CD's you want because you didn't need them for any damage between the last tankbuster and the current one even while you were sat in DPS stance and mashing DPS combos.

Due to high passive mitigation and massive throughput from Regen/Shields that allow healers to focus mostly on dealing damage.

So asking for the new tank to be a "stance dancer" because it is going to be fun without changing how the whole game is balanced is just not learning from the mistakes that already exist and asking for another WAR where you don't want to use half your toolkit. (Bold and italics so people don't confuse want with can)

But at the same time, designing the new tank to feed into this "Damage is irrelevant outside of Tankbusters" and "Just play as a Beefy DPS because your passive mitigation is nuts" offers little itself and in fact just causes more work to need to be done if an overhaul to the game balance is done in the future.

It's also worth noting that this issue stems entirely through scaling too. Given that when you're leveling up and so don't outgear content, then balance is fine. Tanks take plenty of damage and often need to be in Tank stance and roll CD's to keep incoming damage down, while Healers will often be focusing too much on spamming out GCD's on heals and managing their mana to push out much DPS.

Only when you start to get into the wonky end-game scaling does it transition into this "Tanks are Beefy DPS" and "Healers just use oGCD's for healing" scenario.

[Phoenicia]

Actually, this is not technically true.

In terms of combos, WAR's Enmity combo is actually higher potency than its "DPS" combo.

Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Butcher's Block is 160 > 210 > 300 potency.

Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path/Storm's Eye is 160 > 200 > 280 potency.

Just, Storm's Path randomly gives 20 Beast Gauge instead of Storm's Eye and Butcher's Block's 10. So more Gauge means more 520 potency Fell Cleaves (Which means more Infuriate which in turn means more Fell Cleave...)

Storm's Path doesn't "randomly" give 20 gauge, it always does. (Unless you meant they chose it randomly). Regardless, the correct math is:

Storm's Path Combo is 150 + 200 + 280 + 50 (from gauge, using Onslaught as baseline for gauge damage. 20 Gauge = 100 potency). So Storm's Path is more potency than Butcher's Block, making BB a DPS loss.

Same with DRK when you account the MP regen from Syphon strike. 150 + 230 + 300 + 140/70 from MP (Grit/NoGrit) + 40 from Gauge lost (using Bloodspiller here, 40)

PLD's RoH provides no MP regen, is much lower potency than either DPS combo and as such "delays" Requiscat combos and throws off your CD alignment with raid buffs.

That's why change is suggested.

I'm not anti-change, I'm anti-half-change. Don't give me more unfit stuff that you end up reverting 2 patches later (WAR's IR with Unchained).

Comparing healers output to our DPS output is meaningless. You have to compare healers output to NPC output. As, in PvE you're not taking the damage the BLM is dishing out, you're taking the damage the BOSS is dishing out.

The comparison here came because it is what pops in our DPS meters. In WoW during prog, healers are outputting HPS that is 2 to 3 of the highest DPS.

In any case, it's a mixture of both the output of healers and the passive mitigation from tanks.

Snipping numbers.

DK in WoW has not been a cream-of-the-crop tank since Cata iirc. It did get to shine in mythic plus dungeons due to self healing and kiting abilities, but not in raids where mitigation vs damage mattered most. None of its CDs scream "I won't die muwahahaha" like the warrior's or paladins (I happen to main these three until BFA where I played monk for the whole month before I quit lol). Early Legion Blood DK didn't even have Icebound Fortitude so Outside of VB, DK has bad/situational CDs (DRW is used as a DPS CD more than a defensive one). Later Bliz realized it and added IBF back.

Paladin's Immunity CD is a talent that competes with 2 very good talents (reduced CD on the other 2 CDs that you gain more usages or ability to heal self or others more frequently) so it is not a solid pick.

Regardless, my point was that game IS MUCH FASTER. TBs happen MUCH more frequently, like something between 20s to 30s. CDs are there to force, cheese, or save bad situations. In FFXIV CDs aren't there for that purpose, they are there to mitigate, and the damage we have to mitigate is much less frequent. Like once every what, 1.5 minutes average? Inner Beast is NOT designed for this type of damage pattern.

In O10S, tanks will either use immunity/cheat death on Tail's End, or throw all they have without going into tank stance. In cases where they have neither, they will ask healers for shields, DPS for feints and palisade, they still won't go into tank stance. We ARE risking death over losing DPS because it simple IS doable. People only take risks if they see the rewards and in this case the reward is quite high and the risk is negligible.

But at the same time, designing the new tank to feed into this "Damage is irrelevant outside of Tankbusters" and "Just play as a Beefy DPS because your passive mitigation is nuts" offers little itself and in fact just causes more work to need to be done if an overhaul to the game balance is done in the future.

It's also worth noting that this issue stems entirely through scaling too. Given that when you're leveling up and so don't outgear content, then balance is fine. Tanks take plenty of damage and often need to be in Tank stance and roll CD's to keep incoming damage down, while Healers will often be focusing too much on spamming out GCD's on heals and managing their mana to push out much DPS.

Only when you start to get into the wonky end-game scaling does it transition into this "Tanks are Beefy DPS" and "Healers just use oGCD's for healing" scenario.

Scaling is quite slow in this game in general. I honestly have not leveled a tank exclusively through dungeons as a first tank job. My first tanks in ARR and HW leveled through MSQ. In SB I leveled as RDM then SCH then tank. By the time I get to "spam dungeons" I always had either fully crafted sets or the dungeon sets so the damage intake wasn't bad (except in Bardam's, holy poop that dungeon mobs hit HARD).

Regardless, again, I'm not anti-change. I actually do want tank to do "tank stuff" and not be over-glorified beefy blue icon DPS (not that I dislike this play-style either).

I am just saying if they keep things as is, I'd rather not have things locked behind a stance I won't use. It would be bad design. It means I will have abilities that count towards ability number cap (Which I believe is ~25 usable actions) that no one is going to use. The correct way to fix the problem it is the damage patterns, definitely not by adding abilities that do not fit how they design the fights. After all you don't design a car that's going to be always on paved roads and then put a life-boat in the trunk in case of sinking... It's bad design.

Let's use DRK's Dark Mind. It will count as a CD, but then imagine that ZERO bosses deal any form of magic damage. Adding more magic damage reduction cooldowns won't be the cure. Adding magical damage would be.

[Kalise]

Storm's Path doesn't "randomly" give 20 gauge, it always does. (Unless you meant they chose it randomly).

I meant, it seems arbitrarily chosen to give more Gauge than any other skill.

As that's the only reason why that's the optimal DPS combo over the Enmity one. If Storm's Path gave the same Gauge as every other WAR combo, then their best DPS would be their Enmity one.

Similar thing for other Tanks, part of the issue is sticking resource generation into the "DPS" combo's which is honestly an easy fix... Just have resource generation on the Enmity follow up too.

It's not that they're "Heavily penalized" on top of the "Heavy penalization" from Tank Stances. It's only relatively minor things that actually make them inferior which are easy to tweak.

I'm not anti-change, I'm anti-half-change. Don't give me more unfit stuff that you end up reverting 2 patches later (WAR's IR with Unchained).

Well, you seem to be doing a good job of taking every suggestion that is made under the pretense of having things changed so that things like Mitigation and/or Enmity are more prominent things a Tank has to consider and then analysing those suggestions in the current iteration of things.

Which kind of misses the point. Which is that stances and stance locked abilities aren't inherently bad design. They're only "Bad" due to the current issues with balance that make defences redundant and thus means Tank Stances and defensive skills locked behind Tank Stances are unused.

The comparison here came because it is what pops in our DPS meters. In WoW during prog, healers are outputting HPS that is 2 to 3 of the highest DPS.

Again, this means NOTHING.

This has absolutely zero value. This metric is like saying, "I'm wearing a red t-shirt right now. Therefore FFXIV healers aren't healing for THAT much"

You can't just compare HPS to DPS of classes in a PvE environment, because they don't scale equally and are not scaling to tackle equal things.

You have to compare HPS vs incoming DPS from bosses. As that's the only ratio that is important. How much of the damage from a boss is being healed. Thus, how much is being mitigated/shielded/healed by the Tank.

The amount of damage a DD does will not even enter the equation. As it's only relevant in PvP scenarios.

In WoW, as a DK I would be having about the same HPS as the healers in WotLK/Cata/Pandaria/WoD this means that the majority of damage incoming, I was dealing with because I was about matching my dedicated healer in self healing/shielding but also was mitigating damage through defensive CD's. In Legion, I wasn't able to compare as I was maining DH at that point after they thoroughly gutted the DK class for the 3rd expansion in a row.

None of its CDs scream "I won't die muwahahaha" like the warrior's or paladins

No but you were comparing the number of CD's. To which, DK's and Pala's in WoW had a similar number to Tanks in FFXIV with roughly equal strength.

Also, again, WoW Tanks all have active mitigation skills to boot, which serve as mini-CD's when they're basically popping what is essentially Shake It Off/Bulwark/TBN/Anticipation every 5-10 seconds.

Which is part of the difference. WoW Tanks have to deal with damage that is high enough to need a high uptime of healing, even through optimal usage of active mitigation in their defensive stances. This is not even accounting for the TB skills they deal with (Which are as a result, less potent than FFXIV's)

FFXIV tanks don't give a damn about anything except Tankbusters. As such, their powerful CD's seem better because well... They flat out ignore the only damage that matters. Compared to in WoW where ALL the damage matters and the TB's just matter a bit more than usual.

It's not just about the frequency of TB's, but the damage in between them. In WoW and well, pretty much every other MMO, the damage in between TB's is actually threatening. Be it auto attacks or other minor abilities that can't be dodged. It all deals threatening damage to Tanks, so they have to care about mitigation (Often, Active Mitigation as that's been the norm for every MMO released after the year 2000. Heck, even Anarchy Online, released 18 years ago, featured active mitigation for Tanks)

In FFXIV, this is not the case. Passive mitigation and massive shields/HoTs from healers means that most damage is irrelevant.

Scaling is quite slow in this game in general.

It actually isn't that slow. It ramps up pretty fast. Even syncing down doesn't really do much as you still run around being super OP (To the point where as a Healer who's sync'd down, I'd easily out DPS and DD classes that were at the level for the dungeon. Meanwhile, I'd just toss a shield/HoT on the tank and that's them immune to damage for a pack or 2)

Hence why you can also quickly get into the raid meta where Tanks play in DPS stance all the time and healers focus on oGCD's for most, if not all of their healing.

I am just saying if they keep things as is, I'd rather not have things locked behind a stance I won't use. It would be bad design. It means I will have abilities that count towards ability number cap (Which I believe is ~25 usable actions) that no one is going to use.

Yeah, but there's the catch 22 with this.

If you just implement Tanks to fit into the current balance, so Tank Stance is irrelevant outside of gearing up. Then there is much less pressure to do anything to change the status quo and make Tank Stances relevant.

Not to mention, it means severely limiting the design potential of classes and thus if there was ever a change to balance (Which, I think we can both agree, should happen) there would be a lower likelyhood that Tanks that have been designed to be boring because they needed to fit into the boring balance archetype would be changed into ones that are more interesting and capitalize on a new balance archetype.

Take this example: you don't design a car that's going to be always on paved roads and then put a life-boat in the trunk in case of drowning... It's bad design.

It's more like:

Do you design a car to be a 2 seater sports car because you're currently single.

Or do you design a car to be a 4 door because maybe someday you'll start a family and thus be able to use the additional seats. Even if you're still currently single.

The former makes sense if you don't think anything will change, or at least not within a reasonable period of time.

The latter is not the most useful right now, but will fare better when a change occurs.

[Phoenicia]

Some how this is becoming my wall-of-text vs your wall-of-text.

Well, you seem to be doing a good job of taking every suggestion that is made under the pretense of having things changed so that things like Mitigation and/or Enmity are more prominent things a Tank has to consider and then analysing those suggestions in the current iteration of things.

Which kind of misses the point. Which is that stances and stance locked abilities aren't inherently bad design. They're only "Bad" due to the current issues with balance that make defences redundant and thus means Tank Stances and defensive skills locked behind Tank Stances are unused.

I don't see where you're trying to go with these statements. I am saying as long as damage patterns stay as they are, tank stances and abilities locked to them are going to remain bad design as they currently are.

Again, this means NOTHING.

This has absolutely zero value. This metric is like saying, "I'm wearing a red t-shirt right now. Therefore FFXIV healers aren't healing for THAT much"

You can't just compare HPS to DPS of classes in a PvE environment, because they don't scale equally and are not scaling to tackle equal things.

You have to compare HPS vs incoming DPS from bosses. As that's the only ratio that is important. How much of the damage from a boss is being healed. Thus, how much is being mitigated/shielded/healed by the Tank.

Seem to me you just enjoy nitpicking, at this point it feels you are arguing for the sake of arguing. But I'll bite.

the AVERAGE potency of healing spells and their combos vs potency of damaging spells is much lower in FFXIV than in other games. What I am talking about is the healer design. When my base cure is 300, my "better cure" is 600/650, regen is 750, we're not talking big potency when most DPS and tank jobs have a GCD aveerage of ~300~350. In WoW a healer's base heal has twice the scaling of a DPS's damaging hits. And when they can "rotate" heals into combos the numbers just shoot up crazy.

In WoW, healers are designed to combine certain abilities in certain ways to generate more HPS. Or they can occasionally heal a non-priority target. Examples:

- Mistweaver monks have a mastery where their heals can "proc" extra heals. They can also channel mists and as long as they're channeling their main heals on the target are instant casts that do not break the channel. Their HoT acts like AST's Synastery which allows them to "cleave" heal multiple targets. This "cleave" applies even if the target being healed has the HoT (they get the base heal and the bonus 40% on top). By having the HoT on tank/multiple people, channeling their mist on their target, and then heal bombing the tank combined with their mastery, they can output the highest single target HPS in the game. They can amount for crazy AoE heals through essence font.
- Holy paladins use a Beacon (or two) on tanks, then through healing others, the beacon gets 40% of that heal. When they use combos like AW+AM+HS and their AoE heal, the beacon receives 40% of all healing done. Even though the paladin may never target the tank with a heal, they heal them the most. If they DO end up healing the tank, they are refunded mana.

Without details, druids apply hots on raid members, more HoTs means stronger heals. Holy Priests have instant strong heals with CD that get reduced when they use relevant spells. Discipline priests apply atonement through heals and shields and then 60% of any damage they deal heals all targets. Shamans chain heal multiple targets and the more clumped their targets are, the most their healing throughput is.

It does not stop there, ALL healers have some form of "external" I-WILL-save-your-ass cool down that either gives you a auto-resurrection, immunity, massive barrier or ridiculous damage reduction (30~40%). AND they have a raid-wide cooldown that serves a similar purpose but to a less extent (20% damage reduction, massive hot, AoE esuna, etc).

Basically, in WoW, a healer can 0 to 100% their target in ~2 GCDs every 6~10 seconds and absolutely save raid and/or their target once every 2 or 3 minutes. For a WHM to dish out the same effect they can only do it once every minute (Tera + Cure 2) and for a healer to press a I-save-raid button you need LB3 to be present.

Then comes the game design. Of course, healing is meant to be balanced vs the damage we take, not the damage the DPS do..

In Uldir (previous WoW tier), healers are outputting 25~50k HPS. Good DPS would do something like 12~20k. Due to good reason, bosses dish out MASSIVE damage through crazy mitigation via active mitigation that averages 40~60% damage reduction based on your tank. Raid wide damage is added in droves. People take damage regardless (they all get a permanently stacking DoT, or handling a mechanic means raid-wide explosions, etc). The healers end up heal-bombing through crazy stuff. The real test of attrition is to balance how much you need to heal vs how much you can allow for your mana to come back. If a DPS somehow fails a mechanic, a healer MIGHT be able to save them assuming they have the spare GCDs.

In contrast in FFXIV, after a fight, your combined HPS is usually 15k HPS. Healers can keep tanks alive with only HoTs and occasional heal through AoE for most of the fight. And thanks to tanks ignoring the only form of damage that matters to them, tank busters, an oGCD heal before/after tank buster will keep the tank alive. Raid damage intake is as predictable as tank damage. But if a tank stops using CDs or a DPS decides to "sit in the fire", a healer won't be able keep the DPS alive even if they heal-bombs them because they can only heal for so much.

Heck, the game's net-code itself doesn't lend to healing very well. (Remember all those benedections that went off and on CD but target still died? ....Yeah).

This isn't a WoW vs FFXIV comparison either.

In Aion, clerics can 1~100% themselves or their target every 30 seconds. Not 3 minutes. Chanters have a HoT that heals 10~15% of the target's HP PER TICK! And has a crazy up-time (Like 60% up-time or something, iirc).

In TERA, as long as your party aren't getting 1 shotted, you can send them back from 1 to 100% HP EVERY, SINGLE, CAST. (Considering healers are only present to heal mechanical damage, not bad plays).

My point is: Healing in FFXIV isn't as "overpowered" as you make it sound compared to other MMOs. Even compared to the game's damage intake balance design.

Yes, some might argue: We healers can DPS because our healing throughput is "so high". But that is not true, healers can DPS because damage patterns are predictable. There is a good reason why lower skilled groups struggle with healing (because mistakes throw the predictability out the window).

No but you were comparing the number of CD's. To which, DK's and Pala's in WoW had a similar number to Tanks in FFXIV with roughly equal strength.

Also, again, WoW Tanks all have active mitigation skills to boot, which serve as mini-CD's when they're basically popping what is essentially Shake It Off/Bulwark/TBN/Anticipation every 5-10 seconds.

No, I was not comparing the number of CDs. I was comparing the NATURE of those CDs.

Rampart is 90s CD, 20s duration, meaningful damage taken happens at 1~2 minute intervals.

Shield Wall is a 240s CD, 10s duration, meaningful damage taken happens at 10~30 seconds intervals.

I was treating a tank with active mitigation as baseline because without it you're a DPS with a bigger health pool, not a tank. Active mitigation makes the tank take somewhere between 40~60% less damage based on its nature. (e.g. DK takes 16~20% but heals 25% of damage taken back with DS, which they can repeat to heal the 25% a few times, pally outright cuts 60%). Then RNG on top (Parry, dodge, block, etc).

In FFXIV, a tank passively and simply takes 50% of what a non-tank with the highest defense against damage type takes.

Which is part of the difference. WoW Tanks have to deal with damage that is high enough to need a high uptime of healing, even through optimal usage of active mitigation in their defensive stances. This is not even accounting for the TB skills they deal with (Which are as a result, less potent than FFXIV's)

FFXIV tanks don't give a damn about anything except Tankbusters. As such, their powerful CD's seem better because well... They flat out ignore the only damage that matters. Compared to in WoW where ALL the damage matters and the TB's just matter a bit more than usual.

Again, we both know these facts, I do not know why you arguing them with me. I clearly said the same things in my previous posts and in the statements above the quote you are quoting. I am definitely saying as long as damage patterns remain the same in FFXIV, designing abilities in a way that doesn't fit isn't good. A "WoW style" of tanking won't work in FFXIV unless you make the damage we take similar.

If you mean me mentioning how EVERYONE and their uncle has mitigation tools, then it further proves my point of us having too much mitigation when there is barely anything to mitigate in FFXIV. Something I am not arguing in the first place.

It actually isn't that slow. It ramps up pretty fast. Even syncing down doesn't really do much as you still run around being super OP (To the point where as a Healer who's sync'd down, I'd easily out DPS and DD classes that were at the level for the dungeon. Meanwhile, I'd just toss a shield/HoT on the tank and that's them immune to damage for a pack or 2)

It is still slow compared to some other MMOs where certain classes can solo a few dungeons (and in some cases raid bosses) by the time they are half-way through the tier. And DEFINITELY stomping a previous tier without needing the help of artificial buffs like the Echo.

Hence why you can also quickly get into the raid meta where Tanks play in DPS stance all the time and healers focus on oGCD's for most, if not all of their healing.

Not a scaling problem, but a damage pattern problem. Does not matter what your warrior is wearing if he can holmgang 60% of the dangerous abilities coming its way.

Yeah, but there's the catch 22 with this.

Again, in my metaphor with Dark Mind, in a game with no magic damage, adding more magic dampening cooldowns won't fix the problem, adding magic damage does. Unless you KNOW you are adding said magic damage, let us not waste ability slots on magic damage reduction abilities. Get my drift?

Using your 2 seater vs 4 seater. If I know I won't get married because I'm a version in my mum's basement, no point in me getting that sedan and I'll just enjoy my Corvette. (Maybe I have a rich mom, ok?!)

However, if I start going out, getting my skin less pale because of the sun (I know it won't cause me to melt) and actually socializing with people. In that case I will consider the 4-seater or even a van because I probably will meet someone that is interesting enough to invest in.

So yeah, let us stop arguing semantic and sweating details (like you bringing the DK) that lead us to building more walls of text and actually look at what we have in FFXIV instead.

What we currently have is: Tank stance = bad. DPS stance = Good. Abilities locked behind bad stance = bad. Adding more abilities locked behind stance is bad.

The two ways that I can think of to fix this:

First: Change damage patterns from predictable, very long periods of low damage vs spiked high damage abilities to unpredictable, random and moderate damage. Basically reducing the gap between the high and low and making the mode of the graph higher than it is now.

Second: Get rid of stances, base-line tank stance mitigation and DPS stance bonuses.

Retrospectively, option 2 is the easy (and probably less interesting) way out, option 1 will only work for future content but it will make stance-locked abilities relevant. Once you take the step, you can always retro-actively lock abilities behind stances. It was done in Stormblood with DRK (Syphonstrike and Bloodpact became Grit properties).

Personally, as much as I would like to see a stance based play-style, I hate the fact that DRK and WAR can only self heal in their tank stance. I also hate how WAR completely loses access to its on-demand ability, Inner Beast (While DRK and PLD still keep TBN and Sheltron). And I definitely do not enjoy overloaded gauges and/or abilities that try to do too many things. Example: Holmgang trying to pull enemy, which doesn't work on 90% of things, root enemies (meh), prevent knock-back and prevent death. All those "bonuses" are ignored and the one main use is preventing death. But that is a minor issue.

However, if the stances became more of a means to accessing abilities (like MNK's current fists and BRD's songs) with small gaps (5% more damage, 5% less damage, etc) then I don't mind them. I actually find MNK and BRD REALLY fun now. Only reason I'm not playing them is my team's setup (I'm the tank and no one else wants to tank) and lack of gear.

[Kalise]

I am saying as long as damage patterns stay as they are, tank stances and abilities locked to them are going to remain bad design as they currently are.

Meanwhile, I'm saying if damage patterns are changed so that tank stances can be meaningful abilities locked behind them are not inherently bad design

Of course, if things don't change then they will be bad. But it's not in of itself because the design of the skill(s) is bad. It's because the balance of how damage is distributed and mitigated/healed makes those skills bad.

Seem to me you just enjoy nitpicking, at this point it feels you are arguing for the sake of arguing. But I'll bite.

Well, it's nice of you to finally actually compare healing in some way to something relevant.

Rather than comparing HPS values vs DPS values which is a completely meaningless metric.

My point is: Healing in FFXIV isn't as "overpowered" as you make it sound compared to other MMOs. Even compared to the game's damage intake balance design.

Yes, some might argue: We healers can DPS because our healing throughput is "so high". But that is not true, healers can DPS because damage patterns are predictable. There is a good reason why lower skilled groups struggle with healing (because mistakes throw the predictability out the window).

As I say, it's a bit of both. Mitigation and healing both being an issue.

Tanks mitigate a large amount of a most damage so it's easy to cover with just a shield or HoT every so often. Damage is predictable, so its easy to just oGCD things or pre-cast an AoE.

It's not like healers have to spam Cure a bunch and then swap to using the less efficient but more frontloaded Cure II to heal up through damage spikes, like happens in other games. No it's, slap a Regen on the tank and wait for the predictable damage spikes to pop a Benediction.

Or maybe you see that a big AoE damage attack is coming so you fish for a Critlo and then spread it and nullify the entire attack.

This is absurd efficiency in healing. Like, back when I raided as a Healer back in TBC we used to judge healers based on effective healing output (I.e. No overhealing) vs time spent casting heals. Measure any FFXIV healer against that and they win by a landslide because they can minimize time spent healing to ridiculously small values by the nature of how strong oGCD's are and how good single GCD's are at mitigating much of the filler damage between tankbusters.

Yes, part of it is also how tanks mitigate damage, but both are responsible for creating a scenario where the only damage that actually matters in any way is Tankbusters. In doing so, it also means that strong CD's like Holmgang and Hallowed Ground become nuts because they literally ignore the majority of the meaningful damage (As opposed to other games which will have skills like these on similar CD's but they're not as nuts because meaningful damage is happening all the time, often including more frequent, if less deadly, tankbusters)

No, I was not comparing the number of CDs. I was comparing the NATURE of those CDs.

We have too many tools, they last too long and are on short CDs. Most other games have the tanks with 1 or 2 very strong cooldowns that act like our Hallowed Ground.

You literally mentioned about tanks with 1 or 2 very strong cooldowns.

Meanwhile, tanks in other games actually have pretty comparable cooldowns.

Heck, even durations aren't as bad as they appear, 20s in FF vs 8-10s in other games makes more sense when you consider that FF is, by your own admission, a slower paced game where server ticks are 3s and GCD's are 2.5s base while other games are around 1s-1.5s server ticks/GCD's. Meaning that similar numbers of attacks will be performed in the durations.

Really, it's mostly just the difference in passive mitigation against the non-TB damage that's the major thing. With FF having mitigation being passively quite high to the point where it's not much of a threat with minimal healer intervention. While in other games it's much higher, even with active mitigation accounted for, that often requires a moderate to high amount of healer intervention.

Even the TB vs CD timers debate is somewhat notable in this aspect, where some of the onus for mitigating TB's is actually in the hands of healers in other games where they have CD's themselves that will mitigate/absorb the TB to work in tandem with Tanks rotation of CD's. While in FF there is no such thing. A healer can shield the team against some AoE's but they don't have any ST mitigation for TB's, the onus is entirely on the Tanks, which can explain some of the differences in tank CD's that can mitigate TB's between games.

Again, we both know these facts, I do not know why you arguing them with me. I clearly said the same things in my previous posts and in the statements above the quote you are quoting. I am definitely saying as long as damage patterns remain the same in FFXIV, designing abilities in a way that doesn't fit isn't good. A "WoW style" of tanking won't work in FFXIV unless you make the damage we take similar.

Well, because you seem to be arguing in a way that disregards the fact that my entire stance on this topic of stances/tanking was opened with the remark in regards to changing the way damage patterns work as a pretext for the resultant designs.

Then you kept on talking about the designs in the current patterns, ignoring that particular facet, despite me repeating it.

Literally, my first 2 sentences in regards to this particular argument were in regards to changing damage patterns:

This is not an intrinsic aspect of the design and is more to do with how the game has been balanced.

Currently, Tank Stances and their associated skills are unwanted because they're unnecessary because Tank mitigation and Healer output is high enough that damage is never a concern outside of Tankbusters which are conveniently mitigated through CD's.

You even quoted these 2 sentences in your response to the post where they were included.

You then went on to start comparing CD's between games and how the current balance in FF wouldn't work for the referenced design.

Despite the fact that the 2 sentences you actually kept in your response was literally talking about how a change of balance of how damage input (Also, to an extent, healer output) would be necessary to make such designs work.

It is still slow compared to some other MMOs where certain classes can solo a few dungeons (and in some cases raid bosses) by the time they are half-way through the tier. And DEFINITELY stomping a previous tier without needing the help of artificial buffs like the Echo.

It depends on what you compare to. There are some hyperscaling MMO's (Things like EQII comes to mind) where scaling is completely absurd (I.e. Going from level 50-60 is the difference between doing 1000 damage per hit and 1,000,000,000 per hit)

But in most MMO's they do not scale so fast as FF does. Where you'd only be able to feel like an untouchable god in dungeons when you outgear the same tiers raid. Let alone in raids.

Meanwhile, in FF you can reach that stage even before you finish getting gear from that dungeon itself.

Which, you'd know if you'd DF'd to level a tank to gear up.

Not a scaling problem, but a damage pattern problem. Does not matter what your warrior is wearing if he can holmgang 60% of the dangerous abilities coming its way.

Again, it's both. While gearing up, filler damage is meaningful. Scaling causes filler damage to become irrelevant, thus making damage patterns become the problem when you've scaled so only Tankbusters are a concern so that Holmgang nullifies most of the actual relevant damage you'd take.

So yeah, let us stop arguing semantic and sweating details (like you bringing the DK) that lead us to building more walls of text and actually look at what we have in FFXIV instead.

What we currently have is: Tank stance = bad. DPS stance = Good. Abilities locked behind bad stance = bad. Adding more abilities locked behind stance is bad.

The two ways that I can think of to fix this:

First: Change damage patterns from predictable, very long periods of low damage vs spiked high damage abilities to unpredictable, random and moderate damage. Basically reducing the gap between the high and low and making the mode of the graph higher than it is now.

Second: Get rid of stances, base-line tank stance mitigation and DPS stance bonuses.

Retrospectively, option 2 is the easy (and probably less interesting) way out, option 1 will only work for future content but it will make stance-locked abilities relevant. Once you take the step, you can always retro-actively lock abilities behind stances. It was done in Stormblood with DRK (Syphonstrike and Bloodpact became Grit properties).

Okay, so now we're back to what my initial post on this topic alluded to.

I.e. Option 1: Adjust the game so that damage is less meaningless outside of TB's and thus allow stances and stance locked abilities be relevant.

Thus, the design isn't inherently poor, it's the balance of the game that makes them not very good.

If the balance of the game was shifted (Away from the heavy loading of damage into predictable TB's that are easily mitigated with powerful CD's) then stance locked abilities wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.