Will ShadowBringers make tanks feel more unique?

[Bright-Flower]

DPS seem different enough to me, though I haven't played every job to be fair. But Nin/Drg/Mnk feel different enough to me. SMN/BLM/RDM like the TC said are all different enough.

There is a certain level of homogenization in the tanks/healers when it comes to their base abilities. Because these roles all have to cover certain things. Every tank is going to get rampart, have a longer cd bigger mitigation tool like sentinel, some version of temp immunity like hallowed ground.They'll all have an aoe enmity move and an enmity combo and a dps combo.

I haven't played WAR so maybe I'm wrong by not being able to factor them in, but when it comes to higher level play, I don't think DRK and PLD are identical though.

PLD for example doesn't manage mp int he same way drk does. Unless you have to use an emergency clemency if the healers go down or something, you pretty much only use mp for holy spirit spamming. PLD dps basically cycles between phyiscal phase where we use FoF > goring blade > RA > RA > goring blade again before FoF falls off, and magic burst, requiscat > holy spirit x5. Then, we go back to our dps combos where we regen that mp via riot blade and shelltron procs.

Dark Knight I haven't played as much but manages its mp and mp regen much more intricately, choosing when and what to dump MP into via dark arts and having different means of getting mp back. With more things to spend their gauge on where PLD only has shelltron and intervention.

While they both have some similar base tools, and I could play both jobs with the same key binds if I wanted to do the bare minimum, I feel like playing either of these jobs at a high level would be quite different.

[Phoenicia]

Oh no! There it is, the "H" word again!

There is a certain level of homogenization in the tanks/healers when it comes to their base abilities. Because these roles all have to cover certain things. Every tank is going to get rampart, have a longer cd bigger mitigation tool like sentinel, some version of temp immunity like hallowed ground.They'll all have an aoe enmity move and an enmity combo and a dps combo.

What's you're describing here is the bare minimum "REQUIRED TOOLS" to fulfill their jobs as tanks. People are just abusing that homogenization word without really knowing what it means anymore I think. It's the same vein of people asking for PLD to get snap enmity so pulling as a PLD is atrociously bad as it is now. Is that homogenization or is it asking for bare minimum functionality for the role?

When you make things too different, you more likely than not end up with balance issues. Just look at Defiance vs ShO/Grit. What that's causing is:

PLD/DRK: "oGCD and no MP cost so it's better and we want it!"

WAR: "No you can't have it because it doesn't grant immediate eHP like yours!"

And a very long argument will start like "you can IB which gives enormous eHP in both HP and dmg reduction", but if WAR is spending a GCD to gain the benefit of defiance as is, then why are PLDs and DRKs asking for it to not cost them a GCD and we're back a full circle.

No imagine SE decides that tanks shouldn't all have enmity combos and instead decide to give only 1 of the tanks a combo, the other tank purely OGCDs and the third tank a stand alone enmity GCD.

The enmity combo tank will be the least desired to tank because the enmity combo will desync them from raid buffs... Unless they make the enmity combo their biggest damage (HW WAR) and you will have the guaranteed best MT and worst OT in the game.

The purely oGCD enmity tank and the 1 GCD enmity tank can also cause same issues. If the GCD is a DPS loss (kinda like single target Flash) then the tank that has it doesn't wanna use it.. If it's a DPS gain, refer to aggro combo tank. oGCD enmity tank might be the best one as far as enmity is concerned, kinda like how DRK right now is, where DA Plunge is DPS neutral, and DADP and DAPS are minuscule loss/neutral.

So now I'm confused, because so many have homogenization-phobia we're throwing the balance out the window, but these same people are also crying for tank balance when the balance issues are present because tanks aren't at the same level when it comes to basic functions:

1- Enmity: PLD utterly sucks.
2- Damage: WAR has the "ease of access" that it can be too far ahead. Even if the other two tanks can theoretically deal more damage, fights don't cater to 100% uptime and WAR's burst makes it unfair to even DPS jobs.
3- AoE Damage: PLD's AoE damage just doesn't exist (it's the bottm, even healers do more damage). WAR is third or fourth top where only BLM and SMN are guaranteed to deal more DPS in AoE.
4- Mitigation: Holmgang is retardedly busted, Living Dead sucks donkey butts (yes, plural).
5- Raid Mitigation: PLD hogs them all, WAR has no business having an AoE shield, DRK is in the gutter for this. You shouldn't give jobs exclusivity to mandatory tools in a game where you only have spots to pick (soon even less than) half the jobs in the game for a raid.

What we have now:
PLD can heal, help mitigate, cover, raid mitigate, self mitigate (enough to MT anyway), and deal respectable damage in raids.
WAR ignores half the mechanics (thanks to holmgang), kitchen sink the other half, and if it comes short, PLD or DRK can help it, it also deals ridiculous damage in raids and applies slashing.
DRK can mitigate more than WAR or PLD, but WAR and PLD don't care because holmgang and Cover and tank swaps.... DRK can do the same DPS as a WAR, but good luck finding a player good enough to know how to do it.

Homogeneity? Really? Is it because all 3 tanks have, gods forbid, (almost) the same enmity tools and share Rampart and Reprisal? Is your Honda Civic the same as my Porsche Panamera Turbo because they both have air-conditioning and blue tooth? Or is a train a car because both have wheels to travel on the ground?

[Chrono_Rising]

So now I'm confused, because so many have homogenization-phobia we're throwing the balance out the window, but these same people are also crying for tank balance when the balance issues are present because tanks aren't at the same level when it comes to basic functions:

I think I disagree with large chunks of this post. Not necessarily because it is factually wrong, but because it misses the point people who ask for both uniqueness and balance want.

When you make things too different, you more likely than not end up with balance issues. Just look at Defiance vs ShO/Grit. What that's causing is:

PLD/DRK: "oGCD and no MP cost so it's better and we want it!"

WAR: "No you can't have it because it doesn't grant immediate eHP like yours!"

And a very long argument will start like "you can IB which gives enormous eHP in both HP and dmg reduction", but if WAR is spending a GCD to gain the benefit of defiance as is, then why are PLDs and DRKs asking for it to not cost them a GCD and we're back a full circle.

It is not so much that the difference creates an imbalance, its more like the rest of the kit makes drawbacks irrelevant. PLD/DRK have costs associated with their stances, and is balanced with warrior not getting immediate benefit, until you can equilibirum immediately after tank stance and not lose anything. But you are locked into the tank stance for 10 seconds and take a damage penalty, until you pop unchained and you subvert this.

Warrior’s kit is designed around stance dancing, at the time of writing it is the only tank which actually sees full skill changes based on what stance it is in along with unique effects, and because of this design if you need to swap into tank stance you have multiple options for dealing with the repercussions. Even though, used effectively, warrior’s tank stance can HP shield more damage than either grit or shield oath can mitigate.

Ok, having an advantage in one area doesn’t destroy things but lets keep going.

1- Enmity: PLD utterly sucks.

Valid, very valid. But having mained paladin for the majority of this expansion I don’t mind too much. Why? Because in raids my cotank can play to my strengths. Warrior and and similarly Dark Knight can pick up the slack in this area, and in turn paladin can help them in mitigation. What was a weakness in paladin becomes a strategy in which two tanks can synergize.

2- Damage: WAR has the "ease of access" that it can be too far ahead. Even if the other two tanks can theoretically deal more damage, fights don't cater to 100% uptime and WAR's burst makes it unfair to even DPS jobs.

Yes, this is another point in the design category for warrior like tank stance. Because fight design typically has intermissions/nontargetable periods warrior ends up excelling in damage over the other two tanks. Even if in 100% uptime fight either paladin or dark knight would pull ahead. The problem is once again “theoretically they are equal” and practically the fight design tends to favor warrior.

3- AoE Damage: PLD's AoE damage just doesn't exist (it's the bottm, even healers do more damage). WAR is third or fourth top where only BLM and SMN are guaranteed to deal more DPS in AoE.

Warrior again? Seeing a pattern in these examples lol.

4- Mitigation: Holmgang is retardedly busted, Living Dead sucks donkey butts (yes, plural).

Warrior again? Not to mention things like vengeance is a 2 minutes cooldown and is 5 seconds longer than other tank large cooldowns and has a counter attack attached to it, thrill of battle restores HP and increases max hp by 20%, and tank stance is readily available with equilibrium to bump up the HP difference and unchained to make up for tank stance penalty.

5- Raid Mitigation: PLD hogs them all, WAR has no business having an AoE shield, DRK is in the gutter for this. You shouldn't give jobs exclusivity to mandatory tools in a game where you only have spots to pick (soon even less than) half the jobs in the game for a raid.

Warrior is not first! Oh its second. And while that shield isn’t great, it is a shield which means that it can be turned into dps with the way limit breaks can charge off shielding critical damage.

The point that is missed, is that though all the tanks function nearly equivalent relying on a dps combo and similarly themed cooldowns, the tanks are not in an equitable situation when it comes to the usefullness of their kits to a party. All too often Wariror and Paladin occupy the 1 and 2 spot, and while dark knight can shine, the areas where it shines is usually a dungeon.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

My point was: People throwing the "Homogenization" word as if it's a new medical phobia when tanks aren't really alike outside of a set of role actions (of which 1 is mandatory, being provoke, and 2 being relevant and the rest are just "there") and a design paradigm of 3-step combos to fit basic required functions of a tank. Reading your post; You got the point but decided to argue semantics. :P

As for the stances, no where did I point out which is superior, it's just that because they are different, threads over threads over threads and arguments over arguments over arguments keep popping between the tanks how why they want the other tank's "thing" and the other party saying: "My thing is justified because of the rest of my kit"... This doesn't only apply to stances... Which was the whole point of my post.

Having "similar" tools for my basic functions as a tank makes a "way to balance", not homogeneity.

All tanks should be able to snap aggro. Right now, PLD is bad at pulling. You can argue it's mitigated by having others pull for us, which is fine, I don't mind it either... Until the MT dies and I'm stuck trying to "snap aggro" before my DPS dies. This may not be an issue in a long fight like Middy in O10S where tank swaps keep happening so much that both tanks are always on top. But on Final Omega, dead MT means having a 2nd on enmity being a potential target for tank busters, that's bad. Neo Exdeath was a NIGHTMARE with all the aggro resets as PLD. Not to mention Ultimate Refrain where bosses keep jumping one after another and aggro resets keep happening so if MT dies, it's a DPS or healer next, never the PLD.

So yes, we are "working around" PLD's weakness, but that's mainly because PLD brings enough strengths that the 1 weakness doesn't matter. Same with WAR's "weakness" in its stance that rendered obsolete because we're never in it. Then we have DRK where its only real weakness is that it's not WAR or PLD. Which you cannot really "work around" unless by simply rolling WAR or PLD.

Holmgang and Living Dead is another example of how "different" can be bad. i.e. their CDs should be reversed. I used to say this since HW, LD is worse than Holm in every sense, especially being dispellable. Funny enough, the "dispelling" of my ultimate killed me yesterday just 30 minutes before I made my post when my WHM fat fingered Benediction just after the first hit of Ifrit's 3 hit Tank buster.

At the very least, these 2 CDs should be the same (3 or 5) since they functionally do the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I "get" why Holmgang is ok to be as it is. WAR is the only tank with its on-demand mitigation being stance locked while PLD and DRK can still access Sheltron and TBN out of tank stance. It's a crutch it "needs" because without it, we're just gonna die to TBs. But WAR shouldn't need it in the first place when this "crutch" is stronger any of the "fully healthy limps" the tanks have as we end up ignoring half the tank busters in any given fight. All of that because it had to be the "different tank that stance dances".

Which brings us to the other point I made about PLD hogging all the tank team-support bar-Shake it Off and you end up with this solid combo that you never want to not have: Tank ignores half the mechanics, second tank helps the first tank ignore the half it can't ignore.

All this because what? You don't want "homogenization"? What I was saying is: They're doing it wrong. And just a wheel doesn't make a car.

[Shurrikhan]

I think I disagree with large chunks of this post. Not necessarily because it is factually wrong, but because it misses the point people who ask for both uniqueness and balance want.
<snip>
The point that is missed, is that though all the tanks function nearly equivalent relying on a dps combo and similarly themed cooldowns, the tanks are not in an equitable situation when it comes to the usefulness of their kits to a party.

This.

Too often we seem to forget that homogenization does not necessarily equal in-practice parity. Often, it does not even correlate with it.

We've at least as frequently seen the reverse, in fact, following homogenization incidental to ("balance-easing") streamlining and simplification, be it in Rift or WoW or even more ARPG-like games, where while the kits became more similar in how they felt and played, the actual performance gaps got larger and, even more so, the diversity of optimal compositions diminished. Trimming the total span of tools to what was considered most meritable and necessary meant that classes/specs/jobs fell into or out of use over the smallest of differences in the individual skills, where they could previously keep themselves afloat on--and deserve experimentation through--myriad more factors.