Will ShadowBringers make tanks feel more unique?

[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.

[Bright-Flower]

I'm not entirely sure if that post was agreeing with me or not because right after the quoted part of my post I go on to explain hat while the same basic fundamental tools are there DRK and PLD dont' really play the same when doing more than the absolute bare minimum rather than saying the jobs are too similar.

[Phoenicia]

It is less about agreeing or disagreeing (it is agreeing), but more about expanding on it.

[Chrono_Rising]

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

I’m not arguing semantics, at least not in the original post. I’m pointing out that differences in basic function does not imply imbalance. My entire post is a reply to the first quote I provided from you about throwing away balance in favor of uniqueness. Using your own examples I tried to make the point that the balance issue arises not because the kits are different, but because the splitting of strengths and weaknesses tend to favor some jobs, but not others.

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.

I am not claiming that you pointed out one is superior. What I pointed out was the drawback to one tank’s tank stance is also canceled by the same tank’s kit and it can be used more effectively. This on its own is not a massive issue, the issue is the same tank is also best in show in multiple other areas. Yes, people want the some of the benefits of what warrior has because it is quite powerful taken all together.

I’m positive I’m not alone in thinking that some of these advantages could be trimmed and spread out among the tanks. There is only so much that can be piled onto one tank.

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

And there is a word for this, it is called homogenization. Tanks do need to have some overlap in skills. I will concede this point. Pure uniqueness will end up having some amount of redundancy where skills and animation are different but they achieve the same end result. Imagine 4 tanks with 4 different buttons for provoke. Seems silly.

On the other hand, we have this direct damage mitigation scheme right now that largely translates across most tanks. Yes, there are some differences but this easily could be an area where tanks differentiate themselves more and fit into job themes.

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.

I have done prog in Omega and UwU on paladin. Yes, your cotank dying can create aggro issues, and sometimes that isn’t easy to recover. However, I would hardly call it a nightmare, and I have personally recovered aggro in many of these situations. On the other hand, there are creative uses in paladin's snap aggro toolkit. I love doing the first floor of maps and healing the person opening the chest to get aggro on all the enemies before they leave the gates. Granted this has limited uses, but also came in handy when my cotank died in M/F and I provoked their boss and used clemency on myself for aggro and to support the crazy amount of damage I was taking while healers got my cotank back up. Optimal? No, cleared? Yes.

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.

I agree with you. Here is a longer way to say I agree with you. This is one of those interesting areas of balance. Second for second Holmgang and Living Dead have approximately equal cooldown time per second of invuln, 30 seconds of CD time per 1 second of invuln time. Again, from the design perspective, Holmgang also has advantages, sometimes the root is a good thing. Also from a similar perspective it tends to be a better skill as it can mitigate more. The drawback is again, for multihit tank busters Holmgang isn’t as great, but most of the tank busters in the game are single hit meaning frequency is valued more over duration.

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".

This is again one of those funny points. Warrior is designed to be the best at stance dancing. Yet we need to have longer mitigation and shorter durations so that we don’t have to stance dance. This is how you end up with a beast lol.

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.

This is where we differ. Homogenization is definitely a path to absolute balance. Taken to the extreme Warrior Paladin and Dark Knight will be absolutely 100% balanced when the answer to the question “What is the difference between the three tanks?” can be answered with “The weapon they use.”

Personally I feel this is a boring answer though, and I hope that we don’t continue going down the road of homogenization. I would much rather accept some weaknesses in areas that matter provided I get to be strong in areas that matter. However, who is strong where needs to be equitably shared, and in that fair split we can find a kind of imperfect balance that is much more interesting. This is the point of my previous post. The problem, which I think your last line seems to recognize, isn’t that tanks are different, it is that tanks are different and the split of what they do best/well is unfairly divided in favor of some.

[Lyth]

There's not a problem with uniqueness or homogenisation. There's a problem with being preferential with how you apply that uniqueness (what's mine is mine) or homogenisation (what's yours is mine). Stormblood handled this very poorly.

It's obvious that some degree of homogenisation will always be required. You cannot have an all around "best damage" tank. You cannot have a tank with a significant invuln advantage. You cannot have exclusive access to raid damage buffs. And if something is to be considered "an essential feature of tanking", then it needs to be applied across the board, not just copied over to WAR.

But if we're going to be introducing in homogenisation, the concessions need to come from the jobs with more advantages, not the ones with less. The reason why people complained about the role action system was because it robbed from the poor to give to the rich. It's high time that we saw the reverse.

We're the ones to blame though, for not speaking up. I'm not going to take a "wait and see" approach this time around. I'm not going to wait 9-12 months for even a mere acknowledgement of balance problems. It's time for WAR's dominance to come to an end.

[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.

[Izsha]

If a job falls out of the meta because of minor discrepancies that is a positive sign not a negative one for balance. If (for example) a dps falls out of the meta because it does 1% less damage than the next job, that is still incredibly close to perfection and a sign the balance team has done an incredible job if the only difference between meta (read optimal) and suboptimal is a "minuscule difference" as you put it, then all jobs are viable.

You will never balance away the meta. Period. The existence of a meta comp does not measure the degree of balance as by definition there can only be a single optimal case. If optimal comps are determined by minuscule margins then all jobs are extremely close to balance, though an optimal set exists. If metas are determined by large differences then balance is bad as the difference between optimal and sub optimal is large.

Balance is simply a measure of variance between optimal and everything else.

Meta determined only by small variations in performance is the best thing we could ever hope for. Not a sign of doom.

[Lyth]

If a hallmark of balance is that slight variations produce shifts in meta, then a stagnant meta is a sign of poor balance. It's fine if there's a different flavour of the month. But when you have the same few jobs dominating the meta for six years and counting, it's probably a sign that they have some exclusive advantages over the rest.

WAR, SCH, and BRD have been a staple of most comps since early ARR, and they picked up NIN and DRG along the way. Even the cast of Shadowbringers have gotten bored of always running their old jobs over this time-frame. Time to change things up.

[Izsha]

Do you want balance or just arbitrary meta shifts. Those are not the same goals. The optimal comp being 1% off non meta comps means everything is not only viable but competitive. That is a hallmark of balance. That means no job being excluded from PF. No one getting kicked. It means you can play the job you WANT to play at any time in any content. That is a far superior outcome than just changing the flavor of the month waiting for your turn to come around again.

The goal is always to make all jobs competitive. If all you want to do is have a rotation of who's on top that's a terribly shallow goal that completely negates the need to balance anything. Just nerf the top guy and buff the low guy. Repeat every 6 months. Giant arbitrary pendulum swings are not a good design philosophy and certainly not a replacement to tight balance between jobs.