Have Tanks been dumbed down to much?

[testname]

Oh I read a lot in here, " how Tanks are no different from each other, "

Each Tank is very different from animation to story/theme point, hell, even when you play a WAR or PLD you feel different(I do) and I prefer PLD style over WAR one, from very visuals to rotation(atm in love with Gunbreaker). And it is no brainiac that, if you start to ask people why they play this or that, because they like a "their" Job, and dislike others for theirs reasons.

And if you will pull Argument with "oh well this tank is copy of that or this" each Job needs to heal like healers, so ofc it will be Cure this Cure that Potency, with different animations and name, same with defend CD for Tanks. Skills from Role are merged into Jobs because they were pointless.


As for Tanking, Dumbed down? I am sorry, but what was dumbed down? Because We don't need to use Agro rotation? and that was even hard to do? Nothing fundamentally changed, you still use CD for Tank Busters, its all the same as it was before.

At least now all Tanks are close in damage which is nice. (thank you SE)


For me this is the best expansion by far in game-play and story wise too. I have blast with Gunbreaker, and of course I will get every job to 80.

In others mmo I have played as tank, and really for me at least, each one in ffxiv is very different, we might disagree, as usually everyone has their opinion ^_^

[Kiteless]

As for Tanking, Dumbed down? I am sorry, but what was dumbed down? Because We don't need to use Agro rotation? and that was even hard to do? Nothing fundamentally changed, you still use CD for Tank Busters, its all the same as it was before.

The shift from Dark Knight in Heavensward to "Warrior" of Darkness in Shadowbringers is a clear indicator of dumbing down in the tanking roles. Not even remotely the same class anymore.

[RyuDragnier]

The shift from Dark Knight in Heavensward to "Warrior" of Darkness in Shadowbringers is a clear indicator of dumbing down in the tanking roles. Not even remotely the same class anymore.

I wouldn't call it dumbing down, considering we're still doing more than Warrior does in the fact we're managing MP in order to do damage and have our on-demand shield on top of the gauge management, while WAR only manage gauge. We're still more complex than they are. Delirium...let's not open that can of worms, since we all know it could be better and more unique.

[shao32]

Compared to how HW DRK use to work it's a heavy dumbing down, the only thing that have in common with his older self is hilariously living dead.

[DemonicNeko]

For the most part Paladin and Gunbreaker so far from my experience feel good to play and definately feel fine given the amount of concentration you need to be optimal on them.

I can't speak for DRK since I haven't touched DRK since expansion.

WAR on the otherhand... BOY did they dumb down that job. I actually fell asleep at my monitor while doing Titania EX as WAR once, my god did they not realize WAR dumbed down too far from SB. There is just so little to do as a WAR until IR comes off cooldown then you finally have 10 secs where you feel like you are impacting and need to somewhat concentrate so you don't botch it up. After that you enter a down period that just feels bad to play honestly.

Dark Knight plays pretty much like Warrior. With less utility, crits, direct hits, defensive cooldowns. You just hit 123 to build your beast gauge.... I mean blood gauge. Then spend 50 points on Fell cleave.... I mean bloodspiller. Every so often we activate inner release..... I mean Delirium. With the only real difference is we have to balance our mp.

Compared to how HW DRK use to work it's a heavy dumbing down, the only thing that have in common with his older self is hilariously living dead.

Dumbing down I will 100% agree with you. As for the only thing in common with it old self. I disagree. We still do our soul eater combo to build up blood points. We still use bloodspiller on bosses. We still use blackest night on tank busters. Fact they change the dark art spam with Edge of shadow spam. Lol how funny is that. We still have a mana spam ability. Yes you can argue we are spamming edge less then dark arts would not say way less. Maybe half as much as the old dark arts. We are using mana for a dps booster like the old dark arts. It funny how they just changed it so it looks like we are not doing the dark art spam but in reality we are.

I wouldn't call it dumbing down, considering we're still doing more than Warrior does in the fact we're managing MP in order to do damage and have our on-demand shield on top of the gauge management, while WAR only manage gauge. We're still more complex than they are. Delirium...let's not open that can of worms, since we all know it could be better and more unique.

Now sure what you me we are doing more then Warrior? The only think we have difference from Warrior is Dark art spam..... I mean Edge of shadow spam. Same thing really. Bloodspiller = Fell cleave. Blood gauge = beast gauge. Warrior at less bring more dps, more utility and better tanking cooldowns. Beside our anti tank buster ability called Blackest Night. Do not get me wrong. I love BN but that really the only thing Dark Knights have.

[shao32]

That's if we compared to SB where indeed DRK still share bloodspiller, Quietus and TBN and Quietus was nerfed too so doubt it can count.
But compared to HW? There is nothing left mechanically speaking, except living dead that survive the purge bcs it's DRK theme thing like wth is wasn't the rest DRK theme stuff?.

[Maneesha]

People do want balance, so there is no way going around "homogenization" to a certain degree, and the more balance people want, the more "homogenization" we will receive.

Streamlining tank mitigation skills was needed. Who needs a 40% mitigation on a 4min cd, when also a 30% on 3min cd is enough? At least this way they got rid of possible "meta discrimination" based on their (actual) tanking capability. Imo they also should have streamlined the invuln skills, but since this is one of the sources for "job identity" they didn't touch them, or barely. All invuln skills can still be unique, but the cd's and duration should be streamlined, nerf hallowed's duration and you can lower its cd, living dead might need a few more adjustments then just duration, but it's cd is actually perfect, holmgang could use a cd increase to prevent "cheeses" and maybe give it a selfheal, without increasing the duration of the effect.

As for dumbing down, ofc tanks(and other jobs) got dumbed down. Less synergies, no aggro management at all, but this didn't start with shb, its a process which started with sb. Every class had at least 1 dot, buff and debuff they could apply and had to pay attention to, while performing their rotations and doing mechanics. No aggro reduction options for every class, just a few had them i think in hw.For tank swapping we didn't had shirk, so while so many ppl argue that aggro combo is no measurement for skill, it was still skill involved to reduce the need of aggro combos and was part of the optimization of good and efficient groups. Tank stances were also a measure for skill and every tank had to learn how to use the stances, when it was appropriate to drop the tank stance and get some more dps and when to switch back. Sure for drk/pld it felt cluncky because their stances had resource cost(drk) and/or were on the gcd.

Don't forget resource management. While TP was rarely an issue in boss fights (with exception of instances where too much attack speed could be problematic), in dungeons and aoe fights in general one had to still be mindful to not run out on tp. As a warrior i wonder why didn't the devs implement MP as a resource for warriors after they reworked/removed tp? Sure we never used MP before, but this could have been the chance for them to give warriors another layer of complexity, at least a few skills, but no, another expansion with a useless resource bar which is there because "every other job has it too".

Tanks in this game are simply way more offensively designed then in other games. Instead of using cd's to increase your dmg, remove the need to be in a certain position relative to the target, tanks just press mid-long mitigation cd's and play very similarly to a dps. With the added responsibility of positioning the bosses.

So to answer in a simple term, yes they did dumb down tanks, and consequently other jobs, by removing any aggro management, debuffs which provided synergies, by the removal of a lot of dot skills from almost every job and a lot of ogcd skills which jobs previously had or any "proc" we might have had (at least for tanks)

The devs and some people argue that it was needed to fight the "button bloat", and its true that this is one way of handling it, but there are also other methods,like the inner chaos buff from infuriate or how the dancer skills "transform" into a different purpose skills when performing the dances, why not having combo finishers which grant such kind of temporary buffs and transform other skills to re-purpose what they do?

Even after writing all this and missing some of the things we had, i do still think its fun to play a tank job.

[FallenWings]

Tank changes this expansion:

- You don't have to press an aggro combo(that took up hotbar space) once per fight/add spawn and you and your party members have more hotbar space and skill slots to be used on far more interesting skills than maintenance skills like Diversion and Invigorate.
- Newer tanks won't be intimidated by aggro ""management"" due to gear and inexperience, improving tank accessibility.

- Each tank now has a quick reaction CD in the form of RI/Sheltron/TBN/HoS for self buff and SiO/DV+Wings/DMis/HoL for raid buff on top of Reprisal rotations. Every tank also has supplementary TBN/NF/HoS+Aurora/Cover+Intervention+Clemency for co-tank/party member support.

- PLD and WAR rotations have been expanded, GNB has been added and DRK has been revised.
> DRK has never been more flexible and has the most interesting gains with raid buffs and control of its damage output. 10% more CPM from spamming Dark arts 3 more times than Edge and pressing 1-2-3 faster from BW haste is anything but complex or interesting. GCD manipulation from TBN Blood was the extent of SB DRK complexity.
> GNB is no more "big brain" than DRK because they have to press 4-5-6 every 30 seconds and press their resource free and hardfixed Continuation 2 more times than Edge per minute.

Tank damage and mitigation has been balanced across the board. Tank damage at most percentiles is a 3% difference from the top(GNB) to the bottom(DRK). 3%.
No single tank has claim over DPS as their "identity" whilst also being ironically the most effectively durable tank. They all fill the basic requirements to clear content equally and can comfortably compete with eachother in damage with the deciding factor being more the player's personal skill than the class they play.

They all have access to a similar suite of mitigation options (PLD being a minor outlier) options with slight tinges of flavour in DM, Thrill, TBN and Cover/Passive Block.

All actual tank relevant metrics and meaningful contributions like mitigation, positioning and damage are still present and have been expanded upon.
Aggro has been effectively streamlined because it is a pointless and shallow mechanic with no real gains from excelling in.

So... no. Tanks have not been "dumbed down". Not actual tank worthwhile tank mechanics and metrics. If you think tanks are more "Blue DPS" than before, then you clearly have not played this game in any prior expansion.

Bonus graph for tank damage differences to further illustrate the great state of balance:

[EpicOverlord85]

I wouldn't call it dumbing down, considering we're still doing more than Warrior does in the fact we're managing MP in order to do damage and have our on-demand shield on top of the gauge management, while WAR only manage gauge. We're still more complex than they are. Delirium...let's not open that can of worms, since we all know it could be better and more unique.

I disagree whole heartedly that we have to manage our MP.

HW, oh god yes. If you didnt you wouldn’t be able to use any of your aggro generators, AOE skills, and Darkside would fall off which wasn’t good for obvious reasons.

SB, a little less so. You could spam Dark Arts constantly, but still had to be careful not to spam Abyssal too too much as it could still bottom out your MP quickly. Darkside could no longer fall off if you ran out of MP though so that was no longer a thing.

ShB, no. You literally just let it hover at 6,000 so you can use Edge/Flood with the extra 3,000 being held in reserve for TBN. Nothing other than those three skills run off of our MP and it’s child’s play to keep track of it. Unleash, Unmend, Abyssal, Spam them to our hearts content (jk Abyssal is now on a stupidly long cool down for what it does now).

[EpicOverlord85]

Dark Knight plays pretty much like Warrior. With less utility, crits, direct hits, defensive cooldowns. You just hit 123 to build your beast gauge.... I mean blood gauge. Then spend 50 points on Fell cleave.... I mean bloodspiller. Every so often we activate inner release..... I mean Delirium. With the only real difference is we have to balance our mp.



Dumbing down I will 100% agree with you. As for the only thing in common with it old self. I disagree. We still do our soul eater combo to build up blood points. We still use bloodspiller on bosses. We still use blackest night on tank busters. Fact they change the dark art spam with Edge of shadow spam. Lol how funny is that. We still have a mana spam ability. Yes you can argue we are spamming edge less then dark arts would not say way less. Maybe half as much as the old dark arts. We are using mana for a dps booster like the old dark arts. It funny how they just changed it so it looks like we are not doing the dark art spam but in reality we are.



Now sure what you me we are doing more then Warrior? The only think we have difference from Warrior is Dark art spam..... I mean Edge of shadow spam. Same thing really. Bloodspiller = Fell cleave. Blood gauge = beast gauge. Warrior at less bring more dps, more utility and better tanking cooldowns. Beside our anti tank buster ability called Blackest Night. Do not get me wrong. I love BN but that really the only thing Dark Knights have.

I actually miss Dark Arts. It was always fun to pick and choose what I wanted to boost with it (when I wasn’t using it on Soul Eater at least). Dark Arted Abyssal spamming with OG Blood Price running in the background was always satisfying!