How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Quor]

No real good counter arguments to the OP were offered though. No one with the desire to see an increase in tank dps was presented with "reason". It was just a subjective opinion that tanks don't need to worry about damage because they are tanks.

Several were offered, most notably:
1 - apples and oranges comparison of tank damage against healer/dps damage. Comparing damage across roles is a terrible idea and should not in any way govern balance decisions.
2 - the game, as designed right now, is completely clearable. This means the content we have in game has been designed with the current dps/mitigation/healing issues in mind.
3 - arbitrarily boosting the dps of a given job won't make fights go faster. Tying into point 2, content is built around certain expected dps levels. Boosting dps just means the content hp gets boosted accordingly.
4 - tank balance right now is the best it has ever been. Just small tweaks - if any really - are needed, and at most we're looking at small adjustments to potencies or perhaps duration on some things (example: increasing Blood Weapon duration to 11s to make it so hitting the 5th hit is much easier due to the client-server bullshit that happens with BW). Screwing with this balance, even if it's an equal % increase across all the tanks, will throw that balance out the window, since some tanks will gain more from that boost and others will gain less. Furthermore, as gear gets better (i.e. crit scales better) you're going to see the damage rankings for tanks get shaken up. Throwing a blanket dps % increase into the mix will really screw things up.

Those are the ones I remember, without going back and reading each page of this thread again anyway. Most responses to this have been a variation of "but muh deeps" couched in a bunch of bafflegarble about relative dps numbers, as if that means a damn thing considering how the content is built around it.

Tanks should be bumped back up to doing about 70-75% of a DPS just like it was before because getting weaker for no reason feels pretty bad. Just my 2 cents.

I can understand "it feels bad" but please understand that "it feels bad" is also selfish. Content is clearable well within margins of error right now with things the way they are. Asking for more dps simply because "it feels bad" is not a reason to throw job balance on the line. The jobs are all balanced for the content in the game right now. Fights are being cleared in about the same amount of time as they were in the last raid tier. Without the presence of an outside dps meter, there's no way anyone would know that they are dealing less % damage, because the entirety of the game is designed to be beaten with things the way they are now.

So while yes I do understand "it feels bad," it's ultimately a stupid, selfish reason. Not to say you yourself are stupid, but that this reasoning is stupid. Wanting bigger numbers simply because you want bigger numbers is stupid when it would come at the cost of what is arguably the most balanced the tanks have ever been. Furthermore, as others have noted in this post, comparing across roles is a bad idea in general, and not something that should be used as a metric for balancing damage, so using that as an argument is disingenuous at best and actively malicious at worst.

[BarretOblivion]

Several were offered, most notably:
1 - apples and oranges comparison of tank damage against healer/dps damage. Comparing damage across roles is a terrible idea and should not in any way govern balance decisions.
2 - the game, as designed right now, is completely clearable. This means the content we have in game has been designed with the current dps/mitigation/healing issues in mind.


I can understand "it feels bad" but please understand that "it feels bad" is also selfish. Content is clearable well within margins of error right now with things the way they are. Asking for more dps simply because "it feels bad" is not a reason to throw job balance on the line. The jobs are all balanced for the content in the game right now. Fights are being cleared in about the same amount of time as they were in the last raid tier. Without the presence of an outside dps meter, there's no way anyone would know that they are dealing less % damage, because the entirety of the game is designed to be beaten with things the way they are now.

So while yes I do understand "it feels bad," it's ultimately a stupid, selfish reason. Not to say you yourself are stupid, but that this reasoning is stupid. Wanting bigger numbers simply because you want bigger numbers is stupid when it would come at the cost of what is arguably the most balanced the tanks have ever been. Furthermore, as others have noted in this post, comparing across roles is a bad idea in general, and not something that should be used as a metric for balancing damage, so using that as an argument is disingenuous at best and actively malicious at worst.

You completely skip the arguements of tanks which are "We all got nerfed from what we were scaled at beforehand." How would you like your job to get their scaling nerfed next expansion? How about your entire role and force other to have to work harder for something that is completely out of your control.
Yeah content is "clearable" but keep in mind this is the first tier and its been stated that this raid tier they nerfed boss HP values by 15% unlike other first raid tiers where they nerf it by 10%. Gee I wonder why??? "thinking"
Maybe its because ranged DPS were doing too little damage and the pressure got further pushed on DPS to do even higher than they normally did in SB to clear content because one whole role got cut down for something they do.
Healers were supposed to be doing less damage according to every info they gave out so healers would focus on healing but guess what? Now they need to even more than ever DPS. The tanks are balanced in their own bubble... kinda, but overall they are behind, just like Physical Ranged are. So yeah, lets just keep cutting down Tank DPS... won't have any effect on the number of tanks in PF, naaaaah.

[Kabooa]

You completely skip the arguements of tanks which are "We all got nerfed from what we were scaled at beforehand." How would you like your job to get their scaling nerfed next expansion? How about your entire role and force other to have to work harder for something that is completely out of your control.
Yeah content is "clearable" but keep in mind this is the first tier and its been stated that this raid tier they nerfed boss HP values by 15% unlike other first raid tiers where they nerf it by 10%. Gee I wonder why??? "thinking"

What do you mean "Force others to work harder"?

The content is balanced around what the jobs can currently output. If tanks gained another X amount, then future content just takes that into account. AKA everyone is actually working harder, because the ceiling shifted, while only a quarter of the group got the boost.

[BarretOblivion]

What do you mean "Force others to work harder"?

The content is balanced around what the jobs can currently output. If tanks gained another X amount, then future content just takes that into account. AKA everyone is actually working harder, because the ceiling shifted, while only a quarter of the group got the boost.

No. As far as my experience has gone there is more pressure right now on DPS than SB (and yes I have cleared Titan already). You also again are completely ignoring 1 key fact. They specifically decided for this tier to reduce the boss's hp values by 15% prior to release than normal. Which means after this tier the next tier will be normalized. Bosses will have 15% more HP and yes, some DPS will get buffed, but when tanks don't get buffed when their scaling is some of the lowest they have ever been compared to dps (some at 60% or less) of a DPS now we got issues with the balance. Solo activities for tanks are going to take even longer, savage will focus even more heavily on DPS to be doing optimal DPS which means more pressure on them. When one job can't bring its fair weight of DPS then that means you have to find it somewhere else. That pressure from Tanks have been transferred to the 'meta' DPS and the healers now nearly doing as much as tanks.

"Oh well that is not normal" I am going to go baised off my group's parses and our healers are breathing down both of our necks within 800-500 DPS. You have to make up the lack of damage somewhere, you are just moving the numbers around, and as I stated "remember this tier is the 1st and is 15% nerfed"

[J-Reyno]

It's all relative. Should tanks dps more and bosses given more HP to compensate? Should DPS be given less dps and more dps given to tanks?
Or is it an argument that tanks should do more damage and bosses be made easier and faster to kill as a result?

If the time to kill a boss is the same, is there objective value in the distribution ratio of dps between roles?

Here we are. I like your last question here because it highlights part of my issue with the low damage of tanks.

As far as the damage ratio between roles, to me it's about the "power" or as some have described it the "impact" of the role. Yes tanking is necessary because you can take the hits, but like I described previously the act of taking hits mostly boils down to pressing an occasional mitigation skill and relying on passive damage reduction. Outside of that tanks perform their dps rotation and work to pump out as much dps as possible. The actual act of tanking/mitigating is not like healing in this game. Healers have very powerful healing and can bring the entire party from 1hp to full in a matter of seconds. This is the kind of thing that makes a role feel strong, in my opinion, and they do this while dealing nearly the same damage as tanks (and in the case of WHM can do more) with what effectively amounts to one-button rotations.

Imagine a game like Overwatch, which might be a hasty example given the more varied design of heroes in that game's roles. Assuming you're familiar with the game, do you think it would be appropriate for healers in Overwatch, with their very powerful healing, to be able to consistently deal as much damage or even outdamage tank heroes? Of course tanks would still be mandatory so as long as you're taking hits and preventing damage you're doing your job, but do you think that would make healer heroes feel more powerful than tank heroes? And even if you feel like this would be okay, does it make sense how even with multiple mandatory roles that are balanced for teamplay some can feel more impactful than others?

I'm just trying to help with an understanding of these particular concerns. I'm sure someone will decide to say that Overwatch is a PvP game so it's different, but in this scenario two tanks are mandatory in a team so the game would be balanced appropriately around the damage distribution. The only remaining issue is the impact of the roles within that distribution, which is what we're discussing here.

Hell I'd even argue that it's worse in FFXIV because at least tanks in Overwatch have consistent, active mitigation for their role. You can even protect your team in very meaningful ways that require active decision-making. In FFXIV we just dps for the most part. Most of the role's impact is passive and what we actively spend almost all of our time doing (dps) is weak.

[Samsta]

No. As far as my experience has gone there is more pressure right now on DPS than SB (and yes I have cleared Titan already). You also again are completely ignoring 1 key fact. They specifically decided for this tier to reduce the boss's hp values by 15% prior to release than normal. Which means after this tier the next tier will be normalized. Bosses will have 15% more HP and yes, some DPS will get buffed, but when tanks don't get buffed when their scaling is some of the lowest they have ever been compared to dps (some at 60% or less) of a DPS now we got issues with the balance. Solo activities for tanks are going to take even longer, savage will focus even more heavily on DPS to be doing optimal DPS which means more pressure on them. When one job can't bring its fair weight of DPS then that means you have to find it somewhere else. That pressure from Tanks have been transferred to the 'meta' DPS and the healers now nearly doing as much as tanks.

"Oh well that is not normal" I am going to go baised off my group's parses and our healers are breathing down both of our necks within 800-500 DPS. You have to make up the lack of damage somewhere, you are just moving the numbers around, and as I stated "remember this tier is the 1st and is 15% nerfed"

Where do you get that 15% nerf? They are going to balanced boss hp around expected damage, dps are the one who are supposed to have the "pressure" of doing damage, that is their only job.

[Kabooa]

That pressure from Tanks have been transferred to the 'meta' DPS and the healers now nearly doing as much as tanks.

Except, no?

What, are you suddenly going to not care about pushing your damage just because your cap is lower than where you think it should be?

Because -that- makes everyone work harder.

Further, given that every tank in Stormblood, other than Warrior, contributed no actual boosts to the party, if you go back to those data logs and start pruning the bonuses they benefited from, it actually is pretty comparable to our situation now.

Shave off 7-8% from Paladin/Dark Knight, and 10% from warrior. And that's just from slashing, and if you want to be 'technical' about it, you shave off 5%, since you usually had a Samurai or Ninja in the party as well. 6.6% if both.

We dont deal enough damage, we are dealing less damage relative to the content we are doing.

Sure you don't.

[Nedkel]

Except, no?
What, are you suddenly going to not care about pushing your damage just because your cap is lower than where you think it should be?
Because -that- makes everyone work harder.
Further, given that every tank in Stormblood, other than Warrior, contributed no actual boosts to the party, if you go back to those data logs and start pruning the bonuses they benefited from, it actually is pretty comparable to our situation now.
Shave off 7-8% from Paladin/Dark Knight, and 10% from warrior. And that's just from slashing, and if you want to be 'technical' about it, you shave off 5%, since you usually had a Samurai or Ninja in the party as well. 6.6% if both.

Didnt know only tanks used to benefit from team wide bonuses... duh

Shave off these percents from DPS and see what you will get.

[Kabooa]

Didnt know only tanks used to benefit from team wide bonuses... duh

Shave off these percents from DPS and see what you will get.

You get less drastic reductions because it was the DPS and non-White mages bringing those boosts.

The only things the tanks brought was slashing, and that was only warrior, and it wasn't unique to them.

Samurai, Black Mage, and Machinist are the ones who dip once we start pruning.

Ninja shoots up. Dragoon shoots -way up-. Bard might be equivalent to where it is now, but likely raises just a tad. Red mage goes up. Summoner goes up. Astro goes up. Scholar goes down a bit.

Tanks?

They -tank-, with the exception of Warrior since it brought its own Slashing.

[Deceptus]

You completely skip the arguements of tanks which are "We all got nerfed from what we were scaled at beforehand." How would you like your job to get their scaling nerfed next expansion? How about your entire role and force other to have to work harder for something that is completely out of your control.

Every job in every expansion gets "Nerfed" the second they hit level X1 (51, 61, 71) with new scaling.