How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Edax]

Personally I wish tanks did more damage, not much maybe 1k-1.5k across the board but it is what it is.

Problem with mindset if it was not for DPS optimization the tank role would be utterly boring outside of mechanic heavy encounters, and even then once you learn the fight at that point what else is there to strive for? Not like threat management is a thing, or positioning is all that difficult. Personal damage does matter because it is something outside of the fight a tank player can strive to improve an optimize.

Leaving that aside from a sense of progression and character growth it is honestly a crappy feeling having the top end be more or less where we were lack expansion. Just my two cents on the subject. Either way it is a personal desire, that is why I also said it is what it is, because tank balance has never been this close before and it is a personal issue I have, though I do wish war was a tad more engaging to play, but that is another issue.

You don't need a tank buff to achieve a personal damage high score. If anything, asking SE for a tank dps buff defeats the whole purpose of personal achievement cause it's not personal improvement that's driving up the numbers.

[Awha]

You don't need a tank buff to achieve a personal damage high score. If anything, asking SE for a tank dps buff defeats the whole purpose of personal achievement cause it's not personal improvement that's driving up the numbers.

Striving for optimization and wanting more personal damage do not have to be one in the same. Having a higher DPS potential in terms of percentage of how close they are to a pure dps adds the sense of personal growth and reason to push ahead. It is a personal reason, I did not mean to imply they were one in the same, I still strive for optimization as is, even if it personally a crappy feeling that overall my high end is a lower over percentage then the expansion before. Personally it did hamper my motivations for playing, on the top the reasons like the blandness of the wars playstyle but that is another thing. What I was trying to but did not do very well in reply to the person quote was that personal damage number and percentage compared to pure dps does play a large role in the motivating factor and the reason many tanks enjoy the role. Overall having engaging classes / roles across the board is important from a game having means of measuring your performance against others not just within your role is entertaining, while also being selfish.

Did not mean to imply that they are one in the same, they were meant to be two different thoughts in that post.

Granted, I do think people would whine less about overall damage if the tank class was far more engaging in terms of play style and raid responsibility / involvement. Do not get me wrong tanks are still important, but the play style is bland, and the damage aspect really made FFXIV a unique experience.

[Quor]

What I was trying to but did not do very well in reply to the person quote was that personal damage number and percentage compared to pure dps does play a large role in the motivating factor and the reason many tanks enjoy the role.

If ACT and FFlogs did not exist, no one would know what their damage numbers were. Would this change your motivation and reason for playing a tank? I won't pretend to speak for others (or "many" tanks) so I'll say that my motivation for playing a tank is to tank. Not to deal damage. If I want to deal damage I play SAM, or DRG, or DNC, or any of the other dps classes. When I'm on tank I do as much damage as possible, sure, but it's always secondary to doing the necessary things a tank needs to do.

[Awha]

If ACT and FFlogs did not exist, no one would know what their damage numbers were. Would this change your motivation and reason for playing a tank? I won't pretend to speak for others (or "many" tanks) so I'll say that my motivation for playing a tank is to tank. Not to deal damage. If I want to deal damage I play SAM, or DRG, or DNC, or any of the other dps classes. When I'm on tank I do as much damage as possible, sure, but it's always secondary to doing the necessary things a tank needs to do.

Regarding many it was a poor choice of word, was just going based off my personal experience and experience of other tanking communities online especially warriors. Still many is an assumption since I cannot back it up either way nitpicking aside. Personally I play tank because because I enjoy the role, plus it is nice to be a tiny character tanking a giant monster. That point aside since I do not do ultimate, and things properly differ greatly in that content, as it stands personal tank responsibility is lacking in terms of fight design. It is not horrible, but outside the standard tank responsibly positioning, tank swaps, cool down management not much else to do personally. I mean I am one of those weird warriors who do not want an extension on our buff timer since maintaining that buff is a form of engagement. I have always played tanks for their level of engagement. I wish threat management was a thing, I was wish fights required more tank swaps, I wish positioning had a greater level of importance, I wish they would throw more stuff at tanks to do outside of ultimate.

It is not about the damage per-se more so what the percentage and potential damage mean in terms of engagement. It is not like we do low damage by any means, sure percentage wise it is lower then before but it is not horrible and I do agree tank balance is in a great spot but the engagement is lacking, and while I do not see SE making content outside of ultimate that much more demanding on tanks or healers they could at the very least make the roles feel better to play, and bigger numbers while silly to some for others like myself it is gratifying to see, and starving for that optimization that might to beat a pure dps player even if they are playing poorly is also engaging.

Sure if ACT and FFLOGs were not a thing this may be a moot topic, but the thing is they are thing and I doubt they will ever go away so we cannot deny that personal numbers can be used as a motivating factor, and they should not be belittled for having that motivation especially when DPS orientated tanks and healers have been one aspect that differs FFXIV from other games even if it was not intentionally designed to be that way by the devs it has been that way since I have been playing back during the tale end of HW, and from what I have been told it was like that even during ARR.

I guess what I am trying to say (outside exceptions because they are exceptions) dps has always been that aspect that served as that line between, an okay, good, and great tank, and depending on were your tank fell the visible impact you had on the group was clear. Sure groups were able to clear content with a tank sitting in tank stance, but when you ran into a tank that was able to maintain aggro, be easy to heal, and pumps out insane numbers compared to the full tank stance tank it really added something to the experience. It brought me back to that class awe struck moment of damn that guy is awesome, and it gave me a reason to push ahead. I mean if I look back to that situation in today's context as the game is I would not feel the same, because the difference between properly would not be as massive. Do not get me wrong the game as it stands is still enjoyable and tanks still have ways to shine, and I enjoy the raid design and encounters so far. Just personally does not have the same level of engagement that it once had imo.

Though I know my opinion is odd, since I enjoyed dark arts spam, I found that fun.

[Quor]

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.

How would I like it? Well, considering I have 2/4 tanks at 80, and raid regularly on them both, I'd have to say I don't mind it all. Also considering I've raided high-end stuff since 2.0 (mostly on WAR, even back when it was shit and kept out of parties due to almost-nil mitigation prior to the IB and Veng reworks) I don't mind it one whit. Absolute damage has gone up. WAY up. Relative damage might be different, but each xpac is essentially it's own new game. Just because WAR "felt" like it was doing much more damage in 3.0 or 4.0 doesn't mean that it isn't doing damage now. Objectively, WAR does more absolute damage than it did. All the tanks do more absolute damage than they did. Objectively, all the tanks do enough damage so that any combination of two different tanks (accounting for LB generation via a lack of dupe classes) can successfully clear content. Without looking at damage numbers no one would know that tanks are dealing "less relative damage" than last xpac. And since content is clearable, it doesn't matter that the slices of the pie are slightly different in size. All that matters is that the pie gets eaten.

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"

Without further context on the relative %'s of HP in various raid tiers, we simply don't know what that 15% means. Maybe they cut it by 15% because they realized belatedly that they had added too much HP relative to the damage they were expecting. Maybe the last raid tiers in SB they were more able to form an accurate estimation so a 10% cut was all that was needed. Maybe they just wanted this first raid tier to be an easier tier due to the increased popularity of FF14 via the ShB xpac and this would be a good "entry drug" to get new end-game players hooked on the raiding scene. Until (if) further information on this comment comes out, it's simply a useless number with almost no applicable context.

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.

I don't even know what you're referring to with whatever you're trying to say in the first two sentences, but as for the last sentence, if you're q'ing up as a tank because you're concerned about your dps, then the problem isn't with the tank role, it's with you. Tanks put out as much damage right now as they need to. I'll give you the same answer I gave to Awha above; asking for more dps simply because "it feels bad" is selfish and destructive to the game as a whole. Speaking of Awha:

I have always played tanks for their level of engagement. I wish threat management was a thing, I was wish fights required more tank swaps, I wish positioning had a greater level of importance, I wish they would throw more stuff at tanks to do outside of ultimate.

See, now this I can get behind. "Engagement" isn't the same as "damage" although damage can be a form of engagement. For a tank, engagement would be best accomplished via tank-like actions. Damage mitigation, threat management etc. A good (and probably the only) example of this is DRK's TBN. When I'm on my DRK, I'm constantly looking for people I can TBN. It's not a dps loss as long as the shield breaks, and if the shield does break then it's a pretty great overall dps gain, since a properly used TBN saves healer GCD's, which in turn allows those healers to use the extra GCD's elsewhere (usually damage). DRK is basically the only tank to have that kind of "overwatch"-style of play. GNB, WAR and PLD all want to save their short-timer CD's for dealing with tank busters, and the rest of their CD's tend to be "big" uses, like Heart of Light or Shake it Off or Divine Veil during Quietus in E2S. A reasonable criticism to level against SE in this xpac thus far is a lack of short-term engagement for GNB, WAR and PLD on a level that's roughly equivalent to what TBN brings DRK. You can also talk about how brain dead aggro management is compared to what it used to be, but that's another can of worms altogether.

It is not about the damage per-se more so what the percentage and potential damage mean in terms of engagement. It is not like we do low damage by any means, sure percentage wise it is lower then before but it is not horrible and I do agree tank balance is in a great spot but the engagement is lacking, and while I do not see SE making content outside of ultimate that much more demanding on tanks or healers they could at the very least make the roles feel better to play, and bigger numbers while silly to some for others like myself it is gratifying to see, and starving for that optimization that might to beat a pure dps player even if they are playing poorly is also engaging.

Again, I can sympathize with this. I miss Fracture. I miss (old old) Delirium and Scourge. I'm at once both pleased and confused that GNB has two dots to manage while both WAR and DRK lost theirs. I can understand wanting a more complex dps rotation for anything (tank, healer or dps) in the name of being more engaging or fun, but at the same time, it's important to note that complexity necessarily comes with a price. Namely, the more complex a thing is, the more people expect to "get" out of it, simply on the basis that the more complex thing requires more effort or work to pull off, therefore it should have a commensurate reward. Which just makes sense; if person A works harder than person B, you would expect person A to gain a larger reward commensurate with the extra effort they have put in.

The reason why this is a problem is because of balance. NIN is an excellent example of this, since it's arguably the highest APM job in game, yet until the recent buffs happened, was putting out very low dps. Many NIN's rightfully complained that they had to put in so much more work for a contribution that was significantly less than a person would expect for all that work. Clunkiness of the class notwithstanding, it sucks to work hard at something and not be rewarded for it. Most NIN's would probably be happy with being the lowest personal dps of all the jobs if it meant that their raid-wide contribution was in the top 3. But complexity is very hard to balance in the larger scheme of things, and adding further complexity to a dps rotation for any job means you need to reward said complexity with something appropriate.

In this case, since we're talking about dps, the proper reward is bigger numbers. And since we're talking a more complex dps rotation, we're talking bigger personal numbers. Sure, you could go ahead and add some kind of "debuff" mechanic for tanks, similar to Trick Attack or something, but you would then have to add it to all tanks or else you create a clear bias for the tanks with the debuff. And if you do that then you get what, an extra button to push? An extra combo to do? Each tank becomes a bit more like GNB? Homogenization of the tanks creeps ever forward yet again.

Point here being that I understand the desire for more engagement, but I don't think that dps is the way to go about satisfying said desire. Leaning into the things tanks do is the better option; give us something akin to TBN in some form or another. Put Cover on a shorter CD, take it off the gauge, and give PLD's some kind of tangible benefit to Covering a raid member aside from niche uses like Cover+HG. This is just one idea, but you get the gist. Something that plays to the tank role of mitigating incoming damage that has the same short-term tactical thinking involved in using TBN. Something that engages a tank beyond the usual, with a commensurate reward such that the raid is better off for the tank having gone the extra mile.

[Awha]

Snip [On mobile]

Sorry never meant to imply that I thought engagement inherently meant damage, more so that damage potential can create a form of engagement, and if a player finds that as their means of engagement no other player has any real reason to say they are wrong to feel that way. Engagement can mean different things, for different players. I personally would rather have more reactive / active defensive skills, but my personal view changes like that are harder and more risky to implement in the sense can they make every active skill unique for each tank while being effective and thus not leading the community to alienate tank? Personally I do not think so, tanks are in a weird spot for me, they are well balanced but for the most part I find the ones I use to enjoy most DRK and WAR sorely lacking in terms of how they play, I still enjoy certain aspects like TBN, and while clunky I do appreciate the idea behind Nascent Flash.

This is also where my opinion differs greatly from many I do not believe complexity necessarily has to lead to higher numbers, say if they kept the damage balance the same as it is now and they made two of the tank rotations more involved, while I am sure SE would get a lot of complaints I would have no issue with it, and I would welcome it. I think it is okay for games to have jobs that require more effort for similar output for the sake of balance, but have those classes that require more effort for those that simply to put in more effort. Now this creates a lot of problems which tanks to pick, how does one define complexity, what is the difference between 1 - 2 - 3 and just 1-2 things like that. Once again I am in a different boat them most since I had a blast with the dark arts spam of SB, and cleric stance from HW.

Guess what I am trying to say is I know their are other things SE could do to make tanks more engaging to play, but I do not see them doing it and so I go with the next best thing that has provided me with a sense of engagement which was damage.

[Quor]

Guess what I am trying to say is I know their are other things SE could do to make tanks more engaging to play, but I do not see them doing it and so I go with the next best thing that has provided me with a sense of engagement which was damage.

This is my concern as well. But given that SE tends to have a decent reading of the pulse of the player base, I would rather advocate for increased tanky stuff to do instead of a more dps-focused approach.

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

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

This is another misunderstanding. Any class that does not provide a group bonus only gets a benefit from other group bonuses. Furthermore, a number of group buffs that existed in SB no longer exist in ShB. A perfect example is WAR; it provided a slashing debuff in SB, which was a raw 10% increase in damage dealt by anyone who did slashing damage (which was all tanks, NIN's and SAM's). But NIN's and SAM's also provided the slashing debuff, so the only time the WAR contributed damage to the party was if there was no NIN or SAM, and if the other tank was not a WAR. Since it's fair to say that a NIN, SAM or WAR was almost always in a party, every PLD or DRK likely had a 10% boost to their damage as a baseline. In turn, this means that the raw damage of the PLD and DRK (and WAR for that matter, since it brought a slashing debuff that is no longer in game) is padded by an additional 10% due to the slashing debuff that no longer exists in ShB. This adds another layer of difference between SB tank damage % and ShB tank damage %. Essentially, you want to take about 10% of the damage away from all SB tank stats in order to get a better idea of what actual tank damage was.

If we go by the numbers quoted in this thread (tanks are doing ~75% of dps damage as of the end of SB while in ShB tanks are doing about 60% of dps damage) then subtracting 10% brings SB tank damage down to ~67.5% of what dps were doing. That's a difference of 7.5%, which statistically is almost within the margin of error. Considering other buffs that have been lost (Foe's Req, BRD's passive song crit bonuses,, MCH overcharge or whatever it was called) it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the difference in ShB vs. SB tank damage is a result of the padding of tank dps due to the greater amount of buffs that tanks would benefit from. It's also important to note that SCH and DRG crit boosts will scale better as gear ilvl rises due to the increasing power of crit as a sub-stat, so you'll see higher overall numbers later on in an xpac due to crits hitting harder and more frequently.

[Liam_Harper]

When I'm on tank I do as much damage as possible, sure, but it's always secondary to doing the necessary things a tank needs to do.

I'd like if tanks had more necessary tank things to do. Currently it's just pressing a CD or two, and maybe Provoke/Shirk 3 times per fight. If there an add you hit it and you don't aim the boss at your dps. Sure you can rotate cd's efficiently to make your healers life easier but it's not necessary or part of your job, just a bonus. Emnity is done for you now.

This basically leaves dps by far as the bulk of what makes up your role.

It'd be great if tanking was an active role, that you spent the fight making full use of a toolkit with a wide range of mitigation and self heal tools, to survive a boss that was hitting like a truck. That even your main rotation was designed around mitigation and that dps could sacrifice that and was only something a very good player could push as a bonus. But it isn't. They should give us tanking that involves real tanking, but since they refuse to do that and make us glorified dps-dealing punching bags, we shouldn't hit like wet noodles.

[Rhais]

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.

None of this is good counter argument.
There is no apples and oranges comparison, OPs point was that the percentage of party dps tanks are dealing is a bit low, making the other roles dps relevant to that statement. But what if tanks were all perfectly balanced doing 20k dps each? Not a problem right, wouldn't want to look at what the other roles are doing, that would be a terrible idea, can't balance around what other roles are doing.
The content being clearable right now however is completely irrelevant. No one claimed it's not, no one wants damage increases because content is not clearable. If a damage increase was given then future content would be designed with that in mind and old content does not matter at that point anyway. Bringing a nonissue into discussion does not make for a good counter argument.
No one cares about fights being completed faster. Bringing something like this up when the reasons for wanting a dps increase were fairly clearly stated just displays a problem with reading comprehension.
No one is advocating a dps increase for 1 or 2 tanks, it's all of them. No one is advocating for a dps increase that would throw balance out the window. The assertion that a dps increase couldn't be given to tanks without avoiding an unbalanced mess is ridiculous, it's not in such a precarious place that adjustments would just destroy balance and bringing up a hypothetical scenario as if it's the only possible outcome does not lend weight to your argument.

It seems to me that you are just reducing the statements of everyone that would like to see tanks damage increase a bit to "muh deeps" while passing off a bunch of irrelevant drivel as solid reasoning for having tanks hit like a wet noodle simply because it is your concept of what tanking should be.
No persuasive arguments have been made to back your position.

[J-Reyno]

I'd like if tanks had more necessary tank things to do. Currently it's just pressing a CD or two, and maybe Provoke/Shirk 3 times per fight. If there an add you hit it and you don't aim the boss at your dps. Sure you can rotate cd's efficiently to make your healers life easier but it's not necessary or part of your job, just a bonus. Emnity is done for you now.

This basically leaves dps by far as the bulk of what makes up your role.

It'd be great if tanking was an active role, that you spent the fight making full use of a toolkit with a wide range of mitigation and self heal tools, to survive a boss that was hitting like a truck. That even your main rotation was designed around mitigation and that dps could sacrifice that and was only something a very good player could push as a bonus. But it isn't. They should give us tanking that involves real tanking, but since they refuse to do that and make us glorified dps-dealing punching bags, we shouldn't hit like wet noodles.

This comment is on the money. The tank role in FFXIV is in an awful state and there are two options to address that. They can either 1) give tanks a full suite of powerful mitigation tools that are necessary and needed for the player and the party to stay alive or 2) give tanks more damage to properly reflect the moment-to-moment gameplay of the role, which is currently just doing damage.

The first option requires an overhaul of tank jobs, changes to healer jobs to account for the massively increased utility of another role, and an adjustment to ALL of the game's content.

And this is why the discussion is about damage, because we all know that will never happen.

Giving the tanks a 1k bump in dps, though? Doable.