How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[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.

[Kabooa]

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

Ever consider maybe the problem is that the damage rotation itself has very little room to actually excel in?

[J-Reyno]

Ever consider maybe the problem is that the damage rotation itself has very little room to actually excel in?

I'm not sure I get what you're suggesting, but if I understand then there are ultimately two options if you allow more room for tanks to "excel" in damage.

1) Tanks who "excel" are able to do more damage than now, solving the issue of tanks being very low impact compared to the other roles. This would be good

2) Tanks can "excel" in their role but the damage ceiling remains the same, and bad tanks do even less damage. So tanks doing their job properly end up working harder for the same contribution.

The second scenario is unacceptable. The first is good, but this is essentially a roundabout way of saying that tanks need more damage, and I'm not really concerning myself with the how right now. Whether they change the rotation, adjust the formula for tank damage so that we get more out of the current rotation, or just straight up increase potencies, doesn't really matter. If tanks get more damage out of it, then that's fine.

[Kabooa]

2) Tanks can "excel" in their role but the damage ceiling remains the same, and bad tanks do even less damage. So tanks doing their job properly end up working harder for the same contribution.

What exactly is wrong with this level of contribution other than "I don't like it"?

You have 8 glasses and a bucket. The glasses have 3 sets, and every glass within its set is the same size. The bucket's size is equal to the total volume of the 8 glasses multiplied by .8.

No matter how you adjust the the glasses, the bucket will always require .8 from each glass to be filled to the top. If you make one set of glasses bigger, the bucket increases. If you make one set of the glasses smaller, the bucket decreases.

To fill the bucket, you must use all three sets.

Explain to me why the glasses of one set should be bigger or smaller, as long as the glasses within the set are the same size.

[J-Reyno]

What exactly is wrong with this level of contribution other than "I don't like it"?

You have 8 glasses and a bucket. The glasses have 3 sets, and every glass within its set is the same size. The bucket's size is equal to the total volume of the 8 glasses multiplied by .8.

No matter how you adjust the the glasses, the bucket will always require .8 from each glass to be filled to the top. If you make one set of glasses bigger, the bucket increases. If you make one set of the glasses smaller, the bucket decreases.

To fill the bucket, you must use all three sets.

Explain to me why the glasses of one set should be bigger or smaller, as long as the glasses within the set are the same size.

We all understand how the damage distribution works, what we are discussing is whether that damage distribution between the roles is appropriate and how it leaves one role feeling less impactful than others. I've also addressed this exact question multiple times, including the actual OP, and most recently here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5188337

It essentially boils down to asking why, if tanks are going to have the damage of a support, do they not have a full bar of powerful personal and party mitigation tools that are necessary and needed to complete content. If I'm going to do the damage of a support role, then I need more than a watered down dps rotation for my moment-to-moment gameplay. Where are my skills that I use consistently and frequently to tank like the healer's heals? Because pressing a mitigation skill every 60-90 seconds ain't it.

If managing my damage rotation is going to be 99% of my gameplay, then I'm going to need to do more damage than a healer role who gets all these powerful heals and then has a one-button rotation for damage.

This may or may not be something that matters to you, but this is not about whether the role CAN contribute, it's about HOW it contributes. This is something that will be a matter of opinion, but hopefully we can at least reach that understanding and stop going in circles about how the damage distribution between roles works.