How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Shurrikhan]

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

In short, yes. Absolutely. It's not something you'd normally feel in a forced 2/4/2 allotments under heavy homogenization, but it's exactly what allows for flexibility into uniqueness within those role allotments when less homogeneous or flexibility into other role allotments regardless. The rest is "feelcraft", but that doesn't make it quite irrelevant either. Starting from "cruise-control" play, if, say, it took the same amount of effort to increase your useful outputs by 15% on one job or role as it took to increase them by 30% in optimizing either, which do you think would more often attract engaged play? Or, heck, what if it the difference between engaged, masterful play and vague Netflix-muscle memory play was at most 15% performance on one and some 30% on the other? In such cases, the role doesn't matter in itself, but those concerns may need to encroach a bit into the 'allotted damage distribution' in order to make the job's gameplay feel compelling.

Again, I'm not of the opinion that tank damage has been made so low that it no longer feels compelling or our actions meaningful. The difference between good play and poor play, though not particularly demanding at all, is enough in terms of our own outputs that I don't mind if it measures up to relatively little compared to that of a DPS's output. But, I do feel it's nearing the threshold at which our part in the fight (which, apart from hitting an extra "Tanking" action every so often, is just dps) would feel less impactful than it should, which is kind of a first for XIV, where tank damage even in single-target has usually been decently high relative to the DPS.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[VeolE]

I don't know why, but it really irks me at the point on reading some of these feedbacks on this post where it finally got to the point where i'm gonna give out my 2 cents. I'm no raider or do ultimates, but just a mere casual

"You're a tank, not a DPS" Look, we already know we tanks are "Balance" in their own category, but it doesn't hurt for them to be bump up 1kish more. I'll be disheartened seeing a WHM pressing nearly 2 buttons for DPS and somehow out DPSing Tanks. (But the gameplay aspect of the tanks are meh for DRK and WAR, but that's a different topic to discuss)

"It's the DPS job to push out the on said damage" It's not only the DPS to push out the damage too, Tanks and Healers also have to contribute to the raid in terms of damage as well, seeing a tank just tanking and not really putting in effort will be an extra hull to drag on, which meaning DPS gotta push even more. Like remember it's a group effort, it's not solely on the DPS.

I'm only quoting on what i'm seeing a lot on this feedback post.

[Nedkel]

They want more damage.

They're just trying to appeal from a different angle that doesn't make it seem like it's purely for no other reason than "I want it". Which isn't an invalid reason, it's just not a good one.

The amount of DPS jobs have gained after gearing from 440 to 470 (Though 440 was such a marginal gain, our baseline should be 450-470) has actually been pretty comparable.

What does scalling has anything to do with the overall contribution to the team dps?
Tanks are dealing less damage right now than what they used to in comparison to other classes and its a clear and confirmed fact, idk whats your point?
We dont deal enough damage, we are dealing less damage relative to the content we are doing.

It feel worse than in SB, yes "we want" our contribution back to the SB levels and not sit at 50% of dps dps output, because guess it or not there are people who play dungeons and these things are really important due to the team size. I do feel much weaker in this expansion than i was in SB. No longer i could "carry" team with a fellow healer if dps are bad, in SB i could have just burst through the dungeon dealing massive damage, in SHB forget about it especially in synced dungeons it will be a really long and painful slog if dps are single targeting or something like that...

What is wrong with me "wanting" something back? Will it hurt you?

There were several though, you guys just don't care since you have obsession with damage numbers.

Blame SE design choices, where dmg is most important thing in the game.

[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.

[RadicalPesto]

im usually not like this but really enough is enough.

WTH is wrong with you all, you are bitching about tanks not doing the same dps as a dps class whose whole purpose is just that.
are you real? i mean are you real people or just trolls?complaining about why tanks dont hit as hard as a dps,is this for real?
DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THE ROLE IS ALL ABOUT?

Yeah, the tank role in FFXIV is about contributing the highest amount of DPS while completing your role specific mechanics (mitigating for yourself or for others, positioning and tank swapping). Same as every other role in FFXIV.

[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.