How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Quor]

if they Leave tanks as is, players will leave the tank role. simple as that. if you want tanks to tank, it better be fun. You want to argue against tanks, have fun finding them in queue. Enmity is a joke now. tank damage out is a joke. boss damage against tanks is a joke.

Players who are obsessed with damage will leave the tank role, which is fine because they never belonged in it in the first place. It's like all the SCH's who left SCH at the beginning of ShB because they couldn't "dps" like they used too. Those SCH's weren't SCH's, they were dps who wanted fast queue times. If a player is playing tank for the damage, and is going to leave because of a perceived lack of damage, then they aren't a tank and need to be honest with themselves and start playing a dps.

As I (and others) have stated, an argument could be made (and should be made imo) that more complexity can be added to tanks via tank-style stuff such as mitigation or threat management. But fundamentally, tanks are tanks, and tanking is what comes first. If a person is turned off by the damage a tank or healer does instead of being turned on by the tankiness or heal capability of those jobs, then that's not a problem with the job, that's a problem with the player.

[Deceptus]

So long as 6 has new breakpoints that allow for more intensive and deliberate play, yes... yes it is.

Let's keep in mind that the argument you're replying to wasn't just about tank damage. It was also about enmity and damage taken, for instance.

Think of it like one of those output- or stat-distributions into a square or pentagram, each vertex marking some output. Previously there was a greater min-max range between any of those outputs, be it damage, or mitigation, or means of supporting the party. Now, it's almost static. There's little to push or pull on. Part of being a tank before was about deciding how we should spend our time, even if the answers were usually similarly narrow.

Respectfully disagree because in the tank community it largely doesn't come down to how we should spend out time, but bigger numbers. It's almost never, what can I do to make my healers life easier but generally, "They'll pick up the slack, I'm going for more damage!"

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Let's be honest, they removed aggro management because the majority of the casual playerbase were complete and irrevocably too stupid to mitigate their own aggro by pressing one or two buttons throughout their opener and then on cooldown subsequently after that, so SE made it easy for the idiots by removing aggro management from the game. So don't know where this delusion is that aggro management will be making some kind of return to make tanks more complex via that route. As for mitigation, tanks already have enough between the two of them to help out the healers, who also have their fair amount of mitigation tools, as mitigation is pretty much a non factor if you have two brain cells.

SE created the environment that led to current tanking meta which thrived in XIV with Gordias, and harsher DPS checks that forced the tanks to do more than spam aggro combos for days. Although the dps checks have become more lenient, tanks are still expected to contribute as much damage as possible, since in this game dps is the only thing that really matters, and people are deluded if they think otherwise. Sure mitigation can only go so far, mechanics can be done in ever so slight a way all for one purpose...you guessed it MOAR DAMAGE. So any worthwhile tank like any other player, would want to see improvements in their chosen role.

Personally if SE wanted to bump all four tanks equally by 1k dps or so, sure I won't say no. The scaling is off for the tanks compared to the DPS as the graphs shown earlier in the thread, I know they changed the tank damage formula, and Yoshi said himself he thinks tanks did too much damage at the end of SB but it feels worse that you used to be that close but now you're miles behind, but still WHM has the capacity to out dps tanks and that needs to be addressed in 5.1, none of these excuses of but only at this tier or that tier, blah blah blah, doesn't change the fact it is able to if the players are good, and at less effort than playing tank.

[ForteNightshade]

Players who are obsessed with damage will leave the tank role, which is fine because they never belonged in it in the first place. It's like all the SCH's who left SCH at the beginning of ShB because they couldn't "dps" like they used too. Those SCH's weren't SCH's, they were dps who wanted fast queue times. If a player is playing tank for the damage, and is going to leave because of a perceived lack of damage, then they aren't a tank and need to be honest with themselves and start playing a dps.

As I (and others) have stated, an argument could be made (and should be made imo) that more complexity can be added to tanks via tank-style stuff such as mitigation or threat management. But fundamentally, tanks are tanks, and tanking is what comes first. If a person is turned off by the damage a tank or healer does instead of being turned on by the tankiness or heal capability of those jobs, then that's not a problem with the job, that's a problem with the player.

That argument falls a bit flat when tanks have all but become buffier DPS. Gunbreaker practically epitomizes this as does Warrior. This tier is especially bad for how little mitigation you actually need outside Titan, which is why tanks notice how low their damage contribution is compared to what it was. And let's be honest here. I suspect the only reason this change occurred is SE didn't like the idea bad players who died would be out-damaged by tanks and feel bad about it.

Personally, I'm not bothered by it enough to complain one way or another. I do think tanks should be above healers if only because a healer's DPS "rotation" is two buttons—one of which they press every 30 seconds. Tanks actually have a rotation. So it's a bit unfair GNB has to jump through hoops to deal comparable damage to a WHM spamming Glare and occasionally Dia.

Respectfully disagree because in the tank community it largely doesn't come down to how we should spend out time, but bigger numbers. It's almost never, what can I do to make my healers life easier but generally, "They'll pick up the slack, I'm going for more damage!"

Blame encounter design for that. The playerbase merely takes advantage of the tools provided. Presently, there is no reason to over mitigate things at the expensive of your damage regardless of the role you play. For instance, Levi does so little damage, tanks can straight up waste CDs eating the first Temporary Current because it doesn't matter. Likewise, doing things like stacking flares isn't just for tank DPS but the entire party since damage trumps everything in this game. Allowing your tanks to get 3-5 more GCDs while you only trade an Energy Drain for a Soil is a much better exchange.

[Samsta]

That argument falls a bit flat when tanks have all but become buffier DPS. Gunbreaker practically epitomizes this as does Warrior. This tier is especially bad for how little mitigation you actually need outside Titan, which is why tanks notice how low their damage contribution is compared to what it was. And let's be honest here. I suspect the only reason this change occurred is SE didn't like the idea bad players who died would be out-damaged by tanks and feel bad about it.

Personally, I'm not bothered by it enough to complain one way or another. I do think tanks should be above healers if only because a healer's DPS "rotation" is two buttons—one of which they press every 30 seconds. Tanks actually have a rotation. So it's a bit unfair GNB has to jump through hoops to deal comparable damage to a WHM spamming Glare and occasionally Dia.



Blame encounter design for that. The playerbase merely takes advantage of the tools provided. Presently, there is no reason to over mitigate things at the expensive of your damage regardless of the role you play. For instance, Levi does so little damage, tanks can straight up waste CDs eating the first Temporary Current because it doesn't matter. Likewise, doing things like stacking flares isn't just for tank DPS but the entire party since damage trumps everything in this game. Allowing your tanks to get 3-5 more GCDs while you only trade an Energy Drain for a Soil is a much better exchange.

Temporary current will kill a tank. It doesn't even sacrifice the uptime of tanks to dodge it correctly so I dunno why you would do something like that.

[Quor]

That argument falls a bit flat when tanks have all but become buffier DPS. Gunbreaker practically epitomizes this as does Warrior. This tier is especially bad for how little mitigation you actually need outside Titan, which is why tanks notice how low their damage contribution is compared to what it was. And let's be honest here. I suspect the only reason this change occurred is SE didn't like the idea bad players who died would be out-damaged by tanks and feel bad about it.

Personally, I'm not bothered by it enough to complain one way or another. I do think tanks should be above healers if only because a healer's DPS "rotation" is two buttons—one of which they press every 30 seconds. Tanks actually have a rotation. So it's a bit unfair GNB has to jump through hoops to deal comparable damage to a WHM spamming Glare and occasionally Dia.



Blame encounter design for that. The playerbase merely takes advantage of the tools provided. Presently, there is no reason to over mitigate things at the expensive of your damage regardless of the role you play. For instance, Levi does so little damage, tanks can straight up waste CDs eating the first Temporary Current because it doesn't matter. Likewise, doing things like stacking flares isn't just for tank DPS but the entire party since damage trumps everything in this game. Allowing your tanks to get 3-5 more GCDs while you only trade an Energy Drain for a Soil is a much better exchange.

So the solution is to advocate for an even greater dumbing-down and homogenization of gameplay in lieu of advocating for a return to greater complexity?

[ForteNightshade]

Temporary current will kill a tank. It doesn't even sacrifice the uptime of tanks to dodge it correctly so I dunno why you would do something like that.

No, it won't. You can survive quite easily with CDs. You also will lose uptime when Levi splits the platform in two. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

So the solution is to advocate for an even greater dumbing-down and homogenization of gameplay in lieu of advocating for a return to greater complexity?

I wouldn't call increasing tank damage back to what it was as "dumbing-down." And one could argue tanks and healer DPS was homogenized because it's all essentially the same output whereas before the former did more.

Regardless, people have asked for more complexity. The two aren't mutually exclusive nor does what I said still not apply. Tanks have to put in more effort for equal to or less damage than healers spamming two buttons. That being said, we're betting on what horse the devs may actually listen to. While I'd love for boss positioning and debuffs to be something tanks contribute, it's been six years. If they were going to do it. They would have already.

[Quor]

That argument falls a bit flat when tanks have all but become buffier DPS. Gunbreaker practically epitomizes this as does Warrior. This tier is especially bad for how little mitigation you actually need outside Titan, which is why tanks notice how low their damage contribution is compared to what it was. And let's be honest here. I suspect the only reason this change occurred is SE didn't like the idea bad players who died would be out-damaged by tanks and feel bad about it.

Personally, I'm not bothered by it enough to complain one way or another. I do think tanks should be above healers if only because a healer's DPS "rotation" is two buttons—one of which they press every 30 seconds. Tanks actually have a rotation. So it's a bit unfair GNB has to jump through hoops to deal comparable damage to a WHM spamming Glare and occasionally Dia.

It's the first tier of a raid. Deltascape wasn't any different.

As to the healer dps numbers, I don't get why people are obsessing over it, or even considering an outlier to be representative of the whole. The answer isn't to throw another "1k dps" at tanks. Blanketly increasing the dps of four classes by 10-15% "just cause it feels right" (as has often been suggested in this thread) is not and will never be a good idea. Hell, even the engagement argument falls flat. If tanks are where SE wants them to be, then "engagement" means lopping off ~33% of tank dps from their current rotations and adding it back in on a dot or two and maybe another combo. More work for the same result, but hey, at least you're doing something different right? There's this belief extant in this thread that further complexity of tank rotations will (or should) yield more damage. But as is also noted before, this ignores the fight design SE has in mind. Higher dps on tanks will just equate to higher hp on bosses, further devaluing the contribution of actual dps for no reason other than it will make some tanks "feel good" about their damage.

Given that tank potencies are much higher on average than they were in SB and HW, it's highly unlikely SE will see fit to bump damage up at all, especially if the reasoning is a combination of "but the grass is greener on the dps side of the fence!" and "it feels bad." If it feels bad then you shouldn't be playing a tank. If big numbers make you happy, then (as was also noted in this thread) you have 10 perfectly good jobs to choose from.

Tanks are not dps. Tanks should never be dps, even if dps is a major focus of what they are doing, because tanks are tanks, and they do tank things first and foremost. Advocating for more tank-like stuff to be added to the game to emphasize that playstyle is what a tank should worry about, especially given that current intra-tank balance is the best it's ever been. The last thing this game needs is more homogenization, and turning tanks into "like dps, but tankier" is not the right direction to go. Given that all relevant content is clearable by all jobs right now, it's obvious that things are functioning as intended; no one is being left behind, not as far as tanks are concerned anyway. A dps increase as drastic as has been suggested here on any of the jobs is simply asking for current content to be trivialized for no good reason.

[ForteNightshade]

snip

They haven't had boss positioning in years. What makes you think Eden 5-8 will be any different? Bosses in this game typically teleport to a specific spot for most of their mechanics, thus a core aspect of tanking is often disregarded.

Tank mechanic are few and far in between. All four of them essentially are "DPS, but tankier." Like I said, Gunbreaker epitomizes this so much, it's become a meme the devs designed it as a DPS first only to slap some CDs on it later. Sure, you have more to pay attention to than a Dragoon or Monk but you'll primarily be focusing on your damage due to the nature of this game. There is no way around that because damage is paramount. Furthermore, you're missing the point. Tanks want a bigger separation from healers because they have an actual rotation to maintain. And are punished far more severely if they mess it up. Not to mention, tanks were nerfed. So they're essentially wanting the damage percentage they already had in Stormblood because... there really isn't any reason for them not to have it.

I'll reiterate. It doesn't bother me enough I'll demand changes or stop playing tanks because I still enjoy them. But I'll certainly voice my opinion that lowering their damage arbitrary was unnecessary, especially since I strongly believe the only reason they did it was to make bad DPS players not feel bad that a tank outpaced them.

[Quor]

They haven't had boss positioning in years. What makes you think Eden 5-8 will be any different? Bosses in this game typically teleport to a specific spot for most of their mechanics, thus a core aspect of tanking is often disregarded.

E2S Guillotine's will kill people if the boss isn't centered correctly. A real problem on Cycles.

Tank mechanic are few and far in between. All four of them essentially are "DPS, but tankier." Like I said, Gunbreaker epitomizes this so much, it's become a meme the devs designed it as a DPS first only to slap some CDs on it later. Sure, you have more to pay attention to than a Dragoon or Monk but you'll primarily be focusing on your damage due to the nature of this game. There is no way around that because damage is paramount.

Which is why I (and others) advocate for increased "tank stuff" to do in lieu of turning us even more into a dps and homogenizing the game even further.

Furthermore, you're missing the point. Tanks want a bigger separation from healers because they have an actual rotation to maintain. And are punished far more severely if they mess it up. Not to mention, tanks were nerfed. So they're essentially wanting the damage percentage they already had in Stormblood because... there really isn't any reason for them not to have it.

Tanks were not nerfed. Our damage went up substantially with the release of ShB. If our damage had been lowered by a certain % since the beginning of ShB then that would be a nerf but that hasn't happened. Raw tank damage is much higher than it was in SB. How much that damage has increased relative to other roles is irrelevant because comparing damage across roles is meaningless.

I'll reiterate. It doesn't bother me enough I'll demand changes or stop playing tanks because I still enjoy them. But I'll certainly voice my opinion that lowering their damage arbitrary was unnecessary, especially since I strongly believe the only reason they did it was to make bad DPS players not feel bad that a tank outpaced them.

Again, tank damage has not been lowered, it just hasn't been increased as much as it could be. This has had no negative effect on the game; tanks can clear all content, solo, 4-man, and 8-man, without any problems. EX fights were being cleared with ilvl 430 weapons within hours of people reaching 80. Savage was cleared within 24 hours of it's release. The only reason this is any kind of issue is because some people saw a bunch of numbers and decided that their numbers weren't big enough, and that this made their tank job less fun.

Remember; increased complexity isn't going to mean more damage. It'll simply mean damage is shifted from one part of the job kit to another, essentially giving more buttons to press while getting the same return as before. Tank damage is objectively fine right now, both within the tanks and as a part of the larger game. Content is being cleared just fine by a variety of compositions. There is no need for a tank damage buff. There is simply a desire by a small group of people to see larger numbers, and to hell with how this will affect the balance of the game.