How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[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.

[ForteNightshade]

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

Not really. Even if Voidwalker were positioned diagonally, you can still dodge Guillotine just fine so long as people pay attention. And that's a rather extreme example since at best, he'll be slightly tilted. But should we count that an example. Okay... one mechanic spanning four fights. Not exactly what I'd call a big impact. Unfortunately, positioning largely involves inching the boss up slightly or moving it back to center, eventually. It's never been a significant aspect of tanking in FFXIV.

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.

I'll reiterate. It's been six years. If they were going to put greater emphasise on tank responsibility. They would have by now. Asking for a return to their SB scaling is simply betting on the horse you believe SE will actually listen to. It's why the Healer forum doesn't bother asking for a buffs and debuffs style of gameplay in lieu of just DPSing in their downtime. They know SE isn't going to implement 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.

Actually, it's quite relevant because it directly correlates with how our scaling was changed arbitrary. Looking strictly at pDPS for comparison sake. Tanks went from roughly a 3k difference to nearly double. Others have already calculated the estimated loss, and we have Yoshida outright claiming he believed tanks contributed too much damage. It's undeniable tanks scaled significantly lower compared to Stormblood. Now if that change accompanied increased tank mechanics, be they boss positioning, debuffs or the necessitate of more mitigation, one might argue it a fair trade off. It didn't. We're simply weaker—comparatively speaking—because reasons.

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.

Please do not use the "they can clear content" excuse. Not only does it dismiss the argument but is, frankly, rubbish. Bard can clear everything yet gets stomped into the ground by a decent Black Mage.

That tangent aside, I never said tanking was less fun. I mean, I'm switching from a DPS to a tank because I still enjoy the latter quite a bit. None of this has anything to do with complexity. I'll say this once again. I simply find it silly a job with upwards of a fourteen button rotation; which is punished far more should they mess up said rotation, can be matched by a job with three; less if you take out oGCDs. You keep suggesting increasing the tanks DPS will lead to homogenization yet they already are, and always have been, beefier DPS. That does not change if tanks are doing 8,000 or 12,000. Because of that design, however, people typically find it more fun seeing higher numbers. There's a reason FFlogs is so widely popular.

But more so, it's the arbitrary nature of the nerf that upsets some people. And yes, it is a nerf. What did SE offer tanks in exchange for slicing their scaling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You simply do less damage now comparatively because they felt tanks contributed too much. That alone rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

[Quor]

Not really. Even if Voidwalker were positioned diagonally, you can still dodge Guillotine just fine so long as people pay attention. And that's a rather extreme example since at best, he'll be slightly tilted. But should we count that an example.

"There are no mechanics where positioning matters."
"Guillotine in E2S."
"That doesn't count."
Oh goody, another game of "catch the moving goal posts."

Okay... one mechanic spanning four fights. Not exactly what I'd call a big impact. Unfortunately, positioning largely involves inching the boss up slightly or moving it back to center, eventually. It's never been a significant aspect of tanking in FFXIV.

The entirety of BCoB would like to talk with you. So would most of Alex and at least half of Omega.

I'll reiterate. It's been six years. If they were going to put greater emphasise on tank responsibility. They would have by now. Asking for a return to their SB scaling is simply betting on the horse you believe SE will actually listen to. It's why the Healer forum doesn't bother asking for a buffs and debuffs style of gameplay in lieu of just DPSing in their downtime. They know SE isn't going to implement it.

Minus the times that they implemented it (SCH crit buff, the entirety of AST's card kit in 3.0 and 4.0). Let's also not forget that they removed a pair of skills at the start of ShB (Hagakure and Energy Drain) only to reintroduce them following player feedback.

Actually, it's quite relevant because it directly correlates with how our scaling was changed arbitrary. Looking strictly at pDPS for comparison sake. Tanks went from roughly a 3k difference to nearly double. Others have already calculated the estimated loss, and we have Yoshida outright claiming he believed tanks contributed too much damage. It's undeniable tanks scaled significantly lower compared to Stormblood. Now if that change accompanied increased tank mechanics, be they boss positioning, debuffs or the necessitate of more mitigation, one might argue it a fair trade off. It didn't. We're simply weaker—comparatively speaking—because reasons.

It's impossible to lose something you don't have. Just because you didn't get as much as you could have doesn't mean you lost something. You still gained, and more importantly, it doesn't affect your ability to play the game. If big(ger) numbers are where you derive your enjoyment, then that's fine, but you don't go looking for hot dogs at a lumber mill, and you don't go looking for big numbers on a non-dps class. Complaining that you can't find any hot dogs in the lumber mill makes as much sense as complaining that tanks "could have" more damage than they already do, even though it's obvious from the content that said damage would be superfluous. It also ignores the oft-ignored (at least in this thread) fact that the game is designed around certain dps thresholds, with HP values built around those thresholds. Which no one has seen fit to address in any form of counter argument. If tank dps goes up SE isn't just going to shrug and go "Well, I guess they're killing everything 2-3 minutes faster now, pack it in guys," they're just going to scale the fights up to deal with the increased damage while maintaining a similar TTK. Functionally, nothing will change. You'll just have that warm fuzzy feeling of bigger virtual numbers and the knowledge that you forced the dev team to devote resources away from literally anything else just so that the FFlogs graphs looked a bit nicer.

Please do not use the "they can clear content" excuse. Not only does it dismiss the argument but is, frankly, rubbish. Bard can clear everything yet gets stomped into the ground by a decent Black Mage.

It's dismissive because the premise of the argument isn't even worth considering. Can the game be played and beaten using any combination of 2/2/4 tanks/healers/dps? Yes, it can. All current content can be beaten in such a way, with incentives to include a member of each "type" of role, so you don't have the issue of "let's bring two BLM's instead of a BRD and a BLM." You bring both, because BRD puts out respectable dps and provides a decent group buff while also being a very mobile dps, making it much easier for them to take care of "ranged" mechanics and thus enabling the BLM to maximize their turreting and really stretch their damage legs. In short, your comparison is terrible, because the nature of the game is such that there's not going to be an "either or" choice like you present it. Sure, BLM will output more damage than a BRD, but if BLM is the only ranged job then that BLM is going to be doing mechs before anything else, because as bad as the dps loss for the BLM will be, it's going to be worse for one of the three melee or two tanks to break melee range on the boss in order to bait aoes or what not.

That tangent aside, I never said tanking was less fun. I mean, I'm switching from a DPS to a tank because I still enjoy the latter quite a bit. None of this has anything to do with complexity. I'll say this once again. I simply find it silly a job with upwards of a fourteen button rotation; which is punished far more should they mess up said rotation, can be matched by a job with three; less if you take out oGCDs. You keep suggesting increasing the tanks DPS will lead to homogenization yet they already are, and always have been, beefier DPS. That does not change if tanks are doing 8,000 or 12,000. Because of that design, however, people typically find it more fun seeing higher numbers. There's a reason FFlogs is so widely popular.

And there's a reason why SE explicitly refuses to ever incorporate any kind of dps meter into their game. Because - for whatever reason - people find looking at what amounts to an excel graph and ogling at big numbers to be "fun." Not actually playing the game, but holding up their results of playing the game and going "look here, I parsed orange, isn't that impressive?" All of these discussions about the importance of dps for tanks and healers miss the key element; if the tanks and healers did not tank and heal, no one would win anything.

Let's break down the claim in the OP; a WHM has done enough damage to outdo a GNB. Supposedly, this is cause for major alarm. Yet, if you look deeper on it, there are a few questions to answer. First, if that WHM was able to outdo a GNB, then they must have been dpsing nearly full time. This means there had to be another healer there covering for them, essentially meaning said fight is probably something that can be solo healed. If that's the case, why bring the WHM? Why not have the WHM come on a dps? Even a bad dps will outdo the best healer or tank in the game right now. You could argue "healer mechanics" but if Guillotine can be worked around then surely a high-end raid group can innovate around a few measly mechanics, especially if it means a quicker kill. Right?
Or maybe that WHM wasn't solely doing dps. Maybe they actually healed some. Maybe their healing was still needed. So even while doing loads of dps, they threw out a few necessary heals from time to time, meaning if they didn't throw out those heals, then the raid would have wiped. At which point no one does any dps because they're all dead.

Meanwhile, the tanks are still tanking, absorbing the damage and keeping the boss where he should be. They could just say fuck it, I don't want to clip any GCD's so I'm not using any non-dps oGCD's to maximize damage, but then the tank busters come and they become so much red goo on the ground and whaddya know, the raid wipes again. All that dps, all that optimization, for nothing.
So at a base line, the entire premise is stupid from any realistic point of view. Clearly we have a WHM here who was seeking to pad numbers just to flex their own e-peen, and was in a group setup that enabled them to do exactly that. Balance decisions should never be made around outliers, and certainly not as a result of rigged statistics that are nowhere near representative of the norm.

But more so, it's the arbitrary nature of the nerf that upsets some people. And yes, it is a nerf. What did SE offer tanks in exchange for slicing their scaling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You simply do less damage now comparatively because they felt tanks contributed too much. That alone rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

No, there is no nerf. If something is buffed, it's a buff. Just because it isn't buffed as much as it could be doesn't mean it's a nerf. Nerfing is to take something and make it weaker. Tanks are NOT weaker. They are objectively much stronger, both in terms of baseline tankiness and raw damage output. The potency difference alone more than accounts for the loss of the slashing debuff that all tanks benefited from. The entire crux of this post is that a few people looked at some numbers and collectively went:

"By the Twelve! Instead of being X% less average dps than a dps, tanks are instead Y% less dps! This is a major problem that impacts my ability to enjoy the game! Even though I only know about it because of a third party program and it has nothing to do with the core foundation of being a tank, this is causing me to really question my enjoyment of tanking! This simply MUST be remedied!"

Which is just stupid. If there were major problems with groups clearing content, and those problems came down to a severe lack of tank damage, then there would be an argument for boosting tank dps. The suggestion oft-floated in this thread is to just throw a casual 1k dps on all the tanks and call it a day. 1k dps! That's insane. I'm no top tier tank when it comes to damage but I average a respectable 8k on my GNB and just shy of 8k on my DRK, and people want to just increase my damage by 12.5%? They want to just increase all my potencies sans auto-attack by ~15%? That is fucking insane.
Furthermore, how would it even be done?! Are we just going to blanket buff all the tanks, regardless of how they perform? So the uber raid tanks who push 10k regularly without even trying are going to get boosted by 1k, but also the just-barely-there tanks who average 6k will somehow, miraculously, get 1k too? There's no way in hell you could average that in any way that would work. If you boost the top end guys so that they get 1k playing 100% optimally, then the low-end guys will only get a fraction of that, so you're not really boosting "tank dps" by 1k. So fine, you boost the low-end guys by 1k, but now the optimal dudes at the top-end are running 1500 or more extra dps, blowing through content like it's nothing. Talk about throwing balance (and caution) completely out the window.

And herein likes a major crux of the problem; utilizing FFlogs as a metric for how you should buff (or nerf) a class is a terrible idea because it's all just statistics. FFlogs does a great job of logging dps, and that's all it does. It is not a tool for balance. The absolute insanity of suggesting a casual 1k (or hell, even 500) dps increase for "all tanks" just so that the graphs look nicer is impossible to overstate. It shows an amazing lack of understanding of so many aspects of this game on so many different levels that you could write a book about it. From potencies to weapon damage interactions to auto-attack contributions to screwing with relative TTK's....and that's just the obvious stuff.

Lest my tone come off as uncaring, believe me, I am anything but. I am sympathetic to people wanting to have "fun" with a job they play, whatever that job may be. But when said "fun" comes at the cost of upending major aspects of combat in this game for no reason other than "it feels bad to have lower dps than I believe I could have" then I gotta call it out. It's selfish. It's short-sighted. It's outright ridiculous. It's eminently counter-productive, a waste of limited resources. And it does nothing to address what is arguably the only major problem with tanks right now. Namely, the relative lack of "tank-like" stuff to do with our in-combat time.

Remember, SE designs fights with an expected TTK at a given ilvl as their baseline. Boosts (or nerfs) to damage are so that encounter clear times fall within the appropriate TTK range for a given ilvl. Any kind of boost beyond that will result in an adjustment of boss HP to maintain the expected TTK, ultimately resulting in no meaningful change to anything. In other words, a lot of time and effort will be put into changing a major part of the game just to make the graphs on FFlogs look nice.

[ForteNightshade]

"There are no mechanics where positioning matters."
"Guillotine in E2S."
"That doesn't count."
Oh goody, another game of "catch the moving goal posts."

And I explained why Guillotine is a poor example. If Voidwalker is positioned on an angle, nothing changes. You can still avoid the cleave without issue. Therefore, tank positioning becomes a convenience not an inherent responsibility. If it were something impactful, Voidwalking being in the wrong spot would always kill people. Instead, people only die if they aren't paying attention.

The entirety of BCoB would like to talk with you. So would most of Alex and at least half of Omega.

Really now? Let's review Stormblood then since it's the most recent.

Alte Roite: Re-positions himself for every mechanic
Catastrophe: Minor inching for -g100 and tentacles
Halicarnassus: Re-positions herself for nearly every mechanic
Exdeath: You can move him north or leave him dead center for Blackhole. It has zero impact. He re-positions himself otherwise
NeoExdeath: Stationary

Phantom Train: Stationary
Demon Chadarnook: Cannot be moved
Guardian: Keep him center for tower positioning otherwise it doesn't matter
Kefka: Re-positions himself for nearly every mechanic
God Kefka: Huzzah! Our first somewhat movement heavy fight

Chaos: You only have to inch him upwards slightly; re-positions otherwise
Midgardsormr: Re-positions himself
Omega: Outside dragging him to the corner, he re-positions himself
Omega-M/F: Another movement heavy fight
Final Omega: Re-positions himself

So out of fifteen encounters, only two have any real positioning responsibility for tanks where a failure on their part will actually kill people. In every other fight, you either barely have to move the boss at all or they aren't even movable to begin with.

Hard to call this a major mechanic. Alexander was much the same in that "movement" often revolved around "inch the boss here because it's more convenient."

Minus the times that they implemented it (SCH crit buff, the entirety of AST's card kit in 3.0 and 4.0). Let's also not forget that they removed a pair of skills at the start of ShB (Hagakure and Energy Drain) only to reintroduce them following player feedback.

Pressing one oGCD every two minutes is not a buff/debuff system. The idea of such a design would be a consistent thing you manage throughout the fight in lieu of simply DPSing. Even Astro's cards are something you only interact with every 30 seconds. And it's all the same flavour. Additionally, there are no debuffs to maintain.

It's impossible to lose something you don't have. Just because you didn't get as much as you could have doesn't mean you lost something.

... how does this even compute? You received less than you originally had but you didn't lose something? See, you keep making this mistake. Tanks had better scaling in Stormblood, thus they were comparatively closing in damage to the DPS. That was arbitrarily changed; hence being called a nerf. You can try to spin it a thousand different ways but it's still a nerf. What you're doing is blindly looking at the damage itself and concluding because tanks are doing 8,000 instead of 5,500. They were buffed. While yes, their overall output increased. That applies to literally every job, every tier. What changed is their scaling; that was lowered. Which means tanks contribute less of a damage percentage than they used.

For arguments sake, lets use random numbers. Say in Stormblood tank scaling was 25%. If that number is now 15%, it's a nerf to their overall contribution despite the actual damage they deal still going up.

In short, your comparison is terrible, because the nature of the game is such that there's not going to be an "either or" choice like you present it. Sure, BLM will output more damage than a BRD, but if BLM is the only ranged job then that BLM is going to be doing mechs before anything else, because as bad as the dps loss for the BLM will be, it's going to be worse for one of the three melee or two tanks to break melee range on the boss in order to bait aoes or what not.

Actually, here's the funny part. It's statistically better to bring three melee even if it means one of them or the tank will be forced to disengage momentarily. Range DPS is that low comparatively. Dragoon, Monk or Black Mage can straight up die and still beat a top tier Bard. There is presently no scenario where double Black Mage or triple melee isn't superior. Hence why I referenced it when you brought up "but everything can clear!" It's a rubbish argument.

Viability does not equate to balance. Or in the case of tanks, a justification for why their damage was arbitrary lowered yet nothing else changed.

And there's a reason why SE explicitly refuses to ever incorporate any kind of dps meter into their game

That reason is they don't want people to feel bad. Admittedly, there are other concerns regarding public parsers but a significant factor is wanting lesser skilled players to assume their contributions are much higher because it makes them less likely to quit the game.

Everything after this point is just a run-a-long tangent that really has no point to the actual argument beyond "damage shouldn't matter unless you're a DPS." In this game, damage is all that matters because everything else has a threshold. You only need a specific amount of healing or mitigation whereas more damage is always beneficial.

Which is why the community places so much emphasise on DPS; the game allows them to.

You seem to only be concerned with viability. So long as everything can clear, nothing should matter. That's fine if you feel that way, however plenty of people don't. They don't like their job being arbitrarily made weaker without any reason for it, or offered something else to compensate.