How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Kabooa]

Dismissing the point of view and characterizing it as nothing but 'pretty bat graphs' is disingenuous. Se changed the balance between job roles. Thats not just stupid bar graphs. If you wale up tomorrow and healers deal triple the damage of dps, even if monster hp scaled to co.pensate, that would he far more than just bars on a graph. It changes the dynamics of the game. It changes solo play. It shifts the meta. It changes how healers should gear and what the optimal strats are for high end content regarding uptime and who to cater too. It has in game consequences when you change the ratio of damage participation between classes. Dismissing cross role shifts in power is not just existential bs about peoples egos. It is a tangible change to the impact different roles have in combat that affects many aspects of the player experience. Hand waving all that away is the disingenuous action.

Is it to big of a change? Is it a positive change? Negative? Those are worth discussing. Hand waving legitimate concerns wholesale because you want to lump it in with elitism on the other hand is oversimplifying the issue and mischaracterizing the problem.

Yes. That would be a problem because then it renders 60% of the jobs in the game moot.

But in that fantasy land, you'll probably have arbitrary checks in place to keep it from being 2 tanks and 6 healers - Much like what has been suggested in this thread.

So while each healer is outputting 45,000, you still only take two, and those two healers outputting 45,000 are going to be expected to output 45,000. And the boss HP will be tuned to expect 90,000 from the healers, 18,000 from the tanks, and 60,000 for the DPS, and no amount of healer optimization will cover the 6-12,000 gap from underperforming DPS.

So in the grand scheme of things, what really changed?

And that's the problem.

-Contribution- from the tanks is fine. It's literally fine. Again, I urge any tank who thinks otherwise to go in, and slash off 20-30% of what you usually do. It might not mean much in your static, but do it in a PF group. A learning group. A clear group.

See just how much weight your contribution actually holds, let alone during the first few weeks when the content isn't overgeared to hell and bored 99ers aren't joining rando groups that settle for less than 2chest.

[Reynhart]

If you wale up tomorrow and healers deal triple the damage of dps, even if monster hp scaled to co.pensate, that would he far more than just bars on a graph.

Yes, it would, because healers would steal the primary focus of DPS. As long as healers are required to heal, DPS are required to kill and tanks are required to survive, then the only focus should be to do the best you can for your role, regardless of others. Pushed to the extreme, tanks and heals could do literraly 0 DPS in group content that parties would still take them.

And in that specific situation, tanks doing less DPS means that DPS have now a bigger role in killing the ennemies.

[Quor]

Dismissing the point of view and characterizing it as nothing but 'pretty bat graphs' is disingenuous. Se changed the balance between job roles. Thats not just stupid bar graphs. If you wale up tomorrow and healers deal triple the damage of dps, even if monster hp scaled to co.pensate, that would he far more than just bars on a graph. It changes the dynamics of the game. It changes solo play. It shifts the meta. It changes how healers should gear and what the optimal strats are for high end content regarding uptime and who to cater too. It has in game consequences when you change the ratio of damage participation between classes. Dismissing cross role shifts in power is not just existential bs about peoples egos. It is a tangible change to the impact different roles have in combat that affects many aspects of the player experience. Hand waving all that away is the disingenuous action.

Is it to big of a change? Is it a positive change? Negative? Those are worth discussing. Hand waving legitimate concerns wholesale because you want to lump it in with elitism on the other hand is oversimplifying the issue and mischaracterizing the problem.

Did you read the entire thread? Serious question, because we're at page 24 right now. Anyway, if you read the entire thread, then you would have read my earlier responses, some of which mentioned the fact that this is only an "issue" inasmuch as people have decided to make it one for some arbitrary reason. I say it's not an issue for a number of reasons, one of which is that we only know of the dps differences because of ACT and FFlogs. Take those two things out of the equation and no one would be the wiser, because all content is tuned to be beatable by each specific job at a level that said job can handle. So while a dps may deal more damage in a quest fight than a tank, the values of the enemies in the fights are tuned such that completion takes about the same amount of time. In other words, if ACT and FFlogs didn't exist, no one would know about the "issue" that is this thread.

But they do exist, and you can't put the milk back in the bottle, so it is what it is. However, that doesn't mean it's an issue. My other responses have been to note that - by all objective standards - tank damage has gone WAY up, and that comparisons of damage across roles is meaningless. Furthermore, another thing people have ignored (despite being brought up by others many times) is that ShB is a totally new game. It's the 5.0 version of the game, and comparing "tank damage vs. dps damage in 4.0" to "tank damage vs. dps damage in 5.0" is as useful a metric as comparing tank damage in 1.0 would be to 2.0, or 3.0, or 4.0, or any of that shit. This is because SE makes content to be beaten by it's player base, and the jobs are all tuned in such a way that running a 2/2/4 setup of any combination of jobs should be enough to beat anything the game throws at you. Again, by all objective standards, this is true; 100% of the content in game has not only been beaten, but is beaten regularly by pugs utilizing a variety of party compositions.

In short, the system works. The arbitrary numbers that comprise the "gap" between tanks and dps are meaningless in the context of the bigger picture. Tanks are not hurting for damage. Tanks deal much more damage than they ever have before. This damage is more than enough to complete any and all content in game. Tank balance is the best it's been, ever. So what's the problem then? Well, the problem is that there are these graphs you see, and the graphs show that the gap between tanks and dps now is relatively larger than it was back in Stormblood. And this bothers some people, because they don't "feel" as if they deal enough damage. Now mind you, there is no objective support for this; all content is clearable by any composition of 2/2/4, assuming unique jobs in each spot. But still, there's this "feeling" and it's a bad one, because there is an arbitrary "past practice"-style standard that has been set, and this standard has been violated as of ShB, so clearly there is a problem and it MUST be fixed. How do we fix it? Apparently by just throwing 1k dps at tanks. Some people have had the audacity to call this a form of "optimization" while also ignoring counter-arguments that quite clearly show the claim to be bullshit, and others still have mentioned how it's not necessarily the dps per se, but rather the lack of engagement as a tank for anything else *but* dps.

Which, if you've read this thread, you'll know that I - and others - have acknowledged is a legitimate criticism, and had some good discussion about it to boot.

But "our damage isn't the same relative to dps from last xpac and this is un-fun for me, we need to boost it" is absolutely not legitimate criticism. It is whining. Not just any whining, but whining for "moar dps," which is the worst kind of whining when you've got A.) the best balance between the tanks that has ever been, and B.) no objective need for any tank to have it's dps buffed outside of minor potency or duration/cooldown tweaks. Certainly not "1k dps for all tanks." For all intents and purposes, the game is beatable as it is now. So why add more dps to any role? SE isn't just going to shrug and go "well, guess they're killing these bosses 2-4 minutes faster guys, nothing we can do about it." No, if you add 1k dps to any of the roles you're just going to see an appropriate increase in boss HP to compensate. At which point, why even bother adding the dps? There's no objective reason, only subjective ones, i.e. "it feels bad," with the great irony being that without FFlogs and ACT, no one would know.

It's like when you give a small child something to eat that they don't like, but it's cooked or prepared in such a way that the child doesn't think it's the thing they don't like. So the kid goes and eats it just fine, until stupid cousin Fred comes in and is like "oh hey, you're eating that? I thought you hated <insert food name here>" and then all of a sudden the kid hates this thing he was just enjoying a moment ago. That's this thread in a nutshell. I dismiss these concerns because they're petty, selfish, and ignorant. They ignore (intentionally or otherwise) the fact that the state of the game is fine, all content is beatable as it is now, and any change to this will either throw role balance way the fuck out of whack or do nothing but artificially inflate boss HP values for no other reason than a minority of tanks are sad that they're FFlogs numbers aren't as high as they think they should be (aka "the pretty bar graphs look wrong").

[Bravely_Default]

If you think the state of everything is fine especially with the state of ranged dps and physical dps, and the amount of healers and tanks complaining, I dont know what to tell you. In the end it's up to the majority of the players, they can fix it or they leave. Easy as that. I play the game for a certain degree of satisfaction, if a huge expac changes that balance and satisfaction and it doesnt get fixed, I leave. Least I got a sweet 5k hours out of it though.

[Bravely_Default]

Se can reflavor the game however they want to, doesn't mean the players have to like that new flavor. I dont recall players asking for a huge amount of the changes they made. PLD stance dance was a bit wonky, but I'm pretty sure players didnt want the entire stance mechanic removed. Hell I dont even remember dps complaining about tank dps that much. Healers just wanted better balancing so all 3 were wanted in content in any combination.

[J-Reyno]

I want tanks to tank and do tank things, not be a dps in heavy armor that the monster just happens to like looking at. So, instead of giving up and giving in to the "moar dps" approach, I will continue to advocate for increased tank-focused responsibilities that will serve to differentiate tanks from dps instead of blurring the lines between the two.

Let's go ahead and establish that a bump of 1k dps (which is what I suggest, and you seem to enjoy referring to my OP) for tanks is not going to "blur the lines" between the dps and tank roles. This would still leave them well under dps numbers. Putting that out there for the second time in this thread to make sure we understand.

That said, if they want to take the approach of completely overhauling the role? Make it so that tanks have a one-button damage rotation while applying the occasional dot to justify the current damage levels, then giving the role a plethora of actual tanking and mitigation tools? Well, we can see how that goes. But I think it's as unlikely as it is unnecessary as it requires a re-tooling of the entire game.

A small bump in dps is much more realistic. I don't mind the current moment-to-moment gameplay of the role. Just needs more damage if that's what I'm going to spend all my time doing. Hell it'd be great for us to return to the damage distribution between the roles we had in Stormblood. And since we all know they weren't doing dps role numbers, we don't have to continue that made-up argument.

[Kabooa]

If you think the state of everything is fine especially with the state of ranged dps and physical dps, and the amount of healers and tanks complaining, I dont know what to tell you. In the end it's up to the majority of the players, they can fix it or they leave. Easy as that. I play the game for a certain degree of satisfaction, if a huge expac changes that balance and satisfaction and it doesnt get fixed, I leave. Least I got a sweet 5k hours out of it though.

The balance is not perfect. That's accepted, but saying the balance is not perfect doesn't mean it's not overall good. It -is overall good-, and Tanks in particular are -overall in the best state of balance they've ever been in-.

Whether the tanks are, from a design standpoint, better or worse is subjective at best, -and not solved by boosting their damage-.

DPS being imbalanced between the various DPS is an issue because it renders certain jobs obsolete if they have no real strengths to offset the difference.

DPS being imbalanced between Tanks -and any other role- is not even on the same scale of priority or problem.

A small bump in dps is much more realistic. I don't mind the current moment-to-moment gameplay of the role. Just needs more damage if that's what I'm going to spend all my time doing. Hell it'd be great for us to return to the damage distribution between the roles we had in Stormblood. And since we all know they weren't doing dps role numbers, we don't have to continue that made-up argument.

Depending on the degree of bump (Is 1000, the average? The minimum? The maximum), a 12-15% bump is not 'small'. It's significant.

And stop saying "What we had in Stormblood".

What we had in Stormblood was a padded mess. Literally every metric being used is an inflated one. It's PDPS. RDPS, the metric being used now, isn't perfect, but it is attributing the damage where it rightfully belongs - The person who brought it. Granted some of the calculations, especially surrounding crit and direct hit, can be questionable.

You start reassigning all the bonuses being brought to who brought it to Stormblood Logs, and Tanks -significantly dip-. You want "Stormblood" damage contribution back?

Then you'd be asking for like 200-300, because that's about what you lost, but also eclipsed by the Party attribute bonus the tank now contributes to.

[Nedkel]

Yes, it would, because healers would steal the primary focus of DPS. As long as healers are required to heal, DPS are required to kill and, tanks are required to survive, then the only focus should be to do the best you can for your role, regardless of others. Pushed to the extreme, tanks and heals could do literraly 0 DPS in group content that parties would still take them.

And in that specific situation, tanks doing less DPS means that DPS have now a bigger role in killing the ennemies.

And it turns dungeons into flamming hell for both tank and healer if dps in their party are people who are watching netflix and spam only 3 skills over and over. This is the pure definition of fun, being a meatball that soaks damage and is on the grace of RNG god that decides where and when you are getting a smooth run as a tank and healer.
Gameplay in dungeons for tanks is the biggest victim of reducing tanks damage.

[SleepyNeko]

As a tank main I always support more damage on a tank, mainly because it lessens the chance of enrage on bosses when dps dies and pulls you down from clearing the boss. I've had enough clear attempts on bosses where dps just dies once or twice each and we end up enraging. Basically the less damage that a non-dps role contributes to a fight, the more you lose every time a dps dies. It feels really bad when you are doing the fights 100% correct with 100% effort but a few deaths from dps and its a wipe.

But on the other hand would you feel less fun tanking if you weren't using a parser? Because you wouldn't know that you are doing 50% or 70% damage of a dps without a parser. Maybe you'll feel better if you stopped parsing? or played a dps instead.

[Shurrikhan]

And it turns dungeons into flamming hell for both tank and healer if dps in their party are people who are watching netflix and spam only 3 skills over and over.

I have to agree with this. DPS have, by design, become the "Netflix and push the occasional button" role in dungeons. Interrupts have been removed. Repositionals? Removed. Kiting? Removed. Even now I'll occasionally outperform the true DPS's damage on tank or healer, especially in AoE, and given the ceiling on either of those roles, that... feels pretty bad. I have zero desire to reduce tank damage even further just to highlight DPS contribution in lieu of their other removed utilities.

Ultimately, we aren't going to get a satisfying zero-sum solution out of both tank and dps having fewer responsibilities (or, more often in the case of DPS, potential contributions) in their toolkits than they used to have. DPS may want more contribution from their damage, since that's all they have now, to better show their difference from tanks and make up for their increased relative squishiness. But, tanks in turn will want to be able to contribute to raid DPS at least as much as they used to, given that they too have lost most other means of contribution that would actually fall under their control (rather than being provided merely through a passive and single modifier). Both roles would, frankly, be more fun if there was more to do, period. But, given that we only have dps left to fret over, I'm not surprised by, say, this thread hitting 24 pages in such a short time.