How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Shurrikhan]

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.

It doesn't, though. As they say, "There's no free [buff]," except where specifically meant as a nerf to all relevant content.

[Reynhart]

PLD stance dance was a bit wonky, but I'm pretty sure players didnt want the entire stance mechanic removed.

There was a loooot of threads since Alex Savage arguing that tank stance was a bad mechanic and should be removed.

Hell I dont even remember dps complaining about tank dps that much.

You're right, DPS don't complain about tank DPS...in fact, no one complains about tank DPS except tanks. A strange pattern to complain about the size of your DPS when all your partners are fine with it as long as you're skilled

[Izsha]

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.

This guy gets it. Just scaling the mob hp to compensate doesnt mean 'nothing changes'. The bottom line is that every role has an impact on the party and how large or small that inpact is matters. Every tank cpuld do 500 dps but when the raid is doing 75k dps the quality of the tank no longer matters because the impact is so small. Similarly in my triple damage healer example, the healers carry the entire fight on their backs. If they are poor the entire raid fails. If they are great they carry the entire team on their backs wholesale. The impact would be far to high in a team game. This is before we get into replacing dps woth healers or tabks with dps, etc. I use those extreme examples to make the point that the impact of a role (measured in dps in this case) is not just bars on a graph in a 3rd party program. They impact the agency of plahers to impact their surroundings and that is an important part of a team game and it is a SLIDING SCALE. If dps can both be to low or to high relative to other roles, then any change affects this to a smaller degree. To have to much or to little impact affects players and their experiences. It informs strategies, metas, compositions, solo, low man and party play.

Imagine another scenario. All tanks passive mitigation is increased dramatically and the active mitigation skills are toned down to very small (5, 10%) amounts. You could argue tanks take the same damage, but the impact of the player is reduced. Just standing there is nearly as effective as perfect play. Balancing the agency and impact of a player is a core part of the game in all aspects.

Ultimately, the impact of tanks on content of all types has been toned down in ShB. Its not to the point that it is blatently terrible, and you could argue that it may have been to high before (there have been times tanks rivaled low tier dps.) But it DOES matter where it lands. Tanks have less agency than before. The question is, is that a good or bad thing, and that is fairly subjective. If its a bad thing then it needs to be changed. But regardless, the role damage ratio absolutely does matter as it is the impact and agency that players have and that is important.

[Bravely_Default]

one idea I have toyed with for a while that would boost every bodies importance is if they removed hard enrage mechanics from most fights altogether. this would mean that even if 5 team members died, if your tank and healers were good enough at mitigating damage and using their tools to survive mechanics, you still had a chance. just like fighting any really hard enemy in any other game, it's not over until the entire team is dead or the enemy is. IMO too many hard enrage mechanics is just bad design and puts DPS within a certain time frame being the determining factor of winning 95% of fights. when this ends up being the case, of course players are going to complain that they can't contribute what they are good at to that.... can I tank a fight to end sooner? can I heal a fight to end sooner?? no, I cannot.

[J-Reyno]

Whether the tanks are, from a design standpoint, better or worse is subjective at best,

True enough, and if many seem to feel it's worse then I'd say that's worth consideration.

-and not solved by boosting their damage-.

The fact that you feel comfortable stating this as if it's a definitive fact while acknowledging the subjectivity in your above statement is puzzling. Seems for many of us, it would in fact solve the problem. Like I've stated if the design of the job is going to emphasize damage as the primary method of tanking, it should do a good bit more than a job that emphasizes healing and deals damage with a one-button rotation. Increasing the damage of tanks solves that particular issue.

And stop saying "What we had in Stormblood".

What we had in Stormblood was damage distribution that did not allow a healer job to consistently do more damage than tanks at any level of play. A healer flat out should not be doing more damage than tanks or even breathing down their necks, period. That should not be happening.

Anyway, whether or not the damage increase is significant depends on relative values. And given the current damage values of the roles, a 1k bump in (yes, average) dps would be solid for the tank role while not eclipsing the dps role by any means.

[Kabooa]

True enough, and if many seem to feel it's worse then I'd say that's worth consideration.

The fact that you feel comfortable stating this as if it's a definitive fact while acknowledging the subjectivity in your above statement is puzzling. Seems for many of us, it would in fact solve the problem. Like I've stated if the design of the job is going to emphasize damage as the primary method of tanking, it should do a good bit more than a job that emphasizes healing and deals damage with a one-button rotation. Increasing the damage of tanks solves that particular issue.

What we had in Stormblood was damage distribution that did not allow a healer job to consistently do more damage than tanks at any level of play. A healer flat out should not be doing more damage than tanks or even breathing down their necks, period. That should not be happening.

Anyway, whether or not 12-15% is significant depends on relative values. And given the current damage values of the roles, a 1k bump in (yes, average) dps would be solid for the tank role while not eclipsing the dps role by any means.

Whether Hard Slash shows up at 4700 or 5700 doesn't matter. It doesn't make Warrior less boring rotationally, it doesn't fix the issues people have with Dark Knight, it won't make Paladin less static, it doesn't make Gunbreaker more flexible, and it -doesn't change what they do at all-. It's a number shift up. No different from a number shift down. It'll quiet your grumbling for a little, and then you'll be back here, because the fact is you're ultimately unsatisfied with the design of tanks.

And at the very end here, about the healers.

Why?

Why shouldn't they? What reason could you possibly offer here that couldn't be matched by one from the healers?

[J-Reyno]

Whether Hard Slash shows up at 4700 or 5700 doesn't matter. It doesn't make Warrior less boring rotationally, it doesn't fix the issues people have with Dark Knight, it won't make Paladin less static, it doesn't make Gunbreaker more flexible, and it -doesn't change what they do at all-. It's a number shift up. No different from a number shift down. It'll quiet your grumbling for a little, and then you'll be back here, because the fact is you're ultimately unsatisfied with the design of tanks.

That's not what a fact is. That's an assumption. And a wrongful one at that. I'll give you an actual fact: I was satisfied with tanks in Stormblood and I am unsatisfied with them now. My issue is precisely with the numbers. For current tank gameplay the numbers are low.

Sure, it's possible a complete overhaul to the gameplay for tank jobs could address this instead, changing the moment-to-moment gameplay of tanks to justify the low numbers. But I'm not here to entertain that discussion because it's unrealistic and unnecessary, especially when it's not entirely preferable.

And at the very end here, about the healers.

Why?

Why shouldn't they? What reason could you possibly offer here that couldn't be matched by one from the healers?

I've already answered this as well, and I'm pretty sure it was in a previous response directly to you. But to quote myself, 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.

Dealing damage IS the gameplay of tanking in FFXIV. Mitigation is largely passive (through damage reduction and high health pool) and occasionally pressing a button every 60-90 seconds. A job that presses one button repeatedly should not be matching tank damage, especially when that job has a suite of powerful healing tools they get to use in addition to their damage.

Other games seem to understand that roles with powerful healing should not have as much damage as tank roles, and I'm surprised people could actually think that's okay. If a job spends all of its time dealing damage it's going to feel less impactful than a job that can do the same damage, but much easier, while also pumping out powerful heals that an bring the entire party from 1hp to full in a matter of seconds.

So that brings us back to the above. To address that we have the options of 1) increasing tank damage or 2) overhauling the tank jobs entirely while also adjusting healers and all of the game's content. And we're not going to sit here and pretend like option #2 is ever going to happen.

[Reynhart]

one idea I have toyed with for a while that would boost every bodies importance is if they removed hard enrage mechanics from most fights altogether.

I think the soft enrage mechanics on certain fights are much better than hard enrage because good healers/tanks can gain a little extra time for the DPS to finish killing the mob.

That's not what a fact is. That's an assumption. And a wrongful one at that. I'll give you an actual fact: I was satisfied with tanks in Stormblood and I am unsatisfied with them now. My issue is precisely with the numbers. For current tank gameplay the numbers are low.

And again, without a 3rd party information, you wouldn't see the actual numbers of your whole team to have such a feeling.

But to quote myself, 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.

I'm hardly a professional healer, but to push your damage, you need a very good understanding of the fight, knowing how much GCD you can spend on doing damage and healing, how to make your HoT the most efficient, etc...it's hardly "just press one-button for damage". Doing the most damage as a tank have absolutely no impact on how much you survive, while healers doing the same can lead to not enough healing and some deaths, it's a much bigger gamble for them. And finaly, healers having more room to heal can also be tied to how much group mitigation tanks can offer, thus pushing more emphasis on actual tank main focus.

[Kabooa]

So that brings us back to the above. To address that we have the options of 1) increasing tank damage or 2) overhauling the tank jobs entirely while also adjusting healers and all of the game's content. And we're not going to sit here and pretend like option #2 is ever going to happen.

Except this only shows your own inexperience with how the healing role works in this game. Dealing damage -IS- the gameplay of healers in FF14. They actively seek to minimize their healing, to reduce overhealing (and achieve greater efficiency) so they can -deal more damage-.

"Managing your rotation" doesn't come near the amount of hurdles Healers jump through. They not only deal with greater variance due to factors outside their control (RE: Dumb teams), they have to deal with mechanics that they are ill equipped to maintain uptime with, while nearly every basic PF strategy prioritizes melee and tanks. Single button rotations -sounds- easier until you start putting the constraints in context, as well as its multibutton competitors, which for the tanks, are largely linear button strokes, with perhaps the exception of Warrior and Dark Knight by the barest qualifiers of being resource central classes.

Tanks by your metrics don't deserve more damage. They barely deserve equal damage. But even if we were to consider your "99%" to be of greater value, then we still wouldn't increase tank damage, because healers deal damage for nearly equal stretches of time.

You might be dealing damage '99% of the time' but the healer aims for the same goal with infinitely more in their way, so when they can achieve their own fabled maximum damage uptime, despite what obstacles we put in their way, they should certainly be, at the bare minimum, equal to a tank.

[J-Reyno]

I'm hardly a professional healer, but to push your damage, you need a very good understanding of the fight, knowing how much GCD you can spend of doing damage and healing, how to make your HoT the most efficient, etc...it's hardly "just press one-button for damage".

Except this only shows your own inexperience with how the healing role works in this game. Dealing damage -IS- the gameplay of healers in FF14. They actively seek to minimize their healing, to reduce overhealing (and achieve greater efficiency) so they can -deal more damage-.

You've both unknowingly highlighted the issue I describe. I'm not going to entertain the idea that when actually doing damage, it's some difficult thing to do. It's not. I am as familiar with healing in this game as I am with dps and tanking. I play them all fairly equally. But yes, you do work to get as much damage as possible while fulfilling your responsibilities as a healer and that is where we get our optimization and the complexity/difficulty in the role.

Which is exactly the problem. Healer has actual responsibilities aside from dealing damage. Active, powerful contribution that does NOT include pressing their damage button repeatedly. Fulfilling your job as a healer is rewarding. You have powerful heals that you use consistently during content that have an immediate and gratifying effect on gameplay.

Then we switch to tank and find that we spend all of our time dealing damage and for our actual "tanking" role we will hit that mitigation skill every 60-90 seconds. All of that time dealing damage only to barely deal more damage than the healer (or potentially even less damage) when that is not only more of the active gameplay, but more involved as well. Yet there's no alternate reward equivalent to the powerful heals that healers have to keep the party alive.

Tanks by your metrics don't deserve more damage. They barely deserve equal damage.

Yeah that's going to be a hard disagree. The healer role should not be doing more damage than any other. The reward for healing is getting to use your active and powerful heals to keep the party alive and doing damage as best you can. It should not be dealing more damage than another role with less active non-dps contribution on top of that.