How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Reynhart]

Tank ARE designed to deal damage and ARE intended to optimize their damage by the devs' own admission, and doing damage DOES require effort.

Again, optimizing your damage as a tank is unrelated to how much damage you do compared to DPS or healers, but to your fellow tanks. You can coat it with whatever noble goal of doing your job you want, but in the end, what bugs you is that you deal low damage compared to DPS. Increasing that number without any additionnal effort (Which is what potency increase would be, since I don't remember you asking for a more complex rotation) would change absolutely nothing on how well you tank, or how optimized your rotation would be.

I can't really guess what tank you played since this character seems to be your alt, but since you mentionned being more rewarded in SB, it should also be noted that optimizing DPS in ShB is much much easier than it was in SB, so it makes totally sense that the reward would be lower. Healers, on the other hand, have the exact same gamble to make than in past expansions.

[J-Reyno]

Again, optimizing your damage as a tank is unrelated to how much damage you do compared to DPS or healers, but to your fellow tanks.

You suggested that damage is not a primary objective of tanks and we've established that it is. You even argued that "optimizing enmity" would be spamming shield lob repeatedly, which is wrong. I've already said my piece about the impact of roles within a given damage distribution and why it matters multiple times within the thread, so unless you intend to object further that damage is not a primary function of tanks we can dead this particular discussion.

Increasing that number without any additionnal effort (Which is what potency increase would be, since I don't remember you asking for a more complex rotation) would change absolutely nothing on how well you tank, or how optimized your rotation would be.

I'm looking for more impact from what I spend my time doing, which is damage. And since you can't remember, let me remind you with my post below:

I'm not sure I get what you're suggesting, but if I understand then there are ultimately two options if you allow more room for tanks to "excel" in damage.

1) Tanks who "excel" are able to do more damage than now, solving the issue of tanks being very low impact compared to the other roles. This would be good

2) Tanks can "excel" in their role but the damage ceiling remains the same, and bad tanks do even less damage. So tanks doing their job properly end up working harder for the same contribution.

The second scenario is unacceptable. The first is good, but this is essentially a roundabout way of saying that tanks need more damage, and I'm not really concerning myself with the how right now. Whether they change the rotation, adjust the formula for tank damage so that we get more out of the current rotation, or just straight up increase potencies, doesn't really matter. If tanks get more damage out of it, then that's fine.

As you can see, I'd be perfectly fine with an upward adjustment in the rotation that allowed tanks to have more damage with more effort. Keep in mind that doing so would not make actual "tanking" particularly more effective what with enmity and mitigation largely being non-factors, but it would make the role more impactful and engaging.

[Reynhart]

You suggested that damage is not a primary objective of tanks and we've established that it is.

Ok, let's admit that it is because of the relation between damage and enmity. So let me ask you that question : Why would you need more enmity ?

As you can see, I'd be perfectly fine with an upward adjustment in the rotation that allowed tanks to have more damage with more effort.

The main thing that I see is that you tunnel vision into damage numbers and use that to claim that tanks have "very low impact", which is extremely biased and completely disregard the part where tanks, well, tank.

enmity and mitigation largely being non-factors

But again, that is the real issue. The fact that actual tanking is not engaging, not our damage numbers.

A thing I noticed looking back at the graphs back in page 4 is the "score" of tanks. They are around 50 points in Eden where they were closer to 70 in Omega. It's funny when you realize that tanks used to lose roughly 20% of their damage when using tank stance. Basically, now that they removed the hassle of stance dancing and trading survival for damage, we don't get rewarded with the increased damage.

Passive mitigation should likely be reduced in favor of frequent (or even consistently available) means of active mitigation.

I still think mitigation GCD would make tanking far more engaging

[Kabooa]

A thing I noticed looking back at the graphs back in page 4 is the "score" of tanks. They are around 50 points in Eden where they were closer to 70 in Omega. It's funny when considering that tanks used to lose roughly 20% of their damage when using tank stance. Basically, now that they removed the hassle of stance dancing and trading survival for damage, we don't get rewarded with the increased damage.

Omega is PDPS. PDPS is heavily inflated by padding. It's the entirety of the reason that upon Dancer's introduction that the site in question changed its metric. And while that metric isn't perfect, it's more equitable.

So our first fault is trying to compare the raw aggregate data of a -PDPS- based dataset to the raw aggregate data of an -RDPS- based dataset.

Even if we moved back to Stormblood, using this new metric Tanks heavily drop because the only "RDPS" metric brought was by Warrior, and it shares that with two DPS jobs.

What we have is a combination of several factors.

A) A Change of measuring metric.
B) Retuning healer's damage (Where most of the jobs range between 60-70% increases, healers range from 80-90%)
C) The change of assumption in tuning Tanks (RE: There is no longer a penalty - AKA one tank is no longer at 80% while the other sits at 100%, as far as SE's tuning is concerned)

[BarretOblivion]

The main thing that I see is that you tunnel vision into damage numbers and use that to claim that tanks have "very low impact", which is extremely biased and completely disregard the part where tanks, well, tank.

A thing I noticed looking back at the graphs back in page 4 is the "score" of tanks. They are around 50 points in Eden where they were closer to 70 in Omega. It's funny when you realize that tanks used to lose roughly 20% of their damage when using tank stance. Basically, now that they removed the hassle of stance dancing and trading survival for damage, we don't get rewarded with the increased damage.

I still think mitigation GCD would make tanking far more engaging

Okay so... what pray tell does that make an OT then? Because according to your logic a OT is supposed not exist. I can't tank the same boss like leviathan every fight, what am I supposed to do? Oh I voke and help my MT with a TB before he takes it back? Greaaaat. The act of tanking is also doing damage. Not just in FFXIV, but in every MMO tanks have to also deal damage to do their tanking so it is one of our primary concerns. Its last on the list when progging but when clearing it certainly is up there in priority.
A GCD cooldown is probably going to be the dumbest thing they could add. Remember Inner Beast? Yeah, few used that in SB and that was a GCD cooldown. You know what tanks will just do? Have the OT use their OT skills for once or just tank swap.

On your point on tank stance... nobody used tank stance, well at least in end game. You establish hate and then swap to DPS stance the rest of the way unless you needed the extra mitigation (which you almost never needed). If they didn't remove it what would have happened? Well the OT would just take a tankbuster that the MT can't take while in DPS stance. The removal of the stances was to make the tanks more "new player friendly" plus it helped remove the aspect DPS/Heals watching their own hate.

[Reynhart]

Okay so... what pray tell does that make an OT then? Because according to your logic a OT is supposed not exist.

The OT would do exactly the same thing as they do now, tank. The fact that he doesn't manage the whole fight is completely irrelevant. And it's even more important now that every tank has several mitigation tools usable even as an OT.

A GCD cooldown is probably going to be the dumbest thing they could add. Remember Inner Beast? Yeah, few used that in SB and that was a GCD cooldown.

Only because the oGCD mitigation was more than enough to tank everything, and also because the opportunity loss of Inner Beast went way above a single GCD.

On your point on tank stance... nobody used tank stance, well at least in end game.

You're right, in endgame, after you gather enough knowledge of the fight to optimize your mitigation skill, your enmity rotation and optional tank swapping even if the fight didn't require that. And you were rewarded for those efforts by an increased amount of damage. Now, all of that effort is gone, so the reward is also gone.

The removal of the stances was to make the tanks more "new player friendly" plus it helped remove the aspect DPS/Heals watching their own hate.

New players were far away from the whole "stance optimization in Savage content", so no, it wasn't made for new players, but to close that very fiery debate, exactly like the update on accessories. And yes, it removed the aspect of watching hate. So, explain why tanks should be more rewarded now that they have less things to manage ? And that's without counting how the rotations themselves have been mostly streamlined, requiring, once again, less effort than in past expansions (At least for WAR and DRK).

[Ultimatecalibur]

On your point on tank stance... nobody used tank stance, well at least in end game. You establish hate and then swap to DPS stance the rest of the way unless you needed the extra mitigation (which you almost never needed). If they didn't remove it what would have happened? Well the OT would just take a tankbuster that the MT can't take while in DPS stance. The removal of the stances was to make the tanks more "new player friendly" plus it helped remove the aspect DPS/Heals watching their own hate.

New players were far away from the whole "stance optimization in Savage content", so no, it wasn't made for new players, but to close that very fiery debate, exactly like the update on accessories. And yes, it removed the aspect of watching hate. So, explain why tanks should be more rewarded now that they have less things to manage ? And that's without counting how the rotations themselves have been mostly streamlined, requiring, once again, less effort than in past expansions (At least for WAR and DRK).

The HW/SB DpS stance tanking situation was partially caused by unintended uses of skills for massive increases in enmity generated. Enmity management when playing as intended (i.e. in Tank stance with Vit accessories doing a proper rotation) was pretty much a non-concern as it is now. The situation developed after Warrior players discovered that they could generate a massive lead in enmity by combining overhealing with Equilibrium (if I remember right it was a free 1500 enmity at max hp) and their Unchaned opener and that tanks could maintain this lead for long enough to clear content with their Strength accessory enhanced DpS rotations. When the devs tried to correct for this during SB they ended up introducing the Circle Shirk combos which allowed for multiplication of both tanks current enmity without the use of tank stance.

High end Tank players discovered that they could do more work to increase their damage massively. The ShB tank stance changes were done to return the tanks to their intended difficult level.

[Reynhart]

The ShB tank stance changes were done to return the tanks to their intended difficult level.

So, they also returned them to their intended DPS level, now that the additionnal work has been removed.

[Shurrikhan]

A GCD cooldown is probably going to be the dumbest thing they could add. Remember Inner Beast? Yeah, few used that in SB and that was a GCD cooldown. You know what tanks will just do? Have the OT use their OT skills for once or just tank swap.

Should we remove GCD healing as well, I wonder? I mean, oGCD healing has made it mostly superfluous as is, so... why not?

While we're at it, why don't we throw in some channeled oGCDs (broken on any other action) for DPS that deal more than their GCD outputs? Their contribution isn't actually capped, so gotta find some other way to make GCDs unnecessary for their role as well.

:: GCDs are only a waste insofar as low damage tuning and overpowered oGCDs make them a waste.

[J-Reyno]

Ok, let's admit that it is because of the relation between damage and enmity.

Gonna stop you here. I'm glad we can agree that damage is necessary for enmity, but it is also a primary function of the role simply because it is intended by the devs who designed the role that tanks deal damage, just as much as it is intended for dps to deal damage. Tanks need to deal damage because content is designed around tanks dealing damage and utilizing the rotation they are given. It's not a debatable subject.