How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Quor]

While I do generally side with your position here, there have more arguments than are merely both vague and subjective or rely on unargued proven warrants. There a couple, even, I think most could agree with:[LIST]At no point should the skill-to-reward progression of any given role be so limited relative to others that one would seemingly need to switch roles to contribute as much as they could to their party.

Many have complained that this currently seems the case with tanks, especially relative to DPS. Others insist that the passive benefit offered by tanking provides such a high output floor that one has no business complaining about its low ceiling, but this seems a tangential defense at best. Other more directly claim that they just don't feel that the ceiling is particularly limiting despite the difference between medial and peak performance providing less to the party than would the same in DPS, since it's roughly the same % difference -- i.e. a 10% difference between median and maximum parses for both the average DPS and average tank each. It thus remains at an impasse, until we can answer whether it is sufficient merely that improvement in one's percentile allows them to outperform others of their same role (since tanks are going to be obliged by mechanics, and thus "someone's gotta do it, anyways") or if increased skill should be rewarded with equally valuable contributions to their party regardless of the "currency" of their contributions. The discussion will likely also touch on tanks' output floor, as that is far higher than it's ever previously been.

I can agree to this. I understand the design decision behind a simple tank rotation; the main game of a tank is not the combos we use but the macro meta of the fight itself. However, combos are a part of this, and pressing globals is the cornerstone of this game. I don't necessarily think we need a dps-level of complexity, but I can understand wanting more. GNB and PLD both flow pretty well but have a lot of rigidity to them. WAR and DRK have periods of high action where you feel busy but the low intensity periods wear on you. How exactly to address this I don't know. Part of the issue comes from the (relatively) simpler encounters present at end game right now. After seeing that TEA has in store for players, I'm hopeful for more challenging macro-level stuff for tanks to do in upcoming content, but it's always a good idea to talk about how baseline rotational stuff can be improved.

[*]Equally valuable contributions to the party should come from roughly equal requirements of skillful play.

• This is of course a variation on "effort/complexity should be duly rewarded" which is itself controversial and is likely a minority opinion by a slight margin if ever applied as broadly as to general balance or long-term metrics like rDPS. Still, many have argued as an extension of such that the skillful play required for healers to minimize their healing is still not enough to bring them up to the average skill requirements given how barebones their offensive gameplay itself has become -- effectively, that healers are getting too much output potential for too little effort or complexity. There has not yet been any thorough counter-argument save those already applied to the more general warrant. Others have pressed that the efforts spent in allowing for healer offensive uptime is valuable, but none have gone so far as to argue (except perhaps implicitly) that it is therefore sufficient.

I can understand the perspective regarding healers, and again I'm hopeful - having seen the sheer amount of GCD healing needed to beat TEA - that future fights will emphasize more of the "healer" side of a healers kit instead of the dps. As someone who casually plays a healer (WHM and AST) I find AST to be more functionally busy but WHM to feel more powerful overall. I enjoy the longer-term macro planning you get with AST, and I wouldn't mind shades of that being imported to WHM, as well as a bit more depth to healer rotation.

But that's a discussion for elsewhere.

As far as it pertains to tanks, again I think it's important to gauge the contribution not just by GCD and ability complexity, but by the macro-level fight-centric stuff expected of a tank. I'm confident SE has more in store for us later on in the xpac, but I'm not against the idea of higher complexity in tank combos. Naturally I would want this to lead to higher reward (most probably damage, but it would be nice if some kind of mitigation and/or other utility factored in as well). I've been going through the thread Kabooa made, but I have nothing substantive to add as of yet. I'm a bit too focused in on the current state of the game, so all of my suggestions are - to use your words - adding another spinning plate to maintain.