How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[J-Reyno]

snip

Thanks, so let me ask you: do you think that going by these numbers healers received a larger damage increase in Shadowbringers than tanks? We could definitely bump the combined contribution of the tanks in the Voidwalker log by 400 dps if we want closer to 99th numbers, but AST also exists. So what do you think, does healer damage contribution look to have received a greater increase than tank damage?

[Kabooa]

Thanks, so let me ask you: do you think that going by these numbers healers received a larger damage increase in Shadowbringers than tanks? We could definitely bump the combined contribution of the tanks in the Voidwalker log by 400 dps if we want closer to 99th numbers, but AST also exists. So what do you think, does healer damage contribution look to have received a greater increase than tank damage?

Overall, yes, but that's primarily White Mage. It brought no raid damage increases and still doesn't, but at the start of Shadowbringers, it was given the heftiest potency boost to make up for it while Astro and Scholar trimmed down some. Scholar and Astro have since been increased to try and close that gap.

The tank changes centered around equalizing Tanks with the Warrior. The warrior, due to the Slashing Debuff, was 8-10% ahead of any tank without a slashing debuff, but it was also very hard to form a raid composition that didn't take Slashing. Monk, Dragoon, Dark Knight, and Paladin wasn't a common melee set up.

The warrior certainly increased less than the healers by a fair margin. The Dark Knight and Paladin got larger relative increases due to being tuned around there no longer being a slashing buff to exploit.

Tanks got tuned around Warrior, and Healers got tuned around Astro. Of the two, there was less discrepency between the lowest of the Tanks to Warrior than there was of the lowest of the healers to Astro, especially after they folded the power of removed / reduced raid damage buffs back into the job. So while on average, 'healers' saw the larger gain, at the end of the day, the state of the game isn't so far off where it was in Stormblood's end. (You rarely, after all, deviated from 2 tanks and 2 healers)

I do acknowledge that it's not satisfying. That single Balance might be the Astro's damage, but they gave it to me and that means they trust me. While the end result and source of the damage hasn't really changed from a perspective of mechanical balance, I agree it certainly does take away some from Job satisfaction.

And if I'm being honest, I don't have a good answer for that.

[Godsfaith]

Being able to deal around 9k damage on Paladin while taking very little damage in return while being able to solo heal most non-savage boss fights.

I feel like I'm playing all three roles at the same time with very little draw back. There's a reason 8 tanks can clear most savage content.

DPS checks ><

[BarretOblivion]

Overall, yes, but that's primarily White Mage. It brought no raid damage increases and still doesn't, but at the start of Shadowbringers, it was given the heftiest potency boost to make up for it while Astro and Scholar trimmed down some. Scholar and Astro have since been increased to try and close that gap.

The tank changes centered around equalizing Tanks with the Warrior. The warrior, due to the Slashing Debuff, was 8-10% ahead of any tank without a slashing debuff, but it was also very hard to form a raid composition that didn't take Slashing. Monk, Dragoon, Dark Knight, and Paladin wasn't a common melee set up.

The warrior certainly increased less than the healers by a fair margin. The Dark Knight and Paladin got larger relative increases due to being tuned around there no longer being a slashing buff to exploit.

Tanks got tuned around Warrior, and Healers got tuned around Astro. Of the two, there was less discrepency between the lowest of the Tanks to Warrior than there was of the lowest of the healers to Astro, especially after they folded the power of removed / reduced raid damage buffs back into the job. So while on average, 'healers' saw the larger gain, at the end of the day, the state of the game isn't so far off where it was in Stormblood's end. (You rarely, after all, deviated from 2 tanks and 2 healers)

I do acknowledge that it's not satisfying. That single Balance might be the Astro's damage, but they gave it to me and that means they trust me. While the end result and source of the damage hasn't really changed from a perspective of mechanical balance, I agree it certainly does take away some from Job satisfaction.

And if I'm being honest, I don't have a good answer for that.

Except... you know... ninja was meta so you didn't need a WAR in SB to always have slashing when every party ran a bloody ninja.

[Kabooa]

Except... you know... ninja was meta so you didn't need a WAR in SB to always have slashing when every party ran a bloody ninja.

Of course not.

But that makes tanks looks worse. Since then you'd dock them 8% and give that to the ninja.

[J-Reyno]

Overall, yes, but that's primarily White Mage. It brought no raid damage increases and still doesn't, but at the start of Shadowbringers, it was given the heftiest potency boost to make up for it while Astro and Scholar trimmed down some. Scholar and Astro have since been increased to try and close that gap.

The tank changes centered around equalizing Tanks with the Warrior. The warrior, due to the Slashing Debuff, was 8-10% ahead of any tank without a slashing debuff, but it was also very hard to form a raid composition that didn't take Slashing. Monk, Dragoon, Dark Knight, and Paladin wasn't a common melee set up.

The warrior certainly increased less than the healers by a fair margin. The Dark Knight and Paladin got larger relative increases due to being tuned around there no longer being a slashing buff to exploit.

Tanks got tuned around Warrior, and Healers got tuned around Astro. Of the two, there was less discrepency between the lowest of the Tanks to Warrior than there was of the lowest of the healers to Astro, especially after they folded the power of removed / reduced raid damage buffs back into the job. So while on average, 'healers' saw the larger gain, at the end of the day, the state of the game isn't so far off where it was in Stormblood's end. (You rarely, after all, deviated from 2 tanks and 2 healers)

I do acknowledge that it's not satisfying. That single Balance might be the Astro's damage, but they gave it to me and that means they trust me. While the end result and source of the damage hasn't really changed from a perspective of mechanical balance, I agree it certainly does take away some from Job satisfaction.

And if I'm being honest, I don't have a good answer for that.

I'll agree with you that both roles are still offering similar overall contribution, and we agree that healers received a noticeably larger increase in damage.

And this is what I mean by relative damage between the roles. Ideally we want to raise tank damage just as much as healers at a bare minimum. This didn't happen, and healers are now at the very beginning of ShB more damage capable than tanks. Meaning even if tanks stay at the same overall damage contribution they are going to be relatively lower compared to healer, who now has higher damage contribution.

If we compare the numbers you provided from the two logs healer raid damage increases by 92%. And let's say that, like you suggest, 99th tanks would have brought a combined 400 more damage in the Voidwalker fight. So tank damage increases by 78%.

But what if tanks had received a similar damage increase as healers? A 92% damage increase for tanks would place them at 20,023 combined raid damage. Seeing as they're pretty even in this log, that's about 10,011 rDPS each. Tanks lose 4.7% damage from buffs in the rDPS calculation. Now I am not a whiz when it comes to buff calculations, but if we want to hit 10,011 rDPS after losing 4.7% damage from buffs, tanks will need to reach about 10,504 personal dps.

And you're right that hitting this number doesn't put them at 1k more dps. It's still a decent chunk of damage, and I think a solid 1k would be appropriate based on other things I've mentioned in the topic. Either way the current numbers are definitely not satisfying and, for me at least, that'd be answered with upward adjustments to the role's damage.

[Shurrikhan]

Absolutely, I don't think either position is more legitimate than the other, it really just comes down to personal preference in regard to how the dps percentage should be divided between the roles and how important that is to your enjoyment of the game.

That something may ultimately rely on personal preference does not mean that it lacks warrant or thorough reasoning, nor that is must be detached from wider concerns. Here the main concern is generally balance (fairness in job/role choice), but that same concern can take two paths.

On the one side, balance dictates that player should see similar improvement in party contribution as they improve their level of play. (Thus, tanks should see greater tangible reward increase, or greater difference between their output floor and ceiling, to roughly equal contribution difference supplied by DPS.)

On the other, balance would demand that tanks should neither replace nor be replaced by dps -- except perhaps situationally and in equal rates of exchange. (Thus, rewards to tanks' ceiling must be careful not to overpower tanks at the majority of other levels of play as a result of tanks' high output floor.)

Those goals are not, however, mutually exclusive. It just takes appropriate tuning.

[Kabooa]

I'll agree with you that both roles are still offering similar overall contribution, and we agree that healers received a noticeably larger increase in damage.

Right. I'm just on the side of the fence where White mage was undertuned instead of Astro being overtuned.

As far as corrective increases go, I'd be fine with around a 3-4% increase right now (So a 9100 tank would go to around 9500).

Further than that depends on their response to Summoner. If they do the sane thing, then I don't believe further potency adjustment is needed.

There is, however, a distinct lack of the ability to excel (Re as: The 'band' on all percentiles is extremely tiny). An increase of what you're asking for, in its own vacuum, would require some gameplay adjustments, now or later, so that the increase itself is the tank's realm of optimization. The kits currently don't really support that.

To me, it simply makes sense to build that system before increasing them, but like most drivel I toss out, that's just opinion.

[Rhais]

That something may ultimately rely on personal preference does not mean that it lacks warrant or thorough reasoning, nor that is must be detached from wider concerns. Here the main concern is generally balance (fairness in job/role choice), but that same concern can take two paths.

On the one side, balance dictates that player should see similar improvement in party contribution as they improve their level of play. (Thus, tanks should see greater tangible reward increase, or greater difference between their output floor and ceiling, to roughly equal contribution difference supplied by DPS.)

On the other, balance would demand that tanks should neither replace nor be replaced by dps -- except perhaps situationally and in equal rates of exchange. (Thus, rewards to tanks' ceiling must be careful not to overpower tanks at the majority of other levels of play as a result of tanks' high output floor.)

Those goals are not, however, mutually exclusive. It just takes appropriate tuning.

Yes, that's why I said "I'm presuming that like me others that would have no problem with a damage increase are suggesting it under the premise that it would be done in such a way as to preserve job balance and balance between the roles." below the portion you quoted. Obviously any change in dps that would unbalance distribution of roles within the party would cease to be subjective and be objectively bad for the game. There is certainly room for adjustment before that becomes a concern however.

I also think the topic is connected to wider concerns within the role and game in general, and not something that should necessarily be isolated when discussing it. However it seems every time this topic comes up certain people come in, in typically a fairly obnoxious manner, to assert that it shouldn't be a concern of tanks at all. It generally shuts down any actual conversation because people end up spending all their time defending themselves for even daring to broach the subject against others that merely don't place as much importance on that aspect of the role as them. It's hard to discuss something when as soon as you bring it up as a concern you are essentially told you are wrong for even being concerned about it. Hence why I was pointing out it's subjective nature.(again, obviously within reasonable limits)

Edit: For instance, taken from the post above "There is, however, a distinct lack of the ability to excel (Re as: The 'band' on all percentiles is extremely tiny). An increase of what you're asking for, in its own vacuum, would require some gameplay adjustments, now or later, so that the increase itself is the tank's realm of optimization. The kits currently don't really support that."

I think the above quote is one of the biggest problems with current tank design, and one of the issues that really needs to be taken into consideration when discussing tank dps, one of those wider concerns. At least in my view, the above is one of the main culprits for tanks having that feeling of low impact within the party, and as the nature of the game is one of repeating the same content over and over for months, it makes the content stagnate faster.

[J-Reyno]

There is, however, a distinct lack of the ability to excel (Re as: The 'band' on all percentiles is extremely tiny). An increase of what you're asking for, in its own vacuum, would require some gameplay adjustments, now or later, so that the increase itself is the tank's realm of optimization. The kits currently don't really support that.

While I'm fine with more complexity for tank jobs, I feel like people here have been diminishing the effort of the role when it comes to optimizing damage.

For example, I'm looking at recent Eden stats here:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...=Any&bracket=2

I show Gunbreaker averaging 8073 dps at 75th percentile. At 99th, Gunbreaker reaches 8707, a 7.8% damage increase. Samurai sees dps improve from 14049 to 15048, a 7.1% increase. Monk, Dragoon and Ninja improve by 6.8%, 6.3%, and 7.4% respectively.

Maybe tanks just have a lower skill floor so we'll see much smaller increases at lower the percentiles?

I'm not so sure, because I'm showing Gunbreaker with 7639 damage at 50th percentile. From 50th > 99th Gunbreaker damage increases by 13.9%. Samurai damage at 50th is 13358, so up to the 99th percentile damage increases by 12.6%.

And just for the hell of it 10th percentile Gunbreaker sits at 6611, and SAM places 11411. Up to 99th, this is a 31% increase for GNB and a 27% increase for SAM. Ninja also matches GNB at 31% here.

Gunbreaker seems to see similar increases in damage as another "selfish" dps, Samurai, at all percentiles. And at 50th and below, Samurai actually seems to be having a slightly easier time.

I don't think anyone feels like dps jobs don't have room to excel, and by the numbers Gunbreaker has as much room to excel as Samurai and other dps jobs, if not more than some. Why do we say otherwise?