How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Reynhart]

The only difference is that the tank role receives proportionately less damage gain for the effort.

No they receive proportionally the same damage. that's exactly what you numbers are showing

Damage gain from 75th to 99th is 6.6%. 50th to 99th is 12% and 10th to 99th is 31%. Samurai sees damage gains of 6.8%, 12.6% and 34% respectively.

They have a lower base damage because they're tanks. That base damage will also impact their top damage. Asking for tanks to gain the same amount of damage will only make their skill ceiling higher than those of DPS jobs, on top of them having to pay attention to their mitigation.

[J-Reyno]

No they receive proportionally the same damage. that's exactly what you numbers are showing

They have a lower base damage because they're tanks. That base damage will also impact their top damage. Asking for tanks to gain the same amount of damage will only make their skill ceiling higher than those of DPS jobs, on top of them having to pay attention to their mitigation.

I'm referring to overall damage contribution, but that's not the point. Tank is the only role that sees much smaller damage for the effort.

As far as the skill ceiling, unless it takes more skill to reach that higher level of damage, then the skill required to play the job at maximum potential remains the same. So I don't think it matters. If the rotation stays the same then a 75th percentile player will still be 75th percentile. The only thing that will change is their damage numbers. What this does mean is that lower skill players are going to be further from higher skill players in damage values.

Which I don't think is a problem since this is already the case for dps and healers.

[BarretOblivion]

There isn't a luck factor if you organise your team properly, you can get 100% uptime on stormy if your team stays close to the dive where you stay further away then sprint/ cd to safety, pretty sure theres an uptime strat for the bomb too. For Titan you can choose a tank to get near 100% uptime for uplifts. Uplift 1 if the dps stand at the front of their platform tanks can drop their blue in a spot where it doesnt hit anyone but they can still hit the boss, the second blue mark is like a 2 gcd loss max if you time it right. Second uplift you can pick a tank to go with the melees an have front back groups so the melees and that tank always get 100% uptime (as well as padding off of the gaol with demon slice/slaughter and fated).

There is no uptime strat for the bomb, you try and uptime strat and you kill everyone. Again, one tank will get screw balled for uplift. We already know one tank can have 100% uptime but that means the other one will not. Its a luck factor there and it can really screw one tank because that timing is generally when raid buffs go out during uplift 2.

[Reynhart]

What this does mean is that lower skill players are going to be further from higher skill players in damage values.

Here's an example.
Between the top DRK and the first grey DRK, you have a 1945 DPS gap (8231 to 6286).
Between the top DRG and the first grey DRG, you have a 2745 DPS gap (14075 to 11330).

That's a difference of 800 DPS. How punishing would you have to make DRK's rotation to explain such a gap between two players of different skills, knowing that 800 DPS would mean that the low DRK forgot to use either :

• all its auto-attacks
• all its SoulEater
• all its EdgeOfShadow (Not counting Darkside)

?

[Rhais]

How much of the difference between percentiles is due to ilvl, and how much of it is actually skill based?

[Kabooa]

How much of the difference between percentiles is due to ilvl, and how much of it is actually skill based?

One can only make assumptions.

However at this point we could assume that iLvl is much less of a factor than it is in the first month or so. (When the toppity top is geared fully while everyone else is still moseying along).

That said, there's no reason to believe that the trends differ so much that one role is just under geared and another is just underskilled. One might be able to make that assertion in the first few weeks, but if the two aren't equally geared, there's no sense in making a comparison.

Looking back in time, the 'band' for tanks has shrunk since then, and the easiest explanation for that is the removal of Tank Stance as a mechanic of any weight, as well as the removal of Slashing and subsequent retuning.

The implication being that the floor is raised but not the ceiling. While rare, there are likely logs from groups that had no slashing debuff, thus why Dark and Paladin have lower floors. I doubt Warriors were just 10% better in play.

Obviously, this is the problem with just using graphs and why I encouraged deeper dives, but graphs are good at looking at trends even if no context is present.

For example, healer trends mostly haven't changed - Min-ilvl encounters demand healer DPS but Min-Ilvl isn't how most people tackle content, so healer DPS tends to be much more lax while still being provided. But healers also lose damage the more mistakes a party makes. They have a large amount of variance, and high healer damage is almost always indicative of a group that is mechanically sound (if not mechanically great).

The somewhat larger range on Tanks pre-Shadowbringers is almost wholly explained by the old function of Tank Stance. A 15-20% penalty is huge, and while it should be avoided in optimized play, not everyone who contributes to a dataset is at optimized play. Some just prefer having that comfort but they're counted among the same. Likewise, tanks having actual DPS-stances, some of them exclusive, means that your high percentiles are just that much further from your lows.

Would someone say flipping Tank Stance on and off is skill based? (I wouldn't).

This goes back into assumptions. I could see the development team looking at the removal of the damage penalty and deciding that they should also remove the benefit of the DPS stance, and then averaging them around the assumption that one is in (80%) and one isn't (100%), having their new full power be the average of a tank in stance and one out (90%).

The result is a large raising of the skill floor with a reduction of the ceiling.

[Shurrikhan]

But, like I said, since the "base" DPS value is not the same for every role, you'll have a great difference in floor/ceiling. Also, whatever the ratio between DPS and tanks is considered "fair" (Around 60% seemed to be enough back in Alphascape), giving the same room for improvement will inevitably break it.

You get a $50,000 salary and $50,000 worth of benefits.
I just get a $100,000 salary.

Now, due to a raise, we each get a 30% increase in salary.

Resultantly, I end up with $130,000. You end up with effective earnings of at most $115,000. Is the initial parity maintained?

Tanks' overall value do not scale proportionately to the same degree as that of DPS does; all but their damage barely, if at all, scales.

If you wish to argue that tanks' "benefits" so inflate their floor value that their output is still every bit as compelling at the highest levels of play as is that of DPS, feel free. But I'd be just as right to argue then that the floor is too high, and both should scale equally.

Given that you yourself have noted this lackluster scaling in previous expansions, I have to wonder if you're being purposely obtuse right now.

[Reynhart]

You get a $50,000 salary and $50,000 worth of benefits.
I just get a $100,000 salary.

Now, due to a raise, we each get a 30% increase in salary.

Resultantly, I end up with $130,000. You end up with effective earnings of at most $115,000. Is the initial parity maintained?

That's not our situation. Your comparison assumes that 1) We have the same salary amount at one point and 2) you have absolutely 0 benefit while I have some.

A better comparison would be that I have a $50k salary, you have a $100k salary and we both have a benefit of up to 30% of our salary if we perform well. So I gain $65k max and you, $130k max, thus twice as me. Some point later, we both get promoted (Our "new level cap") and gain a 50% increase in salary, but retain that 30% benefit. I gain $97.5k max and you gain $195k max...twice as me. Apart from that, I also happen to have a much much better health insurance than you.

Now, two situations. Either I have to work harder than you to gain that $45k benefit, since it's 60% of my base salary instead of 30%, or, I have to work only as hard as you to gain a 60% benefit while you still gain only 30% benefit. Is that parity ?

Given that you yourself have noted this lackluster scaling in previous expansions, I have to wonder if you're being purposely obtuse right now.

There is a difference between how your base value scales and how much range it got. We can maintain tank's damage higher that what we have now, around the 60% percent of a DPS job they had before if they're given back some complexity and more strategic use of mitigation and enmity. Technically, you can also have up to 40% DPS increase between an average and good player, to the point that a good tank could match a bad DPS.

However, you can't create a really wide gap between "bad" and "good" players, like the "60%" increase I described for the salary comparison above.

[Shurrikhan]

Is that parity ?

When and only when your "health insurance" provides, on average (across multiple encounters), the same benefit to average clear speed (across multiple attempts, including wipes from within normal/optimal compositions and excluding outlier excessive risks) as my increase in salary.

That's the whole point. You've been accounting for only one part of the equation when balance requires that the gestalt opportunity cost/benefit of one must be equal to the gestalt opportunity cost/benefit of the other.

I've already agreed several times in this thread alone, including in posts you have already quoted, that tanks should have greater complexity, as to warrant a more reasonable range -- including a lower floor as to better achieve parity across all levels of gameplay. But that, if done alone, would be to put the means before the ends; without a reasonable goal, the method is irrelevant.

The goal is balance. Though that balance may be unnecessary from a compositional standpoint, since most fight's specifically tank-enforcing events are enough to guarantee tanks their spots despite however little tanks may otherwise provide, it is still very useful in giving a feeling of right and proportionate reward. And before you disparage that as subjective dross, let us note that people play games when they find or expect to find it more fun (a wholly subjective feeling) to be doing so than to not.

[Reynhart]

When and only when your "health insurance" provides, on average (across multiple encounters), the same benefit to average clear speed (across multiple attempts, including wipes from within normal/optimal compositions and excluding outlier excessive risks) as my increase in salary.

My "health insurance" is what allows the clear in the first place. I understand you don't want tanks to be valuable just by being tanks, but that's still one of their massive benefit. These benefits being also what allows healer to DPS more (mitigation) or DPS to not die (enmity), two things that, I think we agree on, should be made more complex and engaging.

And you still didn't adress one issue. Gaining the same amount of raw DPS between two percentile means that tanks would have a greater damage output range. To create that range, you'd have to make tank's rotation more punishing than the DPS' (Like I said, giving current DRK the same room for improvement than current DRG would be like the average DRK not using auto-attacks at all). But, if the rotation is more punishing, it means that it suddenly requires more skill to achieve the same result, which is exactly what you don't want. Or, the other way is to make tanks stats scale higher than those of DPS. Because apart from a single comment from Rhais, the impact of gear was never included in the damage output, yet it still plays a great part.

The goal is balance.

The problem is that tanks and healers bring something else besides DPS. You can't simply focus on the DPS number to judge the value of a job. Especially since the base DPS will always be lower.

And before you disparage that as subjective dross, let us note that people play games when they find or expect to find it more fun (a wholly subjective feeling) to be doing so than to not.

I'd personally have more fun if tanking was made more complex and engaging, even without touching the damage output.