Tanking feels unimportant

[ReiMakoto]

Seen on the tombstone of Barret's raid after a wipe - "At least he didn't screw up his rotation."

If a wipe was caused by a pld not using clemency, something went very very very wrong before that point, if a wipe is consistently happening because you need you pld as a crutch to heal, your party is bad and isnt clearing. If youre having to watch peoples healthbars instead of your rotation, your party is fundamentally flawed

[Quor]

If a wipe was caused by a pld not using clemency, something went very very very wrong before that point, if a wipe is consistently happening because you need you pld as a crutch to heal, your party is bad and isnt clearing. If youre having to watch peoples healthbars instead of your rotation, your party is fundamentally flawed

"Nothing bad should ever happen. Everything should always go perfect, and if it doesn't then definitely don't alter how you play because you either do it perfectly or gtfo."

This attitude is cancer. We have tools to use for a reason. Or do you just want to ignore the solo heal TEA that happened exactly because of the power of Clemency?

Go on. I'll wait.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

"Nothing bad should ever happen. Everything should always go perfect, and if it doesn't then definitely don't alter how you play because you either do it perfectly or gtfo."

This attitude is cancer. We have tools to use for a reason. Or do you just want to ignore the solo heal TEA that happened exactly because of the power of Clemency?

Go on. I'll wait.

Your attitude is the most cancerous here, "I'm right and everyone else is wrong, how dare someone else be more right than I". There is very little discussion with you unless someone happens to agree with you.

During prog and clears, accidents happen outside the normal flow of a fight, and in most cases, especially in ultimate, it is gg better to wipe and start over.

But yes most of the time in clears, things shouldn't go wrong, it's expected of people that they've learnt the fight, since they have cleared it, so they shouldn't screw up normally.

Rei is correct in that if you need a paladin to cast clemency to consistently get through a segment of a fight, healers are doing something wrong, using a solo healer run of ultimate is a poor counter argument, when the point was made where two healers are present like in standard party comps.

Of course in outlier and very extreme levels of play sure, you would get the paladin to help with healing at certain points, but those are heavily co-ordinated uses, not thrown out because some mistake happened. You aren't solo healing ultimate if the runs don't go perfect either.

Which is contradictory to the very point you started with, to the point you finished with.

[Payadopa]

Because that's not my job to watch player's HP? That's healers jobs and role. Not only that I'm not gonna clemency if I am not in my requiscat window, it throws of your rotation considerably if you clemency early and don't have 100% MP when its time to requiscat.

Everyone has a role to do damage in Savage/Ultimate. EVERYONE because EVERYONE HAS TO DO X DAMAGE ELSE YOU WIPE.

That's exactly the kind of attitude I seriously dislike. It's about time SE does something about the 'deeps or die - mindset'.
Rather letting someone die than to 'screw up their rotation'? Unbelievable..

[MerlinCross]

This has become a Clemency topic now it seems.

To throw my opinion of it; it’s nice, niche and can be helpful: Never use it.

If a skill exists only to play to the lore of a job and by and large never gets used, or worse gets you berated for using, delete it and put something usable in. Clemency exists cause “PLD needs a heal spell” and Divine veil. Lore can be trimmed and Divine Veil can work just as well without the heal to trigger it.

But I hold up a couple skills that need deleting anyway.

[Quor]

Your attitude is the most cancerous here, "I'm right and everyone else is wrong, how dare someone else be more right than I". There is very little discussion with you unless someone happens to agree with you.

Chemotherapy is known for it's harshness. But to make an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs.

My major issue is this - on the one hand, many people on this forum (rightly) ask for greater complexity and challenge in the tanks while at the same time advocating against the usage and sometimes for the outright removal of the things that make each tank unique. This is rarely addressed in any meaningful manner outside of the discussion that relates to tank dps. In essence, the attitude is that if it's not helping kill the boss faster then it's useless and should be ignored in favor of literally anything else. This ignores the very real fact that sometimes these non-damage skills can save a person's life, something that is certainly worth more than a single GCD of damage from a non-DPS. The gist of this thread is that tanking feels unimportant, but I know for a fact on each of the tank jobs I've done something clutch that saved a life and ultimately the run.

But to many on this forum, that doesn't matter. All that matters is damage. This is a terrible attitude to take, and will only lead to further homogenization of not only the tank role but all the roles if followed to it's logical conclusion.

During prog and clears, accidents happen outside the normal flow of a fight, and in most cases, especially in ultimate, it is gg better to wipe and start over.

"Most" cases becomes subjective. 95% and barely into phase 1? Sure, restart it. Sub-10% in the final phase with dps looking lit when someone makes a flub right before a raid-wide and that little extra bit of healing will save their life? Of course you'll use Clemency. Any decent tank would. You certainly wouldn't call it a wipe and restart. So it most definitely does have value, by your own admission no less.

But yes most of the time in clears, things shouldn't go wrong, it's expected of people that they've learnt the fight, since they have cleared it, so they shouldn't screw up normally.

Again with that weasel word, "most." For the moment when "most" doesn't happen, SE has given us tools to use in order to do what they envision part of what a tank should do; watch over and protect their team. PLD happens to have a nice direct heal, and it's part of what makes the job unique, but WAR, DRK and GNB all have means of doing something similar.

Rei is correct in that if you need a paladin to cast clemency to consistently get through a segment of a fight, healers are doing something wrong, using a solo healer run of ultimate is a poor counter argument, when the point was made where two healers are present like in standard party comps.

"...using a solo healer run of ultimate is a poor counter argument..." is something I never thought I would see someone say seriously. It's a testament to the power of the skill when used correctly (and in this case, creatively).

Of course in outlier and very extreme levels of play sure, you would get the paladin to help with healing at certain points, but those are heavily co-ordinated uses, not thrown out because some mistake happened. You aren't solo healing ultimate if the runs don't go perfect either.

Most of the arguments about "optimal" rotation and "ideal" situations talk of those qualities in the context of how quickly a boss can be killed. 5 DPS surely kills a boss faster than 4 DPS. By the logic many on this forum employ, the optimal way to do TEA is now single healer with a PLD tank support healing via Clemency. You can be damn sure the lost GCD's on the part of the PLD are more than made up for by the extra DPS.

But you see, this is the issue I have with this attitude. "Optimal" and "ideal" are nice goals to shoot for, but when they get enforced the way they often are on this forum (and elsewhere), as if the only way to play is the "optimal" way and the "optimal" way is expected 100% of the time, and all job discussion revolves around the "optimal" way it ignores anything that disagrees with this hegemony. I have a healthy distrust and hatred of hegemony. It's stifling and stagnant, killing innovation in the name of conformity for the sake of conformity. It's no different than the monkey-and-ladder study done decades ago. I've seen too many people talk about how terrible Clemency is and why does PLD have a "wasted" skill on this heal because the "optimal" way to play is to dedicate every GCD to damage. And here comes this group, thinking outside the box, clearing the hardest content in-game right now with a solo heal, largely due to the healing power proper use of Clemency can give.

Guess that's the new "optimal" now isn't it? Outlier or no, if someone is going to argue that dps is the most important thing, then they have to agree that this is the new meta. It has more overall dps by a good margin and it does it by leaning heavily on tank healing. This goes in the face of all conventional wisdom, and yet was spectacularly successful. Of course, I don't want to see this become the "new optimal." It's simply a nice illustration of my point. All you need is a single data point to disprove a claim. You can't just decide to ignore an outlier because it's inconvenient. And yes, all the major polling and stat companies out there most definitely are screwing it up royally when they do the same thing.

Which is contradictory to the very point you started with, to the point you finished with.

My point was - and has always been - that we are given tools for a reason and these tools help define each job as a distinct entity. That reason most definitely is not to dedicate every ounce of energy to dealing as much damage as possible to the point where we ignore our non-dps tools. Or worse yet, start to advocate for their removal on the basis that this will somehow improve the job in some way. Homogenization and hegemony are my enemies, and if that means I'm a bit harsh at times then so be it.

[ReiMakoto]

snip

Pretty much everything you say here falls apart because the solo heal run isnt optimal lol, its a good 2 mins longer (Edit, 1 min longer, point still stands) than the fastest recorded clear time. There are times when solo heal is stronger than 2 healers, and thats in easier content, I havent seen a final floor savage or ultimate that is faster with solo heal yet. The solo clear of tea certainly is impressive, and that is a heavily coordinated environment where it is aggreed upon when and where clemeny is being used. They are not hawking healthbars in normal play, paladin is not a third healer. Sure it could save a raid, im not doubting that, but unless youre doing something specific, like a man mode or solo heal, paladin shouldnt be relied on for its heal, in your flub scenario what on earth has happened that a healer couldnt cover it instead, if we invent a scenario where the healers couldnt possibly handle it, sure it saved a wipe, but those situations are so niches that again it goes back to my point of paladin should not be watching healthbars. I get that you dont like homogenisation, but when talking about clemency in particular, whilst I dont think they would actually remove it, it doesnt make it any less incredibly niche. Its like leg shot on ranged, 90% of the time it doesnt see any use, but sure itll save some guys life doing something sometime. And im not saying PLDs should cause a wipe as well btw if they are in a situation they know will wipe if they dont do it. The problem is knowing that, ive been in situations where people have looked low and its tempting to throw them a shield or something, but the healers have it covered with tools i dont know anything about, so if i were to drop a clemeny in that situation it would be wasted. You could also gain a lot being more charitable with others arguments and coming off less self aggrandising

[Quor]

I get that you dont like homogenisation, but when talking about clemency in particular, whilst I dont think they would actually remove it,

See, you say that, but look at how much they've already removed from jobs, especially the tanks.

You could also gain a lot being more charitable with others arguments and coming off less self aggrandising

I was, once upon a time. Didn't do much. I've seen this pattern happen before, yet after warning people about it for the umpteenth time in my umpteenth game and seeing history repeat itself yet again you'll have to forgive me if I'm more than a bit jaded. I see the same thing; people complain about something and the solution offered - if any - ultimately results in things getting worse. And that's if a solution is offered at all. I've tried my hand at more than a few suggestions, and sometimes that's come away with some good discussion, but most of the time they're just shot down or ignored outright. And this was back when I was nice.

Given the option, most players of most games will take the easiest most assured possible route to success. The logical end point of this is an "I win" button in many cases. That's an extreme of course, but it's illustrative of the macro issue. Fun, memories worth remembering, stories worth retelling, these things aren't made in a spreadsheet or from a bar graph. I don't remember most of my E4S kills, but I do remember the one where our WHM pulled the MT off to his death with Rescue at 3% and we ended up beating Titan right as he enraged and killed us all. So we all laid there, dead but victorious. It was hilarious.

I don't begrudge the spreadsheeters and bar graphers their kind of fun. In fact, I appreciate the work done to collate and collect data for people to use. I take issue with such information being used as justification for sweeping job changes or calls for reworks or rants about how useless a given job is, because I've seen where that path leads. The surest way to kill fun is to try and balance it by the numbers. That's neither here nor there as far as the thread goes, just a bit of background in regards to where I'm coming from.

[ReiMakoto]

I don't begrudge the spreadsheeters and bar graphers their kind of fun. In fact, I appreciate the work done to collate and collect data for people to use. I take issue with such information being used as justification for sweeping job changes or calls for reworks or rants about how useless a given job is, because I've seen where that path leads. The surest way to kill fun is to try and balance it by the numbers. That's neither here nor there as far as the thread goes, just a bit of background in regards to where I'm coming from.

I see where youre coming from, I just dont think its entirely valid, if a job is fun, requesting number balancing or tweaks based on the numbers is a good thing. Using SB DRK as an example, it was a fun class (to me at least) but numerically it was pretty terrible at the start of the expac towards the middle, then based on these numbers it was rebalanced to deal more damage, maintaining its fun and now being competitive. Just subjectively as well I almost never see people request reworks based on the numbers, reworks are almost always requested from a gameplay feel perspective, (outside of maybe the tank stance rework, but I dont think that was because of numeric complaints, its because they were vestigal, so gameplay.)

[Quor]

I see where youre coming from, I just dont think its entirely valid, if a job is fun, requesting number balancing or tweaks based on the numbers is a good thing. Using SB DRK as an example, it was a fun class (to me at least) but numerically it was pretty terrible at the start of the expac towards the middle, then based on these numbers it was rebalanced to deal more damage, maintaining its fun and now being competitive. Just subjectively as well I almost never see people request reworks based on the numbers, reworks are almost always requested from a gameplay feel perspective, (outside of maybe the tank stance rework, but I dont think that was because of numeric complaints, its because they were vestigal, so gameplay.)

Oh, I feel the same way. Balance is very tight right now between the tanks. Were you around for the very lengthy thread on how tank damage felt? It was pretty recent, maybe a month or so ago, and quite long.