How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[NyneSwordz]

I had a max level Scholar on an alt, and it was by far the most fun I've ever had healing back in HW BECAUSE it felt like a dps job with healing on the side. It was just so fun tagging monsters with DOTs, spreading it with bane, laying down AOE, and healing in between. Current Sch is meh. It was great they gave Sch's back energy drain, but it still pales in comparison to the fun in HW and even SB.

Although there were a few things I would have liked changed in SB, at least I felt all of the actions fit nicely into the War kit and theme. And War still had good self-heal with IB. It was fun sometimes to swap to tank stance for Steel Cyclone heals or IB spam and then just switch back. Then they removed both steel cyclone heals and IB, both moves which would could have done whenever we felt like it if war had some rage, and replaced it basically with Nascent Flash, a move that requires a party member to do - it's just so unfun.

I don't want SE to split Nascent Flash from RI, I wish they would just split Nascent Flash from Nascent Glint.

Anyway, they've had 6 months to change it, and data from Savage and now Ultimate to kinda look at Wars and all tanks for that matter. If there aren't significant Tank adjustments, including QoL adjustments such as the one requested for Nascent Flash, in 5.2 I don't think it's gonna happen this expansion.

[Shurrikhan]

And yet...., yes that's what the community seems to be asking for. No, seriously, lemme see if I can put this clearly.

FF14's design when it comes to fights rewards pushing damage as much as possible due to the scripted nature of the fights, and how easy it is to keep up time on said damage.

However, any attempt to change or suggest changes with this is met with scorn by the community. It's either dropped as a "Never use/do", cheesed so it might as well not matter, or if based around abilities/damage, deemed a "Always bring" and that Job is an instant lock into every fight.

Because you can't take either half alone. To suggest the same things in a new setting will typically be met with the derision owed wasted opportunity, just as to suggest that we use new things in the same setting will typically be met with the derision owed wasted effort. Because they should. It's not paradoxical or hypocritical that the community would respond that way; it's sensible, even if short-sighted to anyone who understands that both halves -- both content and context -- are required to make a difference.

More than any issue like that of people not wanting a heightened focus on mitigation so long as mitigation nonetheless useless or the like, the problem is how rarely this community likes to consider things in depth or venture into less familiar premises. Since the gameplay of any significant suggestion requires an equally large premise in the form of its setting (the undermechancs, the fight designs, etc.), any useful discussion will be long. Discussion here is largely reactive.

But that's not to say that no one here is capable of thinking through these large projects. Even if it's just the 1%, so long as their interests are varied and one keeps in mind that they're skewed towards the more radical and are therefore likely to make more elaborate than may be strictly necessary, it isn't elitist to work with whoever can hold a lengthy conversation over catering to the oft-liked one-liners and reductive implicit arguments so prevalent here. Get far enough with people willing to go far and present it as a whole, with any earlier presented suggestions framed in such a way that does not assume more concrete context than you've yet established, and more radical suggestions fair far better.

As far as I can tell, the community is not too far down the damage-or-bust rabbit hole; it just lacks for any stimulus, any provocation, towards the idea that anything else can fit in the game.

The community is, on the whole, water. Make a slope and the water will follow. But the ideas a community can generate are not. Those ideas aren't limited to merely optimizing around a path someone else made for their players.

You overestimate the incremental levels of investment the average forum-goer will make in improving their situation (and therefore conflate much of the community of incomplete improvements as actively wanting whatever the devs throw at them or the general changes they amount to). But at the same time you underestimate what the few more invested could do if -- frankly -- they gleaned from those short-sighted, "for now" comments the player preferences that would exist regardless of content (what vibes, challenges, considerations, and playflow they want from the game, rather than just which of a few almost equally bad options they'd take), rather than assuming player's ideal gameplay from them.

An okay-but-not-great game is never going to tell us between its column A, column B, and column C of existing choices what ideal gameplay looks like to its player, only the least bad. And building only around that existing context is only going to make those choices more homogeneous, and give us an even smaller glimpse of what players actually want. There's a place for refining, but when you're streamlining your path towards what appears to be a cliff, it's time to start seeing if you can turn.

For my own part, for instance, I'd like to see more damage, more tanking, more self-healing on every job, so long as it fits with their kits and doesn't sap the interactions between roles or reduce the need for party coordination. That's a markedly different criteria than "as long as it doesn't sap the unique capacities or dynamics between roles" that seems the more often player preference, in the few chances I've had to discuss it from both discussing the existing game and extrapolating from it into what could be. And without that extrapolation, those preferences never would have come to a head. Numerous paragraphs of analogies, references, and simulations followed from either end, and those who partook in the discussion ended it better knowing what they wanted, a far cry from had it just ended at "but, if you had to leave tank stance at all, that just means your co-tank or healer screwed up and you should probably just kick them rather than even thinking about all this."

[Falar]

Play a dps if you want to obsess over numbers, I will never understand how it will affect the enjoyment of your gameplay whether or not your parser show a higher or lower number, because it is all relative, the only thing that matters is how much different jobs inside a role deal damage, since content will always be balanced around the expected damage, if they increased the level of tank dps, the boss hp would just be higher. Why does it matter how much different roles do dps? Just play a job that you like and try to your best inside it's expected damage, that is what the game expects of you. And btw white mage should not deal more damage than tanks, something is wrong in that group if they do, either the other healer is solo healing, whm is hugely better geared or the tanks are bad.

Well I like to measure my progression in gear (the entire point of playing content) by how fast I kill stuff.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Well I like to measure my progression in gear (the entire point of playing content) by how fast I kill stuff.

Wouldn't it be better for tanks to measure progression in gear by how long it takes stuff to kill them or if it is even possible for something to kill the tank?

[Falar]

Wouldn't it be better for tanks to measure progression in gear by how long it takes stuff to kill them or if it is even possible for something to kill the tank?

Staying alive is a given. How fast I can kill things out in the world is the measure of strength and feel of progression.

I really miss HW, especially DRK.

[MerlinCross]

Hi, back from the holidays to this topic and because someone bumped it.

Stuff

This is a lot of words that to me boils down to you having far more faith in the playbase than I do. I do not, from experience here, elsewhere, and even in game. Again, a rather small sample size but I recall how fast the STR accessory Meta became popular spread. I believe the community as a whole will take, much like water, the shortest quickest path and surprise, anything that doesn't involve "Dealing more damage or dealing it faster" is going to be perceived as being in the way of that goal. Trying to change it will be met with Scorn by the community, both in context and in content. Any change too small is wasted, any change too big is complained.

To yoink your example; Yes I agree, I believe our path is indeed going to be streamlined off a cliff, driven by both the community and devs. We differ in our reaction though. You start seeing if we can get the drivers to turn. I just shrug and plan to bail before the cliff. The only other difference with me is seeing if I bail sooner than later, and suggesting that maybe we should step on the gas more to get it over with.

For my own part, for instance, I'd like to see more damage, more tanking, more self-healing on every job, so long as it fits with their kits and doesn't sap the interactions between roles or reduce the need for party coordination.

This does not seem possible without either infringing on the interactions and party coordination OR making the additions effectively useless.

Staying alive is a given. How fast I can kill things out in the world is the measure of strength and feel of progression.

I really miss HW, especially DRK.

A fine way of judging but myself, I can never tell how much stronger/progress I've made vs 7 other people beating on the thing. My own measurement is seeing that my HP isn't halfed or below after a Tank Buster in those instances.

[Shurrikhan]

I believe the community as a whole will take, much like water, the shortest quickest path and surprise, anything that doesn't involve "Dealing more damage or dealing it faster" is going to be perceived as being in the way of that goal.

That's fair, but also... says effectively nothing. The community by all means should take the shortest path to the fight's long-term goals. The questions is whether and how to dam that shortest path so that players can see more of the fight than just being hurtled through and past it. If there's no significant obstacle, then why would we expect it to go any other way? At present, we have a few survival checks, but they have almost nothing to do with party coordination and almost never tax the party's push towards or force them to compromise on their long-term goals (in XIV's case, damage, and only ever damage, because we don't know how to design any other sort of fight, apparently). Tanks hit their prescribed buttons, or things slow down or wipe. Healers hit their prescribed buttons or there's a slow down or wipe. Everyone stands in their prescribed places or there's a slow down or wipe. But the best thing that can be said for any of those checks is... that we can see the quality of their performance in how little damage is lost to them. Which just us back to the greater issue at hand.

Since at best... T8, maybe(?), there's never been any strategic choice between mid-term objectives. There's just a check with virtually no consequence, and a final goal. That's incredibly unvaried and... rather uninteresting. It's kind of like standing on the top of a giant, fetid mudhill and expecting players not to want to just... sled down. I mean, it'd be nice if the hill was worth appreciating, but it's not. And it's not worth blaming the players over making the obvious observation.

This does not seem possible without either infringing on the interactions and party coordination OR making the additions effectively useless.

That just depends on how much there is to do. What few examples of coordination-dependent gameplay outside of Holy Trinity designs kind of showcase this. In the end it's a matter of how much you engage with -- how much of whether you survive or not should be merely a passive (effectively, out-of-combat or merely gear-based) concern, and how much should be something you influence?

Now, let me first be clear about what I mean by "role interactions". I do not think tasks ought to be the exclusive responsibility of any role. Making it so the group takes less damage is something tanks can do in a certain way, healers in another, and DPS in yet another. Distracting an enemy so it deals less damage to your party, likewise, can be done by anyone up to a point. And that should be the case.

It seems idiotic to me to make tasks that could be largely trimmed if the game didn't sabotage its own mechanics (CC, kiting, etc.) into the first we think of when assigning responsibilities. Meat-tanking and healing lost HP should never be treated as primary tasks -- essential specialized tasks in many cases, yes, but never primary. To do so would be to purposely remove all the more nuanced intermediate tasks available to gameplay. Before the enemy will inevitably be able to attack someone (so you'd best make it whoever can survive it, which is still a far sight from obligating it be tanked by and only by X player), there are still numerous things that should be been doable if one invests in the tools to do that with (e.g the "mitigation" capacities of DPS and group movement). Healing (as opposed to Support), likewise, will only be guaranteed when all other tasks involved in reducing damage taken fail. It's "all else (at least partially) failed" task.

I see tanks and healers, therefore, as an investment in an outcome you will be unable to entirely avoid. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it should. It means that all roles should play into a common currency and into a shared idea of what coordination and proper play looks like. Decreasing raid damage taken (in such a way as to most effectively increase raid damage dealt over time) while increasing raid damage dealt (in such a way as to most effectively decreased raid damage taken over time) should be a very real part of everyone's play. Why? Because having more control over a fight is more interesting than tunnel-vision, just as having 20 individually useful and interesting skills tends to be more interesting than having just 5 of them.

The differences, more than "Roles", should be their toolkits. Just as a Dark Knight might be able to lock down a bunch of enemies, a Bard might be able to slow a few, speed the group away from them, and provide an Aetherial Manipulation anchor/taxi to the BLM so it can nuke down one before the tank has to double up on mobs and start being overwhelmed, drawing the Support off knockbacks, damage, and Swift spells, etc., etc. Interdependence and interactions increase as each player is able to have an influence in a broader set of tasks, albeit over different tactics or ranges or whatnot, so long as difficulty isn't crippled. Dividing gameplay entirely by "Roles" does not enhance the gameplay of one "Role" at the cost of another so much as it simply cuts 2/3s out of the available gameplay of each. To a degree, toolkit focus is a good thing, but each kit should still be able to play some part in every strategy. That's where you get the most interactions and the most party coordination, when each job can cover some range or extent of a primary task better than others -- not when they can, officially or even just effectively, claim sole ownership over it.

For this question, let your imagination assume whatever toolkit adjustments as necessary -- else we're again looking at kit changes without gamewide changes, or effectively arguing over which species of fish to swim a desert with. Ask yourself -- should a... Monk, for instance, have to make use of their personal defenses and/or personal sustain to be a good player, or should it be mere fluff that might save a healer a(n) (o)GCD or two over the course of a 6-minute fight, as it is now? This is for typical 4- or 8-man play, mind you, so he's probably not outright tanking (unless you specifically want to make off-tanking a thing for melee DPS). Or, more generally, should there ever be a portion of a party's survival, besides just standing in the right place and tanks hitting CDs at roughly the right times, that healers can't entirely make up for? What things should players be allowed to engage in?

For me, I'd prefer to see... Healers, for example, have a lot more to heal if all else fails, but I'd also like to see more for them to do than just undo mistakes, hit scripted heals on cue, and fill the rest of their time with damage-spam. That is to say, so long as healers have a substantial portion of their toolkit devoted to circumstances you'd rather have avoided anyways (damage taken and needing to be restored earlier than others could do themselves), I think there should be enough damage taken to make those skills seem worthwhile, but I don't want that damage to feel uninfluenced, or like we're taking a healer just because a particular script of raidwide damage slightly exceeds what can be healed by HP pots or whatnot. There ought to be a larger tactical advantage to having them as less of an obligation. That's when things feel more fluid between different roles, different role allotments (or, T/D/H compositions), and therefore when things feel more engaging because you have more, and more intuitive, agency.

Sorry that got so long. Just going to summarize and end this for now.

tl;dr:

Tasks and engagement therein are not zero-sum; they are improved, not diminished, by more players, or jobs, participating in them, so long as they each do so in different ways as to allow for diverse choices in group tactics. Different means of doing something should not feel redundant. For example, one job's damage done should not feel just like any other job's damage done, with at best one being slightly better able to capitalize on damage windows or the like, but neither should means of diminishing raid damage taken beyond the mere occasional CD be locked solely into tanks. Timings and the tactics by which different capacities are best utilized should feel distinct, but no primary task (an task that will be rewarded from the start of any combat, such as decreasing party damage taken or increasing party damage dealt when the fight is completed by damage, or VIP damage taken and VIP healing taken if its completed by their HP being topped off, etc.) should ever be the sole property of a given role. If you can't see how your toolkit immediately fits into either primary task, or your toolkit does not allow you to fit into that task in a unique way, design is lacking.

To put it most simply, engagement for a given party is maximized when individual members can more fluidly take or delegate nuanced tasks that visibly progress towards victory (or the next step(s) in that path), rather than arbitrarily dividing general responsibilities by roles. The prior tends to make for far more numerous and respectible mechanics (meaning ones that are not easily or arbitrarily made obsolete, mostly by being impactful amount and well connected surrounding mechanics and the tactics that make use of them). The latter tends to increasingly streamline games into their most barebone mechanics; they tend to work backwards to create only what few mechanics are explicitly required to oblige their respective roles, and usually each in separate fashion, rather than creating scenarios into which those roles, and many nuanced combinations between them, may fit and fluidly interact.

The best way to make your tanks feel like tanks, for instance, is to provide an undermechanics-rich context in which the game might mostly function despite their absence, but into which their toolkits become highly attractive without invalidating others (only some way of playing them). Tanks then exist as a powerful tool that we may utilize in complex and dangerous encounters rather than something that encounters are built just to provide someone for your tanks to be hit by until the again ignore it and move to center to give healers something to heal while otherwise using redundant skills.

tl;dr was tl;dr

Undermechanical depth > exclusive "Role" responsibilities.

[millktea]

Well I like to measure my progression in gear (the entire point of playing content) by how fast I kill stuff.

THIS.

And unlike bunnygirl Samsta, I actually like contributing the dps I should be. Doing damage is fun. Pure tanking is not.

Having a permanent tank stance debuff that's like brink of death is not fun. I do not need to play a dps to dps as dpsing as this game is built around everyone dpsing.

The reason why healers are beating tanks is the design of the content, which forces a lot of unnecessary tank downtime rather than healers, who are too powerful and have a lot of ogcd heals, the fact that healers use only 2 to 3 buttons, how 2 tanks' bursts are during boss jumps/ or critical mechanics and suffer if the party does too well, and the fact that the tank stances never went away. The devs baked it in with a trait. A whm back in the day could beat a war camping in defiance. Speaking of warrior, who had deliverance, which provided another 5%, did not get this back in ShB.

Its fine if hp gets added to bosses, but tanks should be doing their portion, which I feel should be 20 to 25% less than a dps, not 40% or so.

And ultimatecalibur, this is hilarious... thinking I care measuring how long I survive? Wtf. You aren't supposed to die and we have healers on our team. Once mechanics and mitigation are taken care of, its dps that determines the kill.

Tanks are dps, they just have defensive utility, which means they get less offensive power. Same with healers. Tanks are supposed to be the middle, but the healers are too close due to the tanks getting a brink of death debuff on them as a trait with the trait lying calling it a bonus. Healers get full access to their main stats, like dps. Tanks do not.

Also... reading some player calling paladin "the fight that heals" made me roll my eyes.. that's not how you spell *warrior*...

[Falar]

I remember it was mostly healers whining about feeling "forced" to DPS AND heal/perform well in their role.

So upping their DPS while lowering ours even though our role design is to attack the enemies comes across to me as a bizarre decision.

[Aurelius2625]

It's the magick and mend traits, it's what buffs their potencies so much as to why a 900 potency attack is SO different on both roles. Tank mastery also lowers our damage through its multipliers, it's retarded but w/e....

The scaling is BROKEN in the WORST way for tanks but it's just the way that it is.