How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[MerlinCross]

Well, the fact remains, at the end of the day, Tanks will need to do meaningful damage.

Even if there are other Tank duties to consider, Tanks will need to be pushing out meaningful damage.

Why? Scalability.

Typical "Tank" duties are often binary. Usually something like "You either survive it or you don't". If you survive the damage, that's all you need, since you can be healed back up. (This is somewhat marred by tanks having invulnerability CD's allowing them to actually bypass literally any need to hit any sort of minimal gear requirements to survive a particular attack...)

Yet, the driving force for doing content and acquiring gear is to improve your stats. Hence, if "Tank Duties" are tuned around being survivable at minimum item level, which they literally need to be, then what purpose does gearing up serve? None. You simply will end up surviving the same skills but at a slightly higher HP total. That doesn't make the fight progress any better. Not unless it affects something like being able to drop use of a Tank LB and instead use a DPS LB.

Damage is typically the only facet of gearing that scales infinitely. Every point of DPS reduces the kill time of the boss by a fraction. Thus, damage needs to scale with gear at a rate which feels useful, so that gearing up feels useful.

Part of this also includes relative damage to DPS, since if DPS outscale the Tank significantly, then the Tanks increase of damage, no matter how large, will feel insignificant. I.e. If a Tank doing 10k DPS managed to increase his damage by 50% going up to 15k DPS, but at the same time DPS doing 20k DPS managed to increase their damage by 100% going up to 40k DPS, then the 5k increase from the Tank pales compared to the damage that the DPS are now doing.

This last point is of some notable concern for this expansion given that Tanks have a reduced scaling backwritten into their damage formulae, which will cause them to scale significantly slower than all other jobs. There could reach a point closer to the end of the expansion where tanks gear becomes irrelevant due to how minor impact it has on beating enrage timers.

Just to be clear, how much is meaningful damage? How much damage do you people want before you are satisfied?

Yes I understand the fact that right now, tank duty is either "You did it or you wiped". A design idea I very much bloody hate. But demanding each expansion for "More damage" leads us into the problem we bloody have.

FF14 isn't a Trinity. It's 3 DPS, with 2 of them having secondary duties. And I'd very much like for some people to stop hiding behind that and embrace it. Devs included.

You could give tanks and healers 100 things to do within their role and still see dps prioritized just under doing what you need to do to prevent a wipe. Whether your mmo has a trinity class system in it or not does not matter.

Its just that in mmos without the trinity like gw2, players will find ways to "tank" damage the boss does or find a way to sustain through it while keeping up in the nuclear arms race.

I refer to you, the POWER Meta, where back in the day, everyone threw all their points into raw Power and basically turned the entire game into rocket tag to the point that if you didn't build properly, you couldn't go anywhere.

Thanks. I hate it.

This.
No matter what you try to design, dps is the main balance factor and its important for tanks and healers to do reasonable dps in comparison to dps role.
First you need to balance open pve and then instanced pve so all jobs could have important impact on the game.
Everyone could argue with me on this how they want it does not matter, in ALL mmorpgs i played the low dps tanks always were played the least because playing a useless meat shield IS NOT appealing at all from gameplay point of view.

"Reasonable DPS" is... what pray tell? 50%? 65? Let's just ramp it up to 80-95 and be done with it shall we?

And while you say being a useless meat shield is not appealing, I personally don't want to be told I picked the wrong ROLE in a game that tells me there are roles but really the only role is DPS. Just what color do you want to play. And while you also bring up important impact, yeah no. That's not happening.

Not in this community that still bloody makes tier lists. People are still complaining about which healer is best, RedMage is bloody useless, and do we even need to bring up the discussions around how much damage MNK does but no one seems to enjoy PLAYING the broken class? Pepperidge Farm bloody well remembers.

The only important impact the community allows or accepts is anything related to damage. On DPS this makes sense. On Tanks and Healers, I question why but I've come to see I'm just the actual crazy person here.

So let's just give everyone what they want. Real. Important. Impactful. Effects on gameplay. Which is to say, shift the game into hyper damage focus gameplay, and drive this into the dirt faster.

I'll be long gone, either to another MMO or going through my backlog. But hey, if everyone wants nothing but damage, the scaling is only going to go up. And when that's the only mechanic lever you have to balance around, might as well crank that sucker all the way.

People want more damage on Tanks. Fine. But don't complain when your kit next expansion looks as boring as Healers. After all, it's all you said you wanted.

[Shurrikhan]

"Reasonable DPS" is... what pray tell? 50%? 65? Let's just ramp it up to 80-95 and be done with it shall we?

For me, ideally...

Enough to feel that your contribution made a make-or-break impact towards a tight DPS check and is held to nearly the same expectations (in % performance even if not necessarily [or presently likely] meaningful effort required) as DPS. DPS, especially frontline damage-dealers, likewise, should have enough sturdiness to feel that they can have an impact in tanking tasks, should the game ever allow for such. (Think of the many WoW mechanics where melee or mobile-ranged DPS must cycle in to tank things.) Healers, in turn, need to have enough damage that the Healer damage saved (via healing GCDs and/or shared-resource abilities spared) by a tank and healer performing well nearly equates, across a 2nd healer and tank each, to the additional damage of taking 6 DPS instead when accounting for the play then forced upon the remaining single tank and healer each.

Generally, compared to the present situation, this would mean tanks a higher maximal direct contribution (damage) and a lower passive indirect contribution (mitigation) floor and likely less base eHP, while mobs' and bosses' burst damage and Healers' HPS should be decreased to compensate.

Between those restrictions, there should be at least be faint case for possibly replacing a role in either direction, swapping out any tank, DPS, or healer in a 8-man content depending on the needs of the party. If there is never any such case, the fight's design is arguably too rigid and the combat economy imbalanced in the context of that fight's design. That is to say that if, prior to the highest levels of play, no way in which a 3rd tank or healer would be useful but face other and almost equally significant either, the fight does too little to engage with forms of indirect contribution or has imbalanced any one form of contribution (Damage, Mitigation, or Healing). Most fights at present imbalance themselves towards damage-dealing, offering tanks too few tools by which to make use of their indirect contribution without overly relying on rigid mechanics (vulnerability-swaps, tankbusters even the minorest of which a melee DPS cannot survive, etc.) or its passive components (bloated passive Defense atop massive eHP and a 20% baseline mitigation trait). Some HW fights, alternatively, could be said to have imbalanced in other directions, at least in the context of the power of WAR and SCH, and later AST.

To give a ballpark number, a tank should spend 60-70% of the effort of a DPS to deal its damage optimally, and should output around 80-85% of that DPS's damage when purely dedicated to offense, but would typically generate the greatest rDPS while doing around 70% of a DPS's dps. In total, a tank should require perhaps a faint bit more effort in total than your average DPS (e.g. one who does not participate in tanking or healing tasks) to play optimally on the whole, and the equal to a more hybrid DPS with a more versatile toolkit that sees full use; in a perfect party's perfect play, the highest jobs which require the highest effort/awareness/mastery/etc get the highest rDPS, though not by enough for a poor player to shoot for nor enough to oblige even a merely "quite good" player to swap to. The sturdiest melee DPS (let's say MNK with RoE or a DRG otherwise) should have around 70% of the eHP of a tank. (Yes, that includes its mitigation.) Fight design should have enough damage output that the defense difference between, say, a SAM and a BLM is actually, in terms of rDPS in the context of the full party and the opportunities by which that rDPS is rewarded, slightly more than make up for a BLM having more damage than a SAM. (This is, again, just a matter of keeping the different 'currencies' of output--Damage, Mitigation, and Healing--in balance.)

All this would of course require massive changes to fight design and Tank (and likely Healer and DPS) toolkits, however, so consider it merely a pipedream.

[Kalise]

Just to be clear, how much is meaningful damage? How much damage do you people want before you are satisfied?

It's hard to say.

Enough damage that it feels like performance has an impact on beating enrage timers or otherwise making the boss die faster. With enough scaling so that increasing gear within a tier feels like an improvement.

Ironically, the more "Tank Duties" that exist that pull away from focus on DPS, the more raw damage Tanks will require, so that when they've performed their duties well and get some time to drop some damage, that damage will feel like a meaningful contribution.

Yes I understand the fact that right now, tank duty is either "You did it or you wiped". A design idea I very much bloody hate.

If you can think of a tank duty that doesn't result in a binary option, you're welcome to share it.

Personally, I once suggested a mechanic similar to XIII's Stagger system so Tanks could focus on creating burst windows against bosses which can scale infinitely with how fast they can create them and thus how many opportunities they can provide in a fight. Though, the downside is that it literally cannot function in XIV because this game is so heavily focused around everyone popping their 60/90/120s CD DPS cooldowns on 60/90/120 second intervals meaning that any burst window that doesn't line up with 60/90/120 second intervals is bad. (Also, they call this "Co-ordination" when people just press their CD's when they light up as opposed to other games where people actually co-ordinate because CD usage is determined via which boss phase to skip by bursting them down as well as a powerful once per fight Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp CD)

But demanding each expansion for "More damage" leads us into the problem we bloody have.

You mean the problem where the Dev's keep trying to find ways to artificially handicap Tank damage for... Reasons?

And while you say being a useless meat shield is not appealing, I personally don't want to be told I picked the wrong ROLE in a game that tells me there are roles but really the only role is DPS. Just what color do you want to play. And while you also bring up important impact, yeah no. That's not happening.

Being a useless meat shield is not appealing.

Trust me, I've played games where Tank damage was insignificant. Do you know what I did to optimize my gameplay? I pressed taunt then tabbed out to look at funny memes and only tabbed back in when boss was doing a tankbuster so I pressed a CD then went back to look at memes for the next minute.

Why? Because whether I was looking at funny memes or pressing attack buttons didn't affect the encounter at all, but one was infinitely more enjoyable (Hint: It was the memes)

One could argue that if mitigation was a more active part of combat theen being a useless meat shield would be more interesting and I wouldn't be able to tab out and look at funny memes. However, due to how binary tank duties are, you only need to actively mitigate enough to stay alive, which often isn't necessarily 100% engaging, especially once you gear up beyond minimum item levels (In addition to healers gearing up beyond minimum item levels, since that's the secondary factor in this, tanks required mitigation gets hit twice by gear increases because both your own mitigation and healer throughput increases)

Thus, once you hit the downtime between mitigating damage, which exponentially increases as your party gears up, you need something to do. Something that is engaging and feels worth your time to do. Thus, given limited options of things that are possible to do and feel worth your time, it comes down to damage, the ever present and infinitly scaling metric.

People want more damage on Tanks. Fine. But don't complain when your kit next expansion looks as boring as Healers. After all, it's all you said you wanted.

That's not the case.

Heck, I'm an active advocator of Tanks getting more Tank duties to perform, especially the removal of the horrible design which is passive defence that makes up 99% of your mitigation in favour of more engaging active defense skills (Which can be themed to each class, such as you can find in WoW. I.e. Warriors use Shield Block to guarantee blocked damage, Paladins use Shield of the Righteousness to increase their armour (Used to increase block chance), Death Knights use Death Strike to heal and create an absorb shield, Monks use Purifying Brew alongside passive delayed damage, Demon Hunters have Fel Spikes granting armour and parry and Druids have Ironfur increasing armour (Used to be Dodge which made little sense on the class that passively gains more max HP than other tanks))

It's just, being able to pack a punch alongside having tank duties is desired. Since, I've played enough games where the constant whining of DPS mains caused Tank damage to be neutered to the point where it just didn't feel good to play a Tank since all you really did was sit there like a target dummy and spam enmity/taunts.

Not to mention, the whole idea of "Why's the boss just attacking the one person who is not a threat?" being mitigated by you know, Tanks actually being a threat in their own right. Bosses should focus me because I'm kicking their ass.

In an ideal world, Tank damage and Tank duties would be intertwined. Meaning, a Tank performing a Tank duty of mitigating damage, is rewarded with damage. This damage, allows them to access another skill for mitigating damage to use against the next attack, thus gaining more damage.

With, again ideally, these damage increases being proportionate to how much you mitigate so that the better you mitigate damage the better your damage output and the better your damage output the better your mitigation options. (You know, as opposed to the old WoW Vengeance, which had reverse scaling because the attack power increase was based on damage taken after mitigation, meaning you ended up actively sabotaging your own mitigation to get more attack power...)

[MerlinCross]

It's hard to say.

Enough damage that it feels like performance has an impact on beating enrage timers or otherwise making the boss die faster. With enough scaling so that increasing gear within a tier feels like an improvement.

Ironically, the more "Tank Duties" that exist that pull away from focus on DPS, the more raw damage Tanks will require, so that when they've performed their duties well and get some time to drop some damage, that damage will feel like a meaningful contribution.

Cool so you want to do DPS damage without having to put in any work of a DPS.

Let's just axe the tank role then.

If you can think of a tank duty that doesn't result in a binary option, you're welcome to share it.

More buffs, procs, supports for doing the thing they're supposed to do. I've already gone on record saying that if Clemancy gave a damage amp it would be on everyone's rotation. And maybe if the Enrages weren't so bloody tight, we could get away with trying different ideas. With how tight they seem to be, damage is the only thing that actually matters because everything else is "Yes, win. No lose."

Personally, I once suggested a mechanic similar to XIII's Stagger system so Tanks could focus on creating burst windows against bosses which can scale infinitely with how fast they can create them and thus how many opportunities they can provide in a fight. Though, the downside is that it literally cannot function in XIV because this game is so heavily focused around everyone popping their 60/90/120s CD DPS cooldowns on 60/90/120 second intervals meaning that any burst window that doesn't line up with 60/90/120 second intervals is bad. (Also, they call this "Co-ordination" when people just press their CD's when they light up as opposed to other games where people actually co-ordinate because CD usage is determined via which boss phase to skip by bursting them down as well as a powerful once per fight Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp CD)

I would actually take this. Healers get to deal out extra damage by focusing on using their OCD heals and keeping calm. DPS get rewarded for following their rotations and posistionals. Tanks get rewarded.... by not being deleted? Yay.

Just giving us something else to worry/care about besides "Am I dead" or "Did I output all my damage" would go a long way.

You mean the problem where the Dev's keep trying to find ways to artificially handicap Tank damage for... Reasons?

The problem that this is is probably the easiest and safest it's been for Tank DPS and that's still not enough because our Ratio isn't as high as it was before.

Fine. Remove the handicap limit and put them on the same tier as DPS. Which DPS do you still bring and who gets kicked out for your new Blue DPS?

Being a useless meat shield is not appealing.

Trust me, I've played games where Tank damage was insignificant. Do you know what I did to optimize my gameplay? I pressed taunt then tabbed out to look at funny memes and only tabbed back in when boss was doing a tankbuster so I pressed a CD then went back to look at memes for the next minute.

Why? Because whether I was looking at funny memes or pressing attack buttons didn't affect the encounter at all, but one was infinitely more enjoyable (Hint: It was the memes)

One could argue that if mitigation was a more active part of combat theen being a useless meat shield would be more interesting and I wouldn't be able to tab out and look at funny memes. However, due to how binary tank duties are, you only need to actively mitigate enough to stay alive, which often isn't necessarily 100% engaging, especially once you gear up beyond minimum item levels (In addition to healers gearing up beyond minimum item levels, since that's the secondary factor in this, tanks required mitigation gets hit twice by gear increases because both your own mitigation and healer throughput increases)

Thus, once you hit the downtime between mitigating damage, which exponentially increases as your party gears up, you need something to do. Something that is engaging and feels worth your time to do. Thus, given limited options of things that are possible to do and feel worth your time, it comes down to damage, the ever present and infinitly scaling metric.

And being told that this game is about the Trinity, it's balanced around the Trinity, and the fact it has the Trinity is what makes it so good; but the role of the Trinity I picked is expected to out put as much damage as possible is appealing.... why?

I picked a Tank Role to hold the boss, to take the hits, to shield the others from hits that shouldn't be going their way, and to keep focus on myself. Once those are done, THEN I focus on damage. But you're right. They've shaved everything off to the point Tanking is a joke and pushing damage is the only thing you have left.

I just wish the game actually reflected this rather than lying to you for so long. That's all.

That's not the case.

Heck, I'm an active advocator of Tanks getting more Tank duties to perform, especially the removal of the horrible design which is passive defence that makes up 99% of your mitigation in favour of more engaging active defense skills (Which can be themed to each class, such as you can find in WoW. I.e. Warriors use Shield Block to guarantee blocked damage, Paladins use Shield of the Righteousness to increase their armour (Used to increase block chance), Death Knights use Death Strike to heal and create an absorb shield, Monks use Purifying Brew alongside passive delayed damage, Demon Hunters have Fel Spikes granting armour and parry and Druids have Ironfur increasing armour (Used to be Dodge which made little sense on the class that passively gains more max HP than other tanks))

It's just, being able to pack a punch alongside having tank duties is desired. Since, I've played enough games where the constant whining of DPS mains caused Tank damage to be neutered to the point where it just didn't feel good to play a Tank since all you really did was sit there like a target dummy and spam enmity/taunts.

Not to mention, the whole idea of "Why's the boss just attacking the one person who is not a threat?" being mitigated by you know, Tanks actually being a threat in their own right. Bosses should focus me because I'm kicking their ass.

In an ideal world, Tank damage and Tank duties would be intertwined. Meaning, a Tank performing a Tank duty of mitigating damage, is rewarded with damage. This damage, allows them to access another skill for mitigating damage to use against the next attack, thus gaining more damage.

With, again ideally, these damage increases being proportionate to how much you mitigate so that the better you mitigate damage the better your damage output and the better your damage output the better your mitigation options. (You know, as opposed to the old WoW Vengeance, which had reverse scaling because the attack power increase was based on damage taken after mitigation, meaning you ended up actively sabotaging your own mitigation to get more attack power...)

And I'm seeing the reverse happen there. Where Tanks are constantly whining for more damage because of reasons, and complaining about anything that gets in their way or is looked at as useless, see Clemency debate(okay yeah bad skill but you'd think people wouldn't react to the point you'd expect a vote kick if you used it). To the point anything about Tanks has been shaved off or streamlined to make it easier than every to push damage but because the Ratio isn't right, there's still MORE Complaining. How much damage do people want to do without overtaking DPS? And how EASILY do people want it too, as I've seen mostly just "more damage, more damage" but no good way to give Tanks more damage besides just bumping up the numbers. And if we just bump up the numbers, we're going to run into problems with that oh so infinite scaling people seem to love so much.

I say again, you people want nothing but damage. FINE. But don't be surprised if that's ALL they hear and Tank rotation is just as boring as Healer next expansion. OH but the Ratio is high enough so it'll be okay right? Right? You'll be doing 95% of a DPS's damage with 2 buttons, it'll be just what you wanted right? RIGHT?

I'm just saying, be careful what people ask for. All this talk of damage this, and damage that, but suggestions of extra tank duties or actions to get that extra damage tend to be lost in the mass. And when majority seem to want just Damage, that's what the Devs see an work on, regardless of the actual underlying feelings about it. This wouldn't be the first time they've looked a community complaint only to get it wrong. Look forward to Tank being pruned more to make way for extra Damage. I just hope people can live with it as I've all but hung up my blue icon this expansion. Tanks next time might do far more rewarding, impactful damage; but if that's ALL they do and they actually lose out on some tank abilities, will they still be fun to play?

At what point is a Tank still fun to play, as a Tank? Because personally, that is what is missing from Tanks in FF14 for me these days. It might have always been there, but perhaps not as clear as it is now. I want tanks to play differently, to be exciting again, to feel removed from DPS. But when I get off Tank and jump to DRG, I don't feel too much of a difference. There's something wrong then. Even if it's just with me.

[Kalise]

Cool so you want to do DPS damage without having to put in any work of a DPS.

Point me to where I said that.

More buffs, procs, supports for doing the thing they're supposed to do. I've already gone on record saying that if Clemancy gave a damage amp it would be on everyone's rotation. And maybe if the Enrages weren't so bloody tight, we could get away with trying different ideas. With how tight they seem to be, damage is the only thing that actually matters because everything else is "Yes, win. No lose."

What buffs? What will procs do? What supports?

It's alright to name some random mechanics, but you need to elaborate on how that will actually do something. Buffs? What kind of buffs? AST has buffs, they buff damage and are oGCD so just get weaved in while they're pew pewing. Procs? What sort of procs? You mean damage procs like BRD/DNC get? Supports for things they're supposed to be doing? Like attacking stuff?

If Clemency gave a damage amp, it will either be used purely for DPS gain or ignored if it doesn't provide the same DPS as using another GCD (Especially given that PLD's use their MP purely for Requiescat bursts) - This means that in either case, this suggestion doesn't do literally anything to alleviate Tanks focusing on damage.

If enrages weren't so tight, that wouldn't stop everyone from maximizing DPS to bring bosses down faster. Since enrage timers aren't the thing that drives that, the fact that DPS is the only infinitely scaling factor in a fight does.

The better you gear, and play, the only real factor that will scale, is time to kill a boss. Unless you can think of a mechanic that can provide similar scaling incentives for something other than killing a boss faster, that's just the baseline of pretty much all video games.

The general scaling of beating a boss is:

- Can't beat the boss
- Can just about beat the boss
- Can comfortably farm the boss
- Can minimize time to kill the boss

With the last step lasting forever as gear and skill improves.

Personally, I've tried thinking of mechanics that can reward Tank/Healer duties in a similar fashion, but nothing I've come up with has been really workable, due to the inherent limitations in interactivity. (Outside something like getting more loot for mitigating X% of the bosses damage and healing Y% of the bosses damage, which of course can lead to cheesing such as having OT's intentionally stand in mechanics with CD's on)

I would actually take this. Healers get to deal out extra damage by focusing on using their OCD heals and keeping calm. DPS get rewarded for following their rotations and posistionals. Tanks get rewarded.... by not being deleted? Yay.

Just giving us something else to worry/care about besides "Am I dead" or "Did I output all my damage" would go a long way.

But as I mentioned, it literally cannot work in this game without a complete overhaul of how combat is designed across ALL jobs.

Since everything has to be focused around the 60/90/120 second timers.

To say nothing about the interaction with completely scripted bosses, wherein you can end up with situations where you don't want to maximize your Stagger gain because otherwise you'll end up proc'ing the burst phase during a time when the boss is doing a mechanic that prevents people from DPSing.

The problem that this is is probably the easiest and safest it's been for Tank DPS and that's still not enough because our Ratio isn't as high as it was before.

Fine. Remove the handicap limit and put them on the same tier as DPS. Which DPS do you still bring and who gets kicked out for your new Blue DPS?

It's also the easiest and safest it's been for DPS too. A lot of DPS jobs have been simplified and streamlined to make them easier to play. Like, in terms of actual complexity, there's... BLM has to position well and... Maybe SAM has some tricky optimization because of SkS affecting their filler rotations.

Also, Healers too. I mean, they press 1 DoT every 30 seconds and otherwise press 1 nuke ad infinitum.

Yet all these keep their full scaling and damage capabilities.

Finally, the issue isn't simply just that Tanks don't deal DPS level of damage, but that Tanks don't scale the same as EVERY OTHER JOB IN THE GAME. Be it through janky formulae where Vit is used for AP, through accessories that lack STR and need to be melded (Making lower item level Crafted items BiS because they can be penta-melded since Materia don't scale with ilevel) or recently with a new janky formula that just nerfs Tanks AP gain from STR.

If Tanks only did like 75-80% of the DPS of a DPS job, but scaled the same as them so they could continue doing 75-80% of the DPS of a DPS job throughout all tiers in an expansion, that would be fine and wouldn't be in danger of replacing DPS jobs in pre-made parties.

The scaling is the major issue, while the relative damage output has some lenience and can be easily adjusted through potencies without affecting scaling like all the trash ways Devs have tried to limit Tanks.

And being told that this game is about the Trinity, it's balanced around the Trinity, and the fact it has the Trinity is what makes it so good; but the role of the Trinity I picked is expected to out put as much damage as possible is appealing.... why?

Because in ANY Trinity, that is the case.

Once a Tank can survive the stuff they need to, they focus on maximizing DPS.

Once a Healer can heal through all the stuff they need to, they focus on maximizing DPS.

Since, once again, DPS is the only infinitely scaling factor.

Overhealing doesn't do jack. Saving an extra few HP points when mitigating an attack doesn't do jack. You can't buff people harder (For the cases where a Trinity system also houses a 4th, Support role).

That is just fact.

The only difference in the case of this game, is that Tank duties are ridiculously minimal, which causes the DPS focus to appear far earlier than in many other games.

I picked a Tank Role to hold the boss

Question:

How do you typically hold a boss as a Tank?

(Hint: Via dealing damage, often boosted with additional enmity)

And I'm seeing the reverse happen there. Where Tanks are constantly whining for more damage because of reasons, and complaining about anything that gets in their way or is looked at as useless, see Clemency debate(okay yeah bad skill but you'd think people wouldn't react to the point you'd expect a vote kick if you used it).

The issue is that in order to add in more Tank duties, there needs to be a fundamental overhaul of encounters to actually be able to add in more and consistent duties for Tanks to deal with. As I've mentioned in a recent thread that got... Mixed reception.

Meanwhile, a far easier problem to tackle, is one of damage. Hence it's more talked about. Tank damage can be entirely fixed by not fucking with their damage formulae or gear and then simply adjusting potencies to achieve a desired DPS output. Especially these days where all 4 Tanks are rather close in overall DPS (There's no "WAR is best DPS because IR during burst windows" thing causing a huge disparity)

Things that don't contribute to damage literally are useless. Clemency is pretty bad especially compared to many other Tank's skills that can heal as they're oGCD's so don't interrupt their rotations. Further to that, is PLD's use of MP being focused around Requiescat and Holy Spirit and so using MP outside of that messes with that burst combo (Which, as mentioned before, the entire game is focused around these 60/90/120s burst CD's)

With also, Tenacity being pretty terrible too (Though, given how Materia works, in that it merely offers flat stat increases that don't scale with gear and also how limited slots are because only Crafted (I.e. Minimum item level) gear can be penta-melded (Though even then, you can only use 2-3 of the highest value materia because more limitations) different melds offer only marginal variations in overall DPS) because of how unnecessary the extra few points of damage mitigation actually are.

To the point anything about Tanks has been shaved off or streamlined to make it easier than every to push damage but because the Ratio isn't right, there's still MORE Complaining.

Though, not all of the stuff that has been removed has happened because people wanting to focus on DPS.

Heck, the fact that it's all happened despite Dev's constantly saying they feel tanks are doing too much damage and constantly backhand nerfing Tank damage, also suggests that this has little to do with making it easy to push out damage.

It's more to make Tanking easier for newbies. As well as getting rid of unecessary bloat (I.e. When 99.99% of all Tanks never touch Tank Stance and Enmity Combos after the first 3 attacks of a pull... Why keep them around?)

There are still people who advocate for more depth to Tank rotations, though given that SE have been dumbing down EVERY jobs rotations, it's not looking like a particularly fruitful adventure.

And if we just bump up the numbers, we're going to run into problems with that oh so infinite scaling people seem to love so much.

Not really.

With normal scaling, you'd literally stay on par with the same relative DPS to all other jobs. You'd never scale better, and you'd never scale worse.

I say again, you people want nothing but damage. FINE. But don't be surprised if that's ALL they hear and Tank rotation is just as boring as Healer next expansion. OH but the Ratio is high enough so it'll be okay right? Right? You'll be doing 95% of a DPS's damage with 2 buttons, it'll be just what you wanted right? RIGHT?

I'm still not sure where you're seeing all of these people who simply want just damage and don't care what happens to rotations at all.

Also, why would SE nerf Tank rotations into the same level of braindead as Healer ones? Given that Healer rotations were nerfed because they wanted more focus on healing rotations as opposed to damage ones.

And when majority seem to want just Damage, that's what the Devs see an work on, regardless of the actual underlying feelings about it.

And time and time again the devs have shown they don't give two hoots about Tanks wanting just Damage.

As shown by their continual backhanded nerfs to Tank damage.

Meanwhile, they've shown some indication of addressing certain gameplay elements, such as boring single button AoE rotations now utilizing 2-4 buttons. There's been some improvements to oGCD's to use within rotations too.

It's not perfect and they're missing a lot of potential with having mitigation effects leading into damage, but then again, we'd need to see some actual damage outside Tankbusters first in order to make such a thing actually usable.

Tanks next time might do far more rewarding, impactful damage; but if that's ALL they do and they actually lose out on some tank abilities, will they still be fun to play?

I mean, if they're as interesting to play as some of the DPS jobs, then yeah.

Losing Tank abilities means little when right now, in their current state, these abilities mean so very little.

Ideally, yes, Tanks will have rewarding and impactful tank abilities ALONGSIDE some damage that is meaningful.

But if we only get one of the two, I'd rather get the one that is actually relevant in the game rather than becoming like Healers with their DPS kits nuked while having a ridiculously large Healing kit of which 1% is actually used ever in all content bar Ultimate.

So yeah... I'm hoping they do overhaul the games systems to allow for more meaningful Tanking and Healing systems to be used and to be common. With a lot more interactivity between bosses and these roles (You know, things like debuffs that can be removed with Esuna. Damage that needs to be healed with GCD's. More active mitigation on Tanks as opposed to Defence being passive "You take like a billion less damage than everyone else". More mechanics that are Tank focused (Like the mechanics used in Tank solo duties where you stand between the bad guy and your ally to block the damage))

At what point is a Tank still fun to play, as a Tank? Because personally, that is what is missing from Tanks in FF14 for me these days. It might have always been there, but perhaps not as clear as it is now. I want tanks to play differently, to be exciting again, to feel removed from DPS. But when I get off Tank and jump to DRG, I don't feel too much of a difference. There's something wrong then. Even if it's just with me.

It depends. But simply nuking Tank DPS and keeping it low won't suddenly make Tanks feel like Tanks.

Just ask any Healer if having crap DPS makes them feel any more like a Healer when they spend 99% of their time spamming Glare/Broil/Malefic.

[Nedkel]

"Reasonable DPS" is... what pray tell? 50%? 65? Let's just ramp it up to 80-95 and be done with it shall we?
And while you say being a useless meat shield is not appealing, I personally don't want to be told I picked the wrong ROLE in a game that tells me there are roles but really the only role is DPS. Just what color do you want to play. And while you also bring up important impact, yeah no. That's not happening.
Not in this community that still bloody makes tier lists. People are still complaining about which healer is best, RedMage is bloody useless, and do we even need to bring up the discussions around how much damage MNK does but no one seems to enjoy PLAYING the broken class? Pepperidge Farm bloody well remembers.
The only important impact the community allows or accepts is anything related to damage. On DPS this makes sense. On Tanks and Healers, I question why but I've come to see I'm just the actual crazy person here.
So let's just give everyone what they want. Real. Important. Impactful. Effects on gameplay. Which is to say, shift the game into hyper damage focus gameplay, and drive this into the dirt faster.

I'll be long gone, either to another MMO or going through my backlog. But hey, if everyone wants nothing but damage, the scaling is only going to go up. And when that's the only mechanic lever you have to balance around, might as well crank that sucker all the way.

People want more damage on Tanks. Fine. But don't complain when your kit next expansion looks as boring as Healers. After all, it's all you said you wanted.

Reasonable dps would be an average at about 75% of average dps class, so a good tank will still do more dps than bad DPS player, easy as that isnt it?

There is no reason why it shouldnt be that way, do you think all those dps player would just jump on the tanks and healers? Not really, besides that we actually need more players to play those two roles, what the problem is with making healers and tanks more appealing to play?
DPS are played because they have relatively small number of responsibilities and are just fun to play, if some of them jump over to play healer and tanks that would be more than welcome.

"not in this community that still bloody makes tier lists" - welcome to the mmorpg games i guess? Its same thing for every game since year 2000.
DPS IS the most important thing in all bloody games you will EVER play, sorry to break it down for you but thats how the games works. If you figure out how to survive thats it, you dont need to be 100% hp all the time since the only HP that matters is last one you could optimise your damage output and thats the only thing that matters really.

You could go to any mmorpg there is, you wont escape min-maxing and dps importance, peace.

[MerlinCross]

Reasonable dps would be an average at about 75% of average dps class, so a good tank will still do more dps than bad DPS player, easy as that isnt it?

There is no reason why it shouldnt be that way, do you think all those dps player would just jump on the tanks and healers? Not really, besides that we actually need more players to play those two roles, what the problem is with making healers and tanks more appealing to play?
DPS are played because they have relatively small number of responsibilities and are just fun to play, if some of them jump over to play healer and tanks that would be more than welcome.

"not in this community that still bloody makes tier lists" - welcome to the mmorpg games i guess? Its same thing for every game since year 2000.
DPS IS the most important thing in all bloody games you will EVER play, sorry to break it down for you but thats how the games works. If you figure out how to survive thats it, you dont need to be 100% hp all the time since the only HP that matters is last one you could optimise your damage output and thats the only thing that matters really.

You could go to any mmorpg there is, you wont escape min-maxing and dps importance, peace.

But why does a good tank need to deal more damage than a bad DPS? I'd also like to know what qualifies as "Bad". Not doing the proper rotation, having to deal with mechanics, dying, being slapped with damage down? Yes all of these can be slapped under "Bad DPS" but each thing lowers their DPS a certain degree. If you want to deal more damage than a Bad DPS that suffered one attack down or messes up on their rotation a little bit, I suggest you switch to to DPS. Because that's what the class is supposed to do.

You also missed it back in Heavensward it seems or at least weren't around. A good number of DPS did switch over to WAR during that time because it was stupid easy to push high numbers. Sure it might not have been as high as DPS but it was still appealing to go for the big damage with the least amount of work. I'm sorry, I don't want to go through the failed DPS, DPS Tank Meta again. I want a tank that tanks, not a DPS that wants an easier time for their logs.

And if DPS is the only thing that matters, what's the problem in pushing the gameplay to reflect that? That's all you people want after all. Take a Red Mage? No we need a Black Mage. Take Warrior, WHY? It's the 'weakset' right now right, kick it to the curb. So why do these classes exist if they don't output the damage you people want or the game seems to bloody expect? Those are just failed designs in the tier list eyes.

I understand, that tier lists are a thing in every MMO and in even bloody game. Allowing them to dictate changes or at least demanding they do is the problem I have here, and usually the hyper focused nature of them. The Solution shouldn't always be "Bring them up to the same level, doing the SAME THING The Top Jobs do", there should be another allowed solution. But because Damage is the only tier list people seem to care about, everything else is trash.

I want a Tank that plays like a tank. That's at the lowest Tier though so I'm a bad player and I'm trash, and my class is trash and I'm not supposed to be having fun blah blah blah. If you aren't having fun on tank because of it's damage, there's more than enough DPS classes for you. Why demand an entire role be changed? Oh that's right, because damage is the only thing that matters, and without damage there's no fun. Oh but changing the game to reflect this is totally out of the question because... reasons?

I'm tired of "Damage Only" focus and people being too blinded by it to ask for anything else. So just Ax the trinity already and make the game hyper damage focused. The Community and Game seems to want nothing but DDR Rocket tag, so just make the game be that, even more so than it is now.

At the very least, make it so the game stops lying about what it is earlier on.

But hey, maybe they'll listen to you next patch and do the same thing to Tanks as they Did to healers. Effective damage that's taken into account, boring to play. Because that went over so well.

[Kalise]

You also missed it back in Heavensward it seems or at least weren't around. A good number of DPS did switch over to WAR during that time because it was stupid easy to push high numbers. Sure it might not have been as high as DPS but it was still appealing to go for the big damage with the least amount of work.

Meanwhile, we still have Red Mages and Bards complaining that people don't want them in statics because of approximately a 200 DPS difference with other similar jobs.

That's right. A ~1% difference in DPS, less than what people consider insignificant in terms of materia meld choices.

I don't think people will suddenly be rushing to play Tanks for "Easy" DPS that is literally 20%+ lower than a DPS, especially when DPS jobs these days are also equally faceroll easy.

The Solution shouldn't always be "Bring them up to the same level, doing the SAME THING The Top Jobs do", there should be another allowed solution. But because Damage is the only tier list people seem to care about, everything else is trash.

The issue is there's a limit to what can actually be useful in a fight.

We have things like Vercure, Mantra, Tactician etc. But given that Tanks and Healers already don't need to do very much, these things are wasted.

Especially when you consider the fact that if anything was designed around an ability or mechanic that a specific job had instead of competitive DPS, then good going you've now made that job mandatory for every comp. If fights are not designed around such an ability, it's superfluous because you can simply get by without it by playing better (Which is what the top players will do, which filters down into the meta)

I want a Tank that plays like a tank.

So, why is in your opinion a Tank the antithesis of Damage?

Why can there not be a case where a Tank, that plays like a Tank, can still deal damage (Like in pretty much every other game in existence)?

Like, it doesn't make sense for Tanks to be ineffectual in damage, when you consider their namesake, the military armoured vehicle Tank, not only has its thick armour plating making it difficult to take out without specialized equipment... But also has a honking great big cannon sticking out the front that can cause serious damage.

Having Tank centric gameplay and having reasonable damage are not mutually exclusive concepts. It's still very much possible to have the feel of a Tank while still hitting hard.

Why demand an entire role be changed? Oh that's right, because damage is the only thing that matters, and without damage there's no fun. Oh but changing the game to reflect this is totally out of the question because... reasons?

Why demand an entire role be changed? Because the role is uniquely being targetted by the Devs to make them artificially inferior in a completely stupid way.

Why is changing the game to reflect the damage focused nature of things totally out of the question? Because, despite your constant whining, people don't just want Tanks to become DPS and are holding out hope that the game gets changed for the betterment of actual Tank and Healer gameplay.

I'm tired of "Damage Only" focus and people being too blinded by it to ask for anything else.

The major issue that you're not seeing because you're getting too blinded by damage, is asking for more Tank tools won't do anything.

Since the game is not designed to use them. Heck, the tools we already have are more than enough, with a significant number of fights being possible to solo tank with many that aren't simply having dual tank busters meaning that a single Tanks kit can mitigate all the necessary damage as opposed to requiring tank swaps to make use of BOTH tanks tools.

Asking for damage can be done in the game right now. Literally, they can fix damage and push out a hotfix next reset.

Asking for more reasons to include a better tank kit requires completely redesigning encounters from the ground up, from frequency, to types of mechanics used, alongside overhauls of all Tank jobs in their entirety to incorporate the new tools as well as a ton of balancing if they want to avoid simply copy/pasting the same skills across all tanks.

It's a much bigger ask, than simply undoing a dumb change to the damage formula for a specific role. One that also impacts other roles too, since if Tanks have more resposibilities, it means that there's more chances to fail leading to Healers having to pick up the slack putting more pressure on them. This then means that global mechanics might have to change in difficulty/frequency which will then impact DPS too.

But hey, maybe they'll listen to you next patch and do the same thing to Tanks as they Did to healers. Effective damage that's taken into account, boring to play. Because that went over so well.

Actually, the boring to play changes would be if they followed your idea and "Made Tanks into Tanks", since that would be the same thought process they used for Healers when they tried to make them into Healers by adding a bunch of (Unnecessary) healing skills while cutting out their DPS stuff to allow them to focus on healing.

Wherein, they'd try to make Tanks into Tanks by giving them a bunch more (Unnecessary) defensive skills while simultaneously cutting down their damage skills so that they can focus on tanking.

[Kabooa]

Asking for damage can be done in the game right now. Literally, they can fix damage and push out a hotfix next reset..

But it also means effectively nothing.

Oh wow, now tanks do [more than they currently do despite them doing exactly the same thing as before]. Exciting!

[Rilifane]

But it also means effectively nothing.

Oh wow, now tanks do [more than they currently do despite them doing exactly the same thing as before]. Exciting!

Exactly.
How many healers would suddenly think "WOOOOO! I'm doing 2k more dps by pushing the same button over and over! EXCITING!" if their dps got bumped up? And they at least have healing and dpsing compete for GCDs and sometimes other resources. Healers got stripped of a lot of skills but at least they still have a clear path for progression: getting better at balancing healing and dpsing to squeeze out more dps while simultanously keeping the party safe.
You'd have to add some sort of trade off like healers have to make it more interesting than "Congrats, you get a flat 20% dps increase. Enjoy". But tanks are bloated with free mitgation; even in a raid scenarios a lot of CDs are used on auto attacks because you have more than enough for the next tankbuster and stacking everything isn't effective. And more often than not, the tankbuster gets invul cheesed anyway.
So all that's left is cycling through a simplified dps rotation ad nauseum.

And I don't think a trade off would suddenly lead to tanks being all "need to dps, can't mitigate lel! healers adjust!". Balancing healing and dpsing was much more difficult in the earlier days AND tanks had both dps and tank stance AND enmity was a thing you had to worry about beyond "tank swap, time for my provoke/ shirk macro" and it was fine. The number of healers or tanks tunneling on dps and neglecting their role was fairly low and still is. The stories of bad players in the Tales thread are not the norm.

I've heard from a number of tank mains that they quit tanking because it felt unrewarding. Not because of numbers but because they don't have to think about mitigation and everything else is just a simplified dps that gets punched first.
People won't suddenly play tanks because they push 2k more dps.
Nor will players who already do suddenly find tanking super exciting. It would just be a cheap bandaid that might feel cool the first week but gets old really fast.
But as long as mitigation is completely free and "fire & forget" they have nothing to consider or balance.