How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Aurelius2625]

Grats on the Shiva Clear btw .

Did a run of Ramuh and Garuda/Ifrit on my ruby weapon WAR and was able to be at purple, that shows you how easy it is to do well on a tank. I have so little to improve, once I get fully geared in these fights.

[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.

[Liam_Harper]

As an absolute BASELINE, tanks NEED to do MORE damage than healers. Healers are the quintessential make or break role... you suck at it, everyone dies, you don't do enough damage? It's noticeable.

There's a huge difference between an optimized healer and a non optimized one. Their damage shoots through the roof as they peel back all of the bandaid panic heals and replace those GCDs with damage gcds.

Healers have a clear pathway for damage progression: less healing, more damaging.

Tanks have no such thing, really. The combos and rotations are braindead easy, and honestly, almost all of these fights can be solo tanked without the introduction of a "forced gimmick" that is forced for no other reason than to force two tanks to be brought. Seriously. Looking at the busters in this tier, how many of them are designed not thru damage, but thru sheer gimmicks to require two tanks?

If I do 9k or 11k dmg it doesn't matter. I don't have a big impact. The skill floor is so low for tanks, the skill ceiling is so low, for tanks. But there's a HUGE difference between an 11k Greyville monk and a 18 to 19k OJ monk. A good dps player is noticeable.

Exactly, that's why I heal over tanking right now, even though healer design is far from perfect. As you optimize your healer gameplay, your damage shoots up. You can be both top on healing and twice the damage of your co-heal if you know what you're doing. It's rewarding and feels like you bring something to the group. An optimized tank doesn't really bring that much more than an average one. The fact that tankbusters barely happen 2-3 times on some encounters and are the only threatening thing is silly.

God I loved bdk lol

I hear ya. Sure it was bonkers, but those moments when your whole team is down, it's just you and the endgame raid boss at 8% with your raid cheering you on, 5 stacks of tank debuff too many, and you need to put every last bit of that toolkit into use, health bar bouncing like a yo-yo ...and you actually pull it off. You lived for those moments. Best times as a tank.

[Shurrikhan]

As an absolute BASELINE, tanks NEED to do MORE damage than healers.

While I'd agree that tanks ought to deal more damage, assuming compensation elsewhere, this feels shockingly off to me. Why should a role which has no compromise between its direct and indirect outputs (Damage and Healing/Resurrections Spared) have higher direct output than a role in which the two are mutually exclusive in any given GCD? Where able to use solely oGCDs, healing is free to Healers, apart from any clipping necessary, but no matter how intensive the damage intake gets Tanks' mitigation is always and entirely free of cost to their damage output. So why should the one role that gets its entire unique functionality for free output more than the one that does not?

I'd agree that in an typical Savage fight, enough healing should be required that a Healer's total damage dealt ought to be less than that of a tank, but that is an issue of fight design more so than job design. Until Tanks are no longer bloated by so much free mitigation (with the majority of the healing spared thereby caused being outright passive), they should have less raw damage throughput than a healer in anything approaching a dummy/SSS-fight situation.

[Lyth]

Because if tank damage falls below healer damage, then you start running your tanks out of melee range of the self-tanking boss to pick up hula-hoops while your healers stay in place to spam single GCD damage spell 'rotations'. Presumably one of the main reasons why people pick up tanks in the first place is to go toe-to-toe against the big bad. If you can't even supply that part of the experience, you're better off creating a game with just dps and healers.

[Kalise]

So why should the one role that gets its entire unique functionality for free output more than the one that does not?

Probably for these very reasons.

Healer DPS and GCD healing compete for usage (In an ideal world where healing isn't 99% free because leloGCD's). Thus, if Healers do more DPS, then there puts more focus on Healers actively avoiding their primary role to DPS more.

Meanwhile, with Tanks not having any resource competition between their Tanking and DPS skills, having higher DPS doesn't necessarily detract away from them performing their primary role.

This is an oversimplification, but from a design standpoint, you don't want the role that has competing resources to have more efficiency with their off-role causing conflict within gameplay.

There are however, other things that can be considered in regards to this too, such as the minutia of such a scenario where if healers do more DPS than Tanks, then Tanks sacrificing DPS for more mitigation in order to allow for more room for the Healer to DPS can be a thing (As opposed to the Tenacity issue, we currently have, where the DPS loss from melding Ten over Crit/DH isn't mitigated by the DPS gain from healers pushing out more DPS GCD's (Partially due to the fact that it outright doesn't even mitigate a GCD spent on healing)). Though, such a scenario would need to actually have any sort of interaction with mitigation beyond maybe melding Ten/Det over Crit/DH and then still just mashing max DPS combos during fights anyway.

[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.

[Jirah]

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.

I’m with her, MMO is a petty enjoyment of numbers and hallow highs with said numbers. Racing to get Eden choir gear ...for what to do the true engame of being AFK in Limsa until 5.3?

[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!