How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

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!

I agree, but let's consider the differences between, say, tanks and healers in that regard.

There is little to no way to fail the dps tasks themselves on a healer. Tanks, at least, have varying (though generally low) degrees of skill-gap within their kits by which to punish or reward players. Though each tank may be doing the same thing under the same percentage reward or punishment, that difference would at least amount to more.

[Shurrikhan]

...from a design standpoint, you don't want the role that has competing resources to have more efficiency with their off-role...

...What? It should be quite clear that I'm not saying healers should be more DPS-efficient than DPS to the point that they'd never heal (though I'm not sure there's much of any point at which never healing would EVER be efficient), so I can only assume this is continuing the comparison between the 'off-role' (damage dealing) of tanks and healers. So, let's consider.

Let's say as a healer I have access to my off-role 80% of the time. You, as a tank, have access to your off-role 100% of the time. Assuming we had equal output, you'd do 25% more off-role throughput than I would.

Now, atop that, you want my off-role's uptime to be LESS effective than yours? Not only does my off-role cost me my main role, but you want it to be weaker than your off-role, which costs you nothing?

How does that remotely sound intuitive, balanced, or otherwise sensible to you?

Again...

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.

Indeed, virtually any healing output, by nature of it being mutually exclusive with damage-dealing, ought to put them (nearly) on level. But the throughput of 100% DPS uptime on a Tank, at zero cost to their 'main' role, absolutely should NOT be higher than that of a healer, whose 'main' role is mutually exclusive with that output. Again, my response was to the idea of their output rate, not their totals.

[Nedkel]

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!

The strawman in this post is strong and its just plain out wrong.

It means pretty much everything since everything about combat in this game is based around doing damage, having a tank being able to do more dps than bad dps means tank could do the job even if his teammates are watching netflix, is this a bad thing to ask? By going the route of your argument we could ask a question, why tanks do any dps at all if it means effectively nothing?
See how stupid argument this is?

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.

The difference between bad DPS and good DPS on average could be as high as 5k dps which is 25-30% total and it involves much more than just messing up a rotation.

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.

Yeah, and what was the problem with it tell me? And what tank meta has anything to do how we play the game? The game will only let you have 2 tanks if you want the loot, also having a full party of tanks who still deal way less dps than everything else wouldnt even be efficient. Btw you could do encounters and dungeons even without tank right now, is this okay then?

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.

So why SE consecutively buffed redmage and ninja in the last patches when it shouldnt mean anything? Because it does.

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.

Lol brining the numbers up wont change your tank gameplay even a bit, it would just make it more important to be good at it thats all. I fail to rationalize the stance you are taking against having higher numbers instead of being 2x weaker than dps, in the next gear tier the difference is going to be even bigger. Tanks scaling IS SO BAD that they dealing less damage than healers.

[Kalise]

Let's say as a healer I have access to my off-role 80% of the time. You, as a tank, have access to your off-role 100% of the time. Assuming we had equal output, you'd do 25% more off-role throughput than I would.

Now, atop that, you want my off-role's uptime to be LESS effective than yours? Not only does my off-role cost me my main role, but you want it to be weaker than your off-role, which costs you nothing?

How does that remotely sound intuitive, balanced, or otherwise sensible to you?

The sense comes from when players find dumb ways to exploit things.

Say you're a healer who has more throughput than the tank, but you spend 20% of your time healing so your average DPS is about equal.

What happens when you spend 15% of your time healing? 10%?

At what point does it become more worthwhile to let the Tank die and have someone insta-res them with weakness because you pumping out more damage yourself is more effective than their 100% uptime and you stopping to cast GCD heals (Most notably would be the case of a DRK using LD when there isn't a WHM with Benediction available, why bother spam healing them when you can just nuke the boss and Swiftcast Raise)?

At what point does the meta become having PLD spam Clemency to heal themselves/the MT because their DPS is not worth as much as a Healer forgoing healing?

At what point is it more valuable for Tanks to run about soaking orbs meant for rDPS/Healers because it allows the Healers to sit still nuking for more overall DPS?

That's the issue of having inequalities in the off-role when it conflicts with a main role. You start to dumpster the role that has a less effective off role by ignoring your main role.

When the off-role doesn't conflict with the main role, then there's complete freedom to have the off-role be as effective as you want, because it can never cause people to sacrifice their main role and thus make others do it for them, in order to better facilitate their own, superior, off-role capabilities.

This is where on the face of it, it sounds balanced to have the role with lower uptime on DPS to thus have higher DPS capacity to average out the same as a role with higher uptime on DPS. But such a scenario can cause players to look to exploit mechanics in order to simply focus on increasing the higher damage role's uptime at the cost of the lower damage role.

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!

It means that instead of waging the same battle we've been doing for 6+ years at trying to not get gimped stats/gear, we can instead get normalized stats that the devs don't need to keep trying to mess with.

Leading to the opportunity to focus on other topics, such as having a more engaging tank role or at the very least, a somewhat interesting DPS rotation.

To say nothing about how prog raiders, world first racers and speed killers would all find it notably interesting to have not only more base damage on tanks, but also better scaling so that tank gear has a slightly larger impact on overall DPS (It'd also be a slight boon to BRD too since buffing both the tanks via songs will net them a marginally higher rDPS total)

[Arkhon-Infaustus]

Leading to the opportunity to focus on other topics, such as having a more engaging tank role or at the very least, a somewhat interesting DPS rotation.

Exactly. I miss 2.0 and 3.0 because being a tank meant something: you had to manage aggro, use a lot of skills to reduce damages and help your healer(s), manage MP (for DRK) etc... I played warrior on 2.0 and dark knight on 3.0 and it was really fun back then, they had a real identity and who cares if I wasn't dealing a lot of damages, it's a "bonus", that's not my role, or else I play DPS.

Now what, I'm only a HP bag, using one skill to fix aggro, one cooldown from time to time, and the shield (as DRK) blackest night which is the only interesting feature.
But hey, I have a new DPS rotation (as DRK again), a one target skill and an aoe skill, wouhou. And I can use them when I have MP to spend, which means not often, yay !

SE should focus on what each role means, and not try to put DPS everywhere. Tanking is for taking hits, reducing damages, managing aggro and features depending on your job's gameplay. Healing is for, well... healing, and if I want to hit hard, I play DPS, that's all. Now I just don't want to play tank anymore.

[Shurrikhan]

At what point does it become more worthwhile to let the Tank die and have someone insta-res them with weakness because you pumping out more damage yourself is more effective than their 100% uptime and you stopping to cast GCD heals (Most notably would be the case of a DRK using LD when there isn't a WHM with Benediction available, why bother spam healing them when you can just nuke the boss and Swiftcast Raise)?

Not too far away, I'd imagine, which is why I've been suggesting higher maximum tank damage output if they too can see meaningful output conflict -- not to mention threads on how tanks will always scale more poorly than other roles so long as much of their kit is tied up in percentile mitigation, which scales only with content -- and have criticized how little healing there is to be done in the majority of this game's fights. This isn't just a matter of tuning. It's a fundamental issue.

No unconflicted output should be stronger than one that is given entirely for free. As you've said, merely throwing out a buff to the almost-entirely conflicted output isn't going to be able to balance its output against another that is entirely free by just assuming a certain amount of necessary conflict. The fights across this game vary too wildly in their damage intake. Moreover, at present healers, in a sense, benefit doubly from gear in that they both afford for themselves more time to damage atop higher damage dealt, while apart from granular damage increases all the opportunities afforded by a tank's gear (i.e. towards their 'main role' or 'indirect') output only seem to benefit only the healer, even if it is ultimately the tank's rDPS.

The problem with balancing Blue DPS is that they're always set for a 100% 'time spent focusing mitigation', because they've removed their ability to actually influence direct (damage) vs. indirect (mitigation) outputs. There's still some skill-gap in both regards, but even when noting that half or more of that skill-gap shows only on other players' performance (in a way we somehow forget despite noting it at length on any DNC's or RDM's parse), it pales compared to that of healers because it gives the player nothing to adapt to or around. The fundamental problem with balancing Tanks is that they are both never truly Tanks (gameplay-wise), nor ever not entirely tanks (in terms of % mitigation output and its relevant costs to other outputs). They vary in tankiness only as a DPS varies in DPS-ness during CDs, despite healers following an obviously far different and far more sensible design paradigm, even if the majority of the game's fights are a lackluster mess in terms of healing required.

[Kalise]

The fundamental problem with balancing Tanks is that they are both never truly Tanks (gameplay-wise), nor ever not entirely tanks (in terms of % mitigation output and its relevant costs to other outputs). They vary in tankiness only as a DPS varies in DPS-ness during CDs, despite healers following an obviously far different and far more sensible design paradigm, even if the majority of the game's fights are a lackluster mess in terms of healing required.

Which is an issue, given that solving it can only really come at the expense of essentially redefining the entire combat system from the ground up:

- Increasing the amount and frequency of damage so that there are more opportunities to mitigate and to heal.

- Increasing the amount of interactivity from Tanks in regards to mitigation.

- A deviation away from fixed percentile CD's and passive mitigation in favour of potency based skills to scale with gear.

- An overhauled stat system to make picking stats have more depth and impact upon mitigation potential.

- Completely redesigned Tanks so there's more actual interactivity beyond a barebones DPS combo.

All this is certainly in SE's power to do, if a relatively large amount of work (Though, one that they need to address irregardless, if they want to do something about all the ShB Healer feedback. Either they start planning for a 6.0 combat overhaul or decide to go full meme and effectively remove Tank and Healing roles from the game and continue with mere DDR encounters).

Though, one that will be hampered by SE's need to babyproof everything. Where they won't make changes because they don't want to get lazy people to face up to the fact that in order to beat some content you have to actually bother playing the game. Since, instead of implementing any sort of tutorial for how to play, they seem to prefer just dumbing down everything to the level where these people can beat content without even trying.

I've mentioned about it in another thread, how it is in fact possible for them to facilitate teaching players, especially for non-MSQ content if they want to keep that stuff completely braindead so people who just want FFXIV: A Visual Novel can still progress:

They often simply dumb down mechanics and gameplay to try and appeal to the lowest common denominator (I.e. Billy No-Brain) rather than actually facilitate TEACHING people how to play.

Like, we have the Halls of the Novice which is a good beginner intro to classes. But it's not mandatory and so people don't and likely won't access it (Since it is kind of out of the way)

We could have also gotten "Halls of the Intermediate" "Halls of the Artisan" and "Halls of the Master" to teach people up to Savage level of character mechanics. Heck, these could be made mandatory in order to access Max Level Roulette, Expert Roulette and High End Duties respecitvely while rewarding a box full of min ilevel gear for said content (So, currently, a bunch of 430, 450 and 470 gear respectively)

It would be so easy to implement such a thing so that people can experience playing a role without it feeling awkward due to the nice rewards of a free set of catch up gear (Instead of needing to farm out Tomestones and then grind a single Raid boss to get your weapon) whilst also locking out purely optional content (Also, only in the form of roulette for the easier stuff)

Though, at this point I don't know if SE will go against the status quo and do much other than continue to dumb down all jobs until we're all just using Healer's 2 button DPS rotations and playing DDR in Dungeons/Trials/Raids which are all just 1 boss in an arena...

[Kabooa]

It means that instead of waging the same battle we've been doing for 6+ years at trying to not get gimped stats/gear, we can instead get normalized stats that the devs don't need to keep trying to mess with.

Leading to the opportunity to focus on other topics, such as having a more engaging tank role or at the very least, a somewhat interesting DPS rotation.

To say nothing about how prog raiders, world first racers and speed killers would all find it notably interesting to have not only more base damage on tanks, but also better scaling so that tank gear has a slightly larger impact on overall DPS (It'd also be a slight boon to BRD too since buffing both the tanks via songs will net them a marginally higher rDPS total)

If your priority is focused on higher numbers before you can have more engaging gameplay, then the developers aren't the problem.

The strawman in this post is strong and its just plain out wrong.

It means pretty much everything since everything about combat in this game is based around doing damage, having a tank being able to do more dps than bad dps means tank could do the job even if his teammates are watching netflix, is this a bad thing to ask? By going the route of your argument we could ask a question, why tanks do any dps at all if it means effectively nothing?
See how stupid argument this is?.

It means nothing.

If you're at 10k, 15k, 12k, or 6k, without changing anything else, you still bring two tanks, you still have the same ratio of 'bad to good' tank, and the only thing you changed was where you place on the pretty rainbow bar.

Wherever you land, boss Health changes to adjust for it.

Tanks could get a 50% increase in their damage, and Shiva would go from 72.4 million HP to 79.4.

[Shurrikhan]

Which is an issue, given that solving it can only really come at the expense of essentially redefining the entire combat system from the ground up:

Which is why I called it... an issue, no? And it's why I've insisted on revising the combat system towards more integral role functionality/interaction, rather than away from such as per XIV's average bearing, since 2015.

Though, one that will be hampered by SE's need to babyproof everything. Where they won't make changes because they don't want to get lazy people to face up to the fact that in order to beat some content you have to actually bother playing the game. Since, instead of implementing any sort of tutorial for how to play, they seem to prefer just dumbing down everything to the level where these people can beat content without even trying.

I've mentioned about it in another thread, how it is in fact possible for them to facilitate teaching players, especially for non-MSQ content if they want to keep that stuff completely braindead so people who just want FFXIV: A Visual Novel can still progress:

You're preaching to the choir here. I've been pushing for this since Guildhests were first introduced and made relatively little of, with a resurgence after each major dungeon nerf (AK, Pharos, etc.).

We can provide both more integral tanking and a more competent playerbase as a sum of small changes and additions, and though neither of us will be appeased for likely an expansion or three there will at least be some positive change. But that depends first on people agreeing that "streamlining" (effectively read: hallowing out) toolkits isn't necessarily the best for the game's overall health, especially in regards to sources of indirect contribution like healing and healing spared (mitigation/kiting/etc.), and that we do in fact want a balanced economy of outputs between our roles when taking into account all they provide rather than just their numbers on an rDPS chart that still can't account for half of all indirect contribution.