How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Shurrikhan]

We are nowhere near that level, nor are the concerns of individual parties / players and their decisions on what roles to play within our breadth of discussion.

The discussion is "Do tanks need more?"

The answer is no, but as I've said at basically every interval this thread comes back up, a small corrective adjustment up is fine. At the time of creation, that was about 2%. At the current state, this can be 3-5% depending on how much of a boost the Ranged get, if any, in 5.3.

It also won't mean anything in the end, but that's basically been the outcome of every flavor of "Muh Accessories" thread that came about.

Again, I agree on the whole. At present, we're not in that situation that demands any significant increases to output, even if it may quite nearly demand more engaging gameplay.

My point was only the goal. Specifically, I don't believe that "the numbers ultimately mean nothing so long as the tanks are close enough to each other to not render one invalid". That's a start, and absolutely necessary, of course, but I don't find balancing a role among only itself as a sufficient goal. There should be a sense of knowing what X role costs you in terms of other roles, and there being an apparent balance between the roles, with one ultimately ending up at or very near to 2/4/2 because of that balance rather than gimmicks alone.

I realize I'm using the term "gimmick" here loosely. I probably also extend that definition further than most, including even vulnerability mechanics to oblige swaps in place of simply needing to rotate CDs, and the like. I essentially consider something a gimmick when it acts as a composition check rather than an output check. If something outright requires a role more so than it requires a given amount of eHP, HPS, or DPS (even if that's normally limited to a tank, healer, or dps, respectively), it leans into "gimmick" territory for me.

When I'm playing a role -- any role -- I like to feel like a toolkit that ultimately forms my responsibilities, not a classification that a bunch of parts are later added to by obligation alone. If I'm a "Tank", it should be because I have so much capacity and gameplay revolving around tanking, rather than just being told I'm a Tank, getting a goodie bag that says "Tank" on it with a handful of mitigation skills to pop at preset times. When design aims merely to balance roles unto themselves, where things are specifically "tank" skills rather than "mitigation", etc., with no sense of shared currency between each role, that latter, shallow feeling inevitably starts to appear and make itself increasingly obvious.