6.0 Both Tank and Healers Need Major Focus on Bringing Back Job Identity

[Kabooa]

It might be helpful if you put down what you think those identities should be, and how to achieve that.

For example

Following Paladin's theme of Holy Knight, looking at their current rotation we have an excess of nearly 3,000+ MP doing a standard rotation. Combos, passive regen, spirits within. Their GCD rotation is exceedingly tight so any additional GCD will require a bit more finesse.

For the only job utilizing a shield, their advancement hasn't included much around the shield. With the focus on sword and magic along with sword magic, it seems the natural place to put its new ability is combining magic with its shield into an OGCD ability that costs around 1500 to 3000 MP depending on how often we expect it to be used.

So it's a Shield based magic ability that does a thing, not interrupting its current rotation but putting more demand to maintain its uptime lest using it delay your ability to Requiscat window.

[BarretOblivion]

It might be helpful if you put down what you think those identities should be, and how to achieve that.

For example

Following Paladin's theme of Holy Knight, looking at their current rotation we have an excess of nearly 3,000+ MP doing a standard rotation. Combos, passive regen, spirits within. Their GCD rotation is exceedingly tight so any additional GCD will require a bit more finesse.

For the only job utilizing a shield, their advancement hasn't included much around the shield. With the focus on sword and magic along with sword magic, it seems the natural place to put its new ability is combining magic with its shield into an OGCD ability that costs around 1500 to 3000 MP depending on how often we expect it to be used.

So it's a Shield based magic ability that does a thing, not interrupting its current rotation but putting more demand to maintain its uptime lest using it delay your ability to Requiscat window.

Im sorry to say but SE doesn't take into consideration suggestions on the forums. They shown that with the DRK rework by ignoring every single input that was thrown around during SB and just pivoted towards "make it WAR".
PLD pivot more towards using the shield as a tool and more to do during requiscat.
WAR start pivoting away from IR, give the beast guage more to do with it, they are a beserker tank so pivot on that by giving them skills where they gain something from taking damage.
DRK should be given back Dark Arts as a skill and bring back scourge, give them another melee combo and rework Delirium or remove it, we don't need another tank with IR.
GNB, more to do with the blast charges and pivot towards the speed of the class staying at high gear, maybe give them a combo that increases their skill speed as its maintained.
TLDR: for all the tanks, more to do with our job guages that aren't just "FELL CLEAVE FOR ME!"

[Kabooa]

Don't tell me that. Tell them.

Put it in an organized bullet point on your opening post.

The crafters did this and while not every point was addressed, the following design of Ishgard hit a fair amount of them, coincidence or not.

That said, they also took time to gather together shared issues, hammer out conflicting ones, as well as compile a list of suggestions to address shared and compromised ones.

[Absimiliard]

Seems like there are just as many seasoned tanks around as before, only now there are a lot of new ones mixed in as well. We've even been seeing more instances of literally anything but tanks popping up on adventurer in needs that are typically always tank, even frequent calls for DPS. That being said, tanking certainly isn't what it used to be. Wouldn't mind getting the tank jobs made less like each other again. GNB is pretty well fine as-is, but hoboy do WAR and DRK need to be separated.

[Lyth]

Im sorry to say but SE doesn't take into consideration suggestions on the forums.

That's actually not true. If you look back, you'll see that they actually took a lot of the proposed suggestions for DRK from that thread on board immediately (4.3), and most of the rest they addressed this expansion, with the one exception of Living Dead. They also did a pretty good job of addressing the dps discrepancy within roles, the discrepancy in effectiveness between the various tank stances, and got rid of the mandatory 100% debuffs, which were all things that we collectively pushed fairly hard for. I don't think that homogenisation was necessarily the answer to all those issues, but they tried.

The problem is that the development/community team doesn't do a particularly good job of actually indicating what they're drawing feedback from. That's one of the few things that I like about Blizzard, in that their blue posts create a two way interaction with the developers and they do a good job of outlining the why of their decisions, even if the decisions themselves come across as a bit daft. That thread I linked was a bit of an exception, specifically because I called them out on it. It's also unclear how much gets actually translated back to the dev team, and whether the responses just get cherry picked.

As much as players are talking about rotational simplicity, I actually think that's the least of our worries. Would I like to see more creative rotations with more room for decision making? Absolutely. But what I really, truly want to see more than anything else is fight design in which the core tenets of tanking matter. I grew up watching Ciderhelm videos on tank positioning tricks during Lich King. I really just want to see that tank movement becomes the starting point for their fight design. And to do that, I think they need to get rid of auto-positioning bosses, and fix that dumb spin strat exploit that forces this kind of boss movement.

[Kabooa]

And to do that, I think they need to get rid of auto-positioning bosses, and fix that dumb spin strat exploit that forces this kind of boss movement.

One would think that "Stop basic AI" thing they do for major mechanics would be sufficient.

[DJMau]

Well if I remember correctly the 3 tanks HAD unique play styles to an extent some time ago...but then people complained about having to do this and that or this discrepancy or that imbalance. Be it MP management on DRK or Stance Dancing with WAR. If it required effort or learning the forum population balked because it wasn't easy to learn.

Now you lot want the stuff back because you got what you asked for. Make up your collective minds.

[shao32]

they didn't, at the contrary they did what they want it looking at the issue and remove it or make it worse gameplay wise.

-double weaves issue was partialy fixed, only plunge was shorten and dark arts animation never get reduced only deleted post SHB when we didn't ask for that.

-dark passegnger get buffed but was still a dps loss due slashing debuff, this expansion removed dark passenger and give us flood wich have the same problem of SB dark passenger being usable on aoes, so the same issue different name.

-none of the dark arts feedback has been taken in to consideration, the whole mechanic was deleted.

-sole survivor get fixed to become deleted

-souleater selfheal become fixed but none of the sugestion were taken into consideration, better deleted dark arts instead of properly desing it.

-blood weapon was made instance independent but blood price was deleted, no rework was made for blood price, and blood weapon nerf make the skill way worse.

-mp and GCD cost of grit is the only one that has been fully done by comunity specifications with plunge.

-darkside has been basically made a trait but they partialy build a keep up mechanic with a dedicated gauge to end working like a trait, basically a huge waste of resources here, obvious incomplete work.

-delirium rework with several sugestions to make it more important, none of then asking to make the whole blood system a copy pasted of rage system anywhere, they just seems to read "delirium + remove blood cost = bring inner release" no MP relation, no dark arts relation, just nothing but make DRK a WAR clone here for some reason.

-increase the MP pool to have less problems on management nope, they just make it even more tight and they just destroyed the MP economy instead, now is just build you MP and trow it under buff windows.

-plunge specific changes, granted.

-reprisal is still a tank role skill, this was complety ignored why bring back to DRK a rightfull skill and make his own unique version of party mitigation? lest make a magical raid mitigation and give it to GNB and DRK with no diference whatsoever (outside of animation).

-shadow wall sugestion ignored they just reduce the recast and put it in to the "let's make everything the same" boat on SHB, only WAR have something unique despite not being anything crucial the problem still remains, at least is not arguable the worst anymore.

-living dead is still being living dead.

of the 14 sugestion only 2 where done as we asked for, the rest has been taken as "anomaly detected target and destroy" and they just take to much freedom on how to dealt with things making the rise of DARK WAR complains, almost half of the kit has been deleted for this, they didn't listen they dint take our/your feedback to make what we use to have and make it better designed, they just delete everything grant us 2 things and proceed to did another several stuff that nobody asked for.

in the end DRK identity has suffered way more this expantion that anything on SB did to the job.

[Lyth]

One would think that "Stop basic AI" thing they do for major mechanics would be sufficient.

I'm not even sure why that happens in the first place. There was this trick that players did in Leviathan Ex back in ARR where the Wavetooth Sagahin is supposed to use an uninterruptable Dreadwash as a sort of dps check. But if your WAR did a Holmgang and leapt away from the mob, it would be forced to move when its position was supposed to be locked (due to the binding chain), interrupting the cast. It's strange that a lot of these "casted" abilities require a stationary mob in order to execute them, or else they get interrupted (or could not be initiated in the case of the spin strat exploit, prior to auto-positioning bosses). If this is a coding issue that they can't directly fix, I think the best solution is to design fights with an untargetable offscreen mob that casts the AoEs. That way the fight follows the script irrespective of what happens to mob positioning.

Either way, I'm baffled that they still can't make mobs cleave while moving. I was watching some of the more recent stuff from Warcraft and was drooling over how smoothly their bosses continued to respond to even slight changes in tank movement while throwing out attacks, AoEs, and cleaves without the need for position locks. And this was the case even back circa 2006. I know that they're working with what they inherited from 1.x, but it's been 7 years. Please fix your coding. The present fix of auto-positioning bosses is not an appropriate countermeasure.

[Nedkel]

I wouldn't hold my breath, tbh. While I want SE to fix healers by 6.0, I 100% doubt they'll ever be anything more than "WHM but with ___" at this point, anything besides that is just impossible to balance, apparently. ShB was also massively successful, despite healers sucking so much ass, there is literally no incentive for them to change their design philosophy. As it stands, I think it will only get worse for the role in the expac.

I'm done being upset about it though, I'm just looking to clear the content I want to clear, unsub, and move on. Find a game that doesn't treat their healers like trash. It's a shame too, I love the fight design of this game, I really do, I love that healers are there to do more than just kiss booboos away, they're there to fight on the front lines with everyone else, patch them up when they need it, then go back to fighting, it feels really nice to balance both, but I hate that that's been reduced to "lmao, spam your 1 button and shut up"

Can't say anything for tanks though, don't really play the role.

Thats why its important for you guys to stop "afking" in this game and move into other ones.
I started playing wow and cant wait for shadowlands, unsubbed from ffxiv for now since lvling healers is just a true pain and i dont feel like going into there. :P
Having more fun with wow so far, playing demon hunter feels like playing some arcade game, playing with freedom and mobility like i never would have in ffxiv.

I kinda lost all my hope for this japanese company, they just dont even listen to players outside of their own island, well.