my thoughts on how to make tank jobs more engaging

[BarretOblivion]

really Dark and Warrior are the problems here lacking in identity and just over all uninteresting job design.
with Paladin its in a good spot atm but still suffers from some questionable job design in its defensive and utility kit.

They can't do what they did in ShB again with PLD else we got a problem. Just giving it stuff the other tanks get and then basically just adding very slight changes to its rotation isn't engaging enough to warrent an 'expansion/evolution' of thier skills.

[bundythenoob]

really Dark and Warrior are the problems here lacking in identity and just over all uninteresting job design.
with Paladin its in a good spot atm but still suffers from some questionable job design in its defensive and utility kit.

Yes, I feel that as well, which is why I advocate more for the gauge cost of sheltron to be lowered via a trait, as well as its base duration increased, so as to naturally give PLD more bulk without adding button bloat or upsetting the homogenisation that Square is so insistent on keeping (something that I doubt they will change their mindset on)

I don't get this obsession people have with healers doing more damage than tanks and that somehow being a bad thing.

More to the point, the 90th percentile is not where you want to balance anything around. Added to that is the fact that at this point in time, 90th percentile (hell, 80th+ probably at this point) stuff is so stupidly skewed on FFlogs thanks to parse parties that it in no way reflects a real situation. The absolute last thing this game needs is to further reduce any job identity differences and homogenize things more than they already are. Advocating for tanks as "blue dps" isn't the way to go; people should be advocating for more tank-centric things to be included in game, both on the tanks themselves as well as in the encounters.

As for the Tank damage argument, sure it might sound like nonsense, and might not look so bad on paper, but the FEELING that tank players go through when they to try and maximise their job's potential, yet still get outdamaged by the other jobs by a huge margin just doesnt provide enough incentive for most veterans, and once the rest of the playerbase catches on, they will most likely feel the same way. I am just worried because i feel that the tank jobs do not reward hard work as much as the other roles do, and even though healing is in a bad spot as well with their rotations being gutted, they can at least contribute just as much as a tank can, despite having only a singular attack. don't get me wrong, I would LOVE nothing more than SCH and WHM to return to their former glory, and to give AST an aoe DOT to match the others, but since this is a Tank thread, I didn't find it appropriate to add such comments.

I am not advocating for a straight potency increase for all of the tank jobs to match DPS jobs, but I feel that an APM increase for DRK and WAR, which can create a new baseline for tank job damage, should be the direction Square should take. PLD and GNB can get their potencies adjusted since they already have decent, working kits with nuances in their gameplay in relation to current WAR and DRK, but I would like an overhaul to their rotation that leads to a natural, healthy increase in damage, and which I feel would reward good gameplay with a bang

[HeulGDarian]

So Paladin is in a really good place and has been well designed and has great optimization capabilities fight by fight but you want to tear all that down because some misplaced idea that it needs to be a beginner job lacking in "imaginative, fun, engaging ,deep and more complicated" gameplay, yet it already does provide sufficient knowledge to beginners about tanking and still capable of a lot of optimization at end game, it doesn't have to be an either or choice, all tanks should be able to allow entry into tanking and have a skill ceiling.

PLD already passed the ACCESSIBILITY changes, wont get anything removed , and NO not all tanks should allow entry into tanking , there should be jobs that have their floor be you know the drill lets get right into the fun part , like for example those that start at lvl 30 and 60 as well as be jobs for those who had played a tank in a previous mmo so they dont need to be hand held like for example warrior.

I enjoy pld quite alot but not cause he is pld but because of the 4 he is the second complete tank job in the game first ofc being gnb.
pld fits to be the one with the easiest access albeit he still lacks one godamn cooldown , he has free mitigation cause shield , he has heal , he can protect the party the best , he has the best oh shit skill even if it is on longer cooldown, its an overal safe job to play, safer than other tanks.
Instead we have 4 roles trying to allow ACCESS and ending up being exactly the same, everything being accessible to everyone doesnt mean that is interesting to everyone or anyone, for example the air is accessible to everyone i dont think people are interested enough to keep looking at it no matter how ACCESSIBLE it is , i review the air 0/10 mostly clean with a vague smell of cat shit

[Liam_Harper]

I don't get this obsession people have with healers doing more damage than tanks and that somehow being a bad thing.

Agreed. I think that good healers being able to push high damage while simultaneously healing the group is one of the few remaining good points the job has. It rewards you for playing well. You see everything from 3k to 10k dps healers in Savage, the good player is significantly more valuable and contributes way more. It's just a shame the dps toolkit is so bland and healing needed is so low.

I'm all for both tanks and healers getting a dps bump, along with a more engaging dps toolkit for both with meaningful choices on heal/mitigation, so you had to work for that extra damage. They could easily be up to 75% the output of a dps without damaging the game. Easy to learn is fine but there should be plenty to master.
I feel they went the wrong way trying to lure people to play tank/heal. A braindead easy job isn't really that tempting except to the very casual player, who soon gets bored anyway. A half-invincible juggarnaut who can play a key role and dish out decent damage once you master it is far more tempting.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Hate to break it to you, but Shadowbringers' busters on tanks are hitting as hard (relatively) as busters in Stormblood raids without tank stance on. All the Tank Trait does is provide the old tankstance benefit for Lv70 and below content; for SHB content the damage is taking the trait into account and is scaled like being in DPS stance in SB.

Yeah you right, tankbusters in Stormblood totes hit for 110k damage through Vengeance's 30% mitigation.

[ReiMakoto]

Yeah you right, tankbusters in Stormblood totes hit for 110k damage through Vengeance's 30% mitigation.

Read what they said again, they are proportionally hitting the same damage, as in a buster in sb without tank stance on would do say 75% of your health (pretend numbers for clarity), now in shb a buster deals 75% of your health with nothing on, thats why the person said relatively, they obviously are doing bigger numbers now because of number bloat. Im inclined to agree with that assessment having tanked savage in both expacs, if anything I think we are taking more damage now than stanceless tanking in sb but what with boss autos being as inflated as they are now.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

PLD already passed the ACCESSIBILITY changes, wont get anything removed , and NO not all tanks should allow entry into tanking , there should be jobs that have their floor be you know the drill lets get right into the fun part , like for example those that start at lvl 30 and 60 as well as be jobs for those who had played a tank in a previous mmo so they dont need to be hand held like for example warrior.

I enjoy pld quite alot but not cause he is pld but because of the 4 he is the second complete tank job in the game first ofc being gnb.
pld fits to be the one with the easiest access albeit he still lacks one godamn cooldown , he has free mitigation cause shield , he has heal , he can protect the party the best , he has the best oh shit skill even if it is on longer cooldown, its an overal safe job to play, safer than other tanks.
Instead we have 4 roles trying to allow ACCESS and ending up being exactly the same, everything being accessible to everyone doesnt mean that is interesting to everyone or anyone, for example the air is accessible to everyone i dont think people are interested enough to keep looking at it no matter how ACCESSIBLE it is , i review the air 0/10 mostly clean with a vague smell of cat shit

So all this sounds like an excuse of please bring back the shitshow for the last 5 years of no balance and people crying and bitching cause their favourite tank is being left out. HARD PASS.

Also why not make Warrior, the beginner tank then since there is even less to manage, yet PLD can actually require some thought process to optimise using Atonement shift rotations, knowing when to squeeze out a Requiescat + Confiteor just before a boss jump, or using other methods to adjust your rotation to make it a gain, if you are so hard pressed to have a "tank for dummies" class. Personally, I highly disagree with your sentiments in the first place, I don't think it is mutually exclusive of each other, and that PLD is already a perfect example of it can work without need to sacrifice you for the other.

Hell a lot of new people to tanking only start once they get to DRK or GNB because they start 30 or 60 levels in, respectively. Honestly, your idea is flawed because those that level specifically to unlock DRK or GNB, probably won't necessarily pick either GLD or MRD as a starting class, and it shows in DF with some random tanks after 70+ levels in can't use cooldowns and still too chickenshit to pull more than one pack at a time, making PLD or WAR or any tank for braindead entry level in an already braindead entry level is an idiotic notion. Either people are gonna learn or they're just gonna have their weird entitlement and scream bloody murder because you dare give advice. Having a specific tank fill this role will only make one tank redundant at end game and defeat the purpose of making all jobs viable, while some who main a specific job will lash out in response.

Also why are you getting so hung up over one god damn cooldown less on PLD than the others also has a means to pool two on demands back to back, or time Intervention + Sheltron for double busters. PLD has PoA a second AOE mitigation with personal mitigation built in, time it right and you might lose an auto-attack at best, while mitigation only really matters in 8 man content, but even then you have 2 tanks, so you have two tanks worth of cooldowns. I genuinely have not run into an issue on PLD where I've thought "oh gee I wish I had another cooldown right now" in raids. Every tank has a ST support skill for their co-tank which also eases the burden on mitigation significantly. Dungeons are nothing but a face rolls, where you cycle cooldowns if you're out, well you have passive blocking, and things should be pretty much dead at that point anyways, oh and healers still have their excessively powerful and bloated toolkit.

What Paladin might miss ever so slightly in personal mitigation; it's balanced out by it's party mitigation and support.

[HeulGDarian]

So all this sounds like an excuse of please bring back the shitshow for the last 5 years of no balance and people crying and bitching cause their favourite tank is being left out. HARD PASS.

Also why not make Warrior, the beginner tank then since there is even less to manage, yet PLD can actually require some thought process to optimise using Atonement shift rotations, knowing when to squeeze out a Requiescat + Confiteor just before a boss jump, or using other methods to adjust your rotation to make it a gain, if you are so hard pressed to have a "tank for dummies" class. Personally, I highly disagree with your sentiments in the first place, I don't think it is mutually exclusive of each other, and that PLD is already a perfect example of it can work without need to sacrifice you for the other.

Hell a lot of new people to tanking only start once they get to DRK or GNB because they start 30 or 60 levels in, respectively. Honestly, your idea is flawed because those that level specifically to unlock DRK or GNB, probably won't necessarily pick either GLD or MRD as a starting class, and it shows in DF with some random tanks after 70+ levels in can't use cooldowns and still too chickenshit to pull more than one pack at a time, making PLD or WAR or any tank for braindead entry level in an already braindead entry level is an idiotic notion. Either people are gonna learn or they're just gonna have their weird entitlement and scream bloody murder because you dare give advice. Having a specific tank fill this role will only make one tank redundant at end game and defeat the purpose of making all jobs viable, while some who main a specific job will lash out in response.

Also why are you getting so hung up over one god damn cooldown less on PLD than the others also has a means to pool two on demands back to back, or time Intervention + Sheltron for double busters. PLD has PoA a second AOE mitigation with personal mitigation built in, time it right and you might lose an auto-attack at best, while mitigation only really matters in 8 man content, but even then you have 2 tanks, so you have two tanks worth of cooldowns. I genuinely have not run into an issue on PLD where I've thought "oh gee I wish I had another cooldown right now" in raids. Every tank has a ST support skill for their co-tank which also eases the burden on mitigation significantly. Dungeons are nothing but a face rolls, where you cycle cooldowns if you're out, well you have passive blocking, and things should be pretty much dead at that point anyways, oh and healers still have their excessively powerful and bloated toolkit.

What Paladin might miss ever so slightly in personal mitigation; it's balanced out by it's party mitigation and support.

bescause back in stormblood at least the job that felt like he had to do some dancing for mitigation was war not pld the guy who had the most reliable mitigation was pld , remember how war had the 100% parry but crit if they hit you from behind? sure you can go ahead and say make war the beginners tank , but thats your opinion i simply present mine. pld was always the safest and thats what a new player needs . the reason im hang up on that one cooldown is cause it contradicts the fact that pld is the safest choice , the thing i remember is how he had to rely on someone else in order to mitigate , the guy who has a shield needing help to mitigate.



as for calling wanting one job to be the newbies one an idiotic notion, currently all the tanks and healers are that and if one is an idiotic notion then this one is an idiotic notionx6. You call the prior state unbalanced and a shit show i call it fun , the current one is devoid of fun cause every responsibility the jobs had was stripped away cause it was "scary", removing gameplay doesn't do a favor to no one, if there is anything the game is currently lacking is high risk high reward gameplay , tanks and healers dont have that anymore , no more playing around with aggro , no more stance changing to get extra dps out , no more cleric stance shenanigans nor swapping fairies for dps or trying to get the better out of your cards. everything is made to be safe so that people dont fail , but they can and they do.

In the end all i want is to find a job in those roles that has some more meat into it. in stormblood all 3 tanks were fun they were so fun i got the drk mount without noticing, ive done 1 third of pld as well and about the same on war, i also played a crap ton of sch it was fun and engaging to heal while keeping the lvl 50 smn rotation . Now i cant play either of them. its simply put boring , i used to clear ex as both a healer or a tank i wasnt even maining i was just helping out friends or to speed up pfs. but now all gone

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Also why are you getting so hung up over one god damn cooldown less on PLD than the others also has a means to pool two on demands back to back, or time Intervention + Sheltron for double busters. PLD has PoA a second AOE mitigation with personal mitigation built in, time it right and you might lose an auto-attack at best, while mitigation only really matters in 8 man content, but even then you have 2 tanks, so you have two tanks worth of cooldowns. I genuinely have not run into an issue on PLD where I've thought "oh gee I wish I had another cooldown right now" in raids. Every tank has a ST support skill for their co-tank which also eases the burden on mitigation significantly. Dungeons are nothing but a face rolls, where you cycle cooldowns if you're out, well you have passive blocking, and things should be pretty much dead at that point anyways, oh and healers still have their excessively powerful and bloated toolkit.

What Paladin might miss ever so slightly in personal mitigation; it's balanced out by it's party mitigation and support.

Howdy, generally a correct asassment, playing favourites about "which tank should be beginner level and which should be intermediate level" is indeed unnecessary. However, there is some truth about some issues of PLD, frankly speaking. While PLD generally has a pretty fair amount of damage relative to the other tanks and isn't overly difficult to play, their self-mitigation is indeed a little weak as a whole, even taking "the better party mitigation" into account.

Quick Analysis:


1.) PLD has three party mitigation options, whereas the other tanks have two (counting Reprisal). While on paper this is a clear upside, it also is nothing to write home about anymore after SHB throwing mitigation options for raid wides basically everywhere - every physical ranged having a 120s cooldown for 10% reduction, every caster having Addle at 90s (most raidwides are magical), every healer has at least one -10% damage taken option available (WHM being the only one who doesn't at Lv70 content though) and when circulating mitigation options between the tanks, having the extra Passage of Arms is rather a small upside. That being said, Divine Veil and Passage of Arms both suffering from their own issues such as DV requiring a Healing SPELL to proc the effect and Passage of Arms only being up for 5s (quick weave like Diurnal AST's Collective Unconscious).

2.) Divine Veil's 10% scaling off the PLD's HP holds hardly any merit since Shake it Off's 15% scales to roughly the same amount while also shielding the caster himself and not requiring an input to be procced either.

177.000 HP = roughly the BiS HP right now for tanks under full 5% party boost and a food buff.
115.000 HP = roughly the average DPS HP, not even BiS for comparison's sake.

177.000 HP * 0.10 (10%) = 17.700 shieldHP (DV)
115.000 HP * 0.15 (15%) = 17.250 shieldHP (shake)

This was caused by the 5.2 WAR buff if I remember correctly, the statement for that change was literally "to bring Shake it Off in line with Divine Veil"

3.) PLD's Cover has been nerfed into obscurity, if not plain "why do I have this button even". Having less and less mechanics you can efficiently cover doesn't help the issue either.

4.) Compare the four tanks on three things - their "passive", their extra CD and their short CD.

WAR - parry + HP generation (Storm's Path), Thrill of Battle +20%eHP for 10s, Raw Intuition / Nascent Flash HP recovery
DRK - parry + HP generation (Souleater), Dark Mind -20% magic mitigation, TBN +25% eHP / shield
GNB - parry + HP generation (Brutal Shell, half shield), Camouflage -10% mitigation and high parry rate, Heart of Stone -15% mitigation
PLD - parry + block (overlap), Passage of Arms (if held, also block), Sheltron (also block) Blocks only mitigate -20% on top of all that.

The glaring issue here is that unlike WAR DRK GNB, Paladin's passive, extra CD and short CD overlap without any extra benefit while the other three can pair their varying sources of eHP and mitigation. On top of that, unlike the other three Paladin has to charge their Sheltron / Intervention with autoattacks - a method for gauge accumulation that has been done away for Ninja in SHB, yet kept for PLD for unexplained reasons. Frankly, while they have the option to pool two uses of Oath skills, they also have to stay in melee range to keep generating gauge (nullifying the benefit of having a ranged attack phase), making it the only tank who cannot generate their short CD resource without hitting something with a toothpick.

Can PLD tank? Sure they can, but to be honest, PLD's saving grace why I wouldn't just plain block it out of all static applications is Hallowed Ground being the only "true" invulnerability and Intervention making "some" value on back-to-back or double busters. I stopped using PLD entirely personally, Hallowed Ground for me isn't worth all the hassle.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Read what they said again, they are proportionally hitting the same damage, as in a buster in sb without tank stance on would do say 75% of your health (pretend numbers for clarity), now in shb a buster deals 75% of your health with nothing on, thats why the person said relatively, they obviously are doing bigger numbers now because of number bloat. Im inclined to agree with that assessment having tanked savage in both expacs, if anything I think we are taking more damage now than stanceless tanking in sb but what with boss autos being as inflated as they are now.

I'm sorry, is this supposed to be a bad thing? Bosses are supposed to hit hard in savage; it's sort of the point. I quite liked Titan auto attacking for 33k when I had 148k HP. Hell, I'd have been fine with him auto'ing even a little bit harder. If for no other reason than the fact that nothing does anything resembling damage outside of savage, even in certain EX's the bosses do laughable damage.