Tank homogenization

[Goji1639]

What options? At this rate tanks are healer are becoming more and more like skins instead of jobs, with a gameplay so dull that makes watching the grass grow more entertaining. You cans see that this expansion took a real hit on healer player numbers and even tanks despite having a new toy have also came back to be on dire demand once again after the honeymoon with gunbreaker ended. At this rate either you like the job "tank" and/or "healer" or you wont no matter how many skins they have, which is already gradually getting harder and harder to like considering how they are gutting the jobs removing every ounce of flavour they have bit by bit on each expansion.

But SE answer that that time and time was to make them more and more brain dead because they think "tanking and healing is too hard so we need to make them more accesible and be clones of each other because its easier to balance that way" garbage instead of making them a bit unique and fun to play. Shiny new animations of the same skill quickly gets old

This is like saying if a barber want to do the same hairstyle to a group of friends he should shave them all bald because that way they wont complain that one's hair is longer than the other....

The tank classes are distinct enough, they have different ways they approach mitigation/sustain and they have different DPS rotations. If you try to turn each class into a fundamentally different concept they just won't be balanced, we'll have the 1 tank class that completely outstrips the rest and it'll be the only class you're allowed to play. People crying to make everything completely different don't seem to understand what that's going to mean.

As for complexity, I wouldn't mind tanks having real, difficult DPS rotations, but enmity management is boring; I'm glad they did away with it. If you want to stare at a list instead of focusing on the fight then play a healer.

[shao32]

As far i see nobody is asking to give tanks specific and unique traits that can be a potential imbalance on the future, nope they are asking to make tanks rotations be way more diferent from each other, aka not having for example 3 of them inner release, or the same gauge system working exactly the same way like WAR and DRK, and mitigate the damage on diferent ways but all of them mitigating the same amount of damage and not being literally all rampart+sheltron variant and sentinel+shelltron variant and then invul witch is tanks today 99% of the time.

This kind of mitigation and dps rotations use to be totally diverse and diferent from each tank back in HW and SB and tank inbalance where totally done by pasive traits and numbres more than anything else, aka slashing debuff, PLD phisical exclusive mitigation and DRK overall lower numbers wich have nothing to do with the gameplay of each job.

then we have stuff like anti knockback wich in the past use to be DRK using his gap closer to catch up and PLD use tempered will to stay on his place, this bring unique gameplay options to dealt with anti knockbacks, in resume even back in HW where the balance was more rough no tank was actually excluded and all of them where viable to complete every kind of content and i personally want back HW tank diversity back but without the problems that make his balance rough wich doesn't exist anymore wich are the slashing debuff and PLD physical mitigation only.

[Bhearil]

As far i see nobody is asking to give tanks specific and unique traits that can be a potential imbalance on the future, nope they are asking to make tanks rotations be way more diferent from each other, aka not having for example 3 of them inner release, or the same gauge system working exactly the same way like WAR and DRK, and mitigate the damage on diferent ways but all of them mitigating the same amount of damage and not being literally all rampart+sheltron variant and sentinel+shelltron variant and then invul witch is tanks today 99% of the time.

This kind of mitigation and dps rotations use to be totally diverse and diferent from each tank back in HW and SB and tank inbalance where totally done by pasive traits and numbres more than anything else, aka slashing debuff, PLD phisical exclusive mitigation and DRK overall lower numbers wich have nothing to do with the gameplay of each job.

then we have stuff like anti knockback wich in the past use to be DRK using his gap closer to catch up and PLD use tempered will to stay on his place, this bring unique gameplay options to dealt with anti knockbacks, in resume even back in HW where the balance was more rough no tank was actually excluded and all of them where viable to complete every kind of content and i personally want back HW tank diversity back but without the problems that make his balance rough wich doesn't exist anymore wich are the slashing debuff and PLD physical mitigation only.

I agree with what mostly of what you said, aside the fact that on HW PLD was shafted due to entire Alexander being almost everything magic damage and was being unable to block that (which should have been fixed in the very same expansion honestly) , because it turned on the weakest tank defence and damage wise by a considerable ammount (WAR was really strong there and DRK basically had the words "magic tank" painted all over when it was released during a magic metagame dealing very respectable damage as well to boot which sealed the deal)

Seems that SE saw FFXI where every class had a complete personal flavour that made certain classes must have while others being absolutely waste of space in a party on a game you NEEDED to play in party and wanted to avoid that no matter what. Problem is that the are going the complete opposite which has its own issues as well due to making jobs clones of each others with very minor differences being aesthetics the biggest one.

On FFXI they went for the "fun" part ignoring the "balance" part, here on FFXIV they are obsessed with keeping a perfect balance by sacrificing the fun factor of every job on the pool of the "tank" or "healer" archtype making them almost equal aside animations, when they can and SHOULD aim for a middle ground where "fun" and "balance" try to coexist as much as possible instead of denying one or another because is easier to design jobs that way

Heck, despite not liking how RDM was developed on ShB (barely added anything outside of fixing things like having a proper aoe rotation etc) they managed to add the dual cast system on FFXIV, so it is possible to add exclusive flavours without breaking the game

[ForteNightshade]

The tank classes are distinct enough, they have different ways they approach mitigation/sustain and they have different DPS rotations. If you try to turn each class into a fundamentally different concept they just won't be balanced, we'll have the 1 tank class that completely outstrips the rest and it'll be the only class you're allowed to play. People crying to make everything completely different don't seem to understand what that's going to mean.

As for complexity, I wouldn't mind tanks having real, difficult DPS rotations, but enmity management is boring; I'm glad they did away with it. If you want to stare at a list instead of focusing on the fight then play a healer.

Like Shao said, we aren't asking their mitigation be unique but how their DPS rotation. Currently, Paladin, Dark Knight and Warrior all follow the same "spam this ability five times". Gunbreaker only barely moves away from it through Continuation. There are plenty of ways to avoid this problem, especially since personal damage output has no bearing on anyone else. It doesn't matter how say, Warrior, achieves x about, just that x amount is comparable with the other tanks. The point of criticism is things like Delirium, which is straight up laziness by the dev team. That, or they've simply run out of ideas. It's literally a copy/paste of Inner Release.

[Sarkhane]

Im honestly down with having each tank mitigate damage differently. But there is at least some of that albeit a small amount drk has tbn and war has nascent. Tho pld war and gnb all share a pretty generic -XX% less damage for X seconds on a 25ish second CD

[Anhra]

Tanks (and DPS too imo) should also have their utility skills such as shake it off and the "immortality button"( it should be a healers job to provide such utility), the self healing capabilities removed (why does a warrior have one of the strongest healing abilities in the game potencywise?) and have their armor value adjusted, so that defensive buffs on the correct timing actually matter.

But what would be left on a tank with all those kinds of green flavour gone you ask? I'd say give tanks utility skills that actually make sense on the Job like being able to break free out of crowd controls/stuns once in a while, attack skills that are"hard to utilize, but rewarding if pulled off" (maybe charged telegraphic attacks for example)which have a rather long cooldown and

Warning: unpopular opinion incoming

Have a proper working aggro system that can be build upon. Having just a buff that solves this problem in one go is quite boring and having tanks actually worry about it so that dps just doesn't steal it away wouldn't just make the game a bit harder and more rewarding, it would also keep things interesting and force players to actually pay more attention during combat.

[Absurdity]

I'd say give tanks utility skills that actually make sense on the Job like being able to break free out of crowd controls/stuns once in a while,

That's what the original Shake It Off was supposed to be and it was utterly useless.

[Anhra]

That's what the original Shake It Off was supposed to be and it was utterly useless.

If such a simple skill proves to be useless then it only shows how "far" we have gone down with any ingame depth about the current combat system.

[ForteNightshade]

If such a simple skill proves to be useless then it only shows how "far" we have gone down with any ingame depth about the current combat system.

The issue stems from how scripted fights are. Stuns typically lock players so a mechanic sequence can play out. Case in point, E12S. At first glance, we really don't need to be stunned through Basic and Intermediate so long as you place your Rewinds correctly. I suspect, however, the script actually requires our characters to be still otherwise the mechanic can't function properly. That, or they want us to "admire" the mechanic.

Either way, unless they fundamentally overhaul their battle system. We aren't going to see changes like this ever happen.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Im honestly down with having each tank mitigate damage differently. But there is at least some of that albeit a small amount drk has tbn and war has nascent. Tho pld war and gnb all share a pretty generic -XX% less damage for X seconds on a 25ish second CD

imo, nascent shouldnt be sharing a CD with Raw Intuition, but instead Thrill of Battle. Thrill and Nascent, both fill the general "theme" that has been WAR over the years. So picking between a 20%hp heal/max hp, or a massive heal, every 25s seems more in line of WARs theme.
but since DRK started becoming more and more like WAR, TBN feels like it competes with WARs identity somewhat. so the only replacement I can think, is to lower TBNs HP amount, and attach magic mitigation to it. making it a bit more unique. the only downside to doing this, is that DRK loses physical mitigation for it, and magical tank busters might not pop it, if we add any significant amount of magical mitigation to it. So im not sure on percentages. quick example i can think of is a 20% shield, with 10%magic mitigation.

and in return, give thrill a boost to its temp hp/heal, so its 25% instead of 20%.

(Also give Living Dead a healing bonus during its duration, so it can at least be useful in large pulls, giving 10s of increased healing received)