Is Tank the happiest/most satisfied role right now?

[Elizasylen]

It's the role with the most agency and soloing potential, so I dare to say yes, We're more happier than some. But this is really the age of the Melee DPS

[Oizen]

It's the role with the most agency and soloing potential, so I dare to say yes, We're more happier than some. But this is really the age of the Melee DPS

I'm not really a fan of the fact that Melee DPS has become synonymous with Viable DPS, meanwhile you only really bring Phys Range because the game arbitrarily gives a party buff for having all damage types.
Which means if that system wasn't in place, Phys Range should be dropped from parties entirely.
I also don't like how it basically hard locks that every party needs 2 Melee DPS specifically, and only 1 of the other two types. It just punishes players for playing what they like.

And I even play Melee DPS, its not THAT much harder than the Phys Range, and its definately not harder than Black Mage

[Lyth]

I think what the issue is that that people often say "Devs don't listen to feedback" when what they mean is "Devs aren't doing the thing(s) we're asking for".

The Devs may very well be LISTENING/READING feedback. Yoshi P seems to be very aware that Healer players (at least some of them) are upset at the state of Healing and very vocal about it, for example. The issue seems to be that the Devs have decided they don't want to go a certain route (e.g. more damage rotations/complexity for Healers), and so they're trying to figure out what else they can do instead, while players asking for more damage abilities insist the Devs aren't listening to their feedback when the Devs clearly ARE, they just don't want to implement those specific solutions.

The worst part is when the monkey's paw strikes - woe be to anyone who complains their Job does "more work" but isn't rewarded enough (in their mind, with more damage), because the corrupt-a-wish monkey's paw will, every single time, smite your DPS kit into homogenized simplistic gruel so you'll never have to complain of doing more work that isn't compensated again. (It's shocking to me how many people still make that complaint given the historic results of those Jobs that do it enough...)

And as you say, people often ask for things other Jobs have instead of just playing those other Jobs. SOMETIMES it's warranted (if something is effectively mandatory - like all Healers have to have a Raise, for example), but often, it isn't, and the result is people get homogenization because they literally asked for it.

I agree that uniqueness is the solution, but that requires people accepting their Job won't have things that everyone else has. And as long as those things aren't essential, it isn't a problem. Expedience isn't essential, for example. Cover isn't essential. But they can be useful or interesting to have.

The reason why I detest the 'difficulty' argument is because I still remember what happened to DRK in Stormblood. Not only was the job consistently undertuned for the entire expansion, the justification the community made for it was because having only one combo supposedly made it easier to play. Which is absurd in retrospect, because we had sub 30 APM WAR mains downplaying the talent of 50+ APM DRK mains. So not only were you were playing at a constant disadvantage, but you weren't even valued if you did manage to outskill and outperform your co-tank like you would've in Heavensward, because 'one-combo job'. It's the worst of both worlds.

People migrate to jobs that give them the maximum reward for the least effort. The 'most difficult/high skill job' is always the one that you're currently playing. This is just human nature. There is no such thing as a 'niche' overpowered job that nobody plays because they're after a 'real challenge'.

I can't help but wonder if adding more elaborate damage rotations to healers will actually make everyone happy. You can model the role such that they play more similarly to the existing caster jobs. But as long as a portion of your hotbar budget is dedicated to healing actions, it is always going to feel like a simplified caster dps.

What's hit has the role hardest is the progressive elimination of resource management from Stormblood on. It's been great for all the other roles, because emptying your resource bar and not being able to do anything at all feels really bad (Goad please). But resource management is a fairly critical part of making healing decision-making challenging.

I'm not saying that the solution is to drive the focus on MP/regen mechanics like a circa 2004 Vanilla Warcraft Priest stacking MP5 gear. But there are more modern ways of ensuring that healers don't have virtually unlimited healing output (doing damage to generate healing resources, 'reload' mechanics, and so on). Overwatch does a pretty good job of this out of necessity, because if your healers can heal all incoming damage without any pauses then PvP matches last forever. Deaths don't happen when you're pumping out healing. They happen when you're forced to reload.

Another problem comes down to job diversity. Rather than dividing healers into 'White Mages' and 'Scholars' and pumping out copies of these jobs, they need to experiment more. A melee-based healer with aura effects or even a physical ranged healer that uses a rechargeable potion system in place of MP could do a lot to shake up the role and make it more interesting. Being overly safe may simplify balancing, but it comes at the steep cost of keeping gameplay fresh.

Actions like Expedience represent an untapped means of making support roles (i.e. tanks and healers) more interesting to play. You can't quantify the exact benefit, but players taking advantage of the buff can translate that into more uptime. These types of actions are harder to pull off, but I really wish that there was more discussion around this type of effect.

Cover represents the counterpoint to unique actions, in that the action has swung between powerful and nigh useless from ARR to present. We've seen it used to completely cheese mechanics (Earthshakers) and allow tanks to bypass swaps and reset stacks. That's probably the reason why its use has been so restricted. And given that it competes with Intervention for gauge, there's a question around its function. It probably just needs a new niche. It's unfortunate, because they probably could have made it work if they didn't want to be so safe about it.

[Abbul_Stonecleaver]

So I’ve only recently returned to the game (quit during Heavensward), and haven’t made it to 90 yet so I haven’t experienced stuff first hand.

However, I’ve been looking at some fflogs stuff to see how things stand.. and I’m disgusted. Warrior, the job that uses a massive Greataxe, should be known for hitting really hard and being the offensive tank. Instead, from most things I looked at they have the worst offense of the tanks. That’s absurd.

I know their identity seems to be shifting to self-sustain, which is fun, but I’d prefer the class to be known for its Greataxe (the reason I selected this class to main), as opposed to it’s healing. Paladin makes way more sense to be the healing/ top defensive tank (due to shield).

[ForsakenRoe]

However, I’ve been looking at some fflogs stuff to see how things stand.. and I’m disgusted. Warrior, the job that uses a massive Greataxe, should be known for hitting really hard and being the offensive tank. Instead, from most things I looked at they have the worst offense of the tanks. That’s absurd.

Problem is, people decided that the only thing that matters is damage, and SE seems to have responded with the way they design stuff. I'd be fine with the idea of 'this tank is burst damage focused' like WAR was for SB (IR Berserk), one being 'this tank is more sustain focused' like PLD was with it's DOT, or DRK was in SB with it's ridiculously misaligned-from-the-party timers (40/80s CDs on things, weird eh), and IDK GNB can be 'this tank is known for causing RSI'. Back in HW and later parts of SB, we didn't have WAR as 'the burst damage tank', it was 'the best by far, in pretty much every metric, tank', and I think some WAR mains might have gotten used to the comfort of the throne. So when SE brought them back to reality, they feel like they deserve to be given back that which they lost. Anyway, SE decided that all of that 'identity' stuff is too hard to balance, so now everyone is 'burst focused', and with that comes the issue that certain classes don't stand out because of fight design choices anymore. For example, if we had a raid tier where PLD was the top damage on one fight, because that fight is 100% uptime and PLD is sustained damage focused, okay cool whatever, because on the next fight, there's some occasional 5-10s downtimes where PLD's DOT doesn't tick, and the PLD can't attack, but WAR's still got it's IR ticking and coming back off CD, thereby increasing how much damage it puts into the 'uptime' parts of the fight. This, I think, is part of the reason WAR was so dominant, downtimes favored it over other tanks, massively.

If SE had kept 4.1 WAR's design going (the one where you had to pool gauge for IR+Berserk windows at 2min, and IR/Berserk were seperate buffs), it'd probably be the strongest tank in terms of DPS. It's being held back by the guaranteed auto-crits, there's no chance to 'exceed' when everything is a static 'it does this much' because of the guarantee.

Or do we mean that WAR should be the tank that 'takes more damage but deals more damage', which... 2.0 says hello (and goodbye just as fast). Much as some WAR mains might wish it, 'does the most damage' is not an 'identity'. Also, what justifies WAR being the top with it's greataxe, when DRK has an equally comical-sized weapon? In fact, since the axe head is the heavy bit, but the whole blade is heavy for DRKs, it makes sense they'd do more damage

[Lyth]

Doing more damage than everyone else is not a 'job identity'.

The tanks are the closest they've ever been in the history of this game, and DRK and WAR trade-off against each other in several fights in second to third place (with P8S part 2 being the exception due to a fight-specific buff). When DPS differences between tank jobs are on the order of 10s, the way to do more damage than everyone else is to actually become more skilled than everyone else. Time to sharpen your own axe and bring the player, not the job.

[fulminating]

Why's gunbreaker allowed "does the most damage" as its sole identity then? RSI is even less of one, and there's nowt else there.

[RyuDragnier]

Why's gunbreaker allowed "does the most damage" as its sole identity then? RSI is even less of one, and there's nowt else there.

Because they've destroyed DRK over the years to where it has no job identity, and WAR's identity has always been (jokingly) "too angry to die."

[ForsakenRoe]

Why's gunbreaker allowed "does the most damage" as its sole identity then? RSI is even less of one, and there's nowt else there.

Is it really 'does the most damage' when the difference is in the double digits? This isn't like the 'does the most damage' WAR mains want because they miss SB, where they got to do 400-500 more DPS than the other tanks because they managed to press IR at the same time Trick went out. And whether you like it or not, 'fast paced, high APM' is an identity, it's part of how you'd describe it's playstyle after all.

And IDK when the stats ended up like this, but every time I've looked in the past, DRK was the top for this tier. Wonder what changed, maybe it's just easier to 'perform at max' as DRK, so GNB results took longer to come in. Either way, SE's consistently removed things that allow for 'identity expression'. DRK was the 'magic tank', now every tank can handle magic pretty well, so Dark Mind just sucks against physical for no gain. WAR was the 'burst damage tank', now everyone bursts at 2min. PLD was the 'party support tank' because of Veil, now WAR has Veil 2, and DRK and GNB got a mit too. We've slowly run out of things to differentiate the tanks by, so all that's really left is 'well, how much damage do they do', and unless SE wants to do something like Conflag from E6S again, I can't see PLD's 'it can use Req moves from range!' being anything more than a cute novelty

[Oizen]

Is it really 'does the most damage' when the difference is in the double digits? This isn't like the 'does the most damage' WAR mains want because they miss SB, where they got to do 400-500 more DPS than the other tanks because they managed to press IR at the same time Trick went out. And whether you like it or not, 'fast paced, high APM' is an identity, it's part of how you'd describe it's playstyle after all.

And IDK when the stats ended up like this, but every time I've looked in the past, DRK was the top for this tier. Wonder what changed, maybe it's just easier to 'perform at max' as DRK, so GNB results took longer to come in. Either way, SE's consistently removed things that allow for 'identity expression'. DRK was the 'magic tank', now every tank can handle magic pretty well, so Dark Mind just sucks against physical for no gain. WAR was the 'burst damage tank', now everyone bursts at 2min. PLD was the 'party support tank' because of Veil, now WAR has Veil 2, and DRK and GNB got a mit too. We've slowly run out of things to differentiate the tanks by, so all that's really left is 'well, how much damage do they do', and unless SE wants to do something like Conflag from E6S again, I can't see PLD's 'it can use Req moves from range!' being anything more than a cute novelty

GNB does more damage against striking dummies, DRK does more in practice, especially with phase changes, downtime, ect.

Basically DRK is not only easier to execute, but also because it does all of its damage in burst windows, any mechanics where the boss is untargetable is a buff to DRK as you're effectively skipping its weakest moments. Mechanics like HC1 and 2 for example give's DRK's cooldowns and MP about 40 seconds to recharge, which is a pretty big deal.