Tank balance and what CBU3 wants to do with job balance

[RyuDragnier]

I really feel they need to cut back on the sustain WAR and PLD have. GNB's should be the gold standard that all tanks should reach, where it's strong, but not strong enough to invalidate having a healer or make content too easy.

WAR's Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash should be reworked into giving an HP shield that can go up to 50% of the person's max HP, that way it's just a move that can buy time, not completely trivialize content. Shake It Off should be losing its regen.

PLD's spells should all have a 300 cure potency instead of 400. Holy Shelltron and Intervention should have a 200 cure potency instead of 250.

[Renathras]

I really feel they need to cut back on the sustain WAR and PLD have. GNB's should be the gold standard that all tanks should reach, where it's strong, but not strong enough to invalidate having a healer or make content too easy.

WAR's Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash should be reworked into giving an HP shield that can go up to 50% of the person's max HP, that way it's just a move that can buy time, not completely trivialize content. Shake It Off should be losing its regen.

PLD's spells should all have a 300 cure potency instead of 400. Holy Shelltron and Intervention should have a 200 cure potency instead of 250.

I kind of agree with this.

WAR being able to heal other party members MAKES NO SENSE. No part of its class fantasy is "healer". It SHOULD have decent sustain, but as you say, reducing/shielding incoming damage (largely to itself) should be how that works.

Conversely, part of PLD's class fantasy IS that it has (a few) White Magic spells. Basically Cure 2, Holy, and Glare, which is what Clemency, Holy Circle, and Holy Spirit are, respectively. The first should be (and is) a DPS loss to use since you're trading a turn of damage for a turn of healing (to speak in classical FF game terms), while the latter two should be DPS gains over your normal attacks at the cost of MP. Which they are: 1-2-3 has an AVERAGE damage of 300 per hit (900 for the combo of 3 strikes = 300 per hit averaged out), of which Holy Spirit does 350, so a slight gain, which is upped to 450 used as Divine Might procs. This is a pretty good system. Largely same deal with their AOE: 1-2 averages 135 per hit (270 for the combo) vs Holy Circle's 200 when buffed. ARGUABLY the base damage should be 150 (> 135) not 100, but the general point still comes across well enough.

The self-healing of those spells probably should be lowered a bit (since Holy and Glare aren't exactly known for their healing), or alternatively, the healing removed but Clemency being given some kind of Holy Might effect to let you use it for sustain for big pulls where damage is less important than sustain and enmity (e.g. wall-to-walls). Though on that point, PLD should REALLY get a low level (like level 30) pre-Clemency that upgrades to Clemency later (like Rage of Halone into Royal Authority), considering a lot of lower level content, PLD has no self sustain. It has no sustain until Clemency at 58, and none as part of its rotation until Holy Spirit at 64.


Contrast the other Tanks, where WAR and DRK get theirs at level 26 (Storm's Path and Souleater), and GNB gets its at level 4 (Brutal Shell). This gives sync or leveling PLDs (*cough* Palace of the Dead solo runs *cough*) a far harder time of it. And before you mock PotD - note that there was a time when PLD could Cross-Class CNJ abilities Cure, Stoneskin, Protect, and Raise (though didn't get the trait to use it in combat). So pre-SB PLD runs of PotD, they'd have Cure, Stoneskin (10% HP), and Protect (10% damage reduction) availble to them at those level ranges where now they have nothing of the sort.

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As to the thread as a whole:

- GNB was in a pretty good spot, so not sure why they changed it. Maybe had something to do with TOP since the forced downtime favored DRK but hurt the other Tanks, including GNB?

- PLD needed a buff, and I think everyone knows that. It was doing EVEN LESS damage than BEFORE the rework, which made no sense as the rework was (partially) supposed to address how it was already doing too little damage. It somehow got even more button bloat but did even less damage. So the buff was absolutely needed, there. PLD was the RDM of Tanks (and arguably still is), but unlike RDM, it's actually getting some buffs to bring it in line to where it should be.

- DRK was already doing fine. DRK struggles in easy content, which isn't so much "struggles" as "actually needs a Healer", which isn't some damning indictment on DRK so much as it is on the other Tanks having too much sustain/healing. DRK didn't need any buffs (neither did BLM), as it was already the gold standard and the "automatic pick" Tank for most high end content with the other slot being a contest of GNB (which usually won) or WAR (if you needed more flexibility) or PLD (if you didn't have either of the other two available). DRK got a longstanding problem fixed (Living Dead) and in such a way that actually makes it a powerful and useful CD now, and it has an extra personal mitigation vs the other Tanks as well. DRK has been eating good this expansion.

- I have no idea what is going on with WAR, though. WAR is a Tank, party healer, and now DPSer all in one. It's like Vanilla WoW all over again if Warrior was ALSO a healer. It's frankly ridiculous at this point. While it IS true that WAR's self-sustain isn't AS big of an issue in high end content as it is in 4 mans, it wasn't super far behind DRK/GNB, so the damage buffs might have over done it. And they also did this after the last couple patches of buffing WAR's healing - the Divine Veil change was needed, the Shake It Off change was not. I honestly have no idea at all what's going on with WAR.

[fulminating]

I kind of agree with this.

WAR being able to heal other party members MAKES NO SENSE.

I dunno, if a berserker is screaming at you to pull yourself together then you might find a bit of second wind. How many intestines do you really need anyway? Presumably it’s really meant to be some kind of waking up their inner beast for a minute or whatever the lore around that is (nascent definition here) , but I prefer the idea that it’s bullying people into reattaching their limbs.

[AmiableApkallu]

The self-healing of those spells probably should be lowered a bit (since Holy and Glare aren't exactly known for their healing), or alternatively, the healing removed but Clemency being given some kind of Holy Might effect to let you use it for sustain for big pulls where damage is less important than sustain and enmity (e.g. wall-to-walls). Though on that point, PLD should REALLY get a low level (like level 30) pre-Clemency that upgrades to Clemency later (like Rage of Halone into Royal Authority), considering a lot of lower level content, PLD has no self sustain. It has no sustain until Clemency at 58, and none as part of its rotation until Holy Spirit at 64.

It's actually worse than that. Review PLD's traits. Aside from Clemency, PLD has no healing until Lv.82. For example, it's the Lv.84 trait Divine Magic Mastery II that gives Holy Spirit and company their healing effects.

[dspguy]

I kind of agree with this.

WAR being able to heal other party members MAKES NO SENSE. No part of its class fantasy is "healer". It SHOULD have decent sustain, but as you say, reducing/shielding incoming damage (largely to itself) should be how that works.

So, the "complaint" about Nascent Flash is something that every tank sort of has. They all have a "shield someone else" ability. WAR's Nascent Flash has a very small shield followed with a bloodbath type ability. DRK can put that shield on anyone. PLD and GNB have similar abilities. In my opinion, it boils down to giving an OT something to do in a raid situation when they don't need any of their own mitigation. Personally, I like to use Nascent Flash on the healer especially if we have no DPS that can raise. In some cases, it make a lot more sense to protect the healer. Tanks have so many ways to mitigate damage, if the healer is any sort of danger, I'd rather make sure they survive because a tank/healer can survive long enough to raise the rest of the party if necessary.

[Renathras]

So, the "complaint" about Nascent Flash is something that every tank sort of has. They all have a "shield someone else" ability. WAR's Nascent Flash has a very small shield followed with a bloodbath type ability. DRK can put that shield on anyone. PLD and GNB have similar abilities. In my opinion, it boils down to giving an OT something to do in a raid situation when they don't need any of their own mitigation. Personally, I like to use Nascent Flash on the healer especially if we have no DPS that can raise. In some cases, it make a lot more sense to protect the healer. Tanks have so many ways to mitigate damage, if the healer is any sort of danger, I'd rather make sure they survive because a tank/healer can survive long enough to raise the rest of the party if necessary.

I think the issue is that it's available EXTREMELY frequently, and allows WARs to heal both a party member and themselves, and by a large amount. In ARR, SCH's Lustrate healed for 25% of people's HP, and they got 3 per minute. And SCH is a Healer Job. And it was considered too powerful and nerfed to a potency ability instead of % health.

WAR can do this to two people twice per minute. That's 4 times (and some change, so more over the course of fights, about 2.5 per minute). And it costs nothing. The WAR has a bit less protection but gets the same healing.

Contrast the other Tanks. TBN doesn't heal. Yes, mitigation is a form of sustain, but healing is recovery and TBN scales to the player's health, meaning it's weaker when used on non-tanks, Nascent is not. A GNB using Corundum on someone doesn't get the heal OR mitigation to themselves. A PLD using Intervention on someone doesn't get the heal or mitigation to themselves, either. A PLD using Clemency on someone gets them 50% of the healing, but requires a DPS loss and digging into their damage resource. Imagine if casting Nascent cost the WAR 40 or 50 Beast Gauge to use. That would make it closer to PLD.

...and it would still be better than GNB unless Nascent had the healing for the WAR removed.

...and it would still be better than DRK unless it had the healing removed from Nascent AND Bloodwhetting.

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WAR's party healing abilities are just too powerful right now. There's not really a good argument against it. WAR's love it, I know, and I get it - it's fun being a super powerful one-man army. The problem is, it's not fun for Healers to be completely unneeded in any 4 man party with a WAR, and for other Tanks to be at or below WAR's damage while also having less mitigation and healing.

[Shurrikhan]

In ARR, SCH's Lustrate healed for 25% of people's HP, and they got 3 per minute. And SCH is a Healer Job. And it was considered too powerful and nerfed to a potency ability instead of % health.

Technically, it was because a huge portion of an optimized SCH's healing didn't therefore scale with their own gear. At all. Only their target's.

(And that it healed for full value through Infirmity because, in usual XIV coding competence, they couldn't figure out how to reduce %HP heals...)

I think the issue is that it's available EXTREMELY frequently, and allows WARs to heal both a party member and themselves, and by a large amount.

But yes, this exactly.

[Absurdity]

Technically, it was because a huge portion of an optimized SCH's healing didn't therefore scale with their own gear. At all. Only their target's.

(And that it healed for full value through Infirmity because, in usual XIV coding competence, they couldn't figure out how to reduce %HP heals...)

Not just Infirmity, it completely negated the negatives of Cleric stance since Lustrate didn't rely on your Mind stat (or be affected by the -20% healing debuff), allowing Scholars to stay in dps turret mode while still providing healing at it's full strength.