What if Tanks were treated like Healers?

[ty_taurus]

This is a question I put up on the healer threads, but I'd love to get input from actual tank players to see just how "popular" this idea would be. The idea is, what if all tanks we reworked to play more like the healers? It's commonly discussed that DPS is way too stressful for healers, and some players just want to heal and don't want to DPS. So naturally, there must be some tank players out there that find the responsibility to DPS as overwhelming and just want to focus on tanking, right?

Over on the healer side, I came up with a concept of what PLD could look like if it were given the healer treatment, but I also came up with a TLDR list of how all 4 tanks could look if they were treated this way. Note that the following actions for each tank would be the only DPS-related tools you need to worry about, and the tanks would get a handful of new GCD defensive cooldowns to allow them to play a more 'pure tank' playstyle without the muss and fuss of needing to do damage.

PLD:

Royal Authority II - 320 Potency single target GCD
Goring Blade III - 80 Potency single target GCD + 80 Potency DoT for 30 seconds.
Holy Spirit - 200 Potency single target ranged GCD
Holy Circle - 150 Potency AoE GCD
Holy Grace - 300 Potency GCD barrier on a 20 second cooldown (3 charges). Grants 1 stack of Retribution (max 3)
Confiteor - 1280 Potency AoE GCD (50% less to secondary enemies). Requires 3 stacks of Retribution
Intervene - OGCD Gap Closer (No Damage) on a 30 second cooldown (2 charges). Inflicts Bind for 4 seconds.

WAR:

Fell Cleave II - 305 Potency single target GCD
Storm's Eye III - 75 Potency single target GCD + 75 Potency DoT for 30 seconds.
Tomahawk II - 230 Potency single target ranged GCD
Chaotic Cyclone - 190 Potency AoE GCD
Berserk - Increases critical hit chance for all party members in range by 10% for 15 seconds. OGCD 120 second cooldown.
Infuriate - OGCD Grants 3 Spirit of the Beast stacks on a 60 second cooldown.
Upheavel - 110 Potency single target OGCD. Consumes 1 Spirit of the Beast
NOTE: Thrill of Battle, Bloodwhetting, Nascent Flash, and Shake it Off now cost 1 Spirit of the Beast in addition to their cooldowns. Shake it Off no longer increases the barrier by dispelling these effects though.
Inner Release - OGCD Grants 3 Spirit of the Beast, but disables all self-healing for 30 seconds. 180 second cooldown.
Onslaught - OGCD Gap Closer (No Damage) on a 30 second cooldown (2 charges).

DRK:

Bloodspiller II - 260 Potency single target GCD
Souleater III - 60 Potency single target GCD + 60 Potency DoT for 30 seconds.
Unmend II - 180 Pontency single target ranged GCD
Quietus - 140 Potency AoE GCD
Blood Weapon - OGCD Increases damage dealt by yourself or a target party member by 6% for 15 seconds. Grants 1 stack of Living Shadow. 30 second cooldown (2 charges)
Delirium - OGCD Increases damage dealt by all party members in range by 6% for 15 seconds. 120 second cooldown.
Dark Mind - Increases your own Damage dealt by 5%, reduces your action recast by 5%, and decreases damage taken by magic attacks by 5%. Costs 3 stacks of Living Shadow.
Darkside - Randomly enables either Flood of Shadow or The Blackest Night. OGCD 60 second cooldown
Flood of Shadow - 260 Potency AoE OGCD. Only usable after Darkside.
The Blackest Night - OGCD Grants a barrier around yourself worth 25% of your max HP (No longer grants Dark Arts when the barrier breaks). Only usable after Darkside.
Plunge - OGCD Gap Closer (No Damage) on a 30 second cooldown (2 charges).

GNB:

Burst Strike II - 340 Potency single target GCD
Bow Shock III- 80 Potency single target GCD + 80 Potency DoT for 30 seconds.
Fated Circle - 180 Potency AoE GCD
Gnashing Fang - 620 Potency AoE GCD (50% less to secondary enemies) on a 40 second cooldown (2 charges)
Lightning Shock II - 340 Potency single target ranged GCD. Costs 1 Cartridge
NOTE: Heart of Stone and Heart of Light effects are the same,but are now GCD actions that generate 1 Cartridge
Blasting Zone - 340 Potency AoE GCD (40% less to secondary enemies) and reduces damage taken by all nearby party members by 10%. 120 second cooldown.
Rough Divide - OGCD Gap Closer (No Damage) on a 30 second cooldown (2 charges).

Having said that, let's pretend that there are 3 buttons in front of you: the green button means "Wow! This is amazing! I support this tank rework 100%". The blue button means "Hmm, I guess it's okay if only 1 tank is like this" (and if you press the blue button, please share which tank you think deserves this rework). The red button means "wtf is this absolute disaster of an idea? Get this shit out of here!" If you want to chime in, let me know which button you'd press.

[Cabalabob]

I’ll start with the “it’s commonly discussed that dps is too stressful”.

In my experience the conversation is the exact opposite, people find healers boring because healing is too easy, yet SE insist on dumbing down healer dps to 2 buttons which has switched a lot of people off the role, myself included, because it’s so monotonous.

Tank roles are certainly getting dumbed down to very simplistic and boring rotations (see DRK, WAR and PLD reworks). But they aren’t quite on the same level as healers and I for one would not want to see them go further in that direction.

That’s not to say I can’t see an argument for tank’s rotations and mitigation being combined. Personally I really liked some old incarnations of the jobs that made it so that using your defensive utility would lead to increased dps, making performing your role as a tank also feel rewarding in damage (the only metric anyone actually cares about). Examples such as WAR using thrill of battle to increase the damage dealt by upheaval, PLD using sheltron to proc shield swipes, and even DRK getting a free edge of shadow for using the blackest night. I would have loved to have seen them lean into that idea for tanks rather than pull away from it.

[Lyth]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one. 'What if tanks had our problems?' Er, but why would tanks want that, though?

The underlying issue comes down to pass-fail checks. Tanks are very much dependent on fight design for engagement. You can develop a fight with a self-positioning boss that has no real 'tank checks', where one tank is forced to just be an understudy. In casual content, you can actually see tanks fighting over who actually gets to 'tank' the instance. This is in combination with the fact that tank survivability means that you can survive failed mechanics that would ordinarily kill off any other role. The frustration that experienced tanks have is that while there are flashes of positioning and mechanical brilliance in fights that let experienced tanks show off their stuff, those fights aren't being made consistently. It's harder to demonstrate value at baseline.

Healing intrinsically is built around pass-fail checks, which means it's easier for a healer to gate a party's progress even at lower difficulties, especially in the absence of raises. This is actually the primary appeal, because not everyone can clear a given fight on a healer, even if they are versatile enough to do so on every other role. To counteract issues around being gated by your healers, other roles have been expanded out to cross-compensate through either self-healing tools or non-healer raises. And I suspect that the playerbase's feedback will likely push healing progressively towards more of a vestigial 'support DPS' role in the long run like you see in some other action MMOs, with everyone bringing their own survival tools to the table.

The other issue is that, as long as tanking and healing have additional responsibilities around these pass-fail checks, their rotations will tend to be simpler than their DPS counterparts. And the problem is that while tanks are based off melee designs, healers are based off of caster designs. What are the features of a caster? Low APM. Bursts into tears and endlessly complains about how much easier ranged have it when required to move, despite the fact that their rotations are all now mostly instant cast. Relatively simple rotation with progressively less resource management each expansion. What happens when you try to simplify that further? You get the current healer design. Your issue about rotations is an inherited one. Your fundamental issue is caster design in general.

There's no point in asking 'what if tanks were designed based off of caster design rather than melee?' The question that you should be asking is 'what if healers were designed based off of melee rather than casters'? Bring out a quarterstaff wielding healer that stays in melee range and we'll have a proper topic for discussion on our hands.

[fulminating]

That doesn’t sound right at all. Moving the heals to ogcd would bring them in line with the other roles. As it stands the one chad tank has gcd mitigation and the others just use abilities to achieve that. It seems quite flawed to introduce the healing component as a 3 second event when the player is theoretically learning the role, rather than having the flashy capstones as hardcasts to emphasise their effectiveness. Even if I suspect the efficient route would be to not use them - or keep them as ogcds with a greater mp cost. The role is just not designed the same way as the others.
In order of being actual casters it’s fsh > blu > healers with the short casts > rdm >= blm > sam > smn. Are they ever called casters in game or only magic ranged dps btw?
Warrior has an axe, not quarterstaff. Stick a raise on it for some beast gauge or whatever and it’ll be a healer without the comically bloated healing kit.

[ty_taurus]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one. 'What if tanks had our problems?' Er, but why would tanks want that, though?

My intentions are undoubtedly skewed toward healer concerns; I won't lie.

But, while the conversation is fine over on the healer page, it's not somewhere that's likely to get a lot of input from actual tank players, which was why I wanted to cross post it here as well. Someone over there said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," so I wanted to see if anyone would vote green or vote blue in regards to changes like this. There's nothing about these kits in particular that prevent the tanks from performing their responsibilities or clearing solo content. Outside of maybe numbers balance, there's no reason these takes on the tanks aren't functional in FFXIV. Basically, it's just a question of, is this job design philosophy something tank players would support, tolerate, or reject?

[Zairava]

My intentions are undoubtedly skewed toward healer concerns; I won't lie.

But, while the conversation is fine over on the healer page, it's not somewhere that's likely to get a lot of input from actual tank players, which was why I wanted to cross post it here as well. Someone over there said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," so I wanted to see if anyone would vote green or vote blue in regards to changes like this. There's nothing about these kits in particular that prevent the tanks from performing their responsibilities or clearing solo content. Outside of maybe numbers balance, there's no reason these takes on the tanks aren't functional in FFXIV. Basically, it's just a question of, is this job design philosophy something tank players would support, tolerate, or reject?

The day they make tanks designed like how healers currently are is the day I quit the game entirely, 5.0 already pulled most of the thread for me after removing Stance Dancing and neutering DRK.

Healers are designed horribly, and WAR and PLD need their party healing nerfed into the ground. Having one single dps cast in healing downtime ad infinitum is nothing but boring design. I would be more inclined to play them if probably 90% of my spells weren't glare, broil, etc.

[Rithy255]

No thanks I enjoy my simple Paladin rotation as it is, in-fact I want it a bit more complicated if possible.

I'm all for Defensive kits being fun and interesting, I like Tanks because they're a Mix of DPS/Healer in terms of having a rotation and some utility outside of that. If tanks were made into healer design of one button I think I'd go play DPS or another game.

Yeah Healers have Issues currently, but Tanks also need refining in a lot of ways, my fear is that future changes will be closer to this sort of direction instead of making both job types more fun for players who want to play the two main support categories.

[Renathras]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one.

That's pretty much exactly what it is. An attempt to "strengthen" an argument by making an absurd one and trying to use it to support a position it doesn't really support.

As you point out correctly, Tanks are based on Melee design principles, not Caster ones. Healers are based on Caster design, arguably ARR 2.0 SMN (a cure spam nuke, DoT upkeep, and some oGCDs for additional damage and healing, with some token backup GCD cast heals).

I thought it would be interesting if one was based off of something else, like Ranged (either proc based or MCH-based; before 6.0 I pitched Chemist having a caster/magic gun and having a 1-2-3 rotation like MCH with a Mudra-like "Mix" command for its Job Gage/gimmick, and could see SGE working with a 1-2-3 rotation of shooting lasers at things like that, too), but at present, all Healers are designed from Casters.

There was also no one who said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," the actual quotes were:

"WAR players, for example, just seem happy to be solo 4 man parties. Remove their 1-2-3 -4 and just let them spam Fell Cleave over and over, have full uptime on Bloodwhetting, then Primal Rend once per minute and some Orogeny in there somewhere, and there are quite a few WARs that would be happy as clams over that.
Not saying they all would be, but they probably wouldn't be rioting over it."

"Again, not saying everyone would be thrilled, but quite a few WARs just love being a nearly unkillable god of battle and love the dopamine hits from Feel Cleave and Primal Rend, so "MOAR Fell Cleave! John F---in' MADDEN!!!" would make plenty quite content."

But, just as many would be fine with it, many wouldn't care for it, just like any change to anything will always alienate people that play it. And WAR is arguably already pretty simple. But there is a segment of the playerbase that wouldn't mind being able to run through dungeons with permanent Bloodwhetting, Primal Rending their way down the hallways of dungeons, and fullhealing with each Fell Cleave. I'd think that would get old after a while, but...some people are content with such things forever.

.

The changes for Healers are obvious - have encounters actually require healing; make the Healer Jobs play more distinct from one another.

The changes for Tanks are also obvious - have encounters actually require tanking (positioning, threat management, etc); make the Tank Jobs play more distinct from one another.

EDIT:

And, on both counts, that means continuous requirements from the encounters, not once per minute or whatever, solved with an oGCD.

[ForsakenRoe]

That's pretty much exactly what it is. An attempt to "strengthen" an argument by making an absurd one and trying to use it to support a position it doesn't really support.

You literally say 'there would be some WAR players who would be happy with 1button spam Fell Cleave ad nauseam', this topic seeks to find out if that assertion is true. If anything, the posed rotations in the OP have more depth than the healer ones

The last time you said some dumb stuff about job design and Ty said 'aight bet', we got the survey over in general discussion that showed that around 80% of healer players, across all four healers, would want 'more damage buttons' as their top priority for class design, with AST being 'more buffs' and then 'more damage'

edit:

The changes for Healers are obvious - have encounters actually require healing; make the Healer Jobs play more distinct from one another.

The changes for Tanks are also obvious - have encounters actually require tanking (positioning, threat management, etc); make the Tank Jobs play more distinct from one another.

EDIT:

And, on both counts, that means continuous requirements from the encounters, not once per minute or whatever, solved with an oGCD.

I don't say this to demean or to brag, I say it as a matter of objective fact: to make content 'fun' for players of a higher skill caliber, it would have to be so hard as to exclude players of a lower skill caliber. You wouldn't want to be gated out of content because it's too hard for you to keep up, would you? The only way to keep 'casual content' 'casual accessible' is to have the healing requirements be less threatening which... is exactly the situation we're in now. And the justification of 'well if you want to have fun, there's Savage/Ultimate for you' has been tried, tested and proven to be a stupid stance to have. 'Increase HPS required' does not fix the issue of 'EX roulette is not fun for the veterans who know how to play healer well'

[Kabooa]

If anything, the posed rotations in the OP have more depth than the healer ones
'

Not really?

He just picked a healer for each tank and tried to flavor the tank as a direct analogue.

Less "What if tanks were designed like healers" and more "What if X healer had melee auto attacks".