Wishlist for the expansion

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Warrior being perfect always gets a chuckle out of me. Yeah maybe, if you enjoy the gameplay equivalent of banging two rocks together.

• Bring back some semblance of gauge management so it isn't just the Fell Cleave gauge, Upheavel and Onslaught go back to costing 20 gauge. Return Onslaught to it's original purpose, a situational gap closer + gauge and GCD manipulation. Potentially introduce another oGCD gauge spender to spice things up a bit.

• Inner Release having stacks is all fine and dandy, if it didn't also remove any interaction with the rest of your kit, such as guaranteed direct crits on Upheavel, Onslaught, Nascent Healing and Vengeance reflects.

• Reduce the ability to extend Storm's Eye, maybe we don't need to return back to 30 seconds max but it certainly shouldn't go up to 60 seconds. Remove the +10 seconds on IR activation, make people think about when to refresh Eye again.

• Absolutely return the self-healing back to being performance-based instead of flat X potency per GCD. On top of that remove Bloodwhetting's healing so you need to choose between healing (Nascent Flash) and mitigation (Bloodwhetting).

• Remove the healing from Shake it Off, it's unnecessarily overkill. If you really want it to have an additional effect you could add the old aoe Esuna back in for some very niche usage.

• Or something wild, remove Nascent Flash/Bloodwhetting entirely and reintroduce old Inner Beast: 20% mitigation for 6 seconds, heals for damage dealt, costs 50 gauge. (Of course this would only work if fights actually required the additional mitigation or you're just gonna spam Fell Cleave instead)

All of those of course presuppose that we move away from the god awful 2 minute meta or we don't even need to start talking about changes to the gameplay loop besides "more potency to throw into the raid buff window".

First of all, you don't need to "LIST" then * then "/LIST" for each bullet point, you can just go "LIST, *, *, *, /LIST" for your HTML bullet points. Less work required. As for your points:

1.) Gauge management - hell yes, absolutely. Every bit of yes on this one, especially Onslaught.

2.) Eeeeeh... I mean yeah but I suppose it has its benefits such as the freedom to use your Fell Cleaves at will and not accidentally killing off your Inner Chaos in it.

3.) Personally I'd prefer a wholly different system to Storm's Eye damage buff, mainly in form of dual gauges (so Path generates more of Gauge A and Eye more of Gauge B and both gauges interplay) but honestly... a bit late for this one.

4.) Performance based healing I'd be ok with that or at least a nerf to AOE healing (making AOE skills only trigger for 150-200 pot a la Bunshin). But going back to having to choose between mitigation and healing? You know as much as I do that any normal Warrior player WILL pick the healing over what is basically "short rampart" 99/100 cases. The whole point of the EW change was to be able to use mitigation and not having to sacrifice the healing while still making Nascent Flash superior in double target scenarios. I see no point to this change other than deliberate regression for the sake of it.

5.) Disagree, if we truly think Shake's healing (and also Divine Veil's) is an issue I'd say do something to make Dark Missionary / Heart of Light not be as situational.

6.) Reintroducing original Inner Beast that shares a resource with Fell Cleave is a terrible idea. Inner Beast with mitigation in a vacuum is cool, not when sharing resources. A double gauge system like mentioned in point #3 would remedy this so you could build both, but otherwise no. I genuinely don't want that back unless it has virtually the same potency as Fell Cleave.

There are many ways to get away from the 2min meta - appealing to past designs by picking the worst parts of them isn't one of them.

[Absimiliard]

• No more two-minute meta
• Greater tank rotational complexity
• The return of resource management
• WAR not getting crippled by another knee-jerk reaction when the inevitable nerf comes
• PLD getting pulled up out of the gutter
• Some self-sustain for DRK
• Faster, more reactive fights in place of the DDR we've had until now (unlikely, unless they update the netcode)

Man, that rework to "bring it in line" with the two-minute meta legit shot paladin right in the head. I feel bad for people that try to main it.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Paladin:

• Rework Cover. My recommendation would be to turn it into a permanent uptime buff that can be placed on any party member, including yourself, similar to Kardia. At baseline, it grants the target the ability to block incoming attacks, generating additional gauge. Defensive actions used by the PLD provide additional benefits to the Cover target.
• Give Clemency the opportunity to become an ability without cast time under certain conditions (i.e. successfully transferring a beneficial effect to a Cover target). In exchange, remove the lifesteal effects from offensive spells.
• Merge down Divine Veil and Passage of Arms down into a single action that does not restrict the PLD's ability to do damage while it is active. Perhaps turn it into a ground effect that mitigates damage and prevents knockback for all party members within its area of effect.
• Either do something more interesting with Shield Bash, or remove it.
• Reduce the recast on Hallowed Ground to 6 minutes.

Warrior:

• Make self-sustain skill dependent.
• Replace the magical barrier effect on Shake it Off with temporary HP. Do you remember WAR players trying to see how high they could boost their HP numbers? That should be built into the job design.
• Increase the recast on Holmgang to 5 minutes.

Dark Knight:

• More hitstop.
• Add in more GCD actions. A combo action that follows off of Bloodspiller could be interesting, as could a finisher that terminates Living Shadow early and deals additional damage based on the remaining timer.
• Find a way to bring the Blood Weapon haste buff back to the job, even if it's relatively short duration. Alternatively, just reduce the GCD of Bloodspiller (and an associated combo action, if you add one) to 1.5 seconds.
• Remove the magic only dependence of DRK's actions. If you are unwilling to change Dark Missionary's base effect, then it needs an additional beneficial effect to justify its use in non-magical fights. An expedient style speed boost would be nice.
• Remove the MP cost on TBN and just let it generate a self heal on the target when it shatters.
• Consider merging Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit down into a single action that offers the benefits of both.
• Omnislash.

Gunbreaker:

• Replace Camouflage's effect with something similar to the old Shade Shift action. Create five shadows, each incoming hit gets mitigated up to X% HP damage.
• Remove the magic only dependence of Heart of Light.
• Perhaps introduce an 'Overclock' action, which makes the next defensive action more powerful in exchange for shortening its duration significantly.
• Lionheart.

All:

• Revise gap closers on all tanks so that they are not damage dependent and allows for creative movement techniques. Melee are significantly further ahead when it comes to pure freedom of movement.
• Experiment with timed counter-attacks. Could tanks bring a 'counter' move that can only be used when a red arrow tankbuster is up? Perhaps it staggers the boss and gives the group a miniature burst window to take advantage of.

Nice list of ideas, would like to give feedback...

PLD:
1.) Not a big fan of this... I'd like to keep it simple and start by removing the Oath gauge in the first place then go from there.
2.) On one hand, I see the point with Clemency. On another, I don't think I'd want the offensive spell healing to go away, it seems good flavour as a Paladin at Lv90+.
3.) Eww. Just make Passage of Arms a major cooldown that acts like Temperance. Nerf duration to compensate.
4.) Noted and agreed. Personally I'd be ok if it replaced Riot Blade or becomes part of the rotation somehow.
5.) Reeeaaaally unsure about this one, especially in light of the re-addition of Bulwark and the change to (Holy) Sheltron.

WAR:
1.) Sure I guess
2.) Ok I see your point however this literally just makes it worse. Shield HP vs increased Max HP is the same in terms of eHP, but with how it interacts with mechanics that put your HP to single digits you can kill people with this if used during and would require use of the skill after that so you don't delete the benefits after suffing such an attack (typically "Charybdis" or similar).
3.) The only reason I'm ok with this is because I am sick of warriors who don't understand the concept of "I don't have the same invuln cooldown as you". Would also love the shitshow it would cause in DSR *laugh*.

Dark Knight:
1.) What does that even mean?
2.) Cool with more GCD actions and combo paths, not a fan of Living Dead finisher - will just be used as a damage tool now for what is a significant defensive cooldown.
3.) Blood weapon I want back and quite honestly, after our 47.5% uptime from Stormblood, I'd be pissed if I only got like 10-20% uptime on it. But hell no to the Bloodspiller 1.5s GCD unless they do what they did for Crit + Direct Hit and give skillspeed / spellspeed bonus damage if a weaponskill / spell is already at cap GCD speed.
4.) Agreed to a point. I think giving it more power against magic attacks is ok, just that it shouldn't be virtually useless in the lackthereof. Dark Mind could use the Addle treatment (where it also has -10% phys mitigation) for example.
5.) ...this will most likely make the cooldown go to 25s and I am not a fan of that. The regen can be added even without the MP cost change and I'd prefer to keep the MP cost just so I can have a single braincell active when playing DRK to keep 3000MP pooled when needed. No need to make it virtually the same as every other short CD.
6.) Not against it but also not for it. I'd prefer a decoupling as before EW and other changes before losing either of them.
7.) lol Melee LB2

Gunbreaker:
1.) I... guess? The idea is novel but I also like current Camouflage, ngl.
2.) If that is the only change to it, I'd like to see a nerf like duration to 10s as 15s of omni mit is kinda silly and more of a phys ranged thing.
3.) OK that is very cool, I'd be on game with that.
4.) Yes.

All:
1.) I'd prefer to keep the damage on gap closers - in fact the one tank that had the only GOOD one was Warrior before Endwalker where the damage was neutral in 99% of cases and was used when needed and once per Inner Release. Would like more of that rather than damage-less gapclosers.
2.) I don't know. Vengeance alone stretches the ice incredibly thin, much less a generic tank counter that behaves a bit like stuff from TERA for instance. Maybe not the right game for it.

[Absurdity]

2.) Eeeeeh... I mean yeah but I suppose it has its benefits such as the freedom to use your Fell Cleaves at will and not accidentally killing off your Inner Chaos in it.

We could probably find a middle ground where you can still use your Fell Cleave stacks at will but also have Vengeance, Onslaught, Upheaval and Nascent still benefit from the guaranteed direct crits. I atleast don't think how IR worked before Endwalker and how it works now are mutually exclusive.
Though personally I preferred the old one since it at least required a minimum amount of planning to execute without overcapping on something, be that gauge or Infuriate stacks...or simply missing a Fell Cleave.

3.) Personally I'd prefer a wholly different system to Storm's Eye damage buff, mainly in form of dual gauges (so Path generates more of Gauge A and Eye more of Gauge B and both gauges interplay) but honestly... a bit late for this one.

I'd be completely fine with that, just give me something to actually manage to break up the current monotony of spamming the same 3 buttons (with the occasional 4th one) until the next burst phase. Keeping current Storm's Eye up can't even be called buff management.

4.) Performance based healing I'd be ok with that or at least a nerf to AOE healing (making AOE skills only trigger for 150-200 pot a la Bunshin). But going back to having to choose between mitigation and healing? You know as much as I do that any normal Warrior player WILL pick the healing over what is basically "short rampart" 99/100 cases. The whole point of the EW change was to be able to use mitigation and not having to sacrifice the healing while still making Nascent Flash superior in double target scenarios. I see no point to this change other than deliberate regression for the sake of it.

6.) Reintroducing original Inner Beast that shares a resource with Fell Cleave is a terrible idea. Inner Beast with mitigation in a vacuum is cool, not when sharing resources. A double gauge system like mentioned in point #3 would remedy this so you could build both, but otherwise no. I genuinely don't want that back unless it has virtually the same potency as Fell Cleave.

That's why I called it a wild one, it would most likely involve a bigger rework to tanking in general, for all jobs in the role, where incoming damage couldn't always just be solved by cooldowns and where trading some potency for your survival would just be part of the job.

5.) Disagree, if we truly think Shake's healing (and also Divine Veil's) is an issue I'd say do something to make Dark Missionary / Heart of Light not be as situational.

I simply think that Shake was completely fine after it's original rework, although you could argue that it has been powercrept since then.

Warrior:

• Increase the recast on Holmgang to 5 minutes.

The only thing bothering me about this is that it would turn Holmgang into Living Dead, minus the self healing.

[Korbei]

Not every aspect of every job needs to be designed around 8/24 person endgame content. It just doesn't. It's okay for things to exist for the early game and for them to fall by the wayside later on. It's fine.

It's also okay for jobs to have abilities that aren't suitable for trials and raids simply because they're thematically fitting within the lore of the world. It's fine.

Yeah it's hard to justify using Shield Bash later on when everything resists the stun and it's on the GCD but it's got some utility early on when you have little mitigation. Just take it off your bar and forget about it. It's not the end of the world.

Paladins should be able to raise. They're holy knights. Raise is a holy spell. It's thematically consistent. Yeah it's fundamentally dumb to expect tanks to raise in an 8 person boss fight, so don't! This is exactly why it should be costly an inefficient to perform in battle, to make sure it's not the expectation that Paladins need to raise. It would still be nice to be able to raise your healer in a dungeon fight or after a hunt train fight without having to swap to a healer first. Or just to pick a corpse off the ground out in the world or in Eureka, simply on the basis of being a good samaritan. This is how Paladins behave.

If that doesn't fall into the confines of how you play the game.. you can leave it off your bar.

[Cabalabob]

You have the freedom to literally think of anything and you choose to restrict yourself to their balancing philosophy. Why?

Because if you don’t, people will just cry “balance”, even with the massive drawbacks I’ve put on it that you feel would make it unusable there are STILL people in this very thread saying that it would be unbalanced.

I could have said 6 second cast time, 5k mp cost and it would be just as niche as what I suggested, but the only response that’s going to get is “totally unbalanced, PLD meta tank”.

[Cabalabob]

Gunbreaker:
Perhaps introduce an 'Overclock' action, which makes the next defensive action more powerful in exchange for shortening its duration significantly.

I like this one because something that has always bothered me about GNB is that it really feels like timing has nothing to do with it. The whole idea behind a gunblade is that accurate timing on the trigger pull increases the power, yet this concept isn’t brought out in gameplay in any way. That’s what I based my lionheart idea on, getting a more powerful effect by being able to time it correctly to get the full duration out of it. Your idea makes it so that you’d get a more powerful effect out of your mitigation but your timing would need to be more accurate.

[Lyth]

...

Bit of a late reply, but here goes.

I don't think there's a reason to remove the Oath Gauge, but there needs to be more decision making around it. Otherwise you might as well build in charge counters for Holy Sheltron/Intervention.

The reason why I advocate removing the built in heals on spell casting is because they're just built into a standardized rotation. You might as well add in a passive regen effect on PLD and call it a day. In order for self-sustain to be meaningful, it needs to be an active and not a passive effect. You need to make a conscious decision on when you use it. You could have some standardized effect on RA if you really wanted to, but I think unlocking Clemency situationally as not being a damage loss to use is much more interesting.

The core problem with PLD's raidwide mitigations is it creates an arms race with the other tanks, by having two raidwide defensives instead of everyone else's one. I think the solution isn't to give WAR, DRK, and GNB an extra raidwide mitigation tool next expansion. The solution is going to be bringing everyone down to one raidwide tool that is usable under all conditions.

Invulns are absurdly powerful. There's no reason why one tank should get nearly double the uses of another.

I don't think that temporary HP are necessary a problem if they don't change your max HP. You could argue that it's effectively the same thing as barrier shields, but I think it would be thematically a lot of fun to go to 150000/120000 HP. You could do the same thing with Thrill.

Hitstop is an animation trick in which there's a freeze frame just before the point of impact. It's what makes abilities like Fell Cleave and pretty much the entire Reaper toolkit incredibly fun to use. A Living Shadow finisher would be useful in situations where you need to truncate the effect early due to a boss jump. I think a change to TBN is likely, given how much it has been talked about. While I personally prefer the current setup, I think that requiring the shield to break just places a lot of limitations on the rest of the toolkit. Oblation probably could have been a barrier effect if that restriction wasn't present.

The only thing bothering me about this is that it would turn Holmgang into Living Dead, minus the self healing.

Don't worry about it. Warriors self-heal every time they breathe.

[Khalithar]

I've played Paladin since ARR and I'll tell you what I want more than anything else. It's not a mechanic overhaul, it's not a massive adjustment to our abilities and combos. It's actually something much different,

I have been using Fast Blade and Riot Blade for 90+ levels and hundreds of hours. I *really* want some kind of new attacks to replace them. It doesn't have to be super elaborate like MCH and their upgraded heat shots that replace their combo (though I wouldn't complain if we got that!) but just some kind of new main combo with new attacks even if the potency doesn't even change.

Also get rid of Shield Bash. I don't even keep it on my bar anymore as I don't want to spend the GCD.

[Connor]

I only have Paladin at level 90 so I won’t claim to have any skin in the game here lol. But doesn’t tank suffer from the same issues as healer in regards to encounter design?

Incoming damage and easily resolvable mechanics in most content mean that abilities that ‘defend the party’ in one way or another - those traditionally associated with the role - end up being functionally redundant and near-valueless?

Things like an in-combat raise or more/continued personal healing for tanks are the most egregious examples. Raise for a Paladin sounds cool and it’s certainly thematic, but healers are already so bored with how infrequently allies die that it would almost never see use on a Paladin, because they’d be last on the priority list to use it.

Likewise with Warrior’s self-healing. It’s a cool idea and Warrior has always had the ‘heals self through damage’ / ‘Lifesteal’ sort of theme going, so it makes sense. But incoming damage is so low that the healing a Warrior can produce is practically enough to nullify the need for a healer completely. And that’s not to mention the healers themselves have so many abundant, powerful oGCDs that the Warrior wouldn’t need their self healing anyway

Personally I believe that addressing this issue of encounter design should be what they focus on with the next expansion, as anything else is simply going to compound the issues. I.E giving them more party healing and defense skills when they’re already barely necessary. Or trying to just sweep it under the blanket by plying tanks full of damage combos and abilities, at which point they play more like dps with overpowered defenses