After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

[rawker]

The mitigation through healing from WAR needs to tone down so that they will still require a healer to sustain them. Of all the 25-second mits, Bloodwhetting is a bit overtuned.

[GoatOfWar]

Warrior has always been about Damage to HP so as it is now I think it's in a great shape.

Personally I thought PLD was good until the recent change. I actually hate new PLD. You still need to drop Atonements so the rotation makes even less sense than it used to. Boring Blade is terrible, and we know its just going to get an aoe version in DT. Req Cast being a melee move still baffles me to this day. Cover is shocking. Clemency shouldn't exist or at least change it to an OGCD with a non spammable or lower potency.

That used to be the Drk job identity, it just got transplanted into Warrior.
You know what else Warrior gobbled up from Dark knight? Reprisal and low blow.
TBN used to the the strongest short tank cd, but then Warrior took that as well. Dark knight used to have the most gap closers, now Warrior has 4.
And in EW, Warrior also needed Dark knight's damage apparently. And now there's literally nothing left to take, Warrior is just flat out better.

I wouldn't say Warrior is in a good spot when Warrior's current design just cannibalises and takes away from the others.
Yet, still manages to have the fewest buttons of all tanks and the easiest to optimise rotation of all jobs in the game period.

[rawker]

Warrior has always been about Damage to HP so as it is now I think it's in a great shape.

Personally I thought PLD was good until the recent change. I actually hate new PLD. You still need to drop Atonements so the rotation makes even less sense than it used to. Boring Blade is terrible, and we know its just going to get an aoe version in DT. Req Cast being a melee move still baffles me to this day. Cover is shocking. Clemency shouldn't exist or at least change it to an OGCD with a non spammable or lower potency.

A couple of things I wish to see on PLD

- Fight or Flight is upgraded to Spirit's Within then is upgraded to Expiacion.
- Revert Goring Blade to be a DoT applying combo action from Riot Blade. Combo'ed Goring Blade also gives Divine Might and Sword Oath.
- Rework Circle of Scorn to be a combo action from Total Eclipse that does damage and applies a DoT. Combo'ed Circle of Scorn also gives Divine Might.
- bring back Shield Swipe as magic attacks are now blockable. Allow it to hold up to 3 charges via trait. Blocking an attack lowers the cooldown of Shield Swipe.
- Cover to get a trait where if the PLD receives a total of 50% of its max HP from redirected damage, the PLD gets healed for 1000 potency. Will only proc once per usage of Cover. Cover can also block redirected damage.
- remove damage from Intervene and add 25 oath gauge cost. Lower its cooldown to 5 seconds
- add a trait to Shield Bash where it will get its potency increased after using Intervene and removes the stun effect. Can combo into Riot Blade. Combo'ed Riot Blade from Shield Bash will also give 15 Oath Gauge, in addition to 1000MP.

[AnotherPerson]

Really? BLM is one of the jobs that most frequently gets cited in terms of developer bias, especially because of its association as Yoshi-p's main. There was even a public apology statement in 6.1 and response from the Producer regarding BLM's PvP balance because the dev team were called out on blatant favoritism. That's the one job that they have to be the most careful about public perception, and casters would benefit tremendously if Pictomancer displaces BLM even if only for a single expansion.

Public perceptions about job complexity have more to do with how many people are playing a job rather than any objective measure of gameplay. A popular job is going to tend to be perceived as more complex, simply because perceived depth correlates with time played. Even WAR was lauded as 'the most complex tank' for a time in Stormblood. It wasn't actually, but you had a vocal playerbase insisting that it was. I would take any claims made about job complexity with a grain of salt. It all comes out in the wash anyways if you balance based on averages, and a mediocre player playing a theoretically mechanically complex job doesn't deserve to do additional damage purely based on job selection.

As far as I'm aware, PvE developer bias happened for BLM but only in terms of getting good gameplay for that job. There's a lot of attention towards encounter design to make sure it's compatible with BLM gameplay flow, which stayed relatively consistent throughout expansions. Hence the job still feels good to play for BLM mains even though it's complex to optimize to do the good damage. The fun and challenge lies in the balancing act. The interest in the job is still solid even with the high skill expression. Yoshi P's main in PvE didn't affect the job balance of BLM in the same sense as people are aware it was difficult to play to reach that high DPS value without familiarizing with knowledge of the encounter design, and that hasn't changed. It's still the core highlight that separates BLM gameplay from other jobs but also because it's numerically unrealistic to anticipate knowing what kind of things your party will pull that causes a BLM to lose its DPS uptime. There are also some fights where BLM simply won't attain its max DPS because you have no way of knowing which set of alternating mechanics the boss wants to use next, so you have no idea how much mobility you need to prepare, but it still feels good to squeeze out as much as you can in those situations. The theoretical 'max DPS' is simply theoretical for that reason, because reality makes it unlikely to hit the theoretical max. Hm. Now I suspect a large reason why encounter design feels so stale and static might be because of keeping BLM's flow good or the DPS might drop too significantly. There's some food for thought.

This isn't anything like WAR though. WAR is kind of its own beast. Not really any weaknesses to mention. Just strengths.

You're absolutely right about BLM's PvP balance being overtuned at one point and a level of favoritism (I was also one of the vocal people about favoritism at the time without understanding how their patch cycle worked), but it's not so much as favoritism of the job balance but it seems more about favoritism of getting immediate attention and consistent updates (so basically a non-issue at this point, you'd just see some changes happen on BLM faster before it gets fixed). The devs were very much aware they overcorrected and made changes to reflect that after apologizing. Looking back, BLM wasn't strong all the time. On release and on PvP patch release 6.1 it was in need of buffs and was fairly undertuned due to the problems it had. In hindsight, it actually meant job balance for BLM was very fair and required much higher skill levels to achieve the same general performance. 6.11 helped BLM out but it was slightly undertuned (but overall much better). Various jobs needed buffs at the time and I'd give the devs some leeway here because it wasn't as easy to figure that out because the game mode was still fairly new at the time (a lot of 'higher ranked players' sucked terribly by today's standards). Unless you were playing PvP consistently on release on high-level matches, it's harder to make an accurate gauge of playing around an individual job strengths and weaknesses. It wasn't uncommon to focus-fire BLM first due to how deadly a good BLM can be at the time. BLM's main weakness was its low survival upon being hard-focused, which balanced their strengths of having strong crowd-control to reverse matches instantly.

Yoshi did mention the changes on BLM wasn't due to favoritism but because they saw it was doing poorly. After he played it (around the time before 6.11a released), he mentioned BLM did fine in the hands of a good player and he did fine himself, but the patch changes happened 2-3 weeks in advance and it was too late to change them by the time they were pushed out. They basically overcompensated the slight buff it needed, and eventually dialed the buffs down in 6.15. Their data and Yoshi P's understanding of BLM probably made them realize this wouldn't work in 6.15, so they decided to change things up so BLM doesn't have such a huge strength-to-weakness ratio where it constantly gets focused by changing Umbral Freeze's superflare interaction in 6.18.

So I understand why they did it, but I don't think they meant to do it with favoritism in the sense they overbuff a job. They probably wanted to shore up the weaknesses on BLM to balance it better, but overcompensated as a result due to players heavily focusing a BLM (thus win-ratios skewed) couldn't display BLM's strengths after getting heavily suppressed, leaving the impression it felt overly weak before promptly changing the gameplay to fit PvP better.

[Absurdity]

I think the idea with WAR is that it's supposed to be a bit more squishy than the other tanks, but compensate with self healing... Rather than having as much defensive options as other tanks, they'd have more ways to heal themselves. But aside from dealing with magic damage, they basically have as much defense as DRK or GNB does.

Once upon a time they did actually have weaker mitigation. But as Lyth said, mitigation is just binary most of the time, either you survive or you don't, and we can't require our poor little tanks to actually have to think outside the box and coordinate with other players to make up for their weaker defenses.

Funnily enough in the few cases where it isn't binary WAR does actually still have weaker mitigation, Abyssos' bleed busters showed how mediocre both Thrill and Bloodwhetting can be when it's not just a singular pass/fail check.
It always had and still does have weaker % mitigation, but there are so few fights that actually punish it for it that this flaw might as well not exist.

You know what else Warrior gobbled up from Dark knight? Reprisal and low blow.

Let's not conveniently pretend like Warrior was the only tank that got those two.

And in EW, Warrior also needed Dark knight's damage apparently. And now there's literally nothing left to take, Warrior is just flat out better.

Not like it could've stolen DrK's damage in ShB, they were both at the bottom lol.

[rawker]

Let's not conveniently pretend like Warrior was the only tank that got those two.

Cries in Convalescence.

[Gemina]

So I was going to post this on the tank forum but I decided the question is as much a healer question as it is a tank question

Regardless looking back on EW genuinely what is square enix’s design decision around the current balance of the tanks and how this affects the wider game as a whole?

WAR started the expansion as the most popular tank with the strongest overall mitigation kit given its ability to empower its raidwide mitigation, it’s cracked invuln and bloodwhetting/nascent glint which allows it to heal another member to full every 30 seconds and allows it to be functionally immortal in cleave content. In exchange its one weakness is that its damage was lower than GNB or DRK. Now it has since been buffed above DRK and almost reaches GNB

I haven't played tanks anywhere near as extensively as I have healers and melee DPS. I think the best way I can contribute to this topic is to bring up a chief concern I have playing with tanks in both of these roles, and it is their self-sustain.

As a DPS, I have participated in well over a handful of encounters where the boss has killed everyone except the tank an myself. In this situation I feel like I am a spear and the tank is the shield. I can stay alive so long as I don't fail mechanics and the tank does not die. However, even if I were to fall the tank can still solo the boss. It will just die slower.

As a healer, I have the ability to bring everyone back in the same situation so long as I don't fail mechanics and the tank does not die. However, if I should fall the tank can still solo the boss and it will just die slower.

The common denominator should be quite clear, and I was appalled when this same situation was present in an EX trial (Rubicante EX). It's one thing for this BS to exist in casual content, but starting at the EX level this schite should fly right out the window. Granted, there are maybe a handful of EX encounters where this is possible as most have mechanics that make it impossible for tanks to soak them all and still survive the autos. I don't care. I am of the mind that it shouldn't be possible at all, even in casual content.

I think it is fine if a tank has a strategic advantage over DPS and healer roles in content intended to be soloed. It's a good tradeoff to have the security of increased defensive properties and self-sustain at the cost of lower damage inflicted on the opponent in these situations. Content intended for groups should not be able to be soloed. I can't even begin to express how useless I feel as a healer that if I die when the boss still has a significant chunk of health, and it can still be defeated. I would LOVE to ask Yoshi if he has EVER been in that situation.

The way I see things is that I understand that the tank role is least played/highest in demand for grouping, and that the dev team is challenged with making the role more attractive and incentivized. But I think there are other methods to circumvent this issue other than invalidating the game's healers. It also most certainly isn't designing encounters like they did Mount Ordeals EX. I don't have the answers, and my suggestions are limited since I don't really play tanks. I only know that better decisions can be made in regards to this issue.

[Mecia]

The same as with healers is my guess, iron out any difficulty and stress to attract more players.

[Absurdity]

Which is an inherently flawed idea, making a role something it's not in an attempt to attract people that don't want to actually play it.
Sure, it will get player numbers up in the short term because now all the DPS players will at least try it out, but they're DPS players for a reason and will eventually just return to their chosen role.

And now you're stuck with jobs that appeal to neither the DPS players you tried to cater to, nor the original players of said jobs.

[GoatOfWar]

I haven't played tanks anywhere near as extensively as I have healers and melee DPS. I think the best way I can contribute to this topic is to bring up a chief concern I have playing with tanks in both of these roles, and it is their self-sustain.

As a DPS, I have participated in well over a handful of encounters where the boss has killed everyone except the tank an myself. In this situation I feel like I am a spear and the tank is the shield. I can stay alive so long as I don't fail mechanics and the tank does not die. However, even if I were to fall the tank can still solo the boss. It will just die slower.

As a healer, I have the ability to bring everyone back in the same situation so long as I don't fail mechanics and the tank does not die. However, if I should fall the tank can still solo the boss and it will just die slower.

The common denominator should be quite clear, and I was appalled when this same situation was present in an EX trial (Rubicante EX). It's one thing for this BS to exist in casual content, but starting at the EX level this schite should fly right out the window. Granted, there are maybe a handful of EX encounters where this is possible as most have mechanics that make it impossible for tanks to soak them all and still survive the autos. I don't care. I am of the mind that it shouldn't be possible at all, even in casual content.

It's also enabled healerless runs in the most difficult content in the entire game.
I honestly see no way forward without them nerfing Warrior or implementing super obnoxious mechanics to keep the tank sustain in check.
Either way, 'the common denominator' is currently the best job in the entire game. There's little to no content this game has to offer where you'd want to play another job.
Casual content, solo content, criterion, extremes, most ultimates, savage.. There isn't really any point in levelling a tank other than Warrior besides maybe Gnb if you really want to deal 100 extra dps for much more work.
However, seeing as they never nerf things, it appears like Warrior is setting a new standard for sustain.