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

[fulminating]

You don't need to make stuff up to have a decent argument, all it does is undermine your side.

That used to be the Drk job identity, it just got transplanted into Warrior.

Lifesteal has been part of warrior since arr. i.e before drk was introduced.

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

You know what dark knight gobbled up? rampart. This is a deliberate skewing of events when it's more to do with the missteps of role actions. Especially with how much they were changed when made into role actions. A better example would be requiescat in 4.1, although that'd immediately bring to mind new delirium so I can see why you avoided that. Maybe shake it off, but you also run into the issue that a cleanse that can't be used while statused is inherently flawed, especially since the reason to have a cleanse (pacification) was removed before SIO was added.

TBN used to the the strongest short tank cd, but then Warrior took that as well.

Warrior didn't have a short cd until shb, and tbn is a bit better than sheltron was in stormblood because it's a 5s shield duration rather than blocking a single hit. In shadowbringers, I would not say tbn is significantly stronger than nascent flash in dungeons but it was stronger or at least easier in raids.

Dark knight used to have the most gap closers, now Warrior has 4.

By which you mean 1 on 30s for the duration of heavensward. In stormblood, warrior had the beast gauge one added, which is different enough to a cooldown based system and allowed all tanks to deal with knockbacks. (Paladin having tempered will). Happily onslaught costing 20 beast gauge on 15s cd (then 10s in shb) means that warrior now has less gap closers than it did, so you may rejoice.

And in EW, Warrior also needed Dark knight's damage apparently.

Warrior has always been the damage tank up until the introduction of gunbreaker. For shadowbringers it shared dead last with dark knight, and then dark knight was top two for the first two tiers of EW. This is a non-issue with regard to dark knight, but more an issue with the role. Healers should have a higher damage potential than tanks, but generally be unable to reach it due their role responsibility. Gunbreaker is the only tank remaining with an involved rotation, and it is yet to be seen how dt will treat it. With the simplification obsession it may be that tanks are all reduced to healer level of rotational complexity. The devs need to decide how the support roles will play and how they interact with their function.

I wouldn't say Warrior is in a good spot when Warrior's current design just cannibalises and takes away from the others.

This is not purely a warrior problem, it's endemic across all jobs, possibly due to the workload associated with designing and upkeeping however many there are - soon to be however many +2 +1 more limited. Consider sage, you would have thought that the new healer with a broadly untapped niche would allow the devs to stretch their wings and design something unique. What we ended up with so closely mimicked scholar that they mayn't as well have bothered.

[quote]Yet, still manages to have the fewest buttons of all tanks and the easiest to optimise rotation of all jobs in the game period.[quote]
summoner, new paladin and dark knight are all down there with it. DRK needs to break tbn at some point early enough that it can carry a 4th edge into buffs and is otherwise 123 or hit all the buttons. Summoner is so on rails that it cannot be misplayed without effort. New paladin is comically flexible. Warrior would be well served by returning the gauge management elements associated with onslaught and upheaval, but realistically I can't see them increasing complexity on any tank.

If you genuinely enjoy dark knight as it is, go and enjoy it while it lasts.

[GoatOfWar]

If you genuinely enjoy dark knight as it is, go and enjoy it while it lasts.

I don't enjoy tanking anymore period.
The loud Warrior playerbase and their favourite streamer got any sort of differences there were between them removed with unnecessary buff after buff and homogenisation.
There's nothing any tank excells at, or does better than Warrior. No tank is allowed to have a job identity besides Warrior.
Everything a tank does has to be either a worse version, or equal to what Warrior does. With an extra step sometimes too.
I see absolutely no reason to play tank if i'm being shown there's only 1 right option under any given context, and it happens to be the one i like the least.
I'm not your jobber.

[Lyth]

...

I think arguing that WAR's advantages are the natural result of historical precedent isn't a good justification for future design. ARR was developed at a point in time where they weren't really sure if there would ever be another expansion, so the design wasn't about future proofing so much as it was about desperately staying afloat. Both tanks and healers suffered from the legacy of this as a result of having only two jobs on release. The end result was that the support roles each ended up with a 'vanilla' job, and then every possible theme that they thought of was stuffed into the other. The problem is that burning through so many design directions at once on a single job limits your creative options when introducing in new jobs.

Lifesteal
Lifesteal is not the only form of self-sustain that exists. WAR currently straddles several styles of self-sustain between instant heals, barriers, regens, and lifesteal. None of these make any thematic sense as far as job fantasy is concerned. This in turn creates a push towards homogenization, because every tank job now needs all of these things in order to remain competitive. The solution is to separate these out on to different tanks, and it's relatively easy to do if they actually invest some effort into the role. A lifesteal tank doesn't need an on demand instant heal. If they want to burst heal, they line up their healing with their burst window. You don't need a barrier shield if your lifesteal can push out into temporary HP. You can achieve similar effects with the other mechanics in a way that develops job identity in unique ways.

And this is the point people have been making for multiple expansions now - it doesn't really matter 'who' the lifesteal tank is, but one tank shouldn't contain all those distinct themes at the same time.

Role Actions
The 4.0 role action system definitely impacted DRK more than other tanks. DRK had Shadowskin in Heavensward, which was a much better looking version of Rampart that did the same thing. Dark Dance was nerfed into Anticipation and made available to all tanks. Reprisal and Low Blow were nerfed and made available to all tanks. The net result was it went from having the most number of actions out of any tank to having the least after the transition. But the main problem with the change was that utility was distributed unequally. The lack of knockback mitigation was especially bad, especially given that arena-wide knockbacks was Stormblood's favorite raid gimmick.

The decision around Reprisal was probably the strangest one in Stormblood. If you wanted to consolidate Reprisal as a universal tool, why would you keep DV and then add in PoA? And this lends itself to the mitigation inflation issue. Tanks won't be balanced until every tank has Reprisal + two job-specific raidwide mitigation tools. If you wanted tanks to rely on a standardized tool, just delete DV/PoA/SiO/Missionary/HoL. If you want tanks to each have their unique tool, then give each tank one raidwide mitigation tool out of the six that exist. They clearly ran out of ideas by the time they came to Missionary/HoL.

Mobility
Mobility is an interesting discussion point. DRK definitely had a mobility advantage prior to Stormblood, and WAR after Stormblood. I think part of the problem is that the movement tools on tanks are fairly boring. If you look at melee dps, there are definite differences in movement toolsets but none of them feel particularly disadvantaged. I still think it's hilarious that the WAR playerbase had a SAM style on-demand gap closer and squandered it out of utter greed. What they should have done instead is just asked for an on-demand gap extender to consolidate their advantage, but that's like expecting the average WAR enthusiast to understand Uptime 101. I think the bigger problem though is if you add movement tools like Shukuchi/Raiju/Ingress/Egress/Thunderclap into the mix, tanks will likely complain until each type of movement tool is on every tank, rather than appreciating the differences and letting every job have its unique upsides and downsides.

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

Incidentally, the reason why SGE has so much overlap with SCH was that it was designed to split the SCH playerbase. That's likely what's going to happen to WAR as well. They'll release a hammer tank that is very similar in design to WAR. Once the playerbase is split, then you can make the appropriate balance adjustments that should have been made expansions ago without community backlash.

[fulminating]

I think arguing that WAR's advantages are the natural result of historical precedent isn't a good justification for future design. ARR was developed at a point in time where they weren't really sure if there would ever be another expansion, so the design wasn't about future proofing so much as it was about desperately staying afloat. Both tanks and healers suffered from the legacy of this as a result of having only two jobs on release. The end result was that the support roles each ended up with a 'vanilla' job, and then every possible theme that they thought of was stuffed into the other. The problem is that burning through so many design directions at once on a single job limits your creative options when introducing in new jobs.

It's been 10 years. There's been plenty of good opportunities to properly define the niche of each tank, 5.0 being the best recent example with the introduction of a 4th, but 6.0 and 6.2/3 should also have been considered.

Lifesteal
Lifesteal is not the only form of self-sustain that exists. WAR currently straddles several styles of self-sustain between instant heals, barriers, regens, and lifesteal. None of these make any thematic sense as far as job fantasy is concerned. This in turn creates a push towards homogenization, because every tank job now needs all of these things in order to remain competitive. The solution is to separate these out on to different tanks, and it's relatively easy to do if they actually invest some effort into the role. A lifesteal tank doesn't need an on demand instant heal. If they want to burst heal, they line up their healing with their burst window. You don't need a barrier shield if your lifesteal can push out into temporary HP. You can achieve similar effects with the other mechanics in a way that develops job identity in unique ways.

And this is the point people have been making for multiple expansions now - it doesn't really matter 'who' the lifesteal tank is, but one tank shouldn't contain all those distinct themes at the same time.

No it's not. The addition of shields and regens to warrior was generally a bad move, but let's not pretend that holy sheltron and heart of excog wouldn't be glaring issues if warrior wasn't there. I think lump heal and lifesteal fit the berserker fantasy well enough, with thrill/equilibrium acting as a second wind. There's no way you've not seen the fellowship of the ring, and surely remember the part where boromir gets up again after being filled full of arrows. I don't think this should preclude dark knight from having the abyssal drain loop returned though, as I see that as more of a representation of magic debuffing than too angry to die. Ideally I think warrior wouldn't have healing per se, but rather just increase its high health cap with every attack to convey "too angry to die", however this would not interact well with heal style doom mechanics or benediction existing so lifesteal works as an approximation there.

Role Actions
The 4.0 role action system definitely impacted DRK more than other tanks. DRK had Shadowskin in Heavensward, which was a much better looking version of Rampart that did the same thing. Dark Dance was nerfed into Anticipation and made available to all tanks. Reprisal and Low Blow were nerfed and made available to all tanks. The net result was it went from having the most number of actions out of any tank to having the least after the transition. But the main problem with the change was that utility was distributed unequally. The lack of knockback mitigation was especially bad, especially given that arena-wide knockbacks was Stormblood's favorite raid gimmick... Missionary/HoL

I dislike role actions as a concept, but they could be a necessary evil. I think this probably touches on the real issue, which is the conflicting desire to have shiny new toys and mechanics each expansion while also wanting everyone to be able to do it all even if they don't have them. Maybe the raid and job teams talking more in depth about their ideas for the expansion earlier than the evidently do would help address this, but that might set things in stone far too far ahead.

Mobility
Mobility is an interesting discussion point. DRK definitely had a mobility advantage prior to Stormblood, and WAR after Stormblood. I think part of the problem is that the movement tools on tanks are fairly boring. If you look at melee dps, there are definite differences in movement toolsets but none of them feel particularly disadvantaged. I still think it's hilarious that the WAR playerbase had a SAM style on-demand gap closer and squandered it out of utter greed. What they should have done instead is just asked for an on-demand gap extender to consolidate their advantage, but that's like expecting the average WAR enthusiast to understand Uptime 101. I think the bigger problem though is if you add movement tools like Shukuchi/Raiju/Ingress/Egress/Thunderclap into the mix, tanks will likely complain until each type of movement tool is on every tank, rather than appreciating the differences and letting every job have its unique upsides and downsides.

It's not even greed, it's just utter stupidity. Same as with overpower being changed to a pbaoe. I can't even tell if it's changes for people who don't play the job to induce them to play, but it's such a comical downgrade that you'd hope it wasn't requested by people who actually liked the job. Not that it matters if they keep the huge hitboxes, your movement tools won't actually move you usefully if they get much bigger. Of course the potency based heal is in this category too, but has been done to death.

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

yeah it's super weird, but sounded a bit too revisionist to let slide.

Incidentally, the reason why SGE has so much overlap with SCH was that it was designed to split the SCH playerbase. That's likely what's going to happen to WAR as well. They'll release a hammer tank that is very similar in design to WAR. Once the playerbase is split, then you can make the appropriate balance adjustments that should have been made expansions ago without community backlash.

Do you happen to have a source for this? I would like to believe that sage is anything other than a rushed and unimaginitive addition to a neglected role, but this is the first I've heard of that.

[GoatOfWar]

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

When that is the *ONLY* thing your job does better than others, and then they proceed to buff the damage of the medic tank that already has the best version of every tool the other tanks have access to, and already has a history of cannibalising and assuming the job identity of the job you're playing, yeah.
Warrior deserved being FIRMLY at the bottom of the dps meters, just like every other utility centered job in the entire fucking game. It MUST be at the bottom to warrant having all the other shit it has. There shouldn't even be any discussion about this.
If you're seriously going to argue for Warrior to not have it's damage taxed while it has the best utility and is the defacto best main tank, why even have 4 tanks? I'd genuinely rather play dps than whatever garbage this is where there's only 1 correct choice for any given content in the game. And if we MUST have a BiS tank for every piece of content, why make it the least interesting one? The devs shouldn't be playing favourites, Warrior in it's current state ruined tanking for me. To say i loathe the job and it's players would be an understatement.

[Oizen]

You know what dark knight gobbled up? rampart.

Its more like DRK and WAR had their own versions of rampart that got deleted and rampart got stapled onto them in the god awful "role action" update.

God I miss the Shadowskin animation

[GoatOfWar]

Its more like DRK and WAR had their own versions of rampart that got deleted and rampart got stapled onto them in the god awful "role action" update.

God I miss the Shadowskin animation

I despise the role actions.
They fill up half our hotbars with copy/pasted abilities.
You could remove half of them and give us cool stuff in their place.

Imagine if they removed Reprisal, rampart, low blow, interject and Shirk but then gave us other tools that actually make the tanks different.

[Oizen]

I despise the role actions.
They fill up half our hotbars with copy/pasted abilities.
You could remove half of them and give us cool stuff in their place.

Imagine if they removed Reprisal, rampart, low blow, interject and Shirk but then gave us other tools that actually make the tanks different.

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

[GoatOfWar]

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

Won't work.
What we'll end up with is;
Rampart: 25% damage mit.
Shadowskin: 20% mit, applies blood price (mp regen on receiving damage)
Gnb mit: 20% and a regen.

War: 25% mit
Additional effect: Reflects incoming damage.
Additional effect: Builds beast gauge upon being hit.
Additional effect: Heals when being hit.
Additional effect: (Overtime) Restores health over time after activation.
Additional effect: The user becomes immune to most knock and and draw in effects.

Oh, and the old ''All tanks can clear it doesn't matter'' As a throwaway dismissal to any sort of concerns.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

Agreed, could even extend this to the 30% skills.

Sentinel - maybe just 40% like back then, or an interaction with block strength to temporarily enhance it by half of it (block power 30%, for bulwark and passage of arms interaction).

Shadow Wall - give it an effect like MNK's Earth's Reply from PvP where it will give you a trigger (manual or automatic) healing you for a portion of damage taken/mitigated. Not the damaging part of Earth's reply tho.

Nebula - personal speedboost and/or heal boost (for own actions, Brutal Shell, Aurora, HoC) like PvP No Mercy effect.