Did tanks really need more healing

[CKNovel]

Tanks didn’t just move away from their primary role and became blue DPS, they overtook the healer role from the healers. The average casuals favourite joke to post on mainsub is “hahahaha WAR go burrrrrrr unga Bunga” people are actually playing tanks at this point because it allows them to be a healer for themself. That is 100% cannibalising another role.

If they were so confident that dropping actual agro mechanics and just making them blue DPS with some defensives why did they also need to cannibalise healers to make people want to play them

I want more complex DPS on healer but it isn’t the totality of the problem simply because just making tanks Blue DPS wasn’t the totality of of the fix for them either, they actually had to encroach on healers to make them popular

Again, you're badly exagerating the proportions. Tanks can't provide the same amount of healing healers can.
The problem is that there's no need for so much healing because SQEX doesn't want to stress healers in dungeon, so it results in Tank healing being sufficient to heal casual content.

And if you take content that requires higher HPS, that's survivorship bias, 99.9% of the players have 2 healers in their composition. Solo heal/No healer is a challenge for an extreme, very talented minority that absolutely doesn't define the majority.
Such group even pick one or multiple paladin because they have access to Clemency, a GCD that exist since Heavensward and was never a problem.

Mind you that tank popularity rose in Shadowbringer, not Endwalker. Tank sustain wasn't as big back then, they simply removed the reduced damage from tank stance.
So Tank sustain is completely out of the equation in tank popularity.

[Ramiee]

I think the main problem with why tanks weren't as popular in SB was because they all had stance dancing so you couldn't escape it. It was like mage bard in HW, it wasn't actually that bad but machinist did the same thing so you couldn't escape it.
I wish something like PLD or WAR kept the stance dancing because that would of made them more interesting to play rn.

Personally when it comes to self sustain for tanks I still think healing should be locked behind long CDs and any group healing from tanks should make the tank lose out on damage like clemency. Same opinion on DPS I think summoners new heal should end bahamut give you a damage down for a GCD for example.

[Supersnow845]

Again, you're badly exagerating the proportions. Tanks can't provide the same amount of healing healers can.
The problem is that there's no need for so much healing because SQEX doesn't want to stress healers in dungeon, so it results in Tank healing being sufficient to heal casual content.

And if you take content that requires higher HPS, that's survivorship bias, 99.9% of the players have 2 healers in their composition. Solo heal/No healer is a challenge for an extreme, very talented minority that absolutely doesn't define the majority.
Such group even pick one or multiple paladin because they have access to Clemency, a GCD that exist since Heavensward and was never a problem.

Mind you that tank popularity rose in Shadowbringer, not Endwalker. Tank sustain wasn't as big back then, they simply removed the reduced damage from tank stance.
So Tank sustain is completely out of the equation in tank popularity.

Do you not see the problem with your logic

“Tank sustain isn’t actually that good it’s just that healing is so low that tank sustain is actually good”, if healing requirements are low enough the tank can cover them effectively then tank sustain is good, there is no two ways about that. This also extends to savage content, tanks heal themselves almost twice as much as the healers heal them and 90% of healer healing on the tank is incidental AOE healing, tanks simply don’t need to be healed in any content

The problem with off comps is becoming worse, there is now 7 seperate videos of an on patch extreme (vali) being cleared by a pickup PF group of 8 tanks, every expansion this problem becomes worse, you certainly ain’t clearing vali with 8 healers or anything above extreme with no DPS players, healers are consistently the ones left on the cutting room floor and it can’t be passed off as “extremely talented minority” when tje only thing stopping it from being more common is convention

Yes tank popularity went up in ShB, right when WAR first got the “baby mode immortality” in dungeons with nascent flash and raw intuition, it wasn’t as bad as bloodwhetting was but unlike abyssal drain DA’s you didn’t need a brain to be immortal as a WAR, and surprise surprise ever since then WAR has been the most common tank

[CKNovel]

Do you not see the problem with your logic

“Tank sustain isn’t actually that good it’s just that healing is so low that tank sustain is actually good”, if healing requirements are low enough the tank can cover them effectively then tank sustain is good, there is no two ways about that. This also extends to savage content, tanks heal themselves almost twice as much as the healers heal them and 90% of healer healing on the tank is incidental AOE healing, tanks simply don’t need to be healed in any content

Yes tank popularity went up in ShB, right when WAR first got the “baby mode immortality” in dungeons with nascent flash and raw intuition, it wasn’t as bad as bloodwhetting was but unlike abyssal drain DA’s you didn’t need a brain to be immortal as a WAR, and surprise surprise ever since then WAR has been the most common tank

Raw Intuition only reduced damage but Nascent flash had the healing effect, that's true.
But again, you're blowing things out of proportions, only Warrior had access to this kind of sustain and it wasn't a problem. DRK, GNB and PLD didn't had the sustain and yet the popularity of tank increased.
If sustain was the reason of this increase of popularity, why other tanks gained popularity as well and why didn't it occured earlier when Bloodbath was available?

At some point you'll realize the reasoning that sustain carried the tank popularity makes no sense.

“Tank sustain isn’t actually that good it’s just that healing is so low that tank sustain is actually good”
Yes, and? What is the problem? Apply this question to DPS or Tanks, you'll definitely understand why it is correct.
Imagine if damages taken were so low you could pick 4 DPS, would the problem come from tank?
Imagine if DPS check were so low you could pick 4 Tank and 4 heal, would the problem come from DPS?

Of course not.

As for savage content, again survivorship bias. It is limited to an extreme minority.

[Supersnow845]

Raw Intuition only reduced damage but Nascent flash had the healing effect, that's true.
But again, you're blowing things out of proportions, only Warrior had access to this kind of sustain and it wasn't a problem. DRK, GNB and PLD didn't had the sustain and yet the popularity of tank increased.
If sustain was the reason of this increase of popularity, why other tanks gained popularity as well and why didn't it occured earlier when Bloodbath was available?

At some point you'll realize the reasoning that sustain carried the tank popularity makes no sense.

“Tank sustain isn’t actually that good it’s just that healing is so low that tank sustain is actually good”
Yes, and? What is the problem? Apply this question to DPS or Tanks, you'll definitely understand why it is correct.
Imagine if damages taken were so low you could pick 4 DPS, would the problem come from tank?
Imagine if DPS check were so low you could pick 4 Tank and 4 heal, would the problem come from DPS?

Of course not.

As for savage content, again survivorship bias. It is limited to an extreme minority.

Yes I wonder why the tank that got the most sustain immediately jumped to the most played tank. Hell GNB was the new tank in ShB and WAR still has half the collective parses of the entire expansion, WAR’s self sustain contributed to its popularity in ShB and now the tanks can be directly ranked on play numbers by their levels of self sustain. WAR is as popular as it is because of its self sustain

“Imagine this scenario that doesn’t happen is happening and it’s the same thing as this scenario that’s actually happening”

Lack of DPS checks in casual content is never going to remove the DPS because they always make things go faster. Lack of hard mitigation requirements is never going to remove tanks because it’s always more efficient for the tank to hold agro to keep it off others. Lack of necessary healing IS removing healers right now because the tanks can do it for the healer. This would be no different if the DPS could be the healer but they can’t (and no RDM doesn’t count because they have to give up DPS)

Saying a scenario that won’t happen could happen so it’s just as valid as a scenario that is happening is totally flawed logic. And saying “don’t blame the role that benefits from this unequal situation blame the balance” is flawed because you can equalise the balance by nerfing the role that is unequally benefiting from the balance

You also can’t keep passing off savage as a tiny minority as it continues to become more and more common, you should not be clearing an on patch EX with a PF pickup group with 8 tanks and being able to have it repeated 7 seperate times, TOP healerless is an extreme minority, this new wave is only being held back by the fact that you gain no benefit from doing it, doesn’t mean it is actually hard

[CKNovel]

Yes I wonder why the tank that got the most sustain immediately jumped to the most played tank. Hell GNB was the new tank in ShB and WAR still has half the collective parses of the entire expansion, WAR’s self sustain contributed to its popularity in ShB and now the tanks can be directly ranked on play numbers by their levels of self sustain. WAR is as popular as it is because of its self sustain

Warrior always was the most popular tank, that's not something new.
If sustain was the reason, Paladin would've been the default choice thanks to Clemency, but it was the least popular.
Warrior was liked because it was simple and had access to holmgang while PLD and DRK were much less popular due to their more complex kit, it's not rocket science.

Extreme always had very low DPS check, it's not new that it can be cleared with nothing but tanks.
You take Extreme as an example but have you forgotten the times where extreme could be solo tanked, did tanks cried about it?
Or DPS crying about those full tank Extreme clear? DPS is never necessary outside savage/ultimate, it's a comfort. A healer also makes the content more comfortable, they have access to res unlike many other DPS after all.

You're taking the problem the wrong way, you think the necessicity of heal is taken away by the tanks but you omit there's no necessary healing in the first place.
What will happen when DPS starts using their mitigation or killing packs before the tank is at risk, are you going to scream to nerf them? Rather than increase the adds damage or their HP?

Ironically we had this situation in Shadowbringers between 5.3 to 5.5 where packs would deal ridiculously low damage, healers would simply AFK and wait for the tank to take meaningful damage.
That's where we got "you don't pay my sub" stories where healers refused to DPS.

Look, it's time to move on
You're going full cycle trying to find any reason Warrior was popular and trying to forcefully link it to its sustain while dismissing the satisfying feeling of Fell Cleave and the Holmgang utility.
Nothing new or impactful has been brought in the discussion and I have the feeling nothing will be.

Even if you were to delete Warrior from the game, or any form of sustain from the non-healers, the problems would persist and Square Enix would balance its dungeon around the available healing anyway.
Maybe the day they'll do this and you see packs doing ridiculously low damage you'll understand.

[Connor]

Idk maybe I’m missing something but it seems wrong to say ‘well it’s just casual content so tanks should be able to do all the healing themselves’ (which ignores the many full tank EX clears).

Most obvious point being you can’t drop your healer in casual content lol. I mean, if we’re talking full on casual and not just ‘4 static members doing an expert together’, then you’re going to be in Duty Finder where role distribution is fixed.

So in literally the only time you’re ‘made’ to bring a healer is the one time you need it the least. Tank sustain is so busted now I literally cannot get Excogitation to activate on most tanks during mass pulls. I’ve seen Warriors just completely ignore boss mechanics and gathering up vuln stacks like it was going out of fashion, because with the amount of mitigation and self-healing they have makes it extremely easy to just completely invalidate mechanics outside of direct one-shots. And I have no doubt the other tanks could do the same (maybe not DRK lol they’re weirdly squishy).

Like, why does it not matter that the tank is literally strong enough to invalidate my main role in the majority of content I do? Because, what, it doesn’t affect savage? (I think it does and will lol). It doesn’t seem fair to tell casual healers to just accept that.

Lastly, I feel like saying ‘but that’s just skilled tanks’ is a bit of a straw man. In my experience I can literally count on one hand the amount of tanks who didn’t make full use of mitigations and self-heals. I’m not sure where this idea comes from that the average player is some mind of lobotomised animal, but in my experience the average player really isn’t that bad (they’re, well, average lol).

So where are these tanks who are struggling to keep their HP up, aren’t using any of their mitigations, and require powerful and consistent healing to keep alive? I’ve yet to meet one. And this is as like an extremely casual player lol, nobody can set the bar lower than me

[Supersnow845]

snip

This just cycles back to my original point. If the option is between nerfing tank sustain/survivability or upping incoming damage then nerfing tank sustain is an infinitely better choice because it fixes old content and doesn’t introduce 50 other failure points. The trinity has been broken for too long to try to fix it now by buffing the content beyond the capabilities of the tanks going forward. This is your own point “the content doesn’t do enough damage”, yes the content doesn’t do enough damage against the current survivability of the tanks. The answer is not to then buff every enemy in the game by enough to outpace the tanks, it’s to nerf the tanks. There is edge cases like matoya’s relic but that is incredibly niche compared to the overall problem of the tanks

Notice how every single time an irregular comp comes up in high end content and 99% in casual content it involves using more tanks than normal tanks are the core of the warping of the trinity and you can see this with how much discourse has been generated in DT about tanks leaving the party dead to solo the boss

The trinity is broken and the easiest and least problematic way to fix it is to nerf the tanks, trying to do anything else introduces 8,000 other failure points. As a new DPS main I’m also unhappy that extremes are being cleared on patch by all tanks. The tanks are so far beyond the scope of balance that it’s warping every facet of the game

[CKNovel]

This just cycles back to my original point. If the option is between nerfing tank sustain/survivability or upping incoming damage then nerfing tank sustain is an infinitely better choice because it fixes old content and doesn’t introduce 50 other failure points. The trinity has been broken for too long to try to fix it now by buffing the content beyond the capabilities of the tanks going forward.

Notice how every single time an irregular comp comes up in high end content and 99% in casual content it involves using more tanks than normal tanks are the core of the warping of the trinity and you can see this with how much discourse has been generated in DT about tanks leaving the party dead to solo the boss

The trinity is broken and the easiest and least problematic way to fix it is to nerf the tanks, trying to do anything else introduces 8,000 other failure points. As a new DPS main I’m also unhappy that extremes are being cleared on patch by all tanks. The tanks are so far beyond the scope of balance that it’s warping every facet of the game

"Fix old content"
False, old content has been broken way before tanks even had access to sustain.
UCOB has been cleared in many ways, 7 players, all tanks, 100 KOs, but the most common is the cheesing of mechanics through LB tank, the DPS check is now so low you can deal with damage down.
This has been fixed by the content such as DSR inflicting a 90% damage down to avoid any cheesing, supporting my argument that the content is the problem.

"Every irregular comp is more tank"
False, I've pointed out solo tank and when solo tank is not possible, it's 100% because the content forces an offtank.
EX1 would be difficult, but EX2 is definitely possible with a single tank but would require extra work.
Which, for a second time, support my argument that the content defines what requires a role or not.

It should also be pointed out that player going "off meta" plays with a huge disadvantage to gain small benefits. These players use their ingenuity and talents to play out of the box, we shouldn't take that away from them.
Also note that if Clemency was taken out, a lot of content wouldn't be clearable without a healer, not bloodwhetting.

"The trinity has been broken"
False, The trinity remains unbroken, it can be easily proven by yourself just opening Party Finder and counting how much recruitment breaks the trinity.
As of now, I count 0. And I've seen at least one PF just doing a 5th DPS with a solo heal, which again points out that current content doesn't dish enough damage to exploit healers full kit.

2 Tanks, 2 Healers and 4 DPS remains the strongest and safest composition that dominates the meta.
Sorry to break your fantasy, but the trinity remains strong and you just have to open the party finder to prove it.
I'll be convinced that the trinity is broken the day where healers are completely barred from PF.

For now, I only read hyperbolic statements.

[Supersnow845]

"Fix old content"
False, old content has been broken way before tanks even had access to sustain.
UCOB has been cleared in many ways, 7 players, all tanks, 100 KOs, but the most common is the cheesing of mechanics through LB tank, the DPS check is now so low you can deal with damage down.
This has been fixed by the content such as DSR inflicting a 90% damage down to avoid any cheesing, supporting my argument that the content is the problem.

"Every irregular comp is more tank"
False, I've pointed out solo tank and when solo tank is not possible, it's 100% because the content forces an offtank.
EX1 would be difficult, but EX2 is definitely possible with a single tank but would require extra work.
Which, for a second time, support my argument that the content defines what requires a role or not.

It should also be pointed out that player going "off meta" plays with a huge disadvantage to gain small benefits. These players use their ingenuity and talents to play out of the box, we shouldn't take that away from them.
Also note that if Clemency was taken out, a lot of content wouldn't be clearable without a healer, not bloodwhetting.

"The trinity has been broken"
False, The trinity remains unbroken, it can be easily proven by yourself just opening Party Finder and counting how much recruitment breaks the trinity.
As of now, I count 0. And I've seen at least one PF just doing a 5th DPS with a solo heal, which again points out that current content doesn't dish enough damage to exploit healers full kit.

2 Tanks, 2 Healers and 4 DPS remains the strongest and safest composition that dominates the meta.
Sorry to break your fantasy, but the trinity remains strong and you just have to open the party finder to prove it.
I'll be convinced that the trinity is broken the day where healers are completely barred from PF.

For now, I only read hyperbolic statements.

You are again making two opposing logical statements then not acknowledging you made them

“Playing off meta gives large disadvantages for little benefit”
“Open PF and you’ll see the trinity is in tact”

PF functionally enforces the trinity and you get little benefit from not using the trinity, that doesn’t mean that trinity is not broken when one role simply isn’t needed. It’s Why nobody in PF will play a healer, because their role isn’t actually nerfed they are just there because PF defaults to assuming you are playing with the trinity. There is little skill playing outside the trinity in something like EX1, it’s just there is no advantage to doing so, that doesn’t mean it’s not indicative of a problem. UCOB is the same, UCOB is broken by potency creep, the worst of the 4 tanks currently DPS wise does more damage than the best DPS at UCOB launch, why bother bringing healers and DPS when the tanks do more than the intended best DPS anyway with 1/4 of the complexity. You can’t do this with healers because of the TB’s. All problems with the trinity come back to the tanks because they are the only role you can’t just remove because nobody else can survive the TB’s, the only time you can consider it is if WAR can holmgang every buster itself

The fact that the system enforces the trinity is not an argument that the trinity isn’t broken