Did tanks really need more healing

[Lyth]

I'm curious about current player motivations for wanting to tank. What originally drew me to the role many years ago was that it felt high-stakes and was player skill dependent. You had the core elements of DPS gameplay, but you also needed to have good fight knowledge, cooldown timing, positioning, on top having the situational awareness to be able to reverse potential wipes. You needed to be versatile, perceptive, and flexible.

The current iteration of self-healing tanks with an overabundance of defensive cooldowns in the current climate of self-positioning bosses feels like it's aimed at the sort of player who wants to play melee DPS but lacks the mechanical skill to do so, and needs their personal defensives to survive multiple vuln stacks from unenforced errors. I understand that I'm probably not the target audience anymore, but I just don't know how anyone finds the current design direction satisfying. It feels like you don't need a 'good tank', you just need a tank. Don't people normally pick support roles because they have a degree of pride in their work?

I will say that as long as I've played this game, DPS has progressively gained impact with every expansion, while supports have progressively lost it. It's nice to feel invincible, but tanks do, what, 60% of a DPS job nowadays? It's great that the role is powerful in dungeons, but that survivability feels meaningless in any fight with an enrage. You're basically playing in spectator mode so that you can practice mechanics without dying, while the DPS do the real thing alongside you. It feels like they've removed all the tanking skill checks in the interests in creating a role on training wheels for players to get comfortable in content, without having to worry about failing mechanics.

It just seems so strange that people are defending this design direction. Does this not bother you at all? Or has everyone who liked the perception of tanks as a high-stakes role long since left?

[Rithy255]

Snip

I'm personally not defending the design direction fully, but I'm not against the self and group healing in concept, I think tank is in a really odd spot currently.

As someone who likes Paladin in particular (although I preferred older versions of the job), I like being that "Support" job with cooldowns/raidwides that can help my team while having a decent DPS rotation other then spamming glare and dot, just from a personal preference, Although I think tank rotations need to be more interesting (and healer too), with the current direction.
Healing on tanks to a degree isn't even the issue as I see it, I think the actual mitigative value is way more of a issue (outside warrior lol), I do think theirs some areas where they could tune tanks down, such as PLD's holy blade combo, I much rather PLD have their healing not be "selfish" as I don't really think that fits the job. while on the other hand Warrior outright healing allies more then a Paladin feels really unfitting, I think the trade off to warrior's absurd sustain (even then it should be nerfed), is that it shouldn't be able to heal others, though it should still give out mitigations or reducing the bosses damage.

If I were to change tanks I think I'd
1. Reduce the Self survivability and Sustain down a lot. I think the best way to do this is to nerf the role passive and change some of the short Mits, mainly to not have two mitigative effects stacked on top of each other.
2. Increase the power/importance on Tanks raid wides and cooldowns to save team mates.
3. Increase the Complexity of DPS rotations on Tanks to at least have more combo paths and nuances between each other, instead of 1, 2, 3 builder spenders. Healers should also get some more fun damage buttons

While I enjoy tanking in FF14, I know I would enjoy it more if it was took in a different direction personally, I want Tanks and healers to both have group/party responsibility, which may be harder to balance then have healer do the job 100% and tanks be big hp DPS, but I really don't want tanks to lose forms of party protection ect and just become the most baseline generic definition of a tank.

[Valence]

If anything it's the off tank role that feels the most in dire need of actual things to do in a fight. Sure, the MT has lost so much to do as well, and sure the OT is supposed to help with covering single targets with their short cds on the MT and whatnot, but let's be honest, that's not exactly required most of the time. I'd really like them to make those interactions to cover party members especially more prevalent, one way or another.

[CKNovel]

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

Those two statement aren't incompatible or oppose themselves.
You're simply free to play both ways, players are given the choice and choose to play with 2 healers instead of 1 or 2 extra tank.
That choice made by the community proves the trinity remains unbroken.

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

PF doesn't enforce trinity, only suggest it, you're free to create any composition you want.
If tanks indeed "stole" the healer work, pf would have for 3 or 4 tanks and 0 healers since tanks deals much more DPS than healers. Trinity remains unbroken.

Look, healers are in a bad shape, that's true.
But screaming that the healer apocalypse is happening is exaggerating the current situation and will obscure the facts that matters.

[CKNovel]

It just seems so strange that people are defending this design direction. Does this not bother you at all? Or has everyone who liked the perception of tanks as a high-stakes role long since left?

I used to play MCH because I love being a supporting DPS, Dismantle, Palisade, Manasong were all abilities I really loved and I felt useful to the party beyond DPS.
Tanks evolved to be that, lower DPS jobs with much more mitigation. Despite MCH recovering Dismantle, I felt more at home with tanks.

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT, you still take the enmity, position the ennemies and use mitigation accordingly.
While it's true more and more bosses places themselves or have huge hitbox, that responsibility has been replaced with mitigations in the form of Reprisal, Party wide mitigation or single target mitigation.

While progging savage and ultimate, one of our healers struggled with the content. The fact that I could compensate with my tools and assist them is a gratifying feeling.
Half the party is dead and the remaining healer is occupied with ressing? I can use my abilities to make the other players survive longer.

A tank will do the minimum.
A good tank will go beyond.

If those things were to be removed, we would lose all ingenuity and creativity just for the ego of some healers. The game would become even more braindead that many claims to be.

[Supersnow845]

I used to play MCH because I love being a supporting DPS, Dismantle, Palisade, Manasong were all abilities I really loved and I felt useful to the party beyond DPS.
Tanks evolved to be that, lower DPS jobs with much more mitigation. Despite MCH recovering Dismantle, I felt more at home with tanks.

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT, you still take the enmity, position the ennemies and use mitigation accordingly.
While it's true more and more bosses places themselves or have huge hitbox, that responsibility has been replaced with mitigations in the form of Reprisal, Party wide mitigation or single target mitigation.

While progging savage and ultimate, one of our healers struggled with the content. The fact that I could compensate with my tools and assist them is a gratifying feeling.
Half the party is dead and the remaining healer is occupied with ressing? I can use my abilities to make the other players survive longer.

A tank will do the minimum.
A good tank will go beyond.

If those things were to be removed, we would lose all ingenuity and creativity just for the ego of some healers. The game would become even more braindead that many claims to be.

Nobody wants you to lose things like cover or the mitigation aspect of shareable mits or even something like POA (hell I’d support POA having more mitigation attached to it)

The problem is you sharing 30% mit to help a DPS survive something is a good idea, you sharing 30% mit then also healing them for half their health with no downside to you while also being so tanky the loss of your own shareable mit means nothing is the problem

I’m perfectly fine if you want to protect me with something like cover while I try to rezz someone that’s good tank design and good expression, I don’t think such skills should be so strong on the healer front that you can basically also replace the healer, just like how you don’t want your mitigation effects to be minimalised I don’t want my healing to be minimalised by the tank being able to do it for me

[Lyth]

The responsibility of tanking never lost anything between ARR and DT

I disagree. I think there's been a big drop-off in the amount of raid responsibility on tanks which started around Stormblood, but has gotten progressively worse with every expansion. There has been a general shift away from 'role responsibility' towards 'personal responsibility', but the impact of dps remains unchanged. This has resulted in an erosion of the value of supports over time.

If you want to use a physical ranged example, this akin to having a moment like T1 High Voltage or A6S Spaghetti where you have to hit an interrupt or wipe the raid. At that moment, your role is critical and centre stage. There are 'softer' examples as well - moving and positioning a boss in a way that facilitates uptime while keeping the party out of danger is another, although we rarely see this in the current era of self-positioning bosses. I think if you don't have those types of moments on a role that offers less damage output, then other players don't really have a sense of your personal value as a player. Anyone in that role would be equally as effective.

Valence brings an important point about off-tanking as well. Holmgang being on four minutes essentially deletes most interesting tankbuster swaps that you could design and pushes you towards a WAR main tank with an understudy that pretends to be melee. Even if you somehow die because you're sitting at 8 vuln stacks and daydream through a tankbuster instead of pressing one of ten on-demand defensives with built in burst heals, you have a backup tank who is probably very bored and has a full set of defensives available. So your personal impact is completely replaceable on demand outside of the standard body check requirement that all players are subject to.

It's hard to say if the real problem is between excess healing or mitigation inflation as Rithy suggests, but I think the real answer lies somewhere between the two. I think that if you gave tanks positioning responsibility back, or if you had more cases of snap enmity, then you could make a case for skilled tanks providing additional value despite having excessive survivability. But those responsibilities have been gone for several expansions now, and all you really have left are mitigation checks. And there are so many layers of failsafes here that your skill in using these defensive tools doesn't really matter. You're not rationing your defensives. You're not using any deep insight around fight timings. You have no 'creativity' or 'ingenuity' in the use of these tools. It's just kitchen-sink/invuln. There is no skill expression in this role - and what's worse, everyone else has caught on to this fact.

As things stand, I would prefer the weakest players in any group to pick tank, simply because the defensives make the role more forgiving when learning mechanics, and your relative damage contribution is low enough and rotations are simple enough that you don't need to be good. And that's incredibly disappointing, as someone who previously loved the impact and community value that the role has had for many years.

[Rithy255]

Nobody wants you to lose things like cover or the mitigation aspect of shareable mits or even something like POA (hell I’d support POA having more mitigation attached to it)

The problem is you sharing 30% mit to help a DPS survive something is a good idea, you sharing 30% mit then also healing them for half their health with no downside to you while also being so tanky the loss of your own shareable mit means nothing is the problem

I’m perfectly fine if you want to protect me with something like cover while I try to rezz someone that’s good tank design and good expression, I don’t think such skills should be so strong on the healer front that you can basically also replace the healer, just like how you don’t want your mitigation effects to be minimalised I don’t want my healing to be minimalised by the tank being able to do it for me

I think you're over estimating tank cooldowns at least from the healing side, most will not heal "half their health" Take Intervention for example, it's a 250 Heal over time for four ticks so it will heal 1000 Potency (Which that isn't the same potency as a healer potency because healers have a passive 30% buff to all healing). a Regen such as that I don't see as the issue. when it's things like warriors nascent flash, which is 1600 potency for you and the warrior and the warrior can force crits on it, then yes it becomes a massive issue.

I think having some overlap with Tanks and Healers is fine, I like that healers can help tanks mitigate and I like that tanks can help contribute some limited forms of healing, I just think we can tone down certain aspects of tank jobs, such as the passive mitigation value, Short mits having way too many stacked effects, some cases of sustain being too high like Warrior, slightly toning down PLD/GNB.

Personally I would want tanks to step away from absurd survivability, but gain more importance in helping others survive too, partly its because of sustain but i think the mass amount of mitigation is at such a point where it needs to be tuned down, Warrior being a exception to this as I think it's a case where they have too much Self and target healing which the target healing doesn't even make sense for the "job identity"

[CKNovel]

I disagree. I think there's been a big drop-off in the amount of raid responsibility on tanks which started around Stormblood, but has gotten progressively worse with every expansion. There has been a general shift away from 'role responsibility' towards 'personal responsibility', but the impact of dps remains unchanged. This has resulted in an erosion of the value of supports over time.

You're absolutely free to disagree but:
Silence is a lazy way to excuse the presence of a ranged, just like Esuna.
I've avoided to bring Esuna for this exact reason.
It's on the same level as role bonus.

You're also greatly underestimating the differences between a good and a bad tank.
Mitigation goes way beyond kitchen sink tank buster or using holmgang, many tank buster are designed to go beyond invuln, that leads me to believe you haven't touched any endgame content in a while.

As such, I can only conclude you're evaluating tank in a casual settings.
But the same applies to DPS and Healers, as long as they damage and keep your health up, there's barely any difference between a good and bad DPS/Healer.

In short, that's just weird to say that you don't need to be good, that logic applies to all roles. DPS can be ressed by healers if they miss and backed-up by other DPS, healer have a co heal as well.

[whiskeybravo]

From my perspective there are something like multiple intersecting strings to these arguments and opinions. Lyth is certainly right that the current tank role feels like a shell of it's former self, even if that shell had it's own set of problems at the time. On the hand, there are still particular moments in particular fights where things need to "click" between roles, or the party more generally, so the concepts have not been entirely abandoned. The time period early on where correct mitigation response/damage output is required to succeed, when the content is "relevant". After a time we gear up and gain a leniency which seems to trivialize mechanics. I'm not sure if this could be avoided, or even if it should be.

Regarding tank invulns and OT responsibility.. It's certainly true of many fights, and I'm starting to think that invulns themselves are the main culprit in all this. There's always been so much controversy over trying to balance them, and my prior opinion was more or less make them equal as much as possible, but maybe they actually just need to go entirely. If nothing else it seems like the easiest remedy for many of the discussed ailments.

As a side tangent, I wish there was a way they could freeze or restore our old kits for the old fights. Like, actually go back and do BCOB with my OG Lv50 warrior kit, or any other fight with that time period's kit. It's just sad that so many fights have lost their original integrity over the years.