Warrior Rework to Balance the job

[MikoRemi]

Its people saying "Lalala warrior is fine" and people saying "Lalala warrior is op" you're both as bad as each other.

And yet not only are we not infringing on others because our egos need stroking, were winning as is with a fun job. So whose really doing bad here hmm~?

Not our fault the forums have a few people wanting to loop a braindead desire in a vain attempt in hoping this time it somehow works.

[Lyth]

...

Job designs converge when you introduce in an effect that is powerful enough that every job needs a copy of it to stay balanced. Take invulns, for example. You can easily design tank gameplay without invulns. I'd actually argue that in a fight design standard where you only see four to five tankbusters to be split between two tanks, it actually makes sense not to have them be available at all. But since the existing tanks all have invulns, every tank job introduced from this point forward will also need to have a job-specific invuln. The combined effect of these convergent designs is that tank gameplay starts to feel very similar. That sense of sameness what players are referring to around their experience of 'homogenization.'

The Role Action system was originally designed to combat this by moving essential 'role functions' off into a common pool. But the approach to this has historically been sloppy. We converted Reprisal into a role action in Stormblood so that every tank can contribute to raidwide mitigation. Great. But PLD also kept Divine Veil and gained Passage of Arms. Then WAR players burst into tears and demanded that Shake it Off should become their second raidwide mitigation tool. Then you have to give DRK and GNB second raidwide mitigation tools as well to maintain balance. Eventually, every tank job has two or three hotbar slots dedicated to raidwide mitigation, just so that they can all be on a level footing with each other. More and more of your hotbar space gets overrun by layers of defensive actions, while your offensive rotations are progressively simplified.

Self-healing is just the latest part of this trend, where we just run around slapping on 'Additional Effect: Heal' on to every action. You might as well add it as a tank trait at this point. In truth, I think the real reason for adding it is because some people become unbearably anxious when they're at low HP numbers, and start furiously typing at their 'trolling' healers to heal. I personally liked it better when tanking was self-selecting, and if you weren't able to cut it playing chicken with your healer at sub-20% HP, you just picked another role.

If you want job designs to diverge, you need to build around a theme. The temporary HP that WAR used to be designed around is one such example. You could build all of WAR's defensives around the concept. Another could be designed with more of a barrier focus. A third could make use of block effects. It doesn't have to be every tank with an Excog action and a 20% HP buffing effect.

Either way, I'm glad that you feel that you're 'winning' at something here, but I think this design direction will be detrimental to tanks in the long run. The reason for having a variety of jobs in each role is to draw in players with different tastes, and that doesn't work out in the long run if there's only one or two go to choices in every situation. We'll see what happens in 8.0, I suppose, when the job reworks and possibly a fifth (hammer?) tank enter the picture.

[Alice_Rivers]

The more I read this thread the more I come around to the idea that tanks (especially WARs) neither need or want healers and we should just remove the healer requirement from content.

[CKNovel]

The more I read this thread the more I come around to the idea that tanks (especially WARs) neither need or want healers and we should just remove the healer requirement from content.

One hell of a strawman.

We already pointed that nerfing WAR won't make healers magically fun and backed it up with data and examples from other content, then proposed solution to make healers more fun.
But nope, we're the baddies who don't want healers to have fun.

The discussion always cycled back to "but but but war healing!! it's not fair!! trinity is dead!!".

I want to healers to be fun while retaining Bloodwhetting as it is, so it opens the door to many other tools stepping out of the lines rather than closing it.

[Alice_Rivers]

It's not an argument in the first place, it's merely a statement of fact, disappointing a fact as it is. I came into this thread with some modicum of optimism and hope that there would be room for diplomacy, that a compromise could be reached, I tried to reach such compromise and yet, here we are again. What other conclusion am I to draw?

[CKNovel]

It's not an argument in the first place, it's merely a statement of fact, disappointing a fact as it is. I came into this thread with some modicum of optimism and hope that there would be room for diplomacy, that a compromise could be reached, I tried to reach such compromise and yet, here we are again. What other conclusion am I to draw?

What compromises? You just screams for a nerf without accepting any other solutions, that WAR healing is a problem despite data showing it's not.
Don't talk about diplomacy when you present your solution as the only worth to consider.

Also here the conclusion, that I've been repeating for pages, you are to draw:

I want to healers to be fun while retaining Bloodwhetting as it is, so it opens the door to many other tools stepping out of the lines rather than closing it.

[Alice_Rivers]

I thought I'd go back through the thread to find all the instances where I've suggested or discussed doing things other than or in addition to reducing WAR's self healing, here's what I found:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557324

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557380

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557492

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557508

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557523

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557585

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557679

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6558753

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6559196

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6579806

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6580274

[CKNovel]

Cool taking your posts from weeks ago, yet your stance clearly evolved since then.
You're still hellbent on nerfing Bloodwhetting and drawing poor conclusions.

It's even more questionable, despite linking your post, how can you believe tanks don't want healers?

[Alice_Rivers]

I'd say it's less that my position has evolved so much as I've been reading the discourse and resigned myself to what I see: Healers demanding that things be arranged that healers are given the room/need to heal and tanks saying paragraphs that amount to "No.".

I am still willing to try diplomacy, I am still willing to pursue common ground and compromise. I want dungeons that hit more and harder, I want more uses for interject and esuna, W2W pulls that actually pose a threat when one of the roles isn't pulling their weight - I want to see W2W pulls be fun, skill expression for all. However to do that and maintain the current disparity in tank self sustain seems irreconcilable, now, we could say increase the damage and threat and increase DRK's sustain to the level of other tanks and I suppose that would address the immediate issue but what of the knock-on effects of that? The amount of damage bosses would have to do barring the separation of raidwides into tankbusters and stacks - Per Alexandria's first boss. It's a neat idea but I don't think it should be made the norm simply to balance the amount of HP/mit tanks have now vs everyone else, therefore, it is still my ideal position that we balance increased threats in content with a reduction in tank sustain, per what WoW devs appear to be doing here.

[PyurBlue]

How does diminishing one job's ability all of a sudden make an entirely different job more enjoyable?

It's very straightforward. Healers are supposed to heal. WAR requires no healer. WAR makes healers boring to play. It literally breaks the design of the game.

It seems to me the more enjoyable solution would be to give all the tanks equally effective sustain options. Flavored in their own likeness. Because, you know, it's enjoyable to play.

This would be the worst possible thing to do as it would make all tanks as bad as WAR. Buffs aren't always good and nerfs aren't always bad. Buffs in this case only make things worse.

Imagine wanting to remove fun stuff from a video game, some people are truly baffling.

It turns out it's not fun and that's why people are upset. Challenge is a component of fun, how are you supposed to be challenged when playing a heal focused class when the target that you're supposed to heal outheals you?