Warrior Rework to Balance the job

[Mapleine]

The majority of WAR players are happy

I bet lol, so were Game Shark owners back in the day

[whiskeybravo]

I bet lol, so were Game Shark owners back in the day

The comment you quoted was the first in response to the suggestion WAR needs some sort of "rework" to "balance" it. It does not need a rework to balance within the current meta, and the OP has long since abandoned this thread and their abysmal ideas.

Like, I have every reason to level the other tanks but absolutely 0 desire to do so. Now if in some timeline WAR was bottom tier for the last 5+ years would I feel the same? Hard to say. I've always played WAR, ever since 1st coil in ARR when I had to pop vitality potions as an extra CD lol. At the very least I've no desire for a "rework", and I don't get the impression any other WAR does either (with the exception of those who seem to want a rework to tank gameplay in general).

Regarding the actual conversation taking place..

TBH it sounds to me like this is largely just beating a dead horse. There are good suggestions here by many people but it ultimately boils down to the direction SE decides to take. If dungeons are just meant to be casual ~15 min encounters then there's little hope of implementing any interesting or substantial changes along these lines. Personally I get the impression this is the direction they lean towards.

Healers can complain about not having much to do if tanks heal too much, but what are they going to do otherwise? There's no additional layer of gameplay that exists, just dps or heal. AST at least has cards to play with, but even that's pretty shallow engagement. And it's not much different on the tank front. But I see a big difference in that a core responsibility of tanking is to alleviate the burden on a healer. Maybe BW is too strong right now, but it certainly fulfills that function and it's both rewarding and enjoyable to execute your role responsibilities (even if, yes, it too is a bit shallow). So healers can say we're taking away from their job but any change would take away an aspect of our role too.

It just circles back to what is the level of challenge, if any, SE intends for any given content to have. If the general direction is to keep things on the casual side for dungeons, and empower tanks to greatly alleviate the burden on a healer for efficient completion, then indeed they need to make sure each tank has equally viable and effective options for doing so. I mean, I for one would like a reason to finish leveling and maybe even occasionally play as another tank. Even if WAR was significantly nerfed I don't think I would switch, the other tanks would presumably still be lacking what they lack now so really there'd still be no point.

[AmiableApkallu]

But I see a big difference in that a core responsibility of tanking is to alleviate the burden on a healer.

The core responsibility of tanking is to hold aggro, to direct incoming damage towards yourself instead of letting it hit the party, or failing that, to try and reduce it.

Restoring HP to yourself or the party has nothing to do with that. That's for the healers to take care of. That's why they exist in the tank-healer-DPS trinity.

[Supersnow845]

The core responsibility of tanking is to hold aggro, to direct incoming damage towards yourself instead of letting it hit the party, or failing that, to try and reduce it.

Restoring HP to yourself or the party has nothing to do with that. That's for the healers to take care of. That's why they exist in the tank-healer-DPS trinity.

This is basically the core reason why tanks and healers will never agree on how to fix healers

Tanks think that being an off healer is part of their role design while healers believe that tanks should hold agro and allow them to heal

[Shurrikhan]

This is basically the core reason why tanks and healers will never agree on how to fix healers

Tanks think that being an off healer is part of their role design while healers believe that tanks should hold agro and allow them to heal

Meanwhile, I'd like tanks to be mostly about supporting the party through managing the targeting and indirectly/thereby the positioning and damage-efficiency of enemies while spreading out to thwarting/countering the effect of enemy offenses in varying ways and tanks to mostly be about supporting the party through almost any way possible outside of (to any degree more than dps) manipulating enemies through first and foremost manipulating their targeting, with uniquely few limitations on their ability to sustain the party against damage taken.

That is, to me, tanks should have a fairly narrow keel from which the task expands organically while healers should, as support, be supplementary to nearly every purpose and not necessarily even the primary source of healing but simply the one least limited in how and when they can heal.

But, even if you were to take a Priest-type job specializing in mind-cluckery, cloth armor or otherwise, if their output comes primarily through manipulating enemy targeting and includes at least a decent portion of actions that is naturally synergetic to that condition* (being able to lead them about, keep their attacks from striking allies unnecessarily, and use personals indirectly towards the whole raid's benefit, etc.), then yeah, that's a tank.

Granted, if it were just an unrelated debuff active whenever the enemy is targeting the player, rather than anything the player actively leverages, before even worrying about whether that'd be "tank"-like or not, we'd probably want to consider whether it's quite simply anti-fun...

I've never understood why it has to be a matter of proportioning capacities...

Heck, I wouldn't even mind the perfectly coordinated 8-DPS party being able to squeak by tank and heal checks or a Hemomancer DPS being able to out-burst-heal a Healer when sacrificing its damage, at cost and inflexibly, to that purpose, so long as overall, the traditional comp tends to be quicker or nearly as quick and at much lower stress, skill, and risk required.

...I just want to see roughly equal value overall. Both across the jobs of the given role and between those roles.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[whiskeybravo]

The core responsibility of tanking is to hold aggro, to direct incoming damage towards yourself instead of letting it hit the party, or failing that, to try and reduce it.

I specifically did not use the phrase "the core responsibility" because it is indeed one of a couple. But (holding aggro and directing damage to oneself) is as simple as activating an aura. Considering they just did a round of increasing tank aggro it doesn't seem they're interested in bringing this back as a meaningful mechanic, assuming it ever really was. And "to try to reduce (damage)" is included in "alleviating the burden on a healer", whether by mitigation or restoration. There's no real functional difference between TBN shielding and BW healing back incoming damage. Yet one is OK and the other is not according to your phrasing?

This is basically the core reason why tanks and healers will never agree on how to fix healers

Tanks think that being an off healer is part of their role design while healers believe that tanks should hold agro and allow them to heal

I've never considered off-healing as part of my role design as a tank. There are either support or survival abilities plain and simple. Could they be abused? Sure, lots of thing have been and still are, in this game and many others. So yes things need to be continually analyzed and rebalanced accordingly. But realistically there's probably never going to be a point where healers only heal and tanks only hold aggro. And to be honest there probably shouldn't be.

[Shurrikhan]

How is this any different from a good healer being able to cover for a bad tank. Would that make healer kits too strong? Or is that healers are supposed to cover for bad tanks but not the other way around?

Unless you count resurrection as "covering for" a bad tank... a tank, at present, can more often render GCD healing (and frequently even oGCD healing) redundant than a healer can render tank mitigation (and self-healing) redundant.

Apart from that, though, I'd agree.

Similarly...

There's no real functional difference between TBN shielding and BW healing back incoming damage. Yet one is OK and the other is not according to your phrasing?

Correct. The difference is simply in practical output, one being far stronger over time than the other, especially but not only in dungeons and especially but not only if using Nascent Flash over Bloodwhetting. Because, barring massive prior mistakes, no tank would ever die for having their sustain dealt after a tankbuster (as healing) instead of against it (as mitigation), there's no advantage to the latter to compensate for the first simply being a significantly greater total.

BW is a bit problematic... because even in single-target and with only Bloodwhetting* it tends to do over double the total sustain of analogs like, say, TBN + Oblation, in a kit that already did more sustain than everyone else's -- not simply because it's healing instead of mit, or even because it scales largely with player stats instead of incoming damage (after all, TBN is even more self-scaled).

* With Nascent only, that can go up to 300+% of TBN + Oblation, since you're duplicating the healing.

[AmiableApkallu]

There's no real functional difference between TBN shielding and BW healing back incoming damage.

They are functionally different like day and night.

A DRK whose TBN keeps breaking will eventually see their HP depleted to zero in the absence of any HP restoration. There is no such guaranteed outcome with WAR's BW.

A DRK whose TBN doesn't break means that the DRK has traded damage for survivability. There are no such tradeoffs with BW.

How is this any different from a good healer being able to cover for a bad tank.

Because a good healer can't actually cover for a bad tank -- not indefinitely, not in scenarios outside of pulling one trash mob at a time.

The healer's resources will be drained faster than they recover. At some point, the tank dies to lack of healing, or the rate of healing being less than the rate of incoming damage. Then it's a matter of hoping the tank gets raised and retakes aggro before the squishy jobs get beaten to a pulp.

[Kabooa]

I specifically did not use the phrase "the core responsibility" because it is indeed one of a couple. But (holding aggro and directing damage to oneself) is as simple as activating an aura. Considering they just did a round of increasing tank aggro it doesn't seem they're interested in bringing this back as a meaningful mechanic, assuming it ever really was. And "to try to reduce (damage)" is included in "alleviating the burden on a healer", whether by mitigation or restoration. There's no real functional difference between TBN shielding and BW healing back incoming damage. Yet one is OK and the other is not according to your phrasing?

TBN cannot indefinitely sustain someone. It does not restore their health, and it scales according to max HP, making it much weaker on a non-tank. It comes with an upfront cost and an opportunity cost, as using it on someone else denies its usage on the Dark Knight.

Compare this to Bloodwhetting and Nascent. It restores their health, and the health restore is balanced around Tank HP, whom have 50% more HP than the DPS. It provides a shield, again balanced on tank HP, and restores up to 1600 potency, which at ~1.8% tank hp per 100 equates to around 44% of a non-tank's health, not counting the ability to crit. The Warrior doesn't give up the use for itself, as outside of extremely hard hitting tankbusters they do not miss the mitigation and still receive the healing they provide, doubling up on it at effectively no cost compared to the closest contemporary Paladin, who must stock up gauge to achieve a weaker result.

Finally, the moment another strikable target is in range the healing doubles, doubling up the doubling Nascent already provides.

Do you see why one is fine, and the other isn't?