True fault of current tank design: Lack of identity

[Carighan]

And if a tankbuster fell during the 30 seconds of downtime?

I mean the current short-CDs are on a 25s CD except TBN. Naturally, no tankbuster chains faster than that. So it'd be 0 issue.

[Supersnow845]

I mean the current short-CDs are on a 25s CD except TBN. Naturally, no tankbuster chains faster than that. So it'd be 0 issue.

Did you read their post, they said delete all defensives and bake it into a forced up and downtime phasing system

[Carighan]

Did you read their post, they said delete all defensives and bake it into a forced up and downtime phasing system

Yeah but my point was that so long as the interval is 25-30 seconds, the "but what if in-between" is irrelevant, as nothing happens more frequently than that. It's the shortest interval the devs baked into tank-specific damage. I get the underlying problem as it restricts fight design, but the devs gave even TBN 15s CD, as if that has any use. They're obsessed with not challenging players too frequently.

...

Aaaand now I just realized the person you quotes said proc Inner Release, as in, automatically. Damn I look stupid now. >.> But yeah, that system would be workable if it's manually triggered tbh.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

..snip

Good read. However I think the issue goes beyond homogenization and more into the cheat the devs are using to design fights for balance. the short of it is that the dev's are removing factors that can drastically effect the outcome or flow of a fight. In doing so they also remove the skill ceiling for doing high-end encounters.

To expound on that - notice how often since endwalker bosses auto-position themselves? Its because the mechanics are designed with the expectation that the solution to the puzzle is often relatively static and predictable.

I will use M1s as a example - the side to side cleave will ALWAYS be launched from a static location which allows folks to preposition well in advance to it going on - making the boss location *almost* irrelevant; If boss positioning was less static then tanks overall would have more of a impact on boss damage due to being able to ideally position the boss to allow dps to maximize their damage - but then you would see damage also suffer if the tank poorly positioned that boss and so SE made it simple and just has the boss auto-position. I used M1s as a example and to explain the "almost" I will use the example of the clones following mouser 1 - note the difference in damage if your Tank knows the locations of the clone mechanics and positions quickly; the damage gain is one of the few situations where tanks have a significant impact on raid damage and I would like to see more of that (another good example is when you have a tank running around in circles and positional become a nightmare but thats generally folks trolling I find)

[Ayan_Calvesse]

(Cont because 3000 word limit sucks)
To speak to your suggestions.
WAR - I agree; simply make them a big health bar that can be filled easily due to healing augmentations; I would probably remove the 30% mit and simply give them a bigger health pool; I think the way "other" classes interact with tanks generally feels the "same" with the noteworthy exception of DRK. The idea is that Warriors use Bloodwhetting and their melee skills to replenish that HP deficit.

DRK - I would focus more on the TBN gameplay and remove its mana cost - instead I would have TBN generate a HP bubble that grows with your damage done (yes putting a upper cap on it) the idea being that the more damage and solid gameplay a DRK is doing; the bigger "encroaching darkness" or whatever the buff would be; creating new gameplay opportunities that at a glance look difference but really only upset the applecart slightly - while opening up avenues for DRK gameplay (such as shielding MT while working as OT without spending the valuable MP resource) I would go so far as to even make it function as a "explosion" when TBN gets popped. This would allow DRK to function as a "drain" without just becoming WAR and leaving Bloodwhetting alone.

PLD - I would focus more on the Shield block and Clemency gameplay - our confitieor chain feels very much like the Delrium chain imo and it feels wrong.

GNB - The "selfish" tank; that said I would like to see GNB survivablity have perhaps more of a trade off for its expected higher damage then it does. How you do that? Hell if I know - keep in mind every tank should be able to MT or OT every fight.

[Absurdity]

Inner Release and Fell is really where things went wrong, what was once something of a reward for warriors has now been dissected thoroughly and bastardized in so many incredibly similar ways that it's no suprise this happened.

It's debatable whether or not Inner Release was the start of "press button, spam same ability X times" or if it was Paladin's Requiescat, considering IR required a lot more setup for the 6 Fell Cleaves pre-4.2.
I absolutely agree though that they have taken the, once novel, design idea way too far, especially because it requires so little effort nowadays that the "reward" lost all it's meaning.

[elioaiko]

As much as ppl don't want to say it, but aggro management pre ShB at least made you check the aggro meter. Managing aggro is so easy now, that it's quite shocking when tanks don't grab aggro (and it does happen sadly).

The devs really don't like balancing by unique playstyles bc ultimately they want them to function similiarly in damage, which means they have to do samey rotations with slight variations.

[Carighan]

It's debatable whether or not Inner Release was the start of "press button, spam same ability X times" or if it was Paladin's Requiescat, considering IR required a lot more setup for the 6 Fell Cleaves pre-4.2.
I absolutely agree though that they have taken the, once novel, design idea way too far, especially because it requires so little effort nowadays that the "reward" lost all it's meaning.

And I mean, I'm all in favor of autocombos instead of individual skills in the sadly very frequent case that there is no divergence in ability-path anyways (see for example Warriors just have 1-2-3 and 1-2-4 for their fillers, so there really just ought to be one button that goes 1-2-3 and another button that is available only after 2 and before pressing 3).

But in this case, since they're just autocombos with a CD, yeah... it's meh.

I wish there was... something.

Say for Paladins, a lot of their CD-based stuff I'd give longer CDs and every time you support somebody (heal them, actually reduce damage they take via Interception/Cover/Wings, such stuff) some cooldowns reduce based on how much damage you prevented/healed. For Warriors, every time you crit and every time your HP drops below 25% or so? Or just take damage. Whatever, basically make CDs unreliable. That'd at least do something with the concept, and on a bigger scale (say a 10 minute raid fight) the CD could still come out to be 60s, 45s, 120s, on average.

[Derio]

I think the over focus on DPS jobs has led to this. This past expansion they clearly put alot of effort into the two new jobs and not much effort into the rest which is concerning going into 8.0

They clearly did not have time to look at each job this past expansion which would explain DRK,SMN, MCH and other jobs that needed to be looked at.

[BabyYoda]

I think the over focus on DPS jobs has led to this. This past expansion they clearly put alot of effort into the two new jobs and not much effort into the rest which is concerning going into 8.0

They clearly did not have time to look at each job this past expansion which would explain DRK,SMN, MCH and other jobs that needed to be looked at.

But dark knight suffered for 7 whole years

They didn't have time for it?

I guess 15 years would be enough to change the job.