Tank Balance

[SpookyGhost]

If you disagree, then you know nothing about game design. That's a simple 100% fact.

All this would do is make tanking 10x easier than it is now. At least with DPS maximization you're putting yourself at risk if you don't play correctly. Choosing between STR and VIT before being maximum ilvl is poor game design, but it has nothing to do with the tanks themselves and all to do with the encounters.

The decision itself also isn't a casual route - there is a choice being made by the player that actually gives them a custom build for each encounter, and tanks are the only one who can do this. If STR accessories weren't an option and fights were tuned harder, you'd literally just take whatever thing had VIT on it until the cows come home. That's extremely linear and casual, which is what every other job is going for (I'm a MNK I take STR accessories, I'm a SMN I take INT accessories, etc.). Tanks are the lone exception due to the design of the encounters not being tuned high enough to warrant full VIT accessories at a low ilvl.

Also, RE: WAR MT vs PLD/DRK OT for DPS, I've always assumed WAR MT was better despite the outrageous damage of 3x FC. With a NIN, you can actually still 3x FC and the RI/Vengeance you use will actually do something (unless you pre-Infuriate > etc. then RIP Vengeance for the next minute and a half). There's also the advantage of WAR's highest enmity combo also being it's highest damaging combo, while PLD/DRK's highest enmity combo is their lowest damaging combo. The major crux of WAR MT in Deliverance is that you no longer have IB (as pointed out) and PLD/DRK still have their entire CD kit - but IB is really only relevant when a tank buster is coming. In which case you can plan ahead of time, enter Defiance ~20s before it happens w/ 5 Wrath, Unchained, build 5 Wrath, IB, then drop Defiance.

[Cidolfas86]

Stuff here.

Honestly I like the way tank accessories are playing out. Its the only set of classes in the game with some variation/itemization on their equipment. Everyone else is so linear, but with tanks at least I get to pick and choose a little if nothing else.

But yeah I agree that if you take DPS away from tanks it'll make tanking that much more boring and drive people away, since tanking in this game isn't all that hard to begin with. There's a reason why most modern MMOs have moved away from meat wall turtle tanks.

[Donjo]

As a preface, it is a known design decision that all accessories are wearable by all battle classes. Since this is universal, it cannot be logically surmised that this design exists specifically to allow Tanks to swap around STR and VIT.

If we want to ask if the existence of Strength Tanks is good design, bad design, or a completely unintended situation that arose from the above seemingly harmless design choice, we should look at things from two angles. First, what is a Tank's "main stat" as best the game has defined for us? Second, every job has a genuine use for more than one of the six Attributes(STR, DEX, VIT, INT, MND, PIE). How does a Tank's relationship with Attributes differ from everyone else's?

Main Stat

I do not believe that there is anywhere within the game or documentation surrounding it that explicitly tells each class/job "Hey. This is your most important stat. You want this one." This is probably bad. So what do we have? Well, let's first take a non-Tank example: the Monk. It is generally accepted that a Monk's main stat is Strength. How does the game suggest this to a Pugilist/Monk?

- With no items equipped or Bonus Attributes allocated, Strength is their natural highest Attribute.
- When in a party, their Party Bonus increases Strength.
- When rolling on gear, they can only roll Need on gear which contains Strength.

Now, let's examine these aspects of the design as they relate to the three Tanks.

- With no items equipped or Bonus Attributes allocated, Vitality is their natural highest Attribute.
- When in a party, their Party Bonus increases Vitality.
- When rolling on gear, they can only roll Need on gear which contains Vitality.

When it comes to Tanks, the signs point to Vitality being the main stat. Another thing worth noting is that if you do attempt to roll Need on an accessory that does not contain your main stat, it doesn't just say no. It explicitly tells you that "This item is not suited for your class or job". Pretty harsh.

So... Joe McTank bops through to 60, seeing the signs that Vitality is a good idea, and then encounters Pug McPuggington who asks why he's wearing yucky Fending Accessories and tells him that Slaying is better. To which Joe goes wait: The accessories with Strength that the game actually flat out said were not for me are what I'm supposed to be wearing? Uh... *Heroic BSOD*

I'd personally classify the "accessory problem" as an unintended situation. The potentially bad design comes later on.

Attributes and You

We all know that Tanks like to fight over Strength and Vitality. They fight over this harder than they fight actual enemies.

...But the other Jobs use Vitality too! Why aren't they fighting like this as well?

Well, that's because Vitality isn't the main stat of any other job. To everyone else, Vitality is decidedly secondary. They'll always naturally get enough to survive what's coming and once that number is hit they don't have to worry one iota about it anymore because any additional gains in the stat will not come at a sacrifice to their main stat. Well, unless you run off and wear a Fending Accessory... but the game says those aren't suited for you. Healers get the bonus round with Piety management, but that's fuzzier because Piety is treated more like a secondary stat(or property, as the character sheet defines them) than an attribute. Still, their goal is "get enough to not run out of MP" and pursuing more does not come at a cost to Mind, their main stat.

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it. It is the only main stat that becomes less useful at certain thresholds. This is not good. The game pushes Vitality at Tanks, yet they're the only jobs for which the stat they're pushed toward isn't unequivocally the best stat to keep increasing at all times.

Basically, we have a situation where one of these things is not like the others. This is a red flag; a probable example of bad design.

Other Observations

- It's been pushed around very recently in this thread that the "one stat to rule them all" paradigm is a approach to gear design that is casual friendly. Now, SE has done MMOs before and has obviously taken inspirations in order to make FFXIV. They, like any other seasoned MMO dev, should know that Tanks tend to comprise the lowest population of players. Isn't it unreasonable, then, for them to purposely give Tanks the least casual gearing process of any job? This is why I believe this whole thing to be an accident more than anything else.
- It is true that Tanking tends to attract people of a certain mindset. Allowing Tanks to deal more damage can attract people who have different mindsets to the jobs. Mindsets that, naturally, clash with the mindsets of the first group. They clash rather... violently. This is the most horrifying result of the fight between Strength and Vitality and the most pressing reason that SE do something about it. It's fortunate that people appear to be starting to lean toward supporting "best of both worlds" solutions that allow both mindsets to have their cake and eat it too, as it could lead SE to make a change that doesn't drive many people from the role.
- In order to properly balance the Tanks against each other and encounters, it may first be necessary to balance them against the other roles.

[Whiston]

All this would do is make tanking 10x easier than it is now. At least with DPS maximization you're putting yourself at risk if you don't play correctly.

And, lo and behold, it seems the playerbase has embraced this playstyle also.
It makes it interesting, engaging and fun.

For those around for the 2.0-2.2 ish era, this meta didn't really exist.
This was also a period that significantly lacked tanks in the playerbase, to the point that SE implemented multiple incentives to try and get more people playing the classes.

Now, I feel, the jobs are pretty well balanced in the playerbase and we don't have the severe deficiencies we used to see.
Anyone who thinks we should go back to that is doing the entire community an injustice.

[carbonx]

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it.

I think this nails it. VIT is really only useful to survive a fight, but after that it's a fluff stat. At some point, people realized they would be better off putting more into Strength, which continues to provide benefit.

However, this itself causes problems, since it gets rid of the VIT safety blanket. This leads to the horror stories of "STR tanks" that don't pop CDs and eat shit while complaining about healers; they are impossible to keep up and actually need more VIT. Then, you run into someone with the same gear, who uses appropriate CDs and is easy to keep up. This build creates a larger gap in skill than previously existed when all tanks spec'd VIT.

Personally, I don't think that extra gap is a bad thing, but no other role has it.

[SpookyGhost]

For those around for the 2.0-2.2 ish era, this meta didn't really exist.

It's actually existed since 2.0, but was only pursued by the higher echelon of tanks. Gryphonskin accessories were pretty much the best accessories we ever got - i70, STR + VIT + DEX, easily capped with plenty of room to meld other secondaries. These were ideal for everything up to T5 MT (when you had more gear, they were ideal for that as well).

STR was a huge benefit for 2.0 WAR, as our only form of "mitigation" was our self heal in IB, which scaled from STR. It also boosted Bloodbath + Berserk + IR + Unchained healing (super good in T4), and though still pitiful it boosted Storm's Path healing as well.

2.2/SCoB was the biggest boon for STR tanking and where melded accessories saw their biggest use. This followed into 2.4 with FCoB and eventually saw it's way into every tank's mind in 3.0 due to the popularity of Xeno.

It's sort of a popular misconception that STR tanking just showed up randomly in FCoB and in 3.0, it's been here the whole time and it's always been as useful as it is now. I personally don't have a problem with STR tanking, but I think if we went the VIT only route we'd need something akin to WoW or Tera's tanking model - active mitigation. Auto attacks currently hit for 3k~3.5k (5.k-ish crit) in Savage, which is essentially nothing. If we had abilities or even a stat (hello Parry wherefore art thou) that mitigated larger incoming damage to the reasonable level it's at now, then we'd have a reason to stack VIT. Obviously Parry doesn't work because it's RNG (even at a high %, larger spikes of damage randomly = nonono) but if it were shifted to something like +Defense then we'd have a worthwhile tank stat.

Anyway, it's really weird that SE hasn't done anything about this tbh. They know it exists but they really just can't seem to be bothered to fix it. Donjo's post implies it's an accident that the STR focus exists, but it seems like they're okay with it sticking around. I dunno, I feel like they forgot what tanks actually are meant to do and instead made DPS that occasionally press a CD to mitigate big damage.

[Ashkendor]

Tanks should get like a massive nerf to their DPS and a massive boost to their enmity gains.

This would get rid of 90% of the false tanks who only tank so they can DPS. Only the true metalheads will remain when the scrubs who bandwagoned tank realize they have to actually tank.

What I'm hearing is: hey, let's take the one role that has real build options and dumb it down.

Making fending an almost necessity to be equipped. The fact that tanks can get away with wearing slaying accessories shows poor game design that's obviously heavily favoring a more casual player.

No, there's definitely a skill gap there. Healing bad tanks in Slaying gear is a nightmare. If I'm gonna have to suffer through healing a bad tank, I'd rather have them in Fending gear. If the tank is good, it's academic whether they're in Fending or Slaying gear because a good tank knows how to mitigate damage properly. This of course doesn't necessarily apply to endgame content, which (depending on gear levels) may have a higher HP threshold than Slaying gear provides (I go 3 Slaying 2 Fending in Savage right now).

If you disagree, then you know nothing about game design. That's a simple 100% fact.

I'm pretty sure there's a logical fallacy in here somewhere.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

They could also just add strength to vitality gear and vitality to all the other pieces of gear.

Anyway, it's really weird that SE hasn't done anything about this tbh. They know it exists but they really just can't seem to be bothered to fix it. Donjo's post implies it's an accident that the STR focus exists, but it seems like they're okay with it sticking around. I dunno, I feel like they forgot what tanks actually are meant to do and instead made DPS that occasionally press a CD to mitigate big damage.

Tanks are not just there to sit and take hits. They do a lot of things and should also be doing damage as well. Just like bards don't just turn on a song and go afk.

[Whiston]

They could also just add strength to vitality gear and vitality to all the other pieces of gear.



Tanks are not just there to sit and take hits. They do a lot of things and should also be doing damage as well. Just like bards don't just turn on a song and go afk.

I think this is a common request lately, but it also takes the risk/reward out of tanking too.
I'm not necessarily saying that's a horrible thing, and it would probably drop a bunch of the STR tank complaints that are rampant on this forum, either from bad healers being unable to heal bad tanks trying it out, or from bad tanks getting jealous over the tanks that make this work.


It would certainly be an easy out for the debate, but it would also make every tank significantly more powerful than they currently are (with the possible exception of full melded crafted accessory tanks, depending on what the proposed balance would be). This would probably lead to slight adjustments to every current piece of content as it negates some of the design intent.

Again, not saying it's a bad idea, but it seems like a bit of an unnecessary hassle and would require further balancing as a result.

Also RIP crafted gear.

[Alahra]

Anyway, it's really weird that SE hasn't done anything about this tbh. They know it exists but they really just can't seem to be bothered to fix it. Donjo's post implies it's an accident that the STR focus exists, but it seems like they're okay with it sticking around. I dunno, I feel like they forgot what tanks actually are meant to do and instead made DPS that occasionally press a CD to mitigate big damage.

They probably don't *like* it but have decided the development time needed to address it wouldn't be worth the gain, as I imagine they'd actually want to keep tank potential for damage roughly the same (given their stance on healer DPS in progression, they probably want people to be able to push tank DPS just the same as healers can). That would mean not only a retooling of tank stats, but more than likely adjustments to tank stances and most of their abilities, too.