Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Syzygian]

Yeah, no offense but this is why I wanted to make a thread that doesn't revolve around insane ideas. That's almost 50% uptime on FoF and you could never have anybody but a DRK MT considering every third skill would cost 0 TP and they would get a third of a Trick Attack by MTing.

-Excuse me sir, but its not insane, 50% uptime on a 30% damage boost is the same as 100% uptime on a 15% damage boost, which is what DRK has. Then while OTing, PLD gets extra autos, and DRK gets Blood Weapon. DA POWER OF DA MATH. What's insane when you factor in WAR is that WAR only needs Maim and Deliverance (not including Abandon crit stacks) to match those percentages. (-20%+15% for DRK and PLD, -25%+20% for WAR, and then each get (roughly) +5% extra in their OT stance) But it has Berserk, Internal Release, Abandon stacks, its own slashing debuff, a 500 potency skill usable multiple times per minute, and no GCD/resource cost of stance dancing.
-And okay, so zero TP might be a bit much. I actually don't think DRK needs any real TP solution while MTing without dropping Grit. WAR has to switch out of Defiance to use Equilibrium for TP, and Blood Weapon is about a 60TP gain every 40 seconds. Blood Weapon slows our TP consumption considerably, its pretty equaled out, and most good DRKs are getting very skilled at finding 15 seconds out of every 40 where it is safe to drop Grit during raids. But you mentioned TP in your OP so I was really just kinda catering to you. Sorry =/
-And a third of a Trick Attack isn't much more of a raid DPS contribution than a 100% uptime slashing debuff. Its certainly more reasonable than people's constant requests to make Reprisal not a reprisal. But okay, sure, maybe a bit OP.

I do agree WAR should be adjusted, but your adjustments really just nerf their MT DPS and cement them even more into an OT role, which is the last thing we want for WAR. (The easiest and best way to adjust WAR IMO is just to lower their DPS cap to ~5% lower than the other two tanks and fix Defiance so Lustrate isn't crap on WAR. That would piss WAR players off, but it would preserve the WAR play-style more than trying to tweak the buffs and there's less risk of screwing up and making WAR legitimately bad than if you start messing with their mechanics).

If you agree with me then why do you seem so offended? Compared to the nerfs in my other thread (which I admit I totally just pulled out of my ass to see what people would say, because I'm sick of the deluge of buff PLD threads I figured I'd see what people did when you come from the other direction) they were pretty tame. I actually don't think most WARs are that upset about mostly OTing now that they have Deliverance and Fell Cleave. I mean... my fingers may not be completely on the pulse of the people, but uhh... yeah.

And make WAR dps 5% lower than the other tanks? WAT? That's WAY worse than anything I ever suggested. The whole IDEA of WAR is a sick DEEPZ tank! And if you mean 5% lower before all their buffs are taken into account, well, that's what we have already. WAR has the lowest combo potencies of any of the tanks, overall, but a ludicrous amount of DPS buffs.

I realize this is an unpleasant post, but we want balance, not to run WAR into the ground. I think you just have a vendetta against WAR.

Way to get personal.

I played WAR as a secondary in 2.x, and raid with one now. I hardly have a vendetta. I'm just reacting to what I've observed, and again, no change I ever suggested would have put the DPS TANK's DPS at FIVE PERCENT BELOW the other two NOT-AS-DPS-TANKS. Even I think that's a bit brutal.

[eagledorf]

DPS TANK's DPS at FIVE PERCENT BELOW the other two NOT-AS-DPS-TANKS.

A WAR adds almost 10% to the other tank's DPS so here's the reasoning.

PLD+DRK=100+100=200
PLD/DRK+WAR=110+95=205

A WAR would still bring more DPS than running the other two. (In actuality, only like 80% of your DPS is buffed, so it would be like 203 for PLD/DRK+WAR, but still higher than leaving out the WAR).

Even if your DRK is MT:

DRK MT+WAR=88+95=183>180=PLD+DRK

With NIN:
PLD+DRK+NIN=220+NIN
PLD/DRK+WAR=205+NIN+α (NIN will gain a few percent DPS by riding off of Eye)

As you can see, lowering WAR DPS to 5% lower than the other two is actually almost perfectly balanced while retaining WAR's DPS utility and without messing up the play-style at all.

The idea of a DPS tank needs to go. That's why WAR was useless in 2.0. There is no DPS tank and no defense tank. A tank needs the defense to survive, then all that matters is DPS. Failing to bring either is no good.

Excuse me sir, but its not insane, 50% uptime on a 30% damage boost is the same as 100% uptime on a 15% damage boost, which is what DRK has

The problem is with things as they are PLD DPS is very close as OT to DRK DPS (effectively the same), so this buff would push PLD maybe 6-7% over DRK (maybe more since then every Scorn and every Spirits Within should fall under FoF). At the same time, it fails to fix the gap in DPS as MT or when swapping in and out of tank stance.

[Syzygian]

The idea of a DPS tank needs to go. That's why WAR was useless in 2.0. There is no DPS tank and no defense tank. A tank needs the defense to survive, then all that matters is DPS.

Ah, now I see. And I agree with you 100%!

However, its not going anywhere because Yoshi P came out and (in a complete contradiction of your statement) said that DPS is part of WAR's utility, effectively giving them the most valuable utility there is. So really, when discussing nerfs for WAR, which may or may not ever happen, we have to consider the fact that the devs are unlikely to go back on that design. I feel like if anything PLD and DRK need some sort of raid DPS boost, albeit slight (nothing like Battle Litany or Trick Attack, save those things for actual DPS), if they're going to give WAR so much personal DPS, that way WAR is like the MNK of tanks, and DRK and PLD are like DRG and NIN.

Even that is unlikely though, cause then DPS would be part of DRK and PLD's utility as well, albiet raid DPS rather than personal DPS. This is really the only reason I've entertained the thought of defensive nerfs for WAR instead, very slight ones, that is, since I've been keeping in the back of my head all this time that WAR's DPS is probably here to stay, at least as an OT, and if DRK or PLD get any buffs to DPS they'll likely be raid DPS utilities, or narrowing the gap between their OT and MT DPS.

The problem is with things as they are PLD DPS is very close as OT to DRK DPS (effectively the same), so this buff would push PLD maybe 6-7% over DRK (maybe more since then every Scorn and every Spirits Within should fall under FoF). At the same time, it fails to fix the gap in DPS as MT or when swapping in and out of tank stance.

I wouldn't worry too much about this, as most of DRK's extra DPS is not in offensive cooldowns but in off-GCD weaving. They have 6x as many oGCD damaging abilities as WAR and 3x as much as PLD. One reason why I think tanks will never be "homogenized" is because DRK is so consistently fast-paced and active, and WAR is slow but heavy hitting, with PLD somewhere in the middle. Regardless of how they deal/take damage, they all have very different pacing.

Assuming you have very poor parry RNG and only get 3 Low Blows, DRK has-
2 Plunges (400)
3 Low Blows (300)
2 Reprisals (420)
1.5 Salted Earths (787.5)
1 Carve & Spit (450)
3 Dark Passengers (450)
...off GCD every minute. Every minute that's almost 2800 extra potency, 2400ish without Reprisals, off the global cooldown, while maintaining FoF-esque damage through Darkside and Blood Weapon being roughly equivalent to the DPS increase from Sword Oath, not to mention Blood Weapon's higher MP returns enabling you to push out 4 DA Souleaters per minute while keeping Scourge/Delirium up. And then all their potencies on their combos are higher as well. It'd take more than cutting the recast of FoF to bring them up to DRK DPS, but it'd at least make them competitive. In fact considering everything DRK and WAR have, now that I think of it, FoF not being on a 60s recast is straight-up kicking them when they're down, imo.

[RapBreon]

snip

This seems like a supporty route for a class sold as a solo brute. Seems thematically more suited for the PLD (which I support). I like the idea of a DPS tank; it's my 'power fantasy'. But this needs to translate into results or it 'feels' hollow.

I do think thematic design is as important numerical balancing in a co-operative fantasy MMO.

[Brian_]

No, you can have a brawler. The archetype is perfectly fine.

The point is that in the end, your tanks must be balanced in terms of contributed raid DPS, survivability, and enmity sufficiency. How they reach that end is where the flavor exists.

So you can have a WAR deal the most individual damage to fit the brawler archetype. The problem is you cannot also give them the most raid DPS support, too.

PLD is also fine as a "defensive tank." But, the problem is you cannot also give them the least raid DPS support or else you have the current imbalance.

It's about balancing raid DPS output IF the meta is centered around raid DPS.

I'm not saying this is the solution, but going on the previous example of Storm's Eye's damage contribution, if you removed Eye from WAR and gave it to PLD, assuming that PLDs do 10% less damage than either WAR or DRK, then the result is 3 tanks that deal the same damage regardless of their pairing (excluding double pairings). But, two of the tanks deal more individual damage to fit their fantasy while one does less damage but makes up for it through raid DPS support.

Back in 2.X, PLDs did more individual damage than WARs when in Sword Oath. But, when you factored in Storm's Eye, WAR DPS contribution was balanced. Now, PLDs do less individual damage AND they have no raid DPS support.

[eagledorf]

If you removed Eye from WAR and gave it to PLD

This would also work fine, but the problem with that is now PLD has three things to juggle and WAR has 2. It sort of reverses the play-style of the two jobs. I don't know, in my opinion keeping WAR mechanically as is is preferable to preserving the flavor since this change means Maim and their OT hate management would need to also be adjusted significantly to work. I know a lot of WAR would prefer to keep high DPS, but actually I suspect this change is more likely end up screwing WAR than just adjusting DPS down.

Your RNG has to be REALLY bad to not proc a Reprisal inside of 20s with close to a 50-60% parry rate

In a fight like Twintania with a long cast bar and slow autos it's actually not at all unlikely. If we assume you have 4 chances to parry it's like a 7% chance you'll just fail to parry and die and Dark Dance is only 20% extra parry chance so you need to stack a lot of parry to get above 50% parry chance. (Actually, Twintania you would die even with Reprisal since that fight was tuned assuming Halone is always up, but that's a different issue.)

[RapBreon]

This would also work fine, but the problem with that is now PLD has three things to juggle and WAR has 2. It sort of reverses the play-style of the two jobs. I don't know, in my opinion keeping WAR mechanically as is is preferable to preserving the flavor since this change means Maim and their OT hate management would need to also be adjusted significantly to work. I know a lot of WAR would prefer to keep high DPS, but actually I suspect this change is more likely to screw WAR than just reducing DPS.

You could just bake the effect into Halone or Goring. Possibly add it to Royal Authorateh, but then you would have to juggle it.

For WAR maybe split Storm's Path double effect? Give the heal to SE or some-such. Or make it the highest potency combo instead of BB.

I suck with specific ideas but. So there maybe interactions I'm not seeing.

[eagledorf]

snip

Yeah, it could definitely done pretty much the way you suggest (making BB lower potency than Eye would be better since the self-heal is pretty iffy). Attaching the Eye effect to Goring Blade would work very well for Paladin. Still, leaving it on WAR means a NIN has the choice of saving TP and letting the WAR change their rotation for more DPS or more mitigation or the NIN can ride off Eye for max DPS so it's much more interesting mechanically. Putting it on PLD is likely to end up being 100% uptime since you'll always choose to keep Goring and Eye up. It could definitely be done, but I think the quality of gameplay will have to take a hit compared to just nerfing DPS.

I suppose it's a matter of what is more important to players, the dynamics of the job or the numbers that players that don't parse (all PS players and any player that doesn't violate the ToS) can't even see to go with the flavor. I think if you keep Fell Cleave potency so it still crits for fairly big numbers, the vast majority of players won't care or even know if overall DPS has fallen to be the lowest tank DPS as long as mathematically the total DPS added is still competitive. Min-maxers will know that the buff adds enough DPS to more than compensate and casual players will still get cool 7k+ crits.

[RapBreon]

Yeah, it could definitely done pretty much the way you suggest (making Eye higher potency than BB would be better since the self-heal is pretty iffy). Attaching the Eye effect to Goring Blade would work very well for Paladin. Still, leaving it on WAR means a NIN has the choice of saving TP and letting the WAR change their rotation for more DPS or more mitigation or the NIN can ride off Eye for max DPS so it's much more interesting mechanically. Putting it on PLD is likely to end up being 100% uptime since you'll always choose to keep Goring and Eye up. It could definitely be done, but I think the quality of game-play will have to take a hit compared to just nerfing DPS.

I suppose it's a matter of what is more important to players, the dynamics of the job or the numbers that players that don't parse can't even see to go with the flavor. I think if you keep Fell Cleave potency high so it still crits for big numbers, the vast majority of players won't care or notice if overall DPS has fallen to be the lowest tank DPS as long as mathematically the total DPS added is still competitive.

Yeah, I think you're right in that respect. I never considered NIN too much. There is good interaction there (I don't get to play WAR in raids T.T). I guess something will have to be sacrificed ultimately.

As for Fell Cleave, that's sneaky!

[eagledorf]

Well, no if the devs put forth some effort I'm sure we can have our cake and eat it too pretty much exactly as you suggested with some tweaks. There's probably a way to give PLD the slashing debuff and still have it be interesting for both PLD and WAR and that would probably be the best of all worlds for everybody.

I just don't know that I trust them to get it right in one try...or two...I like to think they could still adjust DPS outputs though.