Lets nerf WAR :D

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

At this point with what some skilled DRKs are pulling off in savage, you'd have to nerf them too. PLD needs some raid DPS and its utilities fixed. I've come to the conclusion since authoring this thread that DRK and WAR are actually on very equal footing with one losing out to the other in certain circumstances and vice versa, and a specific nerf to either is highly unlikely to be in the cards. PLD just needs some love and it'll get it as hard as this forum is kicking and screaming about it. 3.2 is going to be a hell of a patch.

Square doesn't give a shit about Paladin, they never have since 2.1. It's only becoming more and more evident with how terrible they're trying to cover the issue up with band aid fixes left and right. We're not going to be fixed until everyone pushes Square's shit in and demands that they fix the situation they've created. 3.2 won't bring anything to Paladin as of right now, I guarantee it.

[Freyyy]

Square doesn't give a shit about Paladin, they never have since 2.1. It's only becoming more and more evident with how terrible they're trying to cover the issue up with band aid fixes left and right. We're not going to be fixed until everyone pushes Square's shit in and demands that they fix the situation they've created. 3.2 won't bring anything to Paladin as of right now, I guarantee it.

We'll see my friend, we'll see. If 3.2 doesn't bring anything for you Paladin fellows, I'm sure all the tank community including us, Dark Knights and Warriors, will scream for you.

[eagledorf]

Incidentally, to respond to the actual title of this thread:

I wouldn't like to see WAR "nerfed" directly, but I do want to see some reworking of the job to become more in line with the other tanks. Right now WAR is largely superior as an OT and due to the fact that they benefit from using their defensive buffs for DPS and do not benefit from tanking very much (the reflect from Vengeance being the only thing), they've basically become a glorified DPS that only tanks if they have to.

I think it would be a healthy thing to reduce the potency on Fell Cleave and move it elsewhere. Making Fell Cleave and Inner Beast closer in potency would encourage the stance-dance-to-mitigate play that SE says they imagined instead of the avoid-Defiance-like-cancer play we have now.

Right now WAR in terms of DPS has:

The highest OT DPS in vacuum
The lowest potency gain for tanking period
Unlimited TP

It would be good to adjust it not so much because OMG WAR OP, but because this tends to force the other tank into the MT role and WAR into the OT role. It would also be good if WAR had resource management, but I think we're more likely to see the other two tanks get more and more TP buffs gradually until none of the tanks ever run out of TP.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

We'll see my friend, we'll see. If 3.2 doesn't bring anything for you Paladin fellows, I'm sure all the tank community including us, Dark Knights and Warriors, will scream for you.

I'm gonna' call everyone's bluff on this statement. People are already dismissing the Paladin issue solely based on the Shield Swipe change. The community, in two months time, will have forgotten everything that has been talked about here, they'll forget every single piece of numerical data that has been shown directly exposing the issue, they'll forget just why Warrior fits in every single thing despite being just the "DPS tank" that's "more squishy" than the rest.

If I'm pissing people off, good, that means you won't forget now. That means you'll think back to when I said we're given nothing but band aid fixes or explicitly catered to for just a short while and then forgotten again. I wouldn't be surprised if it ACTUALLY gets worse for Paladins in the future. I'm tired of standing up and screaming to be heard....and now I'm gonna' log off and try to do....something, I don't know anymore.

[Isius]

We'll see my friend, we'll see. If 3.2 doesn't bring anything for you Paladin fellows, I'm sure all the tank community including us, Dark Knights and Warriors, will scream for you.

Unlikely, a few will, but most don't understand why Pld is weak, since they do not raid, and of course you will get those people that will just "Lol, good thing I am not you, but too bad", mostly warrior players atm.

But yes, Plds were asking for buffs in the early weeks of Alexander Savage. This is when several forums appeared with Plds wanting buffs to dps/aggro/utilities because they all felt lacking in Savage. Responses we got was, "Git Gud" "You have your shield only party" "HALLOWED GROUND." You had your time in 2.0" There was even a very active poster that downright tried to single handly keep Pld gimp, and tried to stop Pld needs buff threads, but showing the evidence "HOW MUCH STRONGER PLD WAS TO THE OTHER CLASSES" with little data on actual combat situtations with Pld. So I don't think 3.2 will be much different if Pld remains gimped.

It also really doesn't help that Yoshida himself is saying this stuff too, like Pld does less dps because of shield/HG, and is best defensive tank. Yet Pld dies when there is a continuous amounts of magical dmg...look at the first floor of Alexnader Savage THE FIRST FLOOR HG becomes just another common cd you use in a rotation, and let allow if you get the rarity of having 4 jumps...oops Pld has no more cds...and dies while other tanks are fine...best defensive tank...not really, so Pld doing less dmg doesn't justify itself at all in magical encounters. I just find it really messed up that Yoshida prefers to go by this FoTM tank garbage, then balancing the tanks. If this doesn't change Drk might be the next victim in 3.2, and Yoshida will just say well...Drk just doesn't fit in the content, but the job is fine, and so doesn't need a buff...wait a month or more to get better gear to do a encounter that the other tanks already did a month ago. Balance!

[Freyyy]

Actually from the most recent interview :

"[Speaking about the current very high reliance on tank DPS and stuff]

Yoshida: We'll be making effort to eliminate that as much as possible. Within the content, there are strong and weak points to each job. For example, in the second area of savage, a paladin main tank should have higher stability than a dark knight. Depending on the player and their skill level, each party will see different results, but we'd like to reduce the difference. We can't just make adjustments to jobs based on whether they are strong or weak in particular content as that would break the jobs, so we'll work to eliminate disadvantages to certain jobs as much as possible in the content. That doesn't mean we won't be making any adjustments to jobs in the future, but we'd like to also hear feedback after playing through the different content in patch 3.1."

He clearly says that he wants to alleviate the different weaknesses and strengths of each tank for future content. Whether it needs specific job adjustments or not (I strongly believe that PLD needs adjustments on a lot of things and DRK may need some tweaks too in the physical mitigation and raid utility departments). I think they need to see if changing the encounter design is enough or not, and it will obviously not be enough. I agree that it takes too much time, but I believe that PLD, and tank balance issues will be fixed at some point, most likely 3.2 as it has been already stated multiple times since : new raid tier, new encounter design, revamped accessories, revamped materia system, reworked tank damage calculation... Literally everything could change in 3.2.

[eagledorf]

The problem is that Yoshida is either totally misinformed about the situation with the three tanks or he's desperately trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the players so that they don't have to explain why fixes didn't happen months ago. It's not about one tank being disadvantaged in one set of content, it's about there being no clarity of vision in the design of the tanks or any pretense of attempting to balance the tanks from a defensive or offensive PoV.

It's not just PLD that's broken, DRK is also broken. Even DRK+WAR is broken if we were doing 2.0 content. Nerfing WAR or mindlessly buffing PLD won't really solve the problem either, they need to go do the work that they should have done before releasing 3.0 and make it so the three tanks work together properly.

I posted this in the JP forums, but here's a quick analysis of the tank situation.

Debuffs:

WAR: DMG -10%
DRK: INT -10% (overwritten by MNK), DMG -10% (depends on parry, can be applied to 1 target only)
PLD: STR -10%

Defensive Buffs:

PLD/DRK: -20% DMG 22% uptime　
WAR: -20% DMG >30% uptime

PLD: -40% DMG 5.5% uptime　　
DRK: -30% DMG 5.5% uptime
WAR: -30% DMG 12.5% uptime

PLD: Block+60% 8.3% uptime
DRK: Parry+30% 33% uptime
WAR: 100% Parry 22% uptime

Other:

PLD: Sheltron, Stoneskin, Convalescence+10%, Awareness duration enhanced, Shield
DRK:　Dark Mind
WAR: Thrill of Battle, Infuriate, Foresight recast reduced, Bloodbath duration enhanced, Wrath-based parry buff

Interruptions:

PLD: Stun, Silence, Pacification
DRK: Stun
WAR: Stun

DPS:

DRK: No Grit MT high, Grit very high, OT average, AoE high
PLD: SwO MT slightly low, ShO very low, OT somewhat low, AoE extremely low
WAR: Del MT high, Def average, OT very high, AoE very high

TP management:

DRK: Bad as OT, terrible as MT
PLD: Bad as OT, bad as MT
WAR: Virtually unlimited as OT, Excellent as MT

Self-heal:

PLD: Terrible if interrupted, Excellent if not interrupted
DRK: Limited
WAR: Good to Excellent

Utility:

PLD: Divine Veil, Protect, Stoneskin, Cover, Clemency
DRK: Reprisal (requires parrying damage), Delirium (overwritten by MNK)
WAR: Storm's Path, Storm's Eye, Defiance-buff to Deployment Tactics, Clemency, and Synastry, Mantra

So we have:

PLD: The only tank with a complete interruption toolkit (even both the other tanks combined do not make a PLD interruption toolkit). Average against physical damage. Poor against magic damage. Low DPS. Low AoE. Poor TP management. Highly conditional self-healing. Situational utility.

DRK: Good against magic damage. Poor against physical damage. Conditionally high DPS. Poor to terrible TP management. Poor self-healing. Highly conditional utility.

WAR: Good against magic damage. Excellent against physical damage. Unconditionally high DPS. Excellent TP management. Good self-healing. Unconditionally excellent utility.

Incidentally WAR does have one "weakness"; it pairs relatively badly with Scholar due to how Defiance works. Hilarious that it's contrary to the lore.

Having waited months since the drop of 3.0, if they honestly expect people to wait until 3.2 they sure as hell better start acknowledging the problem and being transparent about their plans for a solution instead of trying to feed us "well, it's about how the jobs work in the content" and trying to pretend there's nothing wrong with the jobs themselves.

The system is broken because they've kept skills as they were in 2.0 when there were only 2 options for tanks and they've brought in a new tank that doesn't form a complete debuff and interruption toolkit when paired with either other tank and a gimmick (a tremendously strong magic cooldown) that is so situational and contrary to the design of the vast majority of existing healer and tank mitigation skills (Foresight, Eye4Eye, etc.) that content that caters to it clashes badly with other jobs.

[Freyyy]

snip

I totally agree here (Kudos for the very detailed analysis), I was personally just pointing out the dev's PoV. We unfortunately can't do anything to make them do something more other than continue to scream like that everyday on the forums. Maybe we'll be heard before 3.2, but I woulnd't expect much. I really can just hope that in 3.2, everything will be as correctly fixed as WAR has been in 2.1.

[Kydi]

snip

This.

The fundamental issue comes down to the design choices made, both in the classes and the meta (speaking only up to A2S and from progression raiding in other MMOs). The meta requires a minimum threshold (let's say 1) of a variable, let's call it "tankiness". If tankiness is too low, the tank cannot survive the tank buster, thus is not viable. The second variable we have at present for tanks is damage and due to the way the meta is currently structured, damage >> tankiness where tankiness >= 1.

On Equalising tankiness

Part of the issue with the current tanking meta is that it drastically favours short, powerful cooldowns over the longer, weaker ones. Equalising the tankiness of all the tanks would, in my opinion, require a shift in the meta to ensure that damage is normalised across a fight, with some spikes, rather than spike damage being the primary source of danger, which inherently favours the short, powerful cooldown, especially if they have a short recast.

In my opinion, more focus should be placed on tanks needing to roll through cooldowns, gradually mitigating a larger amount of damage the longer they tank and eventually needing to swap with their off tank lest they be flattened (I think A3 normal did this quite well in the final phase, prior to being outgeared, with the stacking blunt resistance down). Assuming that damage is equalised, and tankiness is equalised.

On Equalising Utility

The way I would see that tanks could be put on a level playing field is to have all tanks share equal damage and tankiness, but vary a utility, for instance:

PLD - healer and warding utility with clemency and divine veil;
WAR - party wide damage reduction utility through storm's path;
DRK - damage reduction based on blinding boss, so not guaranteed, but when effective better than WAR.

This would give some interesting combos:

PLD/WAR - general damage down and offhealing/shielding from PLD;
PLD/DRK - chance for higher damage reduction but more importance placed on PLD healing when the chance fails;
DRK/WAR - general damage reduction with a chance of very high damage reduction.

This would, in my opinion, make tanking a little more interesting and synergise the classes a little better, without having one go to pairing being objectively better.

On keeping tanks unique

Notwithstanding party utility, a major concern with normalising tankiness is homogenisation of the classes. In my opinion, the classes would fundamentally share the same basic structure of agro combo, damage combo, debuff combo. However, paladin would still keep it's blocking and healing mechanics, warrior still keep the stacks and dark knight still keep its many off gCD abilities. In my opinion this is sufficient to ensure that even if damage and tankiness are the same, each tank still has a unique flavour.

Summary

Tanking is currently in a difficult situation due in part to class design, but predominantly due to the current meta. I personally am of the opinion that if the meta changed (to one of sustained high damage) we would actually see a lot more balance in the tanking classes, forcing use of tank stance for greater periods of time where we see a lot more balance as WAR ~= DRK > PLD but (on physical fights) PLD > WAR ~= DRK in terms of defence.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with the tanking requirements come 3.2, but in my opinion a buff/nerf to a single class is not the solution.

[Cheraa]

PLD: Average against physical damage. Poor against magic damage. Low DPS. Low AoE DPS.

WAR: Good against magic damage. Excellent against physical damage. Unconditionally high DPS.

Wait a second, doesn't SE and Yoshi always try to sell us, that our super low DPS of Paladins comes out of our super tankiness, but reality tells us the Tank with the biggest DPS, delivers the best defence, too?
Seems like you absolutly messed it up, SquareEnix!

But hey, HW is ONLY five month old, no time at all to hotfix the current Tank mess you created?!?