Lets nerf WAR :D

[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.

[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?!?

[Isius]

I am not agruing things may not change in 3.2 with tanks. It's just sometimes what is said in a interview from devs, and what is actually implemented into that game comes out differently. I rather see more changes before 3.2, and the changes could be small. But it would show they are genuinely actively concern about the subject. I really do not want to see 3.0-3.1 tank inbalance to be forgotten, where changes in 3.2 didn't really change anything. Where there is nothing but uproar on the forums again about tank inbalance months later in 3.2. I've waited for 5 months, and still little has not changed so my hopes for 3.2 changes are not high.

Each tank can have it's own strengths, and weaknessess that is fine, but not on terms of a tank being a tank(mitigation) or dps inbalance to the point it seems more like a flaw design, then one of the tanks strenghts or weaknessess. I really do not want to see FoTM tanks again ever. Why I really highly promote the idea all tanks could be able to MT/OT equally the same. Then have DRK/PLD fighting for the MT spot all the time becoming the new FoTM every raid, while War just always has the OT spot to themselves. Atleast to me this would help out how each tanks will function in groups later down the road. I personally think all 3 tanks need to be readjusted for this to happen to a degree.

[Seku]

Funny thing is that they seem to be making the same mistake as FF 11. Claim nothing is wrong with the job when RDM and NIN are the go to tanks for the strongest things in the game and DPS classes are ok with tanking. I mean..at least they can actually keep hate in this one......some what.

But maybe the new shield swipe change has made them a bit better. Guess I'll go see. Off to Shield shoryuken my way through things.

[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.

[Isius]

Funny thing is that they seem to be making the same mistake as FF 11. Claim nothing is wrong with the job when RDM and NIN are the go to tanks for the strongest things in the game and DPS classes are ok with tanking. I mean..at least they can actually keep hate in this one......some what.

But maybe the new shield swipe change has made them a bit better. Guess I'll go see. Off to Shield shoryuken my way through things.

I've tested the new shield swipe changes a little already. Not much has changed. It's a slight dps increase for mt Pld, I still have to use Rage of Halones to maintain aggro if mting while in sword oath without a ninja against higher dps players. I do around +1000dps in sword oath if you are wondering. And with shield swipe being ogcd, but still needing to rely on rng block procs to active it, makes this skill cumberson to use like several other of plds skills, and this buff is meaningless in a all magic encounter. lol

I wish Shield Swipe was turned into just a "ability" that doesn't need block to proc it, and only had the cd as it's cost to use. But with block rng the max you will ever get out of shield swipe is 2-3 per minute.

Well these are just my initial test/thoughts, I'll have a much better idea of it when I go into Savage on weds with my static. But atm just a minor pld mt dps/single target mt aggro buff.

R.I.P. Paladin

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

Took Paladin into Void Ark, could tell literally no difference at all minus an extremely minimal DPS gain. Enmity generation for Shield Swipe is still lackluster in content where it's supposedly "such a great change."

I am better off ignoring the proc in favor of more quickly starting my aggro combo all over again since the combo potency and enmity from Fast Blade to Rage of Halone greatly outweighs that of an ability that's on a 15 second cooldown. This will allow me to drop Shield Oath more soon. The change was unneeded, has made us weaker in content unjustifiably, and is very much ONLY a sidestep to the left and not a step forward.

I really feel like this was just a placebo given to the community to try and placate us with no real effort whatsoever to even begin effectively changing skills and inherent abilities of Paladin.

[Isius]

snip

Yeah I feel like SE is just ignoring the player based that enjoys playing Paladin. I had higher hopes for Shield Swipe changes, and hoped it worked better in practice then it does on paper, but those feelings are slowly going away. Since Pld just really feels like it's in the same spot as 5 months ago.

But even with these changes prior to 3.1 when we just had the patch notes. The changes didn't really sway me away from playing my warrior for my static in A3S/A4S either over my Pld. I was just happy they gave Pld something, but not everything it needed either.