If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[The_NPC]

Heres a thought for "Flash" (& those that can Cross-class it)

Flash
Arrgo Potancy: 600
Added Effect: "Rebound"
Effect Duration: 5-8 seconds (leave this to better ppl to decide time}
Effect Discription: Cause's buffed enemy to deal all or 50& of its (non cast bar in PvE case) damage delt to any target to itself
Chance of imunity: none (yes in PvP for fairness)

Thought about it as a way to give PLD's more damage mitigation & give it a use as OT to lower dmg to the MT (that & maybe lower the recharge time on Tempered Will to make it more usefull)

[Shurrikhan]

Heres a thought for "Flash" (& those that can Cross-class it)

Flash
Arrgo Potancy: 600
Added Effect: "Rebound"
Effect Duration: 5-8 seconds (leave this to better ppl to decide time}
Effect Discription: Cause's buffed enemy to deal all or 50& of its (non cast bar in PvE case) damage delt to any target to itself
Chance of imunity: none (yes in PvP for fairness)

Thought about it as a way to give PLD's more damage mitigation & give it a use as OT to lower dmg to the MT (that & maybe lower the recharge time on Tempered Will to make it more useful)

PLDs are already damn near the king of tanks in PVP. This would utterly cripple low-potency attackers like Monk or Bard just off the mitigation it causes for their targets alone, not to mention that 5-8 seconds of 50 potency reflects could easily total to 200-250+ potency total for high-speed auto-attacking classes. Or just imagine this going off before a Goblin Rush. That could easily be 250 potency in a second. As an AoE. That blinds. DA-DP is the only other AoE that mitigates damage (albeit with basically zero effect in 'real' content, due to Blind immunities), on a 30s CD and costing ~2.5k mana, and it would hardly rival even a small part of this revised Flash's worth.

[The_NPC]

PLDs are... a but load of words saying I'm a moron.

okay noted never post on tank forums with an idea again due to massive "Salty-ness" at lest u understand why I came up with such a convoluded idea at shear random right? out of some desire to give PLD more dmg metigation while getting rid of Blind from Flash as it eather is imuine on players/mobs after 2 uses (or imuine anyway). & plz don't bother with a reply to this reply as I shall not reply to u'r reply to this reply

[therpgfanatic]

... and you could completely rework all 3 tanks, what would you make the main focus of each one?

Let's consider this:

WoW developers spent four years trying to balance Druid, Paladin and Warrior tanks throughout vanilla and BC, only to give up during WoTLK and make Druids, Paladin, Warrior and Death Knight tanks absolutely equal in terms of mitigation, DPS / threat generation and utility. The tanks used different skills to get there, but it was the same result. For once it didn't matter who the MT's class was, the only thing that mattered was their gear.

WoW's designers were by no means dumb people. They were / are some of the best designers in the industry, and they tried designing the classes every way from Sunday for years and years trying to make different strengths and weaknesses for tanks work. But when they gave up, and just made them all equally good as each other, the players benefited for it because people didnt need to reroll a Warrior if they wanted to raid.

Now the new generation of WoW designers have tried to make different tanks have different strengths, and the result has been -- you guessed it -- raids abandoning certain tanks because others are way superior for clearing content.


So what would I do? FFXIV already has this problem. It's self-evident. So I'd accept that if you design tanks to be have different strengths and weaknesses, all you are doing is intentionally creating a situation where one tank class will be viewed the most inferior while another is viewed the most superior.

Sure, tanks can have different flavor text and different ways of playing, but the end-result needs to be the same across the board. Equal mitigation vs physical, magic and utility. Equal DPS. Equal utility.

Unlike damage dealers and healers, tanks are the most essential role for a progression raid. It doesn't matter how much healing or damage is dealt, if the tank goes down, the raid wipes. Therefore raiding parties will always gravitate toward the tank class which offers the most advantage for the encounter and steer clear of the inferior tanks. This has always, always been how things are in MMOs when misguided designers try to make tanks have different strengths and weaknesses.

Just because something sounds cool on paper, doesn't mean it translates well into a live multi-player game. Generally speaking, people follow a herd mentality that gravitates to mix-maxing. Purposely building inferiority into a tank class simply creates tank classes that raids will refuse to take into a raid.

[Shurrikhan]

Let's consider this:

WoW developers spent four years trying to balance Druid, Paladin and Warrior tanks throughout vanilla and BC, only to give up and make Druids, Paladin, Warrior and Death Knight tanks absolutely equal in terms of mitigation, DPS / threat generation and utility. The tanks used different skills to get there, but it was the same result. For once it didn't matter who the MT's class was, the only thing that mattered was their gear.

Now the new generation of WoW designers have tried to make different tanks have different strengths, and the result has been -- you guessed it -- raids abandoning certain tanks because others are way superior for clearing content.

So what would I do? I'd accept that if you design tanks to be have different strengths and weaknesses, all you are doing is intentionally creating a situation where one tank class will be viewed the most inferior while another is viewed the most superior.

Sure, tanks can have different flavor text and different ways of playing, but the end-result needs to be the same across the board. Equal mitigation vs physical, magic and utility. Equal DPS. Equal utility.

Unlike damage dealers and healers, tanks are the most essential role for a progression raid. It doesn't matter how much healing or damage is dealt, if the tank goes down, the raid wipes. Therefore raiding parties will always gravitate toward the tank class which offers the most advantage for the encounter and steer clear of the inferior tanks. This has always,always been how things are in MMOs when misguided designers try to make tanks have different strengths and weaknesses.

To be honest, WoW tanks even now do not have exactly equal mitigation, utility, or dps, except over an average. At different points in a given fight, one class's CD will still time out better than another, much like IB vs. Rampart/Shadowskin. And it's worked just fine. That's what makes composition interesting. There's no need for them to be bland copies of each other (as per Dark-Rampart, etc.).

Now, I'll agree that niches are not a place to look for class identity. No tank should be the master anti-magic tank, etc., unless every fight somehow includes a balancing element of physical anti-tank damage, etc. As you said, noticeable weaknesses, wherever possible, are dropped; not worked around--dropped. But there's nothing wrong with different dynamics that can highlight one's capabilities within certain niches, as long as they do average out in opportunity-reward across all content (and more tightly so where the fight's requirements tighten). Diversity in how they get there is what makes them interesting. There's nothing wrong with a personal/raid saver like Anti-magic Shell/Zone, nor gaining your mitigation through passive growth via Acclimatization, nor chugging through it with damage>absorption shields, etc. That's three very different specs and mitigation methods each equally able to handle a magic boss, albeit with slightly different positions (main-tank, swap-tank, and snap-tank), each performing in combo just as well as any other pair of tanks. (I use these DK examples because it's the only class on which I've done every role (tank/dps) in every spec in a raid environment - in this case ICC.) Warrior-Paladin (even, or especially at 60) already did a decent job with keeping identity, though I still feel PLD falls behind in specific components of parity. However, the unimaginative carbon-copy DRK abilities make me fear for later tanks.

[winsock]

Let's consider this:

WoW developers spent four years trying to balance Druid, Paladin and Warrior tanks throughout vanilla and BC, only to give up during WoTLK and make Druids, Paladin, Warrior and Death Knight tanks absolutely equal in terms of mitigation, DPS / threat generation and utility.

And yet here we are, playing ffxiv.

[Duelle]

And yet here we are, playing ffxiv.

WoW making stupid decisions in story and world development (not to mention the whole promising things and never delivering on them) have nothing to do with gameplay and class design. In fact, gameplay and class design is one of WoW's few remaining strengths.

To be honest, WoW tanks even now do not have exactly equal mitigation, utility, or dps, except over an average. At different points in a given fight, one class's CD will still time out better than another, much like IB vs. Rampart/Shadowskin. And it's worked just fine. That's what makes composition interesting. There's no need for them to be bland copies of each other (as per Dark-Rampart, etc.).

Most of the extra stuff between WoW's tanks is not really a big deal in the long run. At least during my time raiding you didn't see people dumping bear druids or prot warriors for prot paladins or DKs. Hell, one of the top guilds in the world at the time ran with bear druids, despite you almost never seeing them because the bulk of players went prot pally/DK.

DPS was never an issue when it came to tanks (the tank not getting crit to death or crushed matters more). Utility was not a big deal because utility was spread out between classes, so it was a matter of whether you had X buff at all over whether you have the one class that can provide it. This game for the most part treats classes like they're shaman (who had a guaranteed raid slot because of Bloodlust/Heroism), and that's what's creating part of the problem. Hence why I'd personally want certain buffs/debuffs removed and focus more on mitigation styles and gameplay.

[Immut]

Get rid of tank stances, they're dumb. Except for warrior's stances because those actually DO something. No, an indefinite buff that has no effect on the order of the buttons you push is not 'doing something'. And grit takes away things to do so it's actually doing less than nothing. For that matter i'd get rid of Protect too. Fucking useless skill contributes nothing to gameplay.


Then buff enmity in other ways. Make sword oath and shield oath actual spells that last 30 seconds and do something along the lines of sword oath reducing your GCD or shield oath reflecting damage and increasing enmity for the duration, because you can just recast it if you have the mp at the cost of a gcd. Or even have sword oath increase enmity and shield oath reduce damage so you have to pick and choose. They'd be cost prohibitive though, like 1.6k mp or something. Then buff clemency, too. Really make a paladin's MP mean something. They wouldn't get to cast often but when they did you'd notice. Also shield swipe or even bash would put a 5s disable effect on the enemy. Yes you'd be able to spam it. But it costs 170 tp a go to do that.

Ideally the balance would be warrior does the most burst damage (berserk) with paladin at a close second with sword oath and dark knight coming in last with blood sword and fuckall else. But Dark Knight would have the highest sustain, followed by warrior, followed by paladin. Paladin's advantage would be the ability to unbusy the healers with strong defense and support skills so they can get a larger share of the dps. Kind of like how AST pawns most of its dps contribution off onto everyone else through card buffs.

[MagiusNecros]

You want Dark Knight to be weaker then Paladin?

[Immut]

You want Dark Knight to be weaker then Paladin?

Only in terms of burst. They don't get anything for burst damage as it is, it's not even a change really. They'd be like monk, high sustain low burst. Where paladin would be more like machinist. Much lower damage with support skills and enough burst to get you reliably through burn phases.