If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[SpookyGhost]

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

As an example, WAR's current design focus is "self healing" and that's reflected in it's ability to do a lot of... well... self healing.

So would you change this? What would your focus be for the other 2?

And as a bonus, feel free to talk about how you would incorporate your changes into a skillset or just various ability ideas.

[Syzygian]

Haha, yeah I'll bite.

Remarkably little actually. The most infuriating thing about tank balance is how little they'd have to do to fix it.

This factors in 3.2 changes -

PLD:

1. Make RoH's modifier 5.5 like PS and BB.
2. Make Sheltron blocks restore 60 TP.
3. Remove Clemency's cast time, keep its MP cost, make it an ability with a 45 second recast.
4. Move ShO and SwO off the GCD, keep their MP cost..
5. Increase Cover's range to 15y, have it cover magical and physical damage, shorten the duration to 10s and shorten the recast to 90s.
6. Tempered Will restores 100 TP in SwO.

WAR:

1. Increase Equilibrium's recast to 90s. Leave TP restore as is. Buff cure potency to 1600.
2. Reduce BB potency to 270, SP to 240, buff SE potency to 280, Maim potency to 200. No tank's enmity combo should be their top DPS.
3. Overpower no longer interrupts combos. A tank's most basic enmity AoE (Flash, Unleash) should not interrupt combos.
4. Steel Cyclone/Decimate interrupt combos.
5. Defiance now heals for the percentage of HP increased (such that you're at the same percentage of your max HP whenever you change stances), to balance with Oaths/Grit being oGCD.

DRK:

1. Add a physical Shadeshift/Stoneskin effect to non-DA DD.
2. Adjust DASE's self-heal in Grit to ignore the Grit damage penalty and cost no TP (DA only, Grit only).
3. Add a 30s slashing debuff to Scourge, separate from the DoT. Does not stack with and is overwritten by SE/DE. Would not change DRK's rotation, and would not change DRK/WAR comps but would make PLD/DRK comps much easier.
4. Move Grit off the GCD, keep the MP cost.

ALL:

1. Awareness now lasts 25 seconds for all tanks. Enhanced Awareness reduces recast time to 90s for PLD.
2. Bloodbath now lasts 30 seconds for all tanks. Enhanced Bloodbath reduces recast time to 70s for WAR.

[Cabalabob]

So... Why do grit and oaths in your changes have longer recasts than WAR... And an mp cost? Wouldn't having an mp cost give them justification to have shorter recasts than defiance/deliverance?

[Syzygian]

So... Why do grit and oaths in your changes have longer recasts than WAR... And an mp cost? Wouldn't having an mp cost give them justification to have shorter recasts than defiance/deliverance?

Because we get the 20% damage mitigation instantly, WAR doesn't. It has to spend an extra GCD (Inner Beast) to get it. And our tank stance damage penalties are lower. (15% and 20% vs. WAR's 25%. FoF uptime is essentially a 10% boost. So PLD has 0.85*1.1=93.5% tank stance DPS, DRK has 0.8*1.15=92% tank stance DPS, and WAR has 0.75*1.2=90% tank stance DPS.)

Honestly the Grit recast time could be even longer since deactivating it doesn't trigger the CD, and this would encourage efficient Blood Weapon uptime out of Grit (since BW's recast time is 40 seconds and at least 2 uses of BW is par for the course to making dropping Grit worth it against a hard-hitting boss, in terms of both DPS and MP recovery).

The MP cost by itself isn't a justifiable balance by itself since we have MUCH larger MP pools than WAR and multiple ways of recovering said MP.

Hell, PLD will get more than half the MP cost of SwO/ShO back just by following their standard rotation (Riot Blade), before they'll be off cooldown. Not a big deal if you ask me.

[Tranquil]

-stuff about all three tanks-

This is some very good stuff here, can get behind all of this. Great suggestions. (Except not sure how I feel about a slashing debuff being tied to Scourge of all things, seeing as it is a non-comboed skill, but all things considered, it wouldn't hurt anyone, and the lack of a slashing debuff is one of the main things that hurt DRK/PLD comps, and you rationalized this one well). I especially like the eloquent solution to DD without adjusting it too much, as I feel like DRK needs a pinch more of physical mitigation that is guaranteed, if it MTs physical heavy fights and runs out of buttons to press.

Edit:

DRK: I wouldn't mind it if Reprisal was forceable without a parry proc, if it was its DA effect to not require a parry to proc. I saw someone suggest this and at least it would bring guaranteed mitigation to a raid, especially when a DRK is OT, and it is lacking in OT utility at the moment. DRK/WAR comps would be pretty devastatingly good in 100% magical fights with this, though, but it's not like a Reprisal can't be forced up as is in these kind of fights, if there's at least a tiny bit of physical damage going out.

PLD: A RoH potency increase would be good. It doesn't need to be the highest potency combo, but it's such a pain in the ass compared to Storm's Path at the moment, DPS-loss-wise. It's like, what, 80 potency lost over not RAing? Heck, 90 potency, now that RA got buffed by 10 potency. So bringing RoH up a little bit potency-wise would be nice so it didn't feel that big of a loss to put it on. (Whether or not the enmity mod is made 5.5 or kept as is would depend on what potency they would end up at, to roughly balance it while giving it a bit more oomph than it has now, maybe). I wouldn't mind RoH being 290-300 potency.

Also, I would still prefer it if Divine Veil didn't require a heal at all to trigger. It's not a big deal if the PLD is MTing as it is, cause heals will be going their way anyway, but if a PLD is OTing - a healer/fairy/PLD GCD is lost every time to trigger DV, unless AoE healing were to be required for the party as it is (which is a likely scenario to top people off, but anyway).

[Souleater13]

I'm curious to know what ideas SE had for DRK when HP consuming abilities were still a potential mechanic.
Well here are my ideas i started to put together if I were to develop dark knight.
"Same" means either I haven't thought of something different or can just remain the same.

Hard Slash - Standard attack, uses tp.
Shadowskin - Similar defensive cooldown.
Spinning Slash - Combo off Hard Slash, gives some enmity, uses tp.
Scourge - same
Unleash - same
Low Blow - same
Syphon Strike - Combo off Spinning Slash. gain mp. uses tp.
Unmend - same
Blood Weapon - Same but absorb HP instead of MP.
Reprisal - Grant increased parry. if a certain amount of attacks are parried gain a buff (not sure what yet)
Power Slash - Combo off Syphon Strike, high enmity, uses tp.
Darkside Slash - Combo off Syphon Strike, dmg is absorbed as hp.
Grit - same
Dark Dance- for a duration all physical dmg received goes into a "pool" and is dealt to player overtime instead of immediately, CD.
Blood Price- sacrifice some hp gain some mp.
Dark Passenger - similar aoe.
Souleater - toggled stance: Attacks(non-mp skills) do increased damage but cost hp as well as tp.
Dark Mind - decrease dmg taken from magic attacks. A percent of any dmg taken is subtracted from mp.
Dark Arts- costing mp grant a stack of dark arts...can have 3 stacks max.
Consume Darkness - Consume stack of dark arts for the next attack to deal even more dmg at the cost of more hp.
Shadow wall- a reduce dmg cooldown. gets stronger based on percentage of HP left.
Delirium - Combo of Syphon Strike, -int debuff and puts magic resist debuff on target(only for drk?). attacks made with dark arts effect gain benefit of magic resist debuff.
Living Dead - for a short duration dmg received is converted to hp. all heals besides DRKs are ineffective.
Salted Earth - same aoe, allies that stand in it gain hp per hit.
Plunge - same
Abyssal Drain - same aoe but natively drains hp. costs mp
Sole Survivor - same
Carve and Spit - high dmg attack on cooldown, 3hits, souleater affects each hit... if used with dark arts, souleater hits consume mp instead of hp.
*other skills could have a secondary dark arts effect.

[Sarynth]

Greetings all, just a few simple changes I would implement (quality of life stuff)

Warrior: Not much to change; stance dancing is nice and fluid, mitigating damage with mass hp and self heals fits with it. Only change I can think of would be to replace Foresight (ability is junk lol) with Incite: increases damage and defense based on number of times hit by x%, stacks five times.

Paladin/Dark Knight: take Grit, Shield/Sword oath off the gcd to allow for more fluid stance switching. For Living dead please remove the death on not getting healed for 100% hp... just please. Main tank goes down no one has a good day.

Paladin: I'm not sure how paladin is at 60 (mine is 53) but the 1-2-3 combo gets really old especially as gladiator is touted as the sword master. Last but not least rename Sheltron to Palisade, for some reason the name sheltron just doesn't seem fitting.

[garret_hawke]

Paladin: I'm not sure how paladin is at 60 (mine is 53) but the 1-2-3 combo gets really old especially as gladiator is touted as the sword master. Last but not least rename Sheltron to Palisade, for some reason the name sheltron just doesn't seem fitting.

Goring Blade (lvl 54) and Royal authority (lvl 60) give diversity to pld. It's not the main problem with pld.

[Sarynth]

Goring Blade (lvl 54) and Royal authority (lvl 60) give diversity to pld. It\\'s not the main problem with pld.

Oh good, good. It'll be a bit before I get royal authoring but that goring blade animation. Om nom nom.

[JackFross]

replace Foresight (ability is junk lol)

Let me learn you a thing, because too many people are just blind to this or don't give enough of a shit to care about actually considering Foresight.

This implication is flat wrong in 3.x. It may have been a bit accurate before 3.0 made defense a stat that actually means something, finally, but all of the research on Foresight has proven this to be an inaccurate assessment of how effective Foresight is for physical mitigation, now.

My Paladin currently has 2524 Defense with Protect and 3029 with Foresight on top. According to calculations done in early 3.0, hitting this cooldown is ~15.5% physical damage mitigation. I would say that's actually significant. It's certainly weaker than Rampart, but it's a lot closer than you're implying.

Comparison of different physical tank buster mitigations:
ShO+Sen+Shel = .8*.6*.77 = ~36.9% damage taken
ShO+Ramp+Shel = .8*.8*.77 = ~49.3% damage taken
ShO+Fore+Shel = .8*.845*.77 = ~52.1% damage taken
ShO+Shel = .8*.77 = ~61.6% damage taken

So yeah, it's clearly not better than Rampart, but it's absolutely not worthless. Implying it's "not a real CD" is silly. Would you say Dark Mind is "not a real CD" without Dark Arts? It's essentially the Magical equivalent to Foresight at current gear levels.


If you're eating physical tank busters, Foresight should -absolutely- be part of your CD rotation. If it isn't, you're doing it wrong.

More importantly, Foresight is cross-class. If you replace it with some other skill, that skill would ALSO need to be cross-class while being as useful as Foresight currently is. Your suggestion, imo, would not realistically meet either of those requirements. Dragoons and Monks have access to MRD cross-class, as well as both other tanks. So...