Rest in peace War dps

[Syzygian]

Super dedicated tanks are presently approaching 1,000 AP. When they reach full 230 slotting, they're going to be doing more dps than when they were strength tanks. The nerf was pointless, the old complaints about tanks doing too much damage are going to reappear. Bad bards are going to get sweaty again, reeeeeal soon.

No, they won't. Dedicated DPS are gearing up too. I'm so sick of tank damage being compared to bad DPS, as if to say all tanks are DPS masters and all DPS are filthy plebs.

Also at full i240 +a8s weapon with melded accessories DRK/WAR AP is only going to be 1086 (41 points higher than 3.1 i210 STR). Granted we'll deal a lot more damage than that number suggests due to inflated Det, etc. But again DPS are seeing these same gains across the board.

For comparison, DRG at the same ilvl will have 1319 STR/AP.

[Galgarion]

No, they won't. Dedicated DPS are gearing up too. I'm so sick of tank damage being compared to bad DPS, as if to say all tanks are DPS masters and all DPS are filthy plebs.

Who cares about them? The issue at hand is that with that 1086 AP, all the old tricks are going to come back into play. If the goal of the nerf was to eliminate stance dancing as the preferred playstyle to keep tank dps from gating content, then they failed. The world firsts are all going to come from the same groups using the same tactics as last time.

[Sousoulsu]

Tank damage was nerfed.
But after ensuring your survival, you should still be maixmizing the damage output you're doing, because that's what indicates being good at this game.

The way the game is designed, swapping stances will never not be a part of the game, unless they remove the damage penalty from Grit, remove Sword Oath and remove the damage penalty of Shield Oath, and entirely change how WAR plays.

[Syzygian]

Who cares about them? The issue at hand is that with that 1086 AP, all the old tricks are going to come back into play. If the goal of the nerf was to eliminate stance dancing as the preferred playstyle to keep tank dps from gating content, then they failed. The world firsts are all going to come from the same groups using the same tactics as last time.

No it was never to eliminate stance dancing. It was to eliminate pulling in tank stance and then spending the rest of the fight in DPS stance while doing within 50-100 DPS of your group's actual DPS jobs (which you can't attribute to AP alone, tanks have significantly higher uptime and are responsible for (generally) fewer mechanics than DPS jobs), which is NOT stance dancing. People who consider that stance dancing have likely never raided a day in their life, casual, hardcore, midcore or otherwise.

The changes were to nerf STR gear, make pentamelds no longer "BiS", (which they aren't now, although they're certainly ideal during early prog which is another can of worms), widen the gap between tanks and DPS of equal skill/gear, and make tanking in DPS stance harder. Not impossible, but harder. They've, for the most part, succeeded at all of this.

Most tanks aren't getting above 8-900 DPS in fights with actual mechanics. On average they're doing less than that 7-800 at most, until they've got the fight on-farm, while the DPS are doing 1100-1400 (again depending on mechanics).

[Brian_]

No, they failed at numerous things with that list of yours. Pentamelds were never BiS. Slaying was. Pentamelds were only BiS during progression and they still are. Aside from the earrings, pentamelds are unarguably better than anything but i240 gear. Even compared to i240 gear, the difference is small and if you're melding (partial) Vs, it's basically a wash -- pentamelds are better for DPS, i240 fending just gives more HP. Hmmm, I wonder where we've seen this before...

I find this idea of "actual mechanics" to be dubious at best. Does Sephirot have no mechanics? Does A5S have no mechanics? Does A6S have no mechanics? Soon A7S and A8S will have no mechanics with this logic. During early clears in pre-3.2, tank DPS was also lower. Optimizing play takes time. On Sephirot I'm consistently ~1100 DPS now. In our second A5S clear this week I was ~870 with conservative play. Could I easily crack 900 if I wasn't as considerate to my healers? Yea, easily. In our A6S progression I am usually around 800-900 in progression. Just look at WAR parses on fflogs. They're 200-300 DPS behind BRDs despite this being progression. Look at early 3.0. It was no different back then. As people get better gear, get more comfortable with fights and drop their tank stance more / get better optimization out of their Berserk / stacks, increase their up-time even further, and shorten fights, you are going to see that gap shrink just like it did before. Tank DPS scales much faster than DPS does. In early 3.0 A1S progression, it was reasonable to expect a WAR to be around 800 DPS. By the end of the patch cycle, they were breaking 1400.

People act like 100% DPS stance tanking was easy in 3.0 progression. It wasn't. Will it get easier as tanks get more gear? Yea, just like before.

People will cry but I don't feel things have changed much at all.

[Syzygian]

stuff about melds

I put BiS in "s for that reason.

stuff about mechanics

I said actual "mechanics" because I fully expected someone to say something dumb like quoting SSS numbers or something. Please take my post in the context to which it was responding. I totally never said any of those fights had "no mechanics". I realize you're a progression raider, however I'm only about a week and a half behind you, there's no need to speak to me like I've never touched a raid.

my deeps are awesome

Congrats? Yes we'll optimize I totally never said we wouldn't? I said that even once we do we're 2-300 AP behind actual DPS. I don't care how sick your fflogs are, I doubt you're closing that gap against an equally skilled DPS, unless your static is literally designed from the ground-up to maximize tank DPS at all possible expense. That BRD will get better gear and get more comfortable with the fight too. Like, its sheer math, we aren't going to deal the proportion of actual DPS numbers that we were before.

Just so you don't misconstrue this post like the last one, I too am fine with the changes and am not complaining at all, and don't see why people are complaining about "tanks approaching bad DPS numbers", as Galgarion was fearmongering about, with almost no context. I merely wanted to give what he said context and point out that its unlikely those complaints are coming back with the force they had before, but sure, rip my post apart when it seems like we actually agree on most of these points?

[Brian_]

You can dodge the points but I'm not misconstruing anything.

Pentamelds haven't changed at all. They didn't fix anything. If you are serious about progression you buy the accessory and you meld it. End of discussion. This hasn't changed at all. They're still BiS for progression and no longer BiS when stuff is on farm. They did not succeed at changing this. They have not changed at all. The only thing that changed is that other jobs also need pentamelds now.

As for DPS stance tanking, that was also almost non-existent in 3.0 progression. You're comparing the state of 3.1X tanks who are done with the progression cycle to 3.2 early progression. It is a flawed comparison and your conclusions are flawed, too. Nothing has really changed. We've just reverted back to the progression meta rather than the farm-status meta. I know plenty of even PLDs that have really high SwO up-time while MTing. As a WAR, if the damage intake allows, I am in full-time Deliverance after 1 Unchained BB. It hasn't changed. Again, they didn't succeed at anything in regards to this.

Against equally geared and skilled DPS, you weren't closing the gap in 3.0 progression either. Like I pointed out, the relative gap between tank DPS and actual DPS was not that far from where we are now and will shrink going forward.

[RapBreon]

My understanding is that the gap between tanks and DPS will only increase as more gear is accumulated. Primarily this being due to each stat being worth less - damage wise - for tanks than it was before the adjustment.

If tanks are doing around 3.0 DPS in ilvl 240ish gear (as someone claimed? I'm not sure, but I think they did; I somewhat doubt), the gap between DPS and tanks has widened without a doubt. For comparison, my MNK gained 200dps from 10ilvls alone (from 208 to 217). I imagine a dummy parse for a MNK in pure BiS would be almost 1.8-1.9k. A WAR would be around 1.3k with BiS? I'm not sure though. However, the gap was definitely not that big during 3.0, in absolute nor relative terms.

[Sousoulsu]

My understanding is that the gap between tanks and DPS will only increase as more gear is accumulated. Primarily this being due to each stat being worth less - damage wise - for tanks than it was before the adjustment.

If tanks are doing around 3.0 DPS in ilvl 240ish gear (as someone claimed? I'm not sure, but I think they did; I somewhat doubt), the gap between DPS and tanks has widened without a doubt. For comparison, my MNK gained 200dps from 10ilvls alone (from 208 to 217). I imagine a dummy parse for a MNK in pure BiS would be almost 1.8-1.9k. A WAR would be around 1.3k with BiS? I'm not sure though. However, the gap was definitely not that big during 3.0, in absolute nor relative terms.

This is correct.
It'll be similar to that one MMO about Orcs and Humans fighting that's been out for a decade. Warriors in that game scaled much better with gear than most classes; so in the early parts of an expansion their DPS would be lackluster, but as time went on in the expansion cycle it got astronomically higher.

Gear scaling is fun 'w'

[oph]

Having started to main WAR on this new patch, I may not be as affected as long time WAR mains, but damn those fell cleave crits while on berserker are still delicious to contemplate, somehow overall DPS on WAR feels right and being able to moderately stance swap for fell cleaving and berserker while maintaining safe margin of aggro is still doable and satisfying.