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.

[Cabalabob]

Yes shield oath is stronger than defiance but deliverance is far stronger than sword oath, it simply doesn't make sense for WAR to get a free stance swap with 10 second recast while PLD gets an mp cost to swap stance with double the recast. As for DRK getting a 30 second recast that's not good design at all, no one wants to be STUCK in grit for 30 seconds, look at the amount of complaining cleric stance gets over fat thumbing the button for a FIVE second recast!

[Syzygian]

snip

I main DRK, and I'd be thrilled with changes like these.

WAR's stance swap does nothing for its mitigation until it A. is healed, or B. uses IB. The effective healing WAR gets is also lower due to Defiance not buffing ability-based heals.

Honestly if you can't commit to a stance for a measly 20s during which you'll get back most of the MP cost, I'm thinking there's deeper issues at hand. Comparisons to Cleric Stance don't work because a healer isn't in control over what dumb mistakes the party may make that effect their usage of that cooldown. We tanks are effected only by ourselves and the boss, two things which should be extremely predictable.

Fat thumbing Grit after turning it off is still a loss of a GCD currently, and its not a complaint I've really seen a whole lot (the fat thumbing part). Just don't fat thumb it.

[Cabalabob]

WAR also has unchained and Fell cleave, tank stances are entirely balanced around what they add to the job so it simply doesn't make sense for WAR to get lesser restrictions on swapping.

Being stuck in grit for 1 GCD and being stuck in it for 30 seconds (about 12 GCD's) are worlds apart and you bet you'd see a lot of complaints about it if it worked like that.

[Syzygian]

WAR also has unchained and Fell cleave, tank stances are entirely balanced around what they add to the job so it simply doesn't make sense for WAR to get lesser restrictions on swapping.

Being stuck in grit for 1 GCD and being stuck in it for 30 seconds (about 12 GCD's) are worlds apart and you bet you'd see a lot of complaints about it if it worked like that.

WAR already gets the lesser restrictions on swapping.

Its not about the time that you're stuck in Grit, its about Grit costing a GCD that could have been spent on DPS. I can pick out 30 seconds of any fight in the game right now where being stuck in Grit would be a good idea.

Not to mention these changes I came up with list a bunch of buffs to PLD and DRK. And stances moving off the GCD no matter what the recast time is a buff, in my book.

Anyway, put your money where your mouth is and come up with some changes of your own for Spooky's thread. Don't leave him hangin'.

[Duelle]

Keeping it as simple as possible:

PLD designed around shield blocks and cooldowns.
WAR designed around ignoring pain/mini-stoneskins with a focus on active mitigation.
DRK designed around self heals, reactive leech effects and preventative damage shields.

[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).