Vet gamer returning and would like some insight please

[Lyth]

It's meaningless to talk about "good" design or "bad design" without reaching a consensus on what the design question actually is. Designing a car that is "fast" is a different design problem from designing a car which is "fuel-efficient", "easy to drive", "comfortable", or "safe", irrespective of overlap. These are all open-ended design questions, and there's no one true way to solve each of them. Appending the word "objectively" does not erase your subjective biases from the matter, nor does it exempt them from scrutiny. I can assure you that your headcanon on what constitutes "good design" does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other players or even the devs, for that matter. It all depends on how you frame the design question.

The design question may not even be the same across all tanks. Different tank jobs exist to create variations in gameplay experience. Are we looking for a tank that's simple to pick up and play? Complex and unforgiving? One with powerful mitigation tools? Are we interested in DPS potential as MT? OT? Do we want to give the job a certain type of "flavor"? How do we make it fun to play? Do we want unique and niche skills that allow players to creatively solve problems and make the jobs unique? If we do, how do we prevent situations in which those skills become mandatory to clear and give the job a monopoly over a raid spot?

I don't think anyone particularly cares who brings what buffs to raid, so long as there's someone present who can apply them. Delirium/DK is an excellent example of this. It's a mandatory buff. A DRK or a MNK will naturally maintain it through their rotation. SE/DE is a poor example of this. It's a mandatory buff. A WAR will naturally maintain it through their rotation, but it costs the NIN dps to maintain. So you end up being forced to bring a WAR even though two different jobs are theoretically capable of bringing the same buff. This is a team game. You're supposed to cover for each other's weaknesses. If you can bring all of your own required buffs, it eliminates the need for variety.

Skills are generally stance-locked when there is a need to limit their use. In 2.x, IB was the answer to every tankbuster in the game. This does not make for interesting gameplay. Why design a cooldown rotation using long recast cooldowns when you can pretty much use the same on-demand mitigation move for all of them? The 3.0 answer to this was an indirect nerf to IB, through introduction of FC. You now have this incredibly powerful mitigation move which you don't want to use if you can avoid it, since it represents a dps loss. But then why keep it around in the first place? As a safety net for when you screw up your cooldown rotation or can't figure out how to tank it like other tanks do with your standard kit of long-recast cooldowns?

Steel Cyclone is in an even more peculiar position after the introduction of Decimate. We already know that there are plans to replace Wrath/Abandon with a unified system of stacks in Stormblood. I'll be curious to see if these skills will remain untouched during the transition process.

I was under the impression that part of the reason why PLD moved away from a one-combo rotation in 3.0 was to force a trade-off between enmity and dps, instead of giving you an all-in-one combo that did everything for you. WAR's design here is "good" if you don't want the player to exert much effort in thinking about enmity management. But it's only just one a step away from 2.x era PLD design. Sometimes child-proofing a job in the name of "synergy" takes away from making players actually think about their skill usage. But to each their own.

PLD may have some niche skills, but that hasn't prevented players from finding uses for them in Savage. TW has uses in allowing you to dps through the knockback of Gobspin in A10S and Laser X Sword in A11S. Last tier, you could use it to simplify mine knockbacks in A6S/A8S. Before that, it had its uses during the knockbacks in A3S.

Cover is a bit harder to find uses for, but this partly reflects the fact that there is no real equivalent on any other job, so it cannot be "mandatory" to clear. Even still, there were some fun things that you could do with stack-based tankswaps in A5S and A7S last tier, and it was also used to protect your healers from the Goblin Snipers during early clears of A2S. The T13 Earthshaker strategy was another notable, albeit historical application.

In order to design raids that allow for more consistent use out of these, however, you need to widen the toolkit of the other two tanks to allow them to find alternate solutions when there is no PLD present in the party. Access to a silence and the ability to chain stun are other useful skills that could be incorporated into raid design more often if there was wider access to those abilities.

I don't think that these discussions keep revisiting the idea of WAR nerfs merely because of its skill set and how it is constructed. The biggest reason is because of this tired, trite rhetoric about how "superior" the job is, and on how its raid spot security is purportedly attributed to "better design". This is a cooperative game. If your job has a temporary edge, fantastic! All the better for the team, and let's all enjoy it while it lasts. But bludgeoning people with your job's supposed "superiority" ain't gonna impress anyone, and smacks of overcompensation.

Deep down, I suspect that most people don't want to nerf the job, so much as they want to nerf the arrogance that has been built up around it. Sometimes brand loyalty just goes too far. There are plenty of ways in which all three jobs can stand to better. None of them are perfect, and sometimes, merely possessing the slightest shred of empathetic awareness and emotional intelligence is enough to go a long way in fostering amicable, constructive discussions with your fellow tanks.

WAR is a fun job. I'm glad that you like it. I can appreciate that the gameplay gets quite interesting every 90 seconds or so. It feels exciting and powerful to play, whether you're a complete novice or a practised expert. But it's also not everyone's cup of tea, and you're just gonna have to live with that. Sola dosis facit venenum. Bottoms up!

[shao32]

snip

sometimes my lack of english make me hard to explain or say what i really want when i am so focus in make my words are clear for everyone, what you say is what i feel and i alwais want to say so thanks for you post lyth.

yeah i play PLD and DRK brian, and if just start the combat with 2 emity combos bufed by only my own skills and dont have to use it in all the combat (i dont go to explain my openers now bcs im lazy) and i play all actual conten, meaby i dont play with some of fflogs top dps to make me have enough problems in that field and i only need to spend some emity combo in a tank swap with is not much more that how many storm path combos a WAR have to use in a raid combat, like lyth say this is a team game to be stronger together, not to be stronger only you, even the SCH the other mandatory job adresed by devs and yoshi with so much utility lacks in parts that the other healers bright, i say it one time and i say it many times if is need it, make all jobs being expert in every field its not a solution in any MMO, more when are so focus in a trinity and to cover other weakness to improve the team work, not to improve you ego bcs you dont need no one for almost nothing.

[Brian_]

yeah i play PLD and DRK brian, and if just start the combat with 2 emity combos bufed by only my own skills and dont have to use it in all the combat (i dont go to explain my openers now bcs im lazy) and i play all actual conten, meaby i dont play with some of fflogs top dps to make me have enough problems in that field and i only need to spend some emity combo in a tank swap with is not much more that how many storm path combos a WAR have to use in a raid combat, like lyth say this is a team game to be stronger together, not to be stronger only you, even the SCH the other mandatory job adresed by devs and yoshi with so much utility lacks in parts that the other healers bright, i say it one time and i say it many times if is need it, make all jobs being expert in every field its not a solution in any MMO, more when are so focus in a trinity and to cover other weakness to improve the team work, not to improve you ego bcs you dont need no one for almost nothing.

More continued deflection and a complete lack of response to the previous debunking of your points.

Just because you repeat something that was proven to be wrong doesn't mean it's suddenly correct.

Again, if you don't have enmity issues, you either don't play the job correctly or you aren't playing with competent DPS.

Team work is not about burdening other jobs with your design flaws. When you require additional baby sitting as a PLD in A4S or A12S due to less relevant CDs, that's not cooperation. That's your healers carrying you. When you are delaying your raid team's progression by 4 weeks because they need more gear to make up for your lack of raid DPS contribution, that's not cooperation. That's you getting carried. What are you giving back to the raid that other tanks wouldn't? Nothing. You're only hurting the team. That's not cooperation, that's bad design.

And having fundamentally sound jobs is what makes the trinity work, not what hurts the trinity. Why is a DPS job managing a tank's enmity? That's not a balanced trinity. Why do healers have to carry extra burden because of your lack of relevant mitigation? That's not a balanced trinity. Why are you complete trash as an OT? It's supposed to be a trinity. Not a duality within a trinity. Why is your choice of tank job dictating which DPS you can bring? That's not a balanced trinity.

[Brian_]

It's meaningless to talk about "good" design or "bad design" without reaching a consensus on what the design question actually is. Designing a car that is "fast" is a different design problem from designing a car which is "fuel-efficient", "easy to drive", "comfortable", or "safe", irrespective of overlap. These are all open-ended design questions, and there's no one true way to solve each of them. Appending the word "objectively" does not erase your subjective biases from the matter, nor does it exempt them from scrutiny. I can assure you that your headcanon on what constitutes "good design" does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other players or even the devs, for that matter. It all depends on how you frame the design question.

I understand there is subjectivity and a gray-zone with design. But, like I replied already to shao32, the issues I've brought up are not a matter of individual opinion or interpretation.

Unless you are being a contrarian for hipster-sake, someone suffering from learned helplessness, or someone that just wants to be a special snowflake, you'd realize that the issues I've brought up aren't things I'm "head cannoning." They're things that are widely criticized and repeatedly discussed.

So rather than resort to irrelevant verbal diarrhea and meaningless platitudes, why don't you actually address the points?

If you think design issues are a matter of subjectivity, please explain how DRK's lack of versatility and their resulting pigeon-holing into the MT role and complete ineptitude as an OT is a matter of interpretation? Is it an open-minded question that Reprisal can't be intuitively activated as an OT?

Is the factual duality that exists within the tank role a matter of opinion? Tell that to all the PLD and DRK players forced to MT and all the WARs forced to OT.

I'm sure the counter-synergy between DA Dark Dance, DA DP, and Blood Price is just a matter of perspective.

Please explain how PLD's TP issues are a matter of opinion? Or how RoH being a garbage skill is a matter of interpretation? Or how Tempered Will and Cover's practicality is a matter of perspective? Or how PLD's general rotation basically having zero added utility is something subjective.

Is it intuitive design that FoF doesn't buff Flash's enmity generated when Berserk does? Does it make sense that Flash has a flat enmity value that has resulted in SE needing to constantly buff it due to poor scaling? Or healthy design that PLD's AoE damage has been straight garbage since forever?

Is it good design that DRK and PLDs ideally never want to use their enmity comboes and are instead relying on other jobs to circumvent one of the basic tennets of the role, enmity management?

Is it good design that PLDs have been screwed twice in the last 3 raid tiers because of SE's insistence that PLDs and DRKs have gimmicky defense affinities? Is the at least partially causational result of a massive decline in PLD players something that is subjective?

Wouldn't it be better just to balance something as fundamental to tank design as basic mitigation so that you aren't hand-cuffed by your tank design when creating content?

And, how is it a matter of opinion when WAR factually suffers from none of the above?

Yea, this is a team game and the team is carrying PLD. If DRKs weren't propped up by their marginally better MT DPS, poorly balanced content, and LB limitations, they'd be getting carried, too.

Skills are generally stance-locked when there is a need to limit their use. In 2.x, IB was the answer to every tankbuster in the game. This does not make for interesting gameplay. Why design a cooldown rotation using long recast cooldowns when you can pretty much use the same on-demand mitigation move for all of them? The 3.0 answer to this was an indirect nerf to IB, through introduction of FC. You now have this incredibly powerful mitigation move which you don't want to use if you can avoid it, since it represents a dps loss. But then why keep it around in the first place? As a safety net for when you screw up your cooldown rotation or can't figure out how to tank it like other tanks do with your standard kit of long-recast cooldowns?

Steel Cyclone is in an even more peculiar position after the introduction of Decimate. We already know that there are plans to replace Wrath/Abandon with a unified system of stacks in Stormblood. I'll be curious to see if these skills will remain untouched during the transition process.

Yea, stack management and GCD based timing that required some precision was much less interesting than pressing a button to activate a CD. I mained PLD through all of 2.X and it's still my favorite job. But, I'm not completely blind and biased. It was extremely basic and the popular sentiment that it was a boring job was not undeserved.

And most WARs use action swap macros so that IB and Steel Cyclone share a hotkey with FC and Decimate based on stance and operate like Equilibrium does. So, when people complain about how those skills are niche because of their stance restrictions, I think they show how out of touch they are with reality and how little they understand what's actually going on. In practice, IB and FC are two sides of the same coin and might as well be a single weapon skill. In SB, I have a feeling they will be. You know that frequent complaint about skill bloat and the worry that going forward, it's going to limit design space? Well, it's convenient that WAR (and some other jobs) has already solved that problem.

And, why does IB exist? Because you need it? And it's useful? Just because WARs don't need it as much after they out-gear farm-status content doesn't mean it was never extremely useful. When tanking A3S during early prog, it was extremely useful for high-stack cleaves. When solo tanking stuff like A8S Final Punch + Ray + Beam in early prog, IB was pretty much mandatory. In A12S final phase during early prog, it was great to survive the multiple hit tank buster. Path is also not needed anymore. Are you also going to argue that Path should be removed from the game?

Also, it gives WARs that don't want to be a wholly DPS-focused OT and a permanent resident on the edge of death a means to be a sufficient MT and a more conservative, healer-friendly tank. Versatility. I know that word must seem like a foreign language to a DRK player.

I was under the impression that part of the reason why PLD moved away from a one-combo rotation in 3.0 was to force a trade-off between enmity and dps, instead of giving you an all-in-one combo that did everything for you. WAR's design here is "good" if you don't want the player to exert much effort in thinking about enmity management. But it's only just one a step away from 2.x era PLD design. Sometimes child-proofing a job in the name of "synergy" takes away from making players actually think about their skill usage. But to each their own.

Your impression is wrong. Like I pointed out, RA generates enmity and is a pain in the rear to MTing WARs who are trying to maintain Eye and Path, DRKs who are trying to avoid using PS, and after tank swaps in general. Again, explain how it's good design that your OT is forced to spam an enmity generating GCD? Like I already said, at least WAR has the option of rotation Eye > Eye or Eye > Path when Path is needed.

This is not about child-proofing. It's about fixing a broken situation where PLDs and DRKs never want to use their enmity combo and instead rely on a WAR pulling, tank-swaps where the WAR can rebuild the enmity lead, and NINs using shade-walker to manage tank enmity. It's about each combo having a valuable and desired overall impact and operating well as a complete package. WAR's kit does. PLD and DRK's don't. Explain how it's intuitive design that tanks have to begrudgingly use their enmity generators when holding enmity is a core tennet of the role.

PLD may have some niche skills, but that hasn't prevented players from finding uses for them in Savage. TW has uses in allowing you to dps through the knockback of Gobspin in A10S and Laser X Sword in A11S. Last tier, you could use it to simplify mine knockbacks in A6S/A8S. Before that, it had its uses during the knockbacks in A3S.

Cover is a bit harder to find uses for, but this partly reflects the fact that there is no real equivalent on any other job, so it cannot be "mandatory" to clear. Even still, there were some fun things that you could do with stack-based tankswaps in A5S and A7S last tier, and it was also used to protect your healers from the Goblin Snipers during early clears of A2S. The T13 Earthshaker strategy was another notable, albeit historical application.

You realize that you don't even lose a GCD to Gobspin, right? And that even if you TW, you are still needlessly taking avoidable damage? And for Laser X Sword, it only knocks back if you take it solo and if a PLD is taking it solo, it'll be with HG which already negates the knock back.

Your examples in general have all been extremely marginal in impact and hardly justify the skill's existence. That's why I said that they should borrow the concept WAR uses for skills like RI and Vengeance and give TW and Cover more value as skills. Do you know what else protected healers from Sniper fire in A2S? The instant, target independent burst of self-healing aggro from Equilibrium. The difference? Equilibrium is an extremely useful and versatile skill outside of that use. Plunge, DRK's equivalent of movement manipulation, and Holmgang, WAR's equivalent of movement manipulation, both have value outside of that function. Why can't TW be the same? What I'm wondering is why you have this insistence that TW and Cover should remain niche? How is it good design that you might use a skill a few times during a raid tier at best?

I don't think that these discussions keep revisiting the idea of WAR nerfs merely because of its skill set and how it is constructed. The biggest reason is because of this tired, trite rhetoric about how "superior" the job is, and on how its raid spot security is purportedly attributed to "better design". This is a cooperative game. If your job has a temporary edge, fantastic! All the better for the team, and let's all enjoy it while it lasts. But bludgeoning people with your job's supposed "superiority" ain't gonna impress anyone, and smacks of overcompensation.

Deep down, I suspect that most people don't want to nerf the job, so much as they want to nerf the arrogance that has been built up around it. Sometimes brand loyalty just goes too far. There are plenty of ways in which all three jobs can stand to better. None of them are perfect, and sometimes, merely possessing the slightest shred of empathetic awareness and emotional intelligence is enough to go a long way in fostering amicable, constructive discussions with your fellow tanks.

WAR is a fun job. I'm glad that you like it. I can appreciate that the gameplay gets quite interesting every 90 seconds or so. It feels exciting and powerful to play, whether you're a complete novice or a practised expert. But it's also not everyone's cup of tea, and you're just gonna have to live with that. Sola dosis facit venenum. Bottoms up!

Except this topic has never revisited the idea of WAR nerfs. It's about blind and biased DRK and PLDs cutting off their nose to spite their face and arguing against rational changes just because they don't want to have a well designed job. It smacks of extreme childishness. You lot are like little hipster kids that want to buy a Sega Saturn because you don't want to be like Timmy and own a PS4 or XBox One.

Sometimes brand loyalty goes too far? Like how you're rejecting logical PLD and DRK buffs because a poster you assume is a WAR main is making them? You know, I'd like to go back to playing PLD. But, borrowing your point about this being a cooperative game, cooperation is not a one-sided affair and I don't want to play a garbage job that'll needlessly burden my friends and static-mates.

TBH, you're the one here that sounds like they have a personal agenda. I never said WAR was the more effective job and they aren't. It's clear they have less design flaws and if you don't agree, then actually address the issues I listed earlier. I never said DRK or PLD should play like WAR, only that they could serve to benefit from being designed with the same degree of logic, reason, and have a similarly synergistic and practical skill kit. I don't want to homogenize the tanks. I just want there to be some semblance of balance across MT and OT roles. So, stop straw manning, airing your personal grievances, and assuming I'm putting down DRK and PLD when I am trying to help jobs that I also play.

[shao32]

just bcs you dont want to see the isuse from a diferent point of view dont make you point are right or correct either prove be wrong or not whith how you want to see it, i dont go to rewrite all you ask bcs i say lyth write all i want to say in a more acurate way.

the problem of you logic is pretty obious, from how you express you point of view you say how WAR is and work is the most basic but basic basic form of what tanks need to have to do they job, when the game itself prove you dont need at all what WAR have or how work to do you job declare in a selfish way the other 2 are practically trash and are get carried, those life qualitys desing you job have now come from issuse in the pass, not because has to be basic, in 2.0 PLD combo was only RoH and WAR have 3 to rotate, have the best damage combo a the same of the emity build was for counter the PLD emity generation and path effect was steal from BRD to have something to do with path bcs eye in that day was not so usefull that now bcs dont buff in a huge way the personal dps of other jobs like now.

PLD and DRK are pretty good MT, apart of WAR mitigation set sueriority (inner beast and vengeance) they they are the best in that field, and they can be OT, yeah they are not optime in that spot but that dont make the team have to carry both in any way, if DPS meta dont exist, if a TANK meta was mandatory, gettin stuck in you tank stance to survive then you can see how WAR lack in the MT spot bcs is force to sacrifice much to do they job, but we dont have that stage, the DPS meta in part kill WAR purpose and main desing making able to stay 98% of the time in eliverance and 2% in defiance when the job and they life quality desing are to use both at 50% and get a minimal performance in the process.

you use the excuse of you how you job work in a broken stage that make you job have higger performance (edit: better say keep they high performance killing the trade off purpose) that the other bcs is not limits on what you can do in you flaw desing in a unintended meta claming the other 2 how work fine today get the same without see WAR is get played in a abusive way, but you dont care at ll bcs is good for you and i can understand that sentiment in a way (yeah get that point "today") i dont deny PLD problems at the begining of the expansion but the begining of the expansion was a damm madness.

[Sarcatica]

I love how we always go off topic, but anyway, there is no way true balance is going to be achieved. Let's face it, in the current savage, you can even stack the same dps/tanks/healers and you can still clear it ggez.

People just don't feel the balance issue until you get into the min maxing as a group, i.e. speedrun. A9s currently has smn as the premier pick for huge aoe over anything else, else it's full standard drg/nin/brd/mch for 10-12. Now, why are mnk, pld and whm rarely brought into the extreme min maxing scenario? Simple, they are the lesser versions of their counterparts, easy as that. Heck, you can even put in BLM into that list and to some extent SMN. In the lower spectrum, every job has the ability to clear raid contents BUT when perfection is demanded, you get the lopsided data that you can see from fflogs and that's where the balance issues start popping up more rapidly. The exaggeration of the inferior jobs is a lot more of a stigma, however is very much valid in the top level which majority of players tend to avoid doing anyway. And DPS preference is pretty much in line with what SE has been doing up till now so I don't really see a place of huge changes in philosophy if any.

Ultimately this is just a game, play what you like and less complaining. Unless if you are doing serious speedruns or world racing, I don't see any reason why these kind of posts keep popping up. UH WAR SO BROKEN DUDE, SCH SHIELD SO GOOD OMG, BALANCE CARD MORE LIKE IMBALANCE. Go figure. Most raiders don't even do speedruns to even know their limit too, the complaints so far are on the surface at best, imo unwarranted. It's like people saying DRK is way better in a12s (which ofc is true) but still PLD can clear just fine, just need to change strat. I remember seeing week1-2 progression with PLD was just a pain in the ass, nowadays you pretty much can face tank all the things as PLD. But hey, PLD is fine for the most part.

[shao32]

saddly yeah, whe alwais end on this kind of discusion bcs is a very hot theme, a threat who someone come to ask advice for what tank job play become a battlefield.