So if PLD is the defensive what does that make WAR and DRK?

[Gunnie]

Really? Because I think having DPS classes with more support viability in exchange for less damage is a fair trade. I can help my party more, but my own damage is a little lower. It's a trade-off. I don't need to be good at everything all the time. If I want to be maximum offense, I'll play MNK. If I want to have more utility in a Raid, I'll bring my MCH instead.

Then they should lower PLD DPS and give them a more supportive role not just defensively, but also give them DPS buffs for their group. Then their personal DPS is lower, but they contribute more towards the group. If it's just defensively you'll get HW all over again. The highest DPS tank gets invited, seeing they can all survive the tankbusters, and PLD will be left out.

Seeing the above will never happen, for the simple reason a PLD is more a bastion then anything else, having simular DPS as the other tanks is the easiest way to get PLD in the running again. Yes, I said simular, not ahead.

[konpachizaraki]

WAR and DRK are the "we take the good piece from them so they got weaker to satisfy PLD main" tank

[Johnvolk]

I'm siding with MomoOG here, you can get that class fantasy with diffrent rotations and ability names or use cases. We dont need to make 1 tank way better at dmg, def, or raid utility. Doing that would only alienate people who want to play the classes that aren't considered meta. And the vast majority of people play the game just want their class to be able to do just as well as the next so long as they play it as good. Also im more of a traditional when it comes to tanking, My Damage is third in my mind for what to do. Aggro first, Survival second, Extra damage third. I'll stance dance if i see an opening to do so and if it won't cause me to take unnecessary damage. A tanks job is to be a tank first, damage is irrelevant if you can't do that, if you can do that. then by all means do more damage.

[MomoOG]

Really? Because I think having DPS classes with more support viability in exchange for less damage is a fair trade. I can help my party more, but my own damage is a little lower. It's a trade-off. I don't need to be good at everything all the time. If I want to be maximum offense, I'll play MNK. If I want to have more utility in a Raid, I'll bring my MCH instead.

I'm against Homogenizing roles.

Also, you can drop the condescending tone, chief. It doesn't endear you to anyone.

Those support abilities are present to augment the groups dps and so are indirect dps abilities. And you are also trying very hard to cherry pick with your dps example. Why have a MNK, SAM, or BLM class when they are all dps? Are they all homogenized in how they play though? Not at all, they all do dps but with very different flavors.

Okay let me break it down. Mitigation at the end of the day for a tank is fairly binary. You either have enough mitigation to survive what you are tanking or you don't. It does not have an infinite cap in utility (infinite is a clear exaggeration as dps limits are set by the amount of hp the enemy has but on a practical level it is infinite) the way damage does. In simple terms, more dps is always useful while mitigation has a hard drop off in use. Why does this cause a problem? If all tanks are able to survive an encounter there is no purpose to being a "mitigation specialized" tank. Everyone will min/max their groups with "dps tanks". If an encounter is designed so that only the mitigation based tank can survive than we have a very problematic situation where some classes designed as tanks (the dps tanks) aren't even able to perform their basic role of being a tank. More often than not the first scenario is going to occur and "mitigation tanks" get the short end of the stick and get excluded from groups. Or Mitigation tanks are more useful as progression occurs and then once people understand the encounters or become more geared the mitigation based tanks are again excluded from groups.

Now one can argue that the mitigation based tank can be designated as the main tank and the dps tanks can be designated as the off tanks but this would again only hold if the encounter is designed such that there is so much damage that the dps tanks simply can't fulfill the role of the main tank.

One could finally argue that the mitigation tank is able to take so much less dmg that the healers are than able to dps that much more to make up the dps loss of having a mitigation tank. This results in far more difficult balancing act because now balance is now going involving interdependence of classes.

[Furious]

Really? Because I think having DPS classes with more support viability in exchange for less damage is a fair trade. I can help my party more, but my own damage is a little lower. It's a trade-off. I don't need to be good at everything all the time. If I want to be maximum offense, I'll play MNK. If I want to have more utility in a Raid, I'll bring my MCH instead.

I'm against Homogenizing roles.

Also, you can drop the condescending tone, chief. It doesn't endear you to anyone.

Trading off utility for DPS means that it is impossible to balance across multiple group sizes. Classes that have higher personal dps completely destroy small man content if the classes that bring utility to higher man content are balanced around that fact.

If
A = B+Utility[b]*8
then
A > B+Utility[b]*4

Conversely, if you don't want sams running around doubling everyone else's dps in 4man stuff, then they are relegated to obscurity in 8man, where the multiplicative effect of different forms of utility then becomes an issue for those without (circa heavensward group stacking)

A = B+Utility[b]*4
then
A < B+Utility[b]*8

Obviously, it wont always be 4 people and 8 people benefiting (or not benefiting) from the utility in question, but that changes the numbers and not the fundamental reason the outcome is as it is. Because this effect is multiplicative, it becomes more pronounced as time goes on and gear gets better.

It is definitionally impossible to balance a class around "no utility, so more dps", without fundamentally making it a fact that one is measurably better than the other somewhere in the game that matters. It's not a trade off; it's irrefutably a trade-up or a trade-down, depending on which side of the equation your chosen class sits.


In the case of tanks, the choice is much more binary. Tanking is a zero sum game; you either have enough mitigation or you don't. Trading off dps to get more utility means giving up dps for nothing, since all tanks have enough mitigation to cover the content. If they don't have enough, they are literally dysfunctional and do not work. You can never have "too much" dps, but you only need enough survival to live through a fight.

[Shurrikhan]

Really? Because I think having DPS classes with more support viability in exchange for less damage is a fair trade. I can help my party more, but my own damage is a little lower. It's a trade-off. I don't need to be good at everything all the time. If I want to be maximum offense, I'll play MNK. If I want to have more utility in a Raid, I'll bring my MCH instead.

Support is also DPS. If it does not contribute to clear times it is wasted. Just like anything else.

The reason personal vs. indirect DPS aren't seen as imbalanced is because there's only one size of serious content—the 8-man. Allow for 4-man serious content and the indirect DPS contribution fades from reduced user manpower, and its users kicked from that 4-man meta unless they were already overtuned for 8-man content, in which case direct DPS only classes will be kicked from the 8-man meta.

[Araxes]

PLD can get pretty close to WAR and DRK DPS wise. WAR is no longer the DPS tank and DRK is no longer somewhere in the middle. Your answer to getting people to play PLD again was to buff them to high hell which has been your specialty since the XI days SE. Have we not learned anything since then?

DRK's and WAR's are those guys standing behind the Paladin and beg for a spot in the Ex Primal party.

[Lannybaby]

DRK's and WAR's are those guys standing behind the Paladin and beg for a spot in the Ex Primal party.

The more I look into the abilities and toolkits of the three tanks, the harder I find it to refute this statement.

[Jim_Berry]

I've always preferred a defensive tank, which is why I chose PLD back in the ARR days. This is my first MMO where I tried to be a dps, and couldn't do it as a DPS class. Tried to dps as tanks and failed. Ended up only using DRK for dungeons, WAR for fun, and PLD as my go-to.

[Janhyua]

Aaaaaaa no Base on my dps report from a friend on susano my paladin dps is only 20% off from Warrior so Warrior still doing pretty well as a OT on dps as for dark knight I don't know

I don't want to get ban for saying out the number but Warrior without a doubt doing alot more then paladin that for damn sure