Tank Balance Achieved?

[MyaValentine]

As it stands WAR are back to top self DPS king PLD and DRK needing slashing Debuff to keep or do more/less I think darknight might need a slight defense buff and maybe some damage but not so much. I've seen any party workout perfectly with any tank composition and as expected coming from a paladin main ( paladin utility doesn't really chage much in savage fight ) maybe it does but so far v1 and v2 doesn't really help much outside of fuck ups and progression.

Now remeber this is not about how each class feels but how each class perform in savage.

so maybe I'm just crazy or I'm missing something lurking on the forums and it's just me but what are your opinions on the matter, Have we achieved Tank Balance?

disclaimer (I'm using my girlfriends account so she doesn't have any tanks lvl up to 70)

[HyperiusUltima]

SNIP

The answer is no. WAR has no utilities except its own damage output(which matches normal PLD AND DRK damage output overall), and what's more WAR has to work harder to match them as well!

If anything, WAR can't 'Shake It Off' because of a 120s timer and their DPS abilities being locked to Deliverance.

[MyaValentine]

The answer is no. WAR has no utilities except its own damage output(which matches normal PLD AND DRK damage output overall), and what's more WAR has to work harder to match them as well!

If anything, WAR can't 'Shake It Off' because of a 120s timer and their DPS abilities being locked to Deliverance.

What utility can you give war that doesn't involves buffing the rest of the PT overall dps? I can agree than war maybe need just a pinch more of dps since they require more practice to pull the same numbers as paladin but other than that War is on a good position right now. I think the one that needs more help right now Is DRK since is currently doing less damage than pld and war and it has the worst cooldowns of the 3 but still at this moment there's no reason to bring a tank over the other all 3 tank do roughly the same damage mitigate and do the content on the same level. That to me sounds balanced maybe tone pld dmg down a bit? other than that there's no Gordias lurking around and any tank composition works.

[Launched]

Yeah, tanks sure are balanced when there are only 3 WARs in the top 20 Neo Exdeath groups on FFlogs, and when the highest DPS (a WAR) is only 50 DPS ahead of the second (a PLD).

[MyaValentine]

Yeah, tanks sure are balanced when there are only 3 WARs in the top 20 Neo Exdeath groups on FFlogs, and when the highest DPS (a WAR) is only 50 DPS ahead of the second (a PLD).

while I understand you want warrior to be top dps, at this moment your party doesn't get affected by any composition of tanks you might bring, they can maybe buff war a bit more and drk or nerf pld dmg a bit, but other than that you can take any tank and get the same result aslong as the player is good enough.

[ovIm]

Well, lets look at the facts to answer this.

DPS:
WAR has the highest personal DPS, yes, but with the slashing debuff applied, all 3 tanks roughly do the same damage. So yeah, one could say in this pure metric, the tanks are balanced.
The only thing to note here is that WAR heavily relies on his IR+Zerg burst window to keep his DPS up, missing fellcleaves results in a heavy damage penalty overall.
DRK and PLD have more sustained DPS, and with the current raid design, WAR seems to have gotten the short end of the stick for progress groups.
So I'd say DPS wise, WAR is currently in a bad position, despite his high personal DPS.

Mitigation
For single enemy fights, I see no big issue with either tank really. DRKs TBN is hella useful, PLD has shelltron and WAR can easily switch to Defiance for IB thanks to 4.05.

In a group pull, thanks to the changes in blocking (now possible from all sides), PLD has a huge amount of passive mitigation always up, and the cooldowns to improve on that.
Close behind this is WAR, who can easily combine his CDs to be more effective, though, the loss of bloodbath is definitely felt.
DRK however has a very weak mitigation kit, relying a lot on TBN, which does not really help for group pulls. It has gotten a bit better with the buff to quietus, allowing you to DA-AD more often.

Utility
The real issue arises now. As you can see above, PLD already has a slight edge over WAR and DRK, however, nothing to severe and definitely within the scope of reason. However, WAR brings no utility for the rest of the group, and DRK only brings TBN every 15 seconds, while a PLD can cover, intervention, clemency and passage of arms to prevent damage to his teammates or heal them up if required. DRK and WAR both lost their utility (Delirium and Storms Path), and have gained nothing in return. This is severly unbalanced when acknowledging the difference in possibilities (or lack thereof) in the mitigation and DPS capabilities of the tanks, as this means there is no objective reason not to pick a PLD over one of the other two classes.

Gameplay
This is highly subjective, but should be considered as well. IMHO, PLD is the easiest tank to play, with 2 burst windows alternating every 30s, a clear cut rotation and steady damage. WAR and DRK seem to have a much higher skill floor that needs to be reached in order to perform close to what PLD can bring. This too should be considered when talking about balance, because as it stands now, PLD bringst the easiest gameplay, the easiest DPS, the highest mitigation and the most versatile utility kit.

Conclusion
There is simply no objective reason not to play paladin, and that is because the tanks are, currently, still not balanced. However, I hope square acknoledges that and pushes out fixes in 4.1, because I really, really want to see any kind of tank combination desired for any kind of fight.

[MyaValentine]

Well, lets look at the facts to answer this.

Can't help but to agree with this, expect for the statement " there's simply no reason to not play pld" while currently they are at the top of the dos chain, their utility really doesn't do much as people paint it (on savage) the mitigation is very sly and is not worth wasting a GCD 15% dmg reduction whe you have your healers with the only 2 utility been intervetion and divine vail been good because they don't cost you a dps loss and even that only on very specific situation you might really need that and all it changes is probably save the healers an extra GCD.

PLD utility is exelente but not as godlike as people think they only issue right now is him doing more damage and I can agree with that, but then looking back to my previous statement while easier and less punishing your group does not get affected by bringing any party composition unline HW that if you didn't had a warrior it would be a massive DPS loss. this time around all tanks can perform at the same line.

[ovIm]

Can't help but to agree with this, expect for the statement " there's simply no reason to not play pld" while currently they are at the top of the dos chain, their utility really doesn't do much as people paint it (on savage) the mitigation is very sly and is not worth wasting a GCD 15% dmg reduction whe you have your healers with the only 2 utility been intervetion and divine vail been good because they don't cost you a dps loss and even that only on very specific situation you might really need that and all it changes is probably save the healers an extra GCD.

PLD utility is exelente but not as godlike as people think they only issue right now is him doing more damage and I can agree with that, but then looking back to my previous statement while easier and less punishing your group does not get affected by bringing any party composition unline HW that if you didn't had a warrior it would be a massive DPS loss. this time around all tanks can perform at the same line.

Im afraid you might have misunderstood me, or I worded my post wrong. Apologies if I did.
See, no one says that PLDs utility is godlike or OP. But PLD has utility, which nicks him an almost guaranteed spot in any static, a situation that we had with WAR in 3.x and that we wanted to avoid. Objectively, there is no reason not to bring a PLD, because it objectively does everything best and has next to no drawbacks. Im glad that PLD is in a good spot atm, and Im happy for them, I just dont see why SqEx had to butcher the other 2 tank classes really.

When looking at the changes, there is one thought that kept repeating itself in my head - those people (the devs) dont know their own game or anything about balancing.

That or every class had their own team dedicated to the changes, but none of the teams communicated with each other. Because balance wise, 4.0 was a mess. Heres hoping for further fixes in 4.1 in 2 months.

[Stormbrand]

Utility WAR brings no utility for the rest of the group, and DRK only brings TBN every 15 seconds, while a PLD can cover, intervention, clemency and passage of arms to prevent damage to his teammates or heal them up if required. DRK and WAR both lost their utility (Delirium and Storms Path), and have gained nothing in return. This is severly unbalanced when acknowledging the difference in possibilities (or lack thereof) in the mitigation and DPS capabilities of the tanks, as this means there is no objective reason not to pick a PLD over one of the other two classes.

except that any PLD that uses clemency or passage is doing it wrong, those are skills that sacrifice a lot of damage which no PLD will ever do. divine veil is extremely overrated, and cover is still trash. The only useful utilty PLD has is intervention. If they gave WAR passage of arms WAR would still cry, you know why? because the skill sucks, overrated and useless.

[SyzzleSpark]

no PLD will ever do.

If I poke around on youtube I am hard pressed to find a group clear of O3/O4s from last week that didn't feature a PLD using PoA at least once. So I think outside of people that have to wait until they overgear the content, you're wrong.

Also PLD isn't taken for PoA, its taken for Cover and Intervention, meaning a PLD OT can basically hand a free Rampart to their co-tank for 6-12s every 2 minutes or every time their gauge hits 50 (every 25-30s), so essentially, about 5 times every 2 minutes, which is bananas, plain and simple.

0s Cover -20%
30s Int+Ramp -20%
60s Int+Sent -30%
90s Int -10%
120s Int+Ramp -20%
150s Cover+Int -28ish%
180s Int -10%
210s Int+Ramp -20%
240s Int+Sent -30%
270s Cover+Int -28ish%
300s Int+Ramp -20%

Basically a PLD OT is like having an extra -20% cooldown on a 30s recast that occasionally fluctuates down to 10% or up to 30%. What even is tank stance at that point?