Tank Balance

[MiniPrinny]

The problem is lets assume the baseline of job balance is 50 points. This community generally freaks out when a job is at 47 or 53 points, despite that variation still enough to clear the hardest content in the game. Like for DRK, from all the salt you'd assume its fundamentally broken, but no it works really fine, its just a bit less optimal and a bit simpler than other tanks. You're not going to kick your raid bud from the shell over him liking DRK over WAR because it means its impossible to clear stuff otherwise.

Its the whole stupid fflogs culture that focuses on raw numbers and ranking, and it leads to constant seesawing job change. And apart from the whole "make everythign simpler," if you look at job balancing, its really banal stuff like tweaking moves about 10 or 20 potency, or increasing the duration of something a couple seconds.

Okay, let's just run with your example for a moment. Let's say all tanks start at 25/50 points and say each 100 DPS past the lowest count is worth 5, as well as every significant Job-specific skill to mitigate party-wide damage. Improvements on the weakest single target mitigation abilities available are worth 3 points.

Let's start with WAR, just because they have the least unique abilities. Vengeance is a flat upgrade to Shadow Wall, bringing them to 28. They deal 200 more DPS than the lowest tank on average (DRK), so there's 38. They have Inner Beast, which is about equal with Sheltron since it has benefits that Sheltron does not, so nothing there. Shake It Off is great, so there's 43. And then they have their HP abilties, Thrill of Battle and their tanking stance, Defiance; both of these abilities are incredibly powerful and undervalued and together they place WAR at 49. So WAR would be average, right where they need to be.

Next is PLD, they do 100 more DPS than DRK, so they're at 30 from the start. They have both Divine Veil and Passage of Arms, adding another 10 to make 40. Then they have Sentinel, which is again, an upgrade over Shadow Wall, so there's 43. Sheltron is actually a bit weaker than the TBN due to how damage is calculated, so no points gained there. They do have Bulwark however, which while unreliable, covers more damage and for a longer duration and lower cost than Dark Mind, so there's 46. Then we bring in Cover and Intervention, I'll consider these a package deal, bringing them to 49 as well. PLD is like WAR. They're just about perfect, they have their niche, they do less damage than WAR, but make up for it with their incredible toolkit.

Now onto DRK, ready to see some suffering? DRK does the least damage of their peers, they're not even tied with PLD, keeping them at 25. Shadow Wall is the weakest heavy mitigation ability, still at 25. Dark Mind is weaker than Bulwark over all, but it has its moments, so we'll be generous and say it's worth points, up to 28. TBN is powerful, but it's not useful for party mitigation, since its limited to a single target, up to 31. And... we're done. That's it. 31/50 points for DRK. They have no niche outside of Dark Mind, but that ability is situational and to get the most from it requires investing a lot of resources that could have been used for offense. This isn't about FFlogs. I just used damage as a margin of comparison because it is so highly valued by both the developers and the playerbase.

So please, don't assume this is a cut and dry issue, this is a core problem, a third or more of the tanks in this game are vastly under prepared for most situations and the only reason you see DRKs like myself clearing content is because we know what we're doing really well. I've done fights on PLD, I do a lot better on PLD. And not just because PLD is easier or I'm more comfortable on it, it's because PLD is better in every single category.

And the worst part about this all is? DRK has always been this way. They had another of your 10 points in Heavenward through Reprisal and Delirium. But that's gone now. DRK hasn't changed for the better, it's gotten worse.