Tank Balance

[Chrono_Rising]

analogy incoming

Let's imagine we are all playing a side scroller, and there are four characters. They each have some differences, mostly tailored for different types of players. Like one is slightly slower but takes less damage, one is faster and takes more, one is taller, etc.

Now while they are different, you can beat the game with any of them if you try. If you work a bit at it, you can even beat the optional harder new game + after you beat the game once. People may like or prefer one over the other, but none are really too weak or too strong.

Now imagine people get bored with the game after beating it, and decide to speedrun it as fast as possible. Those little subtle differences suddenly matter a lot more to them. The faster character is better for them because speed is better than extra health, since you aren't going to get hit much anyways. The taller character can take shortcuts, which didn't matter as much when you played the game, but shave precious seconds off your time when speed running. The fourth character doesn't have any real utility for speed runs at all; he's all around average. Suddenly, you have a meta for speed running, since the only thing that matters is one aspect of the game; how fast you can beat it.

Would you think its ok for the dev to constantly listen to those speed runners and try to near perfectly balance every one of them for speed running? Even though the closer you get to it, the more impossible it is because the difference can be in a single second or less?

This is kind of like how people in FFXIV view some job changes. If you make a self-goal that really isn't designed explicitly in the game, and its above and beyond tuning the jobs to clear all the explicit content. you can't really call jobs that meet or fail this goal as unviable. The goal is far tighter and narrower than teh devs designed the game for, and balancing for that may be hard or impossible without destroying the ability of the jobs to be individual. You get to a point where you're tuning too tightly because the goal is too tight; in this case its a very strong parity that something like a nerf of 20-30 potency becomes a huge issue. The meta shifts from clearing the game on hard to something much harder to balance for.

I think there's only so much devs can do. Like people complain about red mages utility and damage, but the plus is red mage is a lot simpler job for players to play while still being potent enough to clear content. If you try to balance them around an ideal meta, you risk destroying this.

I think you misunderstand what people are asking for. At this point Dark Knights aren't complaining about meta. They are asking to have one of the unique abilities in your analogy. If we wanted speed running then yes, Dark Knight needs damage and thats it. People are asking for more mitigation, QoL, playstyle variations, or selfsustain, these things aren't really meta issues. The tank subforum is currently concerned with the incoming patch, but if you read closely enough many people are asking for dark knight to have more of an independent identity compared to warrior and paladin.

The sad fact is not every class can be meta, that is something that needs to be recognized of course. But we also need to recognize that Balance doesn't mean everyone is meta, its more like everyone brings unique attributes to a group, and that should be a developer priority.