Gunbreaker gameplay hope and expectations

[Colony]

If Raw Intuition/ToB are an issue... Why not give PLD/DRK additional CD's that compete with them such as buffing Bulwark?

Where is my Dark mind or 20% max hp personal shield every 15 seconds? Oh wait those make drk unique...... that.... doesn't.... sound...... fair......................

[Lyth]

You're right. You do lose a ton of dps for missing a Fell Cleave during IR. You also lose significant dps for leaving to get a coffee mid-fight or falling asleep on your keyboard. I do think that extraordinarily bad play should have extraordinary punishments attached. It's only fair. For most jobs, it's the little mistakes you make that accumulate to result in a 'slow death'. The skill comes from having to identify and weed out all those individual mistakes.

The problem with WAR's "identity" is that it has too many areas in which it specialises in. The high burst damage and low cost snap enmity generation is fine on its own. But then you start layering on other things like self-sustain, relatively short recast mitigation tools like Holmgang, raidwide shielding, high mobility/short recast knockback prevention and so on. If you're going to have an edge, let it be in one area and at the expense of having disadvantages in others. Does it matter that your WAR doesn't have a jet pack and someone else does? Aren't we all supposed to have distinct themes?

You could make every job have an equivalent burst, but then where's the difference? You have, in your own words, homogenised them. But there's another solution. If burst jobs did less damage on a target dummy, you'd see different jobs excel in different fights. Burst-focused jobs would pull ahead under low-uptime conditions. Jobs with a more sustained pattern of dps would pull ahead under high-uptime conditions. If raid dps buffs brought diminishing returns (or had something similar to the old virus immunity effect which prevented you from reapplying the debuff), perhaps you'd be incentivised to bring a mix of jobs which brought raid buffs and ones that didn't.

As far as defensives go: the sheer number that we have access to removes a lot of the challenge from fights. I'm in favour of Dark Mind, Thrill of Battle, Raw Intuition, and Bulwark all going away. Make Inner Beast dps neutral and make resource-based mitigation through Sheltron/IB/TBN a more central part of tanking. Bring Sentinel down to a 2 minute recast, bring Vengeance down to a 10s duration, and let all three do something interesting (i.e. thorns on Vengeance, lifesteal or resource draining on Shadow Wall, and something block or oath related on PLD). Do something about Living Dead's healing requirement (which could be solved by just letting DRK provide enough lifesteal) and make it so that Invulns don't come up nearly as often (5 minutes at an absolute minimum, but I'd much rather see them all on a 7 minute cooldown.)

The problem isn't homogenisation. The problem isn't a lack of homogenisation. The problem is a selective, partial homogenisation which benefits jobs like WAR at the expense of others. The changes to the role action system this expansion was another fairly good example of this.

The solution is to roll this back a little. People have been arguing "just balance everything through buffs" for years. That's not how balance works. If you do, the end result is a steady power creep. We've seen that with defensives, which is why the solution to everything now is either invuln or supercooldown. Nerfs are necessary. And given how poorly the efforts to balance tanks have gone across Heavensward and Stormblood, I'd much rather they err on the side of more nerfs rather than less. Sit down, look at everything that makes WAR systematically dominant, and tone it back. Give them one area, just one, that they excel in, and let the other jobs do the same. There is no room for a fourth tank, because WAR's identity is so broad that it stifles the other jobs. Let's make some room.

[Jandor]

To be honest, I'd prefer less defensive cooldowns.

A boring standard 20% mitigation.
A unique flavour fluff mitigation one (bulwark style.)
A unique flavour proper mitigation one (dark mind, etc.)
An invulnerability.
A usually available reactive one (sheltron, the blackest night, etc.)

TBN is pretty central to dark knights kit, but I'd like if everyone got something similar (with its own flavour) that's core to that job.

[Colony]

Yes because missing a IR FC due to a phase change because your scholar forgot to use fey wind is equivalent to falling asleep at your keyboard. Forget the target dummy, i'm saying in actual practice all tanks are within <5% of each others damage, I encourage you to look it up, you're arguing over peanuts in that department. The defensive aspect is all just a can of worms anyway, this game is a dps centeric song and dance and yes I agree something fresh would be nice. Nerfing Warrior won't do anything to fix any of this. And by self sustain do you mean equilibrium in defiance? The stance no one uses? Or storms path? You can match its healing with less than 5 TBN's.

[Vejj]

Would be interesting if the new tank class will use plate armor like Paladin/Warrior. In the all cinematics and gameplay preview, the class were shown in "Leather" ._.
Makes no sense, that a tank class would share armor with Monk or Samurai but there could be a chance, that he scales with some special stat :P

[Colony]

I admittedly agree, that I feel Wars biggest issue is its lack of identity. Its so well rounded it doesn't feel like it has an identity. For me this is thematically unsatisfying, but I don't think its "dominance" warrants any attention from devs. Tanks are ridiculously balanced. They just have different tools to ideally achieve the same goal. And thats a good thing, although these tools should be more unique from an entertainment perspective. "Balance" obsession ruins games making them bland.

[Lyth]

...

TBN =/= Healing

Tanks don't have parity in dps. I've posted the stats by percentile for every tier at multiple points across this expansion, and unless you cherry pick, it's not equal.

If your ability to hit all your IR FCs are dependent on another party member, you're either doing something wrong or you poorly planned your window.

[Colony]

Except thats not true at all, specific fights demand specific sks and party buffs. Yeah tbn doesn't = healing because storms path healing is a joke compared to the total damage prevented by TBN. Damage not taken is just as good as damage healed.

[Colony]

And yes they statistically are equal. Look up the current stats. Anyone can check those stats by all the tiers and see for themselves, the greatest overal dps disparity was in deltascape and it wasn't that much. Its a moot argument unless you really just want to cry foul on a <5% difference.

[Colony]

Everyone does there part to increase raid dps. Optimally timed IR's sometimes rely on Fey wind thats just a fact and saying missing a FC is due to "poor planning" shows you aren't well versed on Wars situation right now.