How do we feel about the tank changes?

[Shurrikhan]

Mixed bag. I don't mind the homogeneity in the tank's capacity, but I do mind the homogeneity in their playflow that's likely to occur now.

I like that they'll all likely have significant and balanced AoE. I don't like that every job has a two-stage AoE combo plus a gauge-spender AoE.

I mostly like that they can all work equally from MT or OT positions. I don't like that this seems provided by simply each having a point-support and (close proximity) raid-support skill.

It's fine for them to put out nearly the same throughputs and capacities. It's not fine for them to feel the same in the way they do so.

...Oh dear, RIP low level paladins.
No combo at all until 60, just Fast Blade Riot Blade spam the whole way.
Yay...

Rage of Halone has not been removed, judging by datamining. You'll have the same 1-50 combo experience. It's quite possible it will upgrade into Royal Authority later on, though.

[Lyth]

The biggest thing that I took away from this Live Letter is that the dev team seem to at least be processing community feedback. Most of the changes seemed to come out of things that were discussed at length by the community. Even little suggestions, like giving jobs like MCH more of a FF feel through classic abilities (Bio Blaster, Drill) seems to have not gone unnoticed. So well done for that.

The removal of 100% uptime buffs (Slashing, Piercing) was both necessary and very much wanted. The decision to adjust LB generation to account for Shake it off and Divine Veil cheese was also smartly done. More broadly, I think that shielding was starting to get out of control, and I'm interested to see how both the new shield meters as well as the adjustments to healers (especially SCH) are going to impact this.

The tank stance changes are welcome. I'm a bit concerned that toggling off these new "enmity stances" is going to run into the age-old problem of "stance sticking" unless the implementation of stances itself has been adjusted. But we'll have to see.

The charge system is interesting. While it seems like it might alleviate the potency penalty for holding on to a gap closer until a more useful moment, I don't think that it necessarily solves this problem. As long as gap closers benefit from buff windows, you're probably going to want to hold your charges (without capping) until your next potion or buff comes up.

That being said, given that Arm's Length seems like it might also be a tank role action (based on the Gunbreaker hotbars), I think we'll see a definite improvement in the situation.

Overall, what they've presented so far seems pretty good. I'm still reserving my judgement, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done.

[Kabooa]

Overall, what they've presented so far seems pretty good. I'm still reserving my judgement, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done.

Now see, I had been under the assumption that SE assumes the tank currently getting beat in the face by the boss is in old Tank Stance, which is now guaranteed via the trait for -20% damage taken.

Do you think they will adjust damage up to factor this in, or will they keep the damage the same? That's a 25% increase in EHP that the players have by and large ignored that they now get for free, plus whatever scalar is applied based on item level (it says Str/Vit, but that goes up with Item level since you can't meld it now)

[Lyth]

Now see, I had been under the assumption that SE assumes the tank currently getting beat in the face by the boss is in old Tank Stance, which is now guaranteed via the trait for -20% damage taken.

Do you think they will adjust damage up to factor this in, or will they keep the damage the same? That's a 25% increase in EHP that the players have by and large ignored that they now get for free, plus whatever scalar is applied based on item level (it says Str/Vit, but that goes up with Item level since you can't meld it now)

It's hard to predict how the content will be tuned at launch, but it's a lot easier to get the devs to change the difficulty of a subsequent tier than it is to get them to make role or job changes.

In the long term, I suspect that we're going to see people in casual content surviving unmitigated "tankbusters", and active mitigation and timings will likely become relevant when you get to raid content. I would be surprised to see a significant shift in mitigation difficulty.

[MaraD_]

Needing TBN to break, to proc the "Dark Arts effect" in order to use "X of darkness" moves, so you can extend the timer on darkside, still feels like all the stuff i hated they added to DRK in SB, while only getting rid of the clunkiness of pressing dark arts.

I just want HW DRK back. (Even if it was clunky. id rather clunky HW DRK, than unfun, but smooth SH DRK.)
We only needed QoL stuff, not all this other BS.

[Freyyy]

Needing TBN to break, to proc the "Dark Arts effect" in order to use "X of darkness" moves, so you can extend the timer on darkside, still feels like all the stuff i hated they added to DRK in SB, while only getting rid of the clunkiness of pressing dark arts.

What is your source for that please ? If it's really the case I'm pretty sure that breaking TBN is only going to be ONE option to proc "Dark Arts". Because in the job trailer the DRK isn't getting a TBN broken at all and he's still able to use the "Darkside extender" move. I doubt that they just had him have Dark Arts from the start because the video lasts way more than 10sec. You're either spreading some misinformation that even the leaks didn't talk about, or your source is incomplete and we're going to have another option. I highly doubt that they'll make DRK THAT clunky again after all the feedback on all the previous states the job has gone through.

Please wait for the full job skill list to be available for us to see before jumping on any kind of conclusion.

[Nyarlha]

What is your source for that please ? If it's really the case I'm pretty sure that breaking TBN is only going to be ONE option to proc "Dark Arts". Because in the job trailer the DRK isn't getting a TBN broken at all and he's still able to use the "Darkside extender" move. I doubt that they just had him have Dark Arts from the start because the video lasts way more than 10sec. You're either spreading some misinformation that even the leaks didn't talk about, or your source is incomplete and we're going to have another option. I highly doubt that they'll make DRK THAT clunky again after all the feedback on all the previous states the job has gone through.

Please wait for the full job skill list to be available for us to see before jumping on any kind of conclusion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...on_leak_gives/

Yup, Mara totally missed something. Yes, you get Dark Arts when TBN breaks. Dark Arts allow you to cast Flood of Darkness and Edge of Darkness for FREE. You can still cast them and apply/refresh Darkside with them without Dark Arts but at the cost of MP (3000).

[Freyyy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...on_leak_gives/

Yup, Mara totally missed something. Yes, you get Dark Arts when TBN breaks. Dark Arts allow you to cast Flood of Darkness and Edge of Darkness for FREE. You can still cast them and apply/refresh Darkside with them without Dark Arts but at the cost of MP (3000).

Oh okay so it's just the new way to "refund" TBN's cost. I like it. It's basically giving you back the MP you spent on TBN that you would've spent on these other abilities otherwise.

[Sollats]

After watching both trailers in detail and taking notes from their live stream, I enjoyed some of the changes, but majority of the changes hurts a lot. Tanking in general isn't all that much fun unless you are doing things to change up what you normally do in rotations. I.E. cooldowns and other stuff, which they have been bringing in and honestly I enjoyed some of that with the cross abilities that they added. They removed "Cross abilities" and just made it general abilities which is fine, but homogenizing tanks to literally bring to the party the same thing is awful. What's the point of leveling any other tank job other than to look different or maybe do something slightly different. I enjoyed DRK cause it was slightly different than War and PLD since both have a definitive burn phase in their rotations. Now it looks like all tanks have a "Burn" phase in their rotation, they all have a heal, a shield, party shared shields and heals, no debuffs to differentiate any from the other. I can't imagine being synched to lower level until I see what abilities they will have since that's more likely changed. Honestly I enjoyed tanking because it felt like a difficult role to master first entering but now with it dumbed down so much, either the mechanics of bosses need to be interesting, or tanking will be so bogged boring I would have to swap main jobs if I even bother continuing in a game that promotes less synergy of jobs.

[ExLegen]

Tanking in ff14 was never a challenge.
- stay on tank stance for a couple gcds;
- change to dps spec and never look back;
- mitigate dmg on tank busters;
- rotate/switch tanks with taunts.
- the only tank challenge is to squeeze as much dps as possible (I hardly call that a challenge)

Making tanking challenging is more than modifying tanks themselves, it’s modifying content and encounters.

They can lots of stuff to increase the skill ceiling of tanks without touching tanks directly.
- make bosses and some enemies imune to taunt. Make tanks figure out switches and loss of agro.
- make some bosses skills drop a % of agro.
- give some encounters an agro reset at some points in the fight.
Well we can keep going about ways to make tank job more challenging without messing with specific toolkits.

I also hope they don’t make tank stance boring to the point I can just autoattack and not lose agro.