Tank homogenization

[Claire_Pendragon]

Not sure if Troll or not actually tanked anything remotely difficult.

He mostly means the game has roughly 3 buttons that do nearly the same thing.
IMO they are a bit of a middleground. They arent quite distinct enough to really justify themselves, but they are also distinct enough that you CAN pick scenarios for one over another... but imo both scenarios feel like they just did the bare minimum, and left them pretty basic.

[Lyth]

If you want to talk about defensive nerfs, then it simply comes down to this:

Abilities like TBN and Nascent Flash are fun, and inject some personality to their respective tank jobs. If everyone had them, or if you neutered them into insignificance, you'd be destroying what makes those jobs fun. That's just jealousy.

Invulns, on the other hand, are broken.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

He mostly means the game has roughly 3 buttons that do nearly the same thing.
IMO they are a bit of a middleground. They arent quite distinct enough to really justify themselves, but they are also distinct enough that you CAN pick scenarios for one over another... but imo both scenarios feel like they just did the bare minimum, and left them pretty basic.

I understand the defensive kits of each tank, but the person has made a rather...ignorant remark, as high-end content requires the planned usage of said defensive cooldowns, which can be tight windows or require stacking of cool downs, which adding a charge system would undermine in some ways on the latter.
The person I responded to, not having a tank at max level, it's understandable making the remark, but better to get some meaningful experience under the belt before suggesting overhauls to defensive kits.

I do agree that defensives are basic for the most part, TBN, ToB, NF being more notably unique in how they mitigate damage compared to the rest, but generally I don't get that hung up on a cooldown mitigating for the same amount in a different way. All I care about is I know which cooldown or cooldowns I need for buster, and which I can spare for auto attacks. While not much depth, I doubt mitigation is ever going to evolve past that in XIV.

Personally, I think having defensive cooldowns consolidated into one with charges would probably be detrimental, and make tanking further brain dead.

He is kind of right about the core cooldowns.

• Rampart is a 20% mitigation with a 20s duration on a 90s cooldown.
• Vengeance, Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula are 30% mitigations with 15s duartion on a 120s cooldown.
• Raw Intuition, Sheltron, HoS and TBN are all roughly 20% mitigation with a 6s or 7s duration usable roughly every 30s.

When you only need to use any 1 of them to survive a tankbuster the others are mostly redundant while they are off cooldown and their use order is more determined by tankbuster and tank swap timings.

TBN is pretty much the only short mitigation cooldown that isn't redundant with Rampart and the 30%er as it does not suffer from diminishing returns from stacking (and in fact gets increased returns with stacking). Nascent Flash is also such a good cooldown because it turns a redundant mitigation cooldown into a solid self-heal.

Not really, while yes the core three skills do the same thing, they do so at varying strength, this does not make him right. Also what I found funny was this thread complains about homogeneity, then further homogeneity enters the thread, looking to consolidate cooldowns. Personally I don't care about homogeneity, I much rather balance so HW never happens again (PLD main even back then).

But I still rather have a choice of different cooldowns to use, where and which I stack if required regardless of Diminishing Returns, typically found in Savage and Ultimate, some tankbusters will just destroy you, if you only have one cooldown popped. Sure some cooldowns have better synergies with others, but it's negligible, at most you save a healer a cast or two, otherwise they have you covered with oGCD in most cases. Not trying to play down how absurdly strong TBN and NF are, but DR does not make another cooldown redundant, if fights do require stacking for busters.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Sure some cooldowns have better synergies with others, but it's negligible, at most you save a healer a cast or two, otherwise they have you covered with oGCD in most cases. Not trying to play down how absurdly strong TBN and NF are, but DR does not make another cooldown redundant, if fights do require stacking for busters.

That is the key factor and for the most part outside of early progression most fights do not require more than one source of mitigation to survive the tankbusters. It is not like tankbusters are tuned so that Rampart+Short Cooldown+Divine Benison/Adloquium/Noct Aspected Benefict are all required to survive from full health.

I personally think that the cooldown suites of all the tanks are for the most part fine. My problem is more that pretty much no fight uses even close to 70% of both tanks' mitigation capabilities through attack frequency nor damage.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

That is the key factor and for the most part outside of early progression most fights do not require more than one source of mitigation to survive the tankbusters. It is not like tankbusters are tuned so that Rampart+Short Cooldown+Divine Benison/Adloquium/Noct Aspected Benefict are all required to survive from full health.

I personally think that the cooldown suites of all the tanks are for the most part fine. My problem is more that pretty much no fight uses even close to 70% of both tanks' mitigation capabilities through attack frequency nor damage.

I mean, Umbra Slash in 10s is spicy, applying the 4 stacks of slashing debuff, there is one that has to be kitchen sinked, and tank buster in 12s door boss, is super spicy damage, TEA, P3 sharing punishing heat, and divine spears require stacking mitigation regardless of early progression. Otherwise, once BiS, when you have no where else to put a freed up cooldown, you might as well leave it where it is if you can't make use of it anywhere else.

But that falls back to the actual problem of fight design, not the actual tanks defensive suite. This is probably the devs biggest failing in regards tanks, is the lack of tank focus in their fight design.

[Absurdity]

But that falls back to the actual problem of fight design, not the actual tanks defensive suite. This is probably the devs biggest failing in regards tanks, is the lack of tank focus in their fight design.

Or, as mentioned by someone in a different thread, they come up with such great tank mechanics as Twisting Blaze in E6s, where you get to stand in a corner and spam your 120-150 potency ranged attack for 10 seconds.

[Undeadfire]

Or, as mentioned by someone in a different thread, they come up with such great tank mechanics as Twisting Blaze in E6s, where you get to stand in a corner and spam your 120-150 potency ranged attack for 10 seconds.

Um.... You literally can face tank it with BIS gear, even the Melee DPS can in 5.2 easily discovered by top tier raid groups. Originally Paladin covered a Melee, pushed on further by having a 2nd melee soak a blast too for major uptime.

[Absurdity]

Um.... You literally can face tank it with BIS gear, even the Melee DPS can in 5.2 easily discovered by top tier raid groups. Originally Paladin covered a Melee, pushed on further by having a 2nd melee soak a blast too for major uptime.

Yes, and now read what you said again... in organized groups and BiS gear you can "ignore" the mechanic...which means the intended way for it to be done is have the tanks stand at the edges of the arena, doing nothing, to not cleave the raid to death.
That is simply terrible design for a mechanic, whether or not players figure out a way to simply not do the mechanic as it was intended doesn't matter because SE does not design fights with uptime strats in mind.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Or, as mentioned by someone in a different thread, they come up with such great tank mechanics as Twisting Blaze in E6s, where you get to stand in a corner and spam your 120-150 potency ranged attack for 10 seconds.

Yes, I'm saying fight design is the devs biggest failings including with great emphasis on, the poxy fire tornados in 6s.
I can understand forced downtime to try and force players to adjust, but 6s took the p***.

I have given my suggestions in previous posts, how devs might better improve tanking but with every fight made into elaborate dances, rather than fights, a tank's impact on a fight is becoming more diminished by the expansion, outside of being a sponge for damage.

[SkyEdge1]

So, unpopular opinion, and maybe a bit late to the party, but in FAVOR of homogenized roles. I really only need to look at the class "balance" in WoW and see the absolute bananas shift every few weeks in their perceived metas, to look at our roles and say "ehh it's not so bad." I also say roles because then no matter your aesthetic, style, or preference every role can perform just as well as any other role. I think what we need to ask and hope for in 6.0 and beyond is not to make the tanks all perfectly unique, but to create fights in the middle of the skill levels i.e dungeons to EX that force more out of tanks than just a tank buster or a swap. More Reactionary skills would probably feed into this playstyle rather than the slew of planned mitigation that we have as of now. At least that's my opinion, though I say that having tanked only up to EX in the past. Savage and ultimate are entirely different beasts that would need someone far more experienced than I to talk about.