There's not much unique-ness when it comes to tank jobs, are there?

[Jasmyne]

I saw a post on someones view of paladin in its current state and the thread wasn't very well received, I think it's because the author got caught in the typical trap of arguing "viability" of the class. So I'm gonna make a quick disclaimer and say this post is in no way criticizing the viability of tanks, you can literally make a class viable with 2 buttons it's not that hard. This is actually regarding what makes the tank classes unique in respective to their names.

First of all the design team seems to have made defense a very passive stat, and most of a tanks survival comes from skill mitigation (and of course the healer) so in turn that has kind of made the paladin shield nothing more than just being aesthetic. Sure paladin can block, and sure you can do it every so often but it's very unreliable and... I'm not sure, but I think the occasional block was meant to make up for the lack of healing (or barrier) in their basic rotation because all other tanks have that but paladin doesn't. So the only way to get a reliable use out of your block is to use Shelltron, however all other tanks get a different variation of that exact same ability so how does that make paladin unique? *shrugs*

I wasn't around during the beginning of Stormblood, but I was told that among the warrior players they weren't exactly happy with the whole inner release+fel cleave situation, it took a unique class and basically turned it into a meme. But the designers liked it so much that they gave variations of that same 5 button spam rotation to paladin and dark knight? Paladin also has a mini spam in its rotation with Atonement which personally I don't really see the point... I think that gunbreaker is the only one that's unique in that case so good on them.

Anyway I can go on forever, but the point is that none of these jobs are really that unique in anything beyond aesthetics. It's strange to me that they are so desperate to get every class perfectly balanced that they didn't realize that they just managed to make all the jobs exactly the same... or maybe they did realize that and that's their ultimate plan, who knows.

I have tons of ideas to make these jobs unique, but I won't go into that. For now I'll just say that I don't see a problem with minor imbalance. I don't mind seeing paladin as the staple, easy mode tank class that it started off being, because when you think "Tank" in any game it's usually paladin or Sword+Shield. It would be cool to see paladin being the tank class with the highest defense and best damage mitigator.
I don't mind seeing Warrior become the highest damage, highest self healing and highest HP tank in the game the way it originally was. Warrior was difficult, but when people played it right it was admirable and fun to see.
I don't mind seeing Dark Knight as the inner darkness job with the highest angst level and unique love for anime. There's alot they can do with this job to make it less copy pasta than the rest.
Finally believe it or not I actually kinda like Gunbreaker, simply because I think it's the most unique tank due to its rotation. I think it can be WAY better, but it does make me a bit hopeful that they intend on advancing back to unique-ness and job identity.

I know they're worried about the meta, but the nature of "the meta" will always choose one job over another. These hardcore players don't much care for identity or lore, the biggest thing for them is viability and efficiency, so if Paladin has a single second of faster efficiency in a boss fight than Warrior due to animation lag or whatever, then the meta will chose Paladin. I think SE should focus more on making each class "unique" and reasonably ABLE to do end game content, rather than making sure that every class is represented equally in the end game logs.

EDIT: Hmm after thinking about it, I think what I want is a new unique experience every time I switch to a new job. Kinda like I'm actually playing a new game. I feel like at one point they were actually on that path, but that has definitely changed over time. Is it too much to ask? What do you think?

[BarretOblivion]

I don't care about lore when it makes a skill complete sh**. Living dead is a sh** tank invuln for everyone but "oh the lore!" well people won't care and it won't be played. Tanks can be unique but they also need to be viable.

[Jasmyne]

I don't care about lore when it makes a skill complete sh**. Living dead is a sh** tank invuln for everyone but "oh the lore!" well people won't care and it won't be played. Tanks can be unique but they also need to be viable.

Didn't say they shouldn't be viable, if you'd like to re-read what I said you sure can :P
Here's a copy paste for ya "I think SE should focus more on making each class "unique" and reasonably ABLE to do end game content,"

But I do see what you're saying. Living dead is kinda silly and needs a second look.

[Nedkel]

There is not much you could do in games like these.

Jobs performance is being calculated by the DPS they do, and deffensives are binary either they are enough to make it viable or not and thats it.

Unique gameplay does not go well with a game where only one thing is important, especially on the role that is expected a certain performance from by the community with other things taking it as "granted" like for example: pulling big, mitigate decently, bring utility, survive tank busters etc.
They cant be too different because you will end up with jobs that will struggle to do certain duty (i am looking at your HW/SB paladin in dungeons).
Thats why they gave tanks a core gameplay and add some flavours to it to be a little more diverse. It is extremely difficult to make jobs totaly different from each other, but performing the same role the same.
If someone is looking for diverse gameplay he should play DPS, since they are not tied to the strict class rules which all tanks have to meet.

[Jasmyne]

There is not much you could do in games like these.

Jobs performance is being calculated by the DPS they do, and deffensives are binary either they are enough to make it viable or not and thats it.

Unique gameplay does not go well with a game where only one thing is important, especially on the role that is expected a certain performance from by the community with other things taking it as "granted" like for example: pulling big, mitigate decently, bring utility, survive tank busters etc.
They cant be too different because you will end up with jobs that will struggle to do certain duty (i am looking at your HW/SB paladin in dungeons).
Thats why they gave tanks a core gameplay and add some flavours to it to be a little more diverse. It is extremely difficult to make jobs totaly different from each other, but performing the same role the same.
If someone is looking for diverse gameplay he should play DPS, since they are not tied to the strict class rules which all tanks have to meet.

That's definitely a unique perspective, however I'm not sure that I agree with you. Warrior survived with its 20% more health and healing for quite a long time, they didn't NEED to swap to paladin defenses because the 20% extra heal was created as the alternative to mirror paladins 20% extra defense. Also to replace paladin's defense buffs they had self heals which could be added upon quite nicely if they tried.

So no I don't quite agree with you when you say "Tanks can't be different beyond aesthetics" that just sounds kinda sad. I think there are many ways they can make each job unique. It might require them to change up certain aspects of gameplay, but I like to believe there are many creative people at SE who are capable of doing it. "If you want unique-ness then just play DPS" is just depressing.

[Ardox]

Anyway I can go on forever, but the point is that none of these jobs are really that unique in anything beyond aesthetics. It's strange to me that they are so desperate to get every class perfectly balanced that they didn't realize that they just managed to make all the jobs exactly the same... or maybe they did realize that and that's their ultimate plan, who knows.

Define what you mean by unique; Tell me exactly how the jobs are exactly all the same. So far, I've only seem people over generalizing.

I have tons of ideas to make these jobs unique, but I won't go into that.

Why not, it would prove your point and maybe your ideas are going to have enough traction to inspire the designer.

For now I'll just say that I don't see a problem with minor imbalance. I don't mind seeing paladin as the staple, easy mode tank class that it started off being, because when you think "Tank" in any game it's usually paladin or Sword+Shield. It would be cool to see paladin being the tank class with the highest defense and best damage mitigator.
I don't mind seeing Warrior become the highest damage, highest self healing and highest HP tank in the game the way it originally was. Warrior was difficult, but when people played it right it was admirable and fun to see.

How is that addressing the uniqueness concern? You could achieve the same by adding a on/off stance that would either give you high (A) defense + damage mitigating trait to your normal combo or (B) high DPS + healing trait to your normal combo.

[Jasmyne]

Define what you mean by unique; Tell me exactly how the jobs are exactly all the same. So far, I've only seem people over generalizing.




Why not, it would prove your point and maybe your ideas are going to have enough traction to inspire the designer.




How is that addressing the uniqueness concern? You could achieve the same by adding a on/off stance that would either give you high (A) defense + damage mitigating trait to your normal combo or (B) high DPS + healing trait to your normal combo.

Sure, same 123 combo. Same role abilities.
Different variation of the same buff/debuff to maintain (Paladin goring blade, Warrior storm's eye, Dark knight darkness).
Same defense mitigating buffs (Paladin sentinel, Warrior Vengeance, Dark Knight Shadow wall, Gunbreaker Nebula)
Same variation of warrior's Inner release/fel cleave combo (Paladin, warrior, dark knight)
Different variation of the same invulnerability buff (some are better than others, but still fundamentally do the same thing)
Same tank buster mitigation ability (Paladin Shelltron, Warrior Raw intuation, Dark Knight TBN, GNB Heart of stone) However TBN is pretty great I gotta admit
Same 2 button AOE rotation.

Anything else? I mean, I think I just covered all the abilities that fundamentally make each tank that's not some small niche bonus ability. I do think GNB is pretty unique in general, but I already said that so you're clearly not referring to them.

As to your second point, I'm not really that interested in discussing my ideas to make each job unique with you, because it's clear you don't agree with my fundamental argument that they're all generally the same so... what's the point?

Also your last point... I really don't know what you mean by that. Your solution is the complete opposite of the purpose of this post. How does it address it being unique? I mean, it would make paladin the high defense and best at damage mitigation, and would make warrior high in dps and self heals. I think that makes them pretty unique to one another no?

[shao32]

right now 3 of the 4 tanks have as a base the inner release window with extremly minimun diferences wich is something to be worry about, i think is time to say stop, first of all DRK didn't need this mechanic and im worry they end adding this to GNB for no reason in the future.
¿what happen if a player don't like this mechanic?, it's ok if is present on 1 job and if you don't like it you can play one of the other 3 options left, but right now is 3 tanks (+1 dps) with this and 1 tank that don't have it yet. i personally hate this mechanic, is boring uninteresting and depending of the job is more tedious for the animation *staring at bloodspiller* i consider SE need to change the course with tanks gameplay, i will not speak for WAR and PLD but for DRK and GNB i don't want this, they need to encourage gameplay diversity instead of copy pasting the same stuff and adding minnor mechanics on top to differentiate like how DRK and WAR are right now.

[Maneesha]

post..

I think there are multiple reasons why we lost "unique-ness" of the jobs. On the one hand the community and the "meta" mentality or fear of being unwanted in groups and wanting all jobs to be "balanced" or viable so the devs while trying to keep the jobs feel unique while you play, they need to make sure they not only do similar dmg, but also have similar mitigation,support and what not capability. Then we have the process of the older the game gets the more complex it will get, so devs need to balance accessibility vs complexity. They want new people to have a easier time picking up the game and learning the classes, instead of having a very steep learning curve until they can learn the job/catch up to the "veteran" players who played said jobs for 2-6years. So it kinda became natural to "dumb" down things and sometimes lose aspects which made certain jobs unique. Then of course there is also the different views of the player base vs the dev-team, or different philosophy's of what makes the jobs unique in the 1st place. Also the way the player-base plays the game, viewing certain things as useless and so on. Also the fact that we constantly get new jobs, its hard to give them all a different "feel" while playing and make them feel unique and different enough, but on par in usefulness/effectiveness with the "older" jobs.

I think all jobs felt really unique until Stormblood, when the devs decided to make jobs easier across the board and with the (i think) 1st skills pruning and the new "gauge" system. I don't remember what the phrase exactly was back then, but it was something about "raising the skill floor" and making the difference between bad players and good ones look much smaller then it was back in arr/hw. At least until then there was no skill pruning and not such a huge "streamlining" of skills like the one we had with Shadowbringer.

I am not against any of those changes they made tbh, but there are a lot of elements i dislike, even if i can understand the reasons why they did those changes. One of the things i dislike is the constant removal of "synergy" skills/buffs like slashing/piercing debuffs. I think they simply added more depth to the whole combat system, even if they caused huge "imbalances" and excluded jobs from the "meta".

Also since they balance around "savage" content difficulty, there is imo a problem arising from the design of the "savage" content it self. It all feels a bit too streamlined to me or perhaps overly designed/balanced and predictable. Maybe because the size of the group is so small or because how the encounters always do the same thing and all jobs (tanks/heals) can deal with everything. Like almost every aoe is magical (very rare cases of phys aoe), you always have a cd for a tankbuster and so on. I really miss the "old" design of physical and magical tanks, that in certain boss fights one class has advantages over another by design of the class and so on, but given that we can only bring 8 ppl to a fight maybe such designs are simply not possible. While the devs mentioned something about experimenting with the idea of "main" tank and "off" tank, i still can't see a difference, since they want them all to be able to "main" tank.

I don't know, i am kinda conflicted with the whole "unique-ness" vs "balance" thing. I do want every job to be "viable" but maybe not optimal for an encounter and in the same time to be unique and provide a different dynamic and perks for having "X" specific job in the group. But at the moment it all boils down to "dps"/"rdps", which i am not a fan of. I wish it was, for example, something like that : Lets take a paladin for raid utility even if he deals less dps, but will help us survive "X" mechanic, or lets take bard for "X" buff and debuff which will help the group, and so on, that you could make choices based on what a specific class provides. I feel we don't have that anymore, at least to the extend we used to have back in heavensward. Sure if you want to play the meta you simply copied it and that's it, but since not every job did everything any other job does, you had to make choices, or maybe its just foggy memory and we never really had those choices...

[jetfire117]

I mean what's setting us apart now is almost just animations and weapons at this point. I think the role action system (along with some of these changes in Shb) made the situation even worse. It's really boring for all 3 tanks to have the same looking CD, stun, silence, and other stuff. In my opinion the only time the tank jobs felt different was in Heavensward. I would say ARR too, but I didn't level WAR at all and only played PLD so I don't know if they were similar to one another.

right now 3 of the 4 tanks have as a base the inner release window with extremly minimun diferences wich is something to be worry about, i think is time to say stop, first of all DRK didn't need this mechanic and im worry they end adding this to GNB for no reason in the future.
¿what happen if a player don't like this mechanic?, it's ok if is present on 1 job and if you don't like it you can play one of the other 3 options left, but right now is 3 tanks (+1 dps) with this and 1 tank that don't have it yet. i personally hate this mechanic, is boring uninteresting and depending of the job is more tedious for the animation *staring at bloodspiller* i consider SE need to change the course with tanks gameplay, i will not speak for WAR and PLD but for DRK and GNB i don't want this, they need to encourage gameplay diversity instead of copy pasting the same stuff and adding minnor mechanics on top to differentiate like how DRK and WAR are right now.

Well we already have infuriate, now we just need something that lets us spam burst strike 5 times. (PLEASE DON'T GET ANY IDEAS YOSHI-P). But look I wouldn't say no to DRK having something like continuation. I kinda wish all the tanks had something like it. It's just that feeling of having a new combo opening is a good one.