Please make tanks more unique by making the 30% damage reduction skills different

[PyurBlue]

This is pointless, unless Bulwark was guaranteed damage reduction, it's a terrible skill, RNG is this game is pretty bad if you do any crafting/ gathering you'll know. the biggest issue is crits also which blocking does not currently mitigate. So some form of bulwark would be pointless in all instances in trying to offset sentinels 3minute cooldown.

Not at all. Having a chance to mitigate brings issues for TB's, but not for multiple hits. Bulwark was better than Rampart for Autos or mobs. It also built up Oath for more Sheltrons. This doesn't really matter though as the skill could have been changed to anything. I even suggested a fix for the TB issue by having Bulwark build up a shield.

There's nothing wrong with some degree of "homogenisation" ooohhh big scary word, so what if some things are similar, tanks are the most balanced they have ever been, and if having some homogenisation means all tanks are taken and not a HW situation with PLD, or SB for DRK, then it's a worthwhile "sacrifice".

Homogenization isn't a scary word, it's descriptive term. I don't see a sacrifice to be made and that's where we seem to disagree. We don't have to have copied skills to achieve balance. It certainly makes things easier for the devs but it's not required.

You guys keep saying that balance shouldn't require homogenization, but in the case of mitigation specifically with how this game works? It absolutely does. Consider how much DRKs hate Living Dead, and that's one of the more "diverse" cooldowns for defense.

Pointing out a problem with one skill doesn't really say much though. The other three invulns are pretty much fine and balanced within each tank's skill set. Living Dead could be made a clone of one of the other invulns or it could be changed into something completely new that doesn't share the current drawbacks. Even if balancing requires near parity between skills, that doesn't mean that we can't try to achieve some kind of differentiation. It might just be limited to a small amount. Would increasing, say, Sentinel's mitigation by 1% break tank balance? No. What about 2%? You can keep asking yourself while increasing the value and I think it's clear that the skill can be given an advantage over the others without making the other tanks totally useless. The devs just need to find the right values and tradeoffs.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Not at all. Having a chance to mitigate brings issues for TB's, but not for multiple hits. Bulwark was better than Rampart for Autos or mobs. It also built up Oath for more Sheltrons. This doesn't really matter though as the skill could have been changed to anything. I even suggested a fix for the TB issue by having Bulwark build up a shield.


Homogenization isn't a scary word, it's descriptive term. I don't see a sacrifice to be made and that's where we seem to disagree. We don't have to have copied skills to achieve balance. It certainly makes things easier for the devs but it's not required.

I specifically said, unless Bulwark was guaranteed damage reduction, and then proceeded to point out the glaring flaw if it was via blocking. And actually no Rampart was better, as you get two uses of Rampart in the same time it takes for Bulwark to come off cooldown and it last an extra 5 seconds longer in duration. Bulwark which it's effectiveness was heavily dependant on how far into an expansion we were, as blocking does scale, in both rate and strength. Then it comes down to when we're comparing both skills.

To be honest I rather have homogenisation when it comes down to defensive skills, (tank invulns and short recast cooldowns are whatever they are their own thing which gives enough unique defensive flavour to the jobs), like I have said, last time the 30% were unique, they were so imbalanced it was awful, if homogensation of the 30% remedies that, then I'm happy to have some homogenisation.

[Samsta]

You guys keep saying that balance shouldn't require homogenization, but in the case of mitigation specifically with how this game works? It absolutely does. Consider how much DRKs hate Living Dead, and that's one of the more "diverse" cooldowns for defense.

We are not asking them to be changed completely, add different effects on top of the damage reduction and now you have skill that keeps you alive while also being unique and having a flavor. You pointed out living dead but ironically the immunity cooldowns are perfect example of this, with the exception of some people not liking living dead, no one has problems with the different immunities. They are unique and all work, same can be done with other cooldowns.

[MaraD_]

last time the 30% were unique, they were so imbalanced it was awful, if homogensation of the 30% remedies that, then I'm happy to have some homogenisation.

But we know they could have been balanced w/o making them the exact same.
They need to fill the same function, but you dont need them to be identical in how they fulfill the same function.

I understand why the tanks are now going to have more focus on making their DPS rotations differ, while keeping most of thier mitigation nearly identical.
But some of the prior options between the tanks in the prior expansions, could have worked, if content actually required the differences they were given.
example: shake it off didnt work on boss mechanics. so they had to change it.
O6S actually made holmgang less useful, but it didnt matter since the fight wasnt designed around making sure WAR wasn't a guaranteed slot.
PLDs cover is great for cheezing mechanics, but it hardly saw anything like that in HW, despite cover existing back then too.
Anti-push backs werent as frequent until SB, so PLD saw an actual reason to be invited over DRK.
Which is fine, IF DRK had something at least in another fight, to choose it instead.
Or at least a mechanic in the same fight, to also have over PLD. etc.
Tanks have silence/stuns, and hardly use them in savage content. (I know they interrupt now in E1S, but i havent touched current savage, but just going by prior savages)
Awareness was pretty much only used for halicarnasus and nothing else. (All tanks get this, but im just showing how content isnt actually being designed with the tanks capabilities in mind)
You could have 4 required abilities, and each tank only has 3 of 4. (not specifically mitigation.)
So one mechanic is a push back, that 1 tank has no means to deal with, so they have to run away/back.
but they do have the ability thats required later, that another tank doesnt have. etc.
(As long as you have a means to deal with this loss, such as running back to the boss in O5S)

The developers behind the job designs only play DPS. they dont play tanks or healers, and the combat designs dont bother looking at anything other than a bare minimum of what auto attacks can do, cleaves, and TBs can do.

They heavily build the fights around what DPS can do, since burst phases line up with boss mechanics, in a manner you know the devs did intentionally.
Bosses COULD be designed taking tanks pros/cons into mind, but they dont. THAT is why you're "technically" right, but why the rest of us are fighting against it. We want them to actually try on tanking mechanics.

[Shurrikhan]

Also voicing my opinion that any changes toward diversity should be done to playstyles and offensive kits, not defensive kits. You will never get tank balance this good again if you make their defensive cooldowns "diverse" I promise you.

I have to disagree. All that's necessary is that you have the same minimum eHP for the same intervals at the same (if any) cost to rDPS. How you gather than eHP is irrelevant. It could come from one CD. It could come from two CDs paired.

We didn't see significant variance in survivability or general balance during late SB, where tanks were similarly within 1.5% of each other in rDPS and DRK, the lowest dps, still had the highest free mitigation over time, yet each job was significantly more distinct at the time, and many of the things that veered towards imbalance did so not as a result of the skill or toolkit's general concepts, but because of neglect on the part of fight designs (harming slow-ramp classes like SAM just as much as hurting DRK or helping WAR) or through specific tuning or QoL issues.

We see this now with DRK, for instance: a faint extension of Blood Weapon to compensate for its animation and attack-checking method eating a weirdly long portion of its duration, a single tick more from Living Shadow, and Bloodspiller and Quietus giving their MP at all times instead of only under Delirium (as would benefit QoL and DRK leveling) and that faint % damage would put DRK neck-and-neck with PLD, if not GNB. Those aren't imbalances baked into the very concepts of Living Dead or Blood Weapon. They're just faint implementation issues that weren't quite well enough accounted for. Delirium, likewise, is just an issue of a QoL feature only being thought of as important enough to warrant its use during DRK's burst CDs, while DRK is apparently tuned around being applied everywhere. Again, a simple error. Finally, let's consider Living Dead. Nothing in the "heal some amount after triggering an immunity to offset the fact that said immunity cannot waste duration before the fatal blow, except through the healing being done too soon" would require a doom state as it is currently, let alone an amount exactly equal to the DRK's HP. It's a simple implementation issue.

No one's asking for differentiation by capacity. No tank pair should be unable to stun or interrupt a vital mechanic, nor any one tank be uniquely able to do so (which pretty much means, especially once we have a fourth tank, every tank should be able to do those things). No tank should be able to survive what necessary damage others cannot, nor any tank be unable to survive what necessary damage others can. (I say "tank" over "tank pair" because you otherwise run the prog-farm gambit of tanking double-sturdy-tanks and then double-rDPS-tanks.) Given that, neither should their rDPS differ to any degree not already eclipsed by the standard deviation of damage itself and our Crits and Direct Hits, though this may require more than purely fflogs to compute if utility were any more significant, as it's hard to systematically measure the uptime benefits of things like Divine Veil or Shake it Off as on Doomtrain or the like.

There is vast room to differentiate means of mitigation without differentiating its capacity.

[Yrantis]

These are good points and I agree, if you can maintain exactly how much eHP you can put out well it could work. Although It may seem minor, having to stuff 2 OGCDs into a GCD vs just one on another tank is an advantage, especially if one of the TBs is a little bit of a faster cast.

I guess the point I'm making is: diversifying defense and still keeping balance would require VERY tight fight design, because of how scripted the boss fights are. You guys talk about the invincibilities being "balanced" and to a degree they are: in the sense that they're totally unnecessary. None of the current fights require them and most people in the PF don't even use them most of the time. If invincibility were important DRK would be shunned like a leper in groups. Because if all else is equal, DPS is balanced, tank mitigation capacity is "equal", why would you bring the guy who is a huge pain in the ass to work around rather than the guy who goes "LOL HALLOWED GROUND" and just becomes straight invincible?

I guess the overall point I'm making here is: different defensives will put extra pressure on your healers in certain situations. Now they have to learn to heal 4 different ways. Living Dead is a perfect example of this (if it were a requirement for fights). Whereas changing your DPS only affects you and YOUR rotation, changing tank defensives can and will affect other people in your party and will become a nightmare to balance around. What if the "weaker" number healer like AST gets paired with the "gimmick" defensive tank and he is now strained to the point of breaking when on other tanks his rotation will be fine? Even if their theoretical capacity is equal, they're extra trouble, and in the case of the tank, extra trouble the healer can't even opt out of.

Damage in FFXIV is just so consistent, I think is the issue here. There's a million ways to put out damage but only a few to stop it from coming in. I saw someone mention Vengeance as a potential difference to the 30%, but that small difference alone already pushes WAR away from the OT slot or they risk losing DPS for no reason, and flexibility is key in a game where your role has two slots and the game punishes you for duplicates.

Not to knock the folks because I love them, but this dev team can't even get the entirety of the ranged role up to par, and it has neglected SMN play issues and RDM power issues completely for what is now months. I've seen what happens when the roles get "differentiated" like MNK or BLM, and it's frankly what made me flee the DPS classes this expansion. GNB,PLD, and WAR feel totally different offensively, with small cute differences (that actually matter quite a bit in 4mans, just not savage) that keep things fresh, and you know what? So well balanced I can play and enjoy them all, even gear up 3/4 for the price of 1 (fuck you WAR DH/CRIT). It is amazing, so when I see people ask to be more "different" like the DPS...it just makes the former DPS player in me leery.

[MaraD_]

snip

Most of your argument is countering yourself, or agreeing with others you said you disagreed with.
(Outside of agreeing SE seems to fail at handling stuff for tanks/healers, and barely succeeds with DPS)
LD is an example where its not balanced eHP.
Its an example of "Good enough" when a fight requires it. But has no benefit being used outside of that.
Hallowed ground can be used like a normal CD.
So not only does PLD and DRK share the same 30% CD, but PLD also has another on top of that.

And as has been said, if the fights dont actually require the invulnerability moves, then DRK is at a disadvantage.
AND when they do require them, they need fights that show the pros and cons of each tanks invulns. Such as the longer duration and shorter CD of LD, vs the straight up invincible, with only a timer downside, styled PLD invuln. (While still offering the "work around" when you lack the best tank for that mechanic. An example is PLD could solo all the tethers in titania, or they can have an extra person take an extra tether for what they dont want to deal with.
This lets the group work around each tanks ability to invuln stuff.

A11S had a mechanic near the end, that would push the tank off the edge, and running away from it wasn't very good for the group.
Each tank has a way to deal with it, but it was best to tank swap, so WAR or PLD can prevent the pushback.
If you had DRK MT, the PLD could cover the DRK and prevent the pushback. (But PLD+DRK combos werent really that good, despite being the physical/magical combo)

In O5S when the ghost showed up to push people off the course, you could just stand at the side of the "box ghost" to prevent push back, so giving all the tanks methods to deal with push back wasnt needed.

Problem here, is that PLD and WAR let u cheese mechanics, and they gave nothing to DRK to cheese mechanics.
Its only a problem when u dont give a tool to someone, but give unique tools to everyone else.
They wouldnt come off as being that unique, if everyone had something unique. (Heck, even what we're suggesting is still sometimes considered homogenization to some, since they think the only way to have non homogenization is to have "best/worst" rather than pros/cons. The whole "If everyone's unique, then no ones unique" view, but twisted.)

SE is probably never going to stop putting all focus on the DPS, but we're still going to wish otherwise.
You could compare this to current day politics, with 1 group saying "I wish it were this way" and the other group saying "But its never gonna happen, so lets do this other thing".
I still feel its plenty "within reason", but of course it depends solely on SE to actually do it.

[Yrantis]

snip

A lot of my argument is counter to the point I'm making because I'm trying to balance things from dev perspective, tank player perspective, and other player perspective. I see what you guys are talking about, but realistically what happens when you ask for things like this is that you get horrible imbalance from the dev team, because if I'm being honest with you: end game content in this game probably isn't the major focus of the dev team. Small percentages of their playerbase even step into it, so you are very likely never going to get the care and detail you are asking for, but you WILL send a message to the dev team that you want tanks arbitrarily "different". And so what you get is an optimal tank setup that's different depending on the fight, and tank players now have to play every tank in the role to remain viable. This will drive people away from your game, because people don't like having to stop playing their favorite class because someone on the dev team decided it was going to suck for this particular content.

Would I like to live in a world where tank skills were evenly balanced, fights were tuned for viability for multiple diverse playstyles, and they all felt great to play? Of course, but it's a fantasy more fictional than Eorzea, and a potentially dangerous one. I really don't want to end up like RDM, where another class in your role is so overtuned you literally cannot compete with them and are like that because of an arbitrary "difference" that you're not allowed to do damage because you have absolutely useless "utility" or that your class is so bad most people choose to play SMN, a class with NOTORIOUSLY awful QoL issues, over you. How about the fact that ranged classes are just 2000 DPS behind the melee/BLM because they have to be "different" with their 100% uptime, but hey, at least they're different right? Tank balance for this game is the best its ever been, all I'm asking is for you to consider that it might have SOMETHING to do with the fact that the dev team no longer needs to balance raids around four different mitigation styles EVERY SINGLE FIGHT.

[Shurrikhan]

...

You've both oversimplified some of the points here and some missed very obvious answers to your own questions. Simply put, they have clear answers; they're not, therefore, great candidates for rhetorical questions.

Let's take the first one, for example -- effectively "Why would Living Dead ever compete with Hallowed Ground?"

1. When you would clearly have Benediction or (Reci-ET-Adlo and Excog, etc.) and the exact moment of would-be fatal damage is not as predictable, and thus lose less Living Dead duration after the full-heal than you save immunity duration before the would-be fatal blow (i.e. when the effective duration of Hallowed Ground--where actually preventing death--is less than that of [Walking Dead +] Living Dead).
2. When the invincibility is necessary for a cheese strategy of notable benefit to ease or uptime and is necessary more often than Paladin and its co-tank can cover, while DRK + cotank are instead able (e.g. when Superbolide and Holmgang are too short to deal with both or all fatal blows necessary to cheese the mechanic and these blows come more often than HG's 7-minute CD can deal with).

And this is all assuming, of course, that we continue to treat invulnerability CDs as mostly superfluous, and therefore requiring only a loose level of balance. If they were considered true parts of their respective kits, there's no way you'd still see Living Dead exactly as it is now while Holmgang was receiving direct buff after indirect buff after direct buff.

I'll agree that at present the lack of diversity in tank toolkits comes largely from a lack of diversity in how tanks take damage. It's all in the tankbusters, varying only in size, whereby one CD or precise CD pair will suffice, and another will not. A with A. B with B. It has lent design towards a one-to-one "set counter" view of tanking. I see this, I counter with Rampart. I see that, I counter with my 30%. So on and so forth. (And, to be fair, tank kits aren't the only place we see this. More and more, toolkit capacities that used to deal with, say, fatal knockbacks -- through stutter-stepping, mobility, or snap-movement -- are being replaced with "Skip Mechanic" buttons -- like Surecast and Arm's Length. Convenience and direct counters are increasingly denying the native components of job toolkits room to show any benefit.)

That lack of diversity in damage intake may have to be addressed to some extent before diversity can go more than a single step in giving tanks some diversity. But, that step we can take towards diversity now is nonetheless necessary if you ever want to see the combat sourcing our tanks' play see more variance than just "wait until next tankbuster to actually take a vaguely tank-like action" in the vast majority of 8-man gameplay.

As much as the devs have fallen short in other regards, the one thing they consistently jump upon is any excuse to simplify gameplay where depth (not just bloat) would be lost in the process. Just as there's no room for greatly diverse tanks in today's serious content, there's no need across future tiers to accommodate or include varying rates of damage or more than a single rigid concept of tanking because tanks aren't diverse. We can either allow the devs to lock us into a loop locked to its lowest denominator, or we can insist on small improvements where possible to achieve diversity until we can finally wiggle the situation into some position that isn't increasingly pushing us towards 12 jobs: BLM, SMN, RDM, MNK, SAM, DRG, NIN, BRD, MCH, DNC, Healer, and Tank.

While I'm not going to advocate for less enjoyable states of play now -- even while just as tightly balanced as now, I can imagine a few changes to most tank kits, for instance, that would give more diversity and quite likely more enjoyment to their play -- I don't think we can afford to pretend that iterations of our jobs don't establish precedent, much of it general. When we say that a given result is good without even a cautionary note in addition, we allow the narrative to be written as the change was good (and will remain good even when repeated further).

Edit (a final note):

We often toss around phrases here like "voting with your wallet", but that, too, leaves the conclusions for why you disapproved of the game as it stood then -- or, why you left the game -- entirely in the hands of people you no longer believe see eye-to-eye with what you want from the game; so why would one then expect that they would see the loss of subs and think, for instance, "Maybe they don't like half-fleshed-out side content?" instead of "Damn, look what happens when we don't have any newly produced side content! Forget quality, we need more now!" There's no conversation, no guidance, in that. It's entirely on them to do a job that one is already sure they can't perform as well as they should be able or is excluding you and players like you. How would it get any better without that discussion or the information it could provide?

Here, it's important that those who want diversity not only request diversity, but give their reasons for it, and the limits on how it should come about. For me, it's that first step in allowing for tanking (and far more, by extension) to feel like more than a one-to-one "see mechanic; hit its assigned counter button" Blue DPS + occasional extra button gameplay, and hopefully to eventually see fights with mechanics against which multiple strategies are each competitive, with different jobs variably center to each of those strategies. That's not going to come from toolkits alone; but, without diversity in toolkits, there's no incentive to design fights that could ever take advantage of those distinctions. Why have fights that can be approached in multiple ways when, in terms of response to mechanics, you only have 10 jobs: MNK, SAM, DRG, NIN, SMN, BLM, RDM, Ranged, Tank, and Healer? I'd like to see more from the raiding experience than just DDR; there seem just as many lessons that have been somehow unlearned since Coil as have been learned, with the experience outside of Savage leaving even more wasted potential, and that seems quite a shame for an MMO making as much money as this one does. Diversity in and of its self gives a bit more reason to enjoy X job, but... I'd agree that it's not worth the resources in and of itself. But I don't just want diversity; I want what it can give. I want the design paradigms that kept in mind by having it. I wouldn't mind that diversity come a balanced, reasonable nudge at a time; we don't have infinite resources here, and I'm not willing to sacrifice a decent level of balance for diversity alone. But, I want it to be something clearly kept in mind in development, rather than being treated as fundamentally impossible to balance despite all evidence to the contrary when the work's just actually been done (i.e. when the 'imbalance' isn't just a result of poor tuning or coding irrelevant to ability differences themselves).

For now, I'd agree with you: Tanks are well balanced and, where resources are mutually exclusive in allocation, we should first get everyone else up to that level of parity. But I think this is important, too, to nudge towards whenever we get the chance.

[Sylvain]

The difference between HG, LD, Holm and SB already creates a lot of fuss in term of tank balance. Which one being the best depending on / group comp / encounter /etc.

So I wouldn't want them to have different mitigation / cd value.
The only thing I wouldn't mind them doing is adding some flavor to it, a bit like how the short mitigation currently work. They all roughly achieve the same thing, with pro N cons.

For instance I wouldnt mind sentinel also granting 50 gauge, or granting a buff making the next clemency an ogcd.

Shadow wall could increase make the next TBN be applied on both the DRK and it's target.

I would be OK with those kind of addition, but don't touch the 30% and cd. It will do more harm than good