Diversifying Tanks

[Shurrikhan]

So, here's the obligatory thread for those who would like balance and functionality among all tanks, but do not believe such requires that they also be so highly homogeneous.

Note that you're free to talk about just one tank, or any number of them.

But, if they previously faced, in your opinion, excessive overlap with another tank (e.g. Delirium - Inner Release), please note how the job in question would be differed from its overlapping job if those new differences would not be obvious from what you've done to the job in question alone.

To be clear, this isn't just about making jobs different from each other. If they don't become more "DRK-like" or "WAR-like", etc., in the process of differentiation, then we've wasted a significant opportunity. The goal is to make cohesive and compelling kits, working around central themes (which may be far more than just a couple mechanics).

Last note: If you find some system or mechanic that's just clearly and significantly superior for fluidity, depth, functionality, or whatnot, don't be afraid to use it on multiple tanks. All our base systems are similarly shared between all jobs, after all. If, say, giving an effect based on gauge consumed happens to feel right on every job, go for it. But differentiate how that plays into the feel of each tank -- e.g. what capacities, needs, or priorities it highlights, or how it fits into the buttonflow or macrorotation of the job.

Alright. Have at it. I'll post my own thoughts at a later time.

[Shurrikhan]

Space reserved for quick links to highly-Liked ideas.

[shao32]

my idea for DRK to become more like his HW version:

bring back dark arts in the first place, having a second option with edge/flood to bring a meaning of the darkside buff, need more time? edge/flood, don't need more time? dark arts, need mitigation TBN, TBN will add a DA effect afecting only DA an not edge/flood.

dark arts mechanics will include:
- having 1 extensible combo, if you use DA on souleater you will be able to use gillotine as a 4 step of the combo (see delirium for a second option).
- buff and extend the aoe combo with abissal drain as a finisher.
- adding a dot effect on bloodspiller/quietus diferent potency and duration on each one to secure you want to apply the dot in both single and aoe target situations, the dot is called scourge on both and don't stack.

blood weapon/delirium

-blood weapon: mostly back with speed, MP rates ajusted and recast/duration extended depending of delirium to have more uptime, will affect again oGCD (tentative), no longer grant blood.

-delirium: i have 4 versions for delirium, first one act as a extender BW like in SB but free of blood cost (there the duration of bloodweapon change or not) or make it with gillotine a 4 step combo from shyphon strike, reworked again to become a oGCD of be fully removed of the game.

MP economy:
DRK will have a steady economy without much spikes, his management will be around keeping a dot (sourge from bloodspiller) and a buff (darkside from edge/flood)) and the rest of the MP for DA to extend combos and TBN, reduce the cost of all skills to 2k to add some flexibility and comfiness iwith more room to act combined with bloodweapon gains, carve and spit and shiphon strike will ensure some steady control of the job and have a acceptable rate of MP gains/uses, nothing overhelming but enough to make it feel fluid.

-living dead: grant you the status of living dead preventing you HP drop below 1 HP all attacks recover HP equal to 100% of the damage done, duration and recast balanced to his effects.

to finish living shadow: under the effect of living shadow DRK get a damage buff over all his kit to let it act as a burst window, the recast of living shadow can still remain the same or being reduced, i leave that free to share opinions.

things that will gain:

-comlexity, and a feel the kit will sinergy himself.
-identity, pretty unique gameplay in many ways.
-no more excesive downtimes.
-still be able to hold resource for buff windows and enjoy the benefict of all of them better by no longer having to spam edge (magical attack) only so brotherhood and embolden will grant DRK better gains.
-new SHB gauge 100% usefull.

actions removed:

-salted earth.

personal thoughs:


i consider DRK will recover his busy feeling, his buffer/enchanced nature the job use to have in a unique way to manipulate GCD and control his resources, still will have a burst window under living shadow and wont feel incomplete or a copy of other job anymore as the job feel more like HW again without being overhelming to anyone.


edit: i forgeth about blood, to ensure a good control of the scourge debuff the combo (or both combos if ppl love the second combo more apealing) will grant the same amount of blood so you will have bloodspiller when you need to reaply the dot.

i consider right now PLD and GNB perfect in they own, way, for WAR i have no opinion yet, diversity on tanks should be on his gameplay on my opinion.

[DRKoftheAzure]

For now I will touch upon defensive uniqueness since all of the tanks 30% mitigation tools are basically the same thing and Sentinel might as well be the another role action for tank, and each of the tanks don't really have anything big to seperate them from one another.


First up is WAR; 1 thing WAR is generally known for is being the HP sponge tank which is all but removed now, so 1 way to fix that is applying HP up buffs to all of WARs defensives and group utility based on damage reduction %, which increases HP recovered via healing magic by said %.


PLD; Just add 1200 cure potency to all of PLDs Oath gauge spenders, and make Divine Veil apply a raid 1200 cure potency heal that also provides shield, same with Passage of Arms but add regen to it.


GNB; should have some focus on the charge system that is only used for most gap closers, En Avant, and True North for most of their defensives. EDIT: And apply the Brutal Shell buff with the barriers equaling different cure potencies on Heart of Stone/Light and Aurora.


Now the balancing problem that is DRK; More focus on HP shields on all of DRKs defensives based on % of those skills, and The Blackest Night is on a way shorter cooldown.


Invulns are not included because even I don't know to fix them while keeping them unique and making them more overpowered outside of recast timer but it may end up coming to making some invulns just so powerful that you can only use it at least once or twice and encounter...

[DRKoftheAzure]

Now to talk about offensive uniqueness for the tanks that need it most since both PLD and GNB are pretty balanced in this regard.


WAR; so my over all knowledge of WAR is very limited, but from I can gather is that WAR might need more focus on sustained DPS with at least 1 or 2 burst windows, so WAR would obviously need Skull Sunder and Butcher's block to come back but not as seperate combo paths, but as part of the full combo, which is as follows; Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Skull Sunder -> Storm's Path -> Storm's Eye -> Butcher's Block, a six hit combo path that does insane damage the higher you go up the combo, all while generating beast gauge which is used for guaranteed Critical Direct hit combo paths; Inner Beast ->Fell Cleave -> Inner Chaos for single target, and Steel Cyclone -> Decimate ->Chaotic Cyclone. Deliverance would come back as a separate 20% damage up buff that lasts 30 seconds but sits on a 60 second cooldown(cooldown timer is to keep it in line with GNB and PLD 20+% damage up buffed burst window), Inner Release would need to be adjusted to where it lasts 15 seconds and increases the damage dealt by all beast gauge abilities by 50%.


DRK; Darkside needs to go back to stop natural MP refresh in combat, but now doubles MP regain from from certain skills and abilities, and increases damage dealt by 20% and reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto attack delay by 20% and makes it so that while Darkside is active spells now scale with skillspeed(the devs might need to find a way to make this work) and can only enable certain offensive skills and abilites while Darkside is active. Blood Weapon converts a portion of damage dealt into HP and at a later level increases the amount restored and provides shielding based on how much is restored as the trait Blood Price, and enables certain combo paths to restore more HP as Delirium.

Now for reworking combo paths on DRK; combo path a will be Hard Slash ->Spinning Slash -> Power Slash and combo path b will be Scourge -> Syphon Strike -> Souleater. Now for how Souleater and Power Slash are going to work, Souleater doubles the potency of the next Power Slash(buff lasts 20 seconds) and Power Slash generates 10 or 20 blood gauge and doubles blood gauge gain on Souleater, and Unleash/Stalwart Soul are now target AoEs rather than PBAoE(because big pulls) and the combo path is Unleash -> Abyssal Drain ->Stalwart Soul which Abyssal Drain and Stalwart Soul both recover HP and MP and generate blood gauge, and blood gauge is used to power up MP spending combos, Edge of Shadow -> Bloodspiller -> Carve and Spit for single target and Dark Passenger -> Quietus -> Flood of Shadow for AoE(potency increase is between 140 and 280) and have 150 cure potency for AoE and 300 cure potency on single target. Dark Arts is brought back as a button by removing MP and blood gauge costs and increases damage dealt by these combo paths by 50% for 20 seconds, and sits on either a 60 second or 90 second cooldown.


EDIT: I realized that PLD and GNB would be bottom tank DPS wise if these changes somehow happened, so quick fixes to make them on par with DRK and WAR, Gnashing Fang recast is reduced to 15 seconds, Sonic Break and Bow Shock recast reduced to 30 seconds, and Intervene extends Fight or Flight buff(if it's active) by 8 seconds while granting 3 more stacks of Sword Oath

[Kali-ka]

-living dead: grant you the status of living dead preventing you HP drop below 1 HP all attacks recover HP equal to 100% of the damage done, duration and recast balanced to his effects.

This may actually be one of the best suggestions for LD I've seen so kudos. I would even go far to say to have it be a 6-8 second duration and have the damage to healing effect be the ONLY way a DRK could heal itself up during that time for balance.

As for the other tanks and my suggestions, there's quite a bit that I would want to change to make them feel different, but I'll post some of my more "realistic" ideas that I think they wouldn't have much trouble implementing:

DRK

Delirium - The only problem I really have with this is that its boring to spam the same move. So instead, make it more like GNB where using delirium will open up a specific combo window each with different animations. Each move can bring back some of the old animations (scourge, old delirium, power slash etc.) with scourge applying its old dot effect. Can have each move have its own button for complexity (less likely) or just have a one button that changes depending on where you are in the combo (somewhat like continuation). To break up the homogenization, allow the use of blood weapon to give the haste effect inside the delirium window (2sec or less recasts)

Abyssal Drain - make it "spammable" again but also make it cost 2-3k mp

Stalwart Soul and dark mind - add a 5% physical damage reduction

Shadow wall - add the old blood price effect of mp refresh per hit to it

Living shadow - I would just have tiers for blood gauge usage. 50 BG for normal duration 100 for double duration.


GNB

The only thing I really want to see different on GNB at this time is adding a third cartridge slot and giving GNB the option of having another defensive move that costs 2 cartridges and have it be a solid 25% damage reduction self buff. For balance, we could get rid of camouflage.

Heart of light - keep the magic damage reduction the same but let it apply a small shield (10% hp)

WAR

Storm's eye - either extend the duration of the damage increase to 45-60 seconds and let it be applicable with Mythril Tempest

Storm's path - slightly increase healing potency

RI and Nascent - separate these and make Nascent self targetable

Chaotic cyclone and Inner chaos - There is a part of me that wouldn't mind having these as inner release enders like Confiteor just to change up the fell cleave spam a bit, but I think that would have to change how they work outside of IR. Or make it different by having each fell cleave/decimate increase in potency slightly with the last move ending in a Chaotic or Inner chaos.

Onslaught - if they're going to keep the gauge cost, reduce it to 10 and increase the potency.

PLD

PLD is of course pretty solid right now (although personally its the most boring tank for me) so I wouldn't change much

Divine Veil - may not be diversifying but just let it be automatically activated

Atonement - even if its just 3 uses, it irks me that SE made yet another "Spam this move", so make this a unique combo.

Shelltron - add a pseudo shield swipe effect in the form of an extra auto attack per use.

Sentinel - gives oath gauge per hit taken

[Rufalus]

Do we actually need invuln moves. Could be more unique by taking those away. Instead of Living Dead you could have a super-TBN (long recast hp barrier worth 50% of max hp). and superbolide could, idk, set hp to 100% (full heal) but place a debuff on you that reduces heals received after that by 50% for some duration so there's some drawback to your self benediction.

[Cabalabob]

To me, PLD is fine, it could maybe use a few more moves but thematically it’s a solid sword and board job that uses white magic.

WAR, it’s alright, I’d like to see nascent flash lose the drain and instead become retaliate which delivers a counter attack when struck like vengeance. I feel WAR should be more of the aggressive tank, a few self heals in path, thrill and equilibrium are ok but nascent flash puts it too close back to being a drain tank which I don’t think fits for WAR.

DRK I think should be more focused on drains, I’d totally overhaul it because right now it is dark in name alone. Like calling the move shadow wall doesn’t make it any different from sentinel. But I’d try and keep some of the themes in place. For example the blackest night could become drain, absorb 500 potency of damage from the opponent restoring 25% of the DRKs HP, HP over the maximum is restored as a shield. Shadow wall could become absorb power, decrease the enemies damage dealt by 15% while reducing your damage taken by 15%. I’d just like to see some actual dark themed moves on dark knight, and draining like a vampire fits the bill (having more personal hp drains would also make living dead more viable as a move).

GNB I don’t really know how to make this more thematic because a gunblade just doesn’t feel like a tanking weapon to me. I mean a sword that requires precise timing on trigger pulls to increase cutting power = tank? Maybe it could have been some kind of evasion + parry tank if either of those stats had a place in ffxiv.

[Kabooa]

I think the GCDs are the easiest way to differentiate them, along with putting in some proper stances where appropriate.

As a short summary of thoughts, we'd have the Paladin with the Gladiator root having combos that change based on their stance, and skills that transition them from one stance to another.

The Warrior's weaponskills have a large recast difference between them (Some at 2.5, some at 5.0, etc) and as momentum/rage is built up, those recast times on the longer ones shorten while expending said momentum / rage.

The Dark Knight uses a more flexible system similar to Monk with Forward / Back transitions between them, each weaponskill similarly weighted for potency but applying different buffs / debuffs. Bloodspiller and Quietus being 'finishers' where the potency changes based on the previous 3 weaponskills. Your aim here is to get the right buffs / debuffs in place and then end it with the strongest finisher you can before the windows expire.

The Gunbreaker's rotates between 2-3 distinct combos, with Powder Charges instead being toggled on and expended to enhance them until they wear out. (The gauge would need to be expanded to hold more as well as increased generation over all).

[aqskerorokero]

let me understand how the hell Pld is boring now?! Two type of rotation built into his kit. Fast decision making to substitute Clemency with Holy spirit during requescat buff for safety sacrificing dps. Let's not even talk about aoe... Pld gets even two type of aoe rotation....How that's boring?