Diversifying Tanks

[Yrantis]

Toward the idea of diversifying: I feel like the basis for PLD is already there: having it interact with its magic side more often. PLD is a pretty unique tank in its ability to DPS at range (while moving) for brief periods, so having the ability to use spells a little bit more often might give them a sort of caster tank feel. The trouble I can't think of how to get around on PLD is that its rotation is so strict I'm not sure where you'd add the extra spells at, maybe OGCDs? I do think their current OGCD strike that recovers mana is pretty pointless, and its requirement for high HP for full damage just makes it a functionally worse version of other tank equivalents, Blasting Zone is sorta iconic for GNB, but both Upheaval on WAR and Spirits Within could go without much fuss I'd imagine (provided of course they are replaced by other skills).

As for GNB, I must admit--though I do love the class--that I thought when it was releasing Gnashing Fang was going to be affected more significantly by SkS (being a weaponskill with a special cooldown), that it'd let me get enough SkS to get it down to say: 15 seconds or so, so you could do 2 in the same window you do 1 now, but it only affects it by a pretty useless amount. Changing that would put GNB as the seriously active class period, not just for tanks, and with NIN getting a rework to put Mudras on the GCD it would cement it as the APM class (it already has high APM, so some may not like the idea of adding more), and would give one of the tanks a purpose in stacking very heavy skill speed. As it is now...SkS affecting Gnashing Fang only serves to be a pain more than anything else.

[waterboytkd]

Lots of cool ideas in this thread. And even more to explore. But, since I could spend all day writing class ideas, I'll keep my ideas short, without gory details.

- I think the Invulns should actually be homogenized. Their effect is just too potent for any real diversity that feels good. Give Hallowed Ground a more generic name and make it a role action.
- Rampart should then be removed from role actions, and each tank gets a unique version.
- Sentinel/Shadow Wall/Vengeance/Nebula should all be made more unique, but with one caveat: either all of them should be tied to the class's dps, or none of them. Vengeance being any part of WAR's dps is problematic when the others aren't. If they all are, you still have the issue with a tank needs to be MT to do full dps, though. But at least it's universal, and they all have equal claim on MT being good for them.
- As for making defensive abilities unique to the class, I would follow it along these lines: WAR are all about increasing max hp temporarily, with a corresponding buff to all incoming healing; DRK are all about getting some % of max hp as shields (or reducing incoming magic damage by some %, but I think this aspect could be dropped); PLD are all about reducing incoming damage by some %; GNB actually has no identity--it gets a little bit from each of the other tanks, which is unfortunate--but the names are all astronomy related in some way, or Heart related? Really not sure what you could do to give them a unique feel with defensive cooldowns.
- Offensively, I think PLD and GNB are in a really good place. As a PLD main, the only thing I'm not super hot on is how much spamming we do, but eh.
- I honestly think DRK plays mostly fine, too. I like the idea of changing Darkside to a Haste buff, as it makes Blood Weapon's current timer less problematic. Or they could just give Blood Weapon an 11 second duration.
- I also think Abyssal Drain is cool, but could use some polish. In single target situations, it's just a bit of oGCD damage and a negligible heal. In big dungeon pulls, it's decent oGCD AoE damage, and a big heal. But the recast is so long, that the heal is really just a couple seconds of breathing room at best. Also, a self-heal goes against the idea that DRK use a % of max health as shields. I'd change it from a heal to a shield (which probably means changing from a low amount per enemy hit, to a bigger amount regardless of how many enemies get hit), and maybe change AD to a Spell on the GCD (with a cast time?) but has a mana cost? Kinda like DRK's version of a Clemency? Like, it's not part of your normal rotation, but an "oh shit" button? All those question marks mean I don't know if this is actually a good idea, but it is *an* idea.
- Beast Gauge and Blood Gauge being identical, though, is a big issue. One of these needs to change. I think it should be WAR's Beast Gauge, as Blood Gauge currently feels thematic for DRK as their offense seems to be all about keeping their resources spent, so as not to overcap.
- Rework WAR so it's still about these big heavy hits, but rather than building and spending Beast Gauge, it's about keeping its "Berserk" buffs up, which is done by filling Beast Gauge to 100. Maybe using Storm's Path or Mythril Tempest as part of a combo while your "Berserk" buffs are up could allow you to do the big hit--Fell Cleave or Decimate--as the combo finisher. Or it could open up a new big-hitting combo (ie Inner Beast -> Fell Cleave -> Inner Chaos from Storm's Path or Steel Cyclone -> Decimate -> Chaos Cyclone from Mythril Tempest).

Getting into some gory details here, but:

- when you fill your Beast Gauge to 100 or more, it is reduced by 100 and your "Berserk" buffs are refreshed. This language is specific for a reason: overcapping would not be an issue. If, for example, you hit 110 Beast Gauge, you would drop to 10 Beast Gauge and refresh your buffs.
- the "Berserk" buffs could be a few different buffs. Berserk would obviously be one (which would need to change for balance reasons--maybe just a bonus to Crit and/or a Haste buff), and maybe that's the only one required for Path or Tempest to get you to the big hit. Storm's Eye could be another. Maybe even Thrill of Battle, but has its % toned down (though you would need a corresponding % buff to incoming healing to be baseline, not a level 78 trait), at which point a few of your defensive abilities would just be improving Thrill of Battle to higher percentages? You could even require the other buffs to have Berserk up to have any effect.
- This would also require Inner Release to be divorced from Berserk. Which is fine, because the class would have lost its "burst window" ability, and Inner Release could be that. It could just allow you to use your Big Hit (or start your Big Hit combo) whenever you want. Or give auto Crit/DHits. But this would not be something that gets refreshed by filling up your Beast Gauge.
- both the "Berserk" buff durations and the rate at which Beast Gauge is gained would need to be addressed. Sort of like MNK, you should have a fair amount of wiggle room for refreshing your buffs

[RadicalPesto]

It seems that generally the designs for Paladin and Gunbreaker are quite well received, they're the least complained about tanks, and most complaints about Gunbreaker are related to the sound effects change that happened some time ago. The real controversial tanks that people feel are heavily homogenized are Warrior and Dark Knight, and its quite obvious the biggest problem here is new Delirium.

On a surface level I understand the purpose of new Delirium: It's a regular burst phase not based around pooling MP for raid buffs, and pressing 5 Bloodspillers in a row helps break the repetitive 1-2-3 gameplay of Souleater combo that has plagued the class since Stormblood. The issue is, even if a spammy phase was what the developers wanted to add... why does it have to "5 gcds every 90 seconds" just like Inner Release? It happens too infrequently to successfully break the monotony of spamming your combo, and because it's the same gcd 5 times, it ends up feeling monotonous itself, specially because Bloodspillers animation is clearly not designed to look good when spammed! I feel like something as simple as "Delirium is every 60 seconds and is only 3 gcds long, Blood Weapon is every 40 seconds" would have given Dark Knight a more distinct feeling and addressed the 1-2-3 problem better (given that they seem committed to not giving DRK a secondary combo ender for DPS for whatever reason). In addition, the cooldowns on Dark Knight's non-Edge of Shadow offensive cds are way too long, and further contribute to those lengthy windows where you have nothing to do besides press 123. Another DRK rework is something we're unlikely to see for another 2 years, but switching around the cooldowns and durations of certain skills to make the class feel more active is not beyond the scope of a major patch. If Dark Knight's identity is to revolve around a low button count GCD rotation with plenty of off-gcds, we need shorter cooldowns on the off-gcds.

Warrior is a bit more of a problem to diversify away from Dark Knight largely because it seems they intend for it to be an inherently simpler class. It seems Warrior's identity is meant to tie heavily to GCD skills, sorts of like Black Mage or even Monk. If that's the case then Warrior would benefit heavily from having a higher diversity of weaponskills. I think the core foundations as they are aren't too bad, but perhaps 1 or 2 more skills on the GCD could serve to differentiate Warrior from Dark Knight further, albeit I'm not sure what form those skills could take. I don't want to say "add a dot" because that feels extremely unimaginative and is just a timer to track, so perhaps Warrior's identity will require another expansion to flesh out.

[Dzian]

Without trying to start an argument, but is part of this thread's purpose to discuss whether tank defensive abilities need diversifying at all? It seems like it would be nigh impossible to balance tanks effectively if they differentiate the defensive cooldowns too much, especially when it comes to fights like say, E2S. That fight (at matching ilvl) demands two defensive cooldowns for very similar defensive values per TB, or else one of the tanks just gets smeared and a healer has to cover for them. You already have issues like Vengeance for WAR practically forcing them (slightly exaggerating) to be MT or risk losing out on damage, in a role slot that already only has 2 per boss in your standard 8 man content.

Wouldn't it be easier to make them more diverse in their offensive abilities instead? Being a few hundred DPS behind the meta tank isn't even close to a death sentence, but if your mitigation isn't up to the task your class becomes an extra healer stressor at best and a liability at worst,

You could diversify the defencsive toolkits quite substantially just be emphasizing more the differences between physical and magical damage and varying the levels of effectiveness accordingly.

If you look back to HW Paladin was a rahter weak magic damage tank but a real strong physical damage tank. DRK was a rather weak physical tank but a real strong magical tank and warrior was kinda middle of the road with both. this worked quite well and was fine right up until the devs went and made an entire tier of content almost exclusively magic damage...

the jobs having different defensive capabilites wasn't a problem. the problem was the badly designed content.

had the content been designed better it wouldn't have been an issue. sure there would have been powerful magic damage attacks that would have caused a paladin tank some real pain and maybe taxed the healers a little bit more. but had that same encounter had some physical attacks of equal power that paladin tank would then have shrugged them off and granted the healers some extra breathing room. as such it would have balanced itself out.

Darknights would have been the opposite way around and warriors would have been more or less taking consistant damage throughout the enocunter.. thus every job despite having differing defensive capabilites would be viable..

not every job needs to be equally good at everything...

[RadicalPesto]

You could diversify the defencsive toolkits quite substantially just be emphasizing more the differences between physical and magical damage and varying the levels of effectiveness accordingly.

If you look back to HW Paladin was a rahter weak magic damage tank but a real strong physical damage tank. DRK was a rather weak physical tank but a real strong magical tank and warrior was kinda middle of the road with both. this worked quite well and was fine right up until the devs went and made an entire tier of content almost exclusively magic damage...

I mean, what you mean by this is "it worked quite well for Ravana Ex and that's it". Paladin was an atrocious class in Heavensward, and it wasn't just the weakness of its magic mitigation that made it so. PLD had no AoE, would run out of cooldowns in almost every raid, it had worse party defensive utility than DRK and WAR (Divine Veil couldn't compete with Reprisal, Delirium and Storm's Path), extremely bad TP sustain while both DRK and WAR had nearly infinite TP, awful aggro generation that meant it had more trouble than the other tanks staying in DPS stance and also, its DPS was miles behind the other tanks. Heavensward Paladin is a very bad example to use if you want to support a design of "not all tanks should be good at everything", because Heavensward had two tanks that were good at nearly everything and one tank that was only unique in being almost completely dysfunctional in all content.

[Cabalabob]

not every job needs to be equally good at everything...

Except they do, because this game is based on linear progression, there is only one piece of relevant content in any given patch and if a job isn’t viable for that content then it will be excluded, like PLD was in Gordias.

If the game had more content and gear came from more places then maybe having different specialties could be viable.

For example, if there was one fight that focused on physical damage and high raid wide damage with a lenient dps check making utility jobs and a physical tank better and dropped gear for say sch, pld and brd, then there was another fight that focused on magical damage and was more about tight dps checks than dealing with incoming damage that dropped gear for drk, whm and sam, and both fights dropped equal ilvl gear but for different jobs, then it wouldn’t matter that PLD isn’t viable for the second fight because PLD doesn’t get any rewards from the second fight, if you’re trying to gear a PLD you’d do the first fight. If you wanted to do the second fight then you’d play DRK.

But that’s not how the game is setup, if you want PLD gear, you do the current savage along with every other job, if PLD isn’t viable for the current savage then sucks to be you.

[Dzian]

Except they do, because this game is based on linear progression, there is only one piece of relevant content in any given patch and if a job isn’t viable for that content then it will be excluded, like PLD was in Gordias.

If the game had more content and gear came from more places then maybe having different specialties could be viable.

For example, if there was one fight that focused on physical damage and high raid wide damage with a lenient dps check making utility jobs and a physical tank better and dropped gear for say sch, pld and brd, then there was another fight that focused on magical damage and was more about tight dps checks than dealing with incoming damage that dropped gear for drk, whm and sam, and both fights dropped equal ilvl gear but for different jobs, then it wouldn’t matter that PLD isn’t viable for the second fight because PLD doesn’t get any rewards from the second fight, if you’re trying to gear a PLD you’d do the first fight. If you wanted to do the second fight then you’d play DRK.

But that’s not how the game is setup, if you want PLD gear, you do the current savage along with every other job, if PLD isn’t viable for the current savage then sucks to be you.

i wasnt implying seperate content just a bit of divesity in mechanics and attacks.. you could quite easily have a boss throw physical and magical attacks at you throughout the same encounter.

so instead of having every tank be great at everything youd hive variety and diversity
pld might get hurt by attack a but shrug off attack b a few seconds later..
drks might shrug off attack a but get smashed by attack b...

so while theyd have different strengths and weakness both would still be viable in the same content

[Shurrikhan]

i wasnt implying seperate content just a bit of divesity in mechanics and attacks.. you could quite easily have a boss throw physical and magical attacks at you throughout the same encounter.

so instead of having every tank be great at everything youd hive variety and diversity
pld might get hurt by attack a but shrug off attack b a few seconds later..
drks might shrug off attack a but get smashed by attack b...

so while theyd have different strengths and weakness both would still be viable in the same content

Technically, the constraints would still be much tighter than that example would lead one to believe. Remember, we don't use a job except when it's competitive, and given that we can swap out the MT at a moment's notice, there is no way the PLD would ever be hit by Attack A nor DRK by Attack B. You'd have to balance, then, around the pair. And if each is specialized towards some given attack and neither is force to take an attack they are ill-adapted for, you'd only have one real strength: PLD's vs. B and DRK's vs. A, for a consistent high sturdiness. The net change from normal play, then, will just be a loss in flexibility.

This is, of course, just a consequence of the 2/4/2 setup in 8-man content. Should that vary, we'd have a whole different ballpark to balance around.

[waterboytkd]

This is, of course, just a consequence of the 2/4/2 setup in 8-man content. Should that vary, we'd have a whole different ballpark to balance around.

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

[Yrantis]

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

You touch on a funny point about FFXIV: everybody is actually a DPS in disguise, and that's because of the consistency of the fights in this game. Extra mitigation does absolutely nothing for you in a game with 100% predictable damage, and healing someone at full health does nothing, so what do you do the other 80% of the fight when the boss isn't specifically murdering someone? You DPS. They took away tank aggro so they could focus more on DPS, and while they did increase the amount of healing required this tier, it's still entirely predictable damage, meaning once you learn to play around it...you go back to DPSing when you don't need to heal. We are in fact, all DPS classes, but tanks add defensive CDs and position the boss as additional duties, while healers respond to specific, predictable damage outputs (once the fight is learned optimally of course, people take damage they shouldn't all the time when learning).