Tank Fixes

[MaraD_]

DRK shoulda been built around taking up blood in place of HP as a resource, while under dark side. (due to the abusive nature of this, since tanks barely need healing, all -hp/blood effects do more dmg if blood is the resource spent.)
(Also DRK should have had super bolide. Sacrifice all HP to become invincible. Throw up TBN right before, so u dont die to server tick at 1hp.)
In place of their pet on a long cool down, it should be a "death Grip/pull" that works on bosses, to cheese mechanics. But since its a DPS loss, the cheese better be worth it.
(Still put on a long CD, so it cant be spammed)

WAR is essentially "Barbarian" to the japanese, its not based on the FF1 Warrior/Fighter job (PLD is based on those jobs) its mostly based on the FF5 Berserker, along with FF11s.
Berserk isnt a very good mechanic in an MMO, so in this game, it makes u go "nuts" spamming the same ability.
But it looses that "uniqueness" when DRK has a semi clone of it.
Instead, Berserk should be what happens when you reach maximum gauge. But to maximize its potential, you want to time it with Inner Release (for the same effect we currently have)
You try to keep your "rage" as high as possible, while spending some in fell cleaves, so as not to max out. (keeping it higher should raise dmg in some way, most likely increase fell cleave dmg)
Also WAR should have had "Living Dead" but instead, it gets a true berserk status if they arent healed to full, to calm them down. (When true berserked, they spam attacks randomly, and you dont get to choose which skills. Leading to a huge DPS loss.) They can also self heal to help cover the missing HP.

GNB (A lot is wrong here, but Im not going to bother with this one.)
Only statement being it should have had holmgang.

PLD seems mostly fine, but its gauge really does feel tacked on. Considering it uses MP, it doesnt need a gauge at all. When everyone has a guage, the concept of a gauge feels like its no longer interesting/special.
So I simply say, get rid of it on PLD. This helps add some identity between the tanks.

[Enuriel]

An offensive gauge spender with an effective cool down of 7 seconds is the last thing Paladin needs. It would effectively make players avoid Sheltron and add so much empty APM as to make Dark Arts seem like a good mechanic.

Your correct. Had just woken up and wanted to get something posted that i have been thinking about for a couple weeks, and that was a last minute addition.

DRK shoulda been built around taking up blood in place of HP as a resource, while under dark side. (due to the abusive nature of this, since tanks barely need healing, all -hp/blood effects do more dmg if blood is the resource spent.)
(Also DRK should have had super bolide. Sacrifice all HP to become invincible. Throw up TBN right before, so u dont die to server tick at 1hp.)
In place of their pet on a long cool down, it should be a "death Grip/pull" that works on bosses, to cheese mechanics. But since its a DPS loss, the cheese better be worth it.
(Still put on a long CD, so it cant be spammed)

And i think that is where the problem is with tanks now. It's all about DPS gain and not about being able to mitigate more damage. In-vulnerabilities should never be about increasing personal damage. it should 100% be about saving the party from a wipe by allowing the tank to ignore a mechanic or two while allowing everyone to push their DPS. After all we are tanks and that is part of the job description.

As for tank DPS, firstly we are tanks and should be focused more on defensive abilities while contributing to group damage. Which i think a vast majority of people do not like, because i have heard from several people that think tanks should still be doing a lot more damage. I think the current numbers are generally where tanks should be. A little bit higher then a healers output, but far lower then a pure damage dealer. However, i disagree with GNB and PLD being top DPS while DRK and WAR are bottom of the barrel. I think it'd be fine if WAR and GNB were the damage dealing tanks while DRK and PLD were the mitigation tanks.

As for threat, currently it is so mind-numbing and extremely easy. If you lose threat (except in very rare and few situations) you are simply tanking wrong or forgot your tank stance. Part of what made tanking interesting for me was keeping threat off really good players while balancing mitigation and damage. Currently one move pretty much seals the deal. Which is fine i suppose it allows the player to focus on other aspects like when to use their "burst" ability. Sadly i still see lots of tanks not properly using cool downs opting instead to continue their burst.

[Megguido]

[...]

Warrior

• Nascent Flash - Separate from Raw Intuition. Increase duration to 20 secs. Cost 50 Beast Gauge. Change damage reduction to increases parry rate by 50% while 100% of damage dealt is converted to HP.

Dark Knight

• Carve and Spit. Second combo finisher to Syphon Strike, combo potency 450. Adds bleed effect (90 potency dot) duration 20 seconds.
• Delirium - Really don't know how to fix this. Don't want a wasted skill, or a skill that's identical to Inner Release.

I got three remarks about your ideas:

• Current Nascent Flash is a decent ability, seems a bit weaker than Intervention or Heart of Stone. And your idea is to make it random mitigation and physical only ? The point of on-demand mitigation like TNB, HoS, Intervention and Nascent is to reduce damage spikes, not to be used on-cooldown to reduce auto-attacks. You might as well make it life steal only. On the other-hand, making 20s long 100% life-steal when you got skills that hit for 30-45k several times in a row, it feels a bit overpowered.
• Making 25 gauge spenders when the job only generates it by chunks of 10 (basically, WAR and DRK) is a terrible idea. You'll end up with stupid amounts of gauge, which was a problem during early 4.0 when WAR could half its gauge cost. Either make it cost 20 or 30 gauge.
• You don't want Delirium to be a copy of Inner Release, but you have really no issue with Carve & Spit being the exact same thing as Goring Blade ? Also more potency than Souleater with a DoT on top of it (which isn't even compensated by the Blood gained because it no longer powers offensive skills). So it just replaces Souleater ?

Your quick fixes imply another DRK rework. And what should make tanks more enjoyable might as well make them a bit more frustrating to play imo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TheForce]

No, keep Clemency at 2000 mp.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

[*]Nascent Flash - Separate from Raw Intuition. Increase duration to 20 secs. Cost 50 Beast Gauge. Change damage reduction to increases parry rate by 50% while 100% of damage dealt is converted to HP.

So the main purpose of Nascent Flash, is to act as, because people cried that paladin had a monopoly on OT, WARs answer to this. So unless you buff the duration of Intervention, HoS and TBN on another, NO 20seconds is beyond acceptable, it's a complete joke. also as others have stated, the move to physical dmg only in parry (LUL) is a joke, which makes the purpose of the skill redundant on 50% roughly of savage fights. Honestly Nascent Flash is fine as it is, you will have people crying, "but it's useless when everyone is dead"...well yea it's an OT support tool, Intervention is just as useless when everyone else is dead too, that's why you have RI share the recast.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

And i think that is where the problem is with tanks now. It's all about DPS gain and not about being able to mitigate more damage. In-vulnerabilities should never be about increasing personal damage. it should 100% be about saving the party from a wipe by allowing the tank to ignore a mechanic or two while allowing everyone to push their DPS. After all we are tanks and that is part of the job description.

As for tank DPS, firstly we are tanks and should be focused more on defensive abilities while contributing to group damage. Which i think a vast majority of people do not like, because i have heard from several people that think tanks should still be doing a lot more damage. I think the current numbers are generally where tanks should be. A little bit higher then a healers output, but far lower then a pure damage dealer. However, i disagree with GNB and PLD being top DPS while DRK and WAR are bottom of the barrel. I think it'd be fine if WAR and GNB were the damage dealing tanks while DRK and PLD were the mitigation tanks.

So first tank invuln comments, that's like say healers should prioritise GCD healing and save oGCD heals for just in case, lmao not gonna happen mate. Big bad tankbuster gonna happen, you use tank invulns like you would Sentinel, Vengeance, Rampart, or whatever CD, at the end of the day it's still a defensive CD and should be treated as such, none of this amatuer level, it should be an emergency button crap.

So you say Tanks should focus more on defensives, when we have more than than enough defensives to complete all savage fights, and ultimates sync'd down at 70, so no tanks don't need to focus more on defensives when we already have enough. I also disagree with with your assessment of the tanks ranking in damage. As they are now, are mostly fine, Burst damage type jobs should never overtake flat damage type jobs in damage with the exception of killing a fight at the end of a burst phase. So that does put PLD and GNB ahead of DRK and WAR outside of kill time.

[Jonnycbad]

The reason why Sheltron costs 50 gauge is because it has no recast timer, so you can use it back-to-back unlike DRK WAR GNB can't use TBN, Raw Intuition,Heart of Stone back-to-back. Onslaught has gauge cost because it also has 20' range. If you nerf the range to 15', you can remove its gauge cost, but that 20' makes it as good as Shoulder Tackle/SSD for dashing across the arena.

[MurasakiAeda]

The reason why Sheltron costs 50 gauge is because it has no recast timer, so you can use it back-to-back unlike DRK WAR GNB can't use TBN, Raw Intuition,Heart of Stone back-to-back. Onslaught has gauge cost because it also has 20' range. If you nerf the range to 15', you can remove its gauge cost, but that 20' makes it as good as Shoulder Tackle/SSD for dashing across the arena.

I honestly like Onslaught as compared to the other tank's gap closers just because it is seen as a DPS loss to use it on cooldown and the fact that it's the only unique one at this point, the others have 2 charges and they're free of cost, which makes it a DPS move which happens to be gap closer as well. Only time you want to use Onslaught is on IR windows. PLD and GNB's closer is just a reskin of DRK's.

[Refrain695]

If I could have tanks balanced my way, (long shot, but I'll try anyhow) it would be to make "gauge" spenders apply both offensive and defensive benefits. I'm a huge supporter for active mitigation rather than the "press 2 buttons or invuln for TB" iteration of tanking this game has been on for some time. I'm not staying have the resource tied to both an offensive and defensive skill, moreso have the resourse spender provide both benefits. Imagine if FC did what it currently does AND provide a small damage reduction or heal on top. Now it becomes save 50+ beast gauge for a TB or dump if close to cap. This makes a good tank not only pump out good DPS, bit also require less attention from a healer. Of course keep a few ogcd mitigatives for flavor, (TBN being a good example) but I wouldn't mind dumping tank gauge for burst phases and saving one in case needed for mitigation later. This doesn't come without flaws though. It would require autos to be downright nasty as this design would allow for a good amount of fluff mitigation. Also TB's would need to be MUCH more frequent. Which I would be a fan of in both cases. There's a reason that I play a tank, and that is to TANK. Feel free to disagree however, I post to see opinions anyhow.

[FallenWings]

And my point is they choose they laziest option because they are short minded.

DA use to have several uses in the past, one of the bringing combo diversity, the skill himself was pretty important for the job identity, I compare DA to his HW version too in mind and she skill have different purposes on aoe situations so they are not the same, comparing one thing with only a part of the other is not a good way to make comparations.
,SB DA design was a mistake in some ways yes but remove the entire mechanic because they have a problem with the rates? They forget what the skill use to bring? It could be a nice partner with edge so darkside wasn't on auto keep mode making the new gauge more useless that the lillis of SB, they could use it to bring more combos as we asked like the HW ones instead of locking us with the soul eater combo all day, they could use it to bring different effects as you toggle his uses with edge but no.

Removing DA was lazy, short minded and unimaginative way to do things, they don't have any idea how to design DRK and that's why we have all this drama around him.

HW DA usage:
ST > CNS or Soul Eater. oGCD Flat potency.
AoE > Abyssal Drain. oGCD Flat potency and small heal.

SB DA usage:
ST > Syphon, CNS, Soul Eater. oGCD Flat potency.
AoE > Abyssal Drain. oGCD Flat potency and small heal.

ShB "DA" usage:
ST > Edge. oGCD Flat potency.
AoE > Flood. oGCD Flat potency.

What DA was in HW was effectively a oGCD potency boost via augmentation. What DA was in SB was effectively a oGCD potency boost via augmentation. What Edge/Flood is in ShB is effectively a oGCD potency attack.
What changed? Soul Eater is still the primary combo that you press DA/Edge in between. Delirium the combo ender and scourge became a simple high potency attack that doesn't interrupt combos(Blood Spiller), having virtually the same frequency to pad out the Soul Eater monotony. Power Slash didn't exist then and it doesn't exist now without taking over our hotbar space. Healing got removed from Warrior as well since their Steel Cyclone is just potency. This was a global tank design decision to remove both tank's AoE tanking edge over PLD via burst healing.

All that has happened is DRK turned it's 140 pot boost into a 500 pot attack with more flexibility in it's placement per minute. They removed the spam by halving the uses but more than doubling the power. DRKs Mana space by contrast is much larger allowing more pooling into buff windows.

The only real gameplay mechanic that was lost was the TBN MP > Blood play and that has no relation to DA.

DA as a mechanic of turning MP into damage still fundamentally exists. Just not spammy, has a different name, becomes an attack itself instead of a buff, doesn't have additional and often neglected uses like buffing a defensive cooldown that is essentially free now, and doesn't have a requirement of buffing an additional oGCD attack(CnS/DP) since those attacks just became seperate full effect oGCDs (CnS/AD respectively) making Double Weaving much less of a requirement.