How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[MerlinCross]

How did this thread get so long and why are people now comparing individual classes?

I thought this was all about how the OP thinks Tanks should contribute to a higher % of damage done to the boss by the end of the fight.

Just randomly pulling a top 10 fight on e3s here are the numbers:
DPS: 63%
Healer: 19%
Tank: 18%

So basically OP wants the gap between DPS (63%) and Tank(18%) to be reduced. By increasing the DPS on tanks it'll reduce the % for both DPS and Healer (but it'll take a bigger % from DPS) and reduce the reliance on competent DPS to make DPS checks. I'm not really too worried about Healer doing too much dps myself, however, in the above example it would be more beneficial to bring 3 healers and 1 tank if the fight mechanics allowed for it to be single tanked.

I personally would want higher dps on Tanks so that when I have to Tank I don't need to rely too much on the quality of the Pug DPS.

But, why though?

All I keep seeing is just "We want to take a 5th DPS in" when the answer should actually be "Give Tanks more stuff to do" but there's no amount of "Stuff to do" that's going to please you people. You're going to memorize where to stand, when to move, and the rotation of CDs to use and after that it's just practice and keeping your cool. Then logging in to complain you deal too little damage and put too much stress on the DPS for doing what is supposed to be their own JOB. DAMAGE.

F it. Buff Tank damage. Do it. Get that damage buff stupid high. I want to see a 6 man WAR/DRK team that doesn't need DPS roles. Maybe then we won't have people complaining about DPS.

Can't complain about DPS being relied on if there's no DPS(Taps temple). Why yes I know this is hyperbole/over the top, but I would LOVE to see the community's reaction if Tanks got within the ball park of DPS damage. Maybe as an April Fools prank or something, I would love to see the discussion that would happen. I mean heck I know it's side content that doesn't matter but Rathalos EX is completed the easiest with 3 Tanks and a Healer. Let's get that as the norm for a week and see what people think.

Personally I just say ax the OT so you people can take the 5th DPS you actually want. Actual question for you top tier raiders; how often do you just wipe it if your MT dies? Like how often is is that you try to recover with the OT? Honest question but if it's not very often and the general response is to fling your bodies off the stage to wipe; what are you actually losing if OT position was dropped?

[RadicalPesto]

People are sure writing a lot of words to fail to grasp the point that as soon as healers start consistently outdpsing tanks (which will happen due to tanks having atrocious main stat scaling), strategies will adapt towards sacrificing tank uptime wherever it brings the party some kind of benefit instead of healer uptime. Healers can actually do something (heal, shield, place regens) when forced into downtime strategies, whereas tanks can for the most part do absolutely nothing. Healers outdpsing tanks has been deliberately avoided in this game's balance for most of its existence for a good reason, and part of why tanks should outdps healers is that tanks have very little gameplay besides being a slower melee DPS with defensive cooldowns.

The only argument I've received to contradict the fact that the current state of healers as borderline hybrid DPS classes that aim to spam all their GCD's on damage was some shallow attempt at shutting down the discussion with "only healers should talk about this", like its some manner of political issue that should only be discussed by a select community of true healers, and not a widely-recognized flaw in how this game is designed, one that even career healers acknowledge has resulted in healers only being fun when their DPS rotations are, because the healing side of healing is overpowered, unrewarding, and has a massive DPS opportunity cost in a game focused mostly on DPS. Healers having the high DPS they have now actively makes the role unfriendly to new players, discourages any usage of healing GCD's, results in healers being the most counter-intuitively designed role in the game, and as such represents one of the most confused healing class designs out of any MMO I've played.

[Shurrikhan]

People are sure writing a lot of words to fail to grasp the point that as soon as healers start consistently outdpsing tanks (which will happen due to tanks having atrocious main stat scaling), strategies will adapt towards sacrificing tank uptime wherever it brings the party some kind of benefit instead of healer uptime.

No, they'll sacrifice tank uptime when it brings the party some rDPS advantage on the whole.

Tanks have rotations. Healers do not. Tanks can easily be screwed over macrorotationally if having lost downtime at the wrong moment or in the wrong duration relative to their modular parts of rotation. Healers will not be. It would significantly more than healers merely edging out tanks GCD for GCD for the party to be less negatively affected by a tank sacrificing uptime than a healer.

That's not to say I think healers should be doing more damage than tanks when each has perfect uptime; I don't, but no party is going to sacrifice party dps through desync just to allow for a few more Glares.

The only argument I've received to contradict the fact that the current state of healers as borderline hybrid DPS classes that aim to spam all their GCD's on damage was some shallow attempt at shutting down the discussion with "only healers should talk about this", like its some manner of political issue that should only be discussed by a select community of true healers, and not a widely-recognized flaw in how this game is designed, one that even career healers acknowledge has resulted in healers only being fun when their DPS rotations are, because the healing side of healing is overpowered, unrewarding, and has a massive DPS opportunity cost in a game focused mostly on DPS. Healers having the high DPS they have now actively makes the role unfriendly to new players, discourages any usage of healing GCD's, results in healers being the most counter-intuitively designed role in the game, and as such represents one of the most confused healing class designs out of any MMO I've played.

No such argument is necessary. They are, for all intents and purposes, Green DPS, or "DPS, but with barebone damage kits so they can take care of auxiliary function off the global cooldown while they spam 1 and, twice per minute, 2". That doesn't change whether the damage permitted them ought be acceptable, though. It's merely a thus-far irrelevant factoid.

I'll agree that it indicates a game-wide issue, but it's less likely an issue of healers having too much damage available to them per GCD of uptime than simply having too few uptime costs necessary. That's an issue of fight design. Merely reducing the opportunity cost of healing does not remove that opportunity cost; it solely encourages your party to slap you less frequently or painfully when overhealing. It does not make that overhealing any degree of optimal. XIV healing is muddled, and just as many a tank here has complained they would like to have more tanking to do on their blue thingamajob, healers have been requesting the same since ARR. It just so happens that healing requirements are now perhaps the lightest they've ever been, despite all promises to the contrary. Our problem is not a new one; it's just more painfully obvious now.

[Kabooa]

The only argument I've received to contradict the fact that the current state of healers as borderline hybrid DPS classes that aim to spam all their GCD's on damage was some shallow attempt at shutting down the discussion with "only healers should talk about this", like its some manner of political issue that should only be discussed by a select community of true healers, and not a widely-recognized flaw in how this game is designed, one that even career healers acknowledge has resulted in healers only being fun when their DPS rotations are, because the healing side of healing is overpowered, unrewarding, and has a massive DPS opportunity cost in a game focused mostly on DPS. Healers having the high DPS they have now actively makes the role unfriendly to new players, discourages any usage of healing GCD's, results in healers being the most counter-intuitively designed role in the game, and as such represents one of the most confused healing class designs out of any MMO I've played.

Yes.

Healer GCDs being too damage weighted is a -healer issue-. it affects -healers-. It affects -their play-.

It has no bearing on whether or not tanks need more damage. Do you know why?

Because if we reduced healer GCD damage proportionately, the problem -still remains for them-. It doesn't matter that the 'weight' is now less damage oriented for their GCD usage - They're still not going to GCD heal if there is nothing their OGCDs cannot heal, just like right now they aren't going to let someone die just to get off another Glare (Or rather - they shouldn't.)

Everyone is a healer, or a potential healer. This isn't the thread to be talking about the design concept of healers and how their GCD weighting is detrimental to their play, because this is a thread about whether or not tanks need a damage boost. (They don't need one)

Healer gameplay has no bearing on tank numbers. You can shift the GCD damage weight down, increase their OGCD damage capability so there is no difference in the long run, and it has literally no effect on Healer playstyle nor their standings with regards to everyone else.

[*]Equally valuable contributions to the party should come from roughly equal requirements of skillful play.

This is of course a variation on "effort/complexity should be duly rewarded" which is itself controversial and is likely a minority opinion by a slight margin if ever applied as broadly as to general balance or long-term metrics like rDPS. Still, many have argued as an extension of such that the skillful play required for healers to minimize their healing is still not enough to bring them up to the average skill requirements given how barebones their offensive gameplay itself has become -- effectively, that healers are getting too much output potential for too little effort or complexity. There has not yet been any thorough counter-argument save those already applied to the more general warrant. Others have pressed that the efforts spent in allowing for healer offensive uptime is valuable, but none have gone so far as to argue (except perhaps implicitly) that it is therefore sufficient.

[/LIST]

There is nothing inherently wrong about healers dealing comparable damage to tanks. The fact that by and large healers still do less is largely ignored. Heaven forbid that those at the top get to flex a little.

And really, the trend breaker is only White Mage. Astrologian in Stormblood easily passed up Tanks on raid damage, and Scholar wasn't that far behind, the difference is that the hard data analyzer didn't show that as a default.

Edit: I'll make an amend that most of my posts in this thread were made prior to the 5.1 job adjustments. If in further job adjustments Summoner becomes a new baseline, then Tanks can stand to receive an increase alongside Healers.

[Nedkel]

I am just waiting for double paladin healers meta, where tanks dps is so pathetic that it actually is better to have tanks healing with requietcast buffed clemecy.
If healers dps potential js higher than tanks then i dont see reason why not. xD

[Reynhart]

I am just waiting for double paladin healers meta, where tanks dps is so pathetic that it actually is better to have tanks healing with requietcast buffed clemecy.

That would be the best testament on how healers' DPS is far less an issue than the really low healing requirement...which is probably why healers have so much opportunity to do damage.

[Nedkel]

That would be the best testament on how healers' DPS is far less an issue than the really low healing requirement...which is probably why healers have so much opportunity to do damage.

Its a statement that also says how pathetic low and high effort is tanks dps.

You do opener and rotation to the exact milisecond but its not worth as much as healers few buttons spam.

That doesnt mean healers are doing too much damage, but how low tanks dps is and need a good buff. Right now tanks contribution to the dps pool is so pathetic that it does not matter anymore.
One of the world highest ranked raid team has tanks performing at the 85-90% percentile level.

[Reynhart]

That doesnt mean healers are doing too much damage, but how low tanks dps is and need a good buff.

Buffing the damage while keeping the exact same rotation would still make tanks DPS effortless. Those two things are completely unrelated.

Healers high DPS is the result of knowing how much you can heal and how much you can deal damage. Even if the damage is tuned too low right now, that's still something healers have to plan, and it will greatly change their damage output. As a tank, you don't have that kind of reasoning. If you don't use your GCD to do damage, you're just doing nothing.

Which is why some of us are suggesting that enmity and/or mitigation should have an impact of how we use our GCD. And once it does, optimal use of it should reward us with a higher DPS...on top of healer having more heal to do that would naturally reduce their opportunity to do damage.

[Kyni]

That would be the best testament on how healers' DPS is far less an issue than the really low healing requirement...which is probably why healers have so much opportunity to do damage.

It's more of a testament that holy spirit under requiescat needs to hit a bit harder. Increasing the Healing requirement i.e. forcing healers to use more gcds on healing would make this specific problem worse. The big reason, why nobody is already doing it, as glare already hits harder than hs under requiescat, is simply that you probably wouldn't even gain a glare out of it, because the whm wouldn't have used a cure or cure 2 anyway, so there is nothing to really gain here. But, if casting cures becomes more commonplace, so that you can guarantee to get a glare out of it, people will start doing it, even through the gain is very small currently.

That being said this isn't really a Tank dps vs Healer dps issue and more an odd side effect of PLD having a full blown heal. That being said i think it still should be watched, because i don't think it's intended this way.

[J-Reyno]

Yes. Why focus on the damage side though? Why not focus on the tank side? That's the crux of the argument here, as the existence of this thread is predicated on the belief that tank damage is low while also lamenting the simplicity of tank-centric gameplay. If tank-centric gameplay is simple, then (as I mentioned multiple times before in this thread) energy would be better spent advocating for an increase in tank-focused solutions instead of boosting dps.

I focus on the damage side because that's how tanks play. They do damage. It's how they're designed and I don't have a problem with that in itself, but my primary concern is the low damage of tanks given that's pretty much all they do. I think there can definitely be a discussion addressing the relative simplicity of the role, but that doesn't change what's going on with them right now. It's more of a tangential discussion that has its place, but doesn't address immediate concerns of current gameplay design. Still, you'll see that I'm not arguing against people who are actually discussing those things in this thread even if it's not my foremost concern, because I think it's still an interesting and worthwhile discussion to have.

I also don't think they're mutually exclusive. If SE wants to increase tank damage by making the job more complex, that's a one-size-fits-all solution if I've ever seen one.

But it's not 99% of tank gameplay. It's not even 90%. It might be 75-80% in a fight that's on farm, and probably less than 50% for a fight that's in prog. Mechanics will always come first, with dps being a concern after the execution is down pat.

Mechanics are the universal gameplay present for all jobs. I'm referring to what happens when tanks press buttons. 99% of the time it's damage. Yes, they do have passive non-damage contribution by virtue of taking hits, but I'm specifically talking about what happens when you actually press buttons. Active gameplay. And yes it's ultimately the goal for all jobs, even healers, to press as many damage buttons as possible, but tanks are undoubtedly doing that more than healers and with more variety as well. Or put differently, healers interrupt their damage dealing with heals more often than tanks interrupt theirs with... non-damage tanking.

Many veteran players are used to a certain cadence in the game, and this naturally puts an emphasis on more damage and faster clearing when it comes to non-savage/EX level stuff. But just because the emphasis is on dps in those situations doesn't mean the value of a properly played tank or healer is decreased. You still need that tank there to hold aggro and rotate CD's on a big pull, and that healer still needs to make sure said tank doesn't go down or else you'll have 8-10 very angry monsters running roughshod over the rest of the group.

The tank absolutely has value. You should still do your job correctly, but your job mostly amounts to "do damage" with the only real special thing being that you're just doing it while being a tank. You can genuinely get away with not using defensive cooldowns AT ALL during an entire dungeon run. You barely even have to worry about positioning, if at all, because your mistakes can be cleaned up by the healer. The healer, who will and must do healing things more often than you do tank things.

Now I'm not saying a bad tank won't make the run worse or that a good tank can't significantly improve the experience of the group. What I am saying is that a tank can get away with no doing "tank stuff" more than a healer can get away with not doing "heal stuff" in your regular, everyday content. For most content, if you've turned on tank stance you've done the absolute bare minimum needed to function as a tank.

Not only do tanks already have less actual defensive tank abilities to begin with, most of what they do have isn't even necessary in most content. They're simply a much more damage-oriented job when it comes to active gameplay. You might ask again, why do I not focus on addressing this instead? For the reasons stated above. I don't have a problem with tanks being more damage-oriented. I do have a problem with active gameplay being 99% dealing damage given the current damage numbers. You can disagree and feel that tank gameplay should simply be shifted AWAY from damage, which is fine, but it's not a "right" opinion. It's a different one.

I have yet to see anyone else but myself offer an idea in this thread (I am aware of - and thankful - for the thread started by Kabooa) to boost tank damage while also boosting complexity. The meaning behind this is clear; those advocating for an increase in tank damage without commensurate increase in tank complexity simply want more damage for the sake of having more damage.

I've already answered this HERE.

And like I've also said before, increasing the complexity of tank damage is fine. Great, even. Leaving tanks as they are for the remainder of the xpac since we all know significant changes would not happen before the next? That sucks. As for wanting more damage "for the sake of having more damage" I'm not repeating myself because I linked my post in my last response, which in your own response you seem to have at least regarded the impact of the roles as a matter of opinion. Hopefully we can keep that energy. You don't get to decide others' motivations and reduce their arguments and opinions to "want more damage for no justifiable reason" just because you disagree with those reasons.