How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[Kabooa]

It's more of a tangential discussion that has its place, but doesn't address immediate concerns of current gameplay design..

Humor me this last time.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/x6ajk...pe=damage-done

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/LR7qM...pe=damage-done

Examine these two logs and tell me your conclusion. Once you do yours, I'll do mine.

[Shurrikhan]

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

Once overgearing content enough, i.e about the same time TBN becomes too difficult to reliably pop anywhere near as often as its CD, I'd suspect double-Warrior would be the optimal setup... Clemency saves over 2 GCDs of healing (over 3 on cross-heal), but it's so rare to need 2 full GCDs of healing within the same minute -- even on what few Savage fights require GCD healing at all -- that it'd likely overheal in its single use per minute from each tank in cross-healing. Nascent Flash, on the other hand -- no opportunity cost.

Here's hoping next tier will require a decent bit of healing for once...

[Shurrikhan]

Absolutely, I don't think either position is more legitimate than the other, it really just comes down to personal preference in regard to how the dps percentage should be divided between the roles and how important that is to your enjoyment of the game.

That something may ultimately rely on personal preference does not mean that it lacks warrant or thorough reasoning, nor that is must be detached from wider concerns. Here the main concern is generally balance (fairness in job/role choice), but that same concern can take two paths.

On the one side, balance dictates that player should see similar improvement in party contribution as they improve their level of play. (Thus, tanks should see greater tangible reward increase, or greater difference between their output floor and ceiling, to roughly equal contribution difference supplied by DPS.)

On the other, balance would demand that tanks should neither replace nor be replaced by dps -- except perhaps situationally and in equal rates of exchange. (Thus, rewards to tanks' ceiling must be careful not to overpower tanks at the majority of other levels of play as a result of tanks' high output floor.)

Those goals are not, however, mutually exclusive. It just takes appropriate tuning.

[Rhais]

That something may ultimately rely on personal preference does not mean that it lacks warrant or thorough reasoning, nor that is must be detached from wider concerns. Here the main concern is generally balance (fairness in job/role choice), but that same concern can take two paths.

On the one side, balance dictates that player should see similar improvement in party contribution as they improve their level of play. (Thus, tanks should see greater tangible reward increase, or greater difference between their output floor and ceiling, to roughly equal contribution difference supplied by DPS.)

On the other, balance would demand that tanks should neither replace nor be replaced by dps -- except perhaps situationally and in equal rates of exchange. (Thus, rewards to tanks' ceiling must be careful not to overpower tanks at the majority of other levels of play as a result of tanks' high output floor.)

Those goals are not, however, mutually exclusive. It just takes appropriate tuning.

Yes, that's why I said "I'm presuming that like me others that would have no problem with a damage increase are suggesting it under the premise that it would be done in such a way as to preserve job balance and balance between the roles." below the portion you quoted. Obviously any change in dps that would unbalance distribution of roles within the party would cease to be subjective and be objectively bad for the game. There is certainly room for adjustment before that becomes a concern however.

I also think the topic is connected to wider concerns within the role and game in general, and not something that should necessarily be isolated when discussing it. However it seems every time this topic comes up certain people come in, in typically a fairly obnoxious manner, to assert that it shouldn't be a concern of tanks at all. It generally shuts down any actual conversation because people end up spending all their time defending themselves for even daring to broach the subject against others that merely don't place as much importance on that aspect of the role as them. It's hard to discuss something when as soon as you bring it up as a concern you are essentially told you are wrong for even being concerned about it. Hence why I was pointing out it's subjective nature.(again, obviously within reasonable limits)

Edit: For instance, taken from the post above "There is, however, a distinct lack of the ability to excel (Re as: The 'band' on all percentiles is extremely tiny). An increase of what you're asking for, in its own vacuum, would require some gameplay adjustments, now or later, so that the increase itself is the tank's realm of optimization. The kits currently don't really support that."

I think the above quote is one of the biggest problems with current tank design, and one of the issues that really needs to be taken into consideration when discussing tank dps, one of those wider concerns. At least in my view, the above is one of the main culprits for tanks having that feeling of low impact within the party, and as the nature of the game is one of repeating the same content over and over for months, it makes the content stagnate faster.

[Nedkel]

In the first example, the tanks were probably out of defensive stance for 95% of that fight. At the time, Defensive stance dropped your dps by 20% IIRC. Shadowbringers basically applied the tank stance penalties to all tanks across the board for the perception of not losing dps by equipping tank stance.

So again, take the first example of tank dps (10%) and drop 20% off of that for a result of 8% dps contribution add in the extra high potency dps attacks both tanks and healers got in Shadowbringers and you'll see that tanks are in the exact same spot they should be relative to the healers.

So the conclusion that tanks did in fact lost dps that was a part of the offensive stance in sb.
So we could say we all got forced into tank stance since 5.0, seems fair enough.
However it will cause problems in the future, mark my word when dps uptime on tanks will be less of a value than that of healers then a lot of funny things are going to happen. Rightnow tenacity should be the most valuable secondary stat due to healers uptime having bigger impact on raid dpa than a tank, savin one or two gcd on healer will likely be better than 1-1.5% on tank that contributes 8.5% rdps to the total number.

[BarretOblivion]

Right now the only tanks I can argue there is a feeling of "skill" to damage is between maybe DRK (dunno don't play it but its punishing when you screw up) and GNB with it mostly being gunbreaker requiring to regurgitate thier opener every 60 secs with bloodfest being the biggest skill check of knowing timings to use it for resource management.
PLD is not just straightforward but its easy to keep uptime when needing to move and WAR... just don't get me started on WAR -_- plz... they killed it.

And to the point of percentages changes for tanks between (skill tiers), don't use eden or at least use E1/E2s. Titan (uplift and the entire first phase when he picks tanks for mechanics to drop uptime is so brutal as there are some runs I can sit at 9k as a GNB for transition and then tank to 7k with no deaths during transition just because of mechanics.) and Leviathan both have RNG mechanics that destroy tank damage (stormy for leviathan can hurt a tank that's targetted as well as tsunami 2 for the tank that has the 'bomb').
So... I would look at tank differences between tiers with a grain of salt because there is a significant 'luck' factor with those two fights in particular.

[ReiMakoto]

Right now the only tanks I can argue there is a feeling of "skill" to damage is between maybe DRK (dunno don't play it but its punishing when you screw up) and GNB with it mostly being gunbreaker requiring to regurgitate thier opener every 60 secs with bloodfest being the biggest skill check of knowing timings to use it for resource management.
PLD is not just straightforward but its easy to keep uptime when needing to move and WAR... just don't get me started on WAR -_- plz... they killed it.

And to the point of percentages changes for tanks between (skill tiers), don't use eden or at least use E1/E2s. Titan (uplift and the entire first phase when he picks tanks for mechanics to drop uptime is so brutal as there are some runs I can sit at 9k as a GNB for transition and then tank to 7k with no deaths during transition just because of mechanics.) and Leviathan both have RNG mechanics that destroy tank damage (stormy for leviathan can hurt a tank that's targetted as well as tsunami 2 for the tank that has the 'bomb').
So... I would look at tank differences between tiers with a grain of salt because there is a significant 'luck' factor with those two fights in particular.

There isn't a luck factor if you organise your team properly, you can get 100% uptime on stormy if your team stays close to the dive where you stay further away then sprint/ cd to safety, pretty sure theres an uptime strat for the bomb too. For Titan you can choose a tank to get near 100% uptime for uplifts. Uplift 1 if the dps stand at the front of their platform tanks can drop their blue in a spot where it doesnt hit anyone but they can still hit the boss, the second blue mark is like a 2 gcd loss max if you time it right. Second uplift you can pick a tank to go with the melees an have front back groups so the melees and that tank always get 100% uptime (as well as padding off of the gaol with demon slice/slaughter and fated).

[BarretOblivion]

There isn't a luck factor if you organise your team properly, you can get 100% uptime on stormy if your team stays close to the dive where you stay further away then sprint/ cd to safety, pretty sure theres an uptime strat for the bomb too. For Titan you can choose a tank to get near 100% uptime for uplifts. Uplift 1 if the dps stand at the front of their platform tanks can drop their blue in a spot where it doesnt hit anyone but they can still hit the boss, the second blue mark is like a 2 gcd loss max if you time it right. Second uplift you can pick a tank to go with the melees an have front back groups so the melees and that tank always get 100% uptime (as well as padding off of the gaol with demon slice/slaughter and fated).

There is no uptime strat for the bomb, you try and uptime strat and you kill everyone. Again, one tank will get screw balled for uplift. We already know one tank can have 100% uptime but that means the other one will not. Its a luck factor there and it can really screw one tank because that timing is generally when raid buffs go out during uplift 2.

[Rhais]

How much of the difference between percentiles is due to ilvl, and how much of it is actually skill based?

[Kabooa]

How much of the difference between percentiles is due to ilvl, and how much of it is actually skill based?

One can only make assumptions.

However at this point we could assume that iLvl is much less of a factor than it is in the first month or so. (When the toppity top is geared fully while everyone else is still moseying along).

That said, there's no reason to believe that the trends differ so much that one role is just under geared and another is just underskilled. One might be able to make that assertion in the first few weeks, but if the two aren't equally geared, there's no sense in making a comparison.

Looking back in time, the 'band' for tanks has shrunk since then, and the easiest explanation for that is the removal of Tank Stance as a mechanic of any weight, as well as the removal of Slashing and subsequent retuning.

The implication being that the floor is raised but not the ceiling. While rare, there are likely logs from groups that had no slashing debuff, thus why Dark and Paladin have lower floors. I doubt Warriors were just 10% better in play.

Obviously, this is the problem with just using graphs and why I encouraged deeper dives, but graphs are good at looking at trends even if no context is present.

For example, healer trends mostly haven't changed - Min-ilvl encounters demand healer DPS but Min-Ilvl isn't how most people tackle content, so healer DPS tends to be much more lax while still being provided. But healers also lose damage the more mistakes a party makes. They have a large amount of variance, and high healer damage is almost always indicative of a group that is mechanically sound (if not mechanically great).

The somewhat larger range on Tanks pre-Shadowbringers is almost wholly explained by the old function of Tank Stance. A 15-20% penalty is huge, and while it should be avoided in optimized play, not everyone who contributes to a dataset is at optimized play. Some just prefer having that comfort but they're counted among the same. Likewise, tanks having actual DPS-stances, some of them exclusive, means that your high percentiles are just that much further from your lows.

Would someone say flipping Tank Stance on and off is skill based? (I wouldn't).

This goes back into assumptions. I could see the development team looking at the removal of the damage penalty and deciding that they should also remove the benefit of the DPS stance, and then averaging them around the assumption that one is in (80%) and one isn't (100%), having their new full power be the average of a tank in stance and one out (90%).

The result is a large raising of the skill floor with a reduction of the ceiling.