How do we feel about tank damage right now?

[J-Reyno]

I find myself rapidly losing interest in tanking because the damage was not increased from Stormblood as much as the other roles. Hell at higher levels of play WHM consistently does more damage than all of the tanks except Gunbreaker.

Mind you, I think healer damage is fine. Tank damage simply didn't increase as much as the other roles. Tanks don't do a lot to mitigate besides pressing a button or two. So they have actual damage rotations to maintain. Yet for all the work to maintain these rotations through tank and party mechanics, there's little return. I'm usually fighting the mechanics for uptime and trying to make sure I keep everything aligned. Which is significantly more work for damage than when I'm playing a healer job. I have very near my tank jobs' damage on my SCH alt by just spamming the hell out of Broil.

The power distribution is way off right now and it's turning me away from the role. I mean I enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay, but a big part of the fun for tanking was doing my job as a tank while pushing for as much damage as possible. During Stormblood I felt like the damage was appropriate for the work, but now it feels like I'm working too hard just to barely do more damage than my SCH alt spamming Broil while also healing the entire party from low to full health, which makes healer feel FAR more powerful as a role and tank feel like little more than a whipping boy.

It makes me just want to play heal/dps instead where it feels like I'm appropriately rewarded for my efforts. In my opinion tanks should be doing, at minimum, a solid 1k more dps.

What do other tank players think about this?

[Galactimus]

Being able to deal around 9k damage on Paladin while taking very little damage in return while being able to solo heal most non-savage boss fights.

I feel like I'm playing all three roles at the same time with very little draw back. There's a reason 8 tanks can clear most savage content.

[J-Reyno]

Being able to deal around 9k damage on Paladin while taking very little damage in return while being able to solo heal most non-savage boss fights.

I feel like I'm playing all three roles at the same time with very little draw back. There's a reason 8 tanks can clear most savage content.

The healing is indeed a nice aspect of Paladin, but assuming your team isn't completely eating it your healing isn't needed. It's nice to have in a pinch but you also aren't solo-healing any raids, either. Sure you can take the hits but your healer keeps the entire party AND you alive while still pumping out nearly the same amount of damage.

This also leaves out the other three tank jobs. What about them?

Other games do not have tank roles dealing the same amount of damage as support/healer roles. There's a reason for that, imo. Considering the large boost to damage dps and healer jobs got with Shadowbringers, I feel like tanks were left behind.

[Godsfaith]

Being able to deal around 9k damage on Paladin while taking very little damage in return while being able to solo heal most non-savage boss fights.

I feel like I'm playing all three roles at the same time with very little draw back. There's a reason 8 tanks can clear most savage content.

DPS checks ><

[Samsta]

Play a dps if you want to obsess over numbers, I will never understand how it will affect the enjoyment of your gameplay whether or not your parser show a higher or lower number, because it is all relative, the only thing that matters is how much different jobs inside a role deal damage, since content will always be balanced around the expected damage, if they increased the level of tank dps, the boss hp would just be higher. Why does it matter how much different roles do dps? Just play a job that you like and try to your best inside it's expected damage, that is what the game expects of you. And btw white mage should not deal more damage than tanks, something is wrong in that group if they do, either the other healer is solo healing, whm is hugely better geared or the tanks are bad.

[J-Reyno]

Play a dps if you want to obsess over numbers, I will never understand how it will affect the enjoyment of your gameplay whether or not your parser show a higher or lower number, because it is all relative, the only thing that matters is how much different jobs inside a role deal damage, since content will always be balanced around the expected damage, if they increased the level of tank dps, the boss hp would just be higher. Why does it matter how much different roles do dps? Just play a job that you like and try to your best inside it's expected damage, that is what the game expects of you. And btw white mage should not deal more damage than tanks, something is wrong in that group if they do, either the other healer is solo healing, whm is hugely better geared or the tanks are bad.

Ha. I play all of the roles and I'll tell you now that players of every role obsess over numbers.

In any case, it's also about the effort to actually deal damage in the first place. When I swap between SCH and tank there is a great difference in how much work I put in to dps. When I deal damage as SCH, it's just incredibly simple by comparison. Sure my tank jobs deal more damage, but it's considerably more work for what feels like only a little more damage. The healer role currently feels very satisfying because I can do good damage while keeping the entire party alive with tons of healing output. Dps roles are also doing a ton more damage this expansion. Maybe if tanks had nothing more than a simple 1-2-3 rotation and/or more active and powerful party mitigation I'd feel differently, but that's not the case.

[Samsta]

Ha. I play all of the roles and I'll tell you now that players of every role obsess over numbers.

In any case, it's also about the effort to actually deal damage in the first place. When I swap between SCH and tank there is a great difference in how much work I put in to dps. When I deal damage as SCH, it's just incredibly simple by comparison. Sure my tank jobs deal more damage, but it's considerably more work for what feels like only a little more damage. The healer role currently feels very satisfying because I can do good damage while keeping the entire party alive with tons of healing output. Dps roles are also doing a ton more damage this expansion. Maybe if tanks had nothing more than a simple 1-2-3 rotation and/or more active and powerful party mitigation I'd feel differently, but that's not the case.

If you play the game, and especially a tank for the reward of big but ultimately meaningless (like I said, the bosses hp is relative to the excepted damage) damage numbers I can't help you since I can't understand that mindset, yeah I like to aim for the biggest dps possible when healing, but that's more to do with competing inside my job and seeing how well I do within the job that I am given and I enjoy that, I however see no reason to compare my dps to other roles.

Btw not that it really matters but tanks deal a solid 1k+ dps compared to healers in the first place and far more in aDPS: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount.

[J-Reyno]

If you play the game, and especially a tank for the reward of big but ultimately meaningless (like I said, the bosses hp is relative to the excepted damage) damage numbers I can't help you since I can't understand that mindset, yeah I like to aim for the biggest dps possible when healing, but that's more to do with competing inside my job and seeing how well I do within the job that I am given and I enjoy that, I however see no reason to compare my dps to other roles.

Btw not that it really matters but tanks deal a solid 1k+ dps compared to healers in the first place and far more in aDPS: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount.

The higher you go up the percentile, the smaller the gap. It gets considerably smaller until it's practically nonexistant between WHM and tanks. And sure, that's an unreasonable expectation in the average group. I do, however, think it's silly and only further shows that tank dps is low this xpac. Even at more reasonable levels of play the difference is small and, as I've mentioned, doesn't reflect the difference in effort for maintaining rotations along with the utility of the roles.

Since I frequently play all of the roles I always see the numbers of the job I'm playing and compare that to the effort I'm putting in. I do find it frustrating that I work much harder to maintain my damage on tanks for what feels like less of a return. I understand that you feel it's pointless, and it's okay for us to feel differently about it.

[Samsta]

The higher you go up the percentile, the smaller the gap. It gets considerably smaller until it's practically nonexistant between WHM and tanks. And sure, that's an unreasonable expectation in the average group. I do, however, think it's silly and only further shows that tank dps is low this xpac. Even at more reasonable levels of play the difference is small and, as I've mentioned, doesn't reflect the difference in effort for maintaining rotations along with the utility of the roles.

Since I frequently play all of the roles I always see the numbers of the job I'm playing and compare that to the effort I'm putting in. I do find it frustrating that I work much harder to maintain my damage on tanks for what feels like less of a return. I understand that you feel it's pointless, and it's okay for us to feel differently about it.

The only percentage where whm deals more than tanks is 99% cheese percent which is something you should never be looking, under a normal gameplay that doesn't happen.

I don't simply feel the damage disparity is pointless, because it truly is, it's just inside your head, like I said the content is balanced around the expected damage, nothing would change in gameplay or meta if all tanks were buffed the exact same amount, you would just see bigger tank numbers in your parser, the fights would be designed around that and they would last just as long and your "contribution" would be just the same.

[Quor]

The higher you go up the percentile, the smaller the gap. It gets considerably smaller until it's practically nonexistant between WHM and tanks. And sure, that's an unreasonable expectation in the average group. I do, however, think it's silly and only further shows that tank dps is low this xpac. Even at more reasonable levels of play the difference is small and, as I've mentioned, doesn't reflect the difference in effort for maintaining rotations along with the utility of the roles.

Since I frequently play all of the roles I always see the numbers of the job I'm playing and compare that to the effort I'm putting in. I do find it frustrating that I work much harder to maintain my damage on tanks for what feels like less of a return. I understand that you feel it's pointless, and it's okay for us to feel differently about it.

It is never, ever a good thing to consider balance based around the top end of a game. FF14 showed, with it's history, without a shadow of a doubt, that a game lives and dies by its fans. Not by the top end. Not by the "hardcore raiders." But by the people who love the game for what it is and have fun with it that way. This means balancing things in such a way that it works for the vast majority of people, not just the top 1%.