Is anyone surprised at this point?

[Lyth]

I think that it's perfectly fine for a job to feel comfortable and accessible to play. I think that every job should be viable, and they've done a good job of that as far as comparative tank dps totals this expansion. They've also, up until just now, done a reasonable job of rewarding sustain and burst appropriately.

I do, however, believe that comfort should come at a cost. Effort should always translate into a performance advantage, however slight, so that you get recognized for the work you put in. Uptime focused jobs should, by rights, always win out over jobs that have an advantage in burst. It doesn't have to be a big advantage, but there should be a difference.

As an example, one of the key reasons why there are endless complaints about Living Dead (design problems aside) is that it's completely inferior to Holmgang, despite being significantly more punishing. Why go through the extra hassle if you can have more rewards for less effort? Likewise, one of the reasons why people are questioning this potency change is because it rewards you for breathing. Congratulations, you picked WAR and have an intact brainstem. It doesn't reward you for doing something skillful or clever with your burst window. It doesn't force you to do something engaging outside of your burst window and then reward you for it. It arbitrarily hands out sustain benefits to a job that has canonically always been given an advantage over everyone else in burst.

Nobody is begrudging you having a beginner friendly, accessible tank that feels comfortable to play. But be sure to properly reward more skillful play on other jobs appropriately and fairly.

[whiskeybravo]

I think that it's perfectly fine for a job to feel comfortable and accessible to play. I think that every job should be viable, and they've done a good job of that as far as comparative tank dps totals this expansion. They've also, up until just now, done a reasonable job of rewarding sustain and burst appropriately.

I do, however, believe that comfort should come at a cost. Effort should always translate into a performance advantage, however slight, so that you get recognized for the work you put in. Uptime focused jobs should, by rights, always win out over jobs that have an advantage in burst. It doesn't have to be a big advantage, but there should be a difference.

As an example, one of the key reasons why there are endless complaints about Living Dead (design problems aside) is that it's completely inferior to Holmgang, despite being significantly more punishing. Why go through the extra hassle if you can have more rewards for less effort? Likewise, one of the reasons why people are questioning this potency change is because it rewards you for breathing. Congratulations, you picked WAR and have an intact brainstem. It doesn't reward you for doing something skillful or clever with your burst window. It doesn't force you to do something engaging outside of your burst window and then reward you for it. It arbitrarily hands out sustain benefits to a job that has canonically always been given an advantage over everyone else in burst.

Nobody is begrudging you having a beginner friendly, accessible tank that feels comfortable to play. But be sure to properly reward more skillful play on other jobs appropriately and fairly.

Yea 20 pot/gcd is such a reward. Game breaking even.

Putting in more effort on any job usually results in a relative performance advantage.

Except in fights with more downtime phases, right?

Comparing LD with Holmgang over a minor potency buff is irrelevant here. I agree with pretty much everyone else that LD needs to change, as far as I can tell it's about the dumbest ability in the entire game. People have complained about it for years, why it hasn't been changed is far beyond all of our combined comprehension. Could you actually imagine the explosion of hot air if WAR got some other significant rework in the ways you mention to compensate for the minor potency buff, while DRK continued to remain in such a pitifully abandoned state? My advice would be to save your energy on this battle, it's probably not even going to be noticeable by 6.0.

[Lyth]

...

It's precisely enough of a change to push WAR's average combo potency above both DRK and GNB. In order for burst and sustain to be balanced, you need to be at a relative disadvantage outside of your burst window and catch up during your burst. If you have it both ways, why would you play anything else? This is where both Heavensward and Stormblood fell short.

Downtime always benefits burst. Uptime always benefits sustain. But there has to be a trade-off. Otherwise you just have a high damage tank vs. a low damage tank, instead of burst vs. sustain. That's not a trade-off. You're just forced to take the higher damage option.

Giving players more variety to choose from is important. I'm not going back to WAR. Nor, I suspect, are the players who discovered GNB this expansion as an engaging, high damage tank. That's a pretty good thing. There are plenty of people who will want to pick WAR anyways because it feels comfortable, has flexible burst windows, and has excellent self-healing for soloing content. You could attract even more players by making the gameplay decisions more engaging and less mind numbing. That's a much better move than inflating its numbers to make people feel better about themselves.

But I think that if they actually read through NA/EU player feedback about tank ennui, or had community teams that were feeding this back up the chain, they would have known all this for a long time.

[whiskeybravo]

Downtime always benefits burst. Uptime always benefits sustain. But there has to be a trade-off. Otherwise you just have a high damage tank vs. a low damage tank, instead of burst vs. sustain. That's not a trade-off. You're just forced to take the higher damage option.

But this is exactly what's happening. WAR is ahead in fights with more downtime while GNB/PLD are ahead on uptime fights. The problem with DRK is the same it's been since the end of HW, it no longer has an identity. Like it's trying to be a combination of burst and sustain but falls short of excelling at either (maybe on purpose since it'd be too OP to have both the burst and sustain advantage...) IMO the most sensible option is to hone the burst aspect so we have 2 burst and 2 sustain tanks.

[Lyth]

In fairness, LD is pretty good as far as healer CDs are concerned. Holmgang and Superbollide both have you burn Benediction. All you need for LD is Swiftcast (Raise).

The buff was to WAR's sustain, not its burst. Both DRK and GNB have a baseline lower potency combo compared to WAR after this change.

DRK in Heavensward and Stormblood has historically been the most sustain-focused tank at a time when sustain always lost out to burst. In Shadowbringers, it's suddenly burst focused, just in time for the balance to have shifted. But none of this really matters as long as they're consistent. If burst always is to win, then everyone is ultimately going to have to end up with Fell Chaos spam. If there's to be a trade-off, then yes, you will find jobs that have higher uptime requirements win out in dps once the fight is mastered. Skill should 100% translate into performance.

And that's what DRK players have really been asking for. This job was sold out the gate in Heavensward as the 'difficult tank'. That's why abilities like Living Dead have bizarre penalties attached. But that has to translate into some sort of a reward or benefit. I want to see the job have both a higher skill cap and a resultant performance edge when played well. And maybe that they iron out the jank while they're at it.

[whiskeybravo]

Both DRK and GNB have a baseline lower potency combo compared to WAR after this change.

And? They both have a lot more than their baseline combo going on to compensate

[Lyth]

...

If your burst window is bigger than everyone else, your combo potencies and baseline GCD values outside of burst should be smaller than everyone else. Anything else is a recipe for Heavensward or Stormblood era tank balance. You can't have it both ways.

[Bhearil]

In fairness, LD is pretty good as far as healer CDs are concerned. Holmgang and Superbollide both have you burn Benediction. All you need for LD is Swiftcast (Raise).

The buff was to WAR's sustain, not its burst. Both DRK and GNB have a baseline lower potency combo compared to WAR after this change.

DRK in Heavensward and Stormblood has historically been the most sustain-focused tank at a time when sustain always lost out to burst. In Shadowbringers, it's suddenly burst focused, just in time for the balance to have shifted. But none of this really matters as long as they're consistent. If burst always is to win, then everyone is ultimately going to have to end up with Fell Chaos spam. If there's to be a trade-off, then yes, you will find jobs that have higher uptime requirements win out in dps once the fight is mastered. Skill should 100% translate into performance.

And that's what DRK players have really been asking for. This job was sold out the gate in Heavensward as the 'difficult tank'. That's why abilities like Living Dead have bizarre penalties attached. But that has to translate into some sort of a reward or benefit. I want to see the job have both a higher skill cap and a resultant performance edge when played well. And maybe that they iron out the jank while they're at it.

After a tankbuster is rare that a Tank needs to be healed to full to survive next atacks, on GNB case healers have plenty of time to heal since every heal during the duration is effective health. On both DRK and WAR, the idea is to frontload heals at the end to avoid "wasting" healing, but Holgmgang doesnt kill you if your HP is not totally filled. Using Bene on Holmgang is an option but not needed, on LD case is either you waste tons of extra cds or use Bene, so the DRK doesnt kill himself

On War as long as you bring to a decent HP level you can heal him later (plus WAR has great self heals and cap himself the remaning HP without adding extra pressure to the healers)