P1N Warrior solo kill

[Ixon]

If it was a fight design flaw, only being low outgoing damage, then other roles could accomplish it. We don't have that situation on our hands do we?

Let's admit it's a mixture of low relative damage (which tank mitigation as well as invulnerabilities can negate) coupled with high tank sustainability.

Except that the only reason why P1N can be soloable is because the only DPS requirement of a DPS check is not there, and the overall fight damage is laughable. Most fights are designed as such: Tank Busters/Mechanics necessitate the need for a tank, high overall party damage necessitates a need for a healer, and DPS checks/enrages necessitates DPS. P1N is missing two out of three, all that's left is the tank busters. Which by design, can only be handled by the tank, hence why it's called a tank buster, which is why only tanks can clear P1N at the moment. Healers have more sustain than tanks and DPS have and DPS have more damage than the tanks and healers have, but cannot survive tank busters, which is why you hardly see no tank clears. DPS checks are the least likely to exist in Normal modes, and the damage output of Normal modes are about ~30% of what it is in Savage because that's how Normal modes are designed.

The issue is this, you can go ahead and nerf tank sustain. I wouldn't care. GNB did not have nearly what it has now, and the only think I would miss is not being able to carry bad parties as much, but I'd survive. You could nerf it in a way that no tank could solo P1N, and I doubt anyone would really actually care because no one is clearing it solo outside of the challenge of wanting to waste an hour of your day. The issue is it would NOT help the issue healers are having. At all. So the tanks would need an extra essential, lustrate, tetra, per fight. I highly doubt any healer needing to use one more oGCD on the tank is going to jump for joy and praise SE that healers are fixed. It's the fact that almost every fight can be done without needing to cast a single GCD, or done without needing to use the full extent of their kit. Which is strictly why I put the issue on the fight designs.

[Shurrikhan]

Never said it was. I merely pointed out that a single role's ability to cheese content isn't any more likely to be a problem with content than a problem with that role.

That.. doesn't make sense.

You have types A, B, and C. Of those, only A interacts in a way that may be problematic with context X. Is X at fault, or A?

The argument was literally just that it could be either one. It is not necessarily X, as you and Alzinor have insisted.

________________

But, sure, let's back this up a ways, to where the point in contention becomes very obvious.

Even in ShB, you could no-heal and no-dps a majority of content-forms. You would not no-tank them.

Despite tanks clearly therefore being the more designed-in essential role, following ShB, Healer rDPS was decreased from ~64% of a DPS's to ~56%, while (Non-DRK) Tanks not only saw their free self-healing increased from as low as nil to a minimum of 4278 (and maximum of 12440 potency, even in single-target) per minute, their rDPS increased from ~56% of a DPS's to 64%.

Such will, very obviously, cause a shift in relative power in Tanks' favor (over both Healers and DPS), one that time had already proven is far from necessary -- seeing as any period in which tanks have ever become even briefly non-essential has meant immediate redress even while hardly an eye ever bats at Healers being made nonessential.



I say this as someone who plays Tank far more than Healers and prefers tanking to healing: We did not need the degree of power increase that was given to us in EW.

We needed more activity and agency, as arguably every role needed and still needs, but the increase to overall capacity was excessive. It would still be excessive even if there were commensurate added damage funneled into us; such would merely mean that the content would further solidify that imbalance.

Balance within roles is the first place we look to for job diversity, but when balance between roles fails, the whole game starts getting a bit wonky. We haven't yet hit any huge threshold or point of no return but we are certainly leaning that way, which is why we have both the reason and ability to do anything about it.

[Absimiliard]

I feel like people should begin approaching this issue from another point of view. Rather than going "oh no, tanks op," why not simply regard their survival (DRK notwithstanding) as being largely their own responsibility? That's more than enough agency for anybody, and the truth of the matter is that a good WAR, PLD, or GNB is only going to require healing in EX trials, savages, and a handful of dungeon trash pulls with either obnoxiously strong or obnoxious numbers of enemies. Why not embrace it? Let the tanks sustain themselves for the most part. Toss them a heal when necessary, but otherwise concentrate on throwing out damage or healing the floor ta--I mean red DPS.

Removing the increased damage from tanks is going to make far fewer people want to play them, as we saw the last time it happened. Limiting their self-healing, especially if this is done alongside the re-lowering of their damage, will likewise drive a not insignificant number of people away from the role. How does the game benefit from a tank needing twice as long to kill something as a DPS or getting murdered by some inconsequential mobs because they for some reason lack sustain, really? I've been a tank since ARR, and I definitely don't want to go back to the way it was then -- or, for that matter, to have my damage knocked back down to post-nerf levels.

[Lyth]

You're right, except for the wrong reasons.

The reason why there's so much passive self-healing on tanks this expansion is to make them more accessible to novice players. When a new tank sees their HP drop below 70%, they panic, activate all their cooldowns, and start typing angry, tearful paragraphs in chat. Automating the healing process makes the experience much less stressful for both the baby tank and their minder, but it also means that those tanks never grow. But it definitely has had an effect. I'm seeing even newer players on the forums and on reddit showing an awareness that tanking is chill and bottom of the barrel skill, and a lot less of the classic 'tanking looks really interesting but I'm too scared to try it' posts. And in retrospect, it probably makes a lot of sense to encourage newer players to filter through a lower queue time role first requiring less skill investment, get some game experience, and then eventually move on to a more engaging role with dps carry potential in raid content.

I think that the loudest voices in this thread have recognized the value in this and are pushing in what is truly the best design direction for tanks. Give them a passive regen that keeps them at full, a trait that lets them ignore additional damage through maximum vuln stacks while providing an automated nappy change, and then quietly scale down their damage between expansion releases to offset this. I wish you all the very best of success with this endeavor.

[Semirhage]

I'll do that as soon as you show me how gimmick all tank no healer runs have become the standard for the game's content and healers are struggling to find groups because of it.

You can't and you won't.

So it's only a problem if tanks are easily rendered overpowered? I assume this goalpost is just as easily wheeled back to "it's not a problem unless a tank easily solos Ultimate"

For all you say, I still have no idea what you want to be done. Do you want every single piece of content to be solo-able by everyone? Or people so nerfed it can't be solo'd by anyone? Do you want fights changed or jobs? What are you asking for? Cause certain jobs being able to do X happens in all content, in every game, all the time. You are playing this victim card like you and healers like you are being targeted and treated unfairly.

As Shurrikhan said, this cuts both ways. It's not just encounter design, as you keep insisting. Healers, for example, are boring. They're boring in a dungeon, they're boring in solo duties, they're boring in savage, they're boring in ultimate. If you heal an ultimate and are at any skill level above "boosted last week", your enjoyment from ultimate comes from the mechanics of the fight, not your role. WHM in particular (the one I played most) has boring, one-dimensional heal spells with almost zero decision making. Healer gameplay is almost entirely down to countering the occasional obligatory unavoidable raidwide with one or two boring spells, most of which don't interact with anything in your kit at all, then return to Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare.

That's not encounter design that's causing that. It's *exacerbating* it without question, but the job design sucks in a vacuum too.

So back to tanks, Square fixes fights whenever any role other than a tank can handle a tankbuster, but if a non-healer can handle a heal check they have never once given a rat's behind. I don't claim this is because Square "hates healers" (believe me, there's tons of other evidence to suggest they either hate or are indifferent to the role, see above), but it's still an interesting data point that Square seems quite insistent upon making tanks impossible to replace even by highly skilled strategists. Even if their methods include something as ham fisted as a tankbuster every fight. What's their design philosophy that makes tank invalidation a huge red flag, requiring immediate rebalancing, but no healers? Cool, that's just "skill", no need for changes.

Why not embrace it? Let the tanks sustain themselves for the most part. Toss them a heal when necessary, but otherwise concentrate on throwing out damage or healing the floor ta--I mean red DPS.

Edit: I'm also not sure whence came this weird notion about what a tank's purpose is. I've seen this more than once in the tank forums. This idea that the tank's role is to be the party superhero that could probably do the fight all by himself if need be, but he brings DPS and healer sidekicks to clear the fight faster for him. That healers exist to heal the DPS that are enabling the tank's clear. What a bizarre, antisocial way to view teamwork. Glad we're just here to make the instance faster for you.

[Alzinor]

Edit: I'm also not sure whence came this weird notion about what a tank's purpose is. I've seen this more than once in the tank forums. This idea that the tank's role is to be the party superhero that could probably do the fight all by himself if need be, but he brings DPS and healer sidekicks to clear the fight faster for him. That healers exist to heal the DPS that are enabling the tank's clear. What a bizarre, antisocial way to view teamwork. Glad we're just here to make the instance faster for you.

I mean, do you know what dps mean ?

"Damage Per Second" so.....yes it is basically your role to make our fight faster ? idk ?

and healer still have to heal the party and make sure nobody die, then they can dps for the downtime..

[J-Reyno]

I assume this goalpost is just as easily wheeled back to "it's not a problem unless a tank easily solos Ultimate"

We're not going to worry about the next goalpost until you've reached the first one.

[Semirhage]

It's the fact that almost every fight can be done without needing to cast a single GCD, or done without needing to use the full extent of their kit. Which is strictly why I put the issue on the fight designs.

Yay, more outgoing damage. I can't wait to run out of oGCDs so I can finally, finally pull out the pulsepounding excitement that is

Regen. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2.

Hmm there's something (Dia) oddly familiar (Glare) about the pattern (Glare) here but I (Glare) can't put my finger on it.

I haven't the foggiest idea why anyone would consider being forced into the equality terribly designed noninteractive GCD healing spells a "fix" to healer engagement. A boring spell being on the GCD doesn't magically render it well-designed. Maybe other former healer mains disagree, but I'm not Yoshi's target audience. My healing jollies don't get me all giddy just because ooooo, I heard the Cure 2 noise, cast it again! And again! And again!

[Shurrikhan]

I haven't the foggiest idea why anyone would consider being forced into the equality terribly designed noninteractive GCD healing spells a "fix" to healer engagement. A boring spell being on the GCD doesn't magically render it well-designed. Maybe other former healer mains disagree, but I'm not Yoshi's target audience. My healing jollies don't get me all giddy just because ooooo, I heard the Cure 2 noise, cast it again! And again! And again!

While I don't agree with Ixon's position here...

I don't think anyone has claimed that we get our "healing jollies" over the AFX or VFX of healing spells; rather, having times in which someone absolutely will die if you do not seriously pump for a moment can be exciting (though it obviously involves questions of accessibility on which the devs had clearly sided in just one direction).

If the difference of being half-awake for a Healer is that "Oh no! I left a oGCD on CD too long and had to use a GCD heal and thus lost 310 potency in the fight!" instead of "Well, shit, they're dead because of me...," it gives little weight to the player's impact so long as they're a healer.

Moreover, that the GCD kit is terribly designed now does not mean that it must always remain so. The barriers to its improvement are not unique; they're the same as for any other part of healer play: that the devs actually put the necessary time into the Healer role. We certainly have examples from other MMOs more interesting GCD healing (and of healing kits in general).

[Absimiliard]

We haven't even reached the "it's not a problem unless a tank easily solos normal" goalpost yet. The WAR, PLD, and GNB P1N solos weren't easy, and they took bloody forever.

At any rate, I think the crux of it is this; why not, instead of pushing for tanks to have their fun spoiled, invest all that time and spite into getting healers to a position where they get to enjoy themselves more fully? Punishing tanks for having fun is dumb.