Tank IDENTITY

[Vatom]

Oh, I don't think that it will ever change either. It largely has to do with the fact that the dev team tries really hard to make everyone happy, and is incredibly averse to any sort of backlash. That's why we have the current setup as a compromise of sorts - they did tip the balance of lifesteal briefly in DRK's favor in early Stormblood, but then backpedaled on feedback. For that matter, it took about two expansions worth of feedback to convince everyone involved that 'doing massively more damage than everyone else' was not acceptable as an identity-defining trait of WAR.

That being said, I do get why we frequently see posts about how bizarre the job fantasy is in this game for newer players, as in this OP. You're never going to see a change because most players struggle with adapting to it.

Amen to that one

[fulminating]

Bloodbath/Raw Instinct/Bloodwhetting are things that balance offence and defence aren't they? The more you hit, the survivier you are. Thematically it was better as a heal based on damage dealt, but for consistency the change makes some sense.

[Lyth]

Mitigation and sustain aren't quite the same thing, especially when it comes to spike damage. You can draw some rough equivalency over minor hits in terms of 'healing requirement', but the comparison falls apart when talking about things that can kill you in one hit (i.e. eHP discussions).

I was referring to something along the lines of having IR either provide a defensive buff directly, or boosting the effectiveness of defensive actions used when it's up.

[marelooke]

Oh? Well, if it's not lifesteal, I imagine that nobody would miss it if the devs removed it from the game. Since that's not the theme they're going for, after all.

Ah yes, you calling it something it isn't will mean people won't miss that which it actually is...
As I said, lifesteal means taking the health from the enemy, which warrior does not do.

You can argue that from a technical PoV there's no difference, which I could accept just for the sake of argument, but you're then purposefully twisting that to meaning it doesn't fit the job fantasy, which is where I strongly disagree. You seem to sticking to the term just as a means to beat on that. Strictly speaking I don't think FF XIV has any jobs that really lifesteal from a "fantasy" PoV, you need to go to other games for that.

Arguably the de-facto "standard" for lifesteal "fantasy" jobs is the Necromancer, and for tanks that is likely EverQuest's Shadow Knight (which Blizzard "borrowed". WotLK's iteration was pretty much a carbon copy insofar the mechanics of each game allowed), which is a combination of Warrior *and* Necromancer (those would be EQ classes though, which, as most of us know don't exactly translate 1:1 to Final Fantasy)

[Lyth]

I mean, you're the one copy-pasting someone else's bad faith argument in order to protect your turf. I really don't mind if you want to keep your vampiric barbarians, personally. I'm just explaining why we keep getting these threads from fresh players to this game about how job identity in this game doesn't make sense.

Most players will ferociously defend anything that gives their job an advantage, even if it makes no sense on the job in question. Players were demanding that WAR have access to Cover in Stormblood because it was 'unfair' for PLD to be unique in that regard. Hilarious. But if you constantly cater to those types of identity-eroding demands, you'll end up with every job playing pretty much the same as a compromise. The community is 100% responsible for what we have now.

If you want diversity, then you just need to design jobs so that they have similar capabilities using very different approaches. It's the old Deus Ex approach of 'do I infiltrate this place silently, do I talk and barter my way through, or go in guns blazing?' All are viable approaches at the end of the day, yet each is a unique experience. But you have to get the playerbase to buy into the fact that their job might not happen have a cool feature that another job does, but it will have its own unique features that make it fun to play.

[fulminating]

Inner Beast
Delivers an attack with a potency of 260.
Ignores the 35% damage penalty inflicted by Defiance.
Can only be executed when Infuriated.
All Wrath is lost when used. Additional Effect: Absorb HP

Bloodbath
Converts 25% of the damage dealt by next successful offensive ability into HP.
Duration: 15s (Bloodshower 30s)

Mercy Stroke
Delivers an attack with a potency of 250. Can only be executed when target's HP is below 20%.
If delivered as the killing blow, up to 20% of your maximum HP will be restored.

Regarding mitigation and sustain RI/Bw has a % mitigation on too. In most cases south of savage tankbusters, there's no functional difference because very little hits harder than a wet noodle. As previously mentioned vengeance is another skill that balances offense/defence - thematically it'd be nice if its damage out also scaled off damage in, but I can imagine that being just about the worst possible idea to implement.

[Lyth]

In HW, RI and Vengeance gave you Wrath/Abandon stacks, which you can think of as 10 gauge in modern terms. IIRC, in order to land a third FC under Berserk, you needed to pop one of these two defensive cooldowns per Berserk (and both in your opener). So it was generally advantageous to line up periods where a WAR was actively taking damage with their burst window, since those cooldowns were being used anyways. I've always thought that was a fun and unique form of skill expression for WAR. Granted, I also thought that the idea of 'building up' resources towards a planned Berserk burst window was another really interesting form of skill expression, but players were apparently really uncomfortable with that sort of gameplay, leading to the 4.2 Unga Bunga changes that have carried on into the present day.

It's hard to gauge what players are going to find 'too difficult', but it's usually better for skill expression to be rewarded rather than penalizing a lack thereof. If IR rewarded you for using defensives while it was up, or provided a synergistic mitigation benefit, then you might get some of that gameplay back without penalizing players who don't know fight timings well enough to line up their windows correctly. It also fits in with that 'unkillable' berserker rage.

[Vatom]

Ah yes, you calling it something it isn't will mean people won't miss that which it actually is...
As I said, lifesteal means taking the health from the enemy, which warrior does not do.

You can argue that from a technical PoV there's no difference, which I could accept just for the sake of argument, but you're then purposefully twisting that to meaning it doesn't fit the job fantasy, which is where I strongly disagree. You seem to sticking to the term just as a means to beat on that. Strictly speaking I don't think FF XIV has any jobs that really lifesteal from a "fantasy" PoV, you need to go to other games for that.

Arguably the de-facto "standard" for lifesteal "fantasy" jobs is the Necromancer, and for tanks that is likely EverQuest's Shadow Knight (which Blizzard "borrowed". WotLK's iteration was pretty much a carbon copy insofar the mechanics of each game allowed), which is a combination of Warrior *and* Necromancer (those would be EQ classes though, which, as most of us know don't exactly translate 1:1 to Final Fantasy)

You were dead serious about this post huh?

Get off your high horse for the sake of argument
Heal/hit dress it up how you want the mech doesn't change

Ok here goes lifesteal is the mainstream name of HEAL PER HIT
You can say your life steal is soul siphon or souleater or Drain or Idk any

[Shurrikhan]

Trying to base PLD and WAR's identities rigidly on what they were in 1.x/ARR is an incredibly bad idea, because their design was based on them being the only two tanks ever in existence. It took over an expansion after DRK's release and a lot of complaints from here for it to stop it from being treated as a second-class 'PLD/WAR' hybrid.

HW DRK was more of a PLD-like + gimmicks, but that's not because of how PLD and WAR identities were split; it was simply due to Shadowskin being literally identical to Rampart, Shadow Wall just being a Sentinel with a 30s longer CD, etc. A lot of things were simply tossed in as "good enough" on DRK, unlike the original attention given to PLD and WAR's identities. It had fun gimmicks in a then-unique gap-closer, split defensives (DM, DD), and Dark Arts, but the job as a whole was unnecessarily short-changed.

Same problem existed with healers, and they still haven't quite gotten over the 'pure/shield' duality of ARR. Not every healer job needs to be designed as a WHM-replacement or a SCH-replacement.

I don't think anyone's recommended that jobs need to take on a A|B discrete categories, only noted that a job's apparent theme will to an extent be dependent on their differences from the other jobs in its role. For instance, it makes little sense to make Warrior the super-mitigation tank... if it's to stand right next to Paladin, who wears full plate, has a shield, for whom healing better fits thematically as a discrete and support-capable choice, etc.

The one feature of WAR that was fairly unique back in ARR/Heavensward that hasn't really seen much exploration since is the relationship between defense and offense. Historically, certain defensive abilities like IR and Vengeance gave you resources, such that it was beneficial to sync up periods where you were tanking with your burst windows.

There's an element of this with IR's knockback prevention, but it would probably make sense if you had some sort of a defensive bonus while in IR, or even something that synergistically boosts your defensives if you use it in the window. It certainly would fit with that 'too angry to die' aesthetic.

Agreed. Sadly, "streamlining" has mostly gutted that thematic connection.

That's why we have the current setup as a compromise of sorts - they did tip the balance of lifesteal briefly in DRK's favor in early Stormblood, but then backpedaled on feedback. For that matter, it took about two expansions worth of feedback to convince everyone involved that 'doing massively more damage than everyone else' was not acceptable as an identity-defining trait of WAR.

It'd take an extreme number of mobs for "lifesteal" to have been tipped in DRK's favor in Stormblood, especially early. Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast both healed and Bloodbath was available a third of the time. BW-Quietus offered DRK a lot more MP to work with and funnel into DA-AD, but it's hard to say that that actually put it ahead of DRK.

Either way, those were fun times. Well, pre-unga bunga Warrior and the other Stormblood tanks, at any rate.

[Shurrikhan]

Ok here goes lifesteal is the mainstream name of HEAL PER HIT
You can say your life steal is soul siphon or souleater or Drain or Idk any

That's the thing, though. Is it "heal per hit" or "stealing lifeforce"? To anyone else it's merely the prior, and thus need not be restricted to vampiric casters/spellblades. The way Lyth was using the term, "lifesteal" can only belong to ostensible magic-users.

No one's disagreeing that Warrior has healing-from-attacks (lifesteal, in the mere mechanical sense), only that it is therefore using some sort of innately vampiric spellcraft (lifesteal, in a more specific thematic sense, or per terms far more narrow mechanical term of additional, magic-based theft of hit points).

Mare was simply disagreeing with that second, thematic (and far narrower mechanical) claim.