Tank IDENTITY

[Lyth]

...

Inner Beast is a really good example.

IB post-2.1 was one of my favorite actions in the game. It was an offensive tool, defensive tool, required resource management and good timing. Progging T9 as a WAR 'MT' was a lot of fun. IB was killed off by the addition of FC in HW. The end result was that players felt like IB didn't really 'count' as mitigation, yet it existed and was a very powerful prog tool. The end result is that its defensive properties were eventually moved over into its current form with RI/BW to make it standardized like everything else.

I think that Raises are fundamentally different because of how powerful they are. I haven't seen anyone complain about having access to Raise. And a lot of this comes down to player perceptions of usefulness. Situational and even purely fluff actions (like pacifying animals as a Warcraft Druid or being able to fly) can be really fun. The problem is that players in this game are very conscious of their 'hotbar budget', and any action that doesn't feel jam packed with usefulness becomes a source of frustration.

GNB has always been fun from an offensive standpoint. I think that most of the gameplay issues stem from longstanding problems around mob movement and responsiveness in this game compared to other MMOs. Camo is a really cool idea thematically (see: Thancred vs. Ran'jit), but its execution is pretty underwhelming. If I wanted to do an 'Evasion-themed' defensive ability, I'd go for something similar to FF6's Image status effect (complete with blinking image clones). Mitigate a set %DR (?physical damage), except that each hit mitigated this way has a chance to remove the buff. Doesn't even need a duration timer, really. Or if you want something more consistent, give a set number of stacks. Heart of Light feels fairly uninspired. Most of your abilities deploy portable %DR barriers on yourself and party members, and now you're suddenly magic resist only?

I've said this before, but more movement abilities are always welcome on any tank or melee job. Just set up an extraction point on the arena in advance and get airlifted back to safety in the last moment. Speaking of which, I never understood why they went with a generic bodycheck for WAR's gap closer. Holmgang essentially fires a grappling hook into your opponent. Few things would be more entertaining than swinging across an arena to your target.

[Shurrikhan]

I haven't seen anyone complain about having access to Raise.

I feel like RDM and SMN have provided examples of this any time they're not a top-5 job (blaming "Rez tax"). But yes, all that comes down to "perception" (seeing as having a rez hasn't prevented either from being a top-tier job at various points in the past, just as Clemency hadn't taken from PLD's sustain budget until potentially ShB if that wasn't just an oversight in overall parity).

Situational and even purely fluff actions (like pacifying animals as a Warcraft Druid or being able to fly) can be really fun. The problem is that players in this game are very conscious of their 'hotbar budget', and any action that doesn't feel jam packed with usefulness becomes a source of frustration.

That's the thing, though: We do spend many a button on really shallow abilities. Some cases of this are pure bloat (where one skill that can only be used after another and while that prior skill is, itself, unavailable, ought to replace its bar space), but others are more subtle, made "useful" only because of a useless constraint elsewhere.

Some of ours make sense only because of a combination of not-terribly-reasonable player expectations (such as wanting to be able to hit every possible ability within the first 3 GCDs of combat despite some of those skills being originally placed on gauges specifically to leave some apm and fun actions for outside of our openers) and not terribly reasonable design (a capstone skill locked behind what would normally be 6-8 GCDs of resource generation). Rather than even something as simple as a resting point for job gauges, we have whole skills (Barrel Stabilizer, etc.) dedicated primarily to hastening our openers as to undo past design decisions (such as Bunshin originally at an 80-Ninki cost).

And then there's shit like Arm's Length and Surecast, which exist only to allow certain mechanics (response to which would otherwise have more nuance, add use cases to other kit features, and add no further buttons) to be replaced by a button-press (of, arguably, bloat).

If we didn't so many buttons needlessly on (A) failure to consolidate things that have no possible advantage whatsoever in being separated, (B) undoing past decisions (and largely spending 2 buttons for the benefit of one) or breaking past systems, or (C) in trying to give direct counter buttons like Surecast/AL... we'd have a lot more to work with.

All "fluff" skills would need then to make their fun and flavor permissible is to have at least some "real content" use cases. Druid's beast-pacifying spell, for example, wouldn't be "purely fluff" if we just occasionally saw Enrage buffs on enemies that it could likewise purge. Here, Repose wouldn't have only half of a use case across the whole game if it also could (and had reason to be) used as a purge, soft-CC, etc.

[Seku]

They can't do the fully idenity of the three jobs due to the game limiting the players choice.

Typically warriors would be somewhere between PLD and DRK with physical abilities. It would typically be able to enhance either its Attack or Defense and build itself around its equipment to further either role. I typically think of Warrior as either a berserker or a well-versed soldier.

Paladin typically takes the defensive options of Warrior and expands upon them, while gaining access to white mage magic to support the party as a backup healer if really needed.

Dark Knight takes the offensive side of warrior and furthers it. Typically they can learn they learn enfeebles to weaken the enemy and drain is typically a standard spell for them to recover health so they can then continue to dish out high damage.

With how Yoshida is designing this game and wanting to streamline the content, we probably will never see any of the jobs be their historical selves. As they all have designs that the community has deemed to be "bad", despite them having worked in FF11 and other games. The only one that has made the transition, which took years, is PLD.

GNB is pretty much squall, so they have free reign to do with as they wish just about without stepping on any toes.

As for how I'd like the jobs to play personally....

Warrior imo is ok as is. Blood whetting is just OP for dungeons.

Drk should be able to manipulate it's Hp, then turn that into damage. Have higher self sustain via drains. They made it more into a Rune Fencer and step away from where the job has been historically going in terms of game play. Refer to celes and rune fencer from FF11 for comparison.

Pld is it's best self across the series imo. People generally, from what I see, just don't respect what Defense does after figuring out a fight.

Gnb never had a identity other than shoot bullets while swinging a sword and multiple hits which almost all FF main characters had during the 90's.

[Lihtleita]

All of Wars identity revolves around "keep hitting things" like a berserker

it has four gapclosers so it can always be in melee range and keep kitting things
it has passive hp steal on path so it can keep hitting things
it has self healing that scales off the number of gcds you hit so you are encouraged to keep hitting things
it USED to bind enemies on its invuln so it could keep hitting things, a function we still have in pvp

i think the identity and gameplay fit pretty well
the only part of the berserker identity (in dungeons and dragons and in irl legend) the devs jettisoned was the "pacification" post berserk window and honestly that decision made for better qol overall so....

[Lyth]

See, I don't agree with balancing damage output against utility, because you can't compare the two. It's fine to balance damage output against raid damage buffs. I'd even argue that it's fine to balance damage output against considerations around uptime, resource generation, and burst, although you have to be careful because these can be very variable based off of fight design.

If players are bothered by the power balance of raises, then that needs to be independently assessed. Perhaps there should be a cap on raises per character/party that varies with the difficulty level of the fight. You just need to identify other ways for 'lower utility' jobs to gain more utility. Although I'd love to see a MCH with a jumper cables/defibrillator raise some day.

I have mixed feelings about the role actions system. It's convenient for standardizing common skills without having to invent new ones, although I wish that there was a way to optionally glamour over the animations to give some job specific flair (like Shadowskin/Foresight for Rampart, for example). I think that the anti-knockback tools are really just there as a timing check, for situations like cape/water Pinax. It's probably one of the role actions that gets tested more frequently. I think it's the interrupt mechanics that need a review. I think it's cool to be able to shut down a specific attack, or even adjust its effectiveness. But perhaps they can be bundled in with the likes of the Reprisal effects and merged down to one such ability per role that mitigates and situationally shuts down special actions. Like if they wanted to keep Sleep, they could just give it the Addle effect ('drowsy') and have it conditionally put special mobs to sleep.

I think that there are plenty of ways to do a pure fluff action that's fun but doesn't provide any real combat advantage. Like if you could strike up a conversation with a Voidsent out of combat as a Reaper, Float into the air as a WHM, or disguise yourself as another character or NPC as a NIN. When you look at it, Mug still has that oddball effect which lets you 'steal' extra items from mobs as a finishing blow. These things are unnecessary from a combat standpoint, but they do add a bit of interesting flavor. They don't need to be a part of the action budget, either.

[Shurrikhan]

See, I don't agree with balancing damage output against utility, because you can't compare the two. It's fine to balance damage output against raid damage buffs. I'd even argue that it's fine to balance damage output against considerations around uptime, resource generation, and burst, although you have to be careful because these can be very variable based off of fight design.

What are we calling utility, here, then? To me it's essentially anything that can form an advantage without being directly equatable to damage. But, that still has an eventual sort of equivocation. Uptime, resource generation, and burst, in the context of a fight, all likewise affect one's overall damage across a given fight at a given clear speed.

I'll agree that some fight-to-fight variation is fine --lest no job truly have any difference in output over downtime or no fight be permitted (manageable) downtime at all-- but for more utility-heavy (in whatever relevant form that utility may take) jobs not to simply typically fall short of or notably outperform utility-light jobs, job design does at least need to be mindful of those trade-offs, however complex they may be to calculate precisely.

Essentially, I disagree that you can't compare the two. You can and should, just with a given allowance for fight-to-fight variation. That allowance should not, however, allow one job's forms of utility doesn't come out on top, late-StB WAR-style, in every tier of every form of content on the mere basis that "it is utility and therefore not comparable."

If players are bothered by the power balance of raises, then that needs to be independently assessed. Perhaps there should be a cap on raises per character/party that varies with the difficulty level of the fight. You just need to identify other ways for 'lower utility' jobs to gain more utility. Although I'd love to see a MCH with a jumper cables/defibrillator raise some day.

I feel like the fairest approach is just the old Bard/MCH one seen with Ballad/Army's damage-down effect or Promotion's loss of Rook/Bishop autos. Rather than taxing the job directly for having the ability to use Raise, which may or not come to practice... you charge them only upon using it. That could be through more granular and granularly-affecting resources like MP (if its interactions were revised) or through shared resource CDs, but the idea is that the value of that hastened Raise (relative to a Swift-less healer's) and healer MP saved should be only a bit higher than its cost.

I have mixed feelings about the role actions system. It's convenient for standardizing common skills without having to invent new ones, although I wish that there was a way to optionally glamour over the animations to give some job specific flair (like Shadowskin/Foresight for Rampart, for example).

I feel like if we'd already want skill glamours --let alone unique icons, names, etc.-- for those Role Actions... isn't that just... to not have Role Actions.

I think that the anti-knockback tools are really just there as a timing check, for situations like cape/water Pinax.

That's my point, though. Those timing checks were already provided through pre-positioning or native knockback-cancels like movement skills (be they to-ally, to-enemy, both, or fixed-length). To then add a more lenient button, albeit on a long CD, just to reduce either mechanical depth in prepositioning or reduce variation in the means by which jobs deal with such mechanics... seems not just bloat, but actually diminishing.

I think it's the interrupt mechanics that need a review. <snip>

Agreed. I feel like just centralizing CC to some extent and giving the currently barebone DR systems a look-over would solve much of this. There's no reason, for instance, for Interject not to at least also be able to Pacify, or for non-spammable (or at least potency-less and GCD-consuming) hard CC (Sleep, Stun) to have a second, DR-less function, much like the Repose/Sleep->Addle effect you mentioned (or Pacify/Silence as a fallback from a DRed stun).

I'd also like to see more skills, especially among trash, that can be thus affected. We've the occasional melee-annoying large AoE (think Ktisis first pull) or skills that hit for about three autos at once (Wheel, etc.), but otherwise any sort of counterplay feels fairly rare and lackluster.

I think that there are plenty of ways to do a pure fluff action that's fun but doesn't provide any real combat advantage. Like if you could strike up a conversation with a Voidsent out of combat as a Reaper, Float into the air as a WHM, or disguise yourself as another character or NPC as a NIN.

I mentioned combat advantage for fluff actions (those that actually take up an ability slot) because you'd earlier mentioned concerns about action bloat. If that flavor is wholly passive then there is no such concern.

I wouldn't want to limit this to just passives, though. That could come in any form from revising currently bland and infrequent actions to actually have some fun and flavor, adding new actions altogether, to even having a job produce certain effects through varying means.

To take Mug, for example, (apart from the obvious reversion to 6.08 such that those running with a NIN can have back the other half of their raid sync optimization) I'd have loved to see that actually... "steal" things, such as collecting an "item" (pretty varied in name, but consistent in color scheme for a given effect -- and as an ability, really, as to still be queueable) that can then be woven any time up to the skill's CD-refresh.

I could give examples of the other two forms if curious, but this post has already gone long.

[Lyth]

...

Here's the thing. If you want to say that a job with access to raise should do X dps less than other jobs without raise, you need to be able to mathematically quantify how much that raise is worth in dps. And you can't do that in a consistent way.

And that's why it's better to compare quantifiable benefits with quantifiable ones, and non-quantifiable benefits with non-quantifiable ones. I don't know how much a raise is worth. But if you're not giving me access to raise, give me something else that is fun and unique to use. Like what would be the mathematical dps value of being able to set up a placeable 'Warp' spell between two points in an arena that other players can interact with (i.e. up to X uses)? I don't know, and I can't compare it to raise (or anything else, for that matter). You couldn't even compare two different applications of the same ability.

There are adjustments that you can make based on trends. Jobs with timer-gated burst tend do better in fights with lots of downtime, because you spend more of the effective fight time in a burst window. Jobs with resource-gated burst tend to do worse, because you usually have to be hitting the boss to generate resources. Jobs with a lot of mobility tools might do better on fights with mechanics that force you away from the boss. I think that these are all useful considerations to make when balancing dps. But the more abstract stuff? There's nowhere to start.

I think that the primary function of the role action system is to ensure that every job has access to a basic toolkit. That doesn't mean that it can't have flavor. You could very easily attach 'action glamor' to optional quest rewards, achievements, or even craftable items. Warcraft's Glyph system was a fun way to personalize a character by adding flames to your gapclosers or changing the colour of spell effects. It removes the obligation on the devs to have to come up with duplicate actions on every job, yet also lets them fill in some fun animations when there's time.

I'd really like to see some Treasure-Hunter (THF) related 'steal' options. I once proposed that the job should be introduced as a gathering job, and let you infiltrate areas by swapping clothes sets.

[Mikey_R]

Considering we used to swap without shirk in the past, it really isn't needed and that was before Provoke gave additional enmity, it used to be top +1.

[DannyDeDitto]

I only ever used shirk if the tank doesn't know anything about off-tanking and i need to ''force'' a tank swap in certain fights.

[Colt47]

All the tanks are the same on a basic level and it's been that way since probably Shadowbringers. Paladin was the one that I probably liked the least going from Stormblood into Shadowbringers because of making a spell combo a direct part of the rotation. Paladins never had offensive spells, they were always healing spells that were kind of semi-useless most of the time and defense buffs, so what I was expecting going into Stormblood was a melee combo with their support skills becoming spells. Instead, we got unlimited blade works confiteor.

Dark Knight basically became warrior without the self healing and having an invuln that made people want to hug their whm and pray for benediction until they patched it, so now you just hug any healer for good measure and pray they save you.

Warrior is like the only tank that feels like it never actually changed even though it did. It hits people and heals itself.

Gunbreaker is just there to attract DPS players and act as a place for disheartened / betrayed paladins.