Tank IDENTITY

[Seku]

Utility in this game doesn't matter in most cases and is only as effective as the content allows it to be or the mistakes by the player. This is why I think all roles should be within a 5% margin of each other. At least with the current game design. I think the only time this wasn't the case is when cover had native damage reduction. But some can be some what translated, but would be fight specific.

The warp example is just a question of if it can get you engaged to the boss faster than other options and if so, by how many GCDS, and where in the combo rotation. Most of that however is / would be fight dependent. A decent use would be in Dohn Mheg dungeon where the frog forces you to cross a bridge to get to him and continue attacking. The warp could easily provide an extra 3-5 GCDs per player in this situation if it allowed you over.

Raise and cures that exist to fix mistakes by your team mates on the other hand can't be translated as it's dependent on how good your team is doing and is generally why we have the DPS MOAR mentality.

Shielding in most cases from tanks seems to be worthless. Maybe not so much in the highest tier of combat. But typically they don't circumvent any mechanics or healing requirements without outside aide. Which yet again, is a hit or miss or basically does it allow your healer a offensive GCD.

Crowd control is worthless in a majority of fights and dungeons. Which eliminates quite a few role actions. However it would be good if healers had less options to OGCD heal. Then it would become a question of how well do you hold back the enemies so the healer doesn't have to heal, without losing a GCD yourself.

But they'll never go that direction.

[Shurrikhan]

Even getting hit has an eventual calculable cost, the average of a healer a ppgcd opportunity cost. The complication simply comes from different healers having different rates by which they trade offensive potential for further curative potential at increasing lower combined output efficiency... until a point after which it becomes roughly even and linear. That latter portion being so small and thus breeding so ambiguous in it's cost is just yet another unfortunate symptom of so little of our healing, if optimized, having any opportunity cost at all.

Why they decided to go that direction (of too much free healing or too little to heal), such that healers' maximum and solo offensive output would have to be squished in balance and CC and further tank mitigation at trade-off could have no real reward... well, that's the greater mystery.

[Seku]

Even getting hit has an eventual calculable cost, the average of a healer a ppgcd opportunity cost. The complication simply comes from different healers having different rates by which they trade offensive potential for further curative potential at increasing lower combined output efficiency... until a point after which it becomes roughly even and linear. That latter portion being so small and thus breeding so ambiguous in it's cost is just yet another unfortunate symptom of so little of our healing, if optimized, having any opportunity cost at all.

Why they decided to go that direction (of too much free healing or too little to heal), such that healers' maximum and solo offensive output would have to be squished in balance and CC and further tank mitigation at trade-off could have no real reward... well, that's the greater mystery.

It technically does, and I suppose you could make the argument for purposely failing mechanics would also be something to consider. As in either the group doesn't know how to get around it and when they mess up, more people die vs just having one person take it all. Or they find that by ignoring the mechanic they do more DPS.

I was thinking more in the terms of RDM or PLD healing due to unscripted damage. But I still think that in those cases (emergency heals) it wouldn't be able to translate well, due to the fact that you won't know the results until after the fight. Which is why they are great tools for progression or something like palace of the dead, where damage can come randomly or you're not expecting it instead of through scripted and known encounters.

As for why they went the direction they did, 14 wants casuals. It's not a bad thing, but your typical roulettes won't be hard as they are designed for people that don't want to think about this stuff in most cases.

If anything the game needs more relevant content outside of boss encounters and rework how they handle gear.

[Lyth]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

[Seku]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

Assuming you're talking to me, that's a different situation, or at least their use is. The people that made that argument probably will still argue that tenacity is a very good stat despite providing almost no actual value in most things. 'Defensive tanking' and 'parry builds' should be going more towards passive damage, which hasn't been a threat in this game for the most part. And you're right in that you can't calculate that damage too easily because it's unexpected in most cases. But it also serves an entirely different style of combat that would only serve a purpose in something like deep dungeons.

On the other hand, using mitigation purposely and with thought for something you know is coming can indeed be translated to a rough estimate of DPS gain and loss or at the very least potency gain or loss. The most simple example without going into too great of details would be that a PLD uses invincible to take a tank buster. Assuming the healer doesn't have any oGCD's up this would be a net gain in DPS as it doesn't take the PLD's action (GCD) and it doesn't take the healer's action ( GCD), thus allowing for the healer to continue their DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

A parry in a given fight will nullify, on average, X damage prior to non-passive mitigation. Determine, perhaps based on prior fight (HP) resource graphs, the likelihood that the parry could leave one at a survivable health value through that 20% (previously up to 25%) mitigation and thus forgo any healers' average maximum spammable GCD heal. Then, look at the potency of an average healer's filler attack. The product of that chance any attack potency is, pretty much, the parry's rDPS value.

Yes, every parry could end up affecting only an auto. But that is what is what the averages are for.

The problems with additionally defensive builds are primarily just that

1. they have traditionally been tuned too low to be competitive in rDPS (not a fundamental issue at all, but a balance issue), and
2. the value of any GCDs of healing saved is impossible to tap into when no optimized healer is using GCD healing regardless --at least outside of ReciAdloDeployment (which is, again, not a fundamental issue, but a contextual one).

Yes, there is a further issue of "illusion of choice": As content hits more than X over a fight, increasing the rDPS value of a random parry therein, it becomes optimal and short of that point it's inferior. But that is already true for every stat, and typically with far less context-dependence. That's not a problem fundamental to defensive builds, but an incidental problem from content tuning relative to available (free) healing.

[Renathras]

So, i have felt this way for a while now..,

This is a rather unusual take. "rage, vengeance, destruction" are what I would associate with Warrior, not Dark Knight. Also, "parrying with their weapon" I'd associate with PLD and GNB, and to a lesser extent DRK. You can't really parry all that well with a massive two handed axe...

DRK should be a shield focused tank more than a healing one. In normal FF lore, and in the general "unholy knight" archetype, they don't tend to heal themselves. They tend to use their health to fuel dark magic attacks. The sort of subtype dealing with blood magic might use drains, but that's not exactly what DRK is for the MOST part. Its lore is using darkness to shield people (basically like REDACTED did for the planet, if you think about it)

GNB is the closest thing FFXIV does have (and likely will have) to a dodge/evasion tank. Dodging doesn't work well as a mechanic because when it "misses", you get splattered. RNG hell. But of the tanks, GNB has the most parry related skills, which makes sense given their lighter armor and focus on swordplay. PLDs also have a high defensive option with block from their shields and parry from training with swords. The GNB identity is being a high speed/focused tank, with a bit of evasion, and a lot of swordplay. Also a gun.

I think WAR's thing with its self-healing should be more thought of as "advanced Second Wind" and "Adrenaline Rush/Fight or Flight" (despite PLD having an ability by that name, WAR is the one that leans into the aesthetic). You're thinking Man-At-Arms type Warriors. The FFXIV WAR is clearly much closer to a Berserker. And Berserker classes tend to have a TON of self-healing and health boosting type attacks.

Healing for PLD makes sense, but not for DRK. Dark magic is about inflicting damage and status effects, and rarely, mitigating damage (shielding) not healing.

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I will say that they are all different and there's some homogenization, but PLD is the holy warrior who shields, defends, supports (buffs), and (with some limits) restores/heals. WAR's motif is that of a berserker with some capacity for boosting morale with their superhuman feats (hence "healing"). GNB is an aggressive tank with a high speed of attack and augments defense of self and party members with its special weapon (stuff like Auroa is supposed to be a special type of shot from the gunblade, I believe). And DRK is an armor clad warrior that turns darkness to defense and enforce justice on the forces of evil, cladding themselves and their allies in shields of darkness to protect the weak while wielding the darkness to inflict damage upon the unjust.

Each, presently, fulfills these roles pretty much to a T, honestly.

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EDIT: For the record - what I mean by DRK being a shield tank is barriers/mitigation (like how SCH/SGE are "shield/barrier healers"), not like PLD carrying a shield to block with. So "barrier tank", if you prefer. PLD also gets some of that from Holy magic being more defensive in nature. DRK should, all things being equal, be a bit more offensive and debuff focused while PLD is more defensive and buff focused.

[Sorzai]

Dark knight should be a shield focused tank, that'll be pretty dope. Sometimes I always associate DRK with blood death knight from WoW. I love it and I miss it. Each Tank in WoW is soooooooo different from one another, each have their own unique flare as a tank i.e. blood death knight, Brewster monk, Unlike FFXIV where everything is pretty much a standard cookie cutter, it doesn't help the enjoyment of the game when the uniqueness only happens at near max level.

When I think of a Warrior, I think of one jumping right into the heat of battle, the more dmg he takes the more adrenaline he has, the higher dmg he does, heals faster too. I guess the thing that ruins the fantasy in the current war is that he heals off the dmg he does instead of being buffed to receive more healing.

As for PLD, I never really liked the whole Templar or aspect of holiness fantasy.

As for Gunbreaker, it should seriously be a damn DPS. It already behaves like one, everything about it is dps. I'm not sold on it, it doesn't give me the tank vibe.

[Lihtleita]

As for PLD, I never really liked the whole Templar or aspect of holiness fantasy.

thats...literally what a paladin is in tabletop/videogame fantasy though. even irl the piety aspect was pronounced.

[Absurdity]

I don't really see where people get this idea from that warrior's identity is selfheal, nowhere in the "berserker" fantasy do I imagine healing myself. I think a mechanic like the Brewmaster Monk's Stagger from WoW would be more appropriate. The warrior works themselves into a frenzy, so full of adrenaline during battle that they don't even notice the wounds they're taking immediately, instead slowly bleeding out.

Of course converting direct damage into a DoT effect would be almost impossible to balance in XIV, being able to survive tank busters without any mitigation because it can't instantly flatten you.