How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[Mithron]

3%? What's a good median difference and why? I'd like to see a good discussion on this.

[Aluja89]

0% to none, preferably.

[Mithron]

0% to none, preferably.

So you like homogenization? Not accusing, just seeking opinions.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

So you like homogenization? Not accusing, just seeking opinions.

Do not need homogenisation when there is no other contribution factors to account for in calculating tank DPS, like possessing raid buffs, the only thing that should in any way skew the damage output is Crit and DH variance.

[Melethron123]

So you like homogenization? Not accusing, just seeking opinions.

homogenization of performance is great because nobody wants to play a job that deals half the damage of the others, and nobody wants to play a tank that can't survive the incoming damage of a fight

homogenization of playstyle is the problem, because the whole point of having different jobs is so people that enjoy different things can have options that suit their taste

[Rithy255]

homogenization of performance is great because nobody wants to play a job that deals half the damage of the others, and nobody wants to play a tank that can't survive the incoming damage of a fight

homogenization of playstyle is the problem, because the whole point of having different jobs is so people that enjoy different things can have options that suit their taste

I'd likely disagree, I think with tanks and Healers you should generally have meaningful differences in their kit, obviously some basic fundamentals that all those jobs share, but at the same time it's good when different Jobs excel in different areas, but are still all viable enough in every content.

I personally don't mind IF PLD performs slightly worse by lets say 1% damage, if it has good survivability and defensives in general good utility and support. I think it's fine to have small damage and utility differences in general it's healthier for the game. I feel like currently PLD is bad in both areas of defensives and damage output.

Realistically as long as jobs have different rotations theirs always going to be slight performance differences in damage terms, I again don't think that's a issue as long as all jobs stay viable.

[UkcsAlias]

I'd likely disagree, I think with tanks and Healers you should generally have meaningful differences in their kit, obviously some basic fundamentals that all those jobs share, but at the same time it's good when different Jobs excel in different areas, but are still all viable enough in every content.

For healers there are 2 major issue here:
First of all, mitigation beats restoration. Any damage that isnt applied to the target doesnt require healing afterward. Mitigation also enables higher damage spikes to be survivable. This makes barrier healers initialy stronger. Only once you can reliably survive the spike (which happens fast for most content), the normal healers will come into play. If the normal healers are instantly usable, it means the type of healing you can do essentialy doesnt matter anymore, and it just comes down to a potency race again (the more efficient the heals are applied in oGCD, the more dps casts it can do).

As constant damage is a rarity in this game, healing over time is underwhelming in most cases (a thing that barrier healers are less efficient at). Most dots are also only applied when someone made a mistake.

And yes, there are some dungeons that involve this, but none of them are strong enough to be a real danger. So type again doesnt matter.

This means it in the end just comes down to how much DPS they can effectively dish out (and for AST, it also means that boosted damage must be considered here. 6% on its own isnt a lot, but when a dps does double your damage normaly, it is still 12% on your effective dps).

And kit wise, the healer characters do differ quite a bit, WHM, SCH and SGE have a very diffirent way of handling things. AST being most similar to a WHM in most things. You definitely cannot rely on using the same rotations there. But the main issue is that most of the healers time is pressing that 1 button. A button that should be used in spare time, while being mostly busy with healing. But that 80-90% spare time value is just too high. And oGCD casts on that only make this worse.

[Oizen]

0% to none, preferably.

Issue with doing that and nothing else is that in an environment where every tank does the same ammount of damage, then the Tanks who have additional utility will always be meta and the ones that don't will be left in the dust. DRK and GNB don't get to function as 3rd healers like WAR, so if WAR is hitting as hard as them, why bring DRK or GNB?

In which we'd be forced to make them all have the same defenses too, in which we'd get even closer to having exactly 1 tank class with 4 different cosmetic options

The balance of this game is actually REALLY bad and has been for a while, its just that the majority of content is so easy that no one notices.

[Marxam]

In which we'd be forced to make them all have the same defenses too, in which we'd get even closer to having exactly 1 tank class with 4 different cosmetic options.

It already happened. That's what tank mastery trait did and turned all tank stances into a one button set and forget it. Enmity is such a joke that I wouldn't be surprised if tank stances were just baked into the job and instead they introduce OT stances back since they are so adamant on turning every tank into a pseudo dps. They've literally jumped the shark when it comes to tank homogenization.

Imo 1-2% should be the minimum though if you play a job that cannot clear savage content week 1 because you lack gear then there is something wrong with the balancing. Though I already knew that for years ever since 4.1 destroyed WAR.

The real issue is how the 2 min timer windows destroyed gcd focused jobs. Every job must now dump all their damage in 15-20 secs and if you have a job that's mostly ogcds vs a job that's only gcds guess what will happen? It also doesn't help that FC and EoS are the same potency. Think about that. WAR has to spend a gcd for FC and a combo to get 10% while DRK can double weave EoS in between a gcd and get its dmg buff asap. 1 sec recast > 2.5 sec recast and that is a fact.

I'm also not a fan of this rng dmg that started with WAR's IR that spread to other jobs. I'm not sure why they think hitting the same button only to get wildly varying dmg is fun. I can tell you personally as someone who stuck with WAR through thick and thin that seeing bigger numbers but not actually bigger damage is jarring. It's also not fun knowing that my performance is based on a dice roll. Anyone who has crit their biggest hitting button vs not crit knows what I mean.

Ultimately this won't affect 99% of the playerbase but the fact that it happened in 2022 where you bring your favorite job that you love to play to raid and are then told that you cannot play that job because we won't be able to clear means that we haven't progressed much from HW gordias.

[HyonaCookie]

If all tank defensives are supposed to be the same, why doesn't DRK have large amounts of self-healing? This seems like an oversight then and SE should be giving DRK a self-sustain ability regardless. Sure you can mitigate large amounts of damage, but it isn't the same.

Personally I'd rather have defensives be different than all the DPS numbers being the same.