How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[ForteNightshade]

Call it homogenization if you want. Fact is, this game's raiding community only cares about damage output. Any tank that lags behind will essentially be the redheaded step child, regardless of what other helpful tricks it brings to the table. Either put them in a state of parity or don't bother.

This is because there's literally nothing else to care about. Who cares that Warrior has all this self-healing when it never factors into the fight design as everything is tuned to accommodate every possible tank comp? At least in theory. Warrior offers nothing Dark Knight simply doesn't do better at the Savage level. Sure, Warrior can heal but Dark Knight just takes less damage because it'll always have a bazillion CDs ready for busters. Holmgang is amazing... but not in a raid tier where all invulns took an indirect nerf.

The same exists for healers. White Mage is supposed to be the "raw healer" in a game where every healers must be capable of clearing content. Therefore, those massive "raw heals" will never have value.

If the devs want us to care about something beyond damage. They need to stop making it the only thing that matters.

[Chopstix]

0-1% honestly.

It literally does not matter what tank pair u got u can pass all the mit checks one way or the other. Utility is kind of irrelevant since all tanks have reprisal a 2nd party mit and enough CDs to live what they need to.

So in all honesty, all jobs should do the same dmg. Numbers dont matter, the jobs play differently and that is where diversity comes in.

U should not need to be punished because u dont want carpal tunnel, or u just prefer to play a different job.

[Mekhana]

Around 2% because no such thing as perfect balance.

What tanks need is their identities and class fantasy(TM) back. For some tanks their role actions are nearly half their kit.

[dspguy]

Considering how similar all of the tanks play and the difficultly level of playing them is similar, their DPS should be similar. My hotbars for 2 tanks are nearly the identical ( WAR and PLD ). GNB is almost the same as WAR with a few differences. Same with PLD really. DRK is the only one that is setup fairly differently, but that might just be because I play it the least so it feels different to me. Maybe it is more similar to the other tanks than I realize.

[Gserpent]

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

In practical terms, these are mutually exclusive. Maybe if raid content was the *only* content they worked on, or if they had a team large enough and diverse enough that they could afford to have an entire "raid team" that did raids and *only* raids (designers, programmers, artists, sound techs, testers, etc - *all* of them devoted to *only* doing raid content.) But on a project where that doesn't exist? You cannot possibly afford to devote that much effort and time to achieving both goals.

Personally, if I was in charge, I'd be working on making savage and ultimate completely, totally separate from normal and ex. They would operate on their own PvP-like toolkits and rules and stats. Every class has unchangeable stats, every action does a precise amount of damage or healing with a specific GCD (factoring in buffs that may need to be maintained, etc), and so on. Then, "regular" PvE would focus on fulfilling class fantasy first and foremost, and parse balance afterwards... because normals don't even *have* DPS or mitigation checks for practical intents and purposes, and Ex's checks are very, very generous (as long as your group isn't constantly fucking up the mechanics, you can pass Ex easily with pretty subpar performance, even MINE.) I want the raging berserker Warrior, the Dark Knight that uses their health as a resource, a White Mage that obliterates undead, and so on. Definitely the kind of long-term change and adjustment that would take a long time to implement, absolutely an expansion-level process. And like they're doing with trusts, I think I'd start by only having *current* raids and ultimates obey the new paradigm and... well, if the old stuff becomes "impossible" for a patch or two under MINE/ultimate sync, so be it. It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like this. Probably aim for each patch to bring an old tier/ultimates up to parity with the new system.

A lot of work up front, to save a lot of work down the road.

But why bother with that kind of work, when a majority of your income is from Limsa and Gridania ERP-AFKers? Those people wouldn't give a fig about such changes.

[Melethron123]

In practical terms, these are mutually exclusive. Maybe if raid content was the *only* content they worked on, or if they had a team large enough and diverse enough that they could afford to have an entire "raid team" that did raids and *only* raids (designers, programmers, artists, sound techs, testers, etc - *all* of them devoted to *only* doing raid content.) But on a project where that doesn't exist? You cannot possibly afford to devote that much effort and time to achieving both goals.

DRG and NIN have very different playstyles and they have a lower DPS difference than WAR and DRK. it's actually very easy to make two different jobs with very different rotations have the same damage, all you have to do is tune their potencies and do a test run with a DPS meter

[Rithy255]

DRG and NIN have very different playstyles and they have a lower DPS difference than WAR and DRK. it's actually very easy to make two different jobs with very different rotations have the same damage, all you have to do is tune their potencies and do a test run with a DPS meter

"Very easy?" that's pretty much incorrect, While Ninja and Dragoon perform similary, do keep in mind that not every melee dps is even in a similar spot, also when you take into account other fights Ninja/dragoon actually have a lot of different performences. It's clearly not "very easy" to balance the game fully while also making everyjob have a Different rotation.

A complete balance in DPS numbers isn't fun and doesn't lead to a "Intresting game", What is fun is actual differences, upsides and downsides in how a Job plays and what a Job brings, It's not a balanced game when a summoner who has a lot of mobility and utility does the same damage as a black mage, but if you made summoner a hard casting selfish dps then whats even the point of having a black mage and a summoner in the first place?

Again support/utility need to be considered on tanks and healers, again most people who play "tank" and who play "healer" don't want the same utility kit, they should share basic baselines but actually allow for room to excel at, DPS rotation isn't the only thing that needs to be considerd.

[Melethron123]

"Very easy?" that's pretty much incorrect, While Ninja and Dragoon perform similary, do keep in mind that not every melee dps is even in a similar spot, also when you take into account other fights Ninja/dragoon actually have a lot of different performences. It's clearly not "very easy" to balance the game fully while also making everyjob have a Different rotation.

in every fight of the current savage the biggest difference between DRG and NIN is about 300dps, which is around 2%. compare that to the 11% difference between war and drk and tell me they couldn't possibly make it better

whoever is in charge of tank balance seems to be tuning the numbers around rDPS instead of aDPS. either that or they intentionally want DRK to have much higher dmg than the others (even GNB isn't THAT much of a difference, at around 5%. could be better, but DRK is the clear outlier in terms of tank dmg)

[Rithy255]

in every fight of the current savage the biggest difference between DRG and NIN is about 250dps, which is 2%. compare that to the 11% difference between war and drk and tell me they couldn't possibly make it better

whoever is in charge of tank balance seems to be tuning the numbers around rDPS instead of aDPS. either that or they intentionally want DRK to have much higher dmg than the others (even GNB isn't THAT much of a difference, at around 5%. could be better, but DRK is the clear outlier in terms of tank dmg)

Ok so you completely ignored my argument, if it was super easy then every melee dps would be doing the same damage, with no balancing tuning needed, it's actually incredibly hard even for a full development team to balance out different playstyles, this is why every job bursts into 120. Because the most common and most easy way to balance FF14 is to make the jobs have less differences in playstyles, look outside savage look into other fights such as extremes and ultimate's Ninjas/dragoons actually perform differently from one another depending on the fight structure.

You're never going to get 100% perfect balance in any game, that's fine as long as everything is Viable and actually is fun and unique to play, damage differences are Important but they aren't everything to game balance.

[Gserpent]

DRG and NIN have very different playstyles and they have a lower DPS difference than WAR and DRK. it's actually very easy to make two different jobs with very different rotations have the same damage, all you have to do is tune their potencies and do a test run with a DPS meter

Every DPS is basically the same anymore. Everyone dumps everything every 120 sec and just does a bland, boring filler in between, while using spender actions only as necessary to avoid overcapping on builder gauge.