How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[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.

[Melethron123]

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.

got time to kill while waiting for the reset, so let's do this: (i'm not going to include SAM since it's purely an ADPS job, which makes the balance more finicky)

P5S = RDPS: highest = 11.954, lowest = 11,524 (3,7% diference) / by ADPS: highest = 11.977, lowest = 11.873 (less than 1%)
P6S = RDPS: 12.094 and 11.716 (3.2%) / by ADPS: 12.162 and 11,964
P7S = RDPS: 11.958 and 11.530 (3,7%) / ADPS: 12,077 and 11,708
P8S1 = RDPS: 12.209 and 11.922 (2.4%) / ADPS: 12.375 and 12.124
P8S2 = RDPS: 12,437 and 11.887 (4.6%) / ADPS: 12.664 and 12.191 (3.8%)

so as we can see, only one fight has the highest melee and the lowest melee with a difference higher than 4%, with the outlier being NIN (the others are very close in dmg)

why did i not include SAM, you might ask? that's because comparing the damage between a job with raid buffs and a job without raid buffs doesn't make much sense, since they fulfill different niches in the party. but as it so happens, none of the tanks have raid buffs so we only need to balance around ADPS

[Rithy255]

got time to kill while waiting for the reset, so let's do this: (i'm not going to include SAM since it's purely an ADPS job, which makes the balance more finicky)

P5S = RDPS: highest = 11.954, lowest = 11,524 (3,7% diference) / by ADPS: highest = 11.977, lowest = 11.873 (less than 1%)
P6S = RDPS: 12.094 and 11.716 (3.2%) / by ADPS: 12.162 and 11,964
P7S = RDPS: 11.958 and 11.530 (3,7%) / ADPS: 12,077 and 11,708
P8S1 = RDPS: 12.209 and 11.922 (2.4%) / ADPS: 12.375 and 12.124
P8S2 = RDPS: 12,437 and 11.887 (4.6%) / ADPS: 12.664 and 12.191 (3.8%)

so as we can see, only one fight has the highest melee and the lowest melee with a difference higher than 4%, with the outlier being NIN (the others are very close in dmg)

why did i not include SAM, you might ask? that's because comparing the damage between a job with raid buffs and a job without raid buffs doesn't make much sense, since they fulfill different niches in the party. but as it so happens, none of the tanks have raid buffs so we only need to balance around ADPS

4% is a pretty significant amount when it comes to ff14, it feels like you're underplaying it, also considering DRG/Reaper/Ninja/monk give different types of ADPS I don't really think it's a fair comparison.

Even if let's say all Melee dps were 1% apart, that's mainly due to how the jobs are easier to balance as Burst Jobs which in part goes back to my original point, the best way to "balance" the game is to make jobs play very similarly and cut out differences that "don't fit" into the game, despite a job being perfectly viable. I can admit theirs still room for unique Jobs in a burst meta, but at the same time it very much limits Jobs away from being a burst for the sake of "balance".

at the end of the day, if we wanna argue or not, it's not going to be "very easy" to balance the game without taking away aspects of Job identity, Looking at PLD a Big part of it's identity was Damage over time, that's being took away for "easier balance".

Balance for the sake of fun and uniqueness is generally the direction a lot of things are already going, but I rather not push a game where every job "has" to perform the same amount of damage numbers because it will come at the cost of a lot of what makes the game interesting.

[Melethron123]

4% is a pretty significant amount when it comes to ff14, it feels like you're underplaying it, also considering DRG/Reaper/Ninja/monk give different types of ADPS I don't really think it's a fair comparison.

Even if let's say all Melee dps were 1% apart, that's mainly due to how the jobs are easier to balance as Burst Jobs which in part goes back to my original point, the best way to "balance" the game is to make jobs play very similarly and cut out differences that "don't fit" into the game, despite a job being perfectly viable. I can admit theirs still room for unique Jobs in a burst meta, but at the same time it very much limits Jobs away from being a burst for the sake of "balance".

at the end of the day, if we wanna argue or not, it's not going to be "very easy" to balance the game without taking away aspects of Job identity, Looking at PLD a Big part of it's identity was Damage over time, that's being took away for "easier balance".

Balance for the sake of fun and uniqueness is generally the direction a lot of things are already going, but I rather not push a game where every job "has" to perform the same amount of damage numbers because it will come at the cost of a lot of what makes the game interesting.

if you think 4% is a big difference, that's even more for a reason for job balance to be stricter. especially when one tank is dealing 11% more dmg than the others...

the whole thing about "jobs have to be bursty for balance to be good" is complete nonsense, btw. it all comes down to how high the potency on their skills are and whether or not the fights have a lot of downtime in-between damage windows

a burst oriented job will deal more damage in a fight where the boss is invulnerable for 30s every 2minutes, but other than that it's just a matter of tuning the numbers.
on the flip side, a sustained dmg job would end up dealing more damage than a burst oriented job in a situation where raid buffs are absent (like if you made a raid group with 2 SAMs, a BLM and a MCH) but situations like that aren't very realistic

lastly: a job being bursty doesn't mean it has the same playstyle as another. if they reduced the potency on PLDs physical gcds and massively increased the potency on the magical side, the job would become a lot more bursty without having a single change in their rotation

PS: i've played MMOs where the devs prioritized "uniqueness" over performance (GW2 and several WoW expansions) and there's nothing fun about being denied group invites due to your class being underpowered

GW2 was even funnier because the game's hardest content was so easy a streamer managed to clear with a raid of lvl 78 characters (lvl cap is 80) and people STILL deny invites to players on underpowered classes