How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[dspguy]

I'm sorry but no lol. Yeah they all have a 123 they constantly do (every melee wielding job does this), but WAR and GNB don't play the same at all. The only two tanks that really play similarly are WAR and DRK.

I suppose that's your opinion - "lol."

I jump on WAR, GNB and PLD consistently and my hotbars are nearly the same. Sure, GNB has more button spammage at times, but the general idea is the same across all tanks. Spam rotation, build gauge ( MP on DRK, Beast Gauge on WAR, Cartridges on GNB, Atonement charges on PLD). All their mitigation is pretty much the same with different names. AOE spammage is 1-2 with occasional gauge/MP/cartridge spammage for 3 tanks. 3 of the 4 tanks have a short duration, short recast mitigation ability. DRK has a short recast shield instead.

Sure, someone that is "pro" at a particular tank probably squeezes out 5% more damage than a journeyman tank. In reality though, there's not much to switching between tanks. Players that spend a few minutes lining up their hotbars could just randomly pick a tank, DF/PF and do just fine.

[Rithy255]

i'm a bit sleep-deprived this week (baby) so my memory is a little fuzzy, but did i say in any of my posts that damage is the only thing that matters when it comes to bringing a job to a raid? from what i remember, i said "utility doesn't matter much for performance, since encounters have to be designed around the group comp with the lowest utility, and therefore those 'unique' abilities go to waste, like cover."

I'm keep this short as, I don't really want to run into circles here
Utility such as cover generally has no "reasonable" application in a real raiding situation while something like POA does sometimes have a impact, obviously none of it's required.

I think Ease of use, Mobility and utility all should slightly effect damage, not to massive extents and difficulty can be subjective at times, while you didn't claim everyone wouldn't play jobs that do less damage, you (I believe so) implied that DPS is the only main thing that matters when it comes to job balancing, which we can see by summoners use and play rate in general its usefulness outweighs Black mages better damage, You realise people do actually pick jobs for more then damage, BLM shouldn't be way way harder and doesn't bring any utility or mobility and do the same amount of damage as summoner, the only way you would fix this issue is remove every utility from summoner and make it hard cast most spells, which ruins the job, what I'm saying is it's fine to have a job that isn't just pure DPS, Mobility & utility are clearly taxed for a reason even if I agree that it's a bit too much right now.

If MCH did the same damage as BLM it would simply be unfun, we'd likely have double ranged meta with DC partner mch, I generally want phys ranged to be buffed a bit more but theirs obvious advantage's to have full ranged uptime compared to playing a caster job such as BLM, if you think people should just choose jobs for "fun" then whats the point of excessively balancing dps to the point where theirs hardly any difference, I believe in Balance & jobs having certain niches but also still being viable.

Xenos was talking about p8s mainly, I agree that warrior, PLD and machinist should be buffed in general I think jobs should be looked at, but the issue wasn't Job balance it was the fights DPS check being so harsh that you had to pick the meta picks, this is why dps checks in general should be balanced around every comp.

[Melethron123]

so TLDR: all jobs within a role should have a dps difference lower than 2% between them

[Rithy255]

so TLDR: all jobs within a role should have a dps difference lower than 2% between them

I'd say 2% between BLM and SMN makes no sense.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one not much else I can say

[Marxam]

Imo dmg difference should be less than 1% so that the only real defining factor of the tanks is their defensive tool kit. Right now its the exact opposite. The tool kits are more or less homogenized with only slight variations coming from their short job exclusive cd but even those are just boiled down to a heal, shield/ehp, or flat mit (as of 6.3 for PLD). I feel like if dmg was more or less the same you would see tanks valued for their defensive capabilities in certain situations since dmg is not a factor.

Regardless I'm curious to see how far they dig themselves into this forced burst meta.

[ForteNightshade]

I'd say 2% between BLM and SMN makes no sense.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one not much else I can say

To be honest, the only way they can balance the Casters properly is by removing Resurrection and Verraise. It's simply impossible to balance around these two abilities and we've watched them fail at it for two expansions. There's a reason Yoshida outright admittedly Resurrection was on the chopping block until the last minute. You either have a scenario where Black Mage is the undisputed king or you buff the other Casters and make Black Mage irrelevant. Nothing else actually matters in terms of utility because most people playing Black Mage simply enjoy the job. They won't switch off it if Summoner was doing 2-3% anymore than a dedicated Dragoon or Monk player will slightly play Ninja. The issue isn't utility but rather one specific ability that is simply far too strong in prog but far less valued otherwise.

As for the previous discussion about whether balancing is easy. It depends on the specific role. We've discussed the difficulties with balancing Casters but no such issue exists with the tanks. Warrior and Paladin are weak due to the dev team overrating their utility and sustain. No self-respecting Paladin will even look at Clemency beyond as a desperate last resort yet I guarantee the dev team factors it in as the though they use it infrequently but enough to "help the healers." In the same manner the dev team still insists we rely on GCD heals when you hardly need to press them. And don't whatsoever if you're optimizing. In general, the dev team has a very different idea of how the game is played. Which is what creates the disconnect.

Fixing the tank balance would actually be fairly simple. Instead of rolling out baby buffs for three damn patches, slap some actually meaningful potency on Fell Cleave, Inner Chaos and/or Primal Rend until Warrior is roughly within 1-2% of Dark Knight. Adjust Gunbreaker's potencies to put it on par with Dark Knight and we'll wait and see on Paladin given the rework. Bam, you just fixed all four tanks. It's literally numbers for them.

[Rithy255]

Reply to above (No space to fit quote)
Even if you removed rez BLM and SMN shouldn't be doing close damage that's the thing, SMN is generally way more easy to pick up and way more mobile then BLM or RDM. I'm kind of against removing rez, but a good middle ground would be removing rez actions in savage fights and ultimate's from casters, so they still have their general use in normal content outside that, but they can also focus on making RDM/SMN more closer to BLM. I mean personally I like rez myself, but if it's popular among savage raiders they could have a way for both casual and savage players to generally be happy.

I'm generally just against the whole idea that DPS is the only thing that matters, it's trivial on re-clears because everyone already has good gear, so damage becomes less of a issue, Utility in general is pretty good in progression, depends on the fight generally nothing will ever be set in stone when it comes to ff14. everyjob has been pretty much viable for all forms of content even the ones behind, not counting pre-nerf p8s.

I think it's fine to generally be a small percent behind as a tank or a healer and have perks elsewhere, generally PLD's main issue is that it's awful defensively and offensively, it's small niche utilities hardly make up for both, I'd be way more happier if they fixed up plds clunky Jank, defensives then "damage changes" I don't really mind PLD being behind? two tanks will always be non meta, another two will always be meta by terms of "dps" usually. I at least think we're getting pretty good buffs to PLD's defensives and general kit, I don't hope it comes at the cost of PLD having stuff like two raid wides, clemency (I think it's a good solo ability and it's going to be great for the new deep dungeon) ect. PLD Imo should be a small bit behind like 1-2% obviously I'll not advocate for PLD to be "11%" behind like it apparently is/was

With warrior it feels like sustain is being overrated way too much, because of dungeons and last tier (I heard it was actually pretty well suited for short invul) its actually not that good at surviving big hits, it's good at self healing, Dark knight at least in this tier works way better as a tank and has better DPS, with warrior it has similar problems to Paladin generally low damage and ironically pretty bad defensives compared to GNB/DRK Imo.

I think people generally hyper focus DPS numbers too much, it's pretty important but at the same time every change that's been to "balance dps numbers" such as 2 minute meta is it's own way of making the game more simple and simple, I feel like people complain that not every job is equal but also complain when things are becoming "similar" it falls under how much you want the game to be "balanced" over "Interesting" which has no right answer, people generally enjoy different things, I enjoy more Interesting and diversity in what Jobs bring to the table outside of just a standard rotation.

[dspguy]

Regardless I'm curious to see how far they dig themselves into this forced burst meta.

If the community's interpretation of the live letter is correct, it would appear SE has gone all in.

[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.

[Lieri]

2-3% is enough. For week 1 progression teams that's more than enough to prefer a class compared to the other. They will still be in demands.
I think one of the main issues for tanks is that, the more buttons/weave a tank must do, the bigger the damage difference especially when you count raid buffs in. But they're not DPS role where damage variance will be seen as something more acceptable. We already see this with DRK. They just throw everything under raid buffs and chill after that. And yet does bazillion damage compared to other tanks.
They can weaken the potency of those weaves but then they will feel weak, so right now their solution is to buff other tanks' damage. WAR and PLD has been receiving buffs.
The problem with that approach however it only adds number by potencies not by adding more stuffs to the tanks to retain their identity. Apart from acceptable damage differences, tanks also need to have acceptable degree of differences. If they're all the same then what's the point?

I don't know how the PLD rework is gonna be but I believe it will only make it more similar to the others since they are playing around the 2 min meta. Potencies will again be their main asset, not actually giving something unique, maybe even taking it since raw potencies (no Dots) is easier to calculate.

Some of the tanks need raid buff. It will help with the homogenization problem. If they don't deal enough by themselves maybe they give out damage to the party. Do it SE.