How much difference in damage should the tanks have?

[Melethron123]

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.

i genuinely believe that whoever is in charge of tank balance is tuning numbers around RDPS instead of ADPS. looking at RDPS values for every fight, all four tanks are very close to each other (around 1% difference between the highest and lowest)

[Gserpent]

i genuinely believe that whoever is in charge of tank balance is tuning numbers around RDPS instead of ADPS. looking at RDPS values for every fight, all four tanks are very close to each other (around 1% difference between the highest and lowest)

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. This is a total armchair developer moment and I will fully admit that, but I swear it feels like Square-Enix needs to do some internal restructuring on how they handle design teams and who covers what. I'm pretty sure they don't have, like... a "managerial oversight" setup, and it results in a lot of inconsistencies and... well, "incompetence" is too strong of a word, but something of that nature. Like they're having people who aren't any good at high end content handle design decisions for things that will dramatically affect high end content? Because I don't know how the hell you would think tuning and designing tanks around rDPS instead of aDPS makes any damn sense, but it sure does look like that's what they're doing...

[Oextra]

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.

By that logic, dang near every job plays the same since on pretty much every job you "Spam rotation, build gauge". Of course this is false. As I said (and it's not just my opinion "lol"), only WAR and DRK play similarly. Of course their mits are similar in how you use them, but rotation wise, just no.

[Oextra]

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.

I actually like this idea a lot. There would still be a tier list with this method as well, but it would be a much more tight nit one (at least for savage raids).

[Oizen]

By that logic, dang near every job plays the same since on pretty much every job you "Spam rotation, build gauge". Of course this is false.

Is it though

[Oextra]

Is it though

If you're joking, joke on friend. If you're serious, yes it is false. Might as well say everything's the same since everything does damage lol.

[Gserpent]

If you're joking, joke on friend. If you're serious, yes it is false. Might as well say everything's the same since everything does damage lol.

It's not a joke, though. The differences between classes are minimal at best. Literally every single class has the exact same gameplay of "dump everything every 120 seconds, do boring filler in between." The dumping isn't especially unique to classes either, considering it's literally just your filler plus weaving or double weaving your oGCD buttons at the same time.

[dspguy]

By that logic, dang near every job plays the same since on pretty much every job you "Spam rotation, build gauge". Of course this is false. As I said (and it's not just my opinion "lol"), only WAR and DRK play similarly. Of course their mits are similar in how you use them, but rotation wise, just no.

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. They all build "gauge" in a similar way. It is just called something different for each job but the function is nearly identical.

We have PLD and WAR with a 1-2-3, 1-2-4 combo. Both build "gauge" in the form of either restoring MP for PLD's Fell Cleave or Decimate... wait, I mean Holy Spirit/Circle.
PLD WAR DRK GNB have a "hit this button and then spam this other button X times in a row for damage."

GNB and DRK both have a "do these GCD and then weave in this oGCD that pop up because you are playing the job right.

They all have short-duration, short-recast mitigation abilities with a shield/heal/regen type component.

3 of 4 have one DoT or more.

All 4 have a gap closer. And all 4 have potencies of 150. 3 of the 4 have 2 charges, just 1 has 3 charges of it.

While they all share the role abilities, their mitigation CD might as well be cookie cutter with a different name
30% mitigation: Sentinel, Vengeance, Shadow Wall ,Nebula
Group mitigation: Passage/DV, Shake it Off, Dark Missionary, Heart of Light
Single Target mitigation: Intervention, Nascent Flash, TBN, HoC

The list just goes on and on. For the most part, the jobs are the same with name changes and minor differences.

Since some people see things better visually (oxymoron), here's something that might help. This is essentially an example of how to setup hotbars to jump around to the homogenous tank jobs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Nearly every ability fits neatly into a category shared across all tank jobs. Some minor differences are... WAR gets no DoT, GNB has 2. WAR doesn't have a DPS buff applied by an oGCD. The other 3 have an oGCD that does it. As I said in an earlier post, GNB "fits" the least well due to how Continuation works, but overall is still half a dozen of one and six of the other.

But yeah, I clearly have a "wrong opinion" in your eyes. Cease clutching your pearls and face reality.

[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.