DPS should be WAR > GNB > DRK > PLD

[Cabalabob]

The problem with talking class fantasy is your idea of a class fantasy can vary from someone else’s depending on which version of a job’s fantasy you’re looking at.

Let’s take DRK, it’s traditionally a dps that sacrifices HP to deal damage, usually working as a glass cannon dealing massive damage in exchange for being easily killed. So in that respect you’d think DRK should be the highest dps. But you could also make an argument for DRK being a job that mirrors PLD being a utility tank that utilises dark magic instead of light magic, focusing on drains, DoTs and enfeebling spells. This version of a DRK would probably be low dps like PLD due to high utility.

WAR you can look at as the aggressive tank who focuses purely on damage at the cost of defence, or as the tank that focuses on counter attacks, or a tank that strikes a balance between offence and defence. It has been all these things in the past and where you’d place it in damage is going to depend on which of those fantasies you ascribe to it.

GNB isn’t really a job with an established fantasy, being based on squall from ff8 who could do anything depending on how you built him. But if we look exclusively at the weapon, a sword that deals extra damage with accurate trigger pulls, it sounds like a dps to me so I’d place it high up there.

PLD is the only one that is pretty much fighting for bottom in dps, it is the invincible wall that protects the party, but even PLD can be argued to have versions of it appearing as a dps, such as a holy knight that uses light based attacks to deal high damage.

Personally I’d argue it should be DRK > GNB > WAR > PLD. DRK being the high risk, high reward tank, GNB being more well rounded but still having that focus on dps, WAR being the middle ground having an even split between utility and damage and PLD being the utility tank that protects the party but doesn’t bring as much damage.

[Oizen]

Personally I’d argue it should be DRK > GNB > WAR > PLD. DRK being the high risk, high reward tank, GNB being more well rounded but still having that focus on dps, WAR being the middle ground having an even split between utility and damage and PLD being the utility tank that protects the party but doesn’t bring as much damage.

This game's combat isn't good enough in order to realize something like this, its extremely rigid and formulaic. A high risk/reward tank doesn't work simply because if it DOES work then its the only thing that should be brought, everything else can be optimized around.

They're not going to make content too hard for one tank to do, they're going to homogenize everything to a point where every tank can clear every content, which is really disheatening but its why things have gotten as bad as they are.

[ataren3]

This game's combat isn't good enough in order to realize something like this, its extremely rigid and formulaic. A high risk/reward tank doesn't work simply because if it DOES work then its the only thing that should be brought, everything else can be optimized around.

They're not going to make content too hard for one tank to do, they're going to homogenize everything to a point where every tank can clear every content, which is really disheatening but its why things have gotten as bad as they are.

Oh how I wish they did something like role assignments. In an 8 man party:
- Let one tank be denoted as the "main tank" in the fight. This tank gets some (albeit minor) buffs to their mitigations
- Let the other be denoted as the "off tank" in the fight. This tank gets some (albeit minor) buffs to their damage

It doesn't have to be crazy. They don't suddenly need slightly different animations for abilities and things (although that'd be pretty neat). Tank swaps would give the healers a little extra to do than they have right now, and tanks would need to plan around tank swaps. The main tank would be semi-fine with that tank-buster but the off tank? He doesn't have that nice bump to mitigation that the main tank does; he's gonna need help. That help could come from some healer mit BUT why do that? The main tank got that buff to mitigation! Throw a slightly buffed TBN, Excog, Intervention, Nascent Glint their way. Assist them with surviving the autos until your debuff wears off and you can finally take control and semi-stabilize damage.

[Renathras]

They're not going to make content too hard for one tank to do, they're going to homogenize everything to a point where every tank can clear every content, which is really disheatening but its why things have gotten as bad as they are.

To be fair, it doesn't have to be one OR the other. WoW's Tanks in the post-Vanilla (BC and on) years were all capable of tanking any content, but some fights were better/easier for some of the Tank specs to do than others - but not so much so that the weaker ones COULDN'T do them. I THINK it was Protection Paladin was good in AOE situations (an AOE taunt, AOE continuous damage with Consecration/Hallowed Ground/whatever the ground AOE thing was called back then, and the best shield mechanics meaning blocking lots of hits), Death Knight's initial release had all three specs capable of tanking, but this was eventually condensed into it being the kind of anti-magic tank with extra magic mitigation, Warrior was the good tank against physical damage bosses, and then Druid was kind of an "all arounder" tank since Bear just had stupid high HP and so could be a damage sponge against any type of damage at the cost of your healers having to work a bit harder to make up for the extra health needing to be healed. But, even when out of their specialty, they were still ABLE to tank other things, like Death Knight tanking a physical damage boss or Warrior tanking AOE.

I say this about Healers all the time, too; it's entirely possible to have niches and make a more interesting game without being broken. The trick is to make it where all Jobs in a given role can do the Job at a base level and the differences are niches rather than complete sub-roles in their own right that no other Job can even handle.

That said, it requires effort to do it right, and often results in some things being less "optimal" than others, which means THE COMMUNITY would have to accept that the different Tanks would do different amounts of damage and/or require different amounts of healing and so on depending on the fight.

The problem is as much on the community as it is on the devs, imo.

[Mithron]

Let’s take DRK, it’s traditionally a dps that sacrifices HP to deal damage.

DRK is traditionally a solid tank: FF3 and FF4. It wasn't until later FFs they tried to relabel it as a DPS. In original FF3 and NA FF4, they didn't even have HP draining abilities but it still makes sense as a tank who is meant to receive most of the heals.

PLD has always embodied the high defense and healing/utility tank. FF1, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF9.
WAR has usually been high DPS low defense frontline. Berserker in FF5 comes the closest to it.
GNB is more of a modern invention with Squall, who's very well rounded and high damage/VIT. So makes sense GNB would be behind WAR and above DRK/PLD.

[Cabalabob]

DRK is traditionally a solid tank: FF3 and FF4. It wasn't until later FFs they tried to relabel it as a DPS. In original FF3 and NA FF4, they didn't even have HP draining abilities but it still makes sense as a tank who is meant to receive most of the heals.

PLD has always embodied the high defense and healing/utility tank. FF1, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF9.
WAR has usually been high DPS low defense frontline. Berserker in FF5 comes the closest to it.
GNB is more of a modern invention with Squall, who's very well rounded and high damage/VIT. So makes sense GNB would be behind WAR and above DRK/PLD.

This is exactly my point, your ideas of what the jobs should be differ from someone else’s. Ask anyone what a DRK is, do you think they’re going to tell you it’s a tank that uses white magic basically just an upgrade to the knight class? Because that’s what it was in the original ff3? No, they’re going to tell you it’s a dps that wears heavy armour and sacrifices health to deal damage, possibly having some black magic like drain spells mixed in.

WAR in ff1 and ff3 was just a fighter that could use most melee weapons, in fact if you’re talking in that most literal sense, WAR should be weaker than PLD AND DRK since knight (knight and paladin being one and the same in the ff series) and DRK in ff1 and 3 were simply direct upgrades to the WAR.

FF3 and 4 remakes remedied this by giving jobs more iconic moves, the warrior and knight were differentiated by WAR having advance, allowing it to do full damage from the backline while only taking normal damage, or do extra damage from the frontline for extra damage taken. Meanwhile knight got the defend command to decrease damage taken further. But if you’re going to take a revisionist view of this version of WAR and PLD you can’t also ignore that they made DRK into it’s more iconic form there too.