Tank balance and what CBU3 wants to do with job balance

[Renathras]

I really feel they need to cut back on the sustain WAR and PLD have. GNB's should be the gold standard that all tanks should reach, where it's strong, but not strong enough to invalidate having a healer or make content too easy.

WAR's Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash should be reworked into giving an HP shield that can go up to 50% of the person's max HP, that way it's just a move that can buy time, not completely trivialize content. Shake It Off should be losing its regen.

PLD's spells should all have a 300 cure potency instead of 400. Holy Shelltron and Intervention should have a 200 cure potency instead of 250.

I kind of agree with this.

WAR being able to heal other party members MAKES NO SENSE. No part of its class fantasy is "healer". It SHOULD have decent sustain, but as you say, reducing/shielding incoming damage (largely to itself) should be how that works.

Conversely, part of PLD's class fantasy IS that it has (a few) White Magic spells. Basically Cure 2, Holy, and Glare, which is what Clemency, Holy Circle, and Holy Spirit are, respectively. The first should be (and is) a DPS loss to use since you're trading a turn of damage for a turn of healing (to speak in classical FF game terms), while the latter two should be DPS gains over your normal attacks at the cost of MP. Which they are: 1-2-3 has an AVERAGE damage of 300 per hit (900 for the combo of 3 strikes = 300 per hit averaged out), of which Holy Spirit does 350, so a slight gain, which is upped to 450 used as Divine Might procs. This is a pretty good system. Largely same deal with their AOE: 1-2 averages 135 per hit (270 for the combo) vs Holy Circle's 200 when buffed. ARGUABLY the base damage should be 150 (> 135) not 100, but the general point still comes across well enough.

The self-healing of those spells probably should be lowered a bit (since Holy and Glare aren't exactly known for their healing), or alternatively, the healing removed but Clemency being given some kind of Holy Might effect to let you use it for sustain for big pulls where damage is less important than sustain and enmity (e.g. wall-to-walls). Though on that point, PLD should REALLY get a low level (like level 30) pre-Clemency that upgrades to Clemency later (like Rage of Halone into Royal Authority), considering a lot of lower level content, PLD has no self sustain. It has no sustain until Clemency at 58, and none as part of its rotation until Holy Spirit at 64.


Contrast the other Tanks, where WAR and DRK get theirs at level 26 (Storm's Path and Souleater), and GNB gets its at level 4 (Brutal Shell). This gives sync or leveling PLDs (*cough* Palace of the Dead solo runs *cough*) a far harder time of it. And before you mock PotD - note that there was a time when PLD could Cross-Class CNJ abilities Cure, Stoneskin, Protect, and Raise (though didn't get the trait to use it in combat). So pre-SB PLD runs of PotD, they'd have Cure, Stoneskin (10% HP), and Protect (10% damage reduction) availble to them at those level ranges where now they have nothing of the sort.

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As to the thread as a whole:

- GNB was in a pretty good spot, so not sure why they changed it. Maybe had something to do with TOP since the forced downtime favored DRK but hurt the other Tanks, including GNB?

- PLD needed a buff, and I think everyone knows that. It was doing EVEN LESS damage than BEFORE the rework, which made no sense as the rework was (partially) supposed to address how it was already doing too little damage. It somehow got even more button bloat but did even less damage. So the buff was absolutely needed, there. PLD was the RDM of Tanks (and arguably still is), but unlike RDM, it's actually getting some buffs to bring it in line to where it should be.

- DRK was already doing fine. DRK struggles in easy content, which isn't so much "struggles" as "actually needs a Healer", which isn't some damning indictment on DRK so much as it is on the other Tanks having too much sustain/healing. DRK didn't need any buffs (neither did BLM), as it was already the gold standard and the "automatic pick" Tank for most high end content with the other slot being a contest of GNB (which usually won) or WAR (if you needed more flexibility) or PLD (if you didn't have either of the other two available). DRK got a longstanding problem fixed (Living Dead) and in such a way that actually makes it a powerful and useful CD now, and it has an extra personal mitigation vs the other Tanks as well. DRK has been eating good this expansion.

- I have no idea what is going on with WAR, though. WAR is a Tank, party healer, and now DPSer all in one. It's like Vanilla WoW all over again if Warrior was ALSO a healer. It's frankly ridiculous at this point. While it IS true that WAR's self-sustain isn't AS big of an issue in high end content as it is in 4 mans, it wasn't super far behind DRK/GNB, so the damage buffs might have over done it. And they also did this after the last couple patches of buffing WAR's healing - the Divine Veil change was needed, the Shake It Off change was not. I honestly have no idea at all what's going on with WAR.

[GoatOfWar]

Don't worry guys, giving War an instant res next patch to make sure War is the best at everything.

[fulminating]

I kind of agree with this.

WAR being able to heal other party members MAKES NO SENSE.

I dunno, if a berserker is screaming at you to pull yourself together then you might find a bit of second wind. How many intestines do you really need anyway? Presumably it’s really meant to be some kind of waking up their inner beast for a minute or whatever the lore around that is (nascent definition here) , but I prefer the idea that it’s bullying people into reattaching their limbs.

[AmiableApkallu]

The self-healing of those spells probably should be lowered a bit (since Holy and Glare aren't exactly known for their healing), or alternatively, the healing removed but Clemency being given some kind of Holy Might effect to let you use it for sustain for big pulls where damage is less important than sustain and enmity (e.g. wall-to-walls). Though on that point, PLD should REALLY get a low level (like level 30) pre-Clemency that upgrades to Clemency later (like Rage of Halone into Royal Authority), considering a lot of lower level content, PLD has no self sustain. It has no sustain until Clemency at 58, and none as part of its rotation until Holy Spirit at 64.

It's actually worse than that. Review PLD's traits. Aside from Clemency, PLD has no healing until Lv.82. For example, it's the Lv.84 trait Divine Magic Mastery II that gives Holy Spirit and company their healing effects.

[Deo14]

Game supposedly has only 4 job designers and it shows. Job guide explanations had such a pearls like that PLD deserves lower damage because he has range, in a magic phase, which has static place in rotation, in expansion where hitboxes cover half the arena. All of that before the rework, when PLD even had 1 MIT less than others tanks, yet still was at the bottom DPS wise with WAR.

So yeah, don't get your hopes up when it comes to job design and by no means expect something logical. Balance issues are the smallest problems, at least they're not gutting your job because some idiots who don't even play it wanted it to be even easier.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Drk feels like it should have a regen or heal attached to either oblation or tbn. I get that the invun has a very powerful self heal attached to it but im not sure we can count that.

All tank skills went through buffs.

Sheltron becomes Holy Sheltron and gains regen and better mitigation
Raw Intuition becomes Bloodwhetting and gains leech and a shield
Heart of Stone becomes Heart of Coruondum and gains the excog effect and better mitigation

Now you have Drk, TBN is unchanged and we gained Oblation which is 10% mit, which is nice but its not "great"
Im not asking for Drk to get the best things, but i feel like somewhere there should be a regen or heal?

Maybe a regen if the shield of TBN breaks? RPR has something like this already.

[RyuDragnier]

Part of the issue with Oblation is how late you get it. Had it been obtained much earlier in the game (like say level 58) when we don't have TBN, it'd be a lot better. The other issue is it was obtained at the level where all the other tank uniques got buffed, making it feel like a slap in the face to DRK because TBN was untouched, and instead we got yet another oGCD to press in our already bloated oGCD based kit. Had Oblation been added at level 58, and level 84 gave a 2nd charge and added a healing effect of some kind (like maybe leeching health while it's active), people wouldn't have batted an eye.

[Renathras]

It's actually worse...

Oh god...you're right! I didn't realize that.

Yeah...it IS even worse. Holy crap. XD They get Divine Magic Mastery/Divine Might at 64. They should add Clemency to the things it affects. That would give PLD sustain from at least that point. But I also contend they should get a low level version of Clemency somewhere in the 40-50 range.

Part of the issue...

To be fair, TBN is already really powerful - DRKs were bragging about how good it was for quite some time. So not buffing it WAS kind of the logical move. TBN also has a super short CD, the only thing close is PLD being able to chain Shelltrons, but that's limited by a gauge where TBN is not. TBN is effectively worth a 25% target's HP "heal" every 15 seconds (4x per minute), which is as powerful as pre-nerf ARR Lustrate on SCH was - one-quarter of a Benediction 3 times a minute. It's not a "heal" in the direct sense, but if it is fully absorbed, it maths out to the same as healing a person for that amount. Like say there's an alternate universe where TBN was a regen over 7 sec for 25% of a person's health INSTEAD of a shield (and didn't generate Dark Arts anymore). Would that be better or worse? Depends on the context, of course, but it's pretty powerful. And while I'm very much against button bloat, DRK still isn't QUITE as bad as PLD yet, thankfully.

I'm not saying that you're wrong - one of the issues with TBN has long been that it's added SO LATE, a constant complaint (though ALSO not unique to DRK) - just that DRK already is rather powerful. One of the problems (this is me speaking as a Healer here) is how the Tanks collectively ALREADY have so much healing to render Healers pointless in most normal content. As I said before, DRK not being able to solo 4 mans isn't a signal of DRK being too weak, it's a signal of the other Tanks having too much healing.

If anything, I'd take the opposite approach and reduce all the excess healing. This goes to a greater paradigm thing, but imo, healing for non-Healers should generally be a choice of sacrificing damage to get. It's why I think Verraise, Vercure, and Clemency are good abilities (and Physic would be if it...worked...for SMN), since they have a clear trade-off. It's also why I think lots of self-healing abilities on Tanks as oGCDs or on DPS as either free oGCDs (DNC Curing Waltz) or free as part of their rotation (SMN Phoenix) should generally not be there or be much weaker. Imo personally, what Jobs should get "free" are actions in its role (Tanks getting mitigation free, Healers get healing free, DPS get damage free), and the things we do that dip into other roles should be a trade-off...but that's probably a bit too high level for this discussion.

Anyway, WAR is too strong, GNB is probably okay but just a bit strong, PLD is probably where it should be, and DRK is probably where it should be.

[Absurdity]

And while I'm very much against button bloat, DRK still isn't QUITE as bad as PLD yet, thankfully.

While the overall amount of buttons isn't an issue Dark Knight absolutely suffers from oGCD bloat, because both your offensive and defensive oGCDs often share the same 15 seconds time window.

But that's an overall problem with the core design of the job, you spam all the buttons for 15 seconds and then sit around for 45 seconds pressing 1-2-3 while questioning your life choices.


But hey, at least it's not Warrior where the entire gameplay feels like you're just pressing 1-2-3, unlike Dark Knight that job could use some more oGCDs.

[Renathras]

While the overall amount of buttons isn't an issue Dark Knight absolutely suffers from oGCD bloat, because both your offensive and defensive oGCDs often share the same 15 seconds time window.

But that's an overall problem with the core design of the job, you spam all the buttons for 15 seconds and then sit around for 45 seconds pressing 1-2-3 while questioning your life choices.


But hey, at least it's not Warrior where the entire gameplay feels like you're just pressing 1-2-3, unlike Dark Knight that job could use some more oGCDs.

Yeah, that's fair. XD I suppose it's like NIN with the "cram everything possible into burst, then have an uneventful downtime for the next 45 seconds".

I dunno about the last part, though. I think it's good that Jobs are different. Less homogenization the better. I prefer GNB or PLD to WAR personally, but I get a lot of people like WAR for what it is, and DRK and WAR are already a BIT close as it is, I'm not sure they should be made MORE alike.