Tank balance and what CBU3 wants to do with job balance

[Oizen]

They don't need to have it do the full mitigation, they can give it the Addle treatment and have it mitigate 10% of physical damage along with the 20% magical.

Then we run into the issue of it being really redundant for DRK to have Dark Mind Oblation, seeing as they'd both be 10% 10s duration 60scd physical mit.

Which I guess is preferable but I do think its notable that DRK's never had a single defensive upgrade, hell the only skills that ever upgrade for DRK are Edge and Flood.

[RyuDragnier]

Then we run into the issue of it being really redundant for DRK to have Dark Mind Oblation, seeing as they'd both be 10% 10s duration 60scd physical mit.

Which I guess is preferable but I do think its notable that DRK's never had a single defensive upgrade, hell the only skills that ever upgrade for DRK are Edge and Flood.

I place the fault on the devs for obviously not knowing what to with DRK. I'm pretty sure none of them play it, because I don't think DRK would have ever gotten this bad if they had.

[Renathras]

Shields are not self-sustain.
...All TBN proves is that DRK is stronger defensively rather than with sustainability.

That IS sustain.

That's like saying Adlo's shield isn't part of sustain. Take a hypothetical case where a theoretical Job had no healing but only pure barriers, but could do 500,000 health point per minute barriers. That Job would be able to sustain 500,000 + their HP pool + natural HP reneration damage per minute. That's why shielding/barriers are included in calculations of effective health, because they directly contribute to sustain unless they aren't absorbed.

Moreover, if we don't count them, then we also can't count Veil, Shake's barriers, Nascent/Bloodwhetting's barrier (I think I forgot that with my calculations, so need to add that to WAR's total...), or Brutal Shell's barriers.

If we're talking SELF-SUSTAIN, barriers count.

WAR and PLD really need party healing toned down though. Party healing outside of niche abilities like Clemency should be left to the actual healers.

I do agree with that, though. Clemency and Vercure I think are good designs. They're clearly DPS losses, and are limiting in that they will destroy your MP if used excessively, preventing your damage rotation and even some of your self-healing on PLD (Holy Spirit casts and delaying Confetti casts if you go too low on MP). They aren't free and require trade-offs to use.

For the rest, imo, Tank kits should focus on shielding (barriers) or reducing damage (mitgation), not on recovering/healing from it other than some minor self-sustain and some niche abilities like Clemency.

All the drk math only works out if every single shield breaks and you choose to never burst for openers...
...
In a vacuum the math could maybe check out, but these scenarios wont happen.

I said as much - and this is also true of the other Tanks. PLD going deep Clemency is also going to be unrealistic. GNB probably uses more GCDs on other abilities cutting out some of its rotation self-sustain. So does WAR. I calculated 6 non 1-2-3 Beast Gauge uses, but it can sometimes (and likely always) be higher due to the way they interact with Infuriate. You could use this argument to say the OTHER Jobs are all weaker than these numbers, too.

I'm also pretty sure using TBN that many times per minute is going to lead to a loss to damage output, not only because its not going to break on every use, but because you wont be heading into the next burst window with capped mp.

Note the listed assumptions.

I listed them for a reason. While they aren't always going to be true, they offer good points of discussion. For example, suppose you think only 2 uses of TBN per minute make sense - you have all the numbers to adjust the final total based on that. And again, this is going to be true of some other abilities as well. PLD won't always be using Holy Shelltron on itself if it's using Intervention on someone else. If a GNB uses Heart of Corundum or Aurora on someone else, they can't use it on themselves, etc.

These are still good ballpark figures to consider a comparison between the Tanks under the argument:

Self-sustain.

The argument was that DRK has way less than the other Tanks, but that isn't true. You can argue it's more barriers than healing, but that isn't relevant to self-sustain unless you're frequently not using all of the barriers, in which case the damage may not be significant enough to be a threat anyway. You can argue in practice DRK won't have this much, but in practice, neither will the other Tanks. These are still good general ratios of "how much self-sustain does this Tank have access to". If DRK was down around 20k or something, that'd be a great argument for it having too little. But it's actually the top other than a Clemency spamming PLD. Removing 1 TBN doesn't really change much since it's still in the same ballpark of the others. And we'd have to remove TWO TBNs before it does less than the other Tanks, and it'd be only slightly behind GNB at that point.

This also isn't even looking at mitigation. Most raidwides are magic, and DRK is king at mitigating that. DRK also is the Tank with an extra personal mitigation. A full treatment of this topic would factor in all the mitigations and look at eHP since that's really what self-sustain is based on.

But the point is, DRK isn't worlds behind the other Tanks. It's roughly comparable to them, by the numbers. It's just not as visible, because barriers are never as visible as filling up empty health bars.

My main gripe with DRK is how it is basically the unloved child here.

WAR/PLD/GNB can heal themselves, DRK cannot.
WAR/PLD/GNB can heal another, DRK cannot.
WAR/PLD/GNB's self mitigations can work against anything. DRK has one that cannot work against physicals.
WAR/PLD/GNB all got upgrades to their unique cooldowns. DRK did not.

I understand people not wanting homogenization, but 3/4 tanks is a bad precedent to set when the last one tends to struggle harder because it does not have what the others have. They either have to change one of the tanks to also not fit those, which we all know people will raise hell about, or you have to fix DRK so it ALSO fits those.

It's not that cleancut.

DRK can heal itself, and does so in its 1-2-3 combo (PLD does not) automatically just like GNB and WAR. GNB also has the lowest natural self-healing through its combo, only getting half as much healing as the others. One could word this as:
WAR/DRK/GNB can heal themselves through their base rotation, PLD cannot until level 82, and then the rate is slower and mostly tied to its burst.
WAR/DRK can heal themselves for twice as much in their base rotation as GNB can.

GNB can heal others...but not realistically. It has Aurora once per minute and 2 and some change Corundums, if not using them on itself at all. This is low "spamable" healing. Honestly, PLD is the only one with spamable healing options for others, since the other ones are on either long CDs or take the place of their short duration personal mit, and DRK can use its (TBN) on others, as well as Oblation to reduce damage taken further. WAR is the only on that can heal others with ALMOST no effect on itself, since Shake doesn't have any negative to the WAR (unless you accidentally consume your personal mits to boost it when you didn't mean to), and Nascent doesn't give WAR the mitigation of Bloodwhetting but gives it the same healing, so it's more of a side-grade of free party healing at little personal cost.

PLD has a self-mitigation that only works against physical and not magic (Bulwark). Up until VERY recently, Shelltron didn't work against bleeds, either.

You're going to have to specify "upgrades to their unique cooldowns". You mean the short duration ones? Yeah, because DRK got an extra one, which means theirs offers more flexibility. All things being equal, having something split into two buttons makes it a bit more difficult to use, but potentially more powerful. For example, suppose instead of Nascent, WAR had the mitigation part separate from the healing part. They could then use the mitigation part on themselves (always) and use Nascent (always) to get healing for both them and the party member. This would be more powerful than the current option of mitigate + heal self OR mitigate + heal party member + ONLY heal but not mitigate for self.

This is one of those "grass is always greener on the other side" cases.

It's not 3/4ths of the Tanks for most of those metrics, it only seems that way on the surface.

.

I absolutely do believe DRK probably needs some help, but it's not this neglected Job that has been languishing in the doldrums for patches and expansions in a row now. It's been on top from 6.0-6.4, with only now some chinks showing in that armor, and it's not even clear yet that DRK is going to be UNdesired in 6.4, only that it's not undisputed king/automatic include anymore.

And I don't think the solution is for DRK to get more healing, I think it's for the other Tanks (aside from GNB) to get less AND for TBN to be nerfed in parity with those and Dark Mind merged with Oblation (do something like reduces all damage by 10% and it traits up to an additional 10% for 20% total against magic at level 82). That way DRK doesn't have an "extra" mitigation anymore.

Again, "grass is always greener on the other side" thing.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd like to rein back any and all forms of sustain that neither come at cost nor have any real means of optimization to them (beyond AoEing where you might otherwise ST in 2-target scenarios, in BW/NF's case).

Click to expand the section below for a VERY spitball take on what all that might include...

Warrior

• Undo the lastest potency buffs to Storm's Eye, Storm's Path, and Inner Chaos.
• Inner Beast is now granted at level 30, and Thrill of Battle instead at 35.
• Further nerf Storm's Path and Storm's Eye potency by 20 prior to Melee Mastery. Siphon that potency per minute into Inner Beast (e.g., to 440 potency, up from 330). (Fell Cleave was already buffed, so it can remain as is.) Buff Steel Cyclone to 220 potency.
• Axe the self-heal on Storm's Path. Have Inner Beast instead heal for 440 cure potency and Steel Cyclone hit for 110 potency per target. Fell Cleave and Decimate retain, but do not increase, these bonuses.
• Return the per-hit flat self-healing component of BW/NF to, again, healing for 50% of damage dealt. Let it rip on Fell Cleave + Primal Rush + Inner Chaos x2, but simply comboing should hardly do squat.

Paladin

• Shelltron replaced by Aegis, which grants a barrier equal to 10% of the target's maximum HP and grants 25% mitigation while the barrier is active (and lingering for 1 second thereafter).
• Aegis is now granted at level 30, and Spirit's Within at 35.
• The level 62 skill, Intervention, is now instead simply a trait that allows Aegis to be used on others and causes it to last up to 2 second longer for each defensive ability you have active.
• Clemency is now granted at level 40. Prominence is instead a class skill, granted automatically. Chivalry has been moved to level 40.
• At level 58, Paladin now instead augments Aegis with two additional effects: "Grants MP upon fully absorbing an enemy hit" and "Grants Silver Shield | Silver Shield: Your next use of Clemency will not trigger the global recast time."
• Shelltron Mastery, now Aegis Mastery, upgrades Aegis to Divine Aegis, which causes a second barrier to take the first's place when broken, and extends the maximum duration to 8 seconds.
• Cover no longer consumes gauge by default and now grants an aura to the covered ally that mimics the total multiplicative mitigation of the Paladin's active defensive skills. (This leaves a buff also on the Paladin itself, which causes the transferred mitigation to updates whenever there is a change to the Paladin's defenses.)
• Cover now also grants the Paladin a stack of Oath of the Ceaseless Guardian. This allows the use of Guardian while Cover is on cooldown, swapping the hotkey's use automatically. Guardian is otherwise identical to Cover but has no cooldown and instead costs 50 Gauge and a charge of Oath of the Ceaseless Guardian. Stacks last for 2 minutes.
• Divine Magic Mastery II removed.
• Blade of Faith, Blade of Truth, and Blade of Valor no longer cost MP (since that would otherwise reduce one's cure potency available per minute).

Dark Knight

• Bloodspiller swaps places with Salted Earth, therefore being introduced much earlier in the game.
• Abyssal Drain swaps places with Dark Mind, therefore being introduced much earlier in the game.
• Bloodspiller now heals for its damage dealt, but Souleater no longer heals.
• Bloodspiller now deals 40% of its damage to all enemies in a 3-yalm radius around its target.
• Quietus now deals 50% greater potency to its first target struck (300 to first target, 200 to all others).
• Quietus now inflicts its victims with Quietus for 12 seconds, causing them to grant the Dark Knight 100 MP each time they are struck by an attack from the Dark Knight.
• Carve and Spit now inflicts its victims with Carved Soul for 12 seconds, causing them to grant the Dark Knight 100 MP each time they are struck by an attack and causing them to leave a shade instantly and another if killed while afflicted by Carved Soul. The Dark Knight can move through these to gain 10% HP and 10% MP.
• Abyssal Drain now inflicts a debuff for 10 seconds that causes the Dark Knight to heal for 25% of damage dealt to enemies and to instantly restore 10% of the Dark Knight's HP if the victim dies while under the effect of Abyssal Drain.
• Dark Arts has been revised. It now nullifies a granular amount of MP cost and is simply displayed on your MP bar alike to a barrier effect (on the HP bar).
• At level 30, Dark Knight gains access to Shadowskin, which consumes up to 1500 to 3000 MP (using half your current MP, therefore reaching full effect at 60% MP) to reduce incoming damage by 20% for 3 to 6 seconds, based on MP spent. For every % of max HP's worth of damage nullified gain 1% max MP's worth of Dark Arts, to a maximum of the original amount of MP spent.
• The Blackest Night is now an upgrade to Shadowskin, retaining the 20% mitigation effect (though the duration can no longer fade before the barrier does), and now consumes 1500 to 3000 MP (using half your current MP) in order to generate a barrier of %HP equal to 80% of %MP spent (3000 MP = 30% of MP = 30% eHP). For every % of max HP's worth of damage nullified gain 1% max MP's worth of Dark Arts, to a maximum of the original amount of MP spent.
• Delirium no longer grants free casts of Bloodspiller or Quietus. Instead, for 12 seconds, it increases Attack Speed by 15% and doubles MP and HP generated while halving the Blood costs of Bloodspiller and Quietus.
• Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain each gain a second charge and have their cooldown reduced to 40 seconds at level 84.
• Dark Mind now reduces all damage taken by 10% (and magic damage taken by a further 10%).
• Oblation is now an upgrade to Dark Mind, allowing it to be used on any ally, with a second charge and only a 40-second recast time.
• Carve and Spit, Abyssal Drain, and Shadowbringer now each cost 3k MP. They have been slightly buffed in compensation; the remainder of the lost potency is covered only via DRK's additional MP generation.
• Living Shadow now grants a temporary charge each of Abyssal Drain, Carve and Spit, and Shadowbringer, to be used via the Living Shadow. These temporary charges take priority over your own, have no animation lock / uptime cost, and cost no MP, though they will have only half the normal damage. If not consumed before Living Shadow ends, they will each be rapidly cast in succession when 1 second of duration remains. While Living Shadow is active, it will also duplicate each of your attacks, for half damage. It is now summoned far more quickly/responsively.

Gunbreaker

• Rather than Brutal Shell granting a barrier, Burst Strike and Fated Circle now afflicts its target with a suppression effect, causing its auto-attack damage to be reduced by the lesser of 50% until having consumed damage equal to that dealt by Burst Strike / Fated Circle. This effect does not stack or accumulate.
• Continuation and Hypervelocity inflict an identical effect to that of Burst Strike, but accumulating. This stacks with the effect of Burst Strike.
• Heart of Corundom is no longer an upgrade to Heart of Stone, but rather a secondary action. Heart of Stone Mastery upgrades the mitigation of Heart of Stone directly, while Heart of Corundom, which replaces HoS while HoS is active and on cooldown, causes the beneficiary to heal for their damage mitigated by HoS over the last 3 seconds. (In this way, it becomes more timing dependent, rather than less.)

[Rithy255]

I'd like to rein back any and all forms of sustain that neither come at cost nor have any real means of optimization to them (beyond AoEing where you might otherwise ST in 2-target scenarios, in BW/NF's case).

Click to expand the section below for a VERY spitball take on what all that might include...

I really like these changes especially Paladins, Sounds really fun defensively actually which is something I really would like for the job, Other tank changes seem pretty solid as well.

I'm sure we won't get anything this meaningful in 7.0 but I can dream.

[dspguy]

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.

So, the "complaint" about Nascent Flash is something that every tank sort of has. They all have a "shield someone else" ability. WAR's Nascent Flash has a very small shield followed with a bloodbath type ability. DRK can put that shield on anyone. PLD and GNB have similar abilities. In my opinion, it boils down to giving an OT something to do in a raid situation when they don't need any of their own mitigation. Personally, I like to use Nascent Flash on the healer especially if we have no DPS that can raise. In some cases, it make a lot more sense to protect the healer. Tanks have so many ways to mitigate damage, if the healer is any sort of danger, I'd rather make sure they survive because a tank/healer can survive long enough to raise the rest of the party if necessary.

[Shurrikhan]

I really like these changes especially Paladins, Sounds really fun defensively actually which is something I really would like for the job, Other tank changes seem pretty solid as well.

Mostly just aiming to make self-sustain a bit more sparse but far more active/timeable/manipulable. oGCD Clemencies from procs seemed like an easy choice there.

Ideally, would go a bit further to revitalize PLD, but that's all for the extent necessary for just the chosen goal.

[Renathras]

So, the "complaint" about Nascent Flash is something that every tank sort of has. They all have a "shield someone else" ability. WAR's Nascent Flash has a very small shield followed with a bloodbath type ability. DRK can put that shield on anyone. PLD and GNB have similar abilities. In my opinion, it boils down to giving an OT something to do in a raid situation when they don't need any of their own mitigation. Personally, I like to use Nascent Flash on the healer especially if we have no DPS that can raise. In some cases, it make a lot more sense to protect the healer. Tanks have so many ways to mitigate damage, if the healer is any sort of danger, I'd rather make sure they survive because a tank/healer can survive long enough to raise the rest of the party if necessary.

I think the issue is that it's available EXTREMELY frequently, and allows WARs to heal both a party member and themselves, and by a large amount. In ARR, SCH's Lustrate healed for 25% of people's HP, and they got 3 per minute. And SCH is a Healer Job. And it was considered too powerful and nerfed to a potency ability instead of % health.

WAR can do this to two people twice per minute. That's 4 times (and some change, so more over the course of fights, about 2.5 per minute). And it costs nothing. The WAR has a bit less protection but gets the same healing.

Contrast the other Tanks. TBN doesn't heal. Yes, mitigation is a form of sustain, but healing is recovery and TBN scales to the player's health, meaning it's weaker when used on non-tanks, Nascent is not. A GNB using Corundum on someone doesn't get the heal OR mitigation to themselves. A PLD using Intervention on someone doesn't get the heal or mitigation to themselves, either. A PLD using Clemency on someone gets them 50% of the healing, but requires a DPS loss and digging into their damage resource. Imagine if casting Nascent cost the WAR 40 or 50 Beast Gauge to use. That would make it closer to PLD.

...and it would still be better than GNB unless Nascent had the healing for the WAR removed.

...and it would still be better than DRK unless it had the healing removed from Nascent AND Bloodwhetting.

.

WAR's party healing abilities are just too powerful right now. There's not really a good argument against it. WAR's love it, I know, and I get it - it's fun being a super powerful one-man army. The problem is, it's not fun for Healers to be completely unneeded in any 4 man party with a WAR, and for other Tanks to be at or below WAR's damage while also having less mitigation and healing.

[Shurrikhan]

In ARR, SCH's Lustrate healed for 25% of people's HP, and they got 3 per minute. And SCH is a Healer Job. And it was considered too powerful and nerfed to a potency ability instead of % health.

Technically, it was because a huge portion of an optimized SCH's healing didn't therefore scale with their own gear. At all. Only their target's.

(And that it healed for full value through Infirmity because, in usual XIV coding competence, they couldn't figure out how to reduce %HP heals...)

I think the issue is that it's available EXTREMELY frequently, and allows WARs to heal both a party member and themselves, and by a large amount.

But yes, this exactly.

[Absurdity]

Technically, it was because a huge portion of an optimized SCH's healing didn't therefore scale with their own gear. At all. Only their target's.

(And that it healed for full value through Infirmity because, in usual XIV coding competence, they couldn't figure out how to reduce %HP heals...)

Not just Infirmity, it completely negated the negatives of Cleric stance since Lustrate didn't rely on your Mind stat (or be affected by the -20% healing debuff), allowing Scholars to stay in dps turret mode while still providing healing at it's full strength.