What if we designed other Tank's abilities like they were made for WAR?

[Oizen]

So now that the dust has settled and it seems WAR is the best tank in terms of...well basically everything. Its got me wondering, why does WAR get so many bonus effects on its skills? Why don't the other tanks get things like this?

Like Vengance for example, all the other tanks get 30% flat mitigation. They're all clone skills. WAR gets this and also damage reflection on physical attacks.

Or Raid-wide mitigation....
DRK and GNB are stuck with Dark Missionary and Heart of Light, literally clone skills of each other that only affect magic damage.
PLD gets Veil which provides a shield and a heal.
WAR gets a Shield, a Heal, a Regen, and it also has a bonus shield increasing* mechanic, and of course both the healing on Shake and the shield from shake are larger than Veils.

Tank that literally brings a shield to a fight is less sturdy than the tank with a big axe.

Or how about short mits,
The other tanks have to choose between defending an ally or themselves with their short mit. TBN,HoC,Intervention all only affect your target.

But when WAR does it with its short mit, Nascent Flash, the target gets the mitigation and the healing, but you ALSO get the healing.

So I guess what I'm wondering is, what is the justification for WAR having all these bonus effects on literally everything. Even stuff like Inner Release seems comically bloated compared to the skills the other tanks get. Why doesn't PLD get more knockback immunity? How come DRK isn't getting guaranteed Crit/DHs on Delirium? Skill is basically the exact same otherwise.


Can't be any damage reasons, its currently doing the most damage, so...why don't the other tanks get perks like this? Not saying they need to be copied 1:1, but this could be a way to help make the tanks feel a bit more unique from eachother.

[Eorzean_username]

Usually I try to understand where the developers were coming from in their thought process, even if I don't personally agree with or like a change, etc.

But I really can't reverse-engineer the state that WAR is in — it doesn't seem to have resulted from an actual, structured reasoning process or specific design goal.

It seems to me more like something that has simply gotten out-of-control through one seemingly-innocent decision after another, and the team's new policy of "Never take things away, just improve everyone else instead" has created a situation where even if they realise that WAR's state is getting a little strange, their hands are policy-tied in terms of doing anything about it.

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Like it started with, "Oh, no one wants to use Raw Intuition, everyone likes the healing from Nascent Flash too much. They're even macro'ing it to random party members even when Main Tank. Let's just give Raw Intuition healing too."

Then they went, "But it wouldn't be fair to change the way Nascent Flash works now, people like healing their allies too, so we'll just leave that alone."

Then they went, "But people like helping their cotank with mitigation, and the other Tanks are getting full healing from their 'support' mitigation in 6.00, so we should also bring up how much healing Nascent Flash provides to the off-target."

...That's my honest best guess — the developers feel bad when they nerf something, so instead, they just keep piling on more and more additively, and it slowly starts to get out-of-control.

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My other guess — because this has happened many times before in the past — is that the developers value parts of their design very differently than a lot of players do.

So for example, from their perspective, WAR might be "fine", because:

• Paladin still has Clemency, Cover, Passage, and can inflate the mitigation of Intervention by using their personal defensive CDs

• Dark Knight has Dark Mind and Oblation providing it extra mitigation coverage, and TBN is available more frequently than other short mitigations

• Gunbreaker has a 2nd charge on Aurora and gets to keep Brual Shell on itself when it HOCs (lol)

I am not saying that these things need to actually seem equitable to you, the player... but just that the XIV design team has a habit of assigning or perceiving value-equivalencies that aren't necessarily congruent with common sentiment.

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[...] so...why don't the other tanks get perks like this? Not saying they need to be copied 1:1, but this could be a way to help make the tanks feel a bit more unique from eachother.

Could you give some examples of what you're imagining could be changed?

At first glance it seems like you're saying, "Making the Tanks more similar would make them feel a bit more unique from each other".

[UkcsAlias]

"Never take things away, just improve everyone else instead"

In other words: power creep.

And while in most cases its healthy to keep things fun, there are cases where nerfs must be done. Whether we are in that state yet i cant tell. But never removing anything isnt a healthy thing at all.

[Launched]

PLD gets Veil which provides a shield and a heal.
WAR gets a Shield, a Heal, a Regen, and it also has a bonus damage boosting mechanic, and of course both the healing on Shake and the shield from shake are larger than Veils.

Tank that literally brings a shield to a fight is less sturdy than the tank with a big axe.

PLD has an entire extra raidwide mitigation skill in Passage of Arms.
Shake it Off doesn't boost damage. Its shield is based on each party member's HP, unlike Divine Veil, so it gives roughly the same size shield on DPS/healers unless you consume multiple cooldowns.

Or how about short mits,
The other tanks have to choose between defending an ally or themselves with their short mit. TBN,HoC,Intervention all only affect your target.

PLD can save enough gauge to use Holy Sheltron and Intervention at the same time. TBN has the shortest cooldown, and DRK also has 2 charges of Oblation.
Dark Mind has a 60 second cooldown compared to 90 on Bulwark, Thrill of Battle and Camouflage. Not exactly a short cooldown skill, but still a nice bonus to have over the other tanks.

How come DRK isn't getting guaranteed Crit/DHs on Delirium? Skill is basically the exact same otherwise.

Because WAR has a huge part of its DPS come from 4 skills in Inner Release, while DRK's damage is spread out over a lot of oGCDs. Different jobs should have their burst work in different ways, whether it's guaranteed crits, % damage increases, or skills you can only use every X seconds.

The tanks do actually have differences and advantages/disadvantages in their kits. I don't think they're different enough, but the solution isn't just to add a bunch of stuff to PLD/DRK/GNB's skills. They could all use a big rework.

PLD and WAR were played way less than DRK and GNB in Abyssos and both Ultimates of this expansion. Maybe WAR didn't need as big of a buff as it got, but it needed something. And even with the 6.4 buffs, I think that if the devs had kept Abyssos tankbuster design for the current tier, WAR wouldn't be as popular.

[Cabalabob]

Could you give some examples of what you're imagining could be changed?

At first glance it seems like you're saying, "Making the Tanks more similar would make them feel a bit more unique from each other".

I think the idea is they want each tank to have extra effects more personalised to their specialty so each tank has that same base kit but then they still have that extra flare.

The prime example is the “sentinel equivalent”. For every tank it’s just 30% mitigation on a 2min CD…. Except WAR who also gets counter attacks because reasons?

What if sentinel on PLD was 40% mitigation as the shield wall tank, what if DRK got a dread spikes effect on shadow wall that restored some HP upon being struck as the dark magic tank, what if GNB got a haste effect under nebula as the speedy tank? Something that makes a very minor difference without effecting the overarching purpose of the skill.

[Kabooa]

Never forget they stapled Aurora onto Equilibrium.

[Absurdity]

The prime example is the “sentinel equivalent”. For every tank it’s just 30% mitigation on a 3min CD…. Except WAR who also gets counter attacks because reasons?

What if sentinel on PLD was 40% mitigation as the shield wall tank, what if DRK got a dread spikes effect on shadow wall that restored some HP upon being struck as the dark magic tank, what if GNB got a haste effect under nebula as the speedy tank? Something that makes a very minor difference without effecting the overarching purpose of the skill.

The damage reflect on Vengeance is pretty much just a leftover they kept for "thematic" reasons.
It was originally just the damage reflect with 0 mitigation, then they added the 30% because 2.0 Warrior made no sense.

Sentinel was 40% mitigation until Shadowbringers but on a 3 minute cooldown.

And Shadow Wall was just 30% on a 3 minute cooldown until patch 4.3, because screw Dark Knight.

[Oizen]

So for example, from their perspective, WAR might be "fine", because:

• Paladin still has Clemency, Cover, Passage, and can inflate the mitigation of Intervention by using their personal defensive CDs

• Dark Knight has Dark Mind and Oblation providing it extra mitigation coverage, and TBN is available more frequently than other short mitigations

• Gunbreaker has a 2nd charge on Aurora and gets to keep Brual Shell on itself when it HOCs (lol)

I am not saying that these things need to actually seem equitable to you, the player... but just that the XIV design team has a habit of assigning or perceiving value-equivalencies that aren't necessarily congruent with common sentiment.

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I guess my issue here is that a lot of these upsides come with trade offs rather than just being pure, raw advantages that WAR gets because its WAR.

Clemency is a damage loss, Passage and Cover are clunky to use.

TBN is the only short mit with a cost, and is restricted more by that cost than its actual cooldown.
I also don't view skills existing as a benefit because its not like we accounted for things like Thrill of Battle, which basically serves as WAR's extra mit, and it too as a bonus stat because of course it does.
Nor does Oblation existing feel like one. Oblation exists because TBN is a somewhat awkward skill that you can't really buff without making its gimmick harder to achieve.

Could you give some examples of what you're imagining could be changed?
At first glance it seems like you're saying, "Making the Tanks more similar would make them feel a bit more unique from each other".

I'd just like to see more effects given to tank skills and move away from everyone having clone skills (and WAR getting a superior clone skill because its the dev's favorite).

I'm not well versed enough in all of the tanks to say what they should be, but I think it be a way to help diversify the tanks a little bit. I'd also like to see moving away from generic tank actions except for Voke/Shirk to help with this, every tank could have their own flavor of 20% mit rather than everyone rampart, same with reprisal (and feint addle but thats a whole other discussion at that point)

As for general ideas to rival Vengance's slight benefit,
Maybe DRK gets a slight ammount of MP when its hit while shadow walls up, a blood price lite if you will.
Maybe PLD's defensives are slightly stronger than the other tanks because they probably should be

Can't say what GNB's would be because I'm not versed enough in that job to give advice in it yet.

Cause right now it just seems like WAR's skills are just better because they are.

[Oizen]

Because WAR has a huge part of its DPS come from 4 skills in Inner Release, while DRK's damage is spread out over a lot of oGCDs. Different jobs should have their burst work in different ways, whether it's guaranteed crits, % damage increases, or skills you can only use every X seconds.

The tanks do actually have differences and advantages/disadvantages in their kits. I don't think they're different enough, but the solution isn't just to add a bunch of stuff to PLD/DRK/GNB's skills. They could all use a big rework.

PLD and WAR were played way less than DRK and GNB in Abyssos and both Ultimates of this expansion. Maybe WAR didn't need as big of a buff as it got, but it needed something. And even with the 6.4 buffs, I think that if the devs had kept Abyssos tankbuster design for the current tier, WAR wouldn't be as popular.

We're not talking about damage though, besides WAR has the damage right now, and I don't think damage is viable metric for a job's identity, its going to shift around a lot and random potency buffs will be thrown around forever. I don't care about that. The one that does the most damage will see the play in the hard content, thats never going to change.

I'm just talking about tank skills, theres no rhyme or reason why WAR's get so many bonus effects while the other 3 get skills that read "take 30% less damage".

I wouldn't give a shit if WAR remains the top DPS, I'm saying make the actual TANK part of their kits even, which they currently are not, and becomes laughibly more apparent when you exit the raiding scene and do other forms of hard content in this game the community pretends doesn't exist.

The damage reflect on Vengeance is pretty much just a leftover they kept for "thematic" reasons.
It was originally just the damage reflect with 0 mitigation, then they added the 30% because 2.0 Warrior made no sense.

Sentinel was 40% mitigation until Shadowbringers but on a 3 minute cooldown.

And Shadow Wall was just 30% on a 3 minute cooldown until patch 4.3, because screw Dark Knight.

So give the other skills thematic buffs like this. What justification is there for WAR to just have superior skills? They're a bit niche, but if they don't make a big difference on WAR, then the other tanks can get them too,no?

[Marxam]

Never forget they stapled Aurora onto Equilibrium.

Honestly I would prefer if Equilibrium acted like this after obtaining the level 84 trait:

-HP < 50% = 1200 potency heal
-HP > 50% = HP% shield

Before level 84 Equilibrium will function as just a heal regardless of HP value. The regen imo is overkill when healers are so powerful with their ogcd heals. At least with this change you have that flexibility to use it when needed instead of only after taking a hit. It would also fit more thematically to what equilibrium is defined as.