After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

[Supersnow845]

So I was going to post this on the tank forum but I decided the question is as much a healer question as it is a tank question

Regardless looking back on EW genuinely what is square enix’s design decision around the current balance of the tanks and how this affects the wider game as a whole?

WAR started the expansion as the most popular tank with the strongest overall mitigation kit given its ability to empower its raidwide mitigation, it’s cracked invuln and bloodwhetting/nascent glint which allows it to heal another member to full every 30 seconds and allows it to be functionally immortal in cleave content. In exchange its one weakness is that its damage was lower than GNB or DRK. Now it has since been buffed above DRK and almost reaches GNB

On top of this GNB received a second charge of aurora and “excog but better”, and PLD got holy Shelton, the heal on intervention and the heal on the magical combo and while tanks and healers up till EW retained rough parity in damage in EW tanks are unequivocally stronger (in unoptimisied environments a tanks damage now sits closer to a DPS’s than a healers)

So my question is genuinely what is square enix trying to achieve with this. We are at the point that tanks are approaching all three roles in one, healers are near vestigial in casual content and excess tank healing is facilitating 0 and 1 healer clears of the hardest content in the patch it’s released. Does square really think this is sustainable? What do they intend to do with this warped design going forward? How far can they reasonably push this before you start kicking people for being a healer or buffing tanks till they are fighting for DPS spots

[Rehayem]

Healers in this game are obsolete. My guess they'll buff self sustain even further for tanks.

Still can't forgive SE for buffing WAR above DRK's damage. The only thing DRK had, got stripped away.

[GoatOfWar]

The goalpost for War is that it has to be the best at absolutely everything a tank could possibly do. (That's why a certain streamer and his fans are now crying about GNB and want War's DR buffed despite it already being a powerhouse)
There's actually no reason for me to play Dark knight over Warrior anymore as a Dark knight main. And honestly, despite the buffs, the same is true for Paladin. They do nothing better than Warrior.

Moving forward, i'm kinda cynical for what's to come in DT.
I expect them to further streamline, and buff sustain across the board.

[Supersnow845]

Internal tank balance is a problem (because as you say besides the tiny advantage GNB has in damage at the highest levels of play WAT is better than the other 3 in literally every category) but my question more relates to wider decisions made in regardless to collective class balance and what they really intend to do going forward

Is WAR going to be the best at everything tank related going forward is one question but also how much further can you buff tanks before they legit start encroaching on the positions of the other roles that can’t just be waved away as “nobody cares about dungeons anyway”

What can you give tanks in DT that won’t make one problem or another worse in relation to their balance with another role

[GoatOfWar]

I don't think there's a plan. They just give in to demand as we've seen countless times.
A streamer gets mad, complains, and his fans then complain too. What does Square do? They give them what they want.
You think people who play the job give a shit about what we think? War is already causing problems in most of the game's content.
People will dismiss any sort of criticism by saying ''x content doesn't matter'' or ''The other tanks can clear'' To justify objectively bad game design.
They don't care that Warrior has the strongest version of every tank cooldown while also being the easiest job to optimise in the entire game.
As long as a single tank can do something, anything better than Warrior, it becomes a community problem. This song and dance keeps repeating.

[Aravell]

I would say that WAR is following the same design path as every other job, which is "ease of use at any cost", the only difference is that WAR is taken to the most extreme.

If you look at the current incarnation of WAR and compare it with the past, WAR has followed the same trajectory of the other jobs, all failure points (not having 5 stacks ready for Berserk, Maim buff falling off) removed or made increasingly lenient, inconveniences (Berserk pacification, having to be in tank stance to heal with Equilibrium, the self-bind from Holmgang) removed, etc.

The main difference is that WAR also had all of their weaknesses buffed out of existence, not allowed to be the lowest damage tank, not allowed to have weaker mitigation, not allowed to be reliant on healers, etc.

People who say the state of WAR doesn't present a balance problem are being intentionally blind.

[VentVanitas]

People who say the state of WAR doesn't present a balance problem are being intentionally blind.

it's why so many people saying that "WAR is the best it's ever been" or other such similar phrases has always bothered me to no end. what reasonable mind would ever consider current WAR to be healthy for the game's balance? I'd even go as far as to say that it is one of the biggest perpetrators for the game feeling less and less cooperative and more like you're just playing adjacent to other people.

WAR's design, even before ShB, has always been problematic when SE has constantly decided to allow it to do things unconditionally better than other tanks.

[Oizen]

On the topic of WAR, its one of the Dev's favorites, so its going to get priority balancing over every other job save maybe Black Mage. Theres really no other way look at why they decided Shake it Off Overtime was needed, or why it needed that equal attention present while PLD was getting reworked.


On the topic of Tank party sustain and utility powercreep, its a very odd topic to discuss.
It seems to me that its stems from them really not knowing what they want healers to do, and at a casual level they really dont want healers to every be tested even a little bit, so their answer was to make tanks able to basically solo almost all normal content.
I would be very surpirsed if GNB and DRK dont end up with insane sustain tools to match this precedent come DT. Heart of Corundum is already only a marginally worse than BW or Holy Sheltron,

but its probably the biggest disparity between tanks right now is how much sustain they can pump out, with statistic websites showing us that WAR is capable of about ~1.6x as much sustain as DRK or GNB in a fight on average. PLD is around ~1.45x as much but it makes up for it with superior mitigation across the board.
Meanwhile Dark Knight is saddled with mitigation that isn't even applicable to a lot of content, and GNB is as well to a lesser extent.

[Supersnow845]

Comparison to BLM isn’t even that apt I don’t think because while BLM retains a lot of its old complexity and constantly gets good meaningful skills in its kit it still has meaningful downsides

It has no utility outside of addle (which due to addles short duration is often hard to fit in) and it’s arguably the hardest job in the game to reach its skill cap

Sure when you can optimise it it fights for first with the melees while SMN and RDM fight for last with the phys ranged but you actually have to work for that and both the others offer heals and rezzing

WAR is just a SMN by rotational complexity, that does the damage of a BLM and has the utility of an RDM

[GoatOfWar]

Comparison to BLM isn’t even that apt I don’t think because while BLM retains a lot of its old complexity and constantly gets good meaningful skills in its kit it still has meaningful downsides

It has no utility outside of addle (which due to addles short duration is often hard to fit in) and it’s arguably the hardest job in the game to reach its skill cap

Sure when you can optimise it it fights for first with the melees while SMN and RDM fight for last with the phys ranged but you actually have to work for that and both the others offer heals and rezzing

WAR is just a SMN by rotational complexity, that does the damage of a BLM and has the utility of an RDM

The equivalent to the buffs Warrior got to it's dps would be letting Summoner do the same (Or more) DPS as a BLM despite it's superior utility and ease of use.
But the same logic doesn't translate, because there's no streamers crying for Summoner buffs.
When it comes to literally any other job in the game, jobs get taxed on their dps for their utility.
Warrior mains just enjoy a classic case of favouritism.