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

[Lyth]

...

The problem isn't actually around nerfs themselves.

SE uses an upward balance. If a job is doing too much damage relative to the others, they will buff the potency of every other job rather than dropping the potency of a single problem job. The net effect is the exact same in the long term, but everyone instead cheers on Yoshi-p as he hands out buffs to everyone in the room ('You get a buff, and you get a buff...') A pure upward balance is not sustainable. So to counterbalance this everything gets reset between expansions, and this is typically where stealth nerfs happen. This is where jobs that have historically been really powerful over the past expansion get addressed. The problem is that jobs that offer high reward for low effort will also be very popular. So when players of such jobs go into the next expansion and catch on to the nerfs, then we start seeing complaints rolled out on the forums en masse during the lead in to the x.1 patch.

Jobs with a more vocal playerbase tend to get buffs more often. We saw this during Endwalker as well. WAR was nerfed in the Endwalker transition, but progressively became more powerful over the course of the expansion, until we reached the point that we're at today. The same thing will almost certainly happen in DT as well.

Splitting the playerbase does two things, as you mentioned. When those stealth nerfs go out at the start of the expansion, there's no longer any pushback against them, because of the split. Some people will stick to what they have known for years, and others will be lured by a fresh take with a similar aesthetic. That allows you to retain the balance that you achieved with the expansion launch. It also redistributes the player base, so that every raid group isn't running the same comp for years on end.

Imbalances on the tank and healer roles are a byproduct of having small numbers of job options historically. Splitting the population over a larger number of possibilities means that a single job isn't going to stay on top for expansions on end, reinforced by popular demand. As I said earlier, a much simpler solution is to just say 'no', but there's likely an internal reason why they try to avoid doing this openly. There will always be imbalances, and there will always be a few jobs that tends to outperform the others in the short term. The important thing is that it's not the same job for years on end. It's been 10 years, but we're just about starting to move away from that.

[Oizen]

You know what dark knight gobbled up? rampart.

Its more like DRK and WAR had their own versions of rampart that got deleted and rampart got stapled onto them in the god awful "role action" update.

God I miss the Shadowskin animation

[GoatOfWar]

Its more like DRK and WAR had their own versions of rampart that got deleted and rampart got stapled onto them in the god awful "role action" update.

God I miss the Shadowskin animation

I despise the role actions.
They fill up half our hotbars with copy/pasted abilities.
You could remove half of them and give us cool stuff in their place.

Imagine if they removed Reprisal, rampart, low blow, interject and Shirk but then gave us other tools that actually make the tanks different.

[fulminating]

I think arguing that WAR's advantages are the natural result of historical precedent isn't a good justification for future design. ARR was developed at a point in time where they weren't really sure if there would ever be another expansion, so the design wasn't about future proofing so much as it was about desperately staying afloat. Both tanks and healers suffered from the legacy of this as a result of having only two jobs on release. The end result was that the support roles each ended up with a 'vanilla' job, and then every possible theme that they thought of was stuffed into the other. The problem is that burning through so many design directions at once on a single job limits your creative options when introducing in new jobs.

It's been 10 years. There's been plenty of good opportunities to properly define the niche of each tank, 5.0 being the best recent example with the introduction of a 4th, but 6.0 and 6.2/3 should also have been considered.

Lifesteal
Lifesteal is not the only form of self-sustain that exists. WAR currently straddles several styles of self-sustain between instant heals, barriers, regens, and lifesteal. None of these make any thematic sense as far as job fantasy is concerned. This in turn creates a push towards homogenization, because every tank job now needs all of these things in order to remain competitive. The solution is to separate these out on to different tanks, and it's relatively easy to do if they actually invest some effort into the role. A lifesteal tank doesn't need an on demand instant heal. If they want to burst heal, they line up their healing with their burst window. You don't need a barrier shield if your lifesteal can push out into temporary HP. You can achieve similar effects with the other mechanics in a way that develops job identity in unique ways.

And this is the point people have been making for multiple expansions now - it doesn't really matter 'who' the lifesteal tank is, but one tank shouldn't contain all those distinct themes at the same time.

No it's not. The addition of shields and regens to warrior was generally a bad move, but let's not pretend that holy sheltron and heart of excog wouldn't be glaring issues if warrior wasn't there. I think lump heal and lifesteal fit the berserker fantasy well enough, with thrill/equilibrium acting as a second wind. There's no way you've not seen the fellowship of the ring, and surely remember the part where boromir gets up again after being filled full of arrows. I don't think this should preclude dark knight from having the abyssal drain loop returned though, as I see that as more of a representation of magic debuffing than too angry to die. Ideally I think warrior wouldn't have healing per se, but rather just increase its high health cap with every attack to convey "too angry to die", however this would not interact well with heal style doom mechanics or benediction existing so lifesteal works as an approximation there.

Role Actions
The 4.0 role action system definitely impacted DRK more than other tanks. DRK had Shadowskin in Heavensward, which was a much better looking version of Rampart that did the same thing. Dark Dance was nerfed into Anticipation and made available to all tanks. Reprisal and Low Blow were nerfed and made available to all tanks. The net result was it went from having the most number of actions out of any tank to having the least after the transition. But the main problem with the change was that utility was distributed unequally. The lack of knockback mitigation was especially bad, especially given that arena-wide knockbacks was Stormblood's favorite raid gimmick... Missionary/HoL

I dislike role actions as a concept, but they could be a necessary evil. I think this probably touches on the real issue, which is the conflicting desire to have shiny new toys and mechanics each expansion while also wanting everyone to be able to do it all even if they don't have them. Maybe the raid and job teams talking more in depth about their ideas for the expansion earlier than the evidently do would help address this, but that might set things in stone far too far ahead.

Mobility
Mobility is an interesting discussion point. DRK definitely had a mobility advantage prior to Stormblood, and WAR after Stormblood. I think part of the problem is that the movement tools on tanks are fairly boring. If you look at melee dps, there are definite differences in movement toolsets but none of them feel particularly disadvantaged. I still think it's hilarious that the WAR playerbase had a SAM style on-demand gap closer and squandered it out of utter greed. What they should have done instead is just asked for an on-demand gap extender to consolidate their advantage, but that's like expecting the average WAR enthusiast to understand Uptime 101. I think the bigger problem though is if you add movement tools like Shukuchi/Raiju/Ingress/Egress/Thunderclap into the mix, tanks will likely complain until each type of movement tool is on every tank, rather than appreciating the differences and letting every job have its unique upsides and downsides.

It's not even greed, it's just utter stupidity. Same as with overpower being changed to a pbaoe. I can't even tell if it's changes for people who don't play the job to induce them to play, but it's such a comical downgrade that you'd hope it wasn't requested by people who actually liked the job. Not that it matters if they keep the huge hitboxes, your movement tools won't actually move you usefully if they get much bigger. Of course the potency based heal is in this category too, but has been done to death.

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

yeah it's super weird, but sounded a bit too revisionist to let slide.

Incidentally, the reason why SGE has so much overlap with SCH was that it was designed to split the SCH playerbase. That's likely what's going to happen to WAR as well. They'll release a hammer tank that is very similar in design to WAR. Once the playerbase is split, then you can make the appropriate balance adjustments that should have been made expansions ago without community backlash.

Do you happen to have a source for this? I would like to believe that sage is anything other than a rushed and unimaginitive addition to a neglected role, but this is the first I've heard of that.

[GoatOfWar]

I think it's completely bizarre that anyone would claim that 'doing the most damage' is part of a job's identity. That's a bit like claiming being the most powerful job is part of the job's identity.

When that is the *ONLY* thing your job does better than others, and then they proceed to buff the damage of the medic tank that already has the best version of every tool the other tanks have access to, and already has a history of cannibalising and assuming the job identity of the job you're playing, yeah.
Warrior deserved being FIRMLY at the bottom of the dps meters, just like every other utility centered job in the entire fucking game. It MUST be at the bottom to warrant having all the other shit it has. There shouldn't even be any discussion about this.
If you're seriously going to argue for Warrior to not have it's damage taxed while it has the best utility and is the defacto best main tank, why even have 4 tanks? I'd genuinely rather play dps than whatever garbage this is where there's only 1 correct choice for any given content in the game. And if we MUST have a BiS tank for every piece of content, why make it the least interesting one? The devs shouldn't be playing favourites, Warrior in it's current state ruined tanking for me. To say i loathe the job and it's players would be an understatement.

[Oizen]

I despise the role actions.
They fill up half our hotbars with copy/pasted abilities.
You could remove half of them and give us cool stuff in their place.

Imagine if they removed Reprisal, rampart, low blow, interject and Shirk but then gave us other tools that actually make the tanks different.

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

[GoatOfWar]

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

Won't work.
What we'll end up with is;
Rampart: 25% damage mit.
Shadowskin: 20% mit, applies blood price (mp regen on receiving damage)
Gnb mit: 20% and a regen.

War: 25% mit
Additional effect: Reflects incoming damage.
Additional effect: Builds beast gauge upon being hit.
Additional effect: Heals when being hit.
Additional effect: (Overtime) Restores health over time after activation.
Additional effect: The user becomes immune to most knock and and draw in effects.

Oh, and the old ''All tanks can clear it doesn't matter'' As a throwaway dismissal to any sort of concerns.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I mean they're ok with clone skills like Sentinel, Shadow Wall and Nebula, or even Dark Missionary and Heart of Light.
I don't get why everyone needed Paladin's Rampart, and we couldn't have had unique animations at the very least.
The only role actions I don't mind existing is like, Provoke or shirk. Everything else has potential to be turned into unique skills that give jobs just a bit more flavor.

Like imagine:
Rampart (PLD): 25% Damage mit
Foresight (WAR): 20% Damage mit, reflect damage when hit like Vengence
Shadowskin (DRK): 20% damage mit, applies Blood Price (Mp Regen on receiving damage)

Make one for GNB as well, maybe give it an HP regen like Aurora, or give it a longer duration so you can use it further in advance to not mess up your burst windows like camouflage has.

Really wouldn't be hard to inject some soul into these skills without breaking the game.

Agreed, could even extend this to the 30% skills.

Sentinel - maybe just 40% like back then, or an interaction with block strength to temporarily enhance it by half of it (block power 30%, for bulwark and passage of arms interaction).

Shadow Wall - give it an effect like MNK's Earth's Reply from PvP where it will give you a trigger (manual or automatic) healing you for a portion of damage taken/mitigated. Not the damaging part of Earth's reply tho.

Nebula - personal speedboost and/or heal boost (for own actions, Brutal Shell, Aurora, HoC) like PvP No Mercy effect.

[Absurdity]

Jobs with a more vocal playerbase tend to get buffs more often. We saw this during Endwalker as well. WAR was nerfed in the Endwalker transition, but progressively became more powerful over the course of the expansion, until we reached the point that we're at today. The same thing will almost certainly happen in DT as well.

Only problem I see with that one is that warrior didn't really get nerfed from ShB to EW. It went from bottom of the barrel in damage to bottom of the barrel in damage, so I have no idea out of which woodwork all these "warrior mains" came to cry for damage buffs, they must've just not played for the entirety of 5.X.

[rawker]

Agreed, could even extend this to the 30% skills.

Sentinel - maybe just 40% like back then, or an interaction with block strength to temporarily enhance it by half of it (block power 30%, for bulwark and passage of arms interaction).

Shadow Wall - give it an effect like MNK's Earth's Reply from PvP where it will give you a trigger (manual or automatic) healing you for a portion of damage taken/mitigated. Not the damaging part of Earth's reply tho.

Nebula - personal speedboost and/or heal boost (for own actions, Brutal Shell, Aurora, HoC) like PvP No Mercy effect.

PLD: Can we also get Convalescence back?