True fault of current tank design: Lack of identity

[AddictedToWitches]

Vast homogenization of roles has caused this rift in tank design which has led to where we are today.
Tanks, should have specialized niches but still be just as good at their primary job, tanking.
Let's go down the list:

>DRK
Traditionally, the final fantasy dark knight is based around consuming health to deal damage, and healing itself usually through lifesteal or sustain abilities. A tank damaging itself is somewhat out of the question but they got this class fantasy right back in HW/SB. DRK pulling large packs with blood price and abyssal drain spam achieved this drain tank class fantasy.
As of right now? It's in this weird state of being a. . . shield tank? Your primary mit button is TBN, a shield with a low duration, and your other mits are lacking.
Proposal: DRK should be the sole sustain/drain tank, fitting the traditional dark knight role. You mitigation should revolve around this sustain.

>WAR
The traditional final fantasy warrior/marauder archetype has many different names and many different interpretations over the years. In ARR, WAR's primary gimmick was being the tank that does more damage, and it's primary mitigations revolving around just having a large amount of health, with some damage reduction built into your big damage buttons. As tank damage has sort of evened out (for the most part) WAR has instead now become the sustain/drain tank.
Proposal: Bring back the WAR design of just having a lot of health, increasing health, increasing external healing received, brief mitigations for using damage skills at the right time, perhaps even lean more into the parry/reflection angle. Admittedly WAR is the one I am most on the fence about how it should be changed.

>PLD
There's not much to say about PLD right now. The traditional final fantasy knight and PLD are fairly close now. PLD has retained it's identity as being the most traditional form of tank. Most amount of mitigations, mitigations all being various damage reductions, the ability to mitigate for their team, etc. It's in a good spot, but I'd knock it's sustain down a few pegs, and make fight or flight a stack-based buff similar to inner release and delirium

>GNB
GNB is basically THE damage tank right now, and it shows with its rotation being nearly as complicated as the average melee DPS. The way it plays right now is mostly fine. I am of the opinion that GNB should become the shield tank though. Base all of it's mitigations around shielding, etc. I would also just make no mercy stack-based like inner release/no mercy.

TL;DR Tanks have mostly lost their identity because of the waves of homogenization. Reworking them to carve out their niches would be far more beneficial to the game's long-term health.

TL;DR 2: my justification for fight or flight and no mercy changes are purely based around the fact that you would no longer need to worry about skill speed breakpoints and ping issues.

[BabyYoda]

First let's discuss what tanks have to manage?
Dps have to manage their rotation
Healers have to manage party health

Tanks have to manage something not just pressing 1 button and now he can have enmity generation
Or position boss at specific point in the map

They have to be much more than a dps who has high defense

Tank should have something to manage like enemy rage or cc or something to make them unique


Tanks are op but have lack of identity of their purpose.. it is challenging for devs really but idk what they can do with it.

[BabyYoda]

I have suggested tank identity in another post I will share it:

Note that maybe I could be wrong and that's OK


1- Paladin
Positives: highest defense and passive parry rate, high speed(low GCD 2.0) attacks, party healing.
Negative: less self healing compare to other tanks and less max health than warrior.

2- warrior:
Positives: highest max health and Hp regen, slow but heavy attacks (2.5 GCD)
Negatives: less defense compare to other tanks and no shields (similar to white mage that they have almost no shields)

3- dark knight:
Positives: highest shields in the game with high self healing( example: if 50% of shield break heal for the shielded amount), slow but heavy attacks (2.5 GCD).
Negatives: less defense(similar to warrior), less hp pool (similar to paladin), healing amount have cap with MP consumption, using too many healing skills will reduce overall DPS.

4- Gunbreaker:
Positives: highest passive parry rate and ability to have active parry skills(if successful apply self shield) and continuation convert shield to heal similar to samurai third eye, fast based job similar to paladin(2.0 GCD).
Negatives: defense lower compare to other tanks(similar to warrior), hp pool low(similar to paladin), job is focused more into active parry.

[AddictedToWitches]

First let's discuss what tanks have to manage?
Dps have to manage their rotation
Healers have to manage party health

Tanks have to manage something not just pressing 1 button and now he can have enmity generation
Or position boss at specific point in the map

They have to be much more than a dps who has high defense

Tank should have something to manage like enemy rage or cc or something to make them unique


Tanks are op but have lack of identity of their purpose.. it is challenging for devs really but idk what they can do with it.

Plenty of fights still have tank swaps and proper tank mechanics and knowing how to manage pulls is still role knowledge
I think that aspect of tanking is fine. I prefer it being easier to manage enmity now because it used to be that if a DPS didn't pop diversion they would 100% rip aggro

[Carighan]

Yeah, definitely. Tanks are highly homogenized, you can even use equivalent hotbar layouts between all of them. And while that helps swapping between them, it doesn't help with giving each of them a unique identity.

If I had full tabula rasa choices, I'd change these things:

Paladin: Strongest hypothetical defense, but reliant on actively supporting others, which in turn costs damage. Weakest defense when not supporting others. Would require changes such as being able to spend the instant cast on Clemency, higher base CDs on defensive skills but reducing CDs with Clemensy and Interception used, I'd also merge Intercept and Interception to be a single skill I can also use on allies. Cover continuously reduces the damage the Paladin takes (from all sources) with each hit of damage transferred. Etc etc.

Warrior: Most self-healing removed - except Shake It Off, I suppose. Instead, current healing skills stack shields (up to a certain percentage of max-HP) for the same amount or marginally more. Fits the fantasy of ignoring incoming damage due to being lost in the bloodlest better if the damage is avoided in the first place. Some extra skills gain shield they give while Bloodwhetting is maybe marginally reduced in turn, but eh, not sure about sensible numbers for that.

Dark Knights: Retooled to be more about siphoning/draining/debuffing. Lots of the current instant damage skills removed. Instead, multiple skills apply short~medium DoTs. Many abilities + one of the short DoTs drains health to the Dark Knight, who hence gains a niche akine to the current Warrior niche: Constant and high self-healing. Coupled with a retooling of a significant portion of their damage output to be based on multiple stackable DoTs of various application and duration types. A bit more like a Shadow Knight from EQ1, basically. Whether to keep TBN or replace it with a high-mana-cost short-duration really strong health drain DoT, not sure.

Gunbreaker: The "ranged" tank. Uses a mix of the other tank tools, in fact kept quite close to how they are now. But, Lightning Shot is removed and all other skills get a 25y range, using a different animation if used from range.

So it'd be Support Tank, Damage Ignore Tank, Life-Draining Tank and Ranged Tank.

[Tunda]

Plenty of fights still have tank swaps and proper tank mechanics and knowing how to manage pulls is still role knowledge
I think that aspect of tanking is fine. I prefer it being easier to manage enmity now because it used to be that if a DPS didn't pop diversion they would 100% rip aggro

I agree, enmity now is way better.. but still the things that you have to manage as a tank is less than other roles..

not only that but mastering 1 tank = 80% of other tanks

[Carighan]

I agree, enmity now is way better.. but still the things that you have to manage as a tank is less than other roles..

More importantly, all combat skill of a tank player is in dealing damage. Even picking up enemies just comes down to positioning yourself so that your AoE hits all enemies, at which point aggro is automated. This is the exactly same thing a DPS does to maximize their damage output.

Sadly, there is very little active tanking gameplay right now. It could be improved, and even with how bad TBN is nowadays, Dark Knight at least shows the faintest promise of this gameplay.

But to further improve it, we'd need a bit more willingness to rip existing mechanics apart:

* Extra emnity from tank stance reduced massively.
* Many damage skills lose all or virtually all their damage output.
* Other damage skills increased in damage to compensate.
* The skills with reduced damage now deal massive amounts of emnity.

In other words, you'd have to balance yourself how often you use your emnity generators vs your damage skills. Could even bake this into the job mechanics and make it a unique setup for each job, to further differentiate tanks and heterogenize them! Compare how in WoW's first expansion, Paladin's did a lot of their emnity via Consecration's continuous tick-damage, which was far superior for AoE pickups but inflexible due to its CD+duration, it could not be moved within 10s of being used, but on single targets was roughly the same as other tanks. So for raid bosses it didn't make a big enough difference to matter, but still had strong flavor.

It'd be weird of course, as it would require a massive retooling of all current tank skills, but like my previous post, I don't see how to heterogenize tanks well without doing such massive reworks. :<

[Erit]

In other words, you'd have to balance yourself how often you use your emnity generators vs your damage skills. Could even bake this into the job mechanics and make it a unique setup for each job, to further differentiate tanks and heterogenize them!

This was put to the sword sometime in Stormblood-Shadowbringers—I was on hiatus for that era so don't know exactly when the change happened, only that it did—and Warrior lost their crunchiest GCD in the process. RIP Skull Sunder.

[Absurdity]

—and Warrior lost their crunchiest GCD in the process. RIP Skull Sunder.

You spelled Butcher's Block wrong.

[CKNovel]

I agree, enmity now is way better.. but still the things that you have to manage as a tank is less than other roles..
not only that but mastering 1 tank = 80% of other tanks

Tanks have to manage a DPS rotation while also managing defensive CDs, party survival and their own survival, sometimes placing the boss, enmity swap for TBs...
If you're not doing that, you're doing a terrible tank job and just trying to play a tank like a DPS.

Same can be said for DPS, if you master 1 DPS = 80% of other DPS as they all revolves around the same thing, Always Be Casting and doing their burst within raidbuffs.