Reintroduce Goring blade it as a combo

[Carighan]

Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

[PyurBlue]

1. Shield Bash being useful in content would mean other tanks would need a version of shield bash

Turning Shield Bash into a required ability would be the quickest path to making it useful, but it would feel forced and creates balance problems like you mentioned. If it were made helpful but not strictly necessary, I think that's the better implementation.

Other abilities like bulwark (as I've pointed out) are already covered by skills like Sheltron, so I see no use of having multiple defensives that do bassically the same thing (mitigate damage). Their use case is "see tank buster and press button" but we already have buttons for that.

I also see current Bulwark as unremarkable. The original at least had a niche that set it apart from the other CD's slightly. It was a gamble on a heavy single hit, but strong against many smaller hits. Reverting it would make it a little less bland. If blocking had some kind of special effect that would be another distinguishing factor and be even better.

Though you make a good point in that defensives boil down to a TB reaction in most cases. If we had other more varied ways to mitigate I wouldn't mind losing the existing CD's in exchange.

more dps buttons as both aren't mutually exclusive funnily enough. Giving tanks/Healers more fun DPS options is the safest bet to at least make these roles actually more fun in all types of content though.

I'm not necessarily against more DPS buttons, and I agree that we're not dealing with mutually exclusive changes. It's just that I'd rather try to preserve some of the underutilized features we have instead of stripping them away. I don't want tanks to feel like DPS. Beyond having far too much survivability and being too similar, I wouldn't say that tanks aren't in a terrible spot. What I find boring is not having to utilize the defensive abilities or use them in only the simplest of ways. Tanks are like healers in that they are the most fun to play when the party is making mistakes because that's the only time you get to meaningfully use your abilities.

As a side note, if you had any examples of how you would make tanks more interesting I'd be willing to hear you out, I think it's really hard to actually design meaningful tank mechanics that would justify keeping skills like Shield Bash.

Since Shield Bash is tied to stun, that status would need to find some way to be incorporated into raids. Stopping a boss for 5 seconds is too strong (however if fights had more adds, keeping stun as is might work too) so I think changing the effect to slowing down a castbar or redirecting an AoE might be better. This also helps to differentiate stun from interrupts.

To give an example, a boss might have a proximity circle AoE that is larger than melee range. If Shield Bash could move AoEs, a tank could use it to push the AoE off center and provide a spot for melee to stand safely while in attack range.

Movement is another option. If Shield Bash had some limited ability to move enemies it would give PLD a slight edge in boss positioning. If moving the boss is too strong, the push could be limited to adds.

Circling back to the start of the post, these abilities would need to be balanced against the other tanks. If those tanks had their own unique traits and enemy behavior was randomized then on paper all the tanks would have value and there wouldn't be a situation where every party wants a specific tank for a given fight. There is also the issue of Bash being a 0 damage skill. This could be negated with a vuln up for the PLD's target, though I'm not the biggest fan of that idea. If there were more environment interactions in combat, like bashing a wall to make it collapse and aid the party in some way, the damage loss would be less of an issue.

This of course is all a lot more work than tweaking rotations. I admit that your idea is much more inline with what SE has done in the past.

[Rithy255]

Why?

The idea would be that those other tanks have things Paladins don't have that is useful in various areas. Compare how each area in Unavowed has different solutions depending on which characters you bring along.

It's easy to say that you can just add things useful to tanks that would make them stand out in raids then actually implementing it, If you want to argue tanks can each have a unique importance then I would like to actually see examples rather then just hearing that it can be done, Shield bash being important would almost always require Paladin being mandatory in that fight because for shield bash to ever be useful it would have to be a situation where without it the raid wipes, wasting damage on a stun is not something FF14 is designed around.

Snip

Problem is Shield bash will never be helpful enough as a GCD action that is a damage loss, unlike clemency which can be flexible for prog situations (though is still a niche skill), a gcd stun action would require such specific fight design where it's either required or not that useful.

I think tanks are fun when you're juggling your DPS offensive abilities with party/group protection abilities, Most fun I've had was on PLD where Healers were struggling to stay alive, so I was able to spot heal and cover/use heavy self mit on raid wide stacks to keep a rezzer alive for lb3, That's a lot of fun, of course It's really difficult to design every fight like that because it would reach levels where people would complain about it being too difficult, Rotations are the easiest way of making sure a Job is fun in all types of content.

If fights were designed more around tank kits, protecting allies ect. It would be more fun that way but I don't really see SE moving towards that direction especially for casual content, I see adding more dps complexity as the next best thing, though I'd love to feel like a actual team protector as a tank.

It's also easy to say balance tanks around having unique traits but actually implementing fun and interesting utility (like shield bash) being useful in practice is very difficult task, How would you envision tanks having unique mechs? is my question what would all 4 tanks do that's unique and different but doesn't cause one tank to be a must pick.

Not to say i don't want some uniqueness and upsides added to tanks, but I don't really think you can implement a system where skills like Shield bash are standout abilities on a job like PLD that would get you to consider it over other tanks, without it being a must pick skill.

[Carighan]

an just add things useful to tanks that would make them stand out in raids then actually implementing it, If you want to argue tanks can each have a unique importance then I would like to actually see examples rather then just hearing that it can be done, Shield bash being important would almost always require Paladin being mandatory in that fight because for shield bash to ever be useful it would have to be a situation where without it the raid wipes, wasting damage on a stun is not something FF14 is designed around.

I mean, it is useful in M6S to ensure that the tank can triple-stun the Jabberwocky, which especially when still progging the fight makes that part easier.

Did it result in no non-PLDs being assigned MT? No, of course not. But at the same time, it's not like it did not have a unique use that the other tanks could not replicate.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I mean, it is useful in M6S to ensure that the tank can triple-stun the Jabberwocky, which especially when still progging the fight makes that part easier.

Did it result in no non-PLDs being assigned MT? No, of course not. But at the same time, it's not like it did not have a unique use that the other tanks could not replicate.

i am genuinely doubting how much of a benefit it is to triplestun the Jabberwock with the Paladin using Shield Bash (6s, 3s, 1.5s -> 10.5s total, -0.25s if you use Low Blow as the last one) vs just using stronger GCD damage to help DPS down the Jabberwock & Mus and using the Melee DPS' Legsweeps instead. With 1x Low Blow and 2x Leg Sweep you'd have 7.25s total stun time (5s -> 1.5s -> 0.75s), which is still plenty if your DPS players aren't asleep, which they shouldnt be because it's a Savage fight.

[Carighan]

i am genuinely doubting how much of a benefit it is to triplestun the Jabberwock with the Paladin using Shield Bash (6s, 3s, 1.5s -> 10.5s total, -0.25s if you use Low Blow as the last one) vs just using stronger GCD damage to help DPS down the Jabberwock & Mus and using the Melee DPS' Legsweeps instead. With 1x Low Blow and 2x Leg Sweep you'd have 7.25s total stun time (5s -> 1.5s -> 0.75s), which is still plenty if your DPS players aren't asleep, which they shouldnt be because it's a Savage fight.

Yeah of course. I didn't say it's very useful, but between being able to near-freely stop casts in dungeons and even something like M6S, it's not like it has no uses. That's also an important thing, anyways: People forget that large swathes of the population are not savage raiders. People cap out at roulette dungeons. Balancing and designing for savage/extreme/ultimate fights only (content designed in a way you could readily critique as being badly designed, anyways!) is not really a smart idea.

That is to say: Maybe fight design ought to change first, and only then classes should get looked at in contrast against this new - hopefully improved, though it'll be nearly impossible to not achieve that even if you did random changes - design.

[PyurBlue]

Problem is Shield bash will never be helpful enough as a GCD action that is a damage loss, unlike clemency which can be flexible for prog situations (though is still a niche skill), a gcd stun action would require such specific fight design where it's either required or not that useful.

In an all out DPS fight it's hard to make GCD utility appealing, but it's easier if there are elements outside of raw DPS. Interactions with the environment or enemies that gain additional status from stuns are an example. Making these elements random prevents the stun from being a necessity as you won't have anyway of knowing if you would need it over WAR knockback immunity or TBN shielding status effects, as examples.

That's a lot of fun, of course It's really difficult to design every fight like that because it would reach levels where people would complain about it being too difficult

My view is that the reliance on memorization gameplay is one of the biggest factors making difficulty balancing hard in FF14. Fights range from difficult to impossible when blind and become trivial to somewhat engaging after enough times. If combat was changed to be less predictable, the difficulty curve versus player experience could be flattened and there wouldn't be an optimal composition that you could work out and promote over all other combinations.

If fights were designed more around tank kits, protecting allies ect. It would be more fun that way but I don't really see SE moving towards that direction especially for casual content, I see adding more dps complexity as the next best thing, though I'd love to feel like a actual team protector as a tank.

This is where we're looking at this differently. It's easier for SE to keep gameplay as it is and tweak rotations, so you might call that the realistic option. A combat overhaul is more work and it raises the question of what happens to old content. While it's less likely to happen I think it's a much better solution so I want to push SE in that direction. There is no wrong answer but different ways of finding a solution.

It's also easy to say balance tanks around having unique traits but actually implementing fun and interesting utility (like shield bash) being useful in practice is very difficult task, How would you envision tanks having unique mechs? is my question what would all 4 tanks do that's unique and different but doesn't cause one tank to be a must pick.

We had less homogenization in the past, and there are a few underutilized gameplay elements in the game already. The balancing issue is due in part to scripted fights like I said before, so that shouldn't be unsolvable. A full list of tank traits/mechanics would need to be planned out carefully but some quick examples would be PLD cover, WAR immunity under IR, shields blocking status effects, physically placing your shield down as PLD for a defensive benefit, Holmgang's bind, GNB using aether cartridges to change enemy aspects and apply status to them. Most of those exist in the game already but aren't meaningfully used, and when they are used it's usually in a very specific situation that can be memorized ahead of time. Something that I'd like along with randomized encounters is variable burst windows, by which I mean situations where it's more beneficial to hold burst for a specific situation than to use it on a fixed timer. It would remove the pressure to use skills like IR as soon as possible and leave them available for more strategic use.