Source
r/ffxiv•
deepdrill

Tank tweaks.

[Discussion]

I've gotten WAR to 60, PLD to 51, and DRK to 34.

I've co-tanked with level a 60 PLD and a level 60 DRK in the extreme primals and dungeons.

At this point it is clear to everyone that WAR and PLD are a step ahead of DRK. That's not to say WAR and PLD are perfect -- they have their own minor issues that need tweaking.

Basedon my experience and that of my FC-mates over the weekend, I think these tweaks should be made.

Other tanks let me know your thoughts.

For WAR:

  • Add a new effect to defiance that grantes a chance (10-20%) on a parry to gain one wrath stack. This does 2 things: (1) makes parry more desireable, and (2) mitigates the damage loss from the wrath nerf by making IB and steel cyclone happen more often.

  • The other adjustment is to increase the duration of the storm's path debuff from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. This allows for the increase in skill useage to not offset debuff upkeep by too much.

  • Finally, because IB will be used more often as a result, the healing compnent of IB should be reduced from 100% of the damage to 50% of the damage and a threat modifier added.

For PLD:

  • Shield Swipe refreshes the duration of the rage of holone debuff.

  • Parry stat also increases block rate.

For DRK: (needs the most changes)

  • Add a 10% HP increase to grit stance and chance (10-20%) on parry to regenerate 5% MP. This should help give breathing room to healers to offset their squishiness and help reduce reliance on MP restoration combos and open up more emnity and dps combos.

  • Allow blood weapon to be used in grit, when used without grit the attack speed bonus is increased (15-20%). This will stop DRKs from getting gibed when dropping grit to access this skill.

  • Reduce Reprisal's initial cooldown to 30 seconds and the trait to 15 seconds. It cannot be stacked with a WAR's storms path. Reduce the potency from 210 to 180.

  • Add blunt damage vulnerability (cannot stack with dragon kick) to Dellerium. This allows for more DPS from a monk if one is in the party.

  • Reduce the cooldown on Shadow Wall from 180 seconds to 120 seconds.

Edits: formatting

Posted Jun 22, 2015, 10:20 PM UTC · edited

021
Admiral_Burrito[Balmung]•

For PLD:

  • Shield Swipe is now an off-GCD ability, potency is reduced for balance reasons, pacification debuff remains intact

  • Shelltron now allowed to block the next attack, regardless if its magical or physical. (the trailer showed the PLD blocking a fireball, i wanna block a fireball *pout*)

5
deepdrillOP•

If they take shield swipe off the GCD it will need to have a 10-15 second cooldown to balance it.

Shelltron is insane as it is right now. It does not need to be buffed further.

Remember the point of the thread is to discuss tweaks to fix the holes the tanks have -- not make a great skill even better.

2
Admiral_Burrito[Balmung]•

I'd be totally okay with that, then they can keep the current potency/enmity-boost :)

1
FaldrynSolarisFaldryn Solaris on Leviathan•

Sheltron really is OP, unless the majority of tank busters are going to be magic damage now. PLD is in an amazing spot right now against physical bosses.

1
PROBABLY_BANGDark Falz on Cerberus•

Timing a Sheltron with an enemies attack before your GCD is up is what it's all about.

1
PavFeiraArdelina Feira on Hyperion•

Leveling PLD at 55, WAR at 50, DRK at 31. So, I've played with the toolset, but I haven't really done anything taxing enough to experience the "squishiness" first-hand.

I do love the idea of making Parry more desirable. From what I've been reading, it sounds like they hurt it further in 3.0, which is baffling when you consider what an underwhelming stat it was in 2.0.

At 55 at least, PLD seems in a really good place. The new tools are really rounding out the job and making the job feel more engaging. Obviously I haven't gotten to Extremes and compared myself against WARs and DRKs in that environment, but I'm not immediately feeling any need for PLD changes.

More health just makes a tank spikier, not less squishy. If we want to combat DRK's "squishiness" problem, I feel like they should be given more mitigation moves. Maybe tie mitigation to some of their existing moves, like how WAR has mitigation on Inner Beast.

MP management is DRK's whole shtick, so I definitely don't want to trivialize it. They get a 15% damage increase in Darkside (which should in theory have 100% uptime) to compensate for needing more MP restoring combos.

Blood Weapon is not designed for MT. That's the entire reason for requiring Grit to be dropped. When you were in 2.0, wearing Darklight gear and struggling against Titan HM, you weren't dropping Shield Oath or Defiance. That's the state of the game we're at right now.

I do like the idea of blunt damage vulnerability, to offset the overlap of two jobs that can apply INT debuff, but in terms of fluff text I'm not sure how you justify this. Piercing debuff is given by piercing jobs, and slashing debuff by slashing jobs. If DRK was to give a blunt debuff, they could... slap with the flat of their blade? idk

I like the latter points, though. They need a bit more utility to put them on par with the utility of the other tanks, and they need more forms of mitigation, whether that's cooldowns or reactionaries or w/e.

2
puresin996•

I like the shield swipe idea. At 60 with the new combos and emnity on it(shield swipe), halone use goes down and I'm finding the debuff fall off.

2
DragonRisingII•

I disagree with changing IB for WAR and making parry rates = block rates for PLD. The rest I agree with. DRK has always been my favorite job in FF, so I'm really disheartened to see it so useless right now

2
ScaydeScayde Rorosha on Cactaur•

Currently Leveling DRK @ 52.

I like the idea of parry to MP, doesn't need to be too strong though (5% is probably enough). The main thing is they need to fix the reliability of Reprisal. If it was possible to keep 100% uptime on it, I think that'd solve a lot of the squish complaints I see. That being said I'm still loving this class to death.

1
Arianwen75[Raina] [Flamesoul] on [Balmung]•

I have to say I've been reading a lot about how the community is regarding DRK over the past couple days. A lot of it seems quite negative. I have it at 54 myself and while I am loving the hell out of it's playstyle - I have to agree with most people that it feels quite a bit squishier.

I have tanked each of the first two dungeons a couple times and was MT for Ravana, and while I didn't really run into any issues with the class itself - it certainly was a bit harder to stay in the "not dead" range lol.

A lot of people are suggesting huge changes to the class - which it really doesn't need. It's a good solid class that just needs a nudge. I agree with most of your proposed changes to it. They don't change up the playstyle and don't seem overpowered.

  • A little bit extra HP would be nice, and getting that MP on a parry would really help out a bit. In a multi-enemy scenario, there's no mana problems at all. I can spam unleash to my hearts content and be stuck at max MP. But i was a bit more starved when fighting Ravana - So many situations where he'd stop and charge up an attack, and blood price went unused.

  • I don't think blood weapon needs to be used in grit. I would -like- it to, but I think the job can function without it. With the +5% mp on parry on grit, I think that would be just enough to keep me in the fight, and make our parry buff even more valuable.

  • Reprisal is a big skill that I'm worried about. it has the potential to be very OP if changed. However your changes are the least OP i've seen presented to it. Still make it OGCD, lower it's damage a bit, but I need to reliably get that buff up, and it feels like I proc reprisal often but never get to use it.

  • While I don't mind blunt damage being added to Delirum, I would like to see something that's a bit more beneficial. It would help monks, yes - but that's really it. I think that's why they may not of added the blunt damage to it - because it literally only helps them. Not much of 'raid utility' if it only helps one class. If they add blunt damage vulnerability to this skill - I certainly won't complain.. but I'd really rather something else be on it.

  • Completely agree with shadow wall.

1
notasinglenamegivenCornelia Sylvana on Gilgamesh•

WAR

I disagree with all of your WAR changes. All of them. WAR is good how it is right now, nerfing IB is a bad idea because it makes it less attractive to many, which it shouldn't be. WAR's trait is the ability to self heal a fuckton of HP, why mess with that?

Storm's Path is fine as it is. The 20 second duration is just enough to cycle it properly with maybe 1 or 2 seconds downtime.

And the Wrath for parry is just overall... no. I get it, everyone is on the parry hype at the moment but it's still RNG and parry is STILL a trash stat.

PLD

Parry and block are two different things. Your blockrate is determined by your shield and that should stay that way. Shield swipe refreshing RoH's debuff is just silly IMO.

1
Talderas[First] [Last] on [Server]•

I'm going to disagree with the shield swipe refreshing the rage of halone debuff. I think I know exactly where you're coming from with it. Once you have enough enmity, or enmity is not a concern, rage of halone is only useful for that debuff and rage of halone is the lowest damage option at our disposal. Giving shield swipe the ability to refresh that debuff seems like a natural way to increase your damage by relying on a single 210 potency attack rather than a three 203 average potency attacks compared to the 306.66 avg for goring or 230 avg for royal.

It's a DPS increase that, I'll be honest, PLD doesn't need. PLD is in a very nice place right now with the exception of divine veil's bug.

1
deepdrillOP•

I agree that PLD is in a very good place right now. I nearly cleared ravana ex last night (we were getting to divebombs consistently but didn't know how to position them). Servers went down and we watched some vids on the fight and saw the tank buster is share-able damage... we were having a PLD solo tank them.

After watching the videos and learning the timings, a PLD or WAR can fairly easily solo tank those busters. I am not so sure a DRK can.

1
Talderas[First] [Last] on [Server]•

What's your current gear? If I may ask. I just hit 60 last night so I haven't had much time to work on getting i170. I've only picked up the i170 sword/shield and upgraded that and that was primarily due to having a mildly tough time holding aggro against a very good i180 weapon drg and i170 weapon brd splitting dps targets while I was stuck with the sword from Vault. One thing I have noticed is that I am not at all impressed by the vitality on accessories. The scaling on vitality seemed to cut off sharply and I think last I checked I'd only get around 1.2 to 1.5 thousand hit points from ditching my i110 crafted and picking up higher item level fending. Don't get me wrong. I will pick them up because if I need the hitpoints I need those accessories but they're lower on my buy list right now. People have even suggested mixing slaying and fending of a high level and all I see there is at a 2-3 mix you'll still end up with less strength with barely any more vitality.

1
deepdrillOP•

I was the WAR in the group running i162 with i180 weapon and i180 pants.

Rest of my left side gear is i160 or i170. Accessories are all STR at i148 or i160 (have not bought i170 accessories yet, but plan to buy all the str ones and some of the vit ones).

PLD was full i170 left side, i180 weapon, and i170 right side vit with one i170 str ring.

Parsers were showing our nin at top DPS at 1k, everyone else at 900ish PLD at 300 WAR at 500.

For the record the vast majority of us were between i160 and i165. We are very under geared but still nearly managed to kill it. I am a little disappointed with how easy these EX primals are.

We cleared bismarc ex in 3-4 pulls and were getting ravana to divebombs in 2-3 attempts. Hopefully alexander is not going to be this easy.

1
Talderas[First] [Last] on [Server]•

I'm at work so I can't check myself, but i170 fending are about what? 40 vitality as an estimate? That would put him at 160 vitality making it only about 75 more vitality (~1,100 hit points) than what I would do with i110 crafted. Would you say that amount of hitpoints to be a significant factor?

I'm not sure whether to be more annoyed or pleased that the i110 crafted are still competitive.

1