Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Ever since the introduction of Ninja in FFXI, jobs such as PLD and WAR have lost favor with the FFXI community. PLD has suffered slightly and seen some rather attractive changes, yet Warrior is still left behind.

Many players now view Warrior as a pure damage dealer, yet when you look at the Artifact Armor and Relic Armor, SE's intent seems to state otherwise. There are +enmity stats on that gear, which would be intended to pull mob enmity onto a Warrior. Its pretty clear that tanking was intended to be part of a Warrior's role, yet many Warriors neglect to even use Provoke.

And job classes such as WHM, RDM, SMN have come to prefer Ninja, who can mitigate damage and PLD which have the ability to cure themselves. Warrior can emulate these approaches via support jobs such as /WHM and /NIN, but its doesn't match what a NIN and PLD can do. Even with the adjustments made to Samurai, it doesn't seem like Warriors want to tank or migrate to SAM from a NIN subjob. In fact, I can hardly find any information on player's experiences with WAR/SAM.

I personally enjoy WAR tanking more than doing so with PLD and NIN, but EXP PTs actively discourage it. Mages don't want to cure a Warrior tank when they can get a PLD or NIN.

Warrior aside, Ninja and Paladin are limited in the subjobs they can use in EXP PTs, its very much Warrior or nothing. Were they to have something like a native provoke ability, they would have the opportunity to explore other subjobs. The appeal to FFXI is, after all, to be able to make various combinations of race, main job and subjobs.

All the tanking classes seem to be painted into a corner that limits their full potential, so are there any plans to change this?

[eticket109]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

Nope, they're never going to look at those jobs again.

>.>

I still think they'll implement another tanking job at some point down the line.

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

Another Provoke type ability is needed, both on the melee and mage side(serious bout the mage one). A job like DRK or MNK that are built for either getting lots of enmity or can take a few hits should have a reliable ability to help tank to open up the number of jobs that CAN tank, at least just to open up subjob options for both NIN and PLD.

Mage side, if anyone is wondering, it's pretty easy to sea that while RDM and WHM get invites, BLM and SMN get neglected later on for parties. While BLM's have Manaburns, giving SMN's a decent +Enmity Blood Pact in the form of Ifrit/whatever would help open up more party options. Obviously this would require reworking how Perpetuation costs work and all, or the +Enmity Blood Pact MP cost would have to not be so great, but creating SMN burns would at the very least solve some of the problems SMN's and BLM's have in my current level range.

[neokaril]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

I would love to see an in depth answer to this, but I don't see it coming, it would be a spoiler of things to come. I do however look at WAR like I look at HUME, they are the middle ground, not a pure specialist, but an adequate in many, a jack of all trades on the melee side.
I think party construct and preference has become structured requirement, case in point the reluctance of parties to use COR instead of BARD, from what I have read COR can be as beneficial to a party when played to its potential, but is often frowned upon or overlooked simply because it isn't the established norm. It's my belief that any adjustments made to WAR to "specialize" it as DD or tank will actually move it away from its jack of all build, a build the class has had in every form I have played.

[Mhurron]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

They announced changes for all jobs. They have made changes to some. Is it really so hard to wait and see what's coming instead of asking a question that will never be answered?

[Omni]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

because some people just have way too much time and not enough patience.

[Timian]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

WARs are already excellent tanks. They don't need to be changed.
It's a job that can wear Koenig, wield Ridill, gets Defender and Provoke and still
stand completely free to chose a situational subjob.

As PLD I have no problem subbing /NIN in ToAU exp/merit parties.
Tanking is cakewalk in a TP Burn. No need for Provoke.
PLD/RDM works well too, with very little stress about holding hate.
So no, it's not "/WAR or nothing". Still, having a PLD Provoke ability would be "nice" by all means.

NIN/DRK, although certainly more suited for HNMs than meriting,
could still work in a regular party.
With correct gear, you should be staring at a 23 second Stun recast timer,
which is a better hate tool than Provoke.

What I'm getting at is, the Tanking Classes don't *need* to be changed.
We're good enough already. Any more pampering of the tanks would just
be icing on the cake, making it ridiculously easy to tank.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

I think party construct and preference has become structured requirement, case in point the reluctance of parties to use COR instead of BARD, from what I have read COR can be as beneficial to a party when played to its potential, but is often frowned upon or overlooked simply because it isn't the established norm. It's my belief that any adjustments made to WAR to "specialize" it as DD or tank will actually move it away from its jack of all build, a build the class has had in every form I have played.

COR isn't frowned upon, people just don't educate themselves about it. BRD was once like that, too. NAs took a LONG time to come around to realize what BRDs could bring to the table.

But honestly, I do like being the one support class that isn't constantly hounded to party when I'm not seeking, I had too much of that as BRD and RDM. But when I do put up the flag on COR, the invites still come.

I do want WAR to return to being a centered job, I don't want it to be DD only or tank only. I want it to be a weapons master who can shift between DD and tank as needed. Got plenty of potential on the DD side, wasted or not. Its tanking that's limited because the community forbids it in EXP PTs.

They announced changes for all jobs. They have made changes to some. Is it really so hard to wait and see what's coming instead of asking a question that will never be answered?

The adjustments were announced well over a year ago. They've already hit upon the ones they were giving WAR - /SAM and Tomahawk, in addition to merit abilities. They've done nothing in the way or resolving the issues of te job as a tank because even with /SAM out there, /NIN is still the dominant WAR subjob. Hell, some people never even level THF or MNK subs for it.

[Legal Fish]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

Another Provoke ability isn't needed for NIN and PLD.

Hell, there hardly needs to be a change for them in exp either. If anything, WHM should get a boost in the endurance area to keep up with RDM+BRD combos.

For the end-game, where shadows are just a bit too important, I can understand wanting a change. There, PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK are so strong, it is nearly broken.


I wouldn't mind a small nerf to shadows vs magic and PLD getting a new ability or two.

I made a "Changes to PvP" thread recently. In there details, what I would like for a Shadows nerf vs magic. Basically, if you didn't have the ninjetsu skill and INT for it, spells would take shadows equal to their tier. AM spells counted at tier 5 and 6 spells. A NIN would be able to drop this by 1 shadow practically nake, and perhaps drop it by 2 or 3 shadows if he put the effort/gear/merits into it. I would call it "giving magic its balls back".

Shadows will still remain king in reducing damage overall.



For PLD, they need an ability that drops the Weapon Damage of monsters. This way, defense actually has an effect. This is what they should of did with Sentinel instead of making it a mini-invincible. But whatever, giving them another one wouldn't hurt I guess.

Stalwart
Job Ability
Lv. 70 PLD
Recast: 5:00
Duration: 2:30

Reduces the weapon damage of monster(s) attacking the Paladin. The amount reduced is based on how great the difference is in level and damage. Requires a shield to be used. While this ability is in effect, physical damage% reduction effects from abilities/spells and equipment do not work.

Basically, if a monster has insane weapon damage(as most of them do), it'll reduce it a great amount. So let's say Tiamat has a weapon damage of 150... this makes Defense and VIT practically pointless... this ability will drop it to 75 or 80, where Defense/VIT will start to have a positive effect.

To balance this, I removed the ability to combo it with damage reduction.


One last thing for the PLDs:

Blind and Blind II have a new effect added on to them. Instead giving -Acc, they have a chance of making a monster completely miss an attack.

This attack must have not been countered or absorb by shadows(Blink and Ninjetsu). The chance for Blind would be like 10 to 15% based on INT. The chance for Blind II would be like 16 to 21% based on INT, with each merit increasing the cap by 1%(Maximum 25%).

Blind I wears away after three misses and Blind II wears away after four misses. The Blindness effect weakens if used constantly in a short amount of time.

[Karinya]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

I notice you don't mention BLU at all (either as a main or sub). +50% defense with no loss of attack not relevant to a discussion of tanking?

In large part I think it is plain old laziness that keeps people from trying to use the potential of WAR/SAM, BLU/WAR, WAR/BLU (maybe SAM/WAR too, especially with the +def riceballs). People don't want to try to develop new methods of tanking that work for those jobs when they can just invite two WAR/NINs and let them bounce hate back and forth and never get hit. And WARs and BLUs themselves don't want to bother keeping DD and tanking gear (and leveling the subjobs if they don't have them already). Plus, the ability to invite someone who is a DD and a tank in only one party slot is very tempting, for obvious reasons.

At levels below 74, being open to new tanking possibilities could let more parties get started - except there's only one new support possibility and it's ultra-rare. As long as there's at least as many ninjas as there are RDMs and BRDs, there's no reason to try something new unless it's even *more* powerful than blink tanking (which I think we can all agree would be a real problem).

Unless SE does something fairly drastic, like reducing both utsusemis when subbed to two shadows each, I don't think many people are going to be pried away from /NIN, because it really is very effective and very easy. It's pretty easy to make the case that /NIN is too good a subjob in too many situations, but it's been that way for years and they've done very little about it (a few tp moves might take more than one shadow - but still usually do no damage).

[little ninja]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

They announced changes for all jobs. They have made changes to some. Is it really so hard to wait and see what's coming instead of asking a question that will never be answered?

because some people just have way too much time and not enough patience.

Considering this game is as old as it is. What do you expect for topics nowadays. 3/4 of the topics have been brought up already more then twice.

As for the Nin/Drk combo. I've tried to test it out numerous times in Sky. I usually ended up getting D2'ed an forced to come back as a /war. So im kinda sad i never got to try it out. One of the sackholders told me it was because if poop hit the fan, i could bail them out.

I do find the title kinda silly . I mean to me it seems S.E has tried to make Pld the king of all tanks. They tweaked them a number of ways. They lessened the strength of blink tanking. I know Wars can tank. Its just that ive never seen them tank til Kirin.

[BurningPanther]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

S-E could easily discourage blink-tanking. They could completely reset hate every time a shadow was hit.

Just a thought. /endtangent

I believe WARs have all the tools they need to tank, we don't ever see it anymore simply due to laziness or overall unwilllingness. Some in my own LS have professed that to they did want to because they'd "have to go switch to defense gear" or then they'd "have to give up all the sweet damage" or they "just don't like getting hit." They know what to do, they know how to... they just don't want to.

[little ninja]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

S-E could easily discourage blink-tanking. They could completely reset hate every time a shadow was hit.
Just a thought. /endtangent
I believe WARs have all the tools they need to tank, we don't ever see it anymore simply due to laziness or overall unwilllingness. Some in my own LS have professed that to they did want to because they'd "have to go switch to defense gear" or then they'd "have to give up all the sweet damage" or they "just don't like getting hit." They know what to do, they know how to... they just don't want to.

Well i think S.E figured the attempts like AoE stripping all shadows an doing damage, Plus losing hate with each shadow stripped might weakin ninjas effectiveness. I can just imagine them hitting their head an saying "Doh" after each attempt.

All the wars in my LS are more worried about their damage then anything else. An when the poop hits the fan they usually scream. "OFMG im not a tank!!" Well atleast mine used too.

[BurningPanther]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

Well, S-E's attempts resulted in reducing hate with every shadow hit, not a complete hate reset. Again, it's nothing I'm asking for, but if S-E really wanted to kill blink-tanking, well... there ya go.

[Timian]

Re: Will there be any future adjustments for tanking jobs?

It would kill more than blink tanking...
Imagine if a DD/NIN pulls hate after a nice WS,
the mob/NM takes one swipe at him and *boom* hate resets...

Tanking in general would become impossible...