Did tanks really need more healing

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Originally Posted by Valence

Proactive is another word for "learn the scripted dance to a T" to me. I don't find this fun nor engaging personally, and that's probably why I don't play planned casters in challenging content. I like reactivity to surprises and adjusting to the unknown, so that specific part of the current tank toolkits is perfectly fine to my eyes, although encounter design doesn't play very well into it, or at least doesn't make the fullest out of it.

However I think that all tanks should be more or less aligned onto DRK when it comes to self sustain output (but not on self sustain identity!). Unlike the popular belief, DRK is far from lacking in self sustain (except comparatively to other tanks of course), as it still benefits from Abyssal (unfortunately tied to carve and spit now) and Living Dead (which is literally warrior mode, just not on a 25s cd). Mitigating and surviving as a DRK allows skill expression because using TBN and other mitigators, and then the self healing tools to recover from whatever damage went through, doesn't just require to press a button and watch one's HP pool go up to full. ShB WAR, while already borderline over the top, could truly benefit only from this for example when aligning their nascent onto their burst tools because the self heal was damage based (like in the old days of bloodbath, as it should be).

What they have done with tank self sustain is essentially nuking the skill ceiling and therefore, skill expression. Which has been a recurring trend with job and battle design with the devs.

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If you were not prepared for a tankbuster or raidwide, you made a mistake.
Reactive gameplay corrects those mistakes. Reactive gameplay makes it as such that there was never a mistake to begin with.
Basically, the entire playstyle War has been pushing just revolves around not caring about making mistakes, and fixing them because they don't matter anymore.
The only thing that's ever going to kill War are oneshots. But we don't have those. War has been leading the pack on awful game design for a good while now.
Because it's considered the golden standard, but a lot of people hate it and don't want their role lobotomised.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

In ARR through to Stormblood, there were larger numbers of tankbusters and fewer defensives. To work around this, you were incentivized to activate defensives early to reduce the effective recast and squeeze additional uses out of your defensive kit. For example...

The point is, the proactive, timing-based element of mitigation is what made the defensive gameplay around tanks more interesting historically.

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When fights are heavily scripted, what you've described is reactive gameplay: You're reacting to the time shown on a clock.

You're not demonstrating foresight or anticipating anything when the future is written in stone.

Playing by a strict mit schedule that you have preplanned using your encounter knowledge is more impressive, but using tank mitigation on response to tankbusters feels more ... emotionally imminent and thus more exciting.
Maybe it is an illusion of not being on a script, but sometimes an illusion makes it more fun.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

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By that definition, everything is reactive when playing a video game. You're reacting to visual and audio inputs. If you want more meaningful set of interpretations, then proactive gameplay means anticipating attacks, while reactive gameplay means compensating for being hit after the fact.

If you want a more topical example, look at Elden Ring. Interpreting visual tells to anticipate an attack and evade/parry is proactive. Consuming flasks after you've been hit is reactive. Elden Ring is designed to punish you for attempting the latter and reward you for the former. FFXIV tanking is designed to cater to the lowest common denominator, which is why you can take latter approach without penalty.

Been reading tank buster rework of tundra


Maybe we can take proactive style : Give tank 2 shared quick recast time mitigation abilities and have boss tank buster deal 2 type of damage randomly. Make boss pose a move that give a clue which type of damage it would deal[kinda like boss's perilous attack in sekiro] instead of put a giant red circle on the tank. The 2 mitigation abilities would reduce more damage if it match the type of the tank buster. Make it so that the tank buster won't kill tank if mitigation don't match in normal raids or normal contents but make it fatal in real end game like savage and ultimate.


Then make more 1 mitigation ability that got each tank identity and make it branch out to connect with other action like..Have DRK's parry proc a counter weaponskill. Have Pld's block proc counter attack ability, War's can sacrifice the extra hp got from thirll-like ability for gauge or serveral buffs.

The ARR style of tank swapping via indefinitely stacking debuffs was fundamentally more interesting then the current choreographed "Swap now or get one shot" model because it offered flexibility in when tanks swapped as well how they used their mitigations.

I would love if they returned a tankbuster style thay couldn’t be invuln cheesed and punished people for doing it incorrectly

Look at something like kaliyah from T11

He would bite the main tank then bite again, if one tank took both busters they would get eaten by kaliyah die and kaliyah would get a damage up for the rest of the fight

This design makes both tanks and healers not want to cheese it because both sides get punished for this (the tank dies, the OT takes more damage and the healers have to heal way more)

That or a buster like shadowkeeper where the buster is actually too long for one invuln to cover all 5 hits, the debuff just needs to hit through invuln

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Read quote below. Your response around 'proactive' gameplay has no bearing on my statements. You ought to consider the actual meaning of the word.

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I'm utterly confused what you're trying to say now.

You told me that you're not sure what game i've been playing and that everything is scripted. I simply pointed at that you're either making strawmen out of what I wrote or misunderstanding it completely.

It's pretty simple, really. How fights are designed is a completely different issue from how you execute your actions. You'll generally find that good players on all roles aren't just focused on what's happening currently. They know what's going to happen multiple GCDs ahead of time. On-demand burst healing as implemented on jobs like WAR rewards players who lack anticipation and foresight. That's what I mean by proactive vs. reactive gameplay. It looks like you saw a word that you didn't like and went off on an unrelated tangent.

It would be nice if more fights were designed with elaborate branches and animation tells instead of standard cast bars with predictable timings. But that's a discussion for another thread.

Multi-hit busters like T9 Bahamut's Favor provided a more forgiving learning environment to develop the kind of pre-planning skill the game wants from you. You could still get some benefit out of your mits if you used them after the hits started coming, but if you wanted to maximize the yield, you had to learn to track the boss's HP and anticipate the cast.