Preventing homogenization in tank mitigation

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

GNB could have been an evasion and parry tank. I know people cringe at the sound of that but if the game had evolved in a different direction it could have worked, look at ninja in FFXI. It could have had moves that allow it to dodge 50% of the time, so rather than mitigating damage consistently it would just negate damage half the time. Abilities that allow it to force a parry, abilities that allow it to guarantee a dodge. Similar to WAR it would be a tank that focuses on keeping aggro and staying alive with the help of the support tanks like PLD and DRK.

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Blink could work in this game if it were applied to only few auto attacks at a time.. not the most amazing effect but at least it would add flavor and be extremely useful for post TB mitigation.

The problem is that tankbusters tend to be the only tank damage that actually matters. Abilities like Bulwark were historically poorly received because they just aren't reliable when the damage matters. You'd really only break even with a conventional %DR move if you have a multi-hit tankbuster like Phantom Flurry, because it converges on the expected value when you have a large number of hits.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The problem is that tankbusters tend to be the only tank damage that actually matters. Abilities like Bulwark were historically poorly received because they just aren't reliable when the damage matters. You'd really only break even with a conventional %DR move if you have a multi-hit tankbuster like Phantom Flurry, because it converges on the expected value when you have a large number of hits.

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That’s why I say the game would need to have evolved differently. Back in ARR before the WAR adjustment the only tankbuster in the game was twintania’s death sentence which was the only major stumbling block WAR was facing in the entire game and what lead to the adjustment to WAR having similar tools to PLD. That was the beginning of the end for unique tank mitigation. Every tank from now on was going to need that baseline kit of an invuln, 2 major mitigation tools and some fluff mitigation and in turn all encounters needed to be designed with that mitigation in mind, hence tank busters being the only real threat spread evenly enough for that baseline mitigation kit.

If they hadn’t overcompensated and just given WAR the holmgang adjustment so they could handle death sentence without dying while the PLD recharged the game could look much different now. Mitigation could have been more diverse, support mitigation could have become more prevalent earlier and encounter design could have been less rigid. % mitigation for consistent damage could have been played with and for the occasional tank buster WAR would have holmgang and GNB could force a dodge.

This is incredibly easy to rectify, and purely comes down to fight design. If you don't want invulns be the only form of tank mitigation that matters, then big hits just need to happen a lot more frequently. Every tank has a 25s recast mitigation tool? Great. Then make them use it. Twintania's Death Sentence hit once every 30 seconds. Want to use Hallowed? Sure. It's not going to be up for another 7 minutes. That's 13 tankbusters that you'll have to use some form of intelligent thought on.

Another way to do it is to force players to burn invulns on a specific attack, like Holy Scourge. Yet another is to ramp up boss damage into a soft enrage like Caduceus. The boss is auto/cleaving you for more than half health each hit? Try to invuln-swap your way out of that one.

Honestly, most of these issues could be sorted by hiring a fight designer who actually plays a tank job.