Think Dark Knight will have any HP-sacrificing abilities, for Solo or Off-tank roles?

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Yeah, because the healing factor of IB for WAR back in 2.0 worked so well.

Any sort of ability that requires you to take damage first in order to regain said HP is a bad tank ability to begin with. Reactive abilities in tanking is terrible and never works.

Also, DRK was always a DPS. You could get away with HP sac abilities as a DPS, but not as a tank. If there is such an ability on DRK as a tank, they will already be worse off than the other roles and SE will have learned nothing from the whole WAR debacle of 2.0. (Which wouldn't surprise me).

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Not necessarily. Its perfectly fine to sacrifice a bit of "tankiness" for a bit "DPS" as long as they still have enough "tankiness" that isn't too "complicated". One of the problems is that hardcore raiders tend choose the least complicated setup even its not the most optimal.

Reactive abilities are a great idea especially if they offer higher rewards. Defensive CD are used reactively already, WAR is just far more strict than PLD but isn't anymore rewarding, which is the biggest issue between the tank jobs right now. The problem with the old IB is that this game relies too much on surviving single hard hits and the old IB does almost nothing against that. Anything that isn't single hard hits relied almost entirely on the healer rather than the tank.

I don't have problems with them trying out new things and then changing it if it doesn't work. I don't really have issues with how they did the WAR issue, I much rather have them try new things and change it if it doesn't work than have them just use things that they know works and end up making all tanks too similar.

How about Sacrificing Life to gain mana and damage reduction?

Skill, off GCD:
Reduces max health by 25%, can restore up to 50% mana. You gain damage reduction based off mana restored.

Buff:
Reduces max health by 1% every 3 seconds. Restores 1.5% mana for every art used.



These would be cool abilities.

I don't want to just copy Warrior as the lifetap tank. DRKs should be Manatap tanks.

When a DRK's health goes below 0, they do not die and instead take mana damage.

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Originally Posted by PenutButter

One of the problems is that hardcore raiders tend choose the least complicated setup even its not the most optimal.

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is the other way around .... hardcore raiders go for optimal setup over anything , even if that means going 4 of the same job ...or 1 tank and risk wiping until they got it right

and drk isnt going to sacrifice hp to get the same benefict pld and war get w/o going low hp

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Yeah, because the healing factor of IB for WAR back in 2.0 worked so well.

Any sort of ability that requires you to take damage first in order to regain said HP is a bad tank ability to begin with. Reactive abilities in tanking is terrible and never works.

Also, DRK was always a DPS. You could get away with HP sac abilities as a DPS, but not as a tank. If there is such an ability on DRK as a tank, they will already be worse off than the other roles and SE will have learned nothing from the whole WAR debacle of 2.0. (Which wouldn't surprise me).

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Worked (and still works, as more spells were Just added in recently) in the first 3d MMO, Everquest. If 989/Verant/SOE/Daybreak can figure it out. I'm sure SE can.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=357
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=4062
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=2892
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=5333
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=10285
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=15178
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=19331
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=25607
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=25629
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=28693
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=28721
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=34720
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=34739
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=43646

In EQ's raids, its much worse about tanks being one or two-rounded down than in FF. So HP decreasing abilities can be dangerous. However the benefits outweigh the costs and that's what makes them viable. As for the tanking thing.. SKs have had those abilities.. as you can for 16 years. For all of 16 years they have been tanks. They've been modeled after the original DK concepts.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Worked (and still works, as more spells were Just added in recently) in the first 3d MMO, Everquest. If 989/Verant/SOE/Daybreak can figure it out. I'm sure SE can.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=357
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=4062
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=2892
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=5333
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=10285
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=15178
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=19331
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=25607
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=25629
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=28693
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=28721
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=34720
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=34739
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...ml?spell=43646

In EQ's raids, its much worse about tanks being one or two-rounded down than in FF. So HP decreasing abilities can be dangerous. However the benefits outweigh the costs and that's what makes them viable. As for the tanking thing.. SKs have had those abilities.. as you can for 16 years. For all of 16 years they have been tanks. They've been modeled after the original DK concepts.

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http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Reaver
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Lich

Don't forget these!

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Originally Posted by Kaze3434

or you know, people could not be giving information out. just a thought.

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True, though in the past concerning video games, long silence usually indicates trouble. They could be saving it up for one big announcement, but I'm usually pessimistic in general so don't mind me. :p let's keep speculating until we get some info. Nothing else to do but bitch about RMT, showing vanities, and the like.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Reaver
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Lich

Don't forget these!

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Those were from EQ2 :p

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Those were from EQ2 :p

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I know but they are cool!

Lich would be the perfect tank stance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

True, though in the past concerning video games, long silence usually indicates trouble. They could be saving it up for one big announcement, but I'm usually pessimistic in general so don't mind me. :p let's keep speculating until we get some info. Nothing else to do but bitch about RMT, showing vanities, and the like.

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we get new info often, we got some when benchmark released a couple weeks ago, and are getting some more this week during the live letter

Um, one thing people are missing about EQ1 and EQ2's design for Shadowknights is that classes were given a very "all around" purpose.
Most fights only required a single tank, maybe some off tanks to handle adds. EQ1 especially had a habit of giving out spells like candy, eventually reaching a very real issue of spellbooks being too full, more than 10 years ago.
Then after they found their feet, they found that there was a need for the tank classes to have some damage versatility due to the damage sponge nature of bosses.
XIV doesn't have this issue. It's a much more focused game that builds towards a role. Sacrificing HP to deal damage would be suicidal, though sacrificing MAXIMUM HP, as sort of a reverse Defiance, IS possible.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Um, one thing people are missing about EQ1 and EQ2's design for Shadowknights is that classes were given a very "all around" purpose.
Most fights only required a single tank, maybe some off tanks to handle adds. EQ1 especially had a habit of giving out spells like candy, eventually reaching a very real issue of spellbooks being too full, more than 10 years ago.
Then after they found their feet, they found that there was a need for the tank classes to have some damage versatility due to the damage sponge nature of bosses.
XIV doesn't have this issue. It's a much more focused game that builds towards a role. Sacrificing HP to deal damage would be suicidal, though sacrificing MAXIMUM HP, as sort of a reverse Defiance, IS possible.

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Sacrificing health would be worse then sacrificing max HP. Much MUCH worse. This coming from a healer. I would much rather have a tank sacrificing their HP when they were topped off then lowering it completely. Depending on the situation.

Of course, I wouldn't do it for hurr durr more dps, but for other reasons.

Sacrifice 25% of total life to give yourself 30 seconds of regeneration. (Mana and Health!)
This would be an amazing ability for a tank, not only does it increase your threat a ton, it also helps your overall sustain through the fight and you have to be careful how you use it.
Sacrifice 50% of your total life to increase your damage reduction by 75% for a duration.
This would be an amazing ability for a smart tank, imagine if you have 10% of your life left. It would only take 5% of your life to cast it and when your healer uses a big heal you have a large amount of damage reduction for literally nothing. Of course if you used this at 100% health it would take 50% of your life to cast.


Lowering your max health though? That is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE, bad. You want as much max health as possible.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Worked

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Except that SK excelled in solo/duo play. Warrior was better in larger group content which is what 14 is balanced around. Two different overall concepts, though the same rule applies to raiding, which is the core of 14.

Passive mitigation will always be better in a progression raid setting then reactive abilities that require you to take damage to act. This is why 2.0 WAR sucked. 3k inner beast heals were awesome, but it doesn't help when the mountain buster that hits for 2k already killed you. Meanwhile, PLD just popped his cooldowns and can eat it with no issues.

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Lowering your max health though? That is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE, bad. You want as much max health as possible.

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I'm actually opposed to giving ANY class ANY ability that futzes with their own HP. Convert and Blood For Blood cause enough problems.
Yes, you want as much HP as possible, but tanks already have more HP than they need in nearly every fight except t13.
Letting them tick their own HP down with an ability like the ones in EQ1 and 2 example just creates more work for the healers, since that WILL kill them if not attended to (many Shadowknight guides say "Never ever use this ability except under such and such circumstances". An ability similar to cleric stance that swaps VIT and STR would merely put them at the same level as the melee DPS, which is what they would be doing anyway. But this won't likely happen.
Again, I don't think anything that messes with HP is a good idea for a tank class at all. There's a reason the only abilities that let you sacrifice survivability for damage are exclusive to DPS classes. It took a VERY long time for SKs in EQ1 to be taken seriously as legitimate tanks in part because of those spells. Fortunately for SKs, though, they eventually got the tools they needed. And in EQ2, EVERY class got abilities that let them fill multiple roles (Fighters were Tanks and DPS, Priests were Heals, Damage, and Support, Scouts and Mages were Damage and Support. The newer Channelers and Beastlords were a bit different.)

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Except that SK excelled in solo/duo play. Warrior was better in larger group content which is what 14 is balanced around. Two different overall concepts, though the same rule applies to raiding, which is the core of 14.

Passive mitigation will always be better in a progression raid setting then reactive abilities that require you to take damage to act. This is why 2.0 WAR sucked. 3k inner beast heals were awesome, but it doesn't help when the mountain buster that hits for 2k already killed you. Meanwhile, PLD just popped his cooldowns and can eat it with no issues.

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

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Preach on.
SKs in EQ2 were...interesting...to say the least.

This was done in FFXI to boost the damage done by Dark Knight. However it can bring Hp down to a point where you're dead really fast, or you are unable to drain enough hp back to make certain ability combos into weapon skills survivable. Especially if there's an random aoe around the corner. For a tank, giving up hp to increase attack or feed abilities is suicidal. Dark Knight would be better off as a DPS if that were the case. If what I read in Reddit was any true about a Japanese Q&A. They looked at trying something similar to FFXI with making Dark Hp based and like FFXI it cant tank any better than Dragoon.

So if it is true that Dark Knight is said to be MP based and mitigating damage and boosting damage/enmity is based on MP consumption. It'll leave a pool of Hp for staying alive like the other tanks. However I still can't comprehend gear (current tank sets) and stat allocations. Since it also had a comment about being a different kind of tank and recommending to save up on Piety materia. Especially since only the high level craft gear can have materia melds. If that darkness aura buff does magical damage wouldn't that be modified by int? Right now I'm waiting for the next live letter to hopefully clear some things up about it. However if it's true and based on Mp. Then I can see it having Hp in the middle of War and Pld. Then a tank stance would reduce HP to Pld levels to boost Mp to surpass a Paladins MP pool.

Let's be honest here, the upcoming job is only a Dark Knight in name alone. They probably could have called it something else and people would be all excited about the job rather than bemoaning the loss of Darkness or other HP-sacrificing skills. And in my opinion that's what they should have done. After all, we have Machinist and Astrologian, neither of which really have much of a precedent in previous games (I think tactics is the only other place they show up).

I've come to call them Dark Paladins, since the name fits closer than Dark Knight. Still, we'll see how well they fit the moniker Dark Knight when they're finally playable. I anticipate disappointment and excitement in roughly equal quantities, but at this point I'm levelling every job just so I can draw solid conclusions.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

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So don't use it before a mountain buster? Sorry but you're going to be hard to convince me its going to be impossible to balance when many games before FFXIV have had similar mechanics and those tamks did just fine.

Believe me, I don't see it as a class defining ability. But I don't see how its impossible either.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

So don't use it before a mountain buster? Sorry but you're going to be hard to convince me its going to be impossible to balance when many games before FFXIV have had similar mechanics and those tamks did just fine.

Believe me, I don't see it as a class defining ability. But I don't see how its impossible either.

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You assume every boss is going to be a scripted exercise like titan, which has already been confirmed to not be the case in the coming expansion. What do you propose, sitting on tank defining abilities while trying to forsee the next tank buster ability? That makes for good game play right there...

As mentioned in my earlier post, "just fine" is subjective. SK were worse than warriors. 2.0 WAR was worse than PLD. Full reaver in Rift was worse than Paladin or even a Champ in anything but adds. Ice tank or go home in DC universe.

Could they do it? Sure. If you wanted your healers to rip their hair out in the process.

All of those mentioned tanks worked on passive defense and cooldowns. Their leeching counterparts were always the weaker link due to poor game design, and use of bloated reactive abilities. The very nature of sacrifing/leeching hp -as a tank- makes no sense and would either be extremely broken, or under whelming. Blood DK (A self healing tank for those not in the know) in WoW is a perfect example of this. The class is either too good compared to the other tanks, or the worst of the lot.

Again, hard to heal yourself when you're dead because RNGesus.

the self sacrifice thing is just one of the several dark knight themes that have appeared throughout final fantasy

utilizing darkness as a weapon has probably been the only real connecting thread across them all. Even in ffxi it was soul eater was using darkness to do more damage but it would hurt it's wielder as well being dark evil uncontrollable power and all
Always being a heavily armored figure that tends towards a large weapon instead of a defensive one is a common theme as well
Being magically capable is a reoccurring theme
draining the enemies life force and sapping their strength is a common thread as well

final fantasy doesn't really have a lot of tanky classes if you really think about it. Samurai/dragoon/magic knight have always been kind of paper tigers, ninja was only a tank in FFXI by accident
fighter, paladin, warrior, viking, gladiator, templar, etc are all kind of accounted for in what we already have

dark knights have always been kind of tanky for what they were and the game is sorely in need of tanks so it makes sense to use them and having a tank that is kind of magical and saps the enemies strength and leeches it's health fits the game and fits dark knight well

There is also the issue of classes being tied to weapons.
It would be hard to have a hoplite tank that uses spears because dragoon already uses spears and lancer doesn't really have anything tank oriented about them

The only reason it works with summoner and scholar is because it was a class built from the ground up to be able to go either way which unfortunately pugilist, lancer, and rogue just aren't

I'd say just give it a little faith, The guy that designed it was able to turn a steaming pile of crap into one of the most successful MMO's out there. He is clearly way more skilled at designing these things than any of us and at least deserves that much until proven otherwise imo

I'm seriously against the idea of HP sacrifice in any notable way, particularly for tanking. Why? Because in the end of the day its going to fall on the healers, not the tanks to accommodate for the HP loss and many, particularly inexperienced, tanks will over use it and expect the healer to take up the slack.

Characteristics of a class should be the responsibility of that class, not someone else. That's why MP works and HP doesn't.

Further, there are balance issues. If healing sacrifice is offset by healers either the advantages of the sacrifice are effectively negated opening the potential for them to be overpowered or the advantages are the same as other tanks mitigation making DRK harder to heal leading them to be inferior to the other tanks who offer the same mitigation without the same level of pressure for the healer.

Simply put, having a HP sacrifice mechanic in any meaningful way is a bad idea.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

I'd say just give it a little faith, The guy that designed it was able to turn a steaming pile of crap into one of the most successful MMO's out there. He is clearly way more skilled at designing these things than any of us and at least deserves that much until proven otherwise imo

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The same guy who told the audience of TGS in 2013 that WAR was "strong", then (begrudgingly) gave in and fixed them. He also said that DRG was fine and did not need any buffs, that was also (begrudgingly) fixed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the guy turning a once dead game into something that pulled SE out of the brink of bankruptcy, but his balancing process needs quite a bit of work. They need to get this right the first time, otherwise we're stuck with another release scenario where the other tank classes are better, we get told DRK is "fine", then he doesn't get touched until months later.

It doesn't matter what supposidly fits the class or what the theme was in previous FF games; that may or may not work in this game. DRK was always a DPS class. Health sacrificing abilities would work on a DPS class that is not supposed to be taking damage anyway. DRK is now a tank though, that train of thoughtis counter intuitive on a archetype that is meant to keep their health in order to protect the group.

What is a more common sense approach to this change for the Dark Knight? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that DRK will be a more "let me steal your powers (debuff you, buff me/group)" type tank instead of the traditional DRK we have seen in previous FF games. Of course, it will come with a long CD cooldown, and a semi-short tank buster mitigation like the other two tanks.

They'll also end up being the new add tanks instead of WAR. Calling it now.

I think folks are WAAAAAAY too paranoid about the supposed disaster that would come from an ability that costs a tank MP. As long as a tank is smart about using it, even an ability that cost a quarter of a tank's HP would be easily smoothed over by a healer, to the point where they wouldn't even NOTICE the tank had used an ability (and would just assume the mob critted, or something).

There are times when it's safe for a tank to take extra damage, and there are times when it is not. A good tank will recognize which is which, and use the self-harm ability appropriately. A bad tank may not, but it's not as though a bad tank isn't going to find other ways to fail anyways.

Consider this for an ability: Souleater: Consumes 5% of max HP to deal unaspected magic damage with a potency of 150 to all enemies within range. Additionall effect: Increased Enmity. Recast: 120 seconds.

On an endgame tank with 10000ish HP, 5% is 500 HP. An extra 500 HP of damage at most every two minutes? Healers won't even NOTICE. This sort of ability would be in keeping with the style of Dark Knight and still useful to a tank without being disastrous to the party.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Snip

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No. Just...stop. That whole argument makes no sense and any half decent healer in progression content will rage at this comment.

The whole thought process is just...bad. You do not take unnecessary damage as a tank. That's basically right below the rule on keeping threat in the tank handbook.

This just makes my head hurt at this point.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...c/FACEPALM.png

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Originally Posted by Asierid

No. Just...stop. That whole argument makes no sense and any half decent healer in progression content will rage at this comment.

The whole thought process is just...bad. You do not take unnecessary damage as a tank. That's basically right below the rule on keeping threat in the tank handbook.

This just makes my head hurt at this point.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...c/FACEPALM.png

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So what if a tank sacrificed 25% of his current HP to give himself a barrier effect for double the amount? Suddenly you have an HP sacrifice that increases his survivability. HP sacrificing could easily be made to work for a tank, it just needs a little creativity which sadly many people find too difficult.

For further examples:

- The tank can sac HP to debuff all nearby targets so they do less damage.
- The tank can sac all but 1HP to make himself invulnerable for a time.
- The tank can have a DPS stance much like PLDs do that sacs max HP to increase their damage.

It's really not hard to come up with ways to make this work that actually benefit their tanking ability. Anyone saying it can't work just has zero imagination.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

Wat

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Do you not even see the amount of imbalance that brings?

That ability would give a shield for 5k in the current gear set, on top of stoneskin and SCH bubbles. Naw. Not broken at all. Why make him take damage then? Let's just let the tank completely bypass the big skills in this game.

Invuln by sacing HP? Not broken at all.

The DPS stance I get, but that just adds useless skill bloat that we already have enough of.

Imagination and creativity has nothing to do with what actually works in reality. Hell, a double decker bus with a pool and a few stripper poles near the sports bar sounds great, now try making that a reality with the amount of restrictions in place. You do have to balance these things, that's the part I think you're not getting. It can work, but it results in a second rate tank (or a severely overpowered tank). This is already apparent in the many other games that have it implemented...and it fails every time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alberel

So what if a tank sacrificed 25% of his current HP to give himself a barrier effect for double the amount? Suddenly you have an HP sacrifice that increases his survivability. HP sacrificing could easily be made to work for a tank, it just needs a little creativity which sadly many people find too difficult.

For further examples:

- The tank can sac HP to debuff all nearby targets so they do less damage.
- The tank can sac all but 1HP to make himself invulnerable for a time.
- The tank can have a DPS stance much like PLDs do that sacs max HP to increase their damage.

It's really not hard to come up with ways to make this work that actually benefit their tanking ability. Anyone saying it can't work just has zero imagination.

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There is a difference between something working and something working well.

Because A) the repercussions of the DKs use of HP falls on the healers to cover not the tank making healers jobs harder and B) Either the HP loss is offset by the value of the Mitigation or ability or the abilities are inferior to other tanks who don't require HP lose for Mitigation. Further, if the value of the Mitigation/ability is superior to other tanks it will be exploited because of the reliance on healers to counter the negative repositions. Its a balance mess.

Additionally it will make new DRK even more prone to messing up. I can see healers hating to heal DRKs in DF because of dumb tanks overusing the HP sacrifice making the healers job unnecessarily difficult.

HP sacrifice strikes me as a very bad idea. Resource management for a tank should be managed by the tank, not the healer. That's why MP works and HP doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

There is a difference between something working and something working well.

Because A) the repercussions of the DKs use of HP falls on the healers to cover not the tank making healers jobs harder and B) Either the HP loss is offset by the value of the Mitigation or ability or the abilities are inferior to other tanks who don't require HP lose for Mitigation. Further, if the value of the Mitigation/ability is superior to other tanks it will be exploited because of the reliance on healers to counter the negative repositions. Its a balance mess.

Additionally it will make new DRK even more prone to messing up. I can see healers hating to heal DRKs in DF because of dumb tanks overusing the HP sacrifice making the healers job unnecessarily difficult.

HP sacrifice strikes me as a very bad idea. Resource management for a tank should be managed by the tank, not the healer. That's why MP works and HP doesn't.

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How does it make the healer's job harder to heal a small amount up front and have to heal less overall as a result? If the tank sacs 25% HP to give himself a 50% HP barrier that means the tank has effectively taken 25% less damage for the duration of the barrier and their HP remains static whilst the barrier is up giving healers plenty of time to heal back the 25% they sacced. That means LESS work for the healers! You're really not thinking this through...

As for balance concerns: you seem to be missing the part where their mitigation effects would be considerably more powerful to compensate for the health loss, with the net mitigation as a result being roughly the same. It would work just fine as it has worked in other games. Tanks with mechanics like these usually come paired with life draining abilities as well to allow them to recoup the HP they sacrificed themselves.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

HP sacrifice strikes me as a very bad idea. Resource management for a tank should be managed by the tank, not the healer. That's why MP works and HP doesn't.

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Tanks have LONG been required to carefully balance their own resources with the Healers' resources. This is not a new thing. Tanks need to space out their defensive cooldowns to keep healers from having to use expensive spike heals. Paladins need to ensure they have enough MP to power flash long enough to keep up with enmity generated by heals on large pulls. When bad tanks misuse their resources, the ones who suffer are the healers. Tank resources and Healer resources are closely entwined, and it's a mistake to believe otherwise.

For abilities that sacrifice HP, it comes down to balance: CAN healers handle the HP loss? If not, it's not an appropriate ability for the situation you are in. Not all content is endgame progression content. It's stupid for a Paladin to be using Shield Oath in most parts of endgame, but no one will claim that it's stupid for them to have that ability. They simply don't use it when it is not appropriate. The same goes for an HP sacrifice ability.

In the phrase, "An ability that sacrifices HP has no place on a tank," replace "HP" with "defense", and the statement makes just as much sense - and yet we DO have options for reducing tank defense on our current tanks. When we need defense, we don't use those options.

HP and defense are pretty much the same thing, when you boil them down: How many hits can I take until I die?

Dunno why we're bothering to argue with ignorance at this point. It's not going to be in the game anyway, for obvious reasons.

Just be glad the balancing team actually has common sense.

At least play a tank/healer in progression content before attempting to make sense of that "creativity".

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Dunno why we're bothering to argue with ignorance at this point. It's not going to be in the game anyway, for obvious reasons.

Just be glad the balancing team actually has common sense.

At least play a tank/healer in progression content before attempting to make sense of that "creativity".

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There's a live letter tomorrow, and among other things we will "Catch a glimpse of how the brand-new jobs will function in battle."

I wouldn't discount abilities that sacrifice HP, the job isn't going to be a bland mixture of stuff WAR and PLD already have with different animations. Sacrificing HP to be invulnerable would be broken because the other two tanks don't have an ability that makes them invulnerable? I would rather see an inverse cover ability myself, but that would lead to people refusing to play with DRKs in PUGs.

Sacrificing Health for offensive purposes isn't very good game design for a tank. However sacrificing health for defensive purposes, is the exact opposite. Depending on how they are made and used (wisely) they can be great fun and really add a lot to the game. Sure, it can bring more work to the healers if used improperly just like temp buffs. However if you manage them well it should have a good payout.

Here are some examples of it working well.

Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to grant yourself mana and health regeneration. (low cool-down.)
Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to gain 20% damage reduction for 10 seconds. (low cool-down.)

The benefit of sacrifice temps is that they have low cool-downs compared to their counterparts, however they run a higher risk.

So, unlike other tank classes you can keep your temps up forever. However you have to keep sacrificing your own life to do it. You also have to sacrifice your life to bring back your mana as well.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

So what if a tank sacrificed 25% of his current HP to give himself a barrier effect for double the amount? Suddenly you have an HP sacrifice that increases his survivability. HP sacrificing could easily be made to work for a tank, it just needs a little creativity which sadly many people find too difficult.

For further examples:

- The tank can sac HP to debuff all nearby targets so they do less damage.
- The tank can sac all but 1HP to make himself invulnerable for a time.
- The tank can have a DPS stance much like PLDs do that sacs max HP to increase their damage.

It's really not hard to come up with ways to make this work that actually benefit their tanking ability. Anyone saying it can't work just has zero imagination.

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It is not a problem of imagination, but mechanical viability.

Sac 25% hp to generate a 50% hp barrier makes the user immune to damage if attackers cannot inflict more damage than the barrier can take in the time it takes to recover 25% and reapply the barrier, barely balanced if the attackers do equal to or slightly more than the barrier can take, and only slightly delaying the inevitable if the the attackers can deal more than enough to break the barrier.

Sac hp to debuff target only works if the amount of damage mitigated during the debuff's uptime is greater than the amount of hp sacrificed.

Sac all but 1 hp for a Hallowed Ground effect is semi viable but misuse would cause healers problems and might even cause the user's death because the buff mitigated less than it cost to use it.

A maxHp reducing damage up stance might work, but to be most effective it would require that the class' default(i.e. without a stance up) state have level 40+ tank enmity generation rates.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Sacrificing Health for offensive purposes isn't very good game design for a tank. However sacrificing health for defensive purposes, is the exact opposite. Depending on how they are made and used (wisely) they can be great fun and really add a lot to the game. Sure, it can bring more work to the healers if used improperly just like temp buffs. However if you manage them well it should have a good payout.

Here are some examples of it working well.
Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to grant yourself mana and health regeneration. (low cool-down.)
Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to gain 20% damage reduction for 10 seconds. (low cool-down.)

The benefit of sacrifice temps is that they have low cool-downs compared to their counterparts, however they run a higher risk.

So, unlike other tank classes you can keep your temps up forever. However you have to keep sacrificing your own life to do it. You also have to sacrifice your life to bring back your mana as well.

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The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

The issue with the idea is basically a balance thing.
Your either going to have mitigation that is on par with warrior and paladin in which case dark knight is clearly inferior because they're hurting themselves for no real advantage
Or they're going to have superior mitigation because of the self damage portion of it and all of a sudden every skilled tank has to be a dark knight because as soon as you learn to deal with the sacrifice portion you are left with a clearly superior tank.
It's a bad situation for general game health either way

The only thing I could see with dark knight which is especially easy because they have no class to level up first is making soul eater basically be a reverse warrior tank stance.
Their natural state could be the tanky form and the buff could be -max hp/-threat/+damage just for thematic reasons

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Originally Posted by Nihility

The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

The issue with the idea is basically a balance thing.
Your either going to have mitigation that is on par with warrior and paladin in which case dark knight is clearly inferior because they're hurting themselves for no real advantage
Or they're going to have superior mitigation because of the self damage portion of it and all of a sudden every skilled tank has to be a dark knight because as soon as you learn to deal with the sacrifice portion you are left with a clearly superior tank.
It's a bad situation for general game health either way

The only thing I could see with dark knight which is especially easy because they have no class to level up first is making soul eater basically be a reverse warrior tank stance.
Their natural state could be the tanky form and the buff could be -max hp/-threat/+damage just for thematic reasons

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First of all: I understand where you might be coming from... but

- This is an advanced Job class. Unless you have completed 2.55 you cannot play it. Inexperienced players cannot play the job anyways.

- Sacrifice has its ups and downs, its not superior nore inferior. If you screw up you can wipe the group, just like any other tank temps.

- I play a healer, I have no problem with such mechanics because I have dealt with them in Everquest 1 and 2. Its not as grim as you say it is. In those games the tanks have sacrifice abilities and take even MORE damage to most content, go figure. If you have a problem with it as a healer, don't play with tanks like that.

- It is also "Trollish" to leave a que after you join. So your point to that is invalid, seeing as tanks can already troll groups.

As explained above, you are hurting yourself to gain an advantage. If your being hit for 5k and you sacrificed 5k health so the mob hits you for 2.5k 3-5 times then that is already 7500 to 10000 damage mitigated. However if you use it at a bad time it can kill you.

If you were at low health already, and sacrificed 50% of your health (if your low, you have low health anyways) and then a healer popped his big heal which happens frequently now your capped off with a high amount of damage reduction for sacrificial cost. If you were gonna be hit at that low of health you would of died anyways.

If you sacrificed your health for a HOT mechanic that healed you for more, you could trade that at the start of the fight or when your topped off and you know the mob isn't going to hit you hard at the moment, thus a risky way to increase your sustain mid-fight.

YES.

IT.

DOES.

WORK.

However, we are seeing soon how the tank actually functions.

I think HP sacrificing can work with a tank however, it will most likely not be something that you would use frequently for your main tanking job.

What i would like to see would be a skill with a long CD similar to BLMs convert, that sacrifced HP to replenish MP. The idea would be that the tank would generally not make use of this unless its an emergency to get back ressources for his stronger defensive tools in long fights.

Another way would be to use HP sacrificing strictly for OTing to increase your dps, other tanks sacrifice their defense as well to increase their dps when they are not tanking, so i think thats not too foreign of an idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nihility

The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

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There is no difference in this regard between a class adjusted to be able to able to use lifetaps and still compete (assuming here that there is some tank-like benefit from the lifetaps / hp sacrifices) and a class that has none but the player isn't using his skills as much as he could. I still get blamed for a tank dying when has yet to pop a single CD in a speedrun-size pull. It doesn't take lifetaps for a person to become unhealable.

(
In other words, this:

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

- This is an advanced Job class. Unless you have completed 2.55 you cannot play it. Inexperienced players cannot play the job anyways..

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)

As long as the lifetaps are an actual tool, there is no innate imbalance in the concept either. It is a tool, like Inner Beast, that simply happens to have, among other things, a health cost (just as IB has a health restore). And like all other tools, it gives you control, which as a tank you tend to use to either affect the most incoming damage possible or simply to normalize damage taken. An ability that causes a small spike of its own in order to normalize spikes coming soon after (whether it does so through mitigation, mitigation through offensive bonus, or a HoT), just makes that latter role as apparent as possible.

To me the only real issue is making it effective on a non-tank (or rather a tank not currently tanking) for any real benefit.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

As mentioned in my earlier post, "just fine" is subjective. SK were worse than warriors.

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Warriors can't even dream to do the things that SK's can do in less than 72 man content. I highly doubt we'll see stuff that requires you to use paladin rotations (as in multiple paladins using their invulnerability buff because the boss will 2 shot even the highest hitpoint warrior). So no, we won't see raids in FF14 that require 9-12 paladins for a Hallowed Ground rotation. Won't even see anything above 24 man stuff.

As for the other games, you might want to run your patchers and see the changes. Some of those games you quoted have clothie tanks and other ridiculousness.

RNG is RNG. But its never enough to screw you over if you plan ahead. Just like you have to time when you get the most out of a mitigating ability. You have to time a hp sacrifice so it doesn't go off before a hard hit.. or better yet.. do it after the hard hit since you know another isn't due for a moment. I mean do you really think they are going to throw back to back mountain buster type attacks at us in the expansion? I don't.

Try thinking outside the box, perhaps a sac attack has ranged and a decent potency to it. Making it a pulling ability like tomahawk or shield throw. It doesn't have to be a precursor to a drain ability. Draining is probably going to be part of the class so its a moot point to argue the merits of it.

Would love to see DRK be something like how it is in Bravely Default.

Eat a tank buster witch gets you to 1 HP with a Holmgang like move -> Minus strike the boss for 9999 for a few times and for the last couple of seconds Bloodbath 1 last Minus strike and be back at full HP.

And with Souleater being an AOE that sacrifice 10% HP or so but again with a cross classed Bloodbath will get you up in seconds without even needing that healer cure.

Ofc this will basicly be your only way to actually do deeps and the rest just pure mitagation from that dark aura witch uses MP instead of HP.

And maybe if its not to much to ask, somekind off debuff witch makes the boss vulnerable for black arts aka DRK/BLM maybe even SMN.

Dark Knights originally dual wielded/used spears and could use white magic (FF2 and FF3), so they don't always have to be HP draining emo's.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

It is not a problem of imagination, but mechanical viability.

Sac 25% hp to generate a 50% hp barrier makes the user immune to damage if attackers cannot inflict more damage than the barrier can take in the time it takes to recover 25% and reapply the barrier, barely balanced if the attackers do equal to or slightly more than the barrier can take, and only slightly delaying the inevitable if the the attackers can deal more than enough to break the barrier.

Sac hp to debuff target only works if the amount of damage mitigated during the debuff's uptime is greater than the amount of hp sacrificed.

Sac all but 1 hp for a Hallowed Ground effect is semi viable but misuse would cause healers problems and might even cause the user's death because the buff mitigated less than it cost to use it.

A maxHp reducing damage up stance might work, but to be most effective it would require that the class' default(i.e. without a stance up) state have level 40+ tank enmity generation rates.

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The problems you're pointing out here apply to ALL of the tanks though. A PLD or WAR using their cooldowns at the wrong times can be just as much a liability for the healer. One potential tradeoff for the HP saccing would be to have considerably shorter cooldowns on those skills than their equivalents on other tanks as well. That way a DRK might have more freedom to use them with a self-inflicted penalty for misuse. Yes a bad DRK would be a problem but a bad PLD or WAR is also a problem so it makes no difference.

We're only arguing hypotheticals anyway since SE have said they don't want tanks saccing health because it "doesn't work" (despite other MMOs having them working fine). Sigh.

No HP sacrifice instead MP sacrifice. Let the emo dps cry.