Let's talk about Holmgang, is it stronger, as strong, or...

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

We are.

A shorter CD is typically better due to pure availability. Going back to Godka because it epitomizes how absurdly valuable Holmgang is. You can ignore three casts of Ultimate Embrace, a massive tank buster that must otherwise be split between both tanks who will tank upwards of 40,000+ each that now needs to be healed. Holmgang allows for three instances where only one person is taking all that damage, thus less overall healing compared to Hallowed since the latter will only be up once the entire first. Furthermore, you have to consider the difficulty of healing itself. Essential Dignity and Tetra are more than enough to keep the Warrior alive through autos. And because damage is always predictable in this game, you will be well aware of when you need to heal (i.e. is the Warrior going to cheese an auto or need a heal immediately)

It's all of this that makes Holmgang 100% better on average than any other tank immunity. There are situations where Hallowed or Living pull ahead but their lengthily CDs and more demanding management (for LD) hold them back.

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and I agree with you, but if you increase the recast of Holmgang it because exponentially less useful, to the point where you would ask yourself why bring a WAR to the table.
The lower CD of Holmgang also increases the value of their other mitigational skills as you also buy time to get their recast back.
If you compare these type of skills by how powerful they are, Holmgang is the weakest of all four, but when you take their CDs into account they are all virtually equally powerful.

I say virtually because if you take high damage in waves, Holmgang alone won't save you unlike the other invulns. For example, the Incinerate tankbuster from Ifrit in The Weapon's Refrain Ultimate.

The point I want to make is, all Invuln skills are balanced the way they are presented, nothing warrants change to them.

It's strong but not overpowered. I really think its strength has been exaggerated since 4.0. Most of the Stormblood tankbusters I can think of are either pure damage or give a long duration vuln up, and those are the ones that we can easily deal with even without an invuln (and without losing mitigation on autos). Stormblood PLD and DRK had great options for mitigating tankbusters with Sheltron/Intervention, Cover, and TBN, and now in Shadowbringers WAR and GNB are getting similar skills. If tankbusters continue to just be a ton of damage (and maybe a forced swap) I don't really see why you'd care about mitigating with Holmgang over something like Sheltron+TBN (at least 20% mitigation and a 25% shield) which is going to be up incredibly often.

Being able to completely ignore mechanics like Pantokrator 2 is bigger problem than mitigating normal tankbusters, and I think the extra duration on Hallowed/Living Dead that lets that happen definitely justifies their longer cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Launched

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Exactly the point I was expressing in the other thread. It doesn’t matter if you mitigate the TB with a cooldown or an invuln. The point is for you to stay alive using any means possible. Yes holmgang can be use more frequently that’s just one of its strengths. HG is better for trying to recover from healers dying because you are IMMUNE for 10seconds. You can’t do something that easily with holmgang. You can’t cheese mechanics like you can with HG and even LD to an extent. I don’t get why get upset because a tanks invuln is mostly used for surviving large tank damage. Look at susano when it first came out. You could effectively solo tank it as paladin, once geared enough, because HG prevented the swap due to you not receiving the vulnerability debuff, something you couldn’t do at the time with holm or LD. Plenty of other fights where HG can be outright used to skip tons of mechanics in a phase without even needing the healer to heal you. On top of that holmgang is the worst immunity in dungeons in the event you pull too much where the damage is too much for your cooldowns to keep up with.

Edit: Same argument could be made with tank LB3. Look at Byakko. They didn’t design the fight for you to cheese Hakute by using the tank LB, but it makes the fight 10x easier.

What makes an invuln different from any other defensive cooldown is that you use only one cooldown to mitigate all incoming damage. Let's say that you've got a tankbuster and a follow-up cleave which are going to hit you for 1.3x your total health. Taking autos into account, you probably want to get to about 1.4x-1.5x eHP. You could stack two 20% DR cooldowns (1.56x) or perhaps bring out a 30% DR cooldown (1.42x). If it's a tankbuster that targets two tanks, you could be looking at burning through anywhere from 2-4 cooldowns from your shared pool. If you invuln, you can use a single cooldown and negate everything.

The added advantage is that negating a tankbuster in this way gives all of your other defensive abilities time to reset. So rationing cooldowns becomes a lot less important. That's why we have a surplus of cooldowns. You don't need to know the threshold. Just pop everything and invuln the next one. Your cooldowns will all be back up again when you need them.

I know that this is partially a fight design issue. You could add in more tankbusters, or, as I've suggested elsewhere, have more tankbusters that just ignore your invulns (like Ramuh's Shock Strike, back in the day). But it's much more easily solved by limiting invulns to being used only once or twice per fight (instead of three to four times).

Just as a side point, this issue of cheesing mechanics like Pantokrator is completely irrelevant now that Holmgang doesn't require a target and doesn't bind you. As if any of you would have ever agreed to sit in a corner and do zero dps just because your BRD or SCH wasn't willing to bait that mechanic in the first place. Yeah, right. Just bring it in line with the others. A three minute invulnerability move just doesn't make sense, either from a fight design or a balance perspective.

Well if invulns need to not do anything against TBs then they should make them unable to be used to cheese mechanics too. It’s not encounter design for people to pop an invuln and ignore a part of the fight. Make Invulns only able to absorb a few attacks then. Just remove invulns and give every tank a super cooldown that’s 75% damage reduction. They are already homogenizing the healers and tanks. Just give them all the same super cooldown so there is not more need for complaints. ;)

How about making tank invulns use the charge system. Each one has 2 charges and the recharge times (in combat) could be 999s allowing you 2 uses per fight.
Holmgang - Change name to Unchained - User takes 75% reduced damage and self healing is doubled - 7s duration.

Hallowed Ground - User takes 75% reduced damage and and spawns a field around the PLDs current location where party members (not including the PLD) standing in it take 5% less damage (maybe 7%) - 7s duration. Hell its called Hallowed Ground!

Living Dead - Change name to Into The Shadows - User takes 75% reduced damage and emits a dark aura which explodes for 50% of the damage taken at the end of the duration (max of 20k) secondary effect only works on auto attacks/tankbusters prevent an OT DRk from using it as a dps skill due to needing to be the MT and only having 2 charges - 7s duration.

Superbolide - Change name to Lionheart - User takes 75% reduced damage and enchances weapon skill damage by 5% (maybe 10%) -7s duration

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Any further sources on this?

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no sorry just word going around
i don't even know if its entirely true so take it with a grain of salt

the Short CD makes holmgang a good skill but if its six minute CD is a bit excessive

Ive said it before, ill say it again. Now that they finally balamced tank CDs, they need to up the timer and duration on HG to 420 and 8-10 sec. Game fixed. While your at it break tbn into 2 shields and reward for breaking 1, make LD 50% hp restored. Put all their damage in the same ball park. Enjoy your balanced game.

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Originally Posted by MaraD_

while i dont disagree with you, I just wanted to say that the game "technically" views the WAR/DRK invulns as an immunity too, but under the condition they are at 1hp.
if they are at 1hp, then pop holmgang/living dead, mechanics that can be cheesed with PLDs hallowed ground, can actually be cheezed with holmgang/LD. But it needs to be timed, due to auto regen 2% of ur max hp per 3 seconds.

so they are just immunities with a requirement. (so they are still inferior, as u idealy want to maximize them by keeping them at 1hp, but have more rush to heal them up at the end, making them more stressful for healers)

then of course what the next poster said, that its more than worth while, when it makes things easier in other ways, such as the CD. (also why homlg shouldnt be on a LONGER CD than superbolide.)

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That is a pretty irrelevant distinction. Getting a war or drk to 1 hp to get the true immune effect (assuming it works how you say) doesnt matter because it will never happen. There is no way to have a war at 1hp exactly before a tank buster then HG it and avoid a regen tic. In practice there is a clear distinction. Pld and gun can cheese mechanics. Avoid vuln stacks. Prevent debuffs and such. War/drk cant and that should be a consideration for timers. If they set guns to the same timer as war it will just become the de facto best invuln.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What makes an invuln different from any other defensive cooldown is that you use only one cooldown to mitigate all incoming damage.

The added advantage is that negating a tankbuster in this way gives all of your other defensive abilities time to reset. So rationing cooldowns becomes a lot less important.

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But that's the thing with these low cooldown skills. Sheltron/TBN/RI/HoS all give decent mitigation individually, and they're on a max 25s cooldown, so they're always going to be available for tankbusters. Sure, it's technically using more than one skill, but that doesn't really matter when they're up so often. I'm sure there will be plenty of tankbusters survivable with just these, leaving Rampart and the 30s skills free for other things.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Just as a side point, this issue of cheesing mechanics like Pantokrator is completely irrelevant now that Holmgang doesn't require a target and doesn't bind you.

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It's not irrelevant because duration is still a thing. A PLD can pop Hallowed and sit there for pretty much all the aoes without paying attention, a WAR popping Holmgang is going to have to move for a bit before or after the Holmgang because it doesn't last long enough. And speaking of duration, because other people have brought up WAR being able to Holmgang multiple Ultimate Embraces in O8S, the extra duration on Hallowed/Living Dead let PLD/DRK mitigate both an Ultimate Embrace and a Hyperdrive in the same invuln.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

As if any of you would have ever agreed to sit in a corner and do zero dps just because your BRD or SCH wasn't willing to bait that mechanic in the first place. Yeah, right

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You can't speak for everyone. All of my O11S clears had me sitting in a corner with Hallowed, maybe casting a couple of Holy Spirits. Completely ignoring a mechanic can be more valuable than extra DPS when you're not in danger of hitting enrage or trying to speedrun.

If holmgang is going to keep its current SB cd then it'll still be the strongest invuln out of the rest. Mainly because it makes rotating cds alot easier on TB on most boss fights. There are only some cases where the longer lasting invulns like LD and Hallow has an advantage e.g. Panto 2/easier chaos wind phase orbs/Seiryu solo tank TB. In fights like o10s where you have a chance to be taking multiple tail ends that you have to stack cds make it much easier for WAR to fit in multiple holmgangs throughout the fight.

The whole reduced to 1 hp isn't even relevant with how easy it is to top up a tank in this game, only issue with LD is that healers don't top them to 100%, its not that they can't keep up with the incoming damage after being reduced to 1. Mechanics-wise there are many more fights where Holmgang is favored compared to how many chances you have to cheese mechanics with longer invulns.