Tank Balance

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Originally Posted by CarnivalNights

Tanks should get like a massive nerf to their DPS and a massive boost to their enmity gains.

This would get rid of 90% of the false tanks who only tank so they can DPS. Only the true metalheads will remain when the scrubs who bandwagoned tank realize they have to actually tank.

Making fending an almost necessity to be equipped. The fact that tanks can get away with wearing slaying accessories shows poor game design that's obviously heavily favoring a more casual player. If you disagree, then you know nothing about game design. That's a simple 100% fact.

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So once I've established aggro, I can get up and walk away from the keyboard? Yeah, let's make the entire game as, "exciting" as PLD AoE. Sounds like a blast.

I guess you never do anything but spam your enmity combo/flash, right? No offensive cooldowns or combos at all? Somehow I doubt that.

The idea that tanking has to be as dry as possible is what chases so many people away from it in the first place.

Man the logic in this thread shows me how close minded and lack of creativity. Most of all the game is geared to keep casual players around. Square succeeded in that FFXIV is one the highest played mmorpgs. With that being said they did things to make tanking roles actually fun. What yall trying to do is nerf all tanks to one style of game play which alone defeats the creativity of FFXIV. They want you to bounce around to different classes so you won't hit a comfort zone. It gets old and boring but the bounces of classes keeps casual player interested. And the concept benefits pro players at the same time. Nothing is really wrong with PLD the content doesn't agree with its play style and that's that. If you want balance square should balance out the content where both tanking and damage matters in different scenarios. All tanks should balance out are yall crazy? It takes 30 mins for a dps to Q up now forcing it to play boring you think the wait is long.

I have to post this here since it's funny:

http://cdn.guildwork.net/albums/imag...1e652435de.jpg

"Colin Farrel is right, PLD is shit."

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Originally Posted by Donjo

So, what's the problem with Tanks? It's that Vitality, their main stat, is treated the same way for them as it is for everyone else: once you can survive the fight, stop worrying about it. It is the only main stat that becomes less useful at certain thresholds.

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Very interesting point.
It could be interesting to find an another effect that VIT could offer to counter this.

I think the problem is twofold :
- Vitality only gives HP
- Healing spells are too strong

Why is "more HP" a problem ? Because, unless you're at max HP, you actually don't care what your max HP is. If you have only 1000 HP left, one 1000 hit will kill you, wether you have 2000 or 25000 max HP
As for healing spells, the problem is that healers don't care about auto-attacks. They can keep you alive from auto-attacks for...well, forever, in fact. If their wasn't any tankbusters, tanks would be invincible.

So, what can be changed :
1) Vitality should add a constant mitigation. That way, if you have 1000 HP left, a 1000 hit (before mitigation) will not have the same effect depending on your vitality.
2) Healing spell's potencies should adjusted so that auto-attacks are a real thing, not a minor annoyance. That way, adding vitality would still be useful since its much more difficult to mitigate auto-attacks in the long run.

After that, it can be interesting to decide if Vitality would only be physical mitigation, and Mind for magical mitigation (And Dark Mind could be a swap between the two like Cleric Stance).
Or vitality could enhance heals received, to the same effect, having a constant effect on your mitigation/recovery.

As a sidenote, Piety is the same...enough MP to manage the fight, then the rest is useless...but nobody actually focuses on Piety, so, who cares :p

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

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Personally I liked the way stats worked in FFXI. The whole system of "Main stat is the glass and secondary stat is the water" was interesting for me. i.e. STR raised the cap for your damage, but attack power was what decided how much damage you did. Each point of STR gave 2 power IIRC.

So you had corresponding stats:

STR = Power.
DEX = Accuracy/Crit.
VIT = Def
AGI = Evasion/Block/Parry
INT = Magic
MND = Magic
CHR = .... Yeah

Then you had abilities benefiting from different stats. Most of the great ax weaponskills for example had 1:1 damage scaling from both STR and VIT. (The weaponskill uses STR+ VIT equally as added WD). and some sword weaponskills used STR and MND. Daggers used DEX exclusively IIRC. BRD abilities used CHR as a modifier and Black Magic (since multiple classes used it) had INT.. etc.

Auto attacks were STR, THF abilities used DEX and AGI... etc.

Anyways, not to derail, I think a quick "fix" to tanks gearing would be to encourage tanks to gear for VIT by giving VIT additional benefits. VIT should have added defense and/or have a % of VIT act as pseudo-STR for tanks only.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Personally I liked the way stats worked in FFXI.

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In FFXI, VIT was a physical mitigation on top of adding Defense. (And MND, a magical mitigation)

Since Defense is a passive constant mitigation in FFXIV, VIT adding defense would have the same effect, yes.

But I really think the focus should move a little towards mitigating auto-attacks, since they basically "don't matter" for now.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

In FFXI, VIT was a physical mitigation on top of adding Defense. (And MND, a magical mitigation)

Since Defense is a passive constant mitigation in FFXIV, VIT adding defense would have the same effect, yes.

But I really think the focus should move a little towards mitigating auto-attacks, since they basically "don't matter" for now.

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Yeah, but if both our mitigation AND damage scaled from our main stat, like how healing and damage scales for healers, then tanks would be more inclined to equip VIT gear. Even if the added benefit is smaller than pure STR accessories.

I think also part of the problem is at the start in 2.xx, SE had tanks getting "at least something" from too many stats. We had STR for damage and block/parry values. We had DEX affecting rates. But they were at dismally low rates that they didn't matter. And lack of gear variety made it even worse. SE made a good "choice" by removing that dependency form those stats.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Yeah, but if both our mitigation AND damage scaled from our main stat, like how healing and damage scales for healers, then tanks would be more inclined to equip VIT gear. Even if the added benefit is smaller than pure STR accessories.

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But, the problem is that every gear gives Vitality. Healers don't have high MND and high INT, that's why they have Cleric Stance (Besides, damage and healing do not scale from the same stat).
On our left side, we have the exact same "attack" and VIT bonus than any physical job. To work like healers, our STR bonus should be removed and we should have a skill to swap VIT and STR.

If we separate HP and Vitality, the VIT bonus could be removed from any non-tank gear, since their HP pool would still increase with their level. This way, VIT would really become a "tank" stat.

Another thing to consider is that attack and healing spells use three base stats : Weapon "damage", Attack/Healing potency and skill potency.
Maybe we can work with something similar for mitigation.

Swapping str and vit.... U serious?

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Originally Posted by rawker

Swapping str and vit.... U serious?

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Well, if you're the OT and VIT doesn't change your HP pool anymore...yeah, I'd be serious about it.


Another crazy idea...YES, I'm bored at work :p

What if tanks mitigates by accumulating a "Barrier" ?

Nowadays, mitigation is, mostly, a passive thing. Pop you CD, wait for the blast...even WAR has it a little.
BUT, like DPS constantly attacking to build greater DPS and healers constantly healing to build greater HPS, tanks could constantly use skills to build greater BPS (Barrier Per Second).

The barrier would work like Stoneskin or Addlo, meaning that, as long as you have that barrier, you won't take any damage. This way, tanks could have skills with potencies, even combo, that would give them higher and higher barrier numbers. Rampart, Sentinel, Vengeance...all those skills would work like Flight of Fight or Internal Release by increasing your numbers for a short period of time, adding more chance for them to crit, etc...

With a system like that, tanks would have a rotation to master to accumulate the highest BPS, and harder content could throw higher and higher damage against your barrier meaning you'd really have to master your skills to reduce/prevent your HP from dropping as long as you can.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Snip.

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Yeah, that's called "active mitigation". WAR has some of it with Wrath building and IB usage. DRK kinda with Souleater but not really.

But yeah, active mitigation is a lot more fun than passive mitigation. This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

I feel I should be adding more to my posts but too lazy and tired to elaborate. haha. I should sleep.

IMO, what tanks need are more tanking abilities.

ATM, WARs are already in a good spot since they are gated by wrath/abandon to balance out their offense and defense.

DRKs are gated by MP. A bit more tweaking, and they're done.

PLDs need to be gated by something else. If they're supposed to be the most defensive tank among the rest, then it should reflect through their abilities. i am thinking of a resource that is only gained from blocking. And their future abilities are dependent on that.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

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And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

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Which is by design, I think. They realize that in terms of social pressure, tanking is seen as an "important" job and a lot of people who don't tank choose not to because of that pressure. That's why the tank jobs (with WAR being something of the exception for variety) aren't as demanding rotationally as DPS classes are, so that they have less to worry about and (hopefully) more people can learn to like tanking.

The current setup works pretty well, I think: serious tanks can go all in for DPS maximization, and those that are just tanking for their roulettes or friends can get by just doing the meat shield thing. They need to do something regarding parity in the OT role and probably to make PLD more desirable in 8-mans, though.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

The current setup works pretty well, I think: serious tanks can go all in for DPS maximization

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For me, the second part of your sentence completely contradicts the first.
And I fear this will bite us really hard if they decide to add other tanks in the next expansions.

Adding a real "gameplay" for mitigation would lift a lot of complains because player skill would "blur" the gap between each tank, like it does with DPS.

What would be a mitigation mechanic that is fun and somewhat challenging for example? Outside of certain action oriented games with active blocking/dodging I have yet to see one.

Maximizing damage additionally to mitigation at least increases the low skill ceiling that comes with tanking imo.

While we're here discussing tank balance it seems the only issue devs see in it based on interviews is aggro issues. Hopefully that's not the full extent of tank changes we can expect in 3.1 or its gonna be really depressing.

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Originally Posted by NFaelivrin

While we're here discussing tank balance it seems the only issue devs see in it based on interviews is aggro issues. Hopefully that's not the full extent of tank changes we can expect in 3.1 or its gonna be really depressing.

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I fully agree.

They really need to look at PLD and DRK tp costs.
Then they'll have the issues with each class resolved properly.

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Originally Posted by rawker

IMO, what tanks need are more tanking abilities.

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I don't think this is necessarily true. I think they have enough abilities, it's just that their skillset doesn't seem to flow well or even contradict use in a party setting.

For instance, take a look at Blood Price from DRK. They restore their MP from taking damage, which is important usually during AoE spams of Unleash. The problem? Your healer is usually using Holy or Shadowflare, which reduces incoming damage and thus mitigates enough to cause MP problems, and you have a harder time holding aggro.

PLD's skillset has a lot of good tools, but they seem disjointed at times. Take this for example: Rage of Halone is unlike Butcher's Block, as it's the lowest potency combo instead of the highest, but needed to keep aggro. In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For me, the second part of your sentence completely contradicts the first.
And I fear this will bite us really hard if they decide to add other tanks in the next expansions.

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Care to explain how it's a contradiction? SE wants tanking to be approachable, and at it's base level, it is. You don't have to optimize damage to tank beyond knowing your enmity combos. However, those tanks that are dedicated to the job and want to get more out of it have a lot of room to push for damage, learn how to squeeze in periods in DPS stance while MTing, and so on. In my mind, it's a solid enough compromise and ultimately probably good for keeping tanks available for content.

Carbonx has a good point.

Threat and Damage are interlinked but in an annoyingly exponential way. For Paladins and Dark Knights, the threat combo they have (Halone or Power Slash) is the lowest potency combo, so they ideally want to do it as little as possible to max their DPS. Dark Knights have more potency and threat on theirs, so a Dark Knight might need to only open with a single power slash combo, a PLD might need to do two halones before they're comfy with a lead (depending on if you have a ninja, party dps etc).

The more DPS you do, the more inherant threat you put out and thus the less you need to rely on threat combos. You only need to do as much threat as 1 greater than the highest threat DPS in the raid, and Bonus Enmity only exists as a way to shore up the difference between your -actual- dps and their actual dps. The more dps you do, the less you need to rely on bonus enmity moves/stances to keep yourself above the dpsers.

Paladins do slightly less DPS when tanking than the other two classes, and thus need to use their threat combo slightly more on average. Their threat combo is also weaker, lower potency, lower threat and has a proportionally much bigger potency loss compared to other tanks when they could have done a Royal Authority combo instead (a PLD loses 80 potency when forced to do a Halone instead of a Royal. A DRK loses 10 potency when forced to do a Power Slash instead of a Delirium. In contrast a Warrior's Butcher combo is 20 potency more than their Storms Eye).

In contrast, not only does the Warrior do more damage naturally, but the Warrior's threat rotation (Butchers) is actually their highest potency combo and thus they WANT to do it lots. The Alternating Eye/Butchers combo means that when doing their max dps rotation they're also putting out far more threat than a Paladin doing Goring/Royal/Royal.

This is part of why there's such a big gap between dps values in practise. It's not that Paladins and Dark Knights have trouble holding threat, they don't. It's just in order to -really- minmax their DPS they sacrifice far more threat than a Warrior would. The optimal paladin rotation for dps is Goring/Royal/Royal whilst in Sword Oath, and this will NEVER hold threat off a well geared DPS doing their maximum rotation without either a.) a Ninja for threat transfer or b.) a comfortable threat lead. By reducing the requirements for that comfortable threat lead, you're technically pushing up the potential DPS ceiling for PLDs and DRKs, and bringing them a little closer to WARs.

Imagine if Royal Authority had a 5.5x enmity modifier. Halone would never be used other than as a mitigation tool to apply Str down. Paladins would be able to open pulls in Sword Oath even without a ninja, and never lose threat to anything whilst doing their max dps rotation. I'm not sure this is necessarily what we want as it takes away the skill of playing the class a bit, but it does highlight how increasing threat values can potentially increase their practical MT dps significantly.

Sapphidia basically explained my point in different view, but it also brings up the interesting question of why Paladin's DPS is so low comparatively.

As I stated earlier in the thread, PLD is the only class without an ability that directly counteracts the damage penalty brought on by remaining in their tank stance. DRK has Darkside, WAR has Unchained and IB. Paladin technically has FoF, but it neither ignores the damage penalty or has close to full uptime. So, before you even get into combo potencies, PLD is already at a disadvantage in damage. This problem with DPS output is only reflected in their struggle for enmity generation.

They are forced into using Halone, lowering their DPS more. SE is currently trying to justify this unbalance in DPS through the use of party support skills, but ultimately, is it enough to warrant the loss of DPS inherent to bringing a PLD?

PLD DPS is lower because they have the shield (and, probably, the much more powerful "No Death" button).
They simply do take less physical damage, even if we can argue up and down about whether it matters or not (2.x it was certainly argued this is what made them the best, though I've never found it to be that valuable). That's worth some DPS in the dev's mind.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

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This is a feature, not a problem, because Savage Blade has an enmity multiplier. It facilitates more Royal Authority when tanking and keeping hate.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Care to explain how it's a contradiction? SE wants tanking to be approachable, and at it's base level, it is.

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I don't think it works to make "serious tanking" solely focusing on DPS, because it puts all tank in a bottleneck.
We should have more ways of improving so that each player can pick the tank that match their playstyle.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I don't think it works to make "serious tanking" solely focusing on DPS, because it puts all tank in a bottleneck.
We should have more ways of improving so that each player can pick the tank that match their playstyle.

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Well, in that regard, yes, it doesn't work for serious tanks that don't like to DPS, but SE is kind of stuck in the middle. If they make defensive tanking too active (following WoW's example), it will reduce the number of tanks in the long run for non-raid content (say what you will about queue times for DPS here, they have always been and still are much longer in WoW), as people won't want the "responsibility" on top of the more complex playstyle.

Things as they are now is a compromise, this much is true, but there is at least plenty of room for serious tanks to differentiate themselves from the more casual ones. It works even if it's not to your taste.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

..DRK has Darkside, WAR has Unchained and IB.

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Just wanted to point out WAR's Defiance penalty reducing effect are not Unchained and IB, it's Maim. Grit + Darkside puts DRK at 92% of base unbuffed damage, Defiance + Maim puts WAR at 90% of base damage. Unchained is more akin to FoF (33% up by ignoring the 25% penalty for 20s). IB/SC ignoring the damage is not enough to offset the penalty. All wrath spenders causing WAR to ignore defiance penalty is just the icing on the cake.

Warriors are fine.
Dark Knights are fine.

Paladins are a bit weak, but id rather their damage not be changed. Upp their threat, give them a shorter cd on some of their mitigation, and increase the value of their utilities. Divine Veil for instance should not need a trigger and should effect the paladin. Clemency should be a GCD, not a cast--and simply interrupt combos similar to shield bash does.

Shield Swipe should be a cone.

Blind should effect all enemies, but only auto attacks. No natural immunes unless it has no eyes.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

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To its defense, since PLDs are currently the lowest threat generating tank, as soon as you use savage blade, you are still not screwed up when a sudden turn of events happen.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

As I stated earlier in the thread, PLD is the only class without an ability that directly counteracts the damage penalty brought on by remaining in their tank stance. DRK has Darkside, WAR has Unchained and IB. Paladin technically has FoF, but it neither ignores the damage penalty or has close to full uptime. So, before you even get into combo potencies, PLD is already at a disadvantage in damage. This problem with DPS output is only reflected in their struggle for enmity generation.

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As for this one, you can easily work your way around this by toggling Shield Oath off when doing your big moves. Toggling oath off is the same as toggling cleric stance off where it doesn't interrupt your combos and doesn't consume a GCD. And then, it's just activate oath again after performing your dps move.

As what others have already said, pumping PLD threat generation is a very sound solution.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Things as they are now is a compromise, this much is true, but there is at least plenty of room for serious tanks to differentiate themselves from the more casual ones.

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I don't deny that. But with three tanks (And probably more in the future), there's also room to differentiate serious tanks from other serious tanks.

WAR is the "DPS" tank, so the "serious tanks that like to DPS" will probably go WAR. Since PLD is the "Defensive" tank, let it be the "active defensive tank". This way, every serious tanks can be pleased (Well not every...but more of them).
As for "casual" tanks, they'll just play any tank they want without pushing them to their limit.

I really don't like the "If you think your job is too weak, play another one" but I'm totally fine with "This job's gameplay doesn't suit you, go play another one"

Got to agree with Reynhart.

A good testing ground for a player's mindset is their reaction to getting the various new skills. Most aggressive WARs I know were just jumping for joy when they got Fell Cleave, and couldnt resist running around and bragging about how big a crit they just got against a gaelicat or something. Whereas I was like... meh.. just does damage, whatever.

On the contrary, when I got Sheltron I was over the moon - here was a cool active mitigation button I could press regularly when tanking to mitigate big hits, it felt turtly and awesome. I was 100 times more excited for Sheltron on my PLD than I was for Fell Cleave on my WAR.

Not going to be hanging up my sword and shield anytime soon, regardless of balance.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Things as they are now is a compromise, this much is true, but there is at least plenty of room for serious tanks to differentiate themselves from the more casual ones. It works even if it's not to your taste.

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You couldn't of said that better. I fully agree with your comments! It compromise for the most part in trying to keep casual players well casual tanks and not wait till the next day in hopes of a tank. I don't think SE is in the middle they plan this out well. Forces people to go outside the box. Now this would be a major problem if you could only be one class and have to recreate a character just to remain relevant during gameplay. The best changes I can thinkn of adding content where all tanks can be relevant. One with dps checks another with a great need of defense, another with insane mechanics to keep you on your toes. That way all three tanks are utilized and no one get left behind.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

=D

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There is never a way to ignore the damage penalty.

It is always full damage - 20%.

130% damage - 20% = 104% normal damage.

120% damage - 20%. = 96% normal damage.

115% damage - 20% = 92% normal damage.

100% damage - 20%. = 80%.

The 20% from maim for example is really only 16% more damage. The 15% is really only 12%.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

A good testing ground for a player's mindset is their reaction to getting the various new skills. Most aggressive WARs I know were just jumping for joy when they got Fell Cleave, and couldnt resist running around and bragging about how big a crit they just got against a gaelicat or something. Whereas I was like... meh.. just does damage, whatever.

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Funny!! I was one of those warriors running around for looking things to cleave once I got it. I've always love playing brute like characters so that made my day!!

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Originally Posted by RecklessLion

Funny!! I was one of those warriors running around for looking things to cleave once I got it.

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When I first learned Fell Cleave, I was on skype with a group of buddies and my first words were "they're gona nerf the hell out of this skill" lol. Ahhh sweet sweet memories.

#Launch

I love Fell Cleave, don't get me wrong, but my favorite skill to get was definitely Equilibrium. Seeing that heal for the first time... and testing out the TP restore in AOE situations... so good. Soooo good.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

A good testing ground for a player's mindset is their reaction to getting the various new skills.

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Thing was, when PLDs got Sheltron, WAR's reaction was: "Meh, we have Inner Beast". All that the PLD got was things WAR already "had" and the PLD was "hurting for".

But yeah, active mitigation can go very far. For example: Let PLD have more abilities that increase block temporarily or otherwise reduce damage. WAR's form of active mitigation would be reducing damage taken through offense. Either by generating barriers or healing post-fact.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

WAR is the "DPS" tank, so the "serious tanks that like to DPS" will probably go WAR. Since PLD is the "Defensive" tank, let it be the "active defensive tank". This way, every serious tanks can be pleased (Well not every...but more of them).
As for "casual" tanks, they'll just play any tank they want without pushing them to their limit.

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That's certainly true to a degree (though things like class flavor and the like factor into people's choices as well). I don't foresee them making PLD significantly more complex, though, either through DPS or more active mitigation as it's also the "gateway" tank. With the lowest skill barrier of the three, it's the easiest for someone new to tanking to pick up and use, and even perhaps to enjoy all the way to 60. Granted, they've shown willingness to change simple gameplay styles (BLM from ARR to HW changed significantly, for instance), so it's something that could happen in the future.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Got to agree with Reynhart.

A good testing ground for a player's mindset is their reaction to getting the various new skills. Most aggressive WARs I know were just jumping for joy when they got Fell Cleave... -snip- On the contrary, when I got Sheltron I was over the moon...

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It's funny, actually. I prefer defensive tanking (well, I prefer avoidance tanking, but that's not a solid design avenue in games like these), and I've always preferred PLD to WAR, but I just can't get excited for PLD anymore. I think leveling DRK first killed it for me, as it's a bit more active, and that's made PLD feel really boring now. It's unfortunate because in terms of flavor, PLD is my preferred tank, but gameplay wise, I'm having a hard time enjoying it now. Fell Cleave excites me enough that I'm leveling WAR occasionally when I get bored, but it took me forever to push PLD from 52-54, as Shelltron left me really unexcited. I'm not looking forward to anything on it ability wise, sadly.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

There is never a way to ignore the damage penalty.

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Unchained: Nullifies the damage penalty inflicted by Defiance for 20s.

Inner Beast: Delivers an attack with a potency of 300.
Ignores the 25% damage penalty inflicted by Defiance.

Just saying.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

There is never a way to ignore the damage penalty.

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Originally Posted by carbonx

Snip.

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You two are arguing simantics, lol. You both are correct.

What Carbonx is trying to say is that WAR and DRK have ways to "mitigate" the damage penalty of their tank stances while PLD doesn't. It doesn't have to be completely negated, or otherwise, "ignored" to be considered mitigated.

A more correct way to look at it is to say that DRK and WAR have constant damage buffs to increase their base damage while PLD doesn't. PLD's offensive stance damage comes entirely from the stance itself.

But as long as, while in a tank stance, you do not get the full benefit of your damage had you not been in said stance, you are not completely "ignoring" it. Defiance + Maim is still less damage than no defiance and Maim.

And again, Defiance WAR deals more damage than Shield Oath PLD because of Maim, not Unchained. Unchained is just the icing on the cake. We could argue WAR deals more MT damage than DRK because of Unchained.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

There is never a way to ignore the damage penalty.

It is always full damage - 20%.

130% damage - 20% = 104% normal damage.

120% damage - 20%. = 96% normal damage.

115% damage - 20% = 92% normal damage.

100% damage - 20%. = 80%.

The 20% from maim for example is really only 16% more damage. The 15% is really only 12%.

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I'm pretty sure this isn't right.

Damage enhancements and reductions seem to be additive, not multiplicative(at least that's what the formulas here are pointing to currently though it's still difficult to determine exactly because of the complexity of the damage formula chain) where mitigation skills are multiplicative.

That means for example if you are at 100% damage + 15% Darkside - 20% from Grit, your effective damage is 95%.

However if you stack Sword oath + Rampart + Sentinel the mitigation is multiplicative at 68.9% mitigation.