Tank IDENTITY

As vatom said Lifesteal is, by all intents and purposes, life per hit, but also life on kill. Many other games have their own way of building it;

GW2: Is a separate proc that deals a flat amount of damage and heals a flat amount of HP, and they're scaled separately from Power and Healing Power.
Path of Exile: Heals from damage dealt, but applies it as a regeneration effect (unless you have a certain unique equipped)
WoW: DKs have Death Strike, which heals you a flat 10% of your HP and more scaled from the damage you took recently, granted there is also a leech stat from other means and that one is the simple heal from a perecentage of damage dealt
Castlevania SOTN: You had Dark Metamorphosis which healed Alucard a flat 8 HP from each blood sprite that collides with his body.
Dark Souls: Some items like the Server and the Butcher Knife would heal you (a miserable 5 HP) on hit, there was also the Ring of the Evil Eye which healed you from each kill.
I don't play LoL but i remember Vladimir is a vampire and heals from his Q which is a ranged attack, from what i read that's also just a flat amount of HP.

I could mention more but those are the ones i remember atm. Personaly i always prefer the heals from damage dealt version as that one feels the coolest but all lifesteals are nice, i think it has a bit more to do with the theme, cuz i remember some games that also add heals from damage to holy boys and girls, and i wouldn't really call that ''lifestealing'' since lifestealing is like i said before, more grim in nature.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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In HW, PLD/DRK was one tank slot and WAR was the other, much like WHM/AST was one healer slot and SCH was the other. It wasn't a deliberate design decision, but it happened as a consequence of the fact that ARR had so few tanks and healers. If you contrast this with DPS, you never really saw the same problem because the job pool was fairly diverse from the outset, such each job had a relatively narrow but clearly defined theme.

By the way, Steel Cyclone didn't have any self-healing on Stormblood's launch. You can see that if you pull up an older version of the job actions page circa 2017. That was only added later following complaints over Bloodbath's removal from WAR.

ARR's mistake was to try to set up PLD as a 'defensive tank' and WAR as an 'offensive tank'. Tanks need to be able to mitigate, do damage, obtain enmity, position and move, and you could argue self-sustain fits in there as an optional fifth category. You can have a small degree of variability, but large discrepancies lead to power imbalances. The way around this is that you just find alternative ways of achieving the end result. We saw this to an extent with Shield Oath's %DR vs. Defiance's %HP boost + %healing bonus, or even in Plunge vs. Tempered Will as anti-knockback tools. I don't think that there's any category of tank actions that 'has to be' done one particular way.

And that's where self-sustain comes in. I can think of many ways of doing self-sustain on a tank. PLD's classic spellcasting approach with Clemency has its issues because of the opportunity costs in cast time and resource costs, which makes it a dps loss. But that wouldn't be an issue if you had a way of generating a swiftcast proc that lets you cast healing and defensive spells instantly and for free. You wouldn't need a lifesteal effect built into Holy Spirit/Circle. Need some spot healing? Just weave in a Swiftcast Clemency. Done.

GNB has Aurora, which isn't all that interesting on its own. But what if you tapped into that 'soldier' design a bit more and gave them a Stimpack effect to boost their rate of regeneration along with other temporary bonuses? I've mentioned before that a lifesteal or the more lawful good approach of 'heal yourself on hitting the enemy (wink wink)' job like WAR could expand that same concept into mitigation by turning overhealing into temporary HP. And there are other unexplored options as well. Could you heal yourself on taking damage? Rewind your HP back to a previous timepoint? Could you convert unused shields into healing? Could you airdrop some health pickups for your party to grab? Could you build a heal-over-time effect into a stance or aura? Could you place down a support puppet that acts as a personal healer?

You can basically do this with any of the tanking 'categories' that I mentioned earlier. But it does require buy in from the community. If your tank with stimpack and regen mechanics turns around and starts demanding lifesteal as well as cure spells as well as HP rewind effects, then you end up with a bunch of identical tanks that all have way too much self-healing and defensive bloat.

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Originally Posted by marelooke

Arguably the de-facto "standard" for lifesteal "fantasy" jobs is the Necromancer

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I can't really relate to this one, from someone that enjoys Necros religiously there's two things that make a Necromancer; Undead Minions, and Curses, you're basicaly a Grim General™ so while some jolly little paladin would cheer and bless their comrades in arms to make them do their job better you instead debilitate your enemy so they get effed up harder by your pets. Life-Stealing, Dark Magicks like throwing bone shards all over the place like it's a gothic Metal Slug, satanic stuff like becoming a demon, all that shite and more, in that order, isn't quite ''necessary'' it's more of the bonuses you can give to a necro when adding one to your game or whatever, but those two i find are the most, say, ''appropriate'' way for a necro to start with. That's basicaly what Diablo 2 necro was like if you went with a minion build, popular choice was to also pair it up with corpse explosion but a simple skeletons + curses was a really strong and amazing combo, if a bit lazy which is why corpse explosion was more exciting, in the manual they also had some very nice lore to their skills, how they were basicaly able to shape both spiritual energies and material ones as well, which is why they can make clay, metal and fire golems, and making a skeleton is kind of both of those where they take a pile of bones, and slap a soul on it to keep them bones together... anyway i'm getting off-track here <-<'

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Originally Posted by Lyth

And that's where self-sustain comes in. I can think of many ways of doing self-sustain on a tank. PLD's classic spellcasting approach with Clemency has its issues because of the opportunity costs in cast time and resource costs, which makes it a dps loss. But that wouldn't be an issue if you had a way of generating a swiftcast proc that lets you cast healing and defensive spells instantly and for free. You wouldn't need a lifesteal effect built into Holy Spirit/Circle. Need some spot healing? Just weave in a Swiftcast Clemency. Done.
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Clemency is a spell, no matter how hard you swiftcast it you'll still not be doing weaponskill/spell damage that gcd. Changing clemency to an ability probably wouldn't help much either because you'd now have a 1000/500p heal on demand which generates the opposite issue.

By 'swiftcast proc', I'm suggesting that there would be certain specific conditions under which Clemency could be situationally be weaved as an ability (ideally for free), such as immediately following a Holy Sheltron mitigation, for example. This would still allow you to hardcast it in emergencies when you didn't have set proc available, while also having access to a set number of free 'ability' casts per minute. If you want to expand on this sort of system, you just need a couple of utility/defensive effects that share a common proc, and let the player choose what it gets applied to.

You never want to design an action that always punishes you when using it, which was the problem with many tank actions pre-Shadowbringers. It ends up being dead hotbar space when you're playing optimally.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

In HW, PLD/DRK was one tank slot and WAR was the other, much like WHM/AST was one healer slot and SCH was the other. It wasn't a deliberate design decision, but it happened as a consequence of the fact that ARR had so few tanks and healers.

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I still feel like this was less a problem of what (or how little) jobs existed in each role prior as just... honestly taking the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it mentality" too far, ignoring opportunities for fleshing out their respective new job's (AST and DRK's) themes.

We had an incoming time-space support mage... and the only things we could think of for its core healing bonus was "Give it the choice between WHM mode or SCH mode"??? That theme could easily have offered either, in practice, among increased total output or increased eHP without having to simply copy HoTs and barriers verbatim.

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ARR's mistake was to try to set up PLD as a 'defensive tank' and WAR as an 'offensive tank'.

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Given that PLD had greater OT damage than WAR did and WAR had defensive-only mechanics that PLD had no equivalent to, I can't quite agree that the distinction was quite so clear-cut as that, but otherwise agreed.

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PLD's classic spellcasting approach with Clemency has its issues because of the opportunity costs in cast time and resource costs, which makes it a dps loss.

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To be fair, though, it was never sold as "self-sustain", only as an emergency support tool. The idea before was that Paladin's unreliable extra mitigation over time from blocking would take up that longer-term sustain* function.

But, yes, at least in the current state of things, I certainly wouldn't mind procced "Rapid Clemency" hotswapped button whereby Clemency becomes an ability for its next cast. I'd think that more fitting, at the least, than Knight's Benediction or Requiescat's healing-per-attack.

* To be clear, I'm referring to sustain as anything that increases your longevity, which can be via mitigation (flat or percentile) or healing (likewise flat or percentile, though we don't technically have the latter in XIV).

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GNB has Aurora, which isn't all that interesting on its own. But what if you tapped into that 'soldier' design a bit more and gave them a Stimpack effect to boost their rate of regeneration along with other temporary bonuses?

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...Hell yeah. Would love to see that theme played more with. I don't think we're going to get an outright Soldier at this point, so I don't think it'd be too problematic for its thematic elements to be split each across GNB and DRK.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You never want to design an action that always punishes you when using it, which was the problem with many tank actions pre-Shadowbringers. It ends up being dead hotbar space when you're playing optimally.

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Ehhh. Any Raise, for example, is also that. As is, eventually... nearly every GCD heal. Since Clemency could feasibly save yourself from a death (far more dps-costly than a mere lost GCD and combo progress) or one's raid from a wipe, it certainly "always" punishing, so long as one doesn't narrow their sight to just the one player's offensive output.

Personally, I don't mind a job that is designed to have "saves the raid pitch-hitter buttons" having situational tools, so long as they come at little to no cost to that job's budget. Until ShB's oversights, for instance, I don't think Clemency was every considered part of PLD's sustain (combined effective mitigation and effective healing) budget, and so that was fine. It was a bonus tool that gave the job some unique affordances and further flavor.

I think what sometimes gets lost in the conversation about mechanics and what themes they may imply is their effect on gameplay through their affordances and differences from other means of reaching a roughly equal larger-scale effect (longterm sustain, on-demand eHP, etc.).

For instance, layered flat and percentile mitigation have multiplicative synergy, which can make you feel a bit more bundled up, dependent on coordination/ability-sync, strictly timed, or hard-but-brittle. (To me, that feels rather... Paladin.)

Or, take the difference between temporary HP and healing. The first is more timing-dependent, but the second is susceptible to overcapping. Extend them over time and the first makes the actual HP bar seem to move very little, even if one's max HP may hit amusingly extreme heights, while the second is likely far more in flux. Though when perfectly balanced, both will likely die around the same time, the first makes much more obvious that its life is finite --slowly spiraling downward-- while the second can at least give impression to the contrary --so long as one doesn't notice that, after each wave of healing, their HP has still bounced back up to a little less than before as their enemies chip them down. That difference in impression can make the second feel a little freer, a little more independent, but arguably the first can also feel more urgent and intense (since any of that temp HP that isn't spent before its duration elapses would go to waste). (For that reason, both are really damn good fits for Warrior, imo, so long oversights are avoided and the two can be truly balanced.)

Per-hit effects over a duration, instead of to a capped number of hits? It can certainly be more frustrating, especially if there's nothing extra to differentiate it from the capped version apart from obligatory SkS tiers, but... assuming it has that decent context? It rewards speed; it makes you feel more all-in; it makes timing the effect's CD, especially if bankable, feel more deliberate. (To me, that feels very GNB / blitzkrieg bodyguard.)

Actually, Lyth (and anyone else interested in how themes may tie into mechanics), could I get your two cents on GNB's theme(s) thus far?

What theme(s) do you think they were aiming for, what theme(s) do you think it actually presents, and/or what theme(s) could be both more attractive and in reach (of that intent or actual presentation)?

I feel hesitant to make large suggestions on GNB just because it's not one I've played nearly as much as, say, DRK.

Whereas I top off DRK on multiple characters and use it for every other Ex roulette, I'll only bother with GNB on one, and while I can enjoy it, I'm not nearly so attached. As such, I'm especially curious to see what vibes others are getting from it.

Gnb is a generic tank. Going off the few job quests and artefact armour I think bodyguard might have been the theme they were going for or maybe squall roleplay if that counts, but I don’t think it’s come across clearly. Maybe this is a product of being added in shadowbringers. Heart of corundum and aurora can be put on a friend, but paladin feels more like one with wings and cover and clemency and veil. I don’t think it particularly works as the described anti-gun troop from bozja either, but they haven’t really done anything to make garlean guns seem all that dangerous in game compared with literally everything else. I think they might have issues conveying theme with the busy burst window they gave it requiring a lot of key-binds, leaving little room for anything else to make it feel unique. It’s in this sort of weird halfway house between drk with busy + gauge management and war with just hit buttons lol.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Gnb is a generic tank. Going off the few job quests and artefact armour I think bodyguard might have been the theme they were going for or maybe squall roleplay if that counts, but I don’t think it’s come across clearly. Maybe this is a product of being added in shadowbringers. Heart of corundum and aurora can be put on a friend, but paladin feels more like one with wings and cover and clemency and veil. I don’t think it particularly works as the described anti-gun troop from bozja either, but they haven’t really done anything to make garlean guns seem all that dangerous in game compared with literally everything else.

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I guess I have to wonder what "anti-gun" is supposed to look like. To me, I'd imagine you'd have the ability to quickly close the distance (full-blitzing in), mitigate that distance through dense cover (guerilla warfare), and/or to disrupt them (either disproportionately affecting ranged attacks or just amping up disruption in general, which rifleman and casters would be especially susceptible to). None of that really comes across on GNB outside of tiny bits of flavor text (Camouflage, etc.).

Speaking of flavor text, though, GNB's naming scheme --Aurora, Camouflage, Gnashing Fang, Heart of Stone-- does at least come off as fairly... primal. It feels Hrothgari. It just needs to actually bring that over to the mechanics.

If anyone's played Mists/WoD Feral Druid, for instance, you might have already run into the idea of a hypermobile harasser/bleeder spec (though more a predator than a disruptor) with a side of offensively-fed deliberate support tools.

I'd have expected GNB to play out a bit more like that, bouncing between enemies as sort of a shock-and-awe or hit-and-run evasion tank (not simply in terms of being dependent on RNG mitigation -- *gag* -- but in terms of wanting to use enemies or their attacks as pseudo-cover for a far more integral sense of movement).