Surviving Eorzea - is the gear defense system design archaic?

Subtitle: If healers (and casters) are fragile butterflies that developers tiptoe around, it's because the developers design gear to make them that way

If any in the community reading this love to deep dive into theorycrafting, please consider researching the actual impact on damage taken numbers in game play. I don't have access to some of the tools and data that would be helpful for the discussion.

Currently, gear provides all roles with 3 stats that affect survivability: Vitality (for health points), Defense (reduce damage taken from physical attacks) and Magical Defense (reduce damage taken from magical attacks). Unfortunately, those stats are not made equal for every role.

Using the ilvl 700 Neo Kingdom gear, I come up with the following numbers for each gear set:

Fending - Vit 3797, Defense 6119, Magical Defense 6119
Maiming - Vit 3797, Defense 4284. Magical Defense 3369
Striking - Vit 3797, Defense 3369, Magical Defense 3369
Scouting - Vit 3797, Defense 3369, Magical Defense 3369
Aiming - Vit 3797, Defense 3369, Magical Defense 3369
Casting - Vit 3421, Defense 2449, Magical Defense 4284
Healing - Vit 3421, Defense 2449, Magical Defense 4284

Fending can be safely ignored for the rest of the discussion since their role is to grab enmity and survive the constant hits so the rest of the party can do their jobs.

But why are casters and healers getting shorted on Vitality compared to physical damage dealers? Why the disparity in Defense and Magical Defense between the various non-tank roles?

Encounter design has changed over the years. Mechanics not directed at the tanks now tend to hit the entire party more often instead of only targeting select party members. We're seeing a lot more physical damage AoEs against the entire party compared to the distant past when they were mostly limited to frontal cleaves and circular AoEs that only hit in melee range. We're seeing melee DPS getting hit by more magic damage as well.

Do the differences in Vitality, Defense and Magical Defense on non-tank gear serve a specific purpose in current design or are they just a holdover that the developers haven't thought about?

Do these differences make game play more interesting for players in any meaningful way?

I believe that the differences are causing problems in current design instead of creating more interesting game play. If healers were better able to survive incoming damage (to the same level as physical damage dealers), there could be less concern about healer deaths leading to party wipes because healers would be better able to survive compared to the current fragile butterfly state. There would be less need for the developers to keep giving more healing and mitigation utility to damage dealers and tanks.

Healers and casters having less health and less defense might have made sense in the distance past of MMOs but design has changed. Now it's detrimental to a good game experience.

Its fine how it is, i like the fact that healer/caster needs a bit more mitigation to survive shit then other classes i mean it makes sense if you think about it in a other way

Reaper/Dragoon/Tank Heavy Metal Armor
Phys Range/Scouting/Striking = Leather Armor
Caster/Healer = Cotton

I'm fine with Casters, offensive or curative, having less armor ("physical defense") since they literally have less (effective) armor. That said, I would be fine with most truly raidwide AoEs (not proximity based, not targeting just specific people or angles) becoming magical, and with casters having a normal amount of Vitality.

Maiming is a weird holdover from when Lancer was a pseudo-tank (the Gridanian equivalent to the then-each-very-distinct Marauder and Gladiator), but I'm likewise not sure I want its Defense standardized.

Honestly, though, my biggest complaint would have to be Fending, for just how much of tanks' sustain it takes out of their agency. Why, exactly, do we need tanks to passively mitigate a sixth more damage than everyone else (or, almost double their mitigation) when we've already given them so much more eHP via the extra Vit? Same goes for the Tank Mastery trait, though, of course. And without it the passive mit would finally be more reasonable even if still, imo, excessive.

Others have talked about the obvious which is the type of Armour they wear. But my thoughts lie with party dynamics and game feel.

I think Casters & Healers having less defense and HP is a good thing. The benefits they bring to the party, especially Healers, and helping them survive from Raid wides or their own mistakes is some of the last remaining bit of teamplay we have in this game in non-savage/ulti content. If a melee gets a vuln stack and eats an AoE you know they're gonna be fine. But if a Healer eats a vuln and you see the raid wide coming you know that it's beneficial for all to help them. Makes you feel like a team player and you know the other player feels thankful. It creates small community moments there.

It's a holdover cause of how they usually do damage. For the most part it's to make sure that percentage wise, magic damage does the same to all classes. Here's an example. Back in TOP, healers and casters had 69k hp and phys melee had 76k. During phase 5 we have the 3 dynamis moves hit really hard and require a lot of mit, That one forbidden site has a interesting part where you can look at raw damage before any mits come into effect. Before any mits come into effect, the general damage, when averaged out, of the three dynamis moves are 125k on caster classes and 135k on physical classes. When you do some extra math, (69000/125000) and (76000/135000), it comes out to 0.55 and 0.56 respectively.

This is why vit and magic defense is evened out the way it is. You can also do exactly what I did here for any other fight. Granted, this is a tedious way of doing and it also needs to take into account that both people need to be the same ilvl.

It always made sense to me when I started the game, because it seemed like:

• Tanks were meant to endure so had the most.
• Melee DPS were meant to tank "light-weight adds" or soak things if there's more to soak than there are tanks.
• Casters weren't going to be in melee range and being magic casters makes them equally good at defending against magic, so it was logical for the magic defense to be higher.

In practice? Tanks ended up tanking everything, even light-weight adds. Melee DPS mitigation abilities were redundant and many of them since removed. Casters merely ended up suffering when there was physical raid-wide damage.

Like most things in ARR, it was designed for "lore reasons" and a "throw mud at the wall to see what sticks" kind of design.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SeriousPan

helping them survive from Raid wides or their own mistakes is some of the last remaining bit of teamplay we have in this game in non-savage/ulti content. If a melee gets a vuln stack and eats an AoE you know they're gonna be fine. But if a Healer eats a vuln and you see the raid wide coming you know that it's beneficial for all to help them. Makes you feel like a team player and you know the other player feels thankful. It creates small community moments there.

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I agree with this point though. It creates the need to put your tank utility on a caster or healer if they're nearly dead and an attack is about to finish them.