Opinion on tanking design

With a couple of weeks having passed since 2.1 and the changes to WARs, I have been thinking about some of the changes to WAR as well as their implication on tank design.

As we all know, Holmgang was changed to be a mini-invincibility to help WARs match up with PLD in coil (and kill off the stigma of WAR not being a good tank in all other content). I was at first surprised at the change, and while I was pleasantly surprised at it as well as the other changes to WAR, I did eventually start thinking of the implications this had on tank design.

While Holmgang was a godsend to all WARs, it also tells me that an invincibility cooldown may have just become required in any future tanks.

The reason I say this is because in the event SE decides to implement a new tank in the future, you do run into the risk of WAR's problems at launch repeating themselves if the content is balanced around invincibilities while not giving the new tank an invincibility due to not making sense on a concept level.

The main question I want to ask to our side of the forums is: where do we go from here?

I only see two possible scenarios play out.

a) Keep the invincibilities: Basically, every tank from here on to the day the servers shut down will have an invincibility move. As I said, there's a major risk of it clashing with the concept of certain jobs. It also seems like an extremely limiting approach, since one of those abilities you're giving the new tanks will have to be an invincibility for them to keep up with PLD and WAR

b) Nerf invincibilities and instead make the common denominator between tanks damage reduction: You're gonna hate me for this, but nerf Hallowed Ground from an invincibility to a major damage reduction cooldown (maybe an 80-90% damage reduction?). Change Holmgang to be a major damage reduction or add some form of damage mitigation in addition to what was given to WAR.

The funny thing about B is that I called for Hallowed Ground being turned into a damage mitigation before alpha, and that didn't go over well with people despite my saying that invincibilities tend to cause trouble if not kept on a leash.

I just wanted to see what were the tanking community's thoughts on this. I'm aware that Hallowed Ground is called by its FFXI name (Invincible) in the Japanese version of ARR, but I do see a risk to where we're going with tank design. Then again, maybe I'm just being paranoid. >.>;

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.

If Hallowed Ground only reduces damage by a percentage, then why not get rid of Hallowed Ground? Buff Sentinel a bit and lower its cooldown. Then use Sentinel for large mitigation and Rampart for small. Does there really need to be 3 levels of mitigation? If so, doesn't that force every future tank to have 3 levels of mitigation? I'd rather have skills that do different things. Hallowed Ground does something unique, so it's fun.

What's your concern with new tanks having tank abilities? Which future job concerns you? For example, a ninja tank could make so many shadows they can't be hit for a couple seconds. Etc. It's easy to come up with a unique way to give each tank some common tanking abilities.

Holmgang is a god send? Did I miss some change where they made it less... rubbish?

Holmgang tries to do too many things, does none of them well and just ends up being a rubbish cooldown.

Not a problem at all. Just make certain key boss abilities hit through invincibility effects. This intention is already apparent in the wording of the tooltips for Holmgang and Invincibility.

The way I see it, they want invincibility effects as a last saving grace, but will have things that will ignore invincibility.

You make it sound like Holm is actually on par with a paladins TRUE invincibility. What warriors have is a shadow in comparison, was it a slight improvement yes, but its still not a very good ability and honestly its not really invincibility its more of a oh crap i just took a billion dmg and i'm at 1 hp atleast I had holm on so the white mages or scholars could heal me up.

I hardly consider Warriors having an invincibility skill even with Holmgang.
9 Times out of 10, I pop Holmgang at low health where I don't believe the healer will get me and they just prove me wrong.

The tenth time, can be broken down into:
1. It saved my ass
2. Healers are already dead (so I'm just trying to drag on an extra 6 seconds of life)
3. It saved my ass, but it locked me into a spot I don't want to be in and now I'm back to being afraid for my life

My Overall point is that killing bosses successfully has very little to do with the use of Holmgang. I pop it anyways just for safety sake but generally when it's done, I would have survived anyways.

I'm not convinced this is that much a limit. Perfect dodge would fit an evasion tank very well. As it is we have turtle and blood, evasion is the only classic tank paradigm left. That said our current blood tank isn't that... bloody. Both classes have the same effective hp, and actually if you break it down over time, warrior can mitigate more damage from cool downs than paladin can (excluding hallowed ground) via cool downs (note this is not counting shield oath).

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Originally Posted by PiedPiper

I'm not convinced this is that much a limit. Perfect dodge would fit an evasion tank very well. As it is we have turtle and blood, evasion is the only classic tank paradigm left. That said our current blood tank isn't that... bloody. Both classes have the same effective hp, and actually if you break it down over time, warrior can mitigate more damage from cool downs than paladin can (excluding hallowed ground) via cool downs (note this is not counting shield oath).

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I do wish they would make WAR more "Blood". They'd need to make IB scale with incoming damage, and fix storm's path healing though. Also, Bloodbath should be increased or renamed Bloody Nose.

I think they should also remove the dmg reduction on IB and and make vengeance back to what it was (Assuming they allow bloodbath to function well, in which case vengeance and BB would be great paired together)

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Originally Posted by Bigpurpleharness

They'd need to make IB scale with incoming damage

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It already does. 20% damage reduction scales perfectly with incoming damage.

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Originally Posted by Bigpurpleharness

and fix storm's path healing though. Also, Bloodbath should be increased or renamed Bloody Nose.

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Storm's Path isn't about the heal anymore, it is all about that debuff... though letting it heal a % of max HP would be better than the current system it isn't needed. Bloodbath is a very minor cooldown that can heal for a significant amount over its duration, but it doesn't really 'pop'.

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Originally Posted by Bigpurpleharness

I think they should also remove the dmg reduction on IB and and make vengeance back to what it was (Assuming they allow bloodbath to function well, in which case vengeance and BB would be great paired together)

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So you want them to nerf WARs?

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Originally Posted by IndigoHawk

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.

If Hallowed Ground only reduces damage by a percentage, then why not get rid of Hallowed Ground?

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Because there is such a thing as degrees of damage reduction. 90% damage reduction on a 5 minute cooldown would be useful in different situations than 20% damage reduction for 20 seconds or 30% damage reduction on a 3 minute cooldown.

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If so, doesn't that force every future tank to have 3 levels of mitigation?

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Yes and no. The thing about damage reduction is that it can be implemented differently per job without being as cut and dry as an invincibility. Blood DKs in WoW, for example, have damage reduction via Blood Shield (absorbtion shield based on amount healed from Death Strike), Bone Shield (reduces damage taken by the next 6 attacks by 20%) and Icebound Fortitude (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds).

Compare that to prot warriors, who have Shield Block & Shield Barrier (active mitigation with no cooldown), and Shield Wall (40% damage reduction). Or prot paladins that have a 20% damage taken cooldown but rely more on self heals (and prot pallies have an invincibility but it reduces damage dealt by them by 50% and removes them from the mob's aggro table for the duration). Or monks who reduce damage taken in part by Stagger, in part by dodges and parries, and in part by Guard (damage absorbtion) and Dampen Harm (50% damage reduction to incoming attacks that deal damage equal to or greater than 20% of your max HP).

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What's your concern with new tanks having tank abilities? Which future job concerns you?

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I can't picture a Samurai with an invincibility. Same for Beastmaster, and same for Mystic Knight. On a concept level it doesn't look right.

If we run into an issue where you have a batch of content that only two tanks make possible (much like turn 4 of coil with PLDs pre-2.1), we're back to square one and now have given any of the three a bad stigma until the next patch.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Holmgang is a god send? Did I miss some change where they made it less... rubbish?

Holmgang tries to do too many things, does none of them well and just ends up being a rubbish cooldown.

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Compared to what you had before, yes, it is a godsend.

That said, I never pushed for WAR getting an invincibility via Holmgang. What I was pushing for was WAR getting active mitigation. I mean, more than what you got from Inner Beast.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

That said, I never pushed for WAR getting an invincibility via Holmgang.

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Describing Holmgang as an "invincibility" doesn't quite grok with me. Yes, it prevents you from dying for the duration, but it's not *true* invincibility, like Hallowed Ground, which is what it always gets compared to. The survivability value of Holmgang, even if the bind were removed, is *very* different from what Holmgang provides.

I do understand that it's necessary to group abilities of that level together; I just don't like the category being referred to as "invincibility CDs". A better term, as I see it, would be "uber-CD" or "super CD", since that's really what they are. I've sometimes heard of them referred to as "survivability nukes" ("nuke" referring to a single massive attack on a long CD, which we don't really have in ARR).

As a design point, I *do* think that it's appropriate for all tanks to have a *single* ability that exists in that category. It doesn't necessarily have to copy HG or Holmgang, but I think it behooves the devs to make sure that all tanks have some massive last-resort CD. Even if PLD and WAR didn't start with one, I still think it would be apt to include them, just because it's an appropriate functionality for a tank to have. Unlike DPS, tanks and healers are both classes that often have compressed need for functionality. Burst DPS doesn't really matter in the course of PvE content, but burst survivability and burst healing are very important. Healers have abilities like Lustrate and Benediction to fulfill their need to adapt to the situations that require *incredible* compression and Divine Seal, Sacred Soil, Rouse, and Fey Illumination for times when functional compression is needed, but not on the same scale; tanks have their normal CDs for basic compression, but HG and Holmgang are needed for those "shit hits the fan" moments when you need to have absolute survivability for a short window. Building tanks without last resort CDs would be like building healers without Benediction/Lustrate: they *can* get away with it, but it's a niche functionality that deserves at least a single tool to cover.

Honestly, the tank Limit Break seems to fit this role. The healer Limit Break does as well.
They are made to survive oshit moments, they are our party oshit button (and it makes me sad when a dps pops the LB mid-fight without finishing the boss).

Paladin and White Mage have long "o shit" buttons too. Warrior and Scholar don't, because they aren't as simple as "push the button" (need wrath, combos, aether, multiples actions... nono, that doesn't work).


I think these will be adjusted soon, because they can be used as a strategy to bypass some fight mechanics, while they were probably meant to recover from mistakes done by players.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

As a design point, I *do* think that it's appropriate for all tanks to have a *single* ability that exists in that category. It doesn't necessarily have to copy HG or Holmgang, but I think it behooves the devs to make sure that all tanks have some massive last-resort CD.

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Take Holmgang back to just the attract-bind. Add a new ability in:

Unyielding Fury
The Warrior's rage allows him to ignore wounds and fight on past the endurance of normal fighters.
5 minute recast, 10 second duration
Places a buff on the Warrior that prevents death once. In the event of death being prevented, all damage received over the next 5 seconds is instead converted to a heal.

So if you 'die' while this buff is active, it will trigger and all damage done to you instead heals you. If you don't die, it does nothing but burn a timer.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Unyielding Fury
The Warrior's rage allows him to ignore wounds and fight on past the endurance of normal fighters.
5 minute recast, 10 second duration
Places a buff on the Warrior that prevents death once. In the event of death being prevented, all damage received over the next 5 seconds is instead converted to a heal.

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I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. Dropping to 0 and then getting healed from damage seems more than a little wonky to me. I think it'd be more appropriate for it to bring you back to 75% hp (or 25% with a 50% DR buff for 10 seconds).

The "cannot die" aspect of Holmgang is perfectly fine, in my opinion. It *does* need to be split from Holmgang, though, and have the duration increased so that it's long enough to actually serve as a viable "uber-CD". Other ideas that could replace it are, to me, just brainstorming potential uber-CDs for other tanks.

Or drop the immunity and increase healing done by 700% for 10sec. That'll be fun - and more in line with the warrior way of life.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

The "cannot die" aspect of Holmgang is perfectly fine, in my opinion. It *does* need to be split from Holmgang, though, and have the duration increased so that it's long enough to actually serve as a viable "uber-CD". Other ideas that could replace it are, to me, just brainstorming potential uber-CDs for other tanks.

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There was a Ninja spell in FFXI doing this: cancels all damage taking you under 0 Hp.
It means you couldn't be one-shot by huge hits and they wouldn't touch your hp at all, but you could still be damaged by smaller hits.
Just giving time for healers to actually heal the player that used his oshit button.

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Originally Posted by Nalou

Honestly, the tank Limit Break seems to fit this role. The healer Limit Break does as well.

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Limit breaks are a communal resource and need to be useful in a communal context. The CDs we're referring to strictly benefit the individual using them in that specific situation. HG and the t3 tank LB serve very different purposes, since the tank LBs are largely on par with the normal tank CDs except that they apply to everyone while HG is an explicit "tank take no damage" ability. A situation in which HG would be useful isn't going to be the same one that a tank LB would be useful for because the tank LB is less about making sure that the *tank* survives but more about ensuring that all of the squishies survive a big AoE.

The damage LBs work as they are because they calculate damage based upon the entire group (e.g. a MNK in terribad gear and a DRG in amazing gear are actually doing to do the same damage with their LB if they're in the same group) and damage is always a useful contributor, since, you know, stuff has to die so it's powered communally in order to accomplish a collective goal. Healing and mitigation are specific (you only really need to heal the tank 90% of the time and only the tank needs to have appreciable mitigation because DPS shouldn't be getting hit by stuff that actually requires mitigation to survive) so it's appropriate for tanks and healers to have their own uber-CDs while DPS have to rely upon LBs.

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Originally Posted by IndigoHawk

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.
[snip]

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...except that in this game tanks don't have a genuine forced taunt. Nor, for that matter, do we have threat leech skills. We have aggro builders, we have one threat copy (Provoke), and we have plenty of mitigation skills. I'm not saying we need taunts and leeches, just noting they aren't here.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Limit breaks are a communal resource and need to be useful in a communal context... Healing and mitigation...

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There is no "should be used as" or w/e.
There are situations where you can use LBs as panic buttons, there are situations where you need to manage it as a ressource.
Using LBs as a panic button for one person to prevent a wipe isn't a bad use.

However, HG and LB have no management attached to them, that's why they are potentially game-breakers. You don't build them. You don't anticipate them. You just pop the button when the team made too many mistakes.
They are not part of mitigation or healing, they are part of "oshit I need to do something and I have nothing left".


That's probably why HG only works on "most" attacks but not "all attacks" (and especially not the one that would make a fight waaayyy easier with a pld) and why everyone complaines about Bene's looonngg animation.
They are already nerfed, and I think they will be nerfed even more. Honestly, they seem more like something from v1 they couldn't take away, than like abilities designed to balance this game.

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Originally Posted by Zakalwe

...except that in this game tanks don't have a genuine forced taunt. Nor, for that matter, do we have threat leech skills. We have aggro builders, we have one threat copy (Provoke), and we have plenty of mitigation skills.

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The lack of basic tank abilities is one of the downsides to tanking in this game. For example, taking over an existing mob is a nuisance. A forced taunt would allow tanks to take over for a few seconds, copy threat, build threat, position, and then have no problems once the taunt wears off, regardless of what the party is doing. FFXIV doesn't provide abilities like this, which makes tanking more annoying than in other games. Positioning in FFXIV is more prone to failure, because a dps or healer who doesn't read the tank's mind and unloads at the wrong moment can accidentally ruin the next few seconds of the fight with an out of control mob.

So, all tanks should have basic tank abilities, even if no tank in FFXIV has them. :)

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I can't picture a Samurai with an invincibility. Same for Beastmaster, and same for Mystic Knight. On a concept level it doesn't look right.

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I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

I can envision abilities for samurai, beastmaster, and mystic knight that could make them invincible by not taking damage, instantly recovering, refusing to die, avoiding hits, etc. Samurai dazzles or interrupts attacks with a gil barrage or performs so many feints no attack can get through, beastmaster summons something to intercept hits for a few seconds, mystic knight drains a crystal/uses a rune to enhance their defense or imbue their blade to intercept/absorb all attacks, etc.

If you want to have an ability that gives limited invincibility, you can come up with an excuse without affecting the rest of the class design.

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Originally Posted by IndigoHawk

I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

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Well, the reason for my distaste for invincibilities is two-fold. First because invinciblity was a major player in the negative image WARs had prior to 2.1, and that was due to Hallowed Ground making certain content possible to clear that was not possible with a WAR tank (remember that the devs expected people to throw themselves at coil and die forever much like WoW's devs purposely overtuned C'thun in AQ40 to be mathematically impossible to kill). Even Yoshida admitted this during an interview.

His answer to this was to give WAR an invincibility. Sure, it may not count to some because you have to hit 1 HP and lasts 6 seconds compared to Hallowed Ground's 10, but the decision to even do this in the first place is what has me wondering over what would happen if say SAM was introduced and SAM was given no invincibility. I'd wager it would turn into lolSAM much like WAR was frowned upon pre-2.1 if the issue with coil were to repeat itself.

The second part has yet ot rear its ugly head, but invincibilities tend to be double-edged swords because they can hold back class design. Thankfully, SE's devs haven't gone in that direction.

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As far as classes and jobs, I don't think invincibility would suit a samurai. I could see it gaining a major damage reduction buff by making the SAM parry like crazy and counter attack with every parry. Might work with Mystic Knight, but then you'd have someone cry that it's too similar to PLD. I've always pictured a BST tank working through shared HP pool between the master and pet, though I guess it may work as you suggested.

Rune Fencer could get bubble/reflect, some sort of super stoneskin, seal themselves in an ice/stone that prevents all damage and healing for the given time. Samurai could do counter/parry boost to the extreme or could do that tatami mat technique where you use the floor as a shield. Beastmaster could use treats/steroids to boost the pet or could call 1-2 extra pets like a distress/pack call. Ninja could have a substitution technique(log replacement trick) that works as a timed parry/reraise effect.

There are tons of ways to avoid invincibility all you need is the same end state of having a live tank at the end of a certain time frame.