What Does Protect Actually Do?

So I sputtered in horror when I learned that Protect is going away, then I realized I have no idea what it does even though I dutifully cast it at the beginning of every duty. Tooltip says "Increases the physical and magic defense of target and all party members nearby target". Ok, cool. By how much, and how?

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If I remember correctly, it literally increased both the defense and magical defense stat numbers of your char for the duration of protect. I forgot by how much though.

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Originally Posted by MrThinker

If I remember correctly, it literally increased both the defense and magical defense stat numbers of your char for the duration of protect. I forgot by how much though.

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I believe it is a 15% increase in the value of def and mdef.
How much that actually mitigates, I don't know.

Ok, so I tested it out. My Defense went from 133 to 152. Good to know. Learn something new every day.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I believe it is a 15% increase in the value of def and mdef.
How much that actually mitigates, I don't know.

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Less than 15% of the incoming damage more than likely. I remember the problem with WAR's old Foresight ability was that it:

1) increased physical defense, and only physical, which made it useless against magical attacks, and

2) a 20% increase in defense did not translate into a 20% reduction in damage taken, like Rampart and Shadowskin does/did

If I remember right, it's around 8% effective mitigation?

The spell protect is basically just reduces any damage the players recieve by a set percent and reducing the amount of time players spend healing that can then be spent casting a number of spells like revive, esuna, or gravity. Oh, and also it stacks with shields, and it's only really necessary for big pulls, heavy-instant-aoe fights, BLM, and yazmat

All classes have different base amounts of Physical and Magical Defense so the amount of usefulness from Protect changes accordingly. Tanks have the highest defense stats overall so they get the most benefit from Protect as you would expect but losing the spell definitely won't hurt anyone. The natural defense of every class will be tweaked slightly and no one will be able to complain about not having protect. It was just useless busy work anyway.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

If I remember right, it's around 8% effective mitigation?

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Because it scales with the individuals existing defence stat, it can actually range between about 4% and 8%, maybe less.
If you're undergeared it has less effect.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

If I remember right, it's around 8% effective mitigation?

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At ilv400 it ranges from exactly 8% for tanks and less than 3% for healers/casters

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Originally Posted by AleXwern

At ilv400 it ranges from exactly 8% for tanks and less than 3% for healers/casters

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Wow, good riddance, Protect.

I would still like to see some form of Protect and Shell in the game. Maybe a Ogcd ability the last for 15s?

It's an 8% damage reduction for tanks and people are glad it's gone? I don't get it. That's feels like a heavy nerf; why is this a good thing? When you're in a group of 8 that quickly translates to quite a bit of mitigation across the party too...

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Originally Posted by Truen

It's an 8% damage reduction for tanks and people are glad it's gone? I don't get it. That's feels like a heavy nerf; why is this a good thing? When you're in a group of 8 that quickly translates to quite a bit of mitigation across the party too...

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That’s only presuming that they don’t reduce overall mob damage or increase base defense of every class. There’s other ways to make up for protect being gone.

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Originally Posted by Truen

It's an 8% damage reduction for tanks and people are glad it's gone? I don't get it. That's feels like a heavy nerf; why is this a good thing? When you're in a group of 8 that quickly translates to quite a bit of mitigation across the party too...

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I mean, when you put it like this, it makes it sound like it was removed to force healers to heal more.

The numbers weren't the issue. It's that it was a pointless skill because it had a 30 minute duration and was present on every single healer. Meaning it had a guaranteed 100% uptime in every single encounter in the game. There was no skill or strategy to using it, you just press it as soon as the instance starts, or the second you return from a wipe and forget about it again.

It's telling when people are wanting it nerfed from 30 minutes to something like 15 seconds purely to make it somewhat interesting. As it was it added nothing to the game except another button to fit on your bar.

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Originally Posted by Brynhild

So I sputtered in horror when I learned that Protect is going away, then I realized I have no idea what it does even though I dutifully cast it at the beginning of every duty. Tooltip says "Increases the physical and magic defense of target and all party members nearby target". Ok, cool. By how much, and how?

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In terms of effectiveness, it effectively took up a spot on your hotbars. That's not a joke.

You know it increases physical and magical defense, but don't really know by how much. There has been some numbers tossed into this thread: 8% and 15%, and even much lower numbers for non-tanks. We also know that either way, 8% to 15% increase to def/mdef does not translate to the same amount of damage reduction respectively, which would be a much greater percentile of defense added. The tank having the highest defensive stat benefits the most from this.

Because it has a 30 minute duration, even if negligible you would think any increase to defense can't be bad. In truth it isn't bad at all. What makes it bad is it's a mandatory static buff with little benefit as it is a buff that doesn't really fall off, nor grant any kind of survivability against hard hitting mechanics. As such, it adds an unnecessary step to combat. A player KO costs the healer 3 GCDs, or 2 GCDs and an oGCD depending on availability/preference: Rezz, Cure, and reapply protect. Just shaving one of those off will really help the flow of combat for healers, and those who love to run ahead of Protect currently are most certainly not going to miss it either.

If they wanted to keep it, they could have just have made it instant and I think most would have been fine with that. WHM in particular currently has the least bloat of the three healers, so they could have given it back to them. I'm glad they are taking this concept of Protect away, but not particularly happy it's gone completely.

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Originally Posted by Truen

It's an 8% damage reduction for tanks and people are glad it's gone? I don't get it. That's feels like a heavy nerf; why is this a good thing? When you're in a group of 8 that quickly translates to quite a bit of mitigation across the party too...

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Yeah, there are like a lot of duty finder parties with players that are totally reliant on protect's dmg mitigation. Like, returning players, new players, lazy players, dragoon, black mages, players that are rusty with jobs, players that don't remember what to do, tnk DC nightmares, players without job crystals that are trying experimental set-ups...

TBH, the devs might actually be tired of the content's skill level and might be trying to increase player skill so that they can make more interesting content and increase the depth of PVP. The devs do play FF14 regularly

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Originally Posted by Brynhild

What Does Protect Actually Do?

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Keeps the tank and dps from hitting sprint when the instance starts.

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Originally Posted by MPNZ

Yeah, there are like a lot of duty finder parties with players that are totally reliant on protect's dmg mitigation. Like, returning players, new players, lazy players, dragoon, black mages, players that are rusty with jobs, players that don't remember what to do, tnk DC nightmares, players without job crystals that are trying experimental set-ups...

TBH, the devs might actually be tired of the content's skill level and might be trying to increase player skill so that they can make more interesting content and increase the depth of PVP. The devs do play FF14 regularly

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As explained, Protect scales with your defence stat, so undergeared players benefit less from it anyway. You're only getting that full 8% as a tank if your at max synced ilvl, so thise unprepared players are already at a disadvantage anyway.

And nothing happens in a vacuum guys, you can't claim this is a nerf without seeing all other mitigation skills for tsnks and healer, or seeing how character and enemy stats have changed.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

As explained, Protect scales with your defence stat, so undergeared players benefit less from it anyway. You're only getting that full 8% as a tank if your at max synced ilvl, so thise unprepared players are already at a disadvantage anyway.

And nothing happens in a vacuum guys, you can't claim this is a nerf without seeing all other mitigation skills for tsnks and healer, or seeing how character and enemy stats have changed.

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But, the the dmg reduction is noticeable on every class, though. There is a big difference between 27% and 35% dmg to player's HP bars, so it's definitly enough for people to be concerned about it a little bit. But, yeah, we just really won't know anything until they release the 5.0 patch notes. It's just a bit scary to think of just how many pages might be added to "tales from the duty finder" soon

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Originally Posted by MPNZ

But, the the dmg reduction is noticeable on every class, though. There is a big difference between 27% and 35% dmg to player's HP bars, so it's definitly enough for people to be concerned about it a little bit. But, yeah, we just really won't know anything until they release the 5.0 patch notes. It's just a bit scary to think of just how many pages might be added to "tales from the duty finder" soon

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The obvious solution is to just buff everyone's defense stats by 15%. So everyone basically has the effects of Protect built in. Or just change the effectiveness of defense stats in the damage calculation formulae by a factor of 1.15

It was a rather pointless spell, they just kept it around because it was iconic I guess.

They've probably accounted for the loss of 3-8% mitigation, and hey, instead we get tanks with 20% damage reduction at all times instead of sometimes.

They probably increase base values for both defenses.

People need to remember that even after the changes a UCoB/UWU kill should still be possible.

Without protect and without VIT melds.
Same for any 'minimum ilvl' raid.

So some kind of adjustments will be made.

This has been a long time coming, but if I’m being honest I would rather see Protect/Shell/Veil implemented as targeted cooldowns, like Rampart.