Fixing Tank's Invulnerability Abilities Thread

After knowing the state of the actions, also knowing that current presented information is subject to change, let's discuss how we can bring the invulnerability abilities more closer to a fair balance.

Here is what they are as presented as the NA media tour 2019:

Holmgand: 6s Invuln / 180s cooldown. Bind enemy.
Hollowed Ground: 10s of invuln + imune to damage / 420s cooldown.
Living Dead: 10s trigger + 10s invuln + KO if not healed 100% / 300s cooldown.
Superbolide: Reduces HP to 1 + 8s Invuln / 420s cooldown.

Leave your suggestion and like whoever suggestion you like the most.

I don't see what needs to be fixed.
Perhaps a slightly shorter cooldown on Superbolide as it's not quite what Hallowed Ground is, but still it's not like it's broken.

I will be direct for my suggestion, Holmgang and Hollowed Ground are too unbalanced and they can't be that far away from each other. I would like those tank ultimate skills to be the same cooldown and to feel as a emergency thing. I will remove the bad side of them and put them to the same level as Hollowed Ground.

Hollowed Ground: 10s of invuln to KO + imune to damage. 420s Cooldown.
Holmgang: 10s Invuln to KO. Increased Lifesteal +100% and Damage dealt is converted into HP. 420s Cooldown.
Superbolide: Invuln to KO 10s. Set a shield covering 100% of the HP for 10s. Nullified damage by the shield turns into health as long as the shield is up. 420s Cooldown.
Living Dead: Invuln to KO 10s. Damage received turns into healing for the duration of 10s. But received healing turns into received damag..no no no, no bad sides, just stop with that mentality already. 420s Cooldown.

This will offer to every tank a way to get another chance by themselves without relying on healers.
Paladin: Basically he does not lose HP, and if he uses Hollowed Ground when the HP is low he can just clemency to full HP easily since he does not lose HP.
Holmgang: Since WAR does lose HP then will need a better way than Clemency to recover HP. The lifesteal needs to be that useful.
Superbolide: Shield to not lose HP, and the heal mechanic since GBR does not have other better way like Clemency to heal up.
Living Dead: Can be your salvation, or can be nothing if used wrong, while being equivalent powerful as the other tanks.

Do you see how powerful Hollowed Ground is? Even with all this crazy overpower stuff, Hollowed Ground is the best one.

Living Dead: 10s duration with 20% damage reduction, Walking Dead: 6s duration with 15% Increased Healing and cannot be damage, must be healed to half HP to remove death penalty, Invulnerability will continue for remainder duration of Walking Dead.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I don't see what needs to be fixed.
Perhaps a slightly shorter cooldown on Superbolide as it's not quite what Hallowed Ground is, but still it's not like it's broken.

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What needs to be fixed is that many mechanics can be straight up ignored using holm due to its vastly shorter CD.

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Originally Posted by blaen

What needs to be fixed is that many mechanics can be straight up ignored using holm due to its vastly shorter CD.

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Yes that is the point of it. You are to use it much more often, with the degree of danger to the user presented. It has a much shorter duration of effect so while like DRK you need to be healed or you'll die [to the next auto] the healer has less time to help you out.

You fix them by getting rid of them.

I've posted this in the Living Dead discussion thread as well, but there are some fairly big discrepancies when it comes to tank invulns. This is pretty important, because the invulns shared between your chosen tank duo dictate how easily you can trivialise tankbusters in a fight. This was true for the past two expansions as well, but Shadowbringers makes it that much more obvious.

The easiest comparison is between Hallowed Ground and Superbolide. They're identical, except that Superbolide has a 2 second shorter duration and also comes with a penalty that reduces your HP to 1. Setting side the obvious risk in which you fatfinger the cooldown and send your healer into a panic, it just doesn't offer anything that Hallowed doesn't. Even if this was set at a 6 minute recast, I don't think that it would be worth the penalty over Hallowed. Both Xeno and Merri mention that Yoshi-p thinks that Hallowed is too powerful, but is afraid to nerf it because it might make people upset. Personally, I think that's their fear of "upsetting people" is why they keep putting out progressively worse iterations of tank balance.

Holmgang and Living Dead is another fairly obvious comparison. The most obvious point is number of uses per fight. Holmgang gives you double the number of uses per fight over Hallowed and Superbolide. That means that you can cheese double the number of tankbusters. Living Dead is somewhere in no-man's land as far as recasts go, where it sometimes gives you an extra use, and sometimes doesn't.

It used to be that the main drawback of Holmgang was that it required a target (sometimes you have an untargetable boss) and that it rooted you in place. That's gone now. Holmgang is the only one of the old tank invulns to get a rework, despite the fact that it was already the single most powerful invuln in the game. It no longer roots you in place, just your enemy. The description also seems to suggest that selecting a target is optional. Meanwhile, Living Dead's penalty remains the same, and still is probably the single least liked and least intuitive abilities in the game.

Even if you felt that the instant death penalty on Living Dead was warranted (it isn't, and it makes even less sense now than ever given how little burst healing DRK has to offer), the implementation is terrible. I've gone over them at length, months ago:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Considerations
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ns-Tank-Forums

It's also obvious that this is an ability that a lot of people take issue with:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...d-not-removed?
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...r-s-nightmare.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ead-QoL-Change
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Dead-QoL-buff
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-a-little-more
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ion-Discussion
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ng-Dead-in-3.2
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ead-suggestion
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ed-Living-dead
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...rovement-ideas
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...and-suggestion
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Dead-feedback
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Sole-Survivor

I'm also pretty sure that I explicitly flagged the issue in the feedback thread that the dev team supposedly translated and reviewed, prior to the proposed DRK reworks:
Dark Knight Feedback Thread

And this is just looking at direct Living Dead feedback. I can't even begin to mention how many times it came up in the middle of other discussions as well. What was that? Ignore four years of negative feedback on the ability and buff Holmgang instead? Good idea. Wouldn't want all those WARs cancelling pre-orders on you. They definitely wanted that Dark Knight statue. I mean, you do get that odd WAR who claims that Living Dead is fine. But then let them take the instant death penalty. They're the ones with all the self-healing buffs. That way they can actually put the new Thrill of Battle buff to good use.

It's kind of impressive that Xeno had to actually point out to Yoshi-p that Holmgang was more powerful than even Hallowed. I mean, what ability did you think was trivialising your tankbuster design? Genius. And he's afraid of nerfing Hallowed because of the potential backlash? You might as well forget ever seeing any sort of parity on Holmgang, then. If he's afraid of even the PLD community, there's no way that he's going to take on WAR mains.

I've said this before, but I'll settle for them just fixing Superbolide (and Camouflage) at this point, because I have little to no faith in their ability to balance or even respond to feedback on older skills, especially given what we've seen in the Stormblood media tour. If Shadowbringers has anything in common with Stormblood, the DRK tooltips are going to look even worse after we get the final versions of these actions. GBR looks like something that I'd like to play if they'd just fix the personal cooldown suite.

I've said it before: this is the problem with partial homogenization. Tanks get picked based on the differences between abilities, not their similarities. I found it hilarious that even looking at the 30% cooldowns, despite making them nearly identical, they couldn't resist making Vengeance better by keeping in the damage reflect. If you make the tanks nearly identical, it's these supposedly "small" differences that lead to large variations in pick rates.

Superbolide needs some changes, Holmgang/LD/Hallowed are balanced.

Superbolide: Reduced HP to 1 + 8s Invuln / 300s cooldown. (down from 420s.)

Doesn't last as long as Living Dead potentially can, but also won't kill you.

The outlier here is Holm, we all know it. That move needs to be in line with the others at higher CD timer, even if it means making it longer due to no more rooting you.

The alternative would be lowering the CD on the others, but I think SE is trying to avoid having the death defying moves just negate busters. Living also needed to be changed, I think between 30-50% of the HP needing to be restored would be fine, and add regen to all DRK's attacks during it so they can actively help themselves.

To me holmgang and hallowed are fine, representing the 2 ends of the spectrum, high cd high safety vs. Low cd low safety.

Living dead is an inferior holmgang and now superbolide is an inferior hallowed. This is where it gets silly, why should these tanks have inferior versions? If LD was just a 10 second holmgang with 5 min recast, that’s fine, if superbolide had a 5 min cd, also fine. The power of the move needs to match the recast timer and it just doesn’t for these moves.

People really need to stop emphasising the supposed risk of Holmgang. The chances of you dying are extremely low because you'll only ever use it on a tank buster. Any healer who isn't asleep should already be preparing to heal you since they know busters hurt. Yes, yes, there are dumb healers who don't pay attention, but that can be said of every job. The benefits of Holmgang far exceed any risk. A prime example of how absurdly powerful it is can be seen in Godka, where Warrior is the only tank who can invuln three out of five busters. It utterly trivializes one of Godka's mechanics.

Frankly, one could argue all four invulns need an even longer CD than they currently have—essentially making them a one use per fight outside maybe Ultimate. If nothing else, Holmgang needs to be 5min, especially not that you can use Equilibrium freely. That's a 20-30k (currently) heal. This allows WAR to literally Tetra themselves—something DRK and GUN have no answer for.

I'd probably do something along the lines of:

Holmgang - 6s duration - Can't go below 1HP - Additional Effect: Forces Enemy to attack you for the duration (Basically like a Taunt from other MMO's) - 240s CD

Living Dead - 10s duration - Can't go below 1 HP. Damage that would otherwise cause you to go below 1HP instead creates a shield that absorbs healing for the amount of damage prevented. If this shield remains at the end of the duration, you die. - Additional Effect: Increases healing received by 30% - 300s CD

Superbolide - 8s duration - Cannot take damage. Reduced to 1HP. Additional Effect: Refreshes the CD of Aurora - 300s CD

Hallowed Ground - 10s duration - Cannot take damage - 360s CD

Basically, streamline the CD's so they're closer to each other and put some additional effects onto some. Now the biggest difference in CD is 2 minutes (Between WAR and PLD) but the rest are +/- 60s so they're more on par.

Warrior gets some extra utility in that instead of having mostly redundant Binds, that they instead get forced taunt for the duration which can give them some utility to "Tank Swap" just to soak a TB with Holm. It also fits the theme of "Holmgang" better (Which is a ancient Norse duel). It gets a lower CD than other TB's at the cost of lower duration.

Dark Knight basically gets Purgatory from WoW DK's. Where instead of needing to be healed 100% of their max health (Therefore being penalized for having higher HP pool) they instead only need to be healed for the overkill damage, this allows them to do things like use TBN to help minimize the amount of overkill damage as well as improving as their health pool increases and so the amount of overkill damage from an attack decreases. To add a little extra to the mix, give them increased healing taken so that even less healing is necessary to save them, also without this dispelling the skill itself, meaning they can get full 10s (Well, more like 9s) of hits that bring them below 1HP so long as they get enough healing.

Gunbreaker gets not a ridiculous CD for being literally worse Hallowed Ground. Also, some extra self synergy with the Aurora refresh, allowing them to use the skill even if it was on CD from a prior use. Thus allowing them to tick up their own HP over the duration.

Hallowed Ground just gets a reduced CD to fall more in line with other invulns. No other additions are necessary as it's already very strong as is.

My idea follows simple rules:

Short duration = short cooldown.
Long duration = long cooldown.
Strong effect = strong drawback

Holmgang - duration: 6s, cooldown: 180s, effects: invunerable, drawback: none
Living dead - duration: 10s, cooldown: 300s, effects: invunerable, received increased healing during duration, drawback: dies if not healed to X% of full live
Superbolide - duration: 8s, cooldown: 240s, effects: invunerable, immune to dmg, drawback: hp gets set to 1 at activation.
Hallowed ground - duration: 10s, cooldown: 420s, effects: invulnerable, immune to dmg, drawback: the drawback is the +120s on cooldown in comparison to living dead

As you can see, all the cooldowns are duration x 30s. (except for hallowed ground)

Holmgang has the weakest effect, since it only makes you invulnerable, so it got no further drawback.
Living dead also makes you invulnerable and you receive increased healing, so the drawback is the possibility of dying.
Superbolide makes you immune to dmg, but sets your hp down to 1 at the start.
Hallowed ground doesn't have a drawback, but it got +120s on cooldown.

I know it doesn't fix all the things people address like "LD is the only one that can kill you." or "WAR can cheat too many mechanics because of the low cooldown.", but it's the most balanced thing I can come up with.

Living Dead needs the "not die" requirement to be healed 50% of HP, not 100%.

Superbolide needs it's cooldown lowered to at most 300 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

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Indeed, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Too scared to change Hallowed, too scared to change Holmgang, and also apparently too scared to listen to last 3 years of DRK feedback lol

If they are in fact removing the bind & target requirement from Holmgang then I suppose it's worthy to reconsider it's CD. Yes it has the superior recast now but it's simply not as flexible as the others regardless of how you slice it, the most obvious for me is that it was practically unusable for large dungeon pulls. It's still not a meaningful duration for dungeons, but at least now maybe we won't get rooted in aoe. Additionally, since we've had all our fluff mitigation taken away I imagine it'll see more use.

From a raid perspective, planned LD usage isn't really an issue anymore than Holmgang. But much like how unusable Holmgang is/was for dungeons, LD is borderline unusable there as well. Removing or adjusting the healing requirement is mainly a QoL adjustment more than it is asking for anything to be buffed, but if they aren't going to remove it then the cooldown does indeed need to be adjusted.

I don't particularly like the suggestion of making them all equal cooldowns of 7 or 5 mins or whatever, because - all else being equal - people are still going to gravitate towards the one perceived as the strongest. So all the effects would have to be the same, too. They need to have their own advantages and disadvantages and cooldown & duration should properly reflect that. Perhaps one of the problems holding them up on LD is the 20 sec duration, 10 sec to die and 10 sec to be rescued. It's a fairly long invulnerability but it can also be cut short with quick heals, or of course not proc at all with too many heals. A longer cooldown in light of such duration would make sense on the surface, but it doesn't play out that way in reality. Hallowed by comparison you always get 10 sec regardless. Holmgang you always get 6. GNB will always get 8. Maybe they can find some middle ground here to re-consider that DRK isn't always enjoying a 20 sec window on his CD, or the 10-sec invulnerability window, and that it's simply not an advantageous cooldown in all situations because of the way it actually functions. I mean, if you get one or 2 of these a fight they better be worthwhile, right? They are supposed to be OUR ULTIMATE SKILLS.

Cooldown for Living Dead needs to be reduced, or the effect needs to be adjusted to compensate for actually having as long of a cooldown as it does. Period. I don't have any great suggestions to offer but it's pretty obvious that if they don't do something that DRK will be doomed for the 2nd expansion in a row. And it's supposed to be the poster boy for this one lol

As a non-raider I don't really have a lot of ideas.

Hallowed Ground is kinda OP, but there would be riots if it was changed to much. Its longer CD though seems fine though I'd prefer at 360s instead.

Holmgang, I don't play WAR much and it seems fine enough to me. At most a slightly longer CD for it would be the only thing it would need. Or for WARs to lose a different defensive option to make its increased use more important but I don't like that idea.

Superbolide: Reduce its CD to 300s and its fine.

Living Dead: I know a lot of people want it changed but I honestly love the differences it has in relation to the other tanks. I think the best thing to do is have Walking Dead give a 20% damage reduction as well as causing all actions done by the Dark Knight heal them until they reach full health or die. It'll give a bit of relief on the healers and depending on how much the healing does could even let the Dark Knight do it completely on their own atleast in their burst windows.

Some off-the-cuff thoughts on bringing the invulnerables more in line with each other focusing on just duration and recast tweaks except for Living Dead.

Holmgang simply needs a longer recast time and it should be changed from 180s to 240s. To compensate for the longer recast, the duration should be increased slightly from 6s to 8s, not much but enough to maybe catch an extra auto attack or to provide that slight timing cushion.

Living Dead just needs to be redone. I understand Yoshi-P's desire to have it be "unique" due to "job identity" but you can still have that without it working the way it currently does.
Here is a rework off the top of my head.
Rise Again - recast 360s - duration 8s
If your HP drops to 0 while under the effect of Rise Again, instead of being KO'd you gain the effect of Risen
Risen - duration 8s
Your HP cannot be reduced below 1 and heals you upon activation.
Cure potency: 1200
Basically the same as Living Dead without the excessive death penalty, a small self-heal added in and an increased recast and shortened durations to compensate for the other buffs to the ability. Just something I thought of on the spur of the moment. By no means perfect but it shows how easy it would be to redo the ability but keep the general "unique" feel of it for the purpose of "job identity".

Superbolide can have it's effects stay the same but have it's duration increased from 8s to 10s and it's recast dropped to 360s.

Hallowed Ground can have it's effect stay the same but have it's duration reduced from 10s to 8s. Recast stays at 420s.

Well, apparently when asked about living dead Yoshi said he didn't want to change it because "job identity".

So let's look at these moves and think about what would fit each jobs identity.

PLD and WAR, I think their effects fit them well.
Hallowed ground, complete mitigation, PLD is the shield wall, complete mitigation makes sense.
Holmgang, you can't die, WAR has always been about self healing, so having the ability to not drop below 1hp and just be able to heal itself up just fits.

So DRK and GNB, these don't fit. So let's think about these jobs identity.

Gonna start with GNB, it basically got a gimped hallowed ground. How does that fit it's identity? It looks to me based on their kit, they're kind of setup as a barrier tank focused more on party support. So, simple adjustment. Superbolide: reduce your HP to 1 and render yourself impervious to most damage, party members within range gain a barrier equivalent to HP consumed.

I think the main issue with GNB's invuln, aside from being gimped hallowed, is that it means the healers have to focus on the tank because they're dropping to 1 HP. So if it made it so that the rest of the party was protected so the healers ONLY had to focus on the GNB, I feel like that would balance it out somewhat.

On to DRK, living dead is just brokenly bad and it boggles my mind that it hasn't seen ANY adjustment since it's release. To me, this move needs a ground up rework or complete replacement. So first, let's looks at DRKs identity.

DRK's lore is that it struggles with its darkside for power, the darkside wanting to take over. I think living dead could represent that perfectly. When you pop living dead, your MP is restored to full and you no longer take HP damage, but MP damage instead (since MP represents your darkness), but you don't take direct MP damage (a 50k buster won't instantly reduce your 10k MP to 0 MP), instead you take a set amount of MP damage per hit, so every hit would reduce your MP by 1k for example. This would mean you could take 10 free hits assuming you don't spend or restore MP in that time.

I feel this would be a fair compromise between DRK's lore and it's gameplay as a tank, giving it's own unique identity while giving it an effect that it can manage by itself. It would also give DRK some nuance to it's invuln skill, letting you decide if you want to spend extra MP on damage or hold back and recover MP while the effect is up.

So you may have noticed I didn't mention any recasts or durations. That's because I think they should all be 5min recast and 10s duration. Tank cooldowns have been really homogenised with this expansion, all having rampart, all having a 2min 30% mitigation, all having a short CD mitigation. So why not do the same for invulns? The effects would be the only thing that varies based on the jobs identity but they would all be 5min recast and 10s duration.

Have you used LD? Nice try, not balanced, and barely usable outside preplanned fights with a static.

superbolide should be a lower CD
maybe even had a heal buff to it

Living dead really just needs to not depend on others

I really dont know why they dodnt touch holmgang. I have long said that they need to unlock IBs mitigation from tabk stance and that will allow increasing the timer for holmgang. They gave us the on demand mitigation via raw intuition but did not touch hg (except quality of life which is great). But they should just take the new HG, increase the invuln duration to 8ish seconds and up the timer to 420 and it would be fine.

In the Work to Game interview Yoshi P even admits to Hallowed being overpowered but they are afraid to change it due to how its been that way for so long and the backlash.

But they can at least fix GNB and DRK.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

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The main problem with invulns as they stand is that you're bringing two tanks, each of which has their own. So you're easily knocking off 4+ tankbusters per fight. So either you need more tankbusters per fight, or you need certain tankbusters that flat out ignore the invuln. Now that I think about it, the latter would be a really interesting solution to the problem - your invuln would be something that you use to rescue a run, rather than simply being used to take a mechanic out of the fight.

From a balance perspective, it really doesn't make sense that you have invulns that can be used twice as much as that of another tank. But if you make them too long, then it's a button which you just press once per fight. I think the 5-7 minute range is the best compromise.

I also think that you need a bit of consistency when it comes to the design of these. If you want it to be about trade offs (i.e. you gain the benefit, but it comes at a price), then this needs to be consistent. At the moment, GNB and DRK are the only ones who have drawbacks, and it's to achieve an inferior effect. Likewise, if the point is to give you invuln + another benefit (like it is on WAR), then that should also be consistent.

In the case of Living Dead, the duration is often quoted incorrectly. The active time is Walking Dead, because that's the only time that you're actually mitigating damage. So that will always be some duration less than 10 seconds (i.e. whenever the effect gets cleansed). And if you're busy healing the DRK, their HP is greater than 1 and they're not mitigating any further damage. So outside of a timed benediction, the effective duration of Living Dead is usually shorter than Holmgang.

I think if they wanted to keep Living Dead as it is, they should have incorporated it into the gauge system. If they were able to rework the bars for shielding, they could have at least made it obvious how much remaining healing was required to cleanse the effect. This was pure laziness.

Holmgang needs to be pushed up to a 5 min cooldown, though frankly I am all for them throwing all of these skills out the window. They completely break encounters more than any other skillset in the game.

Every invuln should do the same basic thing: Keep the tank using it from dying for 10 seconds.
They should also all have the same recast timer to maintain encounter design balance.

Holmgang has a solid concept: "I'm a berserker and while you maybe hurt me, you'll not take me out of the fight."
"Cannot be reduced to below 1 HP for 10 seconds" fits the bill and between healers watching the buff tick down and WAR's own self-healing abilities, it's an easy drawback to deal with.

Superbolide is an interesting idea, but I would personally change it to:
"Sets own HP to 50%. Renders you impervious to most attacks while preventing healing from sources other than self.
Additional Effect: Increases HP recovery via healing actions on self by 50%"
Basically, the only way you'd come out at full health would be by saving Aurora. But combining that with Gunbreaker's self shields and the fact that it sets the user to 50%, means that you'll be fine or even higher up on HP than before.

Living Dead is the most complex and troublesome. The 10 second safety net of Living Dead + the 10s of immunity from Walking Dead is really strong. The best idea I can come up with right now would be to give every attack the DRK preforms while Walking Dead a damage boost and some degree of self healing. And then if the DRK isn't healed to full before the end of Walking Dead, they get a damage down for the same amount and duration. That sounds like something that could be abused...

Hallowed Ground is really the hardest to balance because it has nothing to give ideas for downsides. All I can come up with is that using any attack other than Intervene (for the movement) ends the effect. Or maybe give a button to end the effect yourself and attacks deal no damage while it's up - allowing you to keep combos flowing and MP regenerating.

I mean the other option is to delete them all and give each tank a 10s, 90% reduction ability.

I too mostly prefer the idea of removing most immunity abilities completely, or at the least creating a new category of distinct-castbar boss skills against which immunities cannot prevent death or must have an overkill margin of less than X% for death to be prevented.

Ideally, I'd like for them to have a sort of utility that functions similarly in purpose to Immunities, in some cases, that follows organically from unique effects.

Let's take Superbolide for instance. At present, it's just a greatly inferior Hallowed Ground. But what if we could make that 1 HP thing... make sense? For instance:

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Superbolide: Reduces you to 1 HP, instantly shielding you for half of your health removed in addition to a further 30% of your maximum HP. This shield stacks with other damage-preventing effects, but fades continuously over 6 seconds. 240-second cooldown.

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OR

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Superbolide: For the next 6 seconds, your damage taken is reduced by your missing %HP, to a maximum of 75% reduction. (E.g. at 1/2 HP, you take only 2/3s the normal damage, at 1/3s you take only 1/2 damage, and at 1/5th HP or lower, you take 3/4 less damage.)

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Both are strong. Really strong. But, they both have interplay with healing and neither can single-handedly allow you to survive anything and everything. The first will require that you're quickly healed or it will either waste some of the shield and/or be an outright eHP loss. The second will only really protect you from follow-up auto-attacks, though it can make for some jaw-clenching moments of critical HP sustain and efficiency-centric risk-vs-reward play.

Edit: I still favor the 'Purgatory' debuff fix to Living Dead, even if it would technically be a nerf.

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Living Dead: Would-be fatal damage taken over the next 10 seconds activates Walking Dead.
Walking Dead: For the next ten seconds, you cannot die but each instance of damage that would otherwise kill you generates Mortal Coil, a healing-absorption effect equal to the damage prevented. Mortal Coil cannot exceed your maximum HP at any given time and is reduced by 1 point for each point of would-be healing received. If Immortal Coil remains after 10 seconds, you die.

Note: the value remaining on Mortal Coil will be indicated by a red shield graphic over one's health bar equal to the amount.

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Let Paladin have the only true Immunity/Invincibility, but at cost to mitigation resources elsewhere. Holmgang could more or less copy this mechanic from Living Dead as well to better balance it, so that it's granting no free mitigation. Moreover, all three "immunities" would have certain skills they quite simply cannot prevent death or damage from, or must have an overkill margin less than X% to survive.

Hallowed Ground : 6sec Immunity to dmg. The paladin gains a buff which grants him 2 stacks of Holy Spirit and Clemency, making both instant and by using one or the other 1 stack is consumed.Clemency has increased healing potencys. 5min cd.

Living Dead: "living dead" part is a 3sec duration, during that time the next hit kills you (any hit) and turns you into (the walking dead part) a "zombie" (or something edgy/dark knightish) for 10sec. In the "walking dead" state the drk gets the following effects: TBN will now heal the DRK for 25% of his own health instead of granting him a shield which prevents dmg and it won't grant dark arts anymore during the duration. He gets 2 Stacks on TBN and TBN has no mana cost, 2 stacks on every gauge ability. Using 1 stack of either TBN/Gauge ability will consume the stack on both, meaning he must decide on using tbn or dmg skills.He needs to be healed back to 70% before "walking dead" ends or he dies. 5min cd

Holmgang : can't drop below 1hp for 10 sec,trows out chains and sets the enemy or enemies in a 5yalm range around you in a rage status, increasing their dmg dealt to you(to account for some aoe's which may happen while they deal increased dmg,we don't want to wipe the grp :P) for the duration of the effect and forces him/them to attack only you.Grants 2 stacks of Equilibrium,some Gauge skills (same as drk/pld), using any of those skills reduces the stack by 1. 5min cd.

Superbolide: 60% dmg reduction for 8sec, 20%(maybe 10%?) dmg reflect shield for the duration it lasts(a better vengeance basically).Gives 2 stacks of Aurora (also increasing its potencys) and 2 stacks on skills that uses cartridges (not sure which skills thou). 5min cd.

The idea behind this is:
a) give self heal capability in some way(in 8/24man content not that important,but helpful for 4man or solo content)
b) give potential dps ability (high hitting one/aoe) to spice things up, but be very close potency wise so it stays balanced and make more use of the "charge's system"
c) have same cd and almost same duration (duration differs due to difference in damage mitigation,difference in healing needed)
d) be useful when soloing things/solo content
e) keep them different so that every job has its own "job identity"

For paladin i cant really decide which offensive skill to pick to give the stacks, the option for single target or aoe dps should be there, but limited to only 2 uses and since they don't use gauge for anything offensive its a bit hard to decide. Maybe grant 2 uses ,to pick from,of Clemency (with increased healing potencys), Holy Spirit,Holy Circle and/or Attonement. I don't know, it should just be very close aoe/single target to the other 3tanks potencys.

Double Post because of limitations

For DRK its more or less the same and we keep the risk of him dying,but the drk himself has ways to deal this effect and allows this skill to be used in solo play, but he must somehow restore 20% of his own health to not die in solo play. Not getting "Dark Arts" from "TBN" might be a discussion point, but i didnt really see any other skill other then "TBN" that could be turned into a selfheal potent enough so that he might have ways to deal with his imminent dead and giving him "Dark Arts" on top of that might be too good. (maybe abissal drain might work for that?)

Warriors basically the same, but it turned into a "Provoke"/"Ultimatum" skill for its duration with the increased dmg from mobs(setting them into a rage mode) for more "job identity". He cant die for 10sec and the skill is only used to prevent dead, so this rage and increased dmg of mobs is just cosmetic, we can do with or without it. 2 stacks on Equilibrium is to deal with the 1hp effect when the skill ends (if one chooses too) or 2 stacks on Gauge skills (not sure which, maybe 2 fell cleaves/inner beast or 2 decimates/steel cyclones).

Gunbreaker is also tough.. a better version of vengeance kinda sounds appropriate, like he casts a shield on him and turns it on fire (or something like that) and that's the reason why it reflects dmg back to the attacker for every hit they do. I through of a 80% dmg reduction and 6sec duration on the start, but if he had such a great mitigation there will be no reason to ever choose to use a stack or two of Aurora. Speaking of Aurora just increased potencys might not be enough and maybe the skill should also have lower duration, since its a hot, so that he can heal himself/others with the buffed version even faster (like clemency). Then we have cartridges abilities, not sure which to pick, since they are also a combo like skills...