Targeted mitigation often does not work

talking about addle, feint and reprisal

there isn't even a way to tell w/o a combat logger

reason for all this is that even though the animation might be coming straight from the boss, the actual dmg source is an entirely different entity that is often not targetable, let alone existing anywhere in the arena

seems like strange coding to me, or is this in fact intentional? to herd the group to use one of the 3 elsewhere? but again, it happens often that there is nothing to use it on for a rather long time, and how the heck r u gonna tell in the first place w/o a third party tool

reprisal in particular, u have 2 in a group both on a minute CD, guess i'm just gonna mitigate some autos? or not even because boss is casting but the dmg isn't even coming from them

wishful thinking but some positive change here would be nice

/rant over

It also never feels like basic healing mitigation ever works either. Things like AoE mitigation to protect the party. It never really feels like it does any mitigation at all, and is just there to cast, yet do nothing to help. I am sure it's helping in the grand scheme of things, but it never really just feels like it does. You can see Reprisal numbers just off watching the damage ticks that are built in game. You can watch a mob hit you for 2k, then apply a mitigation and see that number average drop for the duration. I wish the same would apply on a mitigated strike that a healer put on to show it, but I have yet to see anything to tell.

This is a pertinent topic actually for me personally. During Dragonsong Ultimate, I'm sure everyone by now has seen the Ultimate End cast. Unlike other versions of Thordan, during this Ultimate End, Thordan is targetable, and thus able to be inflicted with Addle, Reprisal, etc etc. Due to Ultimate End hitting the non-tanks for around 96,000 damage, it is mandatory that you have both shielding, and multiple forms of damage mitigation. So, we set up more soft, but frequent debuff-based mitigation options to make the transition into Final Chorus (around 95,000 damage) and the following Eye of the Tyrant less painful for our healers. However, during my progression after I had already mathematically discovered the bare minimum of mitigation/shielding needed, there were occasions where multiple party members would die anyway, and not by a few hundred, by thousands, far beyond what typical damage variance would be from a high-roll. And it would be almost like we were missing Addle, Feint, and Reprisal, even though all of those debuffs were clearly applied far before the castbar ended.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the game basically does a coinflip on the Ultimate End cast. Sometimes it comes from Thordan, and sometimes, it comes from one of his untargetable knights, despite Thordan always being the actor who casts Ultimate End on the enmity list. This makes all debuff based mitigation totally useless sometimes on one the hardest hitting attacks in the entire fight, placed right before you need every member alive to take advantage of Thordan's damage taken up debuff.

We moved things around, added more shielding for the squishiest of party members, but it doesn't change the fact that that is stupid, and not telegraphed whatsoever.

I can't begin to count the number of times Reprisal has saved a party from wiping, even in dungeons. When you use it and the party survives with 1% health you know that you saved them. Just use it before an aoe cast ends.

It's intentional because some boss casts spawn other entities. If the entity is somewhere else (you can see if an entity spawns in the enemy list), then just use it on something else. You can use area mitigation such as Troubadour, Tactician, Shield Samba, Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, Shake It Off, Dark Missionary, Heart Of Light or any healer mitigation.

At least in old fights, it's not intended to herd the group to use them on different enemies, because not everyone used to have it in the past at least without leveling other jobs to cross-class with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Greyhawk

It also never feels like basicsnip1.

---

u may rest in piece that mitigation in the form of buffs always works (assuming it is magic dmg, yup there is some physical party dmg things too so anything that is magic dmg buff only, wont work sadly), it is hard to tell if any one does anything as there is the usual 95%-105% dmg variance even on raidwides (which is pretty dumb tbh), but u will quickly notice the difference when u have plenty and just short, some or all of ur non tanks will die

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

snip2.

---

there is no castbar for ultimate end (unless im completely crazy), i had to look at logs to figure out when it actually snapshots which is also completely retarded as otherwise u need to guess by trial and error... yeah no ty

i had some weird cases where like 2 members benefitted from reprisal, while the other 6 did not... it was rather mindboggling

to be safe, the 10 sec targeted mitigation needs to be applied after 3rd GCD, i think 5th is too late

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I can't begin to count the number of times Reprisal has saved a party from wiping, even in dungeons. When you use it and the party survives with 1% health you know that you saved them. Just use it before an aoe cast ends.

It's intentional because some boss casts spawn other entities. If the entity is somewhere else (you can see if an entity spawns in the enemy list), then just use it on something else. You can use area mitigation such as Troubadour, Tactician, Shield Samba, Divine Veil, Passage of Arms, Shake It Off, Dark Missionary, Heart Of Light or any healer mitigation.

At least in old fights, it's not intended to herd the group to use them on different enemies, because not everyone used to have it in the past at least without leveling other jobs to cross-class with.

---

if u use reprisal too late, it will be not there in time since it is notoriously slow to get applied... the reason u survived by 1% is because there was nothing there

anyroad, DSR p6 with the dragons... i have nothing to use reprisal on until half the fight is done, the first set of cones comes quite literally from the two dragons, but no reprisal does not work, it also does not work on the busters either (thats cause they r coming from some combination of the 12 knights who r nowhere to be seen, makes sense, right?)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chopstix

if u use reprisal too late, it will be not there in time since it is notoriously slow to get applied... the reason u survived by 1% is because there was nothing there

---

Just need to use it before the cast ends, like with dodging an aoe or interrupting a cast.

But I am not talking about DSR specifically. If that is happening a lot in DSR then the party mitigation I referred to would probably work better.

What do you mean you don't enjoy figuring out if your 10% mitigation actually does anything in a game with 10% damage variance? Such indie game just doesn't have the capacity to make a single entity cast more than a single AoE which means every mechanic creates half-a-dozen of additional entities hidden under the arena which all cast a part of that mechanic. And of course half the time debuffs are explicitly mirrored to such entities but sometimes they simply aren't. Any logic to this? Of course not. Oh, and of course we literally can't tell if the damage is magical or physical, the technology simply isn't there. Good stuff all around, you know.

i still remember the days when you shielded the party and hoped for the best b/c wtf knows how much that shield is lol

it doesn't help with the "slide lag" either when mitigation is applied "early" (a second before) but does not get counted as mit

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azuri

What do you mean you don't enjoy figuring out if your 10% mitigation actually does anything in a game with 10% damage variance? Such indie game just doesn't have the capacity to make a single entity cast more than a single AoE which means every mechanic creates half-a-dozen of additional entities hidden under the arena which all cast a part of that mechanic. And of course half the time debuffs are explicitly mirrored to such entities but sometimes they simply aren't. Any logic to this? Of course not. Oh, and of course we literally can't tell if the damage is magical or physical, the technology simply isn't there. Good stuff all around, you know.

---

If it can hit casters it's usually magic damage because SE has to account for casters having higher magic defense. Addle and feint mitigate both now so it will work with either damage type.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If it can hit casters it's usually magic damage because SE has to account for casters having higher magic defense. Addle and feint mitigate both now so it will work with either damage type.

---

Warder's Wrath says hi.

Real shame you can't mitigate hopeless whiteknighting...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azuri

Warder's Wrath says hi.

Real shame you can't mitigate hopeless whiteknighting...

---

Also most dives in Ultimate, including the mirage dives in eyes that can 100 to 0 a caster with the same mit a melee would survive.

Group mitigation doesnt always work either because there can be up to a full second between the first party member receiving it and the last. The game is hopeless jank in that regard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Greyhawk

It also never feels like basic healing mitigation ever works either. Things like AoE mitigation to protect the party. It never really feels like it does any mitigation at all, and is just there to cast, yet do nothing to help. I am sure it's helping in the grand scheme of things, but it never really just feels like it does. You can see Reprisal numbers just off watching the damage ticks that are built in game. You can watch a mob hit you for 2k, then apply a mitigation and see that number average drop for the duration. I wish the same would apply on a mitigated strike that a healer put on to show it, but I have yet to see anything to tell.

---

Worst thing is the way shields are applied. They're not applied to everyone all at once because of the sh!tty netcode / game engine.

Nope, they're applied from the top of the party list to the bottom one at a time.

So if you're not fast with your cast you can literally have certain people get the mitigation and some not. Sometimes it can take a whole second from the time your cast goes off until party member 8 is shielded. Which make party order super important for a healer!

I honestly think that mitigation is similar. If you to time it RIGHT before the ability goes off, even if it shows the debuff icon on the boss, the game might not register it always due to netcode latency.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the game basically does a coinflip on the Ultimate End cast. Sometimes it comes from Thordan, and sometimes, it comes from one of his untargetable knights, despite Thordan always being the actor who casts Ultimate End on the enmity list. This makes all debuff based mitigation totally useless sometimes on one the hardest hitting attacks in the entire fight, placed right before you need every member alive to take advantage of Thordan's damage taken up debuff.

---

I wonder if that's intended or not (a bug perhaps?), because that seems extremely cheap on a mode that is supposed to be tightly balanced.

Hell, damage shouldn't even be abled to have a "high roll". It should be static. Consistent. You know what to expect and how to properly plan your CD's appropriately.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Worst thing is the way shields are applied. They're not applied to everyone all at once because of the sh!tty netcode / game engine.

Nope, they're applied from the top of the party list to the bottom one at a time.

So if you're not fast with your cast you can literally have certain people get the mitigation and some not.

I honestly think that mitigation is similar. If you to time it RIGHT before the ability goes off, even if it shows the debuff icon on the boss, the game might not register it always due to netcode latency.

---

I didn't realize this and it... Explains a lot actually lmao

I mean it's terrible and annoying but also pretty funny

Yeah, was always told if the cast bar of the boss is less than like around 1/3 from finishing, unless its a really slow cast, then any midigation popped then is too late to register for that hit... It definitely seems like they improved it in EW though, especially healer shields, things felt far worst before.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If it can hit casters it's usually magic damage because SE has to account for casters having higher magic defense. Addle and feint mitigate both now so it will work with either damage type.

---

That... is incorrect

Warden's Wrath is Physical
Slam Shut is Magical
They almost look the same

There are many other instances that the attack looks Magical but it is actually Physical and vice versa, SE likes to be very inconsistent with their damage types and I am stumped to why they have not added the best QoL in a game where you have to know what type you should be blocking and that QoL is Damage Info!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If it can hit casters it's usually magic damage because SE has to account for casters having higher magic defense. Addle and feint mitigate both now so it will work with either damage type.

---

u may be used to more regular content where magic/phys dmg distinction does not matter at all tbh... several folks pointed this out already but ill say it too, DSR especially has some nasty physical dmg aoes that absolutely decimate healers, the light party stacks in p2 thordan, and the mirage dives on p4 eyes r just two examples, i use bloodwhetting on my healer every time so that they dont die to the disgusting dmg variance, u cant expect unavoidable dmg to always be magical, gotta rely on third party tools to tell whats what

also while feint and addle technically work on everything, dont forget the weaker element they target is only half as effective... 5% mit is not particularly great, it is pretty much just in the "good luck" category

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Worst thing is the way shields are applied. They're not applied to everyone all at once because of the sh!tty netcode / game engine.

Nope, they're applied from the top of the party list to the bottom one at a time.

So if you're not fast with your cast you can literally have certain people get the mitigation and some not. Sometimes it can take a whole second from the time your cast goes off until party member 8 is shielded. Which make party order super important for a healer!

I honestly think that mitigation is similar. If you to time it RIGHT before the ability goes off, even if it shows the debuff icon on the boss, the game might not register it always due to netcode latency.

---

i find this ripple effect annoying as well, but it is something that can be fixed easily, simply pop it earlier

there is absolutely no reason to use stuff last second, reprisal e.g. is pretty slow to get applied for some reason (CD is at 59 by the time the debuff finally appears), best case scenario u mitigate an extra auto by 10%, yayyy!!! worst case, someone dies

In Heavensward, it had become a trend that a lot of damage was magic and SE talked about how they kept making changes to whether content dealt magical or physical damage when balancing it. The only logical reason they could care about this so much is because of how casters have less health and less physical defense, and more magical defense. But in that time, all tanks didn't have Reprisal and not everyone had Feint or Addle. What we had were certain combos that could be repeated to mitigate physical or magic damage, but I don't know if it was really balanced around those being used.

Then in Shadowbringers, we got Dark Missionary and Heart of Light, aoe mitigation which only works against magic, but with the above context, I didn't think it was that much of a problem because of how SE likes magic damage.

What I have noticed in modern content, where we actually have abilities like Reprisal, Feint and Addle, is that they are necessary when the content is new to prevent wiping to a raid-wide, so perhaps they have stopped caring about the damage type in content where they expect proper and coordinated use of these abilities. But either way, all three of them mitigate both now, so it helps to know the damage type with Feint and Addle to optimize it but it's not entirely useless if you don't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OM3GA-Z3RO

There are many other instances that the attack looks Magical but it is actually Physical and vice versa, SE likes to be very inconsistent with their damage types and I am stumped to why they have not added the best QoL in a game where you have to know what type you should be blocking and that QoL is Damage Info!

---

My concern with adding the damage type is that if it's too obvious what the damage type is, then it puts into question what the point of a damage type is. If you don't know what it is, then you have to explore and figure it out and I imagine that is the intention. If we are going to explore and figure it out for ourselves, then it should be reasonably obvious from the animation or the cast name whether it is physical or magical.

I think there is a way in the battle log to determine it. If they "begin casting" and then "cast" an attack, it's magic. If they "ready" and then "use" an attack, it's physical.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chopstix

u may be used to more regular content where magic/phys dmg distinction does not matter at all tbh...

---

It's because I am a tank and have Reprisal, which works on both.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saraide

Group mitigation doesnt always work either because there can be up to a full second between the first party member receiving it and the last. The game is hopeless jank in that regard.

---

shake it off is so obnoxious to use for this exact reason

I've noticed it does indeed work. Tank will eat a tankbuster and it'll hurt a lot but if I use my mitigation on them before hand I've noticed they take less damage than before. I pretty much just use them for tank busters and nothing else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Then in Shadowbringers, we got Dark Missionary and Heart of Light, aoe mitigation which only works against magic, but with the above context, I didn't think it was that much of a problem because of how SE likes magic damage.

---

During Shadowbringers it became a 50/50 guessing game and so people that were really into numbers had to do multiple tests to see if Dark Missionary and Heart of Light had any effect against Attack X and/or Attack Y.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

What I have noticed in modern content, where we actually have abilities like Reprisal, Feint and Addle, is that they are necessary when the content is new to prevent wiping to a raid-wide, so perhaps they have stopped caring about the damage type in content where they expect proper and coordinated use of these abilities. But either way, all three of them mitigate both now, so it helps to know the damage type with Feint and Addle to optimize it but it's not entirely useless if you don't.

---

The reason being is because people don't want to play the guessing game and the problem is that Feint and Addle were barely used at all because they weren't necessary, now that they reduce both types albeit only half effectively compared to each others counterparts but at least now it does "something", I see people using it more because it does that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

My concern with adding the damage type is that if it's too obvious what the damage type is, then it puts into question what the point of a damage type is. If you don't know what it is, then you have to explore and figure it out and I imagine that is the intention. If we are going to explore and figure it out for ourselves, then it should be reasonably obvious from the animation or the cast name whether it is physical or magical.

---

The problem is that Animation and Cast Names are very inconsistent, some monsters raid wides that makes them roar are Physical or Magical there is no way you can figure out which is which unless you do heavy experiments and just like my previous post, Eric's Warden's Wrath looks Magical but it is not, it's a Physical attack and then his Slam Shut which is also a raid wide and it looks slightly the same as Warden's Wrath is a Magical, so a DRK or a GNB that does not have this knowledge willl get punished due to the games inconsistencies and expectations that: "The player is supposed to figure that out themselves" having a main fundamental thing like mitigating damage for the entire party being a complete guessing game is very bad game design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I think there is a way in the battle log to determine it. If they "begin casting" and then "cast" an attack, it's magic. If they "ready" and then "use" an attack, it's physical.

---

They stopped following that philosophy at the end of StB the battle log telling you what the boss is doing is the most inaccurate way to determine what is Physical and what is Magical.

"The Ultima Weapon uses Homing Lasers."
Guess what, that is Magical

"The phoinix uses Experimental Fireplume"
Guess what, that is also Magical

"The phoinix readies Scorched Exaltation"
Want me to give you the answer to this type?

"The Terminus wrecker readies Meaningless Destruction"
This is a raid wide guess what Type this is

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OM3GA-Z3RO

They stopped following that philosophy at the end of StB the battle log telling you what the boss is doing is the most inaccurate way to determine what is Physical and what is Magical.

---

It doesn't distinguish on player abilities either, just player GCDs. It doesn't seem like a strict attachment but it would be a start if it was.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OM3GA-Z3RO

Eric's Warden's Wrath looks Magical but it is not, it's a Physical attack and then his Slam Shut which is also a raid wide and it looks slightly the same as Warden's Wrath is a Magical

---

Shining Cells and Slam Shut are arena transitions. Is there an example of a physical arena transition or can we assume all arena transitions are magic?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chopstix

talking about addle, feint and reprisal

there isn't even a way to tell w/o a combat logger

reason for all this is that even though the animation might be coming straight from the boss, the actual dmg source is an entirely different entity that is often not targetable, let alone existing anywhere in the arena

seems like strange coding to me, or is this in fact intentional? to herd the group to use one of the 3 elsewhere? but again, it happens often that there is nothing to use it on for a rather long time, and how the heck r u gonna tell in the first place w/o a third party tool

reprisal in particular, u have 2 in a group both on a minute CD, guess i'm just gonna mitigate some autos? or not even because boss is casting but the dmg isn't even coming from them

wishful thinking but some positive change here would be nice

/rant over

---

Yes, I wish something would be done about this. I had no idea until super recently, when I was informed by a friend of a friend who knew a guy who saw with "special glasses" that damage wasn't coming from the enemy itself, but from environmental elements emitting the damage. This entire time, I'd thought I was helping to mitigate stuff like that, but nope!
I wish this game had more feedback when stuff works properly. If you nail a positional, I wish the skill made a slightly different and more satisfying sound. If you got a mitigation off in time, I wish the impact sounded... idk, muffled? Or had some kind of visual indicator so your team knew that you had their back and -- most importantly -- so we'd know what actually worked outside of eyeballing the damage taken. You can look at the combat logs later, but I want immediate visual/audio feedback that it worked right then, at the time of it working. It'd make the game way more enjoyable. Or failing that, if you're gonna make attacks come from something you can't mitigate, let the players know somehow.