[Discuss] Bringing back mitigation-damage interaction

This was a core thing we lost that I believe could come back, since enmity management as a whole is something most of the playerbase does not want to return.

I thought about this during a boring shift some days ago, and thought I'd ask:

If they were to bake in enmity management, would you accept bringing back both DPS and Tank stance, given that you are provided a means to reduce enmity generation as a role action? If not, how would you go about bringing back mit-dmg interaction?

Being able to trade opportunity between sustain and damage requires only that: an ability to make that trade.

That could, but needn't necessarily, include stances. That could, but needn't necessarily, include shared resource costs (e.g., Inner Beast vs. Fell Cleave). Hell, it could boil down to little more than timing, wherein if you use a nuke from the front of a boss, part of your would-be damage is instead spent to reduce the damage prepared by their incoming attack.

All of which... is separate from Enmity, so I'm not sure why that's entering the picture here. And I certainly don't want to see a return of actions like Diversion as it was in Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

This is why any action where you have to choose between a defensive benefit or an offensive benefit will always come out on the offensive side, unless the defensive side is required to survive, but then it isn't really a choice as you are forced into it.

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We will always choose, within given constraints, whatever produces the most long-term throughput (i.e., whatever value clears the fight). But that does not mean the tank's offensive choice will always be the best choice regardless of incoming damage, even when that damage wouldn't kill them.

The crux is that the equation for solving best rDPS doesn't involve only the tank; it also involves their healer(s). If healers, for instance, had less of their total (both offensive and curative) ppm locked into healing CDs and instead had greater potency-per-GCD (which they could then choose to use as they see fit), then a defensive resource spent to afford a healer 400 extra offensive relative-potency (a Dosis III even now is 429 relative potency, due to Healer's +30% damage trait) by spending one fewer GCD heal on you is going to be worth more than doing an extra 300 relative-potency of damage yourself.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Being able to trade opportunity between sustain and damage requires only that: an ability to make that trade.

That could, but needn't necessarily, include stances. That could, but needn't necessarily, include shared resource costs (e.g., Inner Beast vs. Fell Cleave). Hell, it could boil down to little more than timing, wherein if you use a nuke from the front of a boss, part of your would-be damage is instead spent to reduce the damage prepared by their incoming attack.

All of which... is separate from Enmity, so I'm not sure why that's entering the picture here. And I certainly don't want to see a return of actions like Diversion as it was in Stormblood.

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Agreed. Especially on the timing part. As long as there is a cost-reward to make the trade between damage and defense I'd be happy with it. I just happen to like stances a lot so it's easier for me to use those as examples.

Fair on nothing like Diversion, listing the baked-in enmity so that there was no issues with people who dislike that sacrifice, but seeing as how we get so much of it, and the fact we still have provoke anyway, in hindsight I'm not sure why it would matter.

I'm currently trying to draft out what benefits these stances could provide..but they could honestly make them 1 to 1 copies of their Stormblood integrations and I'd be satisfied. The real thinker is what to do with Gunbreaker dps and tank stances since it was added with Shadowbringers.

If they wanted to give tanks a dimension like this while still trying to keep Enmity out of the game (without having to put forth the cost to code it out; obviously its still there), they could simply:

Increase Provoke Enmity generation obscenely again, so tanks can be ahead of each other on Enmity.

Add 'generates additional Enmity ' to all tank actions, just to preserve that post 5.0 'make sure they're ahead of non tanks' Enmity flavor.

Drop Shirk to 30 sec so tanks can still do the older fights that require swaps more often than once every two minutes.

GNB's PVP incarnation already provides them 3 stances, and the same could be done in PvE with a Draw and Junction, using available players and themselves like BLU mimicry.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

If they were to bake in enmity management, would you accept bringing back both DPS and Tank stance, given that you are provided a means to reduce enmity generation as a role action? If not, how would you go about bringing back mit-dmg interaction?

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Enmity management wasn't even the main issue between tank and DPS stance, it was the choice between a more defensive stance and a more offensive stance and, with the way the game is currently, offence will always trump defence.

One way you could force the tank stance is to make everything hit harder, but tank stance would still be bottom of the list in terms of reducing damage.

This is why any action where you have to choose between a defensive benefit or an offensive benefit will always come out on the offensive side, unless the defensive side is required to survive, but then it isn't really a choice as you are forced into it. This could then affect what tanks want to be stood infront of the boss, which ones don't, which ones can make the most use of their invulns etc. It is a deep hole if you really want to go down it.

the problem with enmity is that it forces a tank role in fights where that is completely redundant. Going from tanks having to keep the boss and adds away from the party to just hitting a striking dummy is quite the change of pace. The only way they can necessitate tank roles without forcing enmity as a gameplay quirk is to just make all raidwides into wild charges. So regardless of who has enmity you will always want the strongest "defense" jobs in the front to protect the party in the back. However this might forces the current heavy mitigation meta into overdrive.

Honestly they've dug themselves into a hole in terms of job design.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

The problem with enmity is that it forces a tank role in fights where that is completely redundant.

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That's not a matter/issue of "enmity" so much as tankbusters themselves at a particular tuning, where that ends up just being a composition check (have tank or rez player). Though, giving all big enemy attacks a means to be collectively mitigated through stacking or lining up in descending order of eHP to protect a marked target --even if that were far less healing-efficient than just using a tank-- would largely deal with that, too.

Enmity exists as it does now, and even as it did back in ARR/HW/StB, primarily to make it so that there's less party gameplay that each member is expected to participate in: Rather than melees swapping in and out, relaxing pressuring and reasserting pressure to allow ranged to briefly kite and then to peel from them as they run out of space, and the party needing to CC, focus fire, and apply timely suppression to specific enemies contextually you get a Blue DPS who prevents the need for any of that largely through just existing. Instead of most of the positional and coordinating aspects of tanking you just have a "Tank" who is free to then act as a simplified DPS with a set of isolated mini-game mechanics atop it.

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The only way they can necessitate tank roles without forcing enmity as a gameplay quirk is to just make all raidwides into wild charges.

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I'm assuming you mean the T10 mechanic, where damage is cumulatively reduced (and so we tend to line up in %miti order insofar as each sequential member can survive)? I don't think that's the only way to necessitate tanks, but I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more mechanics like that.

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However, this might forces the current heavy mitigation meta into overdrive..

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If there's already good reason to correct the existing state (say, of barrier heals just being superior healers altogether), that your idea would require doing so isn't a significant mark against it.

Enmity generation has never had anything to do with player skill outside of snap aggro, which was a pass-fail check. If you want to differentiate between tanks, you need a positioning/movement check. Even small repositioning checks produce large variations in player execution.

Mitigation and damage normally intersect anyways, because plenty of mechanics are designed to coincide with burst, adding in extra weaves during your damage window. It would likely be more obvious without a one button burst design. Historically it was done by coupling resources to mitigation, like Raw Intuition and Vengeance generating Wrath/Abandon stacks, or by giving tanks proc-based counters like Reprisal and Shield Swipe. Both of these options are open from a design standpoint.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

This is why any action where you have to choose between a defensive benefit or an offensive benefit will always come out on the offensive side, unless the defensive side is required to survive, but then it isn't really a choice as you are forced into it.

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What could however still be a choice is when you want to use it, which would at least add another decision to make in any fight. If I have to eventually use my defensive stance to survive, when is the best time to do so and when is it better to use my cooldowns while staying in offensive stance?

Granted this would only be temporary as well because people will quickly have mapped out the best timings for any encounter/party composition.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

What could however still be a choice is when you want to use it, which would at least add another decision to make in any fight. If I have to eventually use my defensive stance to survive, when is the best time to do so and when is it better to use my cooldowns while staying in offensive stance?

Granted this would only be temporary as well because people will quickly have mapped out the best timings for any encounter/party composition.

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But why has it got to the point where you need your defensive stance to survive and how strong is this stance? Tanks have a plethora of defensive tools available, all of which should be considered before you even get to thinking about a defensive stance. Bear in mind as well, fights are (currently) designed so that you do not run out, which I believe also includes ignoring the fact tanks have invulns. The moment you design a fight to tear through all of those, just to force you into defensive stance, would that really be fun? or would it feel forced? Yes, I am currently forced to use defensive cooldowns to survive a tank buster, but I do not lose offensive benefit, but if I was forced inti defence stance just for the mitigation to survive a hit, at the cost of my offence, that feels worse, at least to me (back to what I keep saying that it feels like a punishment system rather than a reward system).

Also, just because I don't visit topics unless there is a new post, I think I missed this:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We will always choose, within given constraints, whatever produces the most long-term throughput (i.e., whatever value clears the fight). But that does not mean the tank's offensive choice will always be the best choice regardless of incoming damage, even when that damage wouldn't kill them.

The crux is that the equation for solving best rDPS doesn't involve only the tank; it also involves their healer(s). If healers, for instance, had less of their total (both offensive and curative) ppm locked into healing CDs and instead had greater potency-per-GCD (which they could then choose to use as they see fit), then a defensive resource spent to afford a healer 400 extra offensive relative-potency (a Dosis III even now is 429 relative potency, due to Healer's +30% damage trait) by spending one fewer GCD heal on you is going to be worth more than doing an extra 300 relative-potency of damage yourself.

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So, to make a point, you adjust how healers work. Which is fair, but if we are going to look at how adjusting things can potentially change the interactions, we need to look at everything, ie. tanks defensive kits, do they have enough to survive (before considering tank stance), what is the incoming damage to tanks, not just via mechanics, if we are tying more healing to GCDs, would this then be something that is more expected across all content, so that every GCD is not a damage GCD? etc.

With so many variables, you can see why changing one thing to make it better suit a particular narrative (whether intentional or not) can come across as a bit disingenuous. Why just change the one thing when there is so much more that needs to be considered. However, it still doesn't change the fact that the only time you would use it is when you are forced into it. Which, as I mentioned above, doesn't necessarily feel good.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Why just change the one thing when there is so much more that needs to be considered. However, it still doesn't change the fact that the only time you would use it is when you are forced into it. Which, as I mentioned above, doesn't necessarily feel good.

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My response literally pointed to any such change to make optional mitigation worthwhile without relying on gimmicks being largely impossible in isolation, and was specifically on when at-cost defensives would be optimal even when you are not "forced" (do or die) into them.

Tanks sustain's rDPS is the healer offensive value thereby afforded, because they are the only ones affected by its difference. You, as the tank, could exploit ("optional") percentile sustain around high incoming damage density in order to spare (the opportunity cost of) flat healer sustain for a net increase to party damage.

If the opportunities afforded through at-cost mitigation aren't worthwhile, then neither can that mitigation's costs ever be worthwhile outside of "consume would-be offensive resources, or die (which is a further DPS loss)." So yes, healer kits will be involved, too.

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So, to make a point, you adjust how healers work.

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It's not merely "to make a point". That literally is how any optional defensive value works. If the fight is won by reducing enemy units' HP to 0, all other outputs besides damage will necessarily be weighed around how much damage their contribution allows for. Positioning enemies, preventing deaths, even safety measures to reduce cognitive load -- it's all ultimately about what wins that fight.

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With so many variables, you can see why changing one thing to make it better suit a particular narrative (whether intentional or not) can come across as a bit disingenuous.

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...Everything else is already accounted for. Tank sustain already includes all of their pre-alloted / "free" means of sustain. Any "optional"/"at-cost" sustain atop that is... atop what already exists. The only thing excluded from that picture is that actions which incur individual DPS loss can nonetheless create a party DPS increase, and such can still come in engaging and high-agency ways.

It's not some rhetorical trick.


Nothing that is ultimately at net cost will ever be used, but a cost can be (more than) recouped either through its actor itself (spending resource on the mitigation ultimately refunds that resource or generates enough individual DPS, such as through damage nullified causing direct or indirect damage, to surpass direct offensive spenders) or through other actors (such as your healers not needing to spend as many GCDs of healing on you).

The first was already mentioned before the time of my post, so there was no reason for me to repeat it. Moreover, of the two, the latter is the more natural and intuitive (literally happens anyways if you just don't implode healer kits with an excess of free/pre-allocated healing, and doesn't rely on gimmicks that may take far more complex calculations to find the net result from), while the changes that would better allow it to be leveraged are ones already widely requested by healers.

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To answer your questions more precisely/individually:

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if we are tying more healing to GCDs, would this then be something that is more expected across all content, so that every GCD is not a damage GCD?

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Yes. Since that also be to the benefit of healing kits and healer gameplay in general.

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Why just change the one thing when there is so much more that needs to be considered.

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I've made no such suggestion.

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However, it still doesn't change the fact that the only time you would use it is when you are forced into it.

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Wrong, unless by "forced" you mean "whenever, under perfectly performed mathematical calculations, it would be an increase to party DPS."

Tl;dr: Fundamentally, at-cost / "optional" sustain --especially where context-/timing-sensitive (e.g., percentile mitigation or recovery [see Death Strike] instead of just a flat shield or heal)-- is a wholly viable design in/for tank kits. The quality possible for that without relying on gimmicks (e.g., whereby your mitigation, itself, supplies damage directly or indirectly through your own actions), though, requires consideration of more than just the tank's own kit.

If I was designing a mitigation-damage interaction for tanks, I'd implement something similar to Elden Ring's Parry/Counter system for tankbusters. If you time it correctly on a tankbuster (arrow action), it reduces the damage from the attack and generates a staggered debuff that gives you a miniature burst window to work off of (except that it won't be up for every tankbuster, forcing you to think a bit about where it would be most effective).

Sound effects are really important for a good counter attack. I think that's part of what made Shield Swipe and old Reprisal so satisfying.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

My response literally pointed to any such change to make optional mitigation worthwhile without relying on gimmicks being largely impossible in isolation, and was specifically on when at-cost defensives would be optimal even when you are not "forced" (do or die) into them.

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Again, missing the forest for the trees. You have assumed the defensive stance only affects one GCD on the healer side, but not how it affects the tanks. First we would need to determine whether it's a GCD swap or an oGCD swap, is there any recast and if so, how long is it. With a GCD to swap, you are effectively making the potency for that GCD 0, of which you might need another one to swap back, so if a healer can save 1 GCD of healing, it needs to outweigh the 2 GCDs the tank loses at minimum and this is before we talk about how it affects the burst phase.

If it is an oGCD, whilst there is no GCD cost, it would be stupid to have it on a 1 second recast as, what's the point? In my opinion, you might as well have another defensive to fill that slot, if it is required, otherwise, how the defensive stance affects your damage needs to be taken into account, which can span multiple GCDs, of which that potency adds up and can outweigh the 1 GCD the healer has saved.

If we then talk about altering GCDs so they serve a different purpose in defensive, then how does that affect potency?

I can go on and on about hypothetical situations where it could be more beneficial for the healer to lose the 1 GCD of potency as you get more out of the tanks, there are going to be situations where it is beneficial for the healer to do the damage and the tank takes the hit. However, none of that is relevant until a basis of what it means to have a defensive stance/offensive stance and how that affects the tank.


Also, to address these points:
[*] (talking about healer GCDs) "Yes. Since that also be to the benefit of healing kits and healer gameplay in general." I would also agree, however, with how healers are now, you would need to provide some DPS benefit for the GCD heal. I'm pretty sure tying the healing and damage together would help alot.
[*]"Wrong, unless by "forced" you mean "whenever, under perfectly performed mathematical calculations, it would be an increase to party DPS."" No, nothing for DPS, party or otherwise, was insinuated in that point. It was implied that, the only time you would go into it was when you had no other options, but why has it come down to the point of no other options? Is it because the tanks defensive kit has been neutered so you cannot cover ALL tank busters (at a minimum) with the kit and so are 'forced' to make this decision just to survive? Is it the case that the defensive stance is so strong that it is needed to survive specific hits, at which point it is forced on the player? (assuming your invulns cannot cover them all or are ineffective). In each case, you have to ask why you want to do this. Why do you want to force the tank to do something that feels bad to use. Ignore DPS, just concentrate on how it feels. Can you honestly say it felt good to be forced into tank stance back in SB because a DPS was being lazy with Diversion? It is the same here. You are being forced to reduce your contribution just because someone decided to. We already do less damage, which is fine, but why reduce it even more for some weird concept of 'defensive stance'.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Again, missing the forest for the trees. You have assumed the defensive stance only affects one GCD on the healer side, but not how it affects the tanks. First we would need to determine whether it's a GCD swap or an oGCD swap, is there any recast and if so, how long is it.

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You're again responding to largely the wrong person. I'm not the one advocating for the return of a "tank stance", only for at-cost sustain options less or not limited by CDs and certain changes to the balance of damage intake and healing output.

A "tank stance" is a means of at-cost sustain (that can nonetheless be a net increase to party dps when used effectively); it is not the only means of doing so.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

It was implied that, the only time you would go into it was when you had no other options

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Which, again, would be wrong unless the tank stance were specifically made to be useless for skilled players, which would be a complete waste and clearly not something almost anyone would intend or ask for. That'd be at least as bad as the button-waste of GCD healing in the present state of the game.

You're effectively claiming that if the mechanic is self-sabotaged, it'll be bad. But neither needs to be the case.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Why do you want to force the tank to do something that feels bad to use. Ignore DPS, just concentrate on how it feels.

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Does it "feel bad", though, to occasionally have it be more optimal to spend your gauge on Inner Beast (for its healing and mitigation) than on Fell Cleave (for its pure damage)?

Would it actually feel bad to have flexible control over one's outputs, instead of solely their timings, and to be rewarded for knowing when opportunities afforded to others (e.g., your healer) will outpace the opportunities you can gain for yourself? Would it feel bad to have significantly more access to active mitigation? Would it feel bad to have a higher skill ceiling accordingly, even it may slightly lower the floor by giving players fallback options?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

First we would need to determine whether it's a GCD swap or an oGCD swap, is there any recast and if so, how long is it. With a GCD to swap, you are effectively making the potency for that GCD 0, of which you might need another one to swap back, so if a healer can save 1 GCD of healing, it needs to outweigh the 2 GCDs the tank loses at minimum and this is before we talk about how it affects the burst phase.

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It's not all that hard to balance, but neither is it my idea, so I don't know why you're demanding these answers of me. Again, I'm not the one asking for tank stance.

It's fully viable, and when done right would be a boon, but I do not think all tanks need to have an identical sustain-option mechanic (i.e., for all to have a tank-stance, or any other single mechanism), and I do not think a stance toggle is typically the best way to cover that purpose anyways. Find the person who actually wanted tank stances to get these responses from.

Returning back to this, yeah I simp for stances but I know it isn't the only method of having damage-mitigation interaction. Nor is it a widely popular method for modern ffxiv. That's why I feel like this discussion is important.

I'd like to see the return of Dark Arts damage-mitigation interativity on Dark Knight, for example, but I'm largely at a loss on how to do it with the other tanks. My second go to would be to have resources gained when you take damage, but I don't believe they want to go back to where not being MT would result in a loss of dps (which is, again, something I wish wasn't dropped. It provided a different feel between being MT and OT).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Does it "feel bad", though, to occasionally have it be more optimal to spend your gauge on Inner Beast (for its healing and mitigation) than on Fell Cleave (for its pure damage)?

Would it actually feel bad to have flexible control over one's outputs, instead of solely their timings, and to be rewarded for knowing when opportunities afforded to others (e.g., your healer) will outpace the opportunities you can gain for yourself? Would it feel bad to have significantly more access to active mitigation? Would it feel bad to have a higher skill ceiling accordingly, even it may slightly lower the floor by giving players fallback options?

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The problem is, there is no feedback to let you know you saved a healer a GCD, or that you have increased party DPS by using Inner Beast over Fell Cleave. It might have helped, it might not have, who knows? Maybe gear levels play a part, you might not need that defensive at higher gear levels, maybe the higher gear levels of the healer means they can just heal through it without issue. There is no way to know.

This compounds when you have alternate mitigation that has no drawbacks to DPS. Why would I use Inner Beast when I can Rampart or Vengeance, which have no impact on DPS, and also save the healer that GCD. When it gets to the point you HAVE to use the damage/mit tradeoff, are you going to feel better about it, knowing you may or may bot have saved a healer GCD, or, are you going to feel you have been unnecessarily nerfed.

You could make ALL mitigation have a DPS cost, but how would you balance that? Would stronger mitigations have a bigger impact to damage? Would they be the same? How about when you have to stack several together?

The other way is this damage/mit tradeoff is your ONLY form of mitigation. Then it is how often does it come up? How strong? How long does it last? How is it going to affect other content, ie. dungeon trash?

It might have been a good idea from the games launch, if they had kept the same design philosophy throughout the game, but they haven't. Even then though, I would bet questions would be asked. Why is it the tank that has to take the damage hit and not the healers (Talking in general here and not as the game is currently)? At which point, the game would change it so that tanks have no damage penalty for using the mitigation, which is exactly where we are now.

As for the big question (which goes for anyone who wants a damage/mitigation tradeoff), would it really fulfil what you want? Can you honestly say it would be a good addition? Or would it eventually go the way of old tank stances?

If you want an ability that trades dps for survivability, there is already Clemency, and we all know how much people love using Clemency all the time...

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Originally Posted by Luizgazen

If you want an ability that trades dps for survivability, there is already Clemency, and we all know how much people love using Clemency all the time...

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Clemency is worth less than any Cure II equivalent, though, due to its lacking the 30% extra healing from Healer's Main and Mend traits, while PLD's offensive ppgcd is higher than most healers' and PLD has a strict macrorotation for which adjustment disproportionately sacrifices its highest ppgcd actions. Under that tuning and context, of course it will see little use.

Compare that, however, to say, old Equilibrium, which was more often used for healing instead. Or Inner Beast, which still saw decently frequent use while being the current Tank. Or if Holy Shelltron were a spender opposite a ~250p oGCD attack.

Do you really think players consistently would forgo over 1200p worth of personal sustain value, whenever it could make a difference larger than what they could do directly (e.g., that 250p) just so they could pad their ACT numbers at expense of clear time?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The problem is, there is no feedback to let you know you saved a healer a GCD, or that you have increased party DPS by using Inner Beast over Fell Cleave.

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There is. Do you not track your healer's oGCDs? Would you not know how much damage is being mitigated by, say, a defensive that grants 30% mitigation for 4s, 15% mitigation for the 4s thereafter? If you have that awareness, and you know that your healer has exhausted their oGCDs and yet, despite your coming near death, there were no GCD heals used on you, you'd know pretty damn well that GCDs would otherwise have been needed.

Ngl, that seems like a skill/knowledge/awareness issue.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

This compounds when you have alternate mitigation that has no drawbacks to DPS. Why would I use Inner Beast when I can Rampart or Vengeance, which have no impact on DPS, and also save the healer that GCD.

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If an at-cost tool would not nonetheless create a net increase in party damage, you do not use it. If an at-cost tool would create a net increase in party dps despite its direct cost to personal DPS, you use it. It's that simple.

You're working under the assumption that the sustain tools tanks have already would so diminish the value of any additional tools that they could never break even. But that is only true of content that is already notoriously undertuned.

That such would very rarely find use in the most overgeared of the most casual of content... does not mean that the design is unworkable. It simply means that maybe places that drop i605 really don't need to allow for up to i665 gear, nor that endgame content needs to baby players harder than leveling content. That's a content tuning issue, not a fundamental one.

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The other way is this damage/mit tradeoff is your ONLY form of mitigation. Then it is how often does it come up? How strong? How long does it last? How is it going to affect other content, ie. dungeon trash?

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Why are you acting like these are novel concerns? That literally applies to every form of sustain existing tanks have right now. You simply, in effect, pre-pay for them. The existing kits have a set amount of combined sustaining + offensive output, with the only variance being the volume of input to fall under percentile Damage Reduction or Damage Amplification.

Even in that all-mitigation-has-a-cost model, the only change is the ability to spend would-be excessive mitigation offensively and to get through more difficult eHP checks at even lower gear levels, given sufficient skill. *

It's the likes of Energy Drain and Verraise. They aren't going to be used all the time, but having them is a boon to flexibility. And, more importantly, it increases the reward of being aware of your team's opportunities and incoming damage beyond a mere prescribed CD schedule. That, in turn, helps Tanks feel more like Tanks, rather than merely Blue DPS, and tanking a more frequent and active part of their kit.

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Why is it the tank that has to take the damage hit and not the healers

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? Not "taking a damage hit" is already an illusion, so long as there is any intent at balance between roles. If you're a healer, you're already giving up more and more of your would-be potential as a greater portion of your total output gets allocated towards those "free" healing tools. That tank dps wasn't reduced despite such large sustain increases (especially, to all but DRK) in Endwalker is largely why tanks feel so OP and healers so redundant.

That "hit" is simply the degree to which you can move your outputs as you see fit, letting your total value produced scale that bit more with player agency. It's no more a "bad" or "antithetical" action than a healer actually having reason (and ability) to use a GCD heal.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There is. Do you not track your healer's oGCDs? ...

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NGL, if you can track the oGCD usage and potentially cooldown of every healer in your party, whether it is 4 man or 8 man, all I can say is you are far and above some reasonable level of expected play and I applaud you for that. However, what about the rest of us where we either cannot effectively track all of that, or lack the knowledge for such a feat? Is such a thing actually reasonable to expect of someone? However, surely it would be better for the healer do deal with the situation as they have the direct knowledge of what they have in their kit, exactly what cooldowns they have and how to best use them. In this case, shouldn't the onus for the healing be on the healer?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

If an at-cost tool would not nonetheless create a net increase in party damage, you do not use it. If an at-cost tool would create a net increase in party dps despite its direct cost to personal DPS, you use it. It's that simple.

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But, as I said, you cannot guarantee the increased DPS. Noone has that sort of control over someone else.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You're working under the assumption that the sustain tools tanks have already would so diminish the value of any additional tools that they could never break even. But that is only true of content that is already notoriously undertuned.

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No, if I have a tool that mitigates damage and I have another tool that mitigates damage but also reduces my own damage, the tool that mitigates damage is going to be the favourable one and people will ask, why does this second one have some sort of damage loss associated with it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Even in that all-mitigation-has-a-cost model, the only change is the ability to spend would-be excessive mitigation offensively and to get through more difficult eHP checks at even lower gear levels, given sufficient skill. *

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We had that sort of model before, it didn't work, as I am sure you are fully aware. DPS always wins.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It's the likes of Energy Drain and Verraise. They aren't going to be used all the time, but having them is a boon to flexibility. And, more importantly, it increases the reward of being aware of your team's opportunities and incoming damage beyond a mere prescribed CD schedule. That, in turn, helps Tanks feel more like Tanks, rather than merely Blue DPS, and tanking a more frequent and active part of their kit.

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You have to remember, Energy Drain was initially taken away and was only added back in as Scholars complained it felt like a waste of Aether Flow when they had to use Aetherflow for their MP but still had stacks left. Energy Drain was easy to add back in, so they did. It does mean it effectively isn't there for the whole damage vs healing thing, that is just a side product from a slight design mishap. As for Verraise, outside of prog, they shouldn't use it, with the healers being the ones to sacrifice their GCD instead. So, if the healer should sacrifice in the case of DPS, why not have the same philosophy with tanks?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

? Not "taking a damage hit" is already an illusion, so long as there is any intent at balance between roles. If you're a healer, you're already giving up more and more of your would-be potential as a greater portion of your total output gets allocated towards those "free" healing tools. That tank dps wasn't reduced despite such large sustain increases (especially, to all but DRK) in Endwalker is largely why tanks feel so OP and healers so redundant.

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With tanks having much better sustain and mitigation tools, the expectation would have been an increase in the incoming damage to warrant the increase, not a reduction in DPS. The same could be said for the increase in healing tools, give more tools, expect more healing.

However, it is curious that you assume a greater defensive/healing kit necessitates a reduction in DPS as opposed to a change in the incoming damage.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That "hit" is simply the degree to which you can move your outputs as you see fit, letting your total value produced scale that bit more with player agency. It's no more a "bad" or "antithetical" action than a healer actually having reason (and ability) to use a GCD heal.

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Which would be to use this tool as little as possible, getting the usage down to 0, unless I go back to the whole forced usage thing, in which case I go to why does this defensive cooldown suck compared to others. So, why? Why do you, or anyone else, want this tool in the first place?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

But, as I said, you cannot guarantee the increased DPS. Noone has that sort of control over someone else.

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Then hold the existing system to that same standard.

If using a defensive is "pointless" unless it produces rDPS or newly prevents a one-shot, but you "cannot guarantee" that a healing GCD will be trimmed for having used it, then what are your defensives doing against any attack that wouldn't one-shot you (regardless, apparently, of whether they're actually nullifying more damage over their whole duration)?

Are they likewise just bloat, despite the difference their "optional" (not required to survive) use being almost half of tank's total sustain, equating to about a fifth of an average healer's sustain output, which... even under the present "pathetic" healing requirements of this Savage tier, do not each have a fifth of their output to spare before using GCDs.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

We had that sort of model before, it didn't work, as I am sure you are fully aware. DPS always wins.

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It was a blatant tuning issue atop a cluster**** of a mechanic, wherein only one tank could actually change stances without crippling cost in more than a single direction per fight. How is that remotely a sane test case?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

However, it is curious that you assume a greater defensive/healing kit necessitates a reduction in DPS as opposed to a change in the incoming damage.

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I'm not saying what it should be; I'm pointing out what has happened.

Healer and tank's maximum portion of rDPS relative to DPS has decreased over time, probably because the sheer amount of pre-allocated outputs (via CDs that can ONLY be used towards sustain) are increasingly less able to flex around the demands of a given situation.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Which would be to use this tool as little as possible, getting the usage down to 0, unless I go back to the whole forced usage thing, in which case I go to why does this defensive cooldown suck compared to others.

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Again, no, that's not the case. You're conflating tuning issues based on what is probably the most overpowered period tanks have ever experienced and, more importantly, the most banal period healing gameplay has ever experienced.

Why would you want to cement either? Why is that the state you want to build any and every possible design around?

Slightly wind back Healers' glut of oGCD healers and give them back greater swing to and control over their rDPS. Pull back a bit of Tanks' timing-insensitive or -inflexible sustain added in Endwalker (Holy Shelltron, Req healing, GNB ExCog, Bloodwhetting/Nascent no longer scaling with damage), so that performance varies more around timely use of cooldowns and/or setup around them -- i.e., the things that make tanking feel like tanking -- rather than being so padded by random-ass HoTs or Benedictions-per-25s in AoE. Both of those things are beneficial changes regardless.

From there, if you want healers to further imbalance towards barrier healers just being objectively better at basically everything and to make healing increasingly centered just around AoE heals, by all means, go increase damage in general. Otherwise, though, you're going to have to look more analytically into relative sustain requirements.

Yes, if tank sustain and damage to tanks increase equally, they cancel out... so long as you can't also trade out other roles for the one you most scaled to match that increased strength of content. But, you can. And we do. In which case just increasing damage to deal with excess tank strength, or vice versa, just increasingly means that you replace healers with tanks.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

So, why? Why do you, or anyone else, want this tool in the first place?

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Because, much like a situation where at-cost (i.e., non-Lily, GCD) heals can be of use (net gain) can let healers feel more like healers, having a place for at-cost tools on tanks rewards awareness of their party's output and opportunities relative to their own personal outputs, which can make them feel more like actual Tanks.

Consider if DPS had the current Tank treatment here:

Rather than depending at all on uptime, especially back when uptime could actually require some skill to maintain, or any other more varied level of optimization... you instead just have a set of CDs by which to do your damage. No more, no less. You quickly map out or look up online what the best time is to hit those CDs, and that's it. That's your role -- done. Anything else is shared mechanics. For your own role, there's no nuance, no shifting priorities, no real awareness checks; you just follow your schedule.

That's what your insisting is a preferable state for tanks and healers.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Then hold the existing system to that same standard.

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Current system doesn't sacrifice DPS from the tank in order to use a defensive, whether the healer takes advantage of that or not to increase the parties DPS is then down to the healer and, if they do not, you effectively aren't losing out on DPS.

I also never said using a defensive is pointless unless it produces rDPS, I said that a defensive that costs you DPS is inferior when you have defensives that do NOT cost DPS.

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It was a blatant tuning issue atop a cluster**** of a mechanic, wherein only one tank could actually change stances without crippling cost in more than a single direction per fight. How is that remotely a sane test case?

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I don't know why, but a bit got missed off, Paladin using Sheltron to proc Shield Swipe, Warrior using Vengeance only for the stack, Dark Knight using Dark Dance to proc Low Blow IIRC (I don't remember fully how their interaction worked), all cases where defensives were used to prioritise DPS. In the case of Warrior, there was a caveat where you could do it as long as you didn't need it, of which groups would work around it as much as possible.

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Again, no, that's not the case. You're conflating tuning issues based on what is probably the most overpowered period tanks have ever experienced and, more importantly, the most banal period healing gameplay has ever experienced.

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No I didn't. You said it could be moved around, I meerly stated that the goal would be to reduce the usage down to 0, which is what the goal would be, assuming you can cover everything with the other defensives. That is literally all i said on that point.

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Because, much like a situation where at-cost (i.e., non-Lily, GCD) heals can be of use (net gain) can let healers feel more like healers, having a place for at-cost tools on tanks rewards awareness of their party's output and opportunities relative to their own personal outputs, which can make them feel more like actual Tanks.

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What is it about something that reduces the tanks DPS to increase their mitigation makes it feel more like a tank? In the case of healers, they try and reduce the amount of GCD healing as much as possible, choosing to GCD heal in downtimes where possible. However, even if the healer has to GCD heal when they could DPS, the difference here is that you aren't sacrificing your GCD for the chance that someone else might have a higher GCD, you do it because the party would be dead, so it is a guaranteed party DPS increase. As opposed to tank mitigation which is a maybe, maybe not situation (unless you can effectively communicate with the healer, but that isn't feasible in all scenarios and is limited to statics that use voice comms).

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Consider if DPS had the current Tank treatment here:

Rather than depending at all on uptime, especially back when uptime could actually require some skill to maintain, or any other more varied level of optimization... you instead just have a set of CDs by which to do your damage. No more, no less. You quickly map out or look up online what the best time is to hit those CDs, and that's it. That's your role -- done. Anything else is shared mechanics. For your own role, there's no nuance, no shifting priorities, no real awareness checks; you just follow your schedule.

That's what your insisting is a preferable state for tanks and healers.

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That is what defensives look like now, that is what defensives will look like after. Mapping out defensives to use the DPS reduction as little as possible (ideally 0) to help the healers more effectively use their healing tools, because guess what? Healers also map out all their healing oGCDs too. And really, when you get down to it, DPS do map out everything as well, when to use Feint, Second wind etc. Anyone who has progged a fight can probably tell you where they are in a fight based on where they are in their rotation. Like it or not, everything is mapped out. That is the reality.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Current system doesn't sacrifice DPS from the tank in order to use a defensive, whether the healer takes advantage of that or not to increase the parties DPS is then down to the healer and, if they do not, you effectively aren't losing out on DPS.

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Then, by your warrant, it does nothing, because the Tank "cannot guarantee", as you put it, that the Healer won't still use GCD unnecessarily.

It's the same thing here: You have the occasional opportunity to produce a net advantage, with potency varying with your ability to maximize the damage intake affected.

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I also never said using a defensive is pointless unless it produces rDPS, I said that a defensive that costs you DPS is inferior when you have defensives that do NOT cost DPS.

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Which I already said. The difference is, again, whether you strictly want tanking and healing requirements to be as pathetic as they are now, or are open to having more. Otherwise, the fact that there are preferred options that can be used first, just oGCD heals, does not mean that your will never use at-cost options. You simply use the latter when it is gainful to do so.

And unlike flat sustain, as per basic heals, time-sensitive sustain like %Damage-Reduction or %Recovery (think Death Strike), there can be gainful actions even without those actions being strictly required for survival in that precise moment.

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No I didn't. You said it could be moved around, I merely stated that the goal would be to reduce the usage down to 0

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This is like saying you'd want to reduce the usage of GCD DoTs (which are at-cost to GCD filler casts) down to 0 just because you wouldn't want to spam them. In the same way, though based on incoming damage instead of a fixed interval, you would use at-cost mitigation when it is gainful, not necessarily never.

For at-cost defensives to be never be gainful, the skills themselves have to pathetically undertuned or the damage intake relative to your combined tanks+healers sustain resources has to be pathetically low, which is a particular balance state which is not required of the game. So yes, that's conflated tuning with something fundamental. They're separate.

It's like looking at a theoretical 7.0 AST with no offensive output outside Malefic spam and saying that %Damage Amplication must be a worthless mechanic in general, just because it can't affect that particular kit, despite that said kit would already be notoriously bad and should be reinvigorated.

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Healers also map out all their healing oGCDs too.

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I'm aware. I've already said as much. Note, though, they still have at-cost sustain available to them, which at least allows for fight design to permit higher healing requirements, greater variety between fights, and a degree of slack for less experienced healers even while challenging more veteran healers in maximizing their rDPS.

Tanks no longer have those options.

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Like it or not, everything is mapped out. That is the reality.

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Here's the difference, though: If you remove all flexibility from tools on the basis that those rigidly timed tools are all that could ever be required of XIV's (current hyperscripted) fights, you're now stuck with those hyperscripted fights from then on. You cannot have variances in damage output from one fight to another without the lesser simply giving healers excess oGCDs because if you tune the lesser up to the level of their "free" healing, there's both zero room left for mistakes and anything above that literally wipes you.

Is that really the only kind of combat you'd ever want? Because if you increasingly narrow the toolkits available solely to those contexts, you're then stuck with those contexts forever.

• Dungeons can't be bothered to regularly give any use for CC? Oh, we can just get rid of them.
• The lack of short-term DPS checks means that CDs are only ever used on CD, which then greatly increases the value of consistent sync? Well, rather than ever giving back short-term DPS checks, we'd best get rid of anything that isn't easily synced.
• Oh, people prefer the simper job (if it typically outperforms any other in its sub-role that isn't played perfectly)? May as well just simplify all its competitors, too.

Those simplifications escalate, and making it impossible ever to reverse course is rarely a good idea.


Again, unless Healers having access to GCD heals somehow makes them less like healers, I fail to see how having similar options that allow for tanks, ultimately, the same combined sustain+offense output but a higher maximum individually for either (more ability to choose between offense and sustain) would be awful for tanks, especially given the increased sustain requirements and diversity among fights' incoming damage that added flexibility would allow.

Defining what should ever be possible off of a narrow present context only acts to make those contexts permanent. Is the current healing situation something we really want to make permanent? Do we never want to attempt things outside of entirely scripted fights?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm assuming you mean the T10 mechanic, where damage is cumulatively reduced (and so we tend to line up in %miti order insofar as each sequential member can survive)? I don't think that's the only way to necessitate tanks, but I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more mechanics like that.

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Yeah like HH. It would put back some of the tank responsibility of good positioning into play, especially with how often raidwides happen in relation to tank busters. It would also necessitate some good cd usage since the first two ppl to be hit with the raidwide will always take a majority of the dmg. Falling back on reprisal might not be effective since you want to save those for situations where there are partner splits and raidwides. Situations where the tanks can only cover half of the party.

Regardless, the increased hitbox, stationary and re-centering bosses really has shifted tanks into pusedo dps since they don't have to do anything outside of swap for TB's. You gotta give the tanks something to do and wild charge raidwides are a good start. It doesn't have to be like HH but the idea is that the tank needs to protect the party and they can do that by standing in front and taking the brunt of the hit.

I think a lot of stuff is getting lost or obfuscated here, so I want to bring it back to the start.

The initial idea was, a tank defensive that reduces the tank's damage in some way in order to use a defensive action.

The first thing we need to ask is why? The tank role has never had the expectation of reducing their own damage in order to increase their own defence, except maybe in the early days of the game where tanks used tank stance. Getting towards the end of Final Coil, tanks did start using DPS stance when tanking but it didn't really catch on until HW where it was expected of tanks to use DPS stance, especially when you had WAR and DRK who were 2 powerful tanks that were fully capable of doing so. From then on, it has been DPS stance all the way through, including SB. This distinction is now no longer present.

This is one reason why I say it is a bad idea. It isn't something that has been drilled into people from the start and so adding it now is just going to cause backlash. You mention simplifications escalate, yes, they do, however, this is something that has been simplified from the past, this is just how it has always been.

Onto the next point. Why does the tank have to sacrifice their own damage for the potential for a healer to gain damage? No other role or job in the game does this. You can say a healer might have to waste a GCD on healing to save a DPS from dying, but that has a much higher tangible reward to DPS and it is expected of the healer to sacrifice some of their damage for the betterment of the group. It has never been the case for tanks to do the same. Even if we were to assume tanks did have that responsibility, you cannot guarantee the healer takes that chance, which then leads to a raid damage loss and you have reduced your own DPS for the potential for more damage, but it wasn't taken. I can compare that to raid buffs. In theory, you put out a raid buff and everyone else has the potential to utilise it. However, there is the potential someone does not, which is obviously bad, however, I have not sacrificed my own DPS to get the raid buff out there, it is down to the other player to make use of it.

Again, gong back to mitigation kits. Tanks have these tools that can use to mitigate damage at no cost to damage, why suddenly add something that does? For something 'different'? Maybe, try different defensive means to make them more exciting rather than reducing the tanks damage first. This will make tanks feel more unique and it won't be a button you want to avoid.

Going to fight flexibility, I don't see how the idea comes into this at all. You say it reduces fight flexibility, but the only way that can happen is if you throw several hard hitting attacks in sequence where your defensives cannot cover it, which also then implies this damage reduction is readily available fairly frequently. However, if you go from a fight like that to a fight where there are less hard hits and your normal defensive kit will suffice, this second fight will likely to be favoured by not only tanks, but healers too, as they have their own cooldowns to worry about as well. This is before the fact that, if healers do run out of cooldowns and have to resort to GCD healing, it gets rid of the initial benefit you set out to achieve anyway. There is a reason you cannot just spam out tank busters, or constant raid wides, it just isn't fun.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Again, unless Healers having access to GCD heals somehow makes them less like healers, I fail to see how having similar options that allow for tanks, ultimately, the same combined sustain+offense output but a higher maximum individually for either (more ability to choose between offense and sustain) would be awful for tanks, especially given the increased sustain requirements and diversity among fights' incoming damage that added flexibility would allow.

Defining what should ever be possible off of a narrow present context only acts to make those contexts permanent. Is the current healing situation something we really want to make permanent? Do we never want to attempt things outside of entirely scripted fights?

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How the healing kit currently operates, or potentially operates has no implications as to whether a tank's mitigation tool should or should not reduce said tank's damage output. I have said it in this thread, healers should be rewarded DPS wise for their GCD healing contribution (as, again, forcing a healer to GCD heal isn't expected unless in high end content, so people will want a reward for it). Which is also funny because if you want healers to GCD heal more, by reducing the tanks damage for mitigation, you heal with a GCD heal, which is another way the benefit isn't taken advantage of.

Again, it might have worked in the past, but it just will not work now.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Yeah like HH. It would put back some of the tank responsibility of good positioning into play, especially with how often raidwides happen in relation to tank busters. It would also necessitate some good cd usage since the first two ppl to be hit with the raidwide will always take a majority of the dmg. Falling back on reprisal might not be effective since you want to save those for situations where there are partner splits and raidwides. Situations where the tanks can only cover half of the party.

Regardless, the increased hitbox, stationary and re-centering bosses really has shifted tanks into pusedo dps since they don't have to do anything outside of swap for TB's. You gotta give the tanks something to do and wild charge raidwides are a good start. It doesn't have to be like HH but the idea is that the tank needs to protect the party and they can do that by standing in front and taking the brunt of the hit.

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This, on the other hand, is what is missing from tanks. The potential to feel like a tank by protecting the party and not just necessarily just by popping your raid wide mitigation. In wild Charge, you take an active role in mitigating damage by not only your own defensives, but also in your positioning. I have also stated a few times how CC could be used to make fights more interesting by having them change how boss attacks work. There are plenty of things than can be done to make a tank feel like a tank without having to resort to reducing the tanks damage. If you want to point out simplifications to the game, you should be concentrating here, where it matters most. The tank gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I think a lot of stuff is getting lost or obfuscated here, so I want to bring it back to the start.

The initial idea was, a tank defensive that reduces the tank's damage in some way in order to use a defensive action.

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The initial idea... from what post? The first post merely asks a spitball question about tank stances, be they for defense or enmity. The second, mine, immediately points out that tank stances are NOT required for decisions in of output (between greater offense or sustain) and that, especially if healers' contexts weren't so abysmal right now, we could easily see situations where at-cost flexible options to mitigation see optimal use even without that being the difference between life and death in that moment.

There's no insistence on CD -> take damage debuff -> defensive action unlocked.

Note that "sustain" is anything that keeps you and/or allies alive for longer. In any fight won by reducing the enemy's HP to 0 (so, every fight in XIV and most fights in every other MMO), its value is ultimately the rDPS difference you get for spending that much less time dead or under Weakened/Brink of Death.

• By and large, in the present context, most of each healer's sustain is "flat", not timing-sensitive. The total amount of damage negation or restoration rarely vary with incoming (Exaltation) or past (Macrocosmos) damage intake. And rarely would --not that either see use-- a Regen create less total effective potency than a Cure II, because we aren't so stressed by incoming damage that we'd ever have to preempt it with something that may eventually overheal nor that we'd have to forgo the over-time option with greater maximum potency. As such, it ends up extremely simple.
• On the other hand, especially until Endwalker, the majority of tank sustain has been timing-sensitive; affecting a dense period of damage intake with % damage reduction or % damage recovery (a Death Strike -style action) is hugely more valuable than affecting a shallow period of damage intake because the sustain that most tank actions produce is not only potentially bottlenecked by but even scales with that context.
• Unlike flat actions (just plain healing, especially where it's not bottlenecked or complicated in any way), time-sensitive actions can see optimal use some of the time even while being unnecessary at others.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The tank role has never had the expectation of reducing their own damage in order to increase their own defence, except...

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So, that "never" is... half the time tank stances were in the game, despite tank stance's gains being pathetically undertuned relative to its costs and a largely unusable mechanic on all but WAR due to its costs in changing stance.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

How the healing kit currently operates, or potentially operates has no implications as to whether a tank's mitigation tool should or should not reduce said tank's damage output.

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It is literally the same question of GCD heals on healers.

If the present context has turned GCD heals into "useless bloat", then you have two options:

1. You remove GCD actions, just as tank's control over their outputs were removed, thereby locking the game even further into hyperscripted but simple timing puzzles with their answers searchable online, or
2. You revert the massive simplifications of healer gameplay and gutting of healing requirements such that healers' 1-50 portion of their kits are actually still compatible with endgame (while increasing their offensive ppgcd in compensation for GCDs likely to be lost to healing --be that through returned or new downtime actions or simple buffs-- thereby improving their solo experience, too).

It's the same damn thing.

Removing all offensive/defensive control from tanks forces combat design to be increasingly precisely and invariably scripted (with any randomizations being wholly interchangeable insofar as the defensives used), because you cannot otherwise push tanks to their limits without breaking them during minimum item level. It also means every fight has to either be the same in its tank damage or has to just not even really push them, because every tank only has that identical set of CDs, with no flexible space.

That lack of output control homogenizes tank defensives and fight design, both. And it makes tanks feel less like tanks, just as surely as leaving healing requirements so low (or reducing healing them even further as to retain accessibility) so that healer CDs are wholly sufficient in themselves and then removing healer GCDs, instead of improving healing requirements/contexts, would make healers feel less like healers.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

This, on the other hand, is what is missing from tanks.

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It's not just one or the other. And the more tanks' available interaction with fight design remains constrained around that (homogenized) set of tank CDs alone, the less can be done to leverage being a tank in interesting ways.

Insisting on having ONLY a strict set of homogenized CDs gives you ONLY what mechanics could align with all of them or could equally be done by any DPS with a personal anyways. It's an unnecessary constraint, and it makes no more sense than asking for GCD heals to be removed instead of improving that context.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

If you want to point out simplifications to the game, you should be concentrating here

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This is such a blatant and unnecessary whataboutism.

To point out that tanks (re)gaining control over their outputs (higher damage ceiling, but generally averaging to about the same personal DPS and perhaps slightly higher consequent party DPS in practice under optimal use of at-cost mitigation) would increase the variety and depth of tank mechanics that can be included in our fights is not somehow mutually exclusive with wanting more tank mechanics. It's futureproofing largely for that purpose.

Without that flexibility, fights are more constrained because you literally have to build around that finite resource (those CDs), which in turn constrains how different tanks can be from one another, since you can't push the limits of any single one without either causing imbalance or making the others identical, because there is literally no fallback, no flex, no room. It's just those CDs. That's all you get for gameplay. That's all you get for fight design.

All for what, to satiate a try-hard's no-clear's refusal to actually math anything out and their insistence instead that anything with direct cause cannot be a net gain, or that a fight is unclearable because not dying would cost them 80 potency? What is the reason for insisting that tanks should have nothing analogous to GCD sustain (percentile mitigation, in their case) nor Aetherflow trade-offs between damage and sustain? Who would be victimized by making it so we could open up fight design and have tanks actually play more differently from one another, including in their actual tanking (not just their Blue DPS rotations)?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

All for what, to satiate a try-hard's no-clear's refusal to actually math anything out and their insistence instead that anything with direct cause cannot be a net gain, or that a fight is unclearable because not dying would cost them 80 potency? What is the reason for insisting that tanks should have nothing analogous to GCD sustain (percentile mitigation, in their case) nor Aetherflow trade-offs between damage and sustain? Who would be victimized by making it so we could open up fight design and have tanks actually play more differently from one another, including in their actual tanking (not just their Blue DPS rotations)?

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How would it makes tanks different? You either need it, or not, doesn't matter what tank you are, you use it at the same time, you haven't changed anything.

You could make the fights more RNG, but what happens when you do the fight the first time and you have to spend a lot of time in tank stance and the second time you don't need to because the damage never came out frequently enough?

But, the big question is WHY? Why is it necessary? I could, again, point out everything, but why does a tank have to sacrifice their damage to put up mitigation? It isn't going to change anything anywhere near as much as you seem to expect.

As for the comment about 'losing 80 potency', my response would be, what is the point? If you have something that is so inconsequential that it doesn't even matter, why have it in the first place? It is there for no reason other than some misguided sense of 'role flavour' that serves no purpose other than, I'm losing a small amount of potency that someone arbitrarily added for no reason.

Also:

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So, that "never" is... half the time tank stances were in the game, despite tank stance's gains being pathetically undertuned relative to its costs and a largely unusable mechanic on all but WAR due to its costs in changing stance

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People still learning how the game plays isn't a good metric for gauging how effective a mechanic is. If we were to go back to the ARR days, but still had out knowledge and experience now, can you honestly say people would still be in tank stance when tanking, or, would they be in DPS stance. I would bet, with 99% confidence, that they would be in DPS stance. HW was the main turning point for most of the community with SB being the full switch over. Also, Warrior only used it occasionally when Unchained was available to negate any downsides to using tank stance. That should tell you all you need to know. Also, if you are calling the tank stances 'undertuned' (by which I assume you mean the defensive benefit is too small but the offensive hit is fine) then you are talking about a potency loss of more than 80, it is going to be quite a significant hit and this is before talks of whether it is an oGCD, what defensive benefits it provides etc. Which brings up the point, we have both been living in hypothetical situations where I am assuming something similar to what we used to have, however, you seem to have a different idea. Maybe it would be beneficial if you actually provided an example or 2 of what you expect with a defensive stance, a solid foundation to base a discussion on is better than talking from 2 different buildings after all.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

You either need it, or not, doesn't matter what tank you are, you use it at the same time, you haven't changed anything.

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No, that is literally not the case.

Again, are you unable to receive value from any defensive that isn't absolutely necessary to survive? Should Vengeance, unless absolutely needed to survive, only ever be popped during raid-buffs for its counter-attack damage, its actual sustain value be damned? By all means, see whether some 400k of missing mitigation produces more rDPS just from buffing those counterattacks than it does from healer GCDs saved.

There are times when a defensive is necessary to survive against the next hit.
There are times when a defensive is necessary now in order not to die to a later hit soon after (against which your HP could not otherwise be sufficiently recovered by the time it hits).
And there are times when a defensive is necessary for neither but is nonetheless worth some amount of rDPS due to the healer or DPS offensive output thus afforded.

All it takes for at-cost defensive to be worth casting is for the rDPS likely to be produced to exceed its opportunity cost.

The greater the likely reward and/or lower the opportunity cost, the more situations it will be used for. The lower the likely reward and/or greater the opportunity cost, the more situational that tool will be. That is normal. That is fine.

I'm looking for a balance point --via context and per the strength of the added skills relative to those they share resource costs with-- wherein each kit should have a skill or two optimally used with moderate frequency in Savage content, even if less often as one nears/reaches BiS, and maybe another than is more situational.

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Why does a tank have to sacrifice their damage to put up mitigation? It isn't going to change anything anywhere near as much as you seem to expect.

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Apply your question to any other role:

Why did healers have to "sacrifice" their damage to heal (for, ultimately, massive rDPS gains over not doing so)?

• Because it allows a further degree of flexibility to fight design that having solely CDs cannot provide, and, when the healing requirements are not pathetically low, allows for far greater skill expression than simply Dosis/EuDosis spamming every GCD. Note also that the more we've made healing "free", the more healers mixed agency and relative maximum rDPS has been squished.

Why do DPS have downtime actions? Why not just remove downtime altogether?

• Because having downtime actions allows for a further degree of flexibility to fight design due to not needing to be so painfully constrained to giant hitboxes, minimal meaningful movement requirements, zero sync optimizations, etc.

Moreover, again, there is no cost to the overall personal DPS tanks would produce. The only difference is, again, that they can now further choose between offensive and sustain outputs, with the maximum of both increasing even though the total would remain almost identical.

I've noted repeatedly that their output ceiling would be raised, increasing the change in their damage as their skill and party coordination increase and making tanks a more lucrative pick (rivaling or sometimes even surpassing DPS) for coffers among statics. How is allowing tanks more palpable progression and actually being a competitive choice for gear allocation... a bad thing?

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People still learning how the game plays isn't a good metric for gauging how effective a mechanic is.

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You're the one who brought up usage as if it were an indicator not only of incidental quality, but fundamental design quality. I merely pointed out that if players increasingly learned how to drop it over the course of Heavensward, that's still half of the period for which tank stances existed, not merely a blip on the radar.

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a potency loss of more than 80, it is going to be quite a significant hit and this is before talks of whether it is an oGCD, what defensive benefits it provides etc.

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No, there is no gauging of opportunity cost that lies outside of what costs AND benefits it has. You literally cannot compare two things without both things.

To say that anything that costs 80+ potency is going to be crippling regardless of its rDPS gains... is bonkers. You may as well say that AST can never be taken because Fall Malefic is 80 potency short of Dosis III, despite AST clearly producing more party DPS.

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Maybe it would be beneficial if you actually provided an example or 2 of what you expect with a defensive stance

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Again, I am not the one suggesting a defensive stance. I have never suggested a defensive stance; I merely pointed out why the ones present from ARR to SB were pathetically impotent.

I feel like, outside of maybe a single tank if they could thematically leverage it far enough, it's an unnecessarily clunky way to achieve the purpose I desire (allowing tanks more swing in their outputs, as to free up fight and tank kit design and better reward tanks' awareness of and coordination around team dynamics).

So why do you keep asking for defensive stance mock-ups... from me? They're not my idea. I don't particularly want them.

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I would rather see further variance in tank kits as permitted by not making them beholden to just the same precise template of rigid CDs.

For instance, I might like to be able to spend Beast Gauge on Inner Beast (Self-Healing and Defense from damage dealt) and Steel Cyclone (self-healing from damage dealt), with higher relative gauge generation (perhaps spending only 40 per skill), instead of just sharing the same old 25s on-demand. And I'd rather see WAR be able to spend gauge on a Warcry that extends some of Warrior's effects to be split over nearby allies rather than just a plain 90s raid mit and an overpowered on-demand-alternative/external in Nascent Flash.

That kind of extra flexibility would both free up fight design and toolkit design, and ultimately allow tanks' experiences with a given fight not to be damn near entirely interchangeable.

Doubt they will, DT will likely be another double down on SHB design.
Half expecting them to give us the healer rotation next expansion with how things are going lol.

Game can't have any complexity or any "choices" or even the illusion of choice, why bother making things work when theirs always the easy solution of making everything the same and easier to play. The casual playerbase won't likely mind.

is it solvable to have more interesting "stances" yes, but is it easy to do? nope. Why would they bother going the hard route that might get people upset or confused on whens the right time to use a offensive stance or a defensive stance.