What kinds of "active" mitigation would you like to see among tanks?

As per title:

What kinds of "active" mitigation would you like to see among tanks?

What other kinds of agency, if any, would you like such controls to interact with or compete against in how tanks vary their capacities across a roster?

It depends on the job, and IMO it also depends on how willing Squeenix is to differentiate - and therefor automatically unbalance, as balanced divergent jobs are utopian and no MMO has ever managed, but they're cool - the current tank jobs:

* Paladin: Raise Shield replaces Shield Bash. While the GCD cycles, you'll block the next single physical hit you take and block amount if doubled. If blocked, you gain 1 charge of "Retaliate" which lasts 3 seconds only and can be used to cast Holy Spirit or Holy Circle as an instant oGCD or to use an Intervene without a charge, causing stun to the main target and a low-damage cone with +emnity behind the main target. Shield Bash itself is removed.
* Dark Knight: I'd remove potency from multiple moves, most importantly our spenders. TBN loses mana cost, shield and most of its CD. TBN can absord a single instance of magic damage, fully. The absorbed potency is stored, and the next Quietus will apply a DoT that deals damage and heals us over time with each tick based on the damage avoided, but the DoT is sloooow (30s++) to not overly spike our damage. Yes I know this massively unbalances, see my point above, I'm not looking for balance here, just "feeling cool". Feeling like the big anti-magic tank in this case, while Paladin is the big anti-physical tank. Tankbusters of course would need a way to pierce this, I suppose.
* Gunbreaker: After some trigger, a marker is left where you are for 2-3 GCDs. All rotational moves get 25y range temporarily, and if you walk away from the marker, you will no longer be hit by directed attacks (not sure how to handle tankbusters here, either). You attack from range briefly while the enemy cannot move and behaves as if you stand where the marker is, while you auto-evade anything you're not in range for. However, this only works while for each GCD you do shoot from range and got a cartridge for it. You're essentially going ranged mode for up to 3 GCDs.
* Warrior: I got no clue. I wish I could remodel it all to stack shields instead of healing itself because I feel it fits the shrug-it-off fantasy better, but I don't play Warrior enough to have any real idea for mitigation here. I'd love to make the damage output retaliatory as I feel that'd fit the class fantasy, but that's where my ideas stop.

I just want all tank jobs to have a comparable level of self sustain and DPS. I like diversity, but most important is for all tank role jobs to feel the same level of control over encounters.

Right now the gap isn't even close. WAR completely blows everything else out of the water in terms of self sustain, encounter control, and efficiency. It can fill its own health bar multiple times over WHILE doing good AOE damage. Nothing else even comes remotely close and has to struggle with more buttons and resource management just to do a fraction as well. These roles are tanks FIRST not "DPS that can take some damage" which seems what too many are content to think of them as. We have enough DPS jobs already. How about the few actual tank jobs are balanced to be actual TANKS?

The suggestions for TBN posted above are HORRIBLE, no offense. There is hardly any magic damage in this game as it is, and this actively makes the worst thing about tank balance even worse.

TBN is supposed to be the DRK equivalent of WAR Blood Whetting and it is an absolute joke. 25% health shield once every 30sec and it competes with your damage resource? Meanwhile WAR gets Blood Whetting on that same cooldown, it costs NO resources, and heals their entire health bar maybe 10x times or more WHILE they do damage? This is OK to people? Really?!?

TBN should lower its cooldown and refund MP if it breaks, and Abyssal Drain should be on a 30sec CD. Beyond that the devs need to seriously rethink their commitment to this role.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

TBN is supposed to be the DRK equivalent of WAR Blood Whetting and it is an absolute joke. 25% health shield once every 30sec and it competes with your damage resource? Meanwhile WAR gets Blood Whetting on that same cooldown, it costs NO resources, and heals their entire health bar maybe 10x times or more WHILE they do damage? This is OK to people? Really?!?

TBN should lower its cooldown and refund MP if it breaks, and Abyssal Drain should be on a 30sec CD. Beyond that the devs need to seriously rethink their commitment to this role.

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Idk what Dark Knight you're playing but TBN is already a 15 second cooldown and it does not compete with the damage resource. If you use it correctly, it breaks and you get a free use of Edge/Flood of Shadow. If you use TBN without it breaking, that is a miscalculation on the player's part and also part of DRKs gameplay to use TBN correctly. But it could for example get a heal/regen after it breaks (or maybe if it doesnt, it heals instead vs mitigating incoming damage), to compete with the other tanks healing abilities. That would especially be helpful for healing team members, because DRK has no way to do that as of now. Abyssal Drain on 30 seconds would also bring it closer to Bloodwhetting levels of heal output


What I do like as "active" mitigation is something like Paladins Passage of Arms, because you have to kinda "aim" it at your teammates. Other mitigations are either directly targeted or just hit everyone in range. Maybe something like Healers Asylum, Sacred Soil or Earthly Star to place across the arena, too, for DR mitigation? Especially comparing with Earthly Star, if you could choose when to apply the healing/mitigation of a skill instead of waiting for it to either hit a threshold of HP or when the CD runs out like Heart of Corundum does.

As it is now, I definitely want all tanks to stay viable in similar ways, and not have any of them get turned into a joke for the sake of some gimmick that either has no real use or only fringe cases (that also have to be solvable by other tanks in case you dont have that *one* tank on hand, or would force people to bring that job to the encounter no matter what). Same as putting mitigation on GCDs, I would prefer if they all stayed mostly oGCDs as they are now. Stuff like Clemency is fine as a GCD I guess, but only because it's also kinda ridiculously strong as it is, and on demand as long as you have the MP.

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Originally Posted by Sunbird_Elf

If you use TBN without it breaking, that is a miscalculation on the player's part and also part of DRKs gameplay to use TBN correctly.

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I don't know how you are totally missing the utter lack of even remotely comperable balance here for the sake of nit picking some CD times but let me break it down further.

WAR Bloodwhetting - 25s CD. 400 potency heal per target hit by any attack. Lets just say there are 5 targets in a small AOE pull not wall to wall. That is a 2000 potency heal per AOE cast for 8 sec. Say you somehow only managed to get off two AOE attacks, which is really, REALLY bad since they have a 2.5s gcd on average and you also have ogcd like Orogeny that can be woven in between casts which will also proc the heal, but just to keep things conservative and simple. That would still be 4000 potency healing every 25s. That is easilly more than a full healthbar of healing (more counting crits). On top of that you get 10% damage reduction (20% for the first 4sec), AND a 400 potency barrier.

DRK The Blackest Night - TBN costs 3000 MP. Even with a 15s CD, you have to actively plan your DPS to balance keeping up Darkside with having at least one charge of TBN available for when it comes up. WAR doesn't need to think about anything.

The ONLY thing TBN does is give you a 25% health barrier. No damage reduction. No healing. NOTHING. IF it breaks (and on 5 targets it frequently won't no matter how much you "calculate"), you get a free cast of your 3000 MP damage skill. Otherwise you are out the MP for a wimpy little 25% shield with no mitigation and no healing.

WAR - Heals full health multiple times, gets active damage reduction, AND a barrier, with NO planning and no resource management. Doesn't rely on timing healer stuns through chat communicating with randos with our 2nd set of hands. Actively contributes to DPS WHILE healing increasing the efficiency of the entire run.

DRK - Gets a wimpy 25% health shield and NOTHING else AND it costs MP. Healers hate you.

Yeah. This is fine. Totally wonderful game design and balance. Let's keep defending it.

I mean objectively that is like comparing apples and orangutangs! The two signature job abilities are not even remotely in the same league! This is OK?

Honestly this game has over a dozen DPS jobs, but only one serious tank (WAR), one mid tank (PLD) and a couple lower DPS jobs that can use tank role mitigation and have some gimicky job mechanics that are inferior to WAR in every way.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

I don't know how you are totally missing the utter lack of even remotely comperable balance here for the sake of nit picking some CD times but let me break it down further.

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I don't know how you are totally missing the point that was me just correcting factually wrong information you gave about how TBN operates. I didn't say anything about whether people can consider the skill good or bad. I am obviously aware that DRK lacks healing other tanks have, hence my further ideas adding more healing output to DRK. But I guess you didn't read that.

Maybe you'll read this other idea related to the threads topic then: Make TBN cost 2k MP, so a successful TBN proc also rewards good active mitigation play with a (slight) DPS increase. Give it a shield (+ Regen) spread similar to PCT Tempera spread for group mitigation vs single target mitigation. Give Oblation a heal, too, if you want, or rather make a heal version share a cooldown with Oblation so you can actively choose whether you need to mit or heal.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

and you also have ogcd like Orogeny that can be woven in between casts which will also proc the heal

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Also wrong, it only heals from weaponskills :P

I can only speak for DRK/PLD, but the thing I like about TBN the most is the risk-reward factor. I quite like learning curve of minmaxing its usage, the flexibility it offers with its short cooldown, and the MP cost being one of the only holdovers from the HW job design is a great thing, so I would HATE to see it go the way of BW/HoS.

PLD has the same decision making factor, albeit without the inherit "DPS loss potential", but I think the design of its defencive mits are in a decent spot. I'd argue the only thing PLD needs is a duration buff/cost reduction on basic Sheltron, and Cover NEEDS to return to its 3.0 ver. Holy Sheltron is nice and having its cost reduced to 30 might make it too strong, but if the devs intend on making content deal more damage, then we might need this to compensate.

I would like to see Oblation changed so it is a true alternative to TBN that gives a 15% shield with a Sole Survivor type delayed heal that refunds mana if it pops, but PLEASE let us get it at an earlier level so that we can a semblance of decision making and party mitigation before lv 70, since they seem to be allergic to giving us an early TBN .

I think DRK/PLD having 2 decent active mits and letting GNB/WAR have one strong active mit is a nice way to differentiate their kits, but as it stands, Oblyat is utter dogwater in comparison to Intervention and feels super clunky to use, let alone waste time casting it on other teammates. It's hard to brainstorm different forms of active mitigation without knowing that the devs will choose to do with the combat and jobs come 8.0, but all I can say for certain is that the current TBN feels good to use and I would like it if tank gameplay expanded on that risk-reward factor that makes TBN so fun to use

Just some brief and neutral comments so far:

If something costs a resource but typically (and with any proper usage) refunds its full cost, it's less that the skill itself has a "cost" than that failure has a cost, while the skill itself can allow for indirect resource banking.

Additionally, capped mitigation (such as TBN's) means that you're much freer to pre-pop it than the other short-CDs. Granted, the risk of failing its damage-intake check makes that will often make that seem too risky to fully leverage, yes.
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It's also been interesting to see what all is considered "active" mitigation here.

To me, active mitigation can mean either of two things: (1) any mitigation that is not passive (as per Defense or Tank Mastery, or arguably what comes in the course of just doing your rotation if the mitigation component of that rotation is not particularly bankable/delayable/rushable to any significant effect) or (2) any mitigation you have to actively work towards beyond just the press of an isolated button (typically, without also falling into the more specific categories of CC or kiting).

As such, Bloodspiller giving healing for a portion of damage dealt and Quietus healing you and restoring some further MP for each enemy that dies within 5s of its hit would be relatively "active", while Souleater (which cannot be deliberately banked to any significant effect) would not be. The first 4s of Heart of Corundum would be, while its triggerable additional heal would not be (at least without a context that would allow you to deliberately amplify it and trigger it at a specific time to be uniquely amplified through some other active measure, since as long as you're playing around it specifically for the added sustain at X moment, that still seems active to me).

Does that way of looking at it seem sensible to anyone? If so, my apologies for leaving things vague at the start. If not, well, define the term as you will and suggest accordingly.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

WAR - Heals full health multiple times, gets active damage reduction, AND a barrier, with NO planning and no resource management. Doesn't rely on timing healer stuns through chat communicating with randos with our 2nd set of hands. Actively contributes to DPS WHILE healing increasing the efficiency of the entire run.
DRK - Gets a wimpy 25% health shield and NOTHING else AND it costs MP. Healers hate you.

Yeah. This is fine. Totally wonderful game design and balance. Let's keep defending it.

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I don't think dungeon gameplay is really a great metric to go off of. Experienced Dark Knight players barely take damage in there now, especially with the 7.2 changes that gave Dark Knight a 4th 10% physical mit and a pocket benediction every 60s.
If you step outside of ultra casual content, you quickly come to the realization that defensively Dark Knight absolutely clowns on Warrior in almost every fight.


On a 5 point scale, Warrior's healing is an 11. Dark Knight's is like a 3. But there are two realities that you become aware of in higher end content.

1.Is of the 3 types of Mitigation (% Reduction, Shields, Regen) , Health Regen is by FAR the worst one. Dark Knight being weaker than the other tanks barely matters here, Healers can more than make up for Dark Knight's short comings in health regen.
In contrast its a lot harder for healers to make up for a tank lacking % Reduction.

2. WAR's % Reduction game is really bad. It has the standard tools (20%, 40%, Short Mit), and Thrill which is basically a big shield on a 90s CD
DRK has: 20%, 40%, 10% x 2, 10-20% depending on Damage type, and TBN, which is basically a big shield on a 15s CD.

DRK's nonstandard mits are all on shorter cooldowns. In the time you can Bloodwhetting once, you can TBN Twice, and pair it with your other % mits (Dark Mind and Oblation being 60s CD instead of 90) and you quickly realize Dark Knight just takes a lot less damage than WAR. I get it, Dark Knights buttons do not READ crazy like the other tank's mits. But these skills do not exist in isolation and time has shown them to be more than the sum of their parts. Dark Knight is just way more defensively solid and way more flexible thanks to this, meanwhile WAR has to play with its %mits way closer to its chest.

Sure, WAR can heal it back thats its gameplan, but at the end of the day your health bar can only be so full, and high end content is very good at running tank mits thin. WAR will bump its head on this ceiling and feel awful, I think M6S was a great example of this, where even if you make a Savage with 4+ Targets for the WAR to leech life off of, as soon as Bloodwhetting falls off you just melt. Despite the insane healing WAR wasn't the optimal pick in the area its supposed to excel in, and honestly didn't get broken there until enough gear was handed around to make up for its lack of % mit. And despite all of that its still the least represented tank in that fight

while DRK not having as free healing in dungeons is just a skill check.

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

TBN should lower its cooldown and refund MP if it breaks

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You must be joking, right? You realize TBN does have half the cooldown you think it does and gives a free attack afterwards to "refund" its mana cost.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

In contrast its a lot harder for healers to make up for a tank lacking % Reduction.

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This part is definitely true, as %DR is going to increase the value of each point of health, effectively appreciating the value of healing done, while just stacking flat sustain atop flat sustain will lack that synergy. But...

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WAR's % Reduction game is really bad.

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This isn't ultimately going to matter until regularly up against very high overall in-window damage intake and/or what would otherwise be OHKOs. As it stands, even with that "really bad" %DR game... WAR's still typically putting out 130 - 160% the sustain (yes, including DR) of what DRK is, and nothing is going to kill OHKO a WAR that a DRK could uniquely survive when acknowledging that each has a co-tank (even if just another WAR) in said content.

It's therefore typically less that WAR has to "play its %mits way closer to its chest," specifically, as simply that one has the more frequent --even if typically numerically inferior both individually and overall-- short(er)-CD tool(s), and that frequency of deaths/panics prevented can make for an easier time than the depth of sustain (including from damage nullification) collected/"padded".

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1.Is of the 3 types of Mitigation (% Reduction, Shields, Regen) , Health Regen is by FAR the worst one. Dark Knight being weaker than the other tanks barely matters here, Healers can more than make up for Dark Knight's short comings in health regen.

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Calling regen mitigation is a stretch, as it doesn't actually secure your own health pool and is itself a sub-type of healing (which in its broader form typically gives us our 4 categories of sustain:

• "%DR" -- scaled and max-eHP-increasing but duration-limited,
• "Shields"/"Barriers" -- flat and max-eHP-increasing but (somewhat) duration-limited,
• "%Recovery -- scaled but not max-eHP-increasing and window-limited (as per Death Knights in WoW),
• "Healing" -- flat and not max-eHP-increasing but without duration limits).

Because the duration of shields tends to be so high (apart from perhaps TBN) relative to the amount of time required to break them, meaning that shielding can rarely ever go to waste, heals tend to just feel worse. Give every barrier only 7s to be popped or cause them to decay over time, though, and things might not feel quite so skewed against pure healing. Just some food for thought.

:: Further, if by Regen you did mean a HoT, then aye, that is purely a limitation. At least, in itself, just as DoTs are weaker than direct damage... unless buffed accordingly (thereby allowing for one to effectively double/triple up on the density of their high-ppgcd soft-CDs by fighting multiple enemies at a time to a higher total damage than others can manage). (Similarly, %Recovery is generally the 'worst' of the above main categories unless overpowered in terms of maximum output. Again, see WoW's Blood Death Knights.)

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I think M6S was a great example of this, where even if you make a Savage with 4+ Targets for the WAR to leech life off of, as soon as Bloodwhetting falls off you just melt. Despite the insane healing WAR wasn't the optimal pick in the area its supposed to excel in, and honestly didn't get broken there until enough gear was handed around to make up for its lack of % mit.

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I can't see a way to go back now to see how its number of parses early in the tier to see if they were in fact below GNB and DRK back then (while now only PLD has more than it), but... are we sure this had nothing to do with WAR's damage also falling way behind in M6S compared to 5, 7, and 8?

The actual mitigation/survival part of classes based an self-rehealing damage is usually an increased health pool. Just look at games that already have done this successfully, such as Blood Death Knights in WoW in the first 2-3 expansions of their existence.

Which makes sense. You can passively survive more punishment, but you lack tools to reduce the damage intake you have. Your overall survivability is similar (less controllable, more passive), but now you're a healing-sponge, so you also get strong self-healing to compensate and that's your controllable active gameplay to not aggravate your healers.

This also feeds into the "usual" types of tanks:

* A "standard" tank. This is usually the tank that takes the least damage per attack, but lacks other specific tools. Their reduction might also be more passive than of other tanks, being the plate armor wearing shield wielding tank that constantly blocks damage and has the highest passive reduction, in return for weaker active tools.
* A "selfhealing" tank. As above this is an HP sponge but not an eHP one, lacking reduction tools, in return being able to survive the higher damage they suffer and being able to re-heal that extra amount and then some. This tank usually excels against DoT damage or other unavoidable damage as in many games this ignores the first tank's passive reductions.
* A reduction/immunity tank. This has frequently become a dedicated anti-magic tank, but the idea here is basically the opposite of the one before. Takes more damage than the first tank, can't re-heal it themselves, but has stronger active tools for mitigation, or can even fully ignore specific attacks like having "active dodge"-skills or seconds-long magic invulns or so.
* (Sometimes) The AoE/aggro tank. In games were aggro is not trivial, you usually find a tank that trivializes it (compare TBC-era Paladin in WoW). This is their thing then, they allow DPS to deal more damage and more aggressively, shortening fights as their way of avoiding damage, and making tank swaps tricky but raising the threat-ceiling so fights don't drag out as DPS wait for their threat-shedding skills to cycle. It's also an important tank for situations with frequently spawning adds as they pick up faster and better than other tanks.
* The sponge-tank. In games that differentiate their damage types, you'll find tanks that are a bit like the self-healing tank only with even more raw health, little passive damage reduction, no or little self-healing, few active skills. The idea here is that against damage that is difficult to avoid, these provide superior survivability and a reliable survival length, but they eat healing and mana off your healers like crazy, and their survival is capped by when the healers become unable to sustain the healing they need, not when they themselves run out of tools. The TBC-era - an insanely good source for tank setup differentiation, tbh - Bear Druid was explicitly built this way. Sum durids is bare ,to quote Alamo.

I personally feel TBN is perhaps one of the better designed defensive abilities in the game specifically because it does have elements you have to consider about it and does have potential drawbacks to improper usage. I find the other short recast defensives to be a bit too simplistic in that they have little to no extra considerations to their usage asides from "hit button -> benefit" in pretty much any situation.

I will however point out that measuring just TBN against the other short recast defensives isn't actually an equitable comparison and you really should be grouping together both TBN and Oblation when comparing them since Oblation is the closest thing to the upgrade that the other defensives get at lvl.82. It was just separated out for a couple of reasons, not making the TBN shield harder to break in all instances where that extra defense may not be needed and to provide DRK with an additional low-end "all rounder" defensive as this was something players had been asking to get for a long time although that was originally to compensate for Dark Mind being magic damage only before they changed it to also include 10% physical damage reduction. Anyways, I digress. Point being you need to look at the combination of both TBN and Oblation when comparing against Holy Sheltron, Bloodwhetting and Heart of Corundum.

In my opinion TBN itself is pretty much fine, although I would love to be able to cache more than one charge of Dark Arts to reward good usage of it and add an extra element of strategy to prepping for your burst.
Oblation on the other hand could honestly use some tweaks to make it align better with TBN as well as the other short recast defensives. Mainly I would like to see Oblation's recast get reduced to 30s so that it could be paired with more TBNs in instances where you would want to do that, making it more akin to the automatic boost that the other defensives have baked into every use with the lvl.82 upgrades.

As for the balance of defensives between the tanks overall, particularly DRK versus the rest or WAR versus the rest, I generally feel what many others do in that the self-healing on most of the tanks has gone a bit too far and probably need to get reined in.

On the topic of "active mitigation", I wouldn't be opposed to reducing the 20% damage reduction that tanks just get through the Tank Mastery trait and then to compensate buffing the defensive elements provided by their weaponskill combos, such as the heal from Soul Eater or shield from Brutal Shell, or some other part of the job's regular rotation. That could maybe even help with reducing the situation of some tanks having too much self-healing where some could be left as is and then other tanks can have that slight defensive boost to their combo or whatever and that change reducing the base % damage resistance from the Tank Mastery trait acts as the equalizer.

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

I think DRK/PLD having 2 decent active mits and letting GNB/WAR have one strong active mit is a nice way to differentiate their kits, but as it stands, Oblyat is utter dogwater in comparison to Intervention and feels super clunky to use, let alone waste time casting it on other teammates. It's hard to brainstorm different forms of active mitigation without knowing that the devs will choose to do with the combat and jobs come 8.0, but all I can say for certain is that the current TBN feels good to use and I would like it if tank gameplay expanded on that risk-reward factor that makes TBN so fun to use

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Oblation isn't as strong as Intervention since DRK can put TBN on other people, while Holy Sheltron is self only. Intervention is really really good for double-tank busters, meanwhile DRK can potentially save up to 3 people from dying to a raidwide with TBN + 2 Oblation stacks, the kit is very versatile.

Exactly. And the CD is also different, but then there's so many more differences such as Dark Mind vs Bastion, it's difficult to compare these. Like, would some DRK players be fine with changes to Oblation if they also imply Dark Mind is now weaker and on a longer CD?

I do quite like how flexible Oblation is, especially in the current mana-starved DRK kit, but I still think it feels terrible to use on its own, especially for a lv 82 skill. Had Oblation originally been a low level skill, then I think that Dark Mind/Missionary might not have needed the buffs they received. I don't think buffing Oblation with a shorter recast and Vigil-type heal would hurt the game, as we have reached a point where the slew of DDR mechanics means that someone is bound to take a hit, and giving tank jobs a way to support teammates during those high movement phases would feel nice imo.

Cover is a skill I enjoy trying to minmax in all forms of content, and I think it would be nice if all tanks had access to some form of party utility around the ARR levels, not just PLD/GNB. If the Tank Mastery trait was removed, we might be justified in having these tweaks to our lower level kits. WAR might even be able to keep its current healing kit, since it would now need the extra HP/healing to make up for this.

The only passive mitigation I would like to see would be baking job-specific effects into our tank stances. Defiance could get back the Thrill of Battle trait, Royal Guard inheritly increasing parry rate, Iron Will giving a higher Block rate, and Darkside receiving a passive lifesteal effect might be nice too. This could let us get Scourge and Power Slash back! (this is copium of the highest degree)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This part is definitely true, as %DR is going to increase the value of each point of health, effectively appreciating the value of healing done, while just stacking flat sustain atop flat sustain will lack that synergy. But...


This isn't ultimately going to matter until regularly up against very high overall in-window damage intake and/or what would otherwise be OHKOs. As it stands, even with that "really bad" %DR game... WAR's still typically putting out 130 - 160% the sustain (yes, including DR) of what DRK is, and nothing is going to kill OHKO a WAR that a DRK could uniquely survive when acknowledging that each has a co-tank (even if just another WAR) in said content.

It's therefore typically less that WAR has to "play its %mits way closer to its chest," specifically, as simply that one has the more frequent --even if typically numerically inferior both individually and overall-- short(er)-CD tool(s), and that frequency of deaths/panics prevented can make for an easier time than the depth of sustain (including from damage nullification) collected/"padded".

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This comes up a lot in Ultimates and week 1 savages, during my time in FRU pf I saw so many warriors just die to the tank busters, they are by far the most reliant on needing outside assistance for them, of which DRK is a very strong ally for them because it has TBN/Oblation on a shorter CD to spare. GNB and especially PLD do not struggle with this, WAR is uniquely over-invested in healing itself that its becoming a detriment in high end content. Waste one of your mits as a WAR and you're dead. Meanwhile if Dark Knight accidentally blows a mit, you're probably fine. If you don't touch the highest end content of this game, you'll never hit your head on this ceiling, and I find basically all of the "DRK HEAL BAD, WORSE WAR" come from casual players.

This isn't me saying the job is unplayable in high end content, it definitely is. But the harder the content gets, the more Dark Knight edges out Warrior

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Calling regen mitigation is a stretch, as it doesn't actually secure your own health pool and is itself a sub-type of healing (which in its broader form typically gives us our 4 categories of sustain:

• "%DR" -- scaled and max-eHP-increasing but duration-limited,
• "Shields"/"Barriers" -- flat and max-eHP-increasing but (somewhat) duration-limited,
• "%Recovery -- scaled but not max-eHP-increasing and window-limited (as per Death Knights in WoW),
• "Healing" -- flat and not max-eHP-increasing but without duration limits).

Because the duration of shields tends to be so high (apart from perhaps TBN) relative to the amount of time required to break them, meaning that shielding can rarely ever go to waste, heals tend to just feel worse. Give every barrier only 7s to be popped or cause them to decay over time, though, and things might not feel quite so skewed against pure healing. Just some food for thought.

:: Further, if by Regen you did mean a HoT, then aye, that is purely a limitation. At least, in itself, just as DoTs are weaker than direct damage... unless buffed accordingly (thereby allowing for one to effectively double/triple up on the density of their high-ppgcd soft-CDs by fighting multiple enemies at a time to a higher total damage than others can manage). (Similarly, %Recovery is generally the 'worst' of the above main categories unless overpowered in terms of maximum output. Again, see WoW's Blood Death Knights.)

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Yeah thats why I meant to say healing/regen is significantly worse than shields or % mit. It goes to waste and doesn't actually help you survive anything unless its a damage over time.
But Shields and %Mit are completely applicable to all types of damage, Healing is exclusively only good against multi-hits or damage over times so it ends up being a fluff stat on WAR's buttons a lot of the time. WAR is busted in dungeons because dungeons not only do no damage, its almost entirely damage over time. Thats where it thrives. WAR crumbles under high burst damage scenarios.

I also know nothing about WoW, nor do I plan to learn anything about Blizzard games, so I dont know what a death knight is. Nor do I use WoW termanology. Fuck Blizzard.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I can't see a way to go back now to see how its number of parses early in the tier to see if they were in fact below GNB and DRK back then (while now only PLD has more than it), but... are we sure this had nothing to do with WAR's damage also falling way behind in M6S compared to 5, 7, and 8?

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Its a bit of personal experience watching my WAR main friend flex onto GNB and make the fight significantly easier as a result, not only through superior AOE damage, but also just just dying outright to either sides of the mob pack.

I beleive the World 1 parties were completely dominated by PLD/DRK.
If damage was the sole factor it would have been GNB/DRK, but PLD brings the most defensive toolset of any tank to the team and generally makes content easier for everyone.
PLD does what people pretend WAR does while not sacrificing real mitigation for it imo.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I also know nothing about WoW, nor do I plan to learn anything about Blizzard games, so I dont know what a death knight is. Nor do I use WoW termanology. Fuck Blizzard.

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These aren't WoW terms. WoW has no unique hold on a term as general as "%Recovery". Theirs just happens to be the only broadly known example of a tank that uses enemy-scaled healing. In XIV, the obvious example of %Recovery is Macrocosmos; it just doesn't happen to be on a tank and is a long CD instead of a gauge spender, making it feel almost unrelated to discussion of tank active mitigation.

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But the harder the content gets, the more Dark Knight edges out Warrior.

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For ease, perhaps. Or if fighting strong enough one-hit TBs and few enough windows of high damage during adds. But that's just a matter of different scaling factors, no?

The harder enemies hit during its mitigated windows, the more DRK can get out of its advantage in %DR, but likewise the less of a bottleneck WAR's maximum HP becomes to its theoretical maximum self-healing. What ultimately serves DRK best in that is simply the staleness of fight types and that, for the moment, WAR lacks the AoE damage to complement any advantage in AoE sustain even if it had the CD-flexibility to reliable leverage that advantage.

And that seems the sad part to me. We really see such little variety in encounters as they'd more interestingly interact with differing tank profiles.

That's never going to be something where you will see much differentiation, though.

Look at how unwilling the community is to already accept the minor differences that exist between tanks. Look at the number of threads being jealous about WAR's selfhealing, DRK's burst, etc etc. The constant ceaseless nerf/buff threads, for something that, comparing other MMORPGs, makes no difference. From the perspective of anybody else outside FFXIV, all 4 tanks are EXACTLY identical. 100% same kit with cosmetic differences.

If we wanted actually differentiating content, this could more readily be achieved via actually differentiating the tanks themseves (and both have to happen either way). But uuuugh would the community be in shambles if they do that. If we had an actual "Boss tank", as in, bosses are balanced to be tanked by this class, if you bring somebody else, expect extra wipes or it being impossible. If we had actual add-tanks, as in, everyone else will struggle to pick up and hold onto this many mobs, expect DPS taking hits or being dead if you do this. Etc etc. Like in any other MMO, it's not like we cannot readily look at the past and current competition to see how this works. I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class diferences. >.>

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's never going to be something where you will see much differentiation, though.

Look at how unwilling the community is to already accept the minor differences that exist between tanks. Look at the number of threads being jealous about WAR's selfhealing, DRK's burst, etc etc. The constant ceaseless nerf/buff threads, for something that, comparing other MMORPGs, makes no difference. From the perspective of anybody else outside FFXIV, all 4 tanks are EXACTLY identical. 100% same kit with cosmetic differences.

If we wanted actually differentiating content, this could more readily be achieved via actually differentiating the tanks themseves (and both have to happen either way). But uuuugh would the community be in shambles if they do that. If we had an actual "Boss tank", as in, bosses are balanced to be tanked by this class, if you bring somebody else, expect extra wipes or it being impossible. If we had actual add-tanks, as in, everyone else will struggle to pick up and hold onto this many mobs, expect DPS taking hits or being dead if you do this. Etc etc. Like in any other MMO, it's not like we cannot readily look at the past and current competition to see how this works. I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class diferences. >.>

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There is, however, still an ocean of difference between...

1. "Every tank can differ only cosmetically"
   
   and
   
   
2. "each fight requires 1-2 specific tanks for it to be cleared (such that there's really only two tanks... merely rotated on a per-fight basis, and every tank main must maintain at least 3)".

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I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class differences. >.>

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This is true, but I feel context is important, too.

When the numbers are obviously consequent to different features and significantly varied by context (e.g., on a phase-by-phase basis), people tend to be more accepting of numeric differences (especially if there's some sort of counterpressure against easy swapping and the given job can redeem itself with an advantage in a specific progression bottleneck or in overall performance even if it might do worse in some other fight).

When the numbers are ALL that seemingly distinguishes the jobs, though, it makes sense that players wouldn't be okay with being at all pushed out over something that provides so little difference in identity.

We're in the/a "sour spot", so to speak. There's not enough identity to feel like the performance differences are warranted, nor then enough difference seemingly permitted to encourage further differentiation.

But I don't think we get out of that by letting things spiral ever closer in terms of HOW tanks contribute...

...and I don't think the trick to diversifying that will come simply from, say, making DRK the only one with shields or WAR the only one with self-heals, or any such categorical divides of what (if not thereby almost purposely imbalancing tanks in prog or farm) will be ultimately identical results in sustain. I think it'll probably have to come from building fights around features that could look at feel really cool to (seemingly creatively) pull off as tanks without being mere gimmicks, amping tank kits accordingly, and so on, back and forth -- something that brings out a sort of variable "puzzle-solving" of a given fight in place of "{Any shape} goes in the {Square Hole}", with equal coverage for each mechanic instead of just roughly equal value over the fight's whole course.

Granted, the concretes of what all can be pushed closer in equity --let alone by what categories or sub-categories or sub-sub-categories of throughput-- without hurting identity is complicated, yes. As would managing to include interesting features that can be used creatively without being relegated to mere gimmicks.

Yeah that's of course true. Like I said above, maybe a differentation should not be "What flavor of mitigation do I have?" but "What breadth of mitigation do I have?".

Meaning that maybe one job constantly uses small short-duration mitigations, but also kinda has to. They reap a benefit from it, but they lack the say, extra 20% passive reduction someone else might have. And yet a third one has an active but less frequent full avoidance or single-hit invuln. So long as fights bring all kinds of damage profiles, ideally even mixed in all kinds of configurations within at least each tier but better all fights, this can be balanced out, and even if the net result of ~identical, it'd feel very different to play, more so because the hotbar setups would also be quite incomparable.

I also feel it was a mistake to (mostly) make Physical and Magical damage equivalent, at least from a tank perspective. If autoattack damage were significant in ~all fights, and magic damage less trivially resistable, then there'd be a valid differentiation between a more plate-based tank (takes less damage total) and a more ability-based tank (takes less from burst/mechanics). It'd be difficult to re-do old fights for this, of course. Another problem is that unlike many other MMORPGs, bosses here don't frequently do the following three:

* DoT the tank, which promotes active avoidance/invuln abilities as usually DoTs ignore defenses and care only about HP pools in MMOs.
* stack-debuff the tank with every autoattack, forcing regular tank swaps.
* Do some form of knockback or so that also drains, say, 50% of the current tank's threat, not only forcibly swapping the tank in most cases but also essentially hard-limiting the damage you can deal to them as a DPS as this eventually hits a "threat ceiling".

All three of which can promote more unique tank mechanics, respectively active avoidance, more frequent taunting/shirking abilities or Cover-style skills, and higher damage/threat output as a unique aspect.

There's so many fight mechanics missing that'd enable more tank variety. :'(

Edge of Twilight 60-90 second cooldown- creates a black barrier around the dark knight. Granting 30% Damage Reduction from both magical and physical damage. also every time take a hit you siphon life from your attackers (hence damage) also gain the buff "Endark" meaning all your attacks and skills will deal additional 5% dark damage top of the damage they already do, also this ability causes large amounts of enmity when used

Cloak of Darkness for 60-90 second cooldown - For 12 Seconds Dark Knight gains "Blink" All physicals attacks, and physical attack skills will result in a miss. only damage dark knight while cloak is active is from magical attacks . also every time you miss an attack you gain large amounts MP back