Dancer - Evasion Tank. Fabulous Support.

[ByakkoSeven]

snip...

To incorporate glancing from what I could really tell would kind of require a change in how mechanics work all together right now. Seeing as we have no way outside of a CD to affect dodge rating (unless it's Dex and it's hidden), dodge chance can't even be taken into account for a tanking stat. I also personally find it kind of odd that Parry is basically the EXACT same as Block, just a 2nd chance to do so. And because it has no way to affect how much you parry for outside of stacking Str, you can only increase the chance you parry, which seems kinda silly to me...

I feel as a tank there's a lot of mechanics and functions of mechanics that should really be re-evaluated in order to bring balance to 1. The current classes, and 2. How they can implement and balance a new tanking class.

[lyndwyrm]

First off, evasion has nothing to do with getting one shot.

After reading that, I realized I wasn't terribly clear with that statement (that happens all the time for me). I should have worded
"If evasion chances were high enough, then normal hits wouldn't one shot them, and there would be plenty of time to heal between hits"
as
"So long as normal hits don't one shot them, a high enough evasion would provide enough time to heal between hits, on average."
The "on average" is important, because yes, at some point the RNG tank will die. Will the RNG tank die twice in a row if appropriately leveled/geared/skilled though? (still yes, but if it isn't less than 0.5% of the time, then the class probably isn't worth playing.)

The second thing I want to point out is that abilities with "live with X HP remaining" kinda throw eHP out of proportion. If a very specialized class had 5 HP but was guaranteed to only take 1 point of damage per hit, then it would work (assuming attacks do come 1-2 per GCD and not a small flurry of hits, and other details I'm leaving out). However, they would (all other things the same [and flat-out ignoring some things]) last the same amount of time against Titan as they would a Star Marmot.
The reason this could balance the Evasion tank is that it provides certainty (in Techro's words "a control, a constant"). Although, the RNG still matters with this type of ability because if all the time you are reduced to 2, healed to 1000, reduced to 1, then healed to 999, then.... dead, then no, people won't want to play it. The key would be, that such instances do not happen often when appropriately geared, skilled, etc. AND, they find a way to scale it. Not scaling isn't normally good, because it produces unbalance when other things do scale (and other things, which I'm not going to worry about).

I should make sure I mentioned this however; although I like the idea of an evasion tank, I don't expect to see one. Similar to how I don't expect to see anything like a blue mage or mimic, because they don't scale normally and are very situational.

Just because numbers..... going with the the situation you built above (240GCD, 3GCD packets). If the tank had 75% evasion, then (on average) 1.25 packets would hit all three times. Yes this does ignore times when more than 3 hits would hit in a row, but 3 hits in a row go goes as 1.56% and any number 3 or more goes as 2.08%. Using 2.08% as the chance, then 1.67 packets would hit all three times, so in a 10 min. fight, a 5 min. CD could solve this (this hypothetical CD would have not to be prediction dependent, but then the CD would also probably have to be longer, so that is someone starts a fight with it up and available, it doesn't become OP, etc. [I'm also not going to discuss how exactly this cool-down solves the problem]). Then, if the tank had 85% evasion, then only 0.317 packets would go through. So with 85% constant evasion, they would only be hit 3 times in a row once per every about 3 of these fights. My thoughts of an evasion tank, start with evasion chance at 75%, but again.... I don't expect to see this. At least not in an MMO. And, admittedly, there is still quite a bit of napkin math with this.

In summary, the RNG tank will die occasionally just due to the RNG (with my build). The only balance to that is how occasionally.

[Techro]

Yes there is no place for evasion tanks...but it would be nice to have a different tank..something away from the sword and board mentality. Another idea that i have is Beastmaster Tank, where you tank with pet abilites, not pets, since the AI would be too much for the engine to handle. Coeurl swipe < emnity, Water spout < heal/regen, Crab < defensive cooldown. The ywould comeout for a second and do an ability and kind of fade. Maybe you can have stances for different types, jungle, forest, river... I feel like a tanking class like this can add variety as well in the form of creating different tanks based on animal abilites. you can then incorporate dodge, or whatever stat you want to focus on as your tanking specialty. just another thought.

[KokuRyuha]

In my opinion a Pure Evasion Tank is something that is too random to be viable...it Could become something that need no heal for like 6-7 hits but that can be one/bi shotted if things go the wrong way...too much random in play.
I think the safest way to use evasion for tanking is to have the stat grant some sort of mitigation when a particular stance is activated, like if you have 40% evasion you gain yes the chance to dodge 1/3 of the hits, but also a 40% mitigation on damage due to the fact that the attacker can't land a clean hit on you (more or less like parry do)...use this with a cloth/leather armor and a low life (like 4k hp) and you have a playable and safe evasion tank

Not mother language so sry if it's not all understandable

[Techro]

your English is fine. Earlier I spoke about making glancing hits a form of mitigation from dodge. The definition of a glancing hit is something that has barely scraped you due to enemy having bad aim or due to your ability to be mobile and dodge. A glancing hit would be the mitigation in dodge and both dodge/glance can be raised via Dexterity. Now you have the RNG of dodge but you also have mitigation of when you dodge or dont dodge an attack it can be lessened via a glancing hit. This can also be even more balanced, with a constant or control, like the one lyndwyrm mentioned. An ability that saves you from death and leaves you at a minimum hp, a percentage of hp total.

[Kitru]

your English is fine. Earlier I spoke about making glancing hits a form of mitigation from dodge. The definition of a glancing hit is something that has barely scraped you due to enemy having bad aim or due to your ability to be mobile and dodge. A glancing hit would be the mitigation in dodge and both dodge/glance can be raised via Dexterity. Now you have the RNG of dodge but you also have mitigation of when you dodge or dont dodge an attack it can be lessened via a glancing hit.

And how is your "glancing blow" any different than parry or block? It's an RNG mechanism that causes you to take partial damage. You're just asking for a new name for something that already exists in multiple forms. Honestly, if you really wanted a Glancing Blow mechanic, just make it a CD that increases your damage reduction so that, for a short while, you're turning *all* hits into glancing blows.

[Narcissus]

Please don't add dancer.

[Masenken]

Evasion tanks are like playing with fire. Unlike games like Tera where dodging is an active skill, you basically need a similar mechanic to do the same thing with xiv. Nin tanks in XI only worked due to utsusemi, get hit in-between had impact but not really ask that life threatening.
Here in XIV, bosses like Garuda and Titan, and I assume in Coil who continuously hit like freight trains, dodging is the least of your worries. Tanks tend to have crazy high hit pools to soak up damage while mitigating said damage at the same time via some mechanic, both active and passive, and with an evasion tank, whose likely going to be super squishy, bad rng or a mistake on the part of the player will see you dropping dead like bad habit in seconds.
So what you're looking at is a crazy skilled player who knows these fights like the back of their hand and knows when to use certain cd's, when to run, when to stand and take a hit. So the trade-off here is that yes you will rarely if ever get hit, but one mistake can and might just outright kill you.
The mindset of the player base will likely shift towards the negative because finding a group of players willing to trust you to not get yourself face smashed will be extremely hard to find, but for the players who manage to play this class well, but only will they be sought out, but they'll be one of a handful who keep the class from being utterly mocked due to how easily they can be killed.
I don't dislike the idea of an evasion tank. It's a crazy concept in the first place and will take equally crazy players to maximize their potential. I don't think there's an issue with them being op so much as an issue of finding players good enough to make them shine.

[Techro]

I think everyone understands the problems of having an evasion tank, we were discussing how would one be constructed, what abilities could facilitate this sort of tank and all the other things everyone has said above. I would like a different tank from the ol sword and shield plus mitigation cool downs. This is the only thing out there in the mmo world and having a discussion about a different way to build a tank can be entertaining, at least.

[Masenken]

In that case, CD's is the only way to do it. Maybe faster than average CD's at that. In keeping with the super simple combo tradition, their third hit produces a fair amount of hate and increased evasion for 5 seconds. As a dancer theme, accuracy down and blind could be their key enfeebs. Eschewing traditional rules, I don't see a reason to step away from the typical "roles" of the old jobs. When it gets down to it, every class is a DD, just some specialize in high sustained damage while others did something else. I never really messed with dancer myself in tactics, but wasn't it always an enfeebler? Tanking via screwing up your opponent like a daredevil bull fighter sounds fun to me honestly.

I'm on my phone, so I can't really type out specific examples of how of a skill set, but the gist is basically matching skill to flavor so it makes sense when you see it in gameplay