New jobs upcoming, new tanks?

[NeruMew]

Another thing on topic that I did not mention is that yes, I believe this game could use the addition of two tanking styles. Magic and Avoidability based tanks.

I just can't stress enough how cool it would be to have a mage tank. lol, something like purely based on magic. (not too hybridish, a bit maybe)

read avoidability based tank as an RNG tank (and yes! the effed up part of rng is what makes it fun :P) where you dodge or eat it whole (or most of it, cause full 100% dmg would be too spikey obviously) and there you could fit the NOT NINJA (but something similar) tank job, perhaps as second to Pugilist? not entirely fond of the idea of second to pugilist, but could be second job to the class root for ninja. you know, staying in the nimble swift tank scheme (i repeat, not going full on stealth ninja style)


Also, i think it would be good for the game to add more tank classes, more appealing to different play styles as well, this would help immensely with the shortage of tanks we are suffering from right now (not sure it's a big of an issue as it seems though)... but still we could really use the variety in playstyles.

[Exstal]

Another thing on topic that I did not mention is that yes, I believe this game could use the addition of two tanking styles. Magic and Avoidability based tanks.

I just can't stress enough how cool it would be to have a mage tank. lol, something like purely based on magic. (not too hybridish, a bit maybe) read avoidability based tank as an RNG tank (and yes! the effed up part of rng is what makes it fun :P) where you dodge or eat it whole (or most of it, cause full 100% dmg would be too spikey obviously) and there you could fit the NOT NINJA (but something similar) tank job, perhaps as second to Pugilist? not entirely fond of the idea of second to pugilist, but could be second job to the class root for ninja. you know, staying in the nimble swift tank scheme (i repeat, not going full on stealth ninja style)


Also, i think it would be good for the game to add more tank classes, more appealing to different play styles as well, this would help immensely with the shortage of tanks we are suffering from right now (not sure it's a big of an issue as it seems though)... but still we could really use the variety in playstyles.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1321817

[NeruMew]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1321817

Not what I meant.

Anyway, it could work but I still think something INT based would be nicer, since after all they are mages. I feel like what are proposed as RDM abilities should be less CD based (I would replace the way the "auras" work, make it more dynamic instead of 20s buff with 2min cd, one for each role), something that gives a stronger sustained support niche, other than just a few cds that increase baseline the capabilities of other jobs, and self I guess in the case of dps.

Anyway, it's not a bad idea (adjusting numbers and some stuff here and there imo, also abilities should cost mostly MP, which is not clarified and gives the idea of TP usage, which is not very magey - also adjusting gear assuming the change from dex, cause well, if they are doing magic attack full dex doesnt make sense anyway). Personally it's not what I was looking for, while the idea for the spells and over all is good, I don't like how it's implemented, plus so many ramifications make it too complex in comparison, considering you are going to need to combo them, I the variety in spells, but it seems not very practical. With some tweaks it could work wonders tho. :P

Anyway.

[Phreak]

In response to RNG/100% Avoidability based tanks. There is nothing fun going into a fight with a 50/50 success rate solely because if you roll poorly you will die hands down or your healers will become over taxed.

[Kitru]

Another thing on topic that I did not mention is that yes, I believe this game could use the addition of two tanking styles. Magic and Avoidability based tanks.

"Magic tank" is a theme, as opposed to a mechanical focus. It's purely cosmetic: you could turn WAR into a magic tank by changing the names on abilities and tweaking their visual effects.

Avoidability is a mechanical focus rather than an actual playstyle. PLD is a damage mitigation tank; WAR is (right now) a self-healing tank. Those descriptions simply describe *what* they do, not how they do it (which is what playstyle is).

The *playstyle* of a tank is based around the abstract of ability usage and interaction. For PLD, the playstyle is largely passive: everything is really set-and-forget. For WAR, the playstyle has a more active/skill-based component: it is defined by generating and consuming Wrath stacks and learning to use them at the proper time. It is because of this that, even if WAR and PLD both used the exact same mitigation mechanisms (i.e. PLD got some self heals or WAR lost all of its self heals in favor of pure damage reduction), they would *still* be fundamentally different tanks because they would play completely differently. It is *much* better to think of tanks in terms of their playstyle as opposed to their mechanics because mechanics are largely a balance consideration whereas playstyle is an actual difference in implementation.

The mechanical construct of a tank is completely separate and can be broken down into multiple categories that affect eHP and/or mean mitigation (DR affects both; +hp only affects eHP; RNG mitigation only affects mean mitigation). For balance purposes, all tanks need to have equivalent eHP and mean mitigation. For an RNG focused tank to be effective, it needs to have a crapload of mechanisms that only increase eHP, which means absorb shields (which increases mean mitigation by some but not a huge amount, especially if the ability requires that you be below 50% hp or something to activate) or +hp. Without those, it is going to be an explicitly sub-par tank because it will suffer from RNG induced death, which is both annoying and broken from a balance perspective.

I have an entire wall of text devoted to discussed all of this in much more detail here. I even discuss how exactly a low defense, high evasion tank would need to be set up mechanically so that it remains as effective as the other tanks.

[Impurrrsive]

You can see what people had to say about my similar idea in thread, instead of me repeating what they had to say : D

i read the thread, honestly i really like hp drain to mitigate damage concept
it really suits DRK (if u consider it to have dark vibe or something >.<)
just need to test it, anything can be implemented

[Dale]

They need a really wanted class to be a tank so people play it (SAM/DRK). That would make the most amount of sense.

I agree that might work. Though I would have thought perhaps Warrior would appeal at least somewhat to the Samurai crowd.

Some magic-based tanks would help a lot I think.

[NeruMew]

I personally enjoy it more, I think RNG is fun, (you can agree as you proposed a CRIT based class, Hmm?). Of course that it couldn't be fully RNG, but as you well said there are ways of mitigating the RNG flaws to prevent death due to simply bad rolls (they still can happen anyway, just gotta keep em under the accepted treshold, and come on, it is funny dying to insane bad luck :P - just as it is doing insane high dps to a good roll in crits). While magic is still a theme in some ways, you could easily make a tank get part of their damage mitagtion from absorbs for example.

A magic tank (read as mage that can tank) would bring its fun in combining different styles, you can work around dmg reduction cds, absorb self buffs, enfeebling magic on your current target (weaker than cds but more consistant) etc etc. I believe most of the enjoyment here (from palying a mage tank) would come from the fact that you are actually a mage. I don't want my mage tank to hit using sword attacks, (although the idea you proposed of magic infused physical attacks is great, although personally i would leave it for either later, or a hybrid DD) I want it to be using spells, flashy magical spells, waving hands infused of elements and with the hit effects of a regular spells, all while at melee range (wouldn't it be fun?), for variations you can add debuffs or extra effects that would come as the obvious effect of using magic. This would also allow us versatility (and coherence) in the theme of using an hybrid heavy armor, plated robes, with mix of mail, or you know, just the general mixture (which looks amazing, and unusual). I believe it's a great idea adding the combo effects(not many, just one, with perhaps an additional one) and mixing it with a more traditional mage rotation (in the end it would be pretty much the same, or to avoid this would have to add situations where you will want to break the combo, virtually perhaps).

What I really wanted to get to is this, in the end it all winds up to themes if you wish to see it that way, for every class you need situational awareness and response, you will not mindlessly continue to combo as a paladin if the situation asks for something different (aggro loss, new adds, spike dmg from spell or crits, whatever calls you). We will always have preferred rotations and changes in them according to the situations, as you said it yourself, if the effects in the end werent similar, the discrepancy would render one of them useless (or not up to par) comapred to the other (what happened with warriors for example, even though they are still very viable tanks).

We all interpret the game through our eyes and ultimately play it under its visual effects, thus making themes matter a lot, because it's the main interface between the game system and the user (player). If it wasn't because of this we could very bluntly be playing table games, and the more you skim off the themes, the more visible the logic under it becomes. But hey, we wouldn't be having fun that way.

Most importantly what I wanted to remark is that I believe we are all being heldback by the game's classes and jobs system. We try to add new jobs to make classes different, but in reality, theres only so much we can change em with adding 5 skills unless we use the scheme that you examplified on your fencer proposal, which wouldn't be very practical, tho while you kept the effects similar for both jobs, it still adds complexity and we already have players with issues reading the current tooltips, this is a fact, otherwise we would have better players that do not need to be told what a good rotation is, for example. The big flaw of this system relies in that with few exceptions, like your RDM and MYS, it wouldn't really play smoothly, leaving us with mostly classes with just one job, or two jobs virtually the same.

edit: Forgot to add the gear customization wall that we are hitting right now, in all reality we can't really choose well what stats we wanna prioritize, at all.

[Sakasa]

textlimit

Well magic tank actually can be a different playstyle but it would have to be made with a different mentality. I have stated before that with the combo system exists a format that hasn't be used yet where you combo spells to ws and vice versa and have rotations that give certain special effects tacted on. Now if you want to approach this as a tank lets truly simplify the trinity.

Tank - main target of aggression to prevent from attacking other players, delay own death till healed to continue main objective being main target

So to achieve the second objective mitigate their damage via reducing enemies potential to deal damage. So instead of a passive, or activated/reactionary , you will be tanking in a pre-meditative way. We already have some debuffs in the game such as virus and slow debuff that achieve this in maginal quanity but for this particular method you would have to go a step further. Reducing damage types before they come out of the chamber. So with that and cast times being a disadvantage it would play very different similar to the idea of a melee (DD) healer where your concept is on the other side of the spectrum and while may look like just animations would require a different mindset as their mechanics are foreign by nature. Sure pld cast a spell or two here or there but its to ease and assist the core method not a primary if you make it a primary it would change the foundation.

With all this in mine I do agree a need of similar eHP is required as of such as full one trick pony like an evasion tank where its balance is evasion would be either OP or subpar. But we are not limited to tank methods as of yet because untapped resources such as elemental defense and parry are still untapped. The issue with this is that its not clear which is which sometimes so at the beginning like new content a tank that would use theory of guess and check would start out at a disadvantage. From a design stand point automation here would be helpful to ease the burden. For instance less take Blue mage it has a learning mechanic in lore. If you have it as a constant flow of information to the player in one form or another you could arrange it so the player has to focus on surviving initial hits. So lets go with twintania for instance. Lets say its auto attack and physical named moves are all piercing (not sure what it is just in theory). Bellyflop is blunt. As a tank you now have to decide weather to keep your static buff to survive the more common hits or reset to reduce bellyflop. Now you need some cool downs that reduces all resistances of enemy across the board, a combo that improves the static trait, and enmity generation. Now i know there is the mulitple opponent issue but im not trying to flesh out a job here just a mechanic difference for a theme that will form a new playstyle (Now new to MMO but new to this game)

[Gamemako]

each time hp is sacrificed it become 3 charges like aetherflow

Actually, that would work a bit better mechanically, but the design would be a odd. I'll try to explain the problem:

Normally, when you use a setup like that, it scales like a support ability. Let's say one healer can put out 500 HPS, which means your opponents can only reach that damage amount (else you'd ultimately die). If you have two healers, that's 1000 DPS max. So let's say your Dark Knight walks in and uses the ability to sacrifice 1000 HP for 30% damage resistance over 10 seconds. In four-player content, you'd have a max of 500 DPS, so you'd reduce damage by roughly 1000 over the interval. This ends up being a net reduction of 10%, which is not so good. If you use it in eight-player content with doubled damage rate, you'd reduce damage by 3000, meaning you'd get back 2000 HP over the interval, a net reduction of 20% -- respectable. You can only balance to one of these cases -- you're too weak in 4-player content or too strong in 8-player content.

Using charges would technically let you dilute the problem, separating the sacrifice and the recovery into two separate events. This mechanically works much better, since you can drop the sacrifice portion where you can afford the healing requirement and reduce the real impact of the setup price. The acquisition of stacks itself would still be somewhat counterproductive, bit it's otherwise feasible. Beyond that, it just is a different resource for a similar design as with the buffed WAR and with my own Mystic Knight concept posted earlier in this thread. The only issue I really have with that is the separation of effect and reward such that it doesn't feel like Dark Knight anymore. Traditionally, the Dark Knight's sacrifice and the benefit are coupled. You sacrifice HP and attack opponents in one motion.

Physical ranged could be single target or AoE or even cone. Since the game is already drawing on FFVII for the limit breaks, ranged physical DPS could get Barretts limit break.

Single-target damage LB would be a poor choice. Giving ranged jobs the ability to do it would basically make melee LB obsolete. Cone damage LB would be unlikely in that range would either be too short for a ranged character (you would have to run up to the opponent to use it) or the total area would be absurdly massive (would totally crush caster LB). AoE damage LB would have no reason to exist beyond directly copying caster LB. I think those could be rejected in general.

Line damage LB could be possible if you really wanted an appropriate DPS LB. Buff and debuff could also be possible, but you'd have to be careful in balancing them. A damage buff one would need to avoid being overpowered compared to direct damage LBs, and you'd need to avoid status-clearing and damage-reducing ones to keep from stepping on tanking and healing LBs.