Opinion on tanking design

[IndigoHawk]

I can't picture a Samurai with an invincibility. Same for Beastmaster, and same for Mystic Knight. On a concept level it doesn't look right.

I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

I can envision abilities for samurai, beastmaster, and mystic knight that could make them invincible by not taking damage, instantly recovering, refusing to die, avoiding hits, etc. Samurai dazzles or interrupts attacks with a gil barrage or performs so many feints no attack can get through, beastmaster summons something to intercept hits for a few seconds, mystic knight drains a crystal/uses a rune to enhance their defense or imbue their blade to intercept/absorb all attacks, etc.

If you want to have an ability that gives limited invincibility, you can come up with an excuse without affecting the rest of the class design.

[Duelle]

I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

Well, the reason for my distaste for invincibilities is two-fold. First because invinciblity was a major player in the negative image WARs had prior to 2.1, and that was due to Hallowed Ground making certain content possible to clear that was not possible with a WAR tank (remember that the devs expected people to throw themselves at coil and die forever much like WoW's devs purposely overtuned C'thun in AQ40 to be mathematically impossible to kill). Even Yoshida admitted this during an interview.

His answer to this was to give WAR an invincibility. Sure, it may not count to some because you have to hit 1 HP and lasts 6 seconds compared to Hallowed Ground's 10, but the decision to even do this in the first place is what has me wondering over what would happen if say SAM was introduced and SAM was given no invincibility. I'd wager it would turn into lolSAM much like WAR was frowned upon pre-2.1 if the issue with coil were to repeat itself.

The second part has yet ot rear its ugly head, but invincibilities tend to be double-edged swords because they can hold back class design. Thankfully, SE's devs haven't gone in that direction.

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As far as classes and jobs, I don't think invincibility would suit a samurai. I could see it gaining a major damage reduction buff by making the SAM parry like crazy and counter attack with every parry. Might work with Mystic Knight, but then you'd have someone cry that it's too similar to PLD. I've always pictured a BST tank working through shared HP pool between the master and pet, though I guess it may work as you suggested.

[Eohi]

Rune Fencer could get bubble/reflect, some sort of super stoneskin, seal themselves in an ice/stone that prevents all damage and healing for the given time. Samurai could do counter/parry boost to the extreme or could do that tatami mat technique where you use the floor as a shield. Beastmaster could use treats/steroids to boost the pet or could call 1-2 extra pets like a distress/pack call. Ninja could have a substitution technique(log replacement trick) that works as a timed parry/reraise effect.

There are tons of ways to avoid invincibility all you need is the same end state of having a live tank at the end of a certain time frame.