Technical Dodge/Parry Tank idea

[Codek]

I would love to see the math on how to balance such a monster out so that it's is neither useless nor over powering compared to current tanks.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

Why not just try for a system that would be usable by all tanks, instead of having one tank oddly sectionalized into these three areas, and likely using up 6 of its abilities with near-duplicates to do so? (Additionally, if you have a simple ability similar to a focus-target-mechanic (obsession, mark) within the class and enlarge the attack angle possible while it is in effect, you can simply attack enemies to the left or right of that focused enemy [without your character turning] to count as left and right strikes...)

And then just some obvious pointers:
- If I moved enough to max out these benefits in a less than ideal situation, my melee party members would hate me.
- If I simply lock my character/turn to the left or right, the opposite side is suddenly what would have been middle. Is this intended?

Edit: I feel like I'd be more supportive:
- If active counters were in the game already (attacking an attacking enemy at the same time, opposite angle, adds some of its damage to your attack when you dodge and allows you to slightly reduce their damage via your own if you strike first and do not dodge).
- If it were possible to cause enemy mobs to deal friendly fire damage to each other.
- If latency didn't so badly mask most actual angles and positions when both you and your tanked enemies are moving.
- If melee weren't also so vulnerable to the above, directly or indirectly.

Hi Shurrikhan, thanks for reading and comments. I see some people didn't even get past first sentence.

To answer your comments - this tank doesn't actually do any physical movement to dodge/parry attacks. In sinple terms it works like this: Instead you put up buffed up dodge and parry shields and maintain them at high potency (very high Dodge% and very high Parry% with Damage-) by using your combo attacks in correct order.
Think of it more like MNK maintaining Greased Lightning, but the buff gives very high damage mitigation instead of increased attack speed. And to prevent situations like Greased Lightning dropping on disconnects or not available from fight start, you will have abilities that give you shadows (like Third Eye or Utsusemi if you played FFXI) or instant stacks of shields (like MNK can do with help of Perfect Balance).

The Dodge/Parry tank can be as good or as bad as Devs make it. They succeeded in FFXI with Ninja by accident, I don't see a reason why they can't do it in FFXIV working on purpose.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

Both PLD and WAR tanking boils down to Effective HP and curing done to keep it up. And they are pretty much equal at the moment (as in, unlike at game's start, there is no PLD onry or WAR onry). Any new tank just needs to achieve the same level of Effective HP, and there are so many variables affecting it, that with correct number tuning Dodge and Parry can be used as main ingredients.
http://www.yagudoinitiative.com/foru...hit-points-ehp

[Codek]

Both PLD and WAR tanking boils down to Effective HP and curing done to keep it up. And they are pretty much equal at the moment (as in, unlike at game's start, there is no PLD onry or WAR onry). Any new tank just needs to achieve the same level of Effective HP, and there are so many variables affecting it, that with correct number tuning Dodge and Parry can be used as main ingredients.
http://www.yagudoinitiative.com/foru...hit-points-ehp

That is an extreme simplification in what goes into balancing tank classes.

In the case of the class you are suggesting, there is a lot of emphasize on the fact that the player has to be good and knowing where attacks are coming from. If they succeed, then they take less damage and if they fail then they take more.

This gives a very big problem with where you balance the class out to fit in. If you match it up to be equal to Pal and War, then you just created a class that is punishing to the player for no extra gain. If you make it better when played right, then it can easily shun out the other tanks.

This type of class also sounds to be very inconsistent across all bosses of the game. The last thing a tank wants when learning a boss fight is to constantly analyze what kind of attack is coming up 7.5 seconds from now just to mitigate it correctly. Why do that when you can just bring in a Pal and simply focus on the overall fight instead.

The classes niche would just become a farming tank for those who have enough experience to know all the attacks by memory.

Besides just making a more complicated class for the sake of it being more complicated (and thus more punishing), what exactly are you trying to achieve with this?

[Empressia]

Even back in WoW, my magical RNG full dodge and parry tank worked extremely situational. Sure it works too OP on very hard hitting or rapid hitting physical damage boss, heck i can go no healers! However with the cost of low HP and became a LOLNUBTANK vs magical damage bosses.

Thing is, FF14 have much more magical damage bosses compared to WoW not to mention RNG in FF14 sux real hard compared to WoW, so no OP, ur dreamy magical RNG armor tank won't exist here!

[Nutz]

I think it would be too complicated unfortunately. It's kind of a neat idea and Gladiators did have slash and stab attacks in 1.0 though I don't really recall why. You'd use up 6 abilities just with the left/middle/right parry/dodge deal, it would be useless when tanking multiple enemies (that is, this tank would probably be terrible at tanking multiple enemies) and would very likely be too good on bosses. Maybe they can craft something like this, but I feel like it would be Hell to balance against current tanks and is very dependent on luck. The closest I could see them coming to this idea is a primarily evasive tank (naturally high evasion with evasion enhancing skills but low HP) and even those are very hit or miss.

[treuhavik]

Cool idea but unfortunately too complex, I think.

What might work instead would be to have a two-handed sword wielder (your SAM or DRK) with a high parry rate who can actively buff their defense or existing parry(rate and/or reduction) through physical attacks (Think multiple stacks of protect or if WAR's wrath stacks granted defense per stack instead of being used as a resource for said defense). Though, depending on your perspective, this could turn out too close to the play-style of our current tanks, granted SE's aim is to actually differentiate our next.

Bottom line is, imo, to remain balanced with other tanks and to keep healers competitive, there needs to be damage taken and healing done. Having a job that can potentially take 1% of what other tanks do throughout a boss encounter would destroy overall balance.

[Duelle]

What might work instead would be to have a two-handed sword wielder (your SAM or DRK) with a high parry rate who can actively buff their defense or existing parry(rate and/or reduction) through physical attacks (Think multiple stacks of protect or if WAR's wrath stacks granted defense per stack instead of being used as a resource for said defense).

Something else that might work is damage split with an auxiliary mechanic to deal with the "extra" damage. Build active mitigation (attacks that increase your parry for a limited time) on top of that with a couple of cooldowns and you would have a working tank model.

Bottom line is, imo, to remain balanced with other tanks and to keep healers competitive, there needs to be damage taken and healing done. Having a job that can potentially take 1% of what other tanks do throughout a boss encounter would destroy overall balance.

This.

[Dotsusama]

I smell a conspiracy by the Battledance materia market.