Think Dark Knight will have any HP-sacrificing abilities, for Solo or Off-tank roles?

[Ultimatecalibur]

So what if a tank sacrificed 25% of his current HP to give himself a barrier effect for double the amount? Suddenly you have an HP sacrifice that increases his survivability. HP sacrificing could easily be made to work for a tank, it just needs a little creativity which sadly many people find too difficult.

For further examples:

- The tank can sac HP to debuff all nearby targets so they do less damage.
- The tank can sac all but 1HP to make himself invulnerable for a time.
- The tank can have a DPS stance much like PLDs do that sacs max HP to increase their damage.

It's really not hard to come up with ways to make this work that actually benefit their tanking ability. Anyone saying it can't work just has zero imagination.

It is not a problem of imagination, but mechanical viability.

Sac 25% hp to generate a 50% hp barrier makes the user immune to damage if attackers cannot inflict more damage than the barrier can take in the time it takes to recover 25% and reapply the barrier, barely balanced if the attackers do equal to or slightly more than the barrier can take, and only slightly delaying the inevitable if the the attackers can deal more than enough to break the barrier.

Sac hp to debuff target only works if the amount of damage mitigated during the debuff's uptime is greater than the amount of hp sacrificed.

Sac all but 1 hp for a Hallowed Ground effect is semi viable but misuse would cause healers problems and might even cause the user's death because the buff mitigated less than it cost to use it.

A maxHp reducing damage up stance might work, but to be most effective it would require that the class' default(i.e. without a stance up) state have level 40+ tank enmity generation rates.

[Nihility]

Sacrificing Health for offensive purposes isn't very good game design for a tank. However sacrificing health for defensive purposes, is the exact opposite. Depending on how they are made and used (wisely) they can be great fun and really add a lot to the game. Sure, it can bring more work to the healers if used improperly just like temp buffs. However if you manage them well it should have a good payout.

Here are some examples of it working well.
Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to grant yourself mana and health regeneration. (low cool-down.)
Sacrifice 20% of your total life (If you have 10 life left, it only take 2 life to cast the spell.) to gain 20% damage reduction for 10 seconds. (low cool-down.)

The benefit of sacrifice temps is that they have low cool-downs compared to their counterparts, however they run a higher risk.

So, unlike other tank classes you can keep your temps up forever. However you have to keep sacrificing your own life to do it. You also have to sacrifice your life to bring back your mana as well.

The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

The issue with the idea is basically a balance thing.
Your either going to have mitigation that is on par with warrior and paladin in which case dark knight is clearly inferior because they're hurting themselves for no real advantage
Or they're going to have superior mitigation because of the self damage portion of it and all of a sudden every skilled tank has to be a dark knight because as soon as you learn to deal with the sacrifice portion you are left with a clearly superior tank.
It's a bad situation for general game health either way

The only thing I could see with dark knight which is especially easy because they have no class to level up first is making soul eater basically be a reverse warrior tank stance.
Their natural state could be the tanky form and the buff could be -max hp/-threat/+damage just for thematic reasons

[Nektulos-Tuor]

The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

The issue with the idea is basically a balance thing.
Your either going to have mitigation that is on par with warrior and paladin in which case dark knight is clearly inferior because they're hurting themselves for no real advantage
Or they're going to have superior mitigation because of the self damage portion of it and all of a sudden every skilled tank has to be a dark knight because as soon as you learn to deal with the sacrifice portion you are left with a clearly superior tank.
It's a bad situation for general game health either way

The only thing I could see with dark knight which is especially easy because they have no class to level up first is making soul eater basically be a reverse warrior tank stance.
Their natural state could be the tanky form and the buff could be -max hp/-threat/+damage just for thematic reasons

First of all: I understand where you might be coming from... but

- This is an advanced Job class. Unless you have completed 2.55 you cannot play it. Inexperienced players cannot play the job anyways.

- Sacrifice has its ups and downs, its not superior nore inferior. If you screw up you can wipe the group, just like any other tank temps.

- I play a healer, I have no problem with such mechanics because I have dealt with them in Everquest 1 and 2. Its not as grim as you say it is. In those games the tanks have sacrifice abilities and take even MORE damage to most content, go figure. If you have a problem with it as a healer, don't play with tanks like that.

- It is also "Trollish" to leave a que after you join. So your point to that is invalid, seeing as tanks can already troll groups.

As explained above, you are hurting yourself to gain an advantage. If your being hit for 5k and you sacrificed 5k health so the mob hits you for 2.5k 3-5 times then that is already 7500 to 10000 damage mitigated. However if you use it at a bad time it can kill you.

If you were at low health already, and sacrificed 50% of your health (if your low, you have low health anyways) and then a healer popped his big heal which happens frequently now your capped off with a high amount of damage reduction for sacrificial cost. If you were gonna be hit at that low of health you would of died anyways.

If you sacrificed your health for a HOT mechanic that healed you for more, you could trade that at the start of the fight or when your topped off and you know the mob isn't going to hit you hard at the moment, thus a risky way to increase your sustain mid-fight.

YES.

IT.

DOES.

WORK.

However, we are seeing soon how the tank actually functions.

[ChaozK]

I think HP sacrificing can work with a tank however, it will most likely not be something that you would use frequently for your main tanking job.

What i would like to see would be a skill with a long CD similar to BLMs convert, that sacrifced HP to replenish MP. The idea would be that the tank would generally not make use of this unless its an emergency to get back ressources for his stronger defensive tools in long fights.

Another way would be to use HP sacrificing strictly for OTing to increase your dps, other tanks sacrifice their defense as well to increase their dps when they are not tanking, so i think thats not too foreign of an idea.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem has already been stated several times but i guess it can be highlighted again.

first off, self damaging mitigation skills would basically be suicide to a new unexperienced tank player likely driving them away from the class and that is bad
Also hp sacrificing skills is putting undue stress on the healer which is bad, If you were a healer would you like to play with a tank that is forcing you to heal twice as much because he can hurt himself to do a big aoe and that makes him feel like a badass. It's creating a situation where one persons lack of skill is punishing someone else directly; Also would feed trollish players "I can spam my self damage skills all I want because it's the healers fault if i die"

There is no difference in this regard between a class adjusted to be able to able to use lifetaps and still compete (assuming here that there is some tank-like benefit from the lifetaps / hp sacrifices) and a class that has none but the player isn't using his skills as much as he could. I still get blamed for a tank dying when has yet to pop a single CD in a speedrun-size pull. It doesn't take lifetaps for a person to become unhealable.

(
In other words, this:

- This is an advanced Job class. Unless you have completed 2.55 you cannot play it. Inexperienced players cannot play the job anyways..

)

As long as the lifetaps are an actual tool, there is no innate imbalance in the concept either. It is a tool, like Inner Beast, that simply happens to have, among other things, a health cost (just as IB has a health restore). And like all other tools, it gives you control, which as a tank you tend to use to either affect the most incoming damage possible or simply to normalize damage taken. An ability that causes a small spike of its own in order to normalize spikes coming soon after (whether it does so through mitigation, mitigation through offensive bonus, or a HoT), just makes that latter role as apparent as possible.

To me the only real issue is making it effective on a non-tank (or rather a tank not currently tanking) for any real benefit.

[Kaethra]

As mentioned in my earlier post, "just fine" is subjective. SK were worse than warriors.

Warriors can't even dream to do the things that SK's can do in less than 72 man content. I highly doubt we'll see stuff that requires you to use paladin rotations (as in multiple paladins using their invulnerability buff because the boss will 2 shot even the highest hitpoint warrior). So no, we won't see raids in FF14 that require 9-12 paladins for a Hallowed Ground rotation. Won't even see anything above 24 man stuff.

As for the other games, you might want to run your patchers and see the changes. Some of those games you quoted have clothie tanks and other ridiculousness.

RNG is RNG. But its never enough to screw you over if you plan ahead. Just like you have to time when you get the most out of a mitigating ability. You have to time a hp sacrifice so it doesn't go off before a hard hit.. or better yet.. do it after the hard hit since you know another isn't due for a moment. I mean do you really think they are going to throw back to back mountain buster type attacks at us in the expansion? I don't.

Try thinking outside the box, perhaps a sac attack has ranged and a decent potency to it. Making it a pulling ability like tomahawk or shield throw. It doesn't have to be a precursor to a drain ability. Draining is probably going to be part of the class so its a moot point to argue the merits of it.

[IXZERO]

Would love to see DRK be something like how it is in Bravely Default.

Eat a tank buster witch gets you to 1 HP with a Holmgang like move -> Minus strike the boss for 9999 for a few times and for the last couple of seconds Bloodbath 1 last Minus strike and be back at full HP.

And with Souleater being an AOE that sacrifice 10% HP or so but again with a cross classed Bloodbath will get you up in seconds without even needing that healer cure.

Ofc this will basicly be your only way to actually do deeps and the rest just pure mitagation from that dark aura witch uses MP instead of HP.

And maybe if its not to much to ask, somekind off debuff witch makes the boss vulnerable for black arts aka DRK/BLM maybe even SMN.

[TrailArnizay]

Dark Knights originally dual wielded/used spears and could use white magic (FF2 and FF3), so they don't always have to be HP draining emo's.

[Alberel]

It is not a problem of imagination, but mechanical viability.

Sac 25% hp to generate a 50% hp barrier makes the user immune to damage if attackers cannot inflict more damage than the barrier can take in the time it takes to recover 25% and reapply the barrier, barely balanced if the attackers do equal to or slightly more than the barrier can take, and only slightly delaying the inevitable if the the attackers can deal more than enough to break the barrier.

Sac hp to debuff target only works if the amount of damage mitigated during the debuff's uptime is greater than the amount of hp sacrificed.

Sac all but 1 hp for a Hallowed Ground effect is semi viable but misuse would cause healers problems and might even cause the user's death because the buff mitigated less than it cost to use it.

A maxHp reducing damage up stance might work, but to be most effective it would require that the class' default(i.e. without a stance up) state have level 40+ tank enmity generation rates.

The problems you're pointing out here apply to ALL of the tanks though. A PLD or WAR using their cooldowns at the wrong times can be just as much a liability for the healer. One potential tradeoff for the HP saccing would be to have considerably shorter cooldowns on those skills than their equivalents on other tanks as well. That way a DRK might have more freedom to use them with a self-inflicted penalty for misuse. Yes a bad DRK would be a problem but a bad PLD or WAR is also a problem so it makes no difference.

We're only arguing hypotheticals anyway since SE have said they don't want tanks saccing health because it "doesn't work" (despite other MMOs having them working fine). Sigh.

[Stormrider]

No HP sacrifice instead MP sacrifice. Let the emo dps cry.