Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Sarcatica]

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids. Even if SE designs raids around much higher tank checks requirement, you can't have tanks doing something like 500dps like most tanks will do realistically. Not to mention that hard tank checks mean that most tanks are still going to fail. Pros and cons weigh each other. I welcome a much harder tank busters like T13 or even harsher actually. If you like to be a turtle so much, you should prove how good you are at mapping enough CDs for harder tank busters. That's however still within the scope of raid tanks to do just as well as current meta, so nothing much will be changed anyway.

Basically it still comes down to how skilled you are, that's universal.

Most people here probably didn't even clear T13 before 3.0, much less before 2.5 ended. So you pretty much have the demographic supporting how most tanks couldn't cope with the hard hitting tank busters.

[Reynhart]

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids.

Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names ). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.

[FallenWings]

Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names ). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.

Conflict in discussions always sparks more discussion, that is what a forum is for no? I insist that you put forth more ideas of the turtle tank concept. This being my first take on a trinity based MMO, I've only really tasted FFXIV's style of tanking so I'm quite curious as to the differences of this and the "traditional" meat wall style and it's boons over this.

While I wouldn't mind if there was a tank that focused solely on personal and party mitigation, I want there to be acknowledgement that this has to be considered in balance of the other tanks.

By your example, we have the Mystic Knight, who when played at an exceptional level is KING of mitigation. Potentially capable of solo tanking even (double tank mechanics aside).

What SE wants to do however, despite the current balance, is makes ALL tanks work together in ALL tank setups and ALL content.

Because of the nature of DF and the now upcoming RF, the weakest of tanks mitigation wise must be able to MT and meet the required mitigation check. Yes?

So if we introduce this ultra tank, what benefits can it bring to offset the major DPS loss? What makes it viable in correlation to the other setups?

And before you begin, we cannot consider solo-tanking because that not only breaks the idea of ALL tanks in ALL compositions, but also breaks the DF matching system.
And no, no content designed strictly for Mystic Knight, because as I said, all tanks must be able to participate.

[Reynhart]

So if we introduce this ultra tank, what benefits can it bring to offset the major DPS loss? What makes it viable in correlation to the other setups?

The major part of higher mitigation is requiring less healing thus giving more room for healers to DPS. The current problem we have is that even the lowest mitigation already allows healer too much DPS uptime...so much that it's becoming a standard. I suppose the Mystic stances shouldn't totally negate the damage though, as it's really hard to compensate a party member actually doing 0 damage Besides it wouln't change the idea that mastering its rotation would fit a surviving goal and not a killing one.

As for solo tanking, yes, it's a viable answer. Consider a fight were tankbusters appears very often. With a "usual" two tanks setup, you'd have to swap during the fight to let CD timers refresh. With this tank, you wouldn't need to. It's a different strat for a different job, but it doesn't prevent "any tanks setup to work on any content". For example, even if the Mystic Knight could solo tank the current Sophia EX, it wouldn't make other tanks suddenly unable to clear it in a usual setup.

Ultimately every game is different, if you like your "OH I AM SO TANKY I DONT DIE FROM ANYTHING" tank, this is probably not your game to showcase that. We base the DPS meta on the effectiveness and efficiency, if you aren't into minmax, that's your problem.

The question is still "Why ?". Why do all tanks automatically have to follow the exact same meta ?