How can tanking and healing be made more broadly useful in more "role-specific" ways?

[Shurrikhan]

Let's imagine that ShO and Grit reduces damage by 50% instead of 20%. Suddently, the healing requirement between "tank stance" and "DPS stance" is very different. If we increase the overall damage a tank suffers, a healer will have less room to DPS than it has now when paired with a DPS-stance tank. But, if paired with a "turtle" tank, he can much more damage since the tank will take significantly less damage.

The idea is that, "what DPS the tanks loses by sitting in tank stance is covered by what DPS the healer gains", so that, in the end, "DPS stance" and "tank stance" are more personal preference and compromise with what type of healer player you have in your party.

My last try on O1S, even if not a significant sample, shown that by sitting in tank stance for all the fight, I lost 500 DPS while my healer only gained 100. If he would have gained 500 DPS, then my stance wouldn't have mattered on the overall raid DPS.

But for the tank stance to be an actual part of your kit, rather than something that could be basically performed via an out-of-combat customization option, it should be incredibly, incredibly rare for you to want to be entirely in one or the other. Having a blanket option that always affords itself removes the synergetic perspective between tanks and healers, because even if your mitigation stance may award them additional DPS, it's not through anything that actually accounted for your or their skill, let alone the actual events involved in that exchange.

While I, too, would like to have more "turtling" viability, I don't want that to be some isolated or effectively locked-in thing. It should be an active concern: Can I stretch the window for leniency of healing enough to give my healer more potency than I'd be losing over the duration, when accounting also for the costs of swapping?

By all means, narrow the gap by mitigating tank stances' obvious scaling issues, but by the time you make it just a "preference", it's essentially nothing at all, in my opinion. You've just made one of the biggest areas for potential tank-healer fun allegedly unmasterable and irrelevant.

EDIT: To be clear, this all goes up on the tally regardless of my own feelings towards the idea, as soon as I have a cogent, cohesive, and essentially comprehensive way to argue for it in its own description.

[Reynhart]

But for the tank stance to be an actual part of your kit, rather than something that could be basically performed via an out-of-combat customization option, it should be incredibly, incredibly rare for you to want to be entirely in one or the other.

I don't have a real issue with sitting in one stance for whole fights. I just have an issue that "DPS stance" is the one you'll sit on. Besides, we still have enough forced tank swaps to make use of the two stances. In fact, if that "DPS stance required" situation didn't exist, I think most people would be ok with how the tanks are designed now.

If we want something more active, we should look eslewhere. Long time ago, I suggested than each tank WS would give some kind of cumulative shield effect, so you should aim for the highest "SPS" you could. And instead of focusing mainly on damage reduction skill, we could have skills that increase the shield you have on you. And the amount of shield you generate could scale with tenacity.

[akaneakki]

Reyn, I'm asking you this. A tankbuster happens, do you, pop 1 cooldown or 2 cooldowns?

[Reynhart]

Reyn, I'm asking you this. A tankbuster happens, do you pop 1 cooldown or 2 cooldowns?

It depends on several things.
When will the next tankbuster happen ?
How many HP do I have ?
Does the party need heavy healing at the same time ?

Most of the time on O1S and O2S, I have no issue surviving with one.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I made this post way back on page 2, but it got missed it seems (maybe not controversial enough?). I'd like some feedback on the ideas presented.

1) Get rid of tank stances completely.

2) Change combo structure. I.e. Not all combo's need to be 3 hits. I.e. Shift some of those buttons into oGCDs. I'd even take shorter GCD inside combos (i.e. Press Fast Blade -> incur 1.5s GCD -> Press Riot Blade -> Incur 1.5s GCD -> Press Royal Authority -> Incur 2.5s GCD. This makes a combo feel like an actual combo and not a super long sequence. It gives the crowd who wants more frequent presses some love, while still maintaining that long GCD between presses for those who like the existing playstyle. I think this is a fair compromise.

3) More oGCDs with actual effects. These should be your more situational presses and not pressed mindlessly on cooldown for DPS.

I.e. Shield Swipe should be more than just damage. Maybe on successful block Shield Swipe becomes active and can be used within say 10s that can be activated to deal damage knocking an enemy off balance triggering additional enmity gain and letting you cast a combo ender instantly. Different combo enders could give threat/DPS/mitigation.

Another example could be having an oGCD that transforms threat to DPS/mitigation. Circle of Scorn costs reduces current threat by x% and deal AOE damage/DoT. While inside the Circle of Scorn area you take y% less damage.

4) Tune damage to be more frequent, but less dangerous. Ideally I envision a paradigm where an encounter is a moderate bleed that the healer massages. When the bleed ramps up (via someone taking avoidable damage, tankbuster, or failing a mechanic induces raid damage, etc.) healers have cooldowns to recover. If those cooldowns aren't available there is still room for them to ramp up and recover, but it won't be free or easy. I don't want huge big staggering hits, and I don't want inconsequential hits. It needs to add up and increase based on mechanics/enemies, etc.

5) Mitigation and Threat and DPS are driven by what choices you make in combo's and oGCDs. Have much less "big cooldowns", but the few that are left cut the cooldowns so they can be used more frequently. The idea would be that you threat would be organic over the fight. You always need to be #1 as the tank, but you don't need enormous threat, sometimes you will need DPS and sometimes you'll need more mitigation. The idea would be that you need mitigation up more often (i.e. using combos/oGCD's to keep a buff up or to raise defense etc.) if the healers are struggling to massage the bleeding I mentioned above. I.e. if you're consistently at 50%HP, and a big hit is coming soon, focus on mitigation effects/combos to allow the healer some time to catch up, and then supplement with a cooldown.

5) Encounter design needs to bring back CC. Not like mass sleeping enemies, but enemies need to cast things that are dangerous and should be CC'd/interrupted. Make that a tanks responsibility and a mDPS responsibility. I wouldn't be opposed to random threat drops on mobs/bosses (since they don't 1 shot) requiring quick threat gain, etc.

It also needs to utilize space control better and less hard pass/fail mechanics. Failing a DPS check or mechanic shouldn't restart the fight. Maybe it ramps up the outgoing damage, or a part of the area becomes a void zone, spawns an add, etc.

It also needs to utilize add phases that aren't intermissions. Have jobs have actual AOE abilities and adds that need to be tanked during a boss fight, not an intermission. Have DPS make decisions between 2 target, 3 target or full AOE kind of ability usage (wow does a good job at this).

Tank swaps need to be more organic. I.e. swap out when hp is getting too low and damage is too high etc or out of coodowns. I'm really tired of taunt at X or for Y tankbuster.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Sorry I didn't go into feedback at the time; I did, however, add portions to the OP tally.

My own opinion is that almost all of what you've suggested would be for the better, so long as the changes are made all at once — tank stances, for instance, should not be removed without first making adjustments to allow for more and more impactful oGCD and weaponskill choices.

The only parts I don't see inherent advantage in are areas 1 and 4. I'd also recommend slight adjustment to area 5, as apart from adding in mitigation choices (which we already had, although disappointingly against weaker mobs, in the form of Delirium, SP, and RoH), that's essentially how everything works already.

More details at request. I can also throw my own ideas your way if you're curious, but they're an awful lot to write out if not.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Sorry I didn't go into feedback at the time; I did, however, add portions to the OP tally.

My own opinion is that almost all of what you've suggested would be for the better, so long as the changes are made all at once — tank stances, for instance, should not be removed without first making adjustments to allow for more and more impactful oGCD and weaponskill choices.

The only parts I don't see inherent advantage in are areas 1 and 4. I'd also recommend slight adjustment to area 5, as apart from adding in mitigation choices (which we already had, although disappointingly against weaker mobs, in the form of Delirium, SP, and RoH), that's essentially how everything works already.

More details at request. I can also throw my own ideas your way if you're curious, but they're an awful lot to write out if not.

Absolutely would love to hear yours. Also - assume all of the changes would be implemented simultaneously (this is a wishlist after all). Below is a little extra clarification into 1 and 4.

#1 ) was merely because tank stances aren't fun to me. It's like old Cleric Stance. Sure it was functional, but the implementation wasn't fun. The IDEA of shifting between healing/DPS is a good IDEA, but the implementation was off. I'm 100% ok with the IDEA of tanking shifting between DPS/Threat/Mitigation, but having it tied to a static toggle switch (one that for PLD is a complete fucking pain) is honestly terrible implementation.

#4) This is tied to the commonly mentioned "triage" style of healing. I do firmly believe this to be a significantly more engaging style of play that also helps shift away from the "DPS til you drop" mentality for healers. To me it almost literally fixes 2 key complaints in one go. It also ties in with tanks who can recognize the triage falling behind and adjust their gameplay on the fly to better meet the needs of the party. I.e. healer is struggling to stabilize health pools, I can shift my resources into additional mitigation to give me leeway. Alternatively, if party messed up a mechanic and it spawned an additional add, I can shift my durability away to get bonus dmg/threat to help the DPS catch up. It allows for good players to shine and pick up the slack, and also allows for those exciting comebacks.

Regarding your bit about that's how things work already, I don't follow. RoH/SP/Delirium are literally irrelevant and negligible. An example of my PLD's "mitigation" could be using a specific finisher (say Royal Authority) converts X% of MP into a barrier blocking the next Y% damage. This way you want to keep your MP up for durability, but expend it on DPS. It would also allow you to roll the effects over so that you could burn MP to give healer time to catch up on Triage. Alternatively If you're sitting at 95% HP, and have a shield from the healer and yourself up, burn that MP on damage/threat because by time you need it, you will likely have restored a lot of it. You can substitute MP for Oath gauge, either would work. You could hit a Royal Authority gain a X% shield, hit Shield Swipe (which remember lets you cast a free finisher) hit Royal Authority again and now you have an X% + Y% shield. Resets duration of shield to max (say 10s), and adds the values. This would give a lot of time to triage the party or could set yourself up to reduce a tankbusters incoming damage. Other new oGCDs would then supplement this style by giving new bolder effects to other finishers and abilities allowing you to seamlessly weave between whatever you needed for the fight as it unfolded.

Alternatively you could need snap threat on 2 add's that spawned. Prep a Halone combo, hit RoH on the new add, shield swipe the second -> into an immediate RoH. At that point you have 2 adds up, you can decide based on incoming damage, current health values, and mechanics what you need to prioritize your next GCDs on.

[Shurrikhan]

Absolutely would love to hear yours. Also - assume all of the changes would be implemented simultaneously (this is a wishlist after all). Below is a little extra clarification into 1 and 4.

#1 ) was merely because tank stances aren't fun to me. It's like old Cleric Stance. Sure it was functional, but the implementation wasn't fun. The IDEA of shifting between healing/DPS is a good IDEA, but the implementation was off. I'm 100% ok with the IDEA of tanking shifting between DPS/Threat/Mitigation, but having it tied to a static toggle switch (one that for PLD is a complete fucking pain) is honestly terrible implementation.

I agree here. While I do think a much quicker-swapping tank stance, especially if it had more weaponskill modifiers, could be fun, I have to agree that DRK's and PLD's, if not even WAR's to an extent as well, feel sluggish, low on synergy, and low on unique impact. I want, ideally, every tool we have to feel like its integral, and a toggled passive needs that even more to be as entertaining as it can. Short of that, I'd agree that tank stances would be better off just... gone... if, and only if tanks' opening possibilities are not limited always to high-enmity skills. Tank stance gave just enough bonus enmity that a geared tank could open with a utility combo and still hold enmity well enough. I'd like to see that remain the case, even if that means repurposing what, exactly, it is that enmity combos do, or even that enmity combos are outright removed — their bonus enmity spread, evenly or unevenly, among different utility, alternate utility (replacing the "pure enmity" or "enmity-inflated" combo), or maximal damage skill chains. Should it not, I feel like the loss of one button could end up feeling like the effective frequent loss of 3 to 6 more.

#4) This is tied to the commonly mentioned "triage" style of healing. I do firmly believe this to be a significantly more engaging style of play that also helps shift away from the "DPS til you drop" mentality for healers. To me it almost literally fixes 2 key complaints in one go. It also ties in with tanks who can recognize the triage falling behind and adjust their gameplay on the fly to better meet the needs of the party. I.e. healer is struggling to stabilize health pools, I can shift my resources into additional mitigation to give me leeway. Alternatively, if party messed up a mechanic and it spawned an additional add, I can shift my durability away to get bonus dmg/threat to help the DPS catch up. It allows for good players to shine and pick up the slack, and also allows for those exciting comebacks.

And to me, what you're intending is wholly a good aim; I just think it's going to require more than universal adjustment to damage rates or the design philosophy for future fights (and potentially revision to that of old ones). Because I haven't seen all the concrete suggestions intended to surround this idea, I can't say whether it will fall short, but I suspect it will end up feeling like it needs additional axis of control even after the tank changes for combat to meet the intended result.

Regarding your bit about that's how things work already, I don't follow. RoH/SP/Delirium are literally irrelevant and negligible. <Examples of much more satisfying mitigation skills.>

Indeed they were, which is why I'd referred to their working "disappointingly against weaker mobs". Your examples here, however, sounds far more alike to what I would have wanted from mitigation tools.

:: My own ideas, however pipedream:

My own ideas on improving breadth and depth of role, however counter-intuitive it might first seem, was to actually put the effective tools of each role into the hands of anyone and everyone. That means that DPS have tools for mitigation on other's behalf and survival in their own rights. However, these would not be slotted skills; rather, they were given through universal undermechanics, tied into how damage and enmity would work.

Let's start with the idea of enmity. At present, enmity is generated at a fixed rate from throughput (damage or healing dealt), which can then be multiplied through a buff or particular skills (tank enmity combos), or divided at separate rates for healing and overhealing. But this lends nothing to (a) player control without a tank except by paring back one's damage or through the use of CDs that are useful at all times, but most effective during highest throughput-per-second windows (making them effectively just a tacked-on spare DPS CD), or (b) any tank beyond their choice of enmity or "other" skill, (c) the idea of organic tank-swapping.

What I'd suggest instead, therefore, is a revision to mob AI that allows for manipulation of enmity. Not only would AI be able to have non-standard modifiers, adjusting the way they react to throughputs over the course and conditions of a fight, but players could manipulate who receives that attention. Moreover, a mob needn't be limited to a single target or focus; a tanking player could potentially throw in additional threat at a well timed moment to distract a tail-swiping mob away from allies forced to move through its tail section when that swipe could be lethal, whether directly or indirectly. But moreover, enmity could be shifted between players through angular stacking, well-timed burst enmity during positional swaps, etc. I realize I'm not being terribly concrete, here, but while the patterns or total number of mechanics necessary make up only a short list (table, mode, conditions, focus), their implications and likely variance have filled up more than a page of my notes.

In addition to this, for damage to be raised without obligating a tank to a point that they feel like a gimmick requirement, there would need to be a way to distinguish between immediate and effectively cumulative damage intake. Ideally, I also wanted to tie this system into tools universally usable for external (suppressive) mitigation. To this extent, I would suggest a Stagger system, a percentile throughput system by which damage dealt reduces target outputs and/or increases intake via a continuously and dynamically fading penalty. Technically, this would be broken into applications of Force* and Pain* (*tentative terms), whereby Stagger is dealt via Force, which is a modifier off of damage, and fades at a rate determined by Pain, also a modifier determined by damage. This allows for synergy and coordination, increasing the need for focused and tactically spread pressure.

What this would mean on the player's end is that damage received would make it easier for yet more damage to be received, while also reducing the afflicted player's throughput produceable. This means that enemy attacks can be impactful without outright one- or two-shotting non-tanks, while tanks in turn see advantage simply due to the formulas for Stagger shared by both mobs and players, and because of their large HP pools and stacking ability for self-mitigation (rather than being limited typically to just suppression and avoidance).

The last couple things are an increased value on avoidance and its opposite, interception.

Consider what would happen if: (1) virtually all attacks were AoE, though still only the strongest were necessarily zone-marked, and (2) all AoEs faced cumulative mitigation — meaning that the damage absorbed by a first player reduces the damage done to the next, and then cumulatively to the third, and so on — or only struck the first in line, and (3) one (generally just tanks) could have a secondary, larger hitbox by which they intercept attacks that would otherwise hit any allied hitbox within.

For starters, a highly mobile player could avoid a greater portion of damage, but more importantly, even if one does not have threat on a mob or the mob literally cannot be focused onto just one player, one can still "tank" the given outgoing damage. Altogether, this makes tanking more about thwarting the enemy's offense — and as a group effort, at that — than simply stacking enmity values in order to meat-shield the attacks, and greatly opens up the variety of mob behavior scripts or AI possible without costing players vital control.

This doesn't yet begin to go into revisions to RNG mitigation (dodge, block, parry), new mechanisms like Guard or Cleave, or combo revisions, but this should at least summarize the relevant bits.

[akaneakki]

It depends on several things.
When will the next tankbuster happen ?
How many HP do I have ?
Does the party need heavy healing at the same time ?

Most of the time on O1S and O2S, I have no issue surviving with one.

In 3 mins. So you would say using rampart and sentinel is overkill together om v1s? And what do you use your cooldowns on and when?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

After dying half a dozen times in the 24 player raid due to healers doing dps over healing the MT (me) I would like to propose a health based dps buff / debuff for healer dps. How it works is that if everybody in the group is 90% or higher they get a +20% dps buff, if their at 80 then 10%, 70/0, 60 / -10%, 50 / -20%, 40 / -30% ... etc. This way it encourages healers to keep their group healed so people don’t die, aka, do their primary job first. If somebody is dead, their dps takes the max penalty, aka, hardly any dps output till the group is back up.

All this encourages is a massive amount of overhealing and punishes healers for other jobs doing dumb things. If you're dying that frequently due to bad healers, kick them.