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

[akaneakki]

Apart from that, I use Reprisal on shares, Dark Mind and Rampart (When availlable) on almost all Twin Lightnings except LD on the second Twin, Convalescence after Charybdis...nothing ground breaking, I guess.

So first twinbolt how do you do that one? The only reason I'm asking is because I wanted to know if you actually did an optimal rotation of cd's there. Like how many tanks doesn't understand popping rampart about 5 seconds into fight, will mitigate 2-3 tailslaps plus the twinbolt, since the cd is that long. And the second reason why I ask, is because in some post you done here, you talk about being in a tank stance 95% of the time is a good thing and doing so, you are pretty much overkilling mitigation from auto attacs when it's not really needed.

[Shurrikhan]

So first twinbolt how do you do that one? The only reason I'm asking is because I wanted to know if you actually did an optimal rotation of cd's there. Like how many tanks doesn't understand popping rampart about 5 seconds into fight, will mitigate 2-3 tailslaps plus the twinbolt, since the cd is that long. And the second reason why I ask, is because in some post you done here, you talk about being in a tank stance 95% of the time is a good thing and doing so, you are pretty much overkilling mitigation from auto attacs when it's not really needed.

The very first entry in a google search for a v1.0 Savage Tanking Guide should have all the information you need. Let's try to keep the thread on topic, please.

[Ayer2015]

Just thought of one that would change healing significantly. No more in combat rezing.

[Enla]

Just thought of one that would change healing significantly. No more in combat rezing.

I had a full body shudder thinking of all the 'it's my sub' DPS that I now can't raise because they thought the AOE looked tasty enough to eat. Please no.

[Ayer2015]

I had a full body shudder thinking of all the 'it's my sub' DPS that I now can't raise because they thought the AOE looked tasty enough to eat. Please no.

I'm sure it would end the 'healers must dps' threads

[Enla]

I'm sure it would end the 'healers must dps' threads

It definitely wouldn't, because good healers can handle both and I say that as someone who doesn't care if a healer prefers to healer exclusively. Most of the times someone has died in my parties it's literally been because they skipped mechanics, and if too many of them are brain dead it can be disastrous. Taking this out would change a salvageable situation and turn it into a wipe instead, causing more frustration and toxicity.

[Ayer2015]

I prefer bad groups.... makes healing more fun

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'm sure it would end the 'healers must dps' threads

All it would promote is wiping if people die. The only way to impact the healer dps meta is by making bosses actually hit harder and/or nerfing healing potencies. Since the devs seem terrified of ever making things "too hard" outside Ultimate, we'll never see that sort of change. They even tried to arbitrarily force it when Stormblood released and the community's response was "PLD/DRK until you fix that stupid WAR penalty."

This. The problem here is bad players, not a flawed system. If everyone is down or dying and the boss is almost dead, how is a debuff on the healer's DPS going to do anything to help? Even if you do implement it the bad healers will still try to eek out as much DPS as possible and leave you stranded because there's a fundamental disconnect in their minds between what's good for the party and what they themselves want to do. A debuff will only hurt the healers who can juggle both.

Epitomizing this is the AST Hyomin and I had last week in Rabanastre. She outright refused to switch over to Diurnal despite having a SCH co-healer. She even claimed her shields wouldn't overlap because that isn't how "she plays." Ironically, when the DPS didn't immediately use LB3 on Mateus she wouldn't shut up about it. Basically, she couldn't care less about the party but just her own preferences. Now imagine this type of person in a system that punishes letting HP drop...

[KaldeaSahaline]

I'd be fine with seeing positionals scrapped, (snip)

I feel like a lot of these issues with positioning in particular though, can be saved by adding a secondary "best of" check, and revising mob turning to look more natural, though, and I'd very much like to see such attempts before entirely condemning the possibilities for positionals and their future uses.

Agreed.

I actually kind of meant the opposite in this case. While I don't mind the idea of giving out more personals, provided they can be used integrally and satisfyingly enough, I want ultimately to give them more axis to interact with these things through mechanics to which anyone and everyone has access.

I still think you can word this more intuitively, because I'm struggling to follow this.

Undermechanics are those mechanics that basically just don't pop up in tooltips. They're not buffs, or debuffs, or damage types (though they can be assigned to a given damage type). Positionals, for instance wouldn't be an undermechanic per se, but the division of a hitbox into separately checkable elements of front, flanks, and back would be. They're the framework, upon which other mechanics or strategies can be built. For instance, someone else mentioned a (under)mechanic by which you take and deal less damage when distancing yourself from your target/attacker, but deal and take more damage when charging them. That range and direction-checking system would be an undermechanic, and it's things like those that I feel XIV could hugely benefit from.

Ah alright, that explains it quite well, it's surprisingly intuitive when you think about it. While undermechanics are super important (and I'd be curious what line of work you are in IRL) you'll notice that I tend to focus on the "gameplay experience" rather than the underlying system design. The reason I do this is I feel that it's significantly easier for people to relate too, but in no way is meant to undermine your statements. I do agree with you wholeheartedly that more dynamic elements (aka more robust undermechanics) would go far for FF14 as a game.

To a degree. I remember writing out a framework to Sandpark for every undermechanic I think would be necessary to generate interesting and diverse mob scripting / AI, but I haven't been able to dig it up as of yet. Let it suffice to say that you simply have a table determined by mob type that assigns multipliers to various throughputs (similar to how healing usually sub-multiplied to generate less threat/enmity relative to damage), but wherein additional throughput types have been added, such as mitigation (personal, external, sabotage, intercepting, or theoretical), where those types may vary based on whom they were applied to (saved the guy I most wanted to kill = you're next, or maybe even the new first), and the current enmity table or certain other triggers (e.g. %HP or %target HP or average enmity-to%HP) can adjust those multipliers. It would require a fairly robust set of undermechanics, but if made modularly, it could be reduced for the majority of mobs while still allowing for a comprehensive spectrum of behaviors.

We're saying the same thing here so I think we're in agreement. Again I think you're focusing more on the actual design of the sub-systems where I am focusing on the experience that those systems subject a player too.

In this case it'd be more like they'd adjust resource expenditure rather than receiving an actual buff, unless that's something unique to the mob type, but yes, in effect, very much like that.

When I said buff I could have been more clear. I don't mean a literal buff visible on the bar. It could easily be a measure at which the enemy simply attacks/cast bar speeds up that we never see on the surface.

That said, there is something to be said about feedback. No visible buff/debuff would be somewhat confusing to the average player, BUT I firmly believe that 'figuring' things out, can be fun. I.e. That faster attack/cast speed triggering off anyone's HP being low. You'd have to be blind to not see the boss literally pounding away 3x as fast or dropping threat and targeting a low HP teammate. I don't see anything wrong with trying to figure out WHY a mob is doing that rather than reading a tooltip.

I'm out of time as well for today, I'll follow up sometime tomorrow. It's been fun discussing these ideas with you.

[Reynhart]

So first twinbolt how do you do that one?

I use Rampart+Dark Mind as soon as finish my enmity combo, which allows me to drop the stance.

To be clear, I'm not talking about how you should, right now, stay in your tank stance. I'm advocating how "staying in your stance" should give a significant benefit. If this "overkilling mitigation" would allow the healer to compensate for the DPS I lose, it could be a tactical option. For now, even if I don't like it, I do it, because it's clearly the best way to go.