Why Blue Mage should be a new Tank job [Magitek Knight]

[Shurrikhan]

I thought the elements might get convoluted. It could easy be simplified to 3 charges though. You then have the skills that cost 1, 2 or 3 charges, and it wouldn't really change my build at all.
Although I liked the idea of making elements useful for something, and the fact that this build has one skill of each element seemed like a unique opportunity to include it. Reducing it to '3 charges' wouldn't bother me though.

1000 needles is a tricky one.
I didn't want to make it too potent as a "starting" ability though, and it's main function is enmity, not damage, so I didn't think a low potency would really matter at higher levels.
I mean, the damage inflicted by Unleash is negligible.

1000 potency split between all targets would be utterly overpowered, if you used it with only one target for example.
Meanwhile 1000 damage split between all targets would be overpowered at low levels, and pitiful at higher levels.

It'd be a lot easier if the game had something to simulate accuracy, and if needles scaled that factor simultaneously with potency. At that point, against a single target, you on average hit with the appropriate number of needles, facing bell curve fall-off to any greater or lesser amount. But against multiple, especially if surrounded on all sides, you've got some real firepower available to you.

In the meantime, though, it'd be far easier just to give it two maxima.

1000 potency overall maximum.
300 potency max per enemy. (Or whatever you think is appropriate for its CD.)
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(More broadly...)

My real issue isn't that having a traditional name attached to it restricts fine tuning--that's easy enough to get around--it's that the identity feels a bit muddled. On a third and fourth read-through that's actually continually the impression I'm getting from all this. It's part Squall, part Soldier, part Blue Mage, and part Rune Knight, yet it doesn't seem to cohesively hold together those parts as well as it might, even while ensuring that there are now three fewer future jobs available due to each having some small part of itself embedded in this other job.

Blue Mage felt eccentric and eclectic. It looked wild, following a very unrefined sense of pragmatism. But that's about as far as you can get from Garlean methodology. They're precise, essential, and modular, with a penchant for over-development and exclusion in the pursuit of order or streamlining. Every magitek ability the Garleans have used against us has been in the shape of raw power, basic but large cure, fire, blizzard, lightning, shadow, freeze, flare (shadow or fire varieties) spells, and in one case, stoneskin when that was the only means of shielding. No magic missiles, no needles, no aqualung, no white wind or arctic wind, nothing of special effect: just sheer force. Squall's Rough Divide, Magiteck Overdrive, Blasting Zone, Degenerator, Aetheric Overload, and Beta Wave all seem appropriate largely for that reason. But the goofily "BLUish" spells, that made BLU be BLU, don't seem like they'd fit in a suit of Garlean techplate.

[Fendred]

I think it would be a good idea to have the blue mage as a tank, but for a slightly different reason. I feel we need a more lightly armored, armed tank for aesthetic reasons. Two out of the three tank classes use massive weapons that emphasize physical strength, and look their best on characters with significant muscle. Something using more agility and dodging would look better on the female models, especially the miqo'te. It would also be nice to have the armor set for the blue mage be more tribal or punkish. Kind of like the current monk anemos set in stormblood, but with more armor.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Nothing stopping the devs from making tank gear that still functions as tank gear, but doesn't look like tank gear. Case in point, the Shi Sui set.

Because an evasion based tank would be a nightmare to balance or run with.

[Shurrikhan]

Nothing stopping the devs from making tank gear that still functions as tank gear, but doesn't look like tank gear. Case in point, the Shi Sui set.

Because an evasion based tank would be a nightmare to balance or run with.

Why do people make the assumption that if an evasion tank were introduced, it'd be in the same barebones, unintuitive context of evasion mechanics as we have now?

Should we say also that there can never be a caster with chain lightning, because every AoE in this game currently already works in a mob-by-mob chain of attacks?

Should there never be an especially mobility-centric job -- not because of the wastefulness of mobility in role-trinity RPGs, but rather... because current net code doesn't do a great job with mobility skills?

I get that XIV would often rather uproot job identities that fix core code issues, but evasion as a mechanic could change at any time, just as it has for literally every game with an evasion tank upon that tank's implementation.

[Kabooa]

Why do people make the assumption that if an evasion tank were introduced, it'd be in the same barebones, unintuitive context of evasion mechanics as we have now?

Being balanced around the assumption of always avoiding the damage that would otherwise kill you is a problem. It generally requires that standard auto attacks be so deadly that evading one is meaningful 'mitigation' and not just packing all the threat into a telegraphed Tank Buster.

What does evasion do there? Does it evade all the damage? What's the cooldown? Can the randomized Evasion it get also dodge the tank buster? How does it interact with healers? Are you just as tanky as other tanks, but Evasion is your active mitigation?

The very concept of the evasion tank doesn't work in this game because by design the game is about mitigating singular points of threat, and being able to avoid that on demand removes much of the threat of the current design philosophy, so it has to be made up elsewhere, which currently, none of the tank jobs are well equipped to deal with constant, high threat, auto attacks.

[Shurrikhan]

Being balanced around the assumption of always avoiding the damage that would otherwise kill you is a problem. It generally requires that standard auto attacks be so deadly that evading one is meaningful 'mitigation' and not just packing all the threat into a telegraphed Tank Buster.

What does evasion do there? Does it evade all the damage? What's the cooldown? Can the randomized Evasion it get also dodge the tank buster? How does it interact with healers? Are you just as tanky as other tanks, but Evasion is your active mitigation?

The very concept of the evasion tank doesn't work in this game because by design the game is about mitigating singular points of threat, and being able to avoid that on demand removes much of the threat of the current design philosophy, so it has to be made up elsewhere, which currently, none of the tank jobs are well equipped to deal with constant, high threat, auto attacks.

And again, there is absolutely no reason evasion would still work in the way it does now if and when an evasion tank were introduced. It could literally be gutted and swapped out in the course of a minor patch if the developers so chose.

At present tanks have heightened eHP and sustainability through:
- Heightened Defense / Magic Defense
- Tank stances
- Self-healing / self-shielding
- CDs

There's nothing in those rates or dynamics that you wouldn't be able to accomplish with parity just as tight as between the existing tanks when designing another with a toolkit that complements and centers around a revised evasion system.

It's completely arbitrary. You might as well say that percentile mitigation could never scale with gear because percentile mitigation doesn't work that way -- when a simple flip of "decreases damage taken" to "increases resistance to damage" could do exactly that, or that "BLM will always be disproportionately benefited by Spell Speed" and that a job with multiple rotational speed breakpoints and alongside a large arsenal of oGCDs could never be fulfilling because currently Spell Speed does not affect oGCD damage.

Remember the whole "because you can only have one Attack Power stat!" bull before the Vitality-based tank AP in mid-Heavensward? The devs were certainly fine with breaking that precedent, and then breaking it right back, as well. And we certainly skipped right over the "because a Gunner & Warden/Templar/Soldier would be weird as classes" with Heavensward's class-less MCH and DRK.

These things can change. One small system element being left in its initial, unrefined state thus far does not forbid its eventual refinement to make room for designs that make use of it.

Expelling any and all thematic possibilities in conflict with one particular archaic design choice that could be gone next month is not sensible.

By all means, consider what would have to change, but when we're talking about 5.0 to 6.0 jobs, shouldn't a diverse and fulfilling roster be worth what little systemic refinement they require to maintain parity in varying ways, rather than being even further mechanically homogenized?

[Reynhart]

And again, there is absolutely no reason evasion would still work in the way it does now if and when an evasion tank were introduced.

But if an Evasion tank doesn't use the current "evasion" mechanic...then it's not really an Evasion tank.
And if Evasion is gutted so that it only reduces damage instead of negating it, what makes it different from Defense or Parry ?

[Shurrikhan]

But if an Evasion tank doesn't use the current "evasion" mechanic...then it's not really an Evasion tank.
And if Evasion is gutted so that it only reduces damage instead of negating it, what makes it different from Defense or Parry ?

The aesthetic. Or is there no difference between a block-centric tank and a parry-centric one -- if one still existed to equable levels -- since they're both non-entire percentile mitigation? Sword and board vs. magicked greatsword, but nah... they share similarities in their RNG mechanic that has some interactions with their toolkit, so surely they're the same thing despite it just being a part -- as integral as it may be -- of their whole job-ness

If it's centered around whatever the game at that time calls evasion, it's an evasion tank. Are people really looking for a chain of 100% mitigation, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 100%, 0%, 0%, 0%, etc. mitigation specifically, over any aesthetic that might make for satisfying gameplay out of interacting with matters of momentum, stagger, impredictable action, and, insofar as animation is concerned, evasion? Couldn't it just be that they want a lightly-armored, agile, tricky, and aesthetically distinct tank?

Heck, it could even use the current evasion mechanic as long as it is appropriately limited by additional resource systems and the implementation finds some complementary way to even out eHP concerns from more sustained damage.

You build up a job gauge for Florish, then burn it on Phantom's Retreat, consuming some flat + percentile (of current) amount of job gauge to guarantee (yes, 100%) evasion of a proportionate AP or (e)HP-based amount of damage (i.e. to a cap). This alongside a self-heal Flourish and whatever backing auras or recovery mechanics one (say, a Dancer) might have make up the bulk of your sustainability over time. In the meantime, your "tank stance" gives a bulk dodge chance that delays critical damage by auto-dodging, but afflicting "Dancing with Death" or "Imbalance" or what have you, making it so that successive dodges increasingly and granularly eat away at your dodge chance until the eHP that was covered for is overhealed, etc.

The larger issue is not going to be evasion, in whatever form it may take. If anything, it will be gear sets.

Something would have to first take a turn for a lightly-armored tank to fall evenly into existing norms for gear progression, whether it be the same <awkwardly "role-based, unless you're a Ninja or Dragoon">, all jobs separate as with Mythic and then Esoteric gear, purely based on armor class, truly role-based but with currency spent on the right to receive items of x type (e.g. a melee chest, of any of its three varieties for Striking, Maiming, and Scouting, or tank chest, of Fending or Flourish), or whatever else.

[Reynhart]

Or is there no difference between a block-centric tank and a parry-centric one -- if one still existed to equable levels -- since they're both non-entire percentile mitigation?

If they both scale the same (either none or based on a similar stat) and are useful in the same situations (physical, magical or both), yes, there is no real difference. And aesthetic is very thin to design a job on.

For me, if they want to create a "parry" tank, they should give it something else, namely a "parry and counter" tank, more heavily based on procs.

Are people really looking for a chain of 100% mitigation, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 100%, 0%, 0%, 0%, etc. mitigation specifically

I can't speak for everybody, of course, but I think that an "Evasion tank", in the mind of lots of Final Fantasy players, is what NIN was in FFXI, where you either took 0 damage or the full hit. And it was unbalanced as hell.

You build up a job gauge for Florish, then burn it on Phantom's Retreat, consuming some flat + percentile (of current) amount of job gauge to guarantee (yes, 100%) evasion of a proportionate AP or (e)HP-based amount of damage (i.e. to a cap).

I'd say the second looks something similar as TBN, and if I understand the first one correctly, you mean that, against similar level opponent, you'd reduce, let's say, 50%, but against lower opponent, you could end with 100% damage reduce since their AP is lower, right ? And against stronger foes, you'd reduce less damage ?

If that's the case, I find the concept of scalable mitigation very interesting. Frankly, I think all mitigation skills should already work that way by having a potency and scale on tenacity, which would make the stat suddenly much more valuable. After all, offensive skills works like that...

[DBelmont]

I love that many people have the same hunch that the next tank job will be something with integrated Blue Mage mechanics. Magitek Knight sounds nice, but Beastmaster/BLU hybrid is also possible.