Suggestion for NIN ability Huraijin

[Deo14]

And what did that 10% miti from Reprisal, shared across all tank jobs, replace? The 10% mitigation unique to each kit and which did not require a separate button for that purpose.

There are more than enough buttons that can more choicefully take up that %mitigation duration*intensity per minute, be that the likes of Intervene & Circle of Scorn, Oblation, Burst Strike & Fated Circle, or WAR's gauge spenders and/or some external element added to Infuriate or Thrill of Battle, etc., offering a higher ceiling and more interactive and varied skill use than just hitting Reprisal on CD or by the boss-script-schedule, all without that button cost.

I'm really struggling to understand what are you trying to say here. Put reprisal effect on Intervene/Circle of Scorn or similar? If that is what you mean, then no, putting MIT on skill which is part of your rotation makes no sense.

But anyways, reprisal is better than having no reprisal, I really don't think that tanks having some 5 self mits and 2.5 group mits is far fetched, could honestly be more. You could consolidate it with Divine Veil and others, but meh, that's lame, just keep it as it is. If it was on one button, you would use it less frequently and kill the creativity. Divine Veil is at 90s, Reprisal at 60s, so you can use them both at the same time, or space them out and similar. They are better designed than regular damaging oGCDs, because they are pro active, and not just some part of you rotation that you use on CD.

Omnidirectional enemies still technically have a front, flank, and rear; they just guarantee positional bonuses regardless. There's no need to have it to the same for an Enmity trait, though. And so long as Provoke still exists, it'd make no difference anyways.

So offtank should just stay in one of the front corners, so he doesn't take aggro from wall boss? And no, Provoke won't help it. Provoke merely places you on top of enmity list and gives you a little extra enmity. If tank stance was a trait, and OT had better gear, he will keep overtaking aggro before MT's provoke even cools down. You're really overcomplicating things with this.

No, it's really stupidly simple.

Can the non-dash skill reach? Yes = Non-dash skill is used. No = The dash skill is used instead.

I.e., slap them together in a macro (in any game where macros haven't been purposely sabotaged to keep them from queuing and where failed lines proceed to the next), non-dash before dash. Done.

As I pointed out before, this has serious pitfalls. In the end, it's computer which decides whether you will use dash or not, and this barely ever ends well. Player will not always agree with computer, and 99% reliability is just not enough for these things. Just like in the example I gave you with the max melee situation, where your small misstep makes computer decide that you will dash, which will get you killed. Sprinkle in some terrible netcode and you have a recipe for disaster. Just like with tank stance, you're overcomplicating the most simple of things.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm really struggling to understand what are you trying to say here. Put reprisal effect on Intervene/Circle of Scorn or similar? If that is what you mean, then no, putting MIT on skill which is part of your rotation makes no sense.

Making Intervene/Circle of Scorn be more than just X potency per second used on cooldown.

One is literally called Intervene and has repositioning opportunities that would synergize well with a trait allowing you to automatically transfer to you a portion of damage taken by those behind you, etc. Instead, it just... deals damage.
The other summons a ring of aetherial swords all to... deal damage. Just damage.

Why leave PLD with 4 "just deals damage; hit as soon as it'd otherwise waste cooling time" oGCDs just to siphon what thematic opportunity they'd otherwise have... over to a role-wide athematic skill that's barely noticeable?

You've got a ton of skills that could offer mitigation in more job-synergetic ways. Why favor a separate, shared Reprisal skill over just vitalizing what's actually unique to each job?

They are better designed than regular damaging oGCDs, because they are pro active, and not just some part of you rotation that you use on CD.

You've limited mitigation capacity available to tanks before they become far stronger in that regard than intended.

Again, do you wish to spend the portion in question...

A. ...in ways unique to each tank that could increase the average thoughtfulness/nuance of their kit's actions, or

B. ...on Role Actions, identical across every tank?

And no, Provoke won't help it. Provoke merely places you on top of enmity list and gives you a little extra enmity.

It's an Enmity-grabbing tool; you can assign to it whatever other functionality serves to that end. If that means also causing the enemy Provoked to take greatly increased Enmity from the player who afflicted it, lasting until overridden, so be it. At least Provoke has further functions available to it than just a toggle that, at most, you wait a bit before toggling on.

Just get what you need from Provoke itself and there's no need for Shirk, Royal Guard, Defiance, Shield Oath, or Grit. The only remaining "skill-gap" thereafter of "Did my tank remember to turn on his stance before running in?" isn't worth a button.

As I pointed out before, [having the skip not dash if it doesn't need to dash in order to reach] has serious pitfalls.

It already works just fine. See *cough* third-party tools *cough*. Yes, even under 250-300 ms ping and packet loss.

But, again, I'd just have Forked and Fleeting temporarily replace Aeolian Edge and Armor Crush since we're literally unable to continue our combos without wasting Raijuu Ready anyways.

[Deo14]

Making Intervene/Circle of Scorn be more than just X potency per second used on cooldown.

One is literally called Intervene and has repositioning opportunities that would synergize well with a trait allowing you to automatically transfer to you a portion of damage taken by those behind you, etc. Instead, it just... deals damage.
The other summons a ring of aetherial swords all to... deal damage. Just damage.

But both Intervene/Circle of Scorn is used on CD because there is damage tied to it. You wouldn't actively mitigate anything, if you did, that was a mere coincidence. What if you needed to mitigate damage which comes at X:25 ? You already used all your oGCDs, because damage outweights any mitigation or heal. Which is why old tank stances were removed. If you have X choices, there will be one with most damage, and that choice will be used 99% of the time.

As for paladin's specific Intervene, which would protect the ones behind you - what if you're MT? Community will delegate PLD to OT once again because of this simple thing. I really don't miss the artificial separation to MT/OT jobs in ShB. Problem for gap closers isn't that it is just damage, problem is that there is damage attached to it at all. You barely used them for their real purpose, you just use them as yet another damaging oGCDs, if you slapped MIT on them, nothing would change.

Why leave PLD with 4 "just deals damage; hit as soon as it'd otherwise waste cooling time" oGCDs just to siphon what thematic opportunity they'd otherwise have... over to a role-wide athematic skill that's barely noticeable?

You've got a ton of skills that could offer mitigation in more job-synergetic ways. Why favor a separate, shared Reprisal skill over just vitalizing what's actually unique to each job?

Again, you cannot merge MIT with damage. Skill will always be used for damage only, with MIT as a mere side effect.

You've limited mitigation capacity available to tanks before they become far stronger in that regard than intended.

Again, do you wish to spend the portion in question...

A. ...in ways unique to each tank that could increase the average thoughtfulness/nuance of their kit's actions, or

B. ...on Role Actions, identical across every tank?

This is when the homogenization comes in. Sure, generally that's the bad thing, but in tanks' case, it's the lesser evil. Dark Mind is pretty unique, but it can be coin flip depending whether tank buster deals magical or physical damage. PLD used to be treated as OT in ShB, since he didn't have self healing like WAR and had one MIT less. DRK has less self sustain than others and people are not happy about it. When DRK dealt more damage because of this lack of self sustain, people were not happy about it either. Giving each tank different flavour is good, but your suggestion of PLD protecting people behind him will delegate him to OT spot. Atleast you can flash people with PoA if you're MT, you couldn't do that with Intervene.

It's an Enmity-grabbing tool; you can assign to it whatever other functionality serves to that end. If that means also causing the enemy Provoked to take greatly increased Enmity from the player who afflicted it, lasting until overridden, so be it. At least Provoke has further functions available to it than just a toggle that, at most, you wait a bit before toggling on.

Just get what you need from Provoke itself and there's no need for Shirk, Royal Guard, Defiance, Shield Oath, or Grit. The only remaining "skill-gap" thereafter of "Did my tank remember to turn on his stance before running in?" isn't worth a button.

Couldn't same changes be applied to tank stance? If you turn it off, enmity you accumulated is split in half. Or it just has current Provoke effect of being on top of enmity no matter what, unless there is other tank stance. Shirk is relevant, it's good practice to use it at tank swap, and it's useful for alliance raids too. Since you can't see how much aggro other tanks have, you can just shirk your teammates if you accidentally rip aggro. Sure, you can just dance with your stance to prevent it, but you still can't do it reliably.

I remember when I once ripped aggro in NieR raids. I played WAR as OT, popped stance after my burst as you should, just to rip it minute later. MT just seemed to have garbage damage, whatever, shirk my teammate and MT had aggro back. But the plot twist? Next boss I realized I was using unfinished HW relic the whole time. So yes, stance dancing is unreliable if you can't see specific values of enmity of other tanks. For real, aggro has been reduced to 3 buttons, it's fine as it is, no need to reduce it even further.

[Renathras]

My idea - remove garbage like Carve, Shadowbringer, Salted Earth etc. and add real GCDs that have some more in-depth mechanic than just building a one sided resource. I really don't think DRK should be oGCD oriented, all basic animations are very slow and it makes DRK look very goofy when he does 1/4 of animation and then it gets canceled by another.

So make DRK into an EXACT copy of WAR instead of a slightly different one? Homogenize DRK completely into being a WAR clone? One of the things about DRK right now that is unique (non-homogenized) vs the other Tanks is their oGCD focus.

It was like that in 6.0, but people hated it and wanted it separated. You can just use one if you want.

I think the argument is to just pick one of the other and dump the other one. Either have the gap closer and dump the non-gap closer, or dump the gap closer and keep the non-gap closer. If they want to keep range functionality, just make it a ranged attack. If they don't, then make it where you don't lose the stacks on taking any other actions so you can, say, Raiton, Throwing Dagger, Sukuchi, 1-2-3 combo, then Raiju. There are several ways to address this problem aside from having two buttons, one or the other of which isn't used by most players (min/maxers use Forked because it doesn't have animation lock).

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As for NIN buttons that could be combined, from easiest/least impactful to the player to most:

Armor Crush/Huraijin (as stated in the OP)
Forked/Fleeting Raiju (as stated above)
Bunshin/Bhavacakra (you always want to use Bunshin first; have Phantom overwrite Throwing Dagger while in effect, since you never want to use Throwing Dagger if you have a Phantom Kamatachi available anyway)

...for starters. You could also combine the AOE 1-2 and single target 1-2-3 into a single button (using Armor Crush/Huraijin would mean pressing it twice for the 1-2- then pressing the separate Armor Crush button for the Huton refresh).


I'm not actually proposing those changes, either, mind you, but saying they could be done without really impacting the gameplay much at all.

Problem with Carve, Shadowbringer and other damaging oGCDs, is that they're always used on CD, so I don't think there is much space for creativity.

Isn't this true of MOST dps CDs, too, though? Including most of NIN's? Not all of them, mind you, but most of them. Mug will generally be used on CD for most of the fight. Meisui will mostly be used at the same point. Trick will mostly be used at the same point. TCJ will mostly be used at the same point. etc etc. This is true of quite a few Jobs where the only time you really change it is if the boss is about to go untargetable and you have to hold burst, or in some unique cases like GNB Gnashing Fang drift or SMN Summon drift.

I think your caps lock is acting up.

Yet another attempt at an ad hominem says "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?"

I take 1-2-3 as an equivalent of basic filler auto attack. I don't mind it, and I would much rather have that than to end up like healers with 1-1-1-1-1 spam. And yes, damage is all that matters in this game, so don't act surprised when 80% of skills, do in fact, deal a different flavour of damage.

Yeah, but the point is, it very much is "more buttons not leading to more interesting/challenging gameplay" and a path to homogenization instead of away from it.

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It's an Enmity-grabbing tool; you can assign to it whatever other functionality serves to that end. If that means also causing the enemy Provoked to take greatly increased Enmity from the player who afflicted it, lasting until overridden, so be it. At least Provoke has further functions available to it than just a toggle that, at most, you wait a bit before toggling on.

Just get what you need from Provoke itself and there's no need for Shirk, Royal Guard, Defiance, Shield Oath, or Grit. The only remaining "skill-gap" thereafter of "Did my tank remember to turn on his stance before running in?" isn't worth a button.

Honestly, it would be cool if you could do Provoke/Reprisal effects through more Job specific stuff.

Shield Bash should be a big fat enmity generator, for example, instead of a button you only use for two levels until you get Low Blow and/or in PotD. And I agree that I'd rather see all the Tanks just get another charge/faster recharge on their mid teir CDs than have a separate button shared between them in Rampart. Cut all the 90 sec CDs to 45 sec and remove Rampart, simple fix there (or make it PLD exclusive once again). Reprisal isn't a bad ability, and does need to be a "doesn't do damage" thing so holding it isn't a bad move (contrast with modern use of "gap closers" as "extra burst damage" now...)

WHM could have Esuna as an upgrade of Cure 1 giving a small heal + cleanse while SCH's was based on their Faerie and AST's could be a stand alone spell, for example. Each unique ways of delivering the same effect that are class thematic instead of an additional boring Role Action button.

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But yeah, there's definitely a lot of button bloat and bland role actions in the game that could be combined with other things to make them more interesting.

[Deo14]

So make DRK into an EXACT copy of WAR instead of a slightly different one? Homogenize DRK completely into being a WAR clone? One of the things about DRK right now that is unique (non-homogenized) vs the other Tanks is their oGCD focus.

Have you not read the part where I said to add more GCDs that have some depth (aka, some mechanic behind it, like SAM's Sen collecting). As for uniqueness - do you think being unique because you're badly designed is a good thing?

I think the argument is to just pick one of the other and dump the other one. Either have the gap closer and dump the non-gap closer, or dump the gap closer and keep the non-gap closer. If they want to keep range functionality, just make it a ranged attack. If they don't, then make it where you don't lose the stacks on taking any other actions so you can, say, Raiton, Throwing Dagger, Sukuchi, 1-2-3 combo, then Raiju. There are several ways to address this problem aside from having two buttons, one or the other of which isn't used by most players (min/maxers use Forked because it doesn't have animation lock).

Exactly, player can already pick one if they don't want to keep one extra button. This is one of the better compromises. Shurrikhan already said that you can just use plugins for that anyways, so just do that if you really think it's that important. Your solution of devs just picking one and removing other is dumb, once again, just do it yourself depending on your preferences. Don't put Forked Raiju on your keybinds if you don't want it, it's not a rocket science.

As for NIN buttons that could be combined, from easiest/least impactful to the player to most:

Armor Crush/Huraijin (as stated in the OP)
Forked/Fleeting Raiju (as stated above)
Bunshin/Bhavacakra (you always want to use Bunshin first; have Phantom overwrite Throwing Dagger while in effect, since you never want to use Throwing Dagger if you have a Phantom Kamatachi available anyway)

...for starters. You could also combine the AOE 1-2 and single target 1-2-3 into a single button (using Armor Crush/Huraijin would mean pressing it twice for the 1-2- then pressing the separate Armor Crush button for the Huton refresh).

Bunshin/Bhavacakra? How will you track CD of Bunshin? Plus there are scenarios where you could use Bhavacakra before Bunshin. Probably not optimally, but game shouldn't hold your hands and make you play optimally. And for the love of god, stop suggesting this autocombo bullshit. Just download XIVCombo and leave people who want to actually play the game alone. Just because other games which have 3x times faster and much more nuanced combat have this autocombo, doesn't mean that it's justified in FFXIV.

Healers hate the 1-1-1-1-1, and for NIN specifically, your filler would be exactly that. High octane burst, then just 1-1-1-1-1 like a trained monkey until next burst.

Isn't this true of MOST dps CDs, too, though? Including most of NIN's? Not all of them, mind you, but most of them. Mug will generally be used on CD for most of the fight. Meisui will mostly be used at the same point. Trick will mostly be used at the same point. TCJ will mostly be used at the same point. etc etc. This is true of quite a few Jobs where the only time you really change it is if the boss is about to go untargetable and you have to hold burst, or in some unique cases like GNB Gnashing Fang drift or SMN Summon drift.

This is true because of the 2 minute meta. There is not a single reason to hold your CDs when they automatically align with the buffs. This is problem with the game as a whole. Which is why I suggested for DRK to be more GCD oriented, since that would supress this kind of stuff.

Yet another attempt at an ad hominem says "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?"

Now your "A" key is stuck?

Yeah, but the point is, it very much is "more buttons not leading to more interesting/challenging gameplay" and a path to homogenization instead of away from it.

You think that consolidating everything without giving it a thought makes job more interesting? Your autocombo will certainly not make jobs more interesting or challenging either. Autocombo would be better for challenged players, but that's about it.

Shield Bash should be a big fat enmity generator

Because it's so hard to generate enmity that you need to use DPS negative GCD, which will make you drop yet another Atonement just so you align properly. /s

More shield actions would be great though, more in character than all the PLD's stab attacks.

[Shurrikhan]

But both Intervene/Circle of Scorn is used on CD because there is damage tied to it. You wouldn't actively mitigate anything, if you did, that was a mere coincidence. What if you needed to mitigate damage which comes at X:25 ? You already used all your oGCDs, because damage outweighs any mitigation or heal. Which is why old tank stances were removed. If you have X choices, there will be one with most damage, and that choice will be used 99% of the time.

Consider old gap-closers or stuns. They were damage CDs and yet they were held whenever the rDPS of their situational value exceeded the additional effective potency from not thereby delaying them. That in itself adds to skill ceiling.

Old tank stances, moreover, weren't removed simply because they were damage-inferior. They were, in fact, rDPS-superior... up to a point. The problem was that it cost 3 additional buttons just to support a mini-game of "How closely can I guess how high the next-highest Enmity will go?" Since Enmity had no other mechanics to it besides an infinitely lasting number table... it added very little depth for its button cost.

The question to me is simply why we still have half the original button count (our of the likes of Shirk, Provoke, Tank Stance, Savage Blade, Rage of Halone, and Flash)... when we only need the one. A single active threat-grab action is in itself enough to cover all our Enmity needs (even while still allowing for the occasional oddball case like no-healing dungeons on the back of rotated Melees' Bloodbath durations).

Again, you cannot merge MIT with damage.

You absolutely can. It just takes not sanding down the brains of every tank and letting tanking actually be a more engaging process of risk and reward --largely for being able to actually make exactly those kinds of decisions-- as it has been in other MMOs.

This is when the homogenization comes in. Sure, generally that's the bad thing, but in tanks' case, it's the lesser evil.

Homogeneity via Role Actions is the lesser evil compared to... what, exactly? To take your Dark Mind example, how are we forgetting that DRK originally also had the best defensive against mass-physical attackers via DA-Dark Dance, opposite Dark Mind?

PLD used to be treated as OT in ShB

PLD was incentivized by a then comparatively-very-strong Intervention to use its own defensives, then Intervene in the last second of those durations stacked to time out at the same time, providing absurd mitigation to their cotank. That it wasn't typically MT had far more to do with the finnickyness of TBN at higher gear making it easier to pop when able to track autos from being hit by then and by WAR's then absurd self-healing via Nascent Flash.

For real, aggro has been reduced to 3 buttons, it's fine as it is, no need to reduce it even further.

Because why use 3 buttons on what can literally be solved equally well --and more intuitively, and with more opportunities for fine manipulation-- with one button and simply accordant traits?

Don't want aggro, and there's another tank tanking at present? Just don't hit constantly from the front.
Want aggro despite having far less DPS than your cotank? Use Provoke (which, as above, would grant a spike of Enmity immediately and increase your %enmity on the target until overridden by your co-tank's Provoke).

That's it. It only takes the one button.

Honestly, it would be cool if you could do Provoke/Reprisal effects through more Job specific stuff.

I didn't bother with unique Provoke versions here, as they aren't necessary to doing everything Tank Stance + Provoke + Shirk together can do, but you absolutely could again have a unique, say...

• Challenge (WAR - AoE taunt around self, target, and in a wide line between),
• Guardian (PLD - can be used on an ally to taunt its every attacker),
• Blade Shift (GNB - second charge, faster cooldown, and can target an ally to generate bonus threat against its attackers, or whatnot), and
• Dark Call (DRK - can be used from Shadowskin or Living Shadow to hold an enemy in place),
• etc.

I can't imagine you'd really feel those differences short of a Savage Dungeon, though.
Any bonus to a voke is pretty irrelevant when there's only the one enemy... as per... virtually all of XIV's serious content.

Shield Bash should be a big fat enmity generator, for example, instead of a button you only use for two levels until you get Low Blow and/or in PotD.

I mean, if anything, I'd probably turn Shield Bash into an core skill opposite Atonement and procced oGCD casts of Clemency, where it can pack a massive suppressive wallop, since I don't imagine needing any Enmity tool beyond Provoke, but if we wanted to actually turn Enmity into a mechanic beyond an effort in contracting (guessing the real Enmity cost and pocketing the remainder as bonus damage)... then sure, shield skills would be a thematically appropriate place for that.

I'm... pretty mixed on that endeavor (revitalizing Enmity as a mechanic) unless it really goes whole hog, though, and I just can't see any room for interestingly leveraging that within XIV's boss designs, though.

Bunshin/Bhavacakra (you always want to use Bunshin first; have Phantom overwrite Throwing Dagger while in effect, since you never want to use Throwing Dagger if you have a Phantom Kamatachi available anyway)

Honestly... that sounds like a job for de-neutered macros, not forced consolidation. And I would personally much prefer that there was no reason to consolidate them. One has a minimum TTK to pay off; the other does not.

Just leave Bunshin its own thing, with PK replacing Bunshin. Let players consolidate them if they want, but that's it.

Bunshin/Bhavacakra? How will you track CD of Bunshin?

So that issue's actually pretty easily solved as long as the devs care to catch up with 2016 plugins or so. You just place the [excess] charging wheel (not the cooldown wheel, which greys things out completely) over Bhavacakra while Bunshin is on CD.

Again, though, I don't think these two should be consolidated, but there are other abilities where one should actually always be used before the other. (Those, too, I'd prefer to see opened to nuance, rather than consolidated, but the tech is worth adding to the game either way.)

More shield actions would be great though, more in character than all the PLD's stab attacks.

Agreed. The whole originally hinted at Shield Oath | Sword Oath aspect of Paladin looked like it could have a ton of fun promise under the Knights of the Round... only to completely drop the thematic opportunity. >.>

[Deo14]

Consider old gap-closers or stuns. They were damage CDs and yet they were held whenever the rDPS of their situational value exceeded the additional effective potency from not thereby delaying them. That in itself adds to skill ceiling.

This is no longer a thing since everything atuomatically aligns in this 2 minute meta. Now you hold your CDs only if you drifted too much.

You absolutely can. It just takes not sanding down the brains of every tank and letting tanking actually be a more engaging process of risk and reward --largely for being able to actually make exactly those kinds of decisions-- as it has been in other MMOs.

You only need these decisions in ultimates and possibly week 1 Savage. Everywhere else, you would use it as damage first, mitigations second. One possibility to make this works is if it had stacks and wasn't affected by raidbuffs. You could similarly disconnect gap closers from raidbuffs and now you can save 1 stack to use as an actual gap closer. Problem is that this individual treatment is just as bad as guaranteed crits.

Homogeneity via Role Actions is the lesser evil compared to... what, exactly? To take your Dark Mind example, how are we forgetting that DRK originally also had the best defensive against mass-physical attackers via DA-Dark Dance, opposite Dark Mind?

Compared to specific jobs being delegated to either OT or MT merely because this or that skill is better suited for OT/MT.

PLD was incentivized by a then comparatively-very-strong Intervention to use its own defensives, then Intervene in the last second of those durations stacked to time out at the same time, providing absurd mitigation to their cotank. That it wasn't typically MT had far more to do with the finnickyness of TBN at higher gear making it easier to pop when able to track autos from being hit by then and by WAR's then absurd self-healing via Nascent Flash.

Yes, this is example of PLD bringing something more unique to a table and being punished for it (unless you prefer jobs being split to MT/OT, of course), while other tanks had more reasons to be MTs. Would be nice if every tank could be more unique, but tanking was already minimized to current state. PLD had 1 MIT less before rework and healers needed to pay him extra attention in DSR as a result. DRK was seen as someone who doesn't really bring much, so he used to have highest damage for a long time to offset this. But merely because he had few percent more damage, he was much more popular. Only thing left to do is to give everything slightly different flavour.

Sure you could give PLD a combat ress, but SE is currently clearly confused how this should affect DPS. Tanks shouldn't have big damage difference, most of TOP clears were with DRK simply because he had highest DPS. But at the same time, if they bring something good, like self sustain, they should have lower damage, right? But by how much? What about the ress, it's good for prog, useless for anything else, how do you calculate that? People are currently pretty unhappy about the way this stuff is handled. WAR seems like an all-rounder with no drawback, RDM is just in terrible state and SMN is treated like a caster even though he has less hard casts than a SAM.

So yes, in ideal game, we would have more uniqueness, but jobs are already homogenized and yet devs still cannot find the right balance.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, this is example of PLD bringing something more unique to a table and being punished for it (unless you prefer jobs being split to MT/OT, of course), while other tanks had more reasons to be MTs. Would be nice if every tank could be more unique, but tanking was already minimized to current state. PLD had 1 MIT less before rework and healers needed to pay him extra attention in DSR as a result. DRK was seen as someone who doesn't really bring much, so he used to have highest damage for a long time to offset this. But merely because he had few percent more damage, he was much more popular. Only thing left to do is to give everything slightly different flavour.

You're again confusing a uniquely strong swap-out (which requires you having already been MT at that time) with a need to be a constant OT; Intervention's value was in snapshotting a buff down to a couple seconds' duration to get half its effect again for another 10s on your cotank. Intervention's bonus was the extended effective uptime of buffs. If you wasted Sentinel and Rampart from the OT position just to buff them for less than half their value on your cotank... you were literally nerfing your party relative to just swapping in with Provoke.

PLD was simply a bit undertuned in terms of overall self-sustain [damage nullified + effective healing done] atop being harder and more fight-dependent to optimize than most jobs; even perfectly utilized, Intervention + all other parts of PLD's kit couldn't match with, say, NF + all other parts of WAR's kit.

You only need these decisions in ultimates and possibly week 1 Savage.

You see how reductive that is, though, right? "The decision-making would be transient, so why bother having any?"???

Apply that to anything else: "Rotations get solved for each fight anyways, so why have the ability to perform our rotations in another order?"

Compared to specific jobs being delegated to either OT or MT merely because this or that skill is better suited for OT/MT.

Those... aren't static positions. As long as there is mitigation you can only get the full value of from while tanking, you will eventually have to swap in, "MT" or "OT".

Your sole example of this literally required the PLD to MT for ~1 second short of the full duration of its defensives before using Intervention for it to get its full value, and only to be swapped out for 10 seconds.

But at the same time, if they bring something good, like self sustain, they should have lower damage, right? But by how much?

By enough that the self-sustain offsets the added risk of enrage during a Week 1 run in a skilled but typical party.

What about the ress, it's good for prog, useless for anything else, how do you calculate that?

Again, based on the likelihood of the rez leading to a clear in Week 1, assuming an already standard comp (2 healers, each presumably holding Swiftcast just for ress). A resurrection is a variable amount of rDPS.

Ideally that'd mean that, rather than reducing the rppm of a DPS with ress, you generally aim not to allow new tiers to have so variable of entry ilvl (e.g. via pentameld crafted gear) and either (A) give ress-capable DPS a flat nerf that then devalues over time at endgame / in tier relative to the DPS requirements, or (B) make the ress at-cost and greatly reduce the "tax" of having that utility.

People are currently pretty unhappy about the way this stuff is handled. WAR seems like an all-rounder with no drawback, RDM is just in terrible state and SMN is treated like a caster even though he has less hard casts than a SAM.

People are upset because there is neither any explicit nor even consistent balancing philosophy. While some may complain nonetheless when their OTP isn't the best at every capacity, the average player would be okay with some things having more or less of this or that so long as they were in tight enough balance around the target scenario that each could be highly competitive, with consistent execution of whatever balancing method.

They need to simply pick a target balancing point (e.g., progression, at pre-weekly-tome-gear-inflated item levels) and simultaneously tighten that context and hammer in what few pain points might arise outside that (like WAR having thrice the self-sustain of any other tank in dungeons, which damn near precludes any sort of tank balance if we were ever to get Savage Dungeons) in ways that don't affect the target anyhow.

[Deo14]

You see how reductive that is, though, right? "The decision-making would be transient, so why bother having any?"???

Apply that to anything else: "Rotations get solved for each fight anyways, so why have the ability to perform our rotations in another order?"

You are advocating for removing use of mits outside of savage/ultimates. If mits are tied to damage, you will not use mits anywhere else because it would be overkill and damage is always more important. Tied damage to mits is just as dumb as tied damage to gap closers. Those skill will lose it's original meaning, just like gap closers did. And for what? For saving single button on your hotbar? There is limit on what skills you should consolidate.

There is still a choice, you can mitigate current attack, or next attack. But in one of your idea of merging Intervene with some mitigation, there would not be this choice. You will just mitigate every raidwide (since Intervene has 2 stacks with 30s CD), assuming you wouldn't just use it for damage in a first place.

Do you want to make bland damage potency oGCDs more interesting? Put a mechanic on them, some gauge or whatever. Tying other effect on it will merely make said effect just a byproduct.

Those... aren't static positions. As long as there is mitigation you can only get the full value of from while tanking, you will eventually have to swap in, "MT" or "OT".

There is no tank swapping in normal content, which is 80% of the game. And that part of game suffers the most from the lack of depth, since you're just fighting a training dummy and you're left with doing your rotation. Playing PLD in ShB in normal content was just a 5th dps. Sure, in normal content it obviously doesn't even matter, but tell that to community which decided that PLD should be delegated to OT even in braindead normal content.

As for calculating tax for ress and similar - yeah, good luck with that. Devs aren't capable of even calculating moogle event tomes properly, last time we got 5-7 for 35 minute NieR raid but 2 or 3 for 3 minute Alexander raid. They even threw yet another towel in the ring this raid tier by making DPS checks virtually non-existant, supposedly you could clear this tier week 1 with multiple deaths and DNC forgetting to DP... I guess that's one way to make even RDM viable.

[Shurrikhan]

You are advocating for removing use of mits outside of savage/ultimates.

Not remotely. Adding miti to a greater number of abilities is not asking for the removal of mit.

Moreover, if "normal content..." is so easy as to have "no tank swapping" nor mitigation... how the heck is some attacks having mitigation... a "removal of mit"?

There is no tank swapping in normal content, which is 80% of the game.

There isn't anything required of modern normal content. That is NOT the bar to limit a game's potential to.

If anything, that's a reason simply NOT to continue slashing normal content down to pure tedium.

that PLD should be delegated to OT even in braindead normal content

Again, no one remotely optimizing anything had a static OT, because that just means wasting defensives, which would a far, far greater difference more than the self-sustain gap between PLD and other tanks. Idiocy should not be the basis for balancing.