Suggestion for NIN ability Huraijin

[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. >.>