Quote Originally Posted by Mikey_R View Post
Current system doesn't sacrifice DPS from the tank in order to use a defensive, whether the healer takes advantage of that or not to increase the parties DPS is then down to the healer and, if they do not, you effectively aren't losing out on DPS.
Then, by your warrant, it does nothing, because the Tank "cannot guarantee", as you put it, that the Healer won't still use GCD unnecessarily.

It's the same thing here: You have the occasional opportunity to produce a net advantage, with potency varying with your ability to maximize the damage intake affected.

I also never said using a defensive is pointless unless it produces rDPS, I said that a defensive that costs you DPS is inferior when you have defensives that do NOT cost DPS.
Which I already said. The difference is, again, whether you strictly want tanking and healing requirements to be as pathetic as they are now, or are open to having more. Otherwise, the fact that there are preferred options that can be used first, just oGCD heals, does not mean that your will never use at-cost options. You simply use the latter when it is gainful to do so.

And unlike flat sustain, as per basic heals, time-sensitive sustain like %Damage-Reduction or %Recovery (think Death Strike), there can be gainful actions even without those actions being strictly required for survival in that precise moment.

No I didn't. You said it could be moved around, I merely stated that the goal would be to reduce the usage down to 0
This is like saying you'd want to reduce the usage of GCD DoTs (which are at-cost to GCD filler casts) down to 0 just because you wouldn't want to spam them. In the same way, though based on incoming damage instead of a fixed interval, you would use at-cost mitigation when it is gainful, not necessarily never.

For at-cost defensives to be never be gainful, the skills themselves have to pathetically undertuned or the damage intake relative to your combined tanks+healers sustain resources has to be pathetically low, which is a particular balance state which is not required of the game. So yes, that's conflated tuning with something fundamental. They're separate.

It's like looking at a theoretical 7.0 AST with no offensive output outside Malefic spam and saying that %Damage Amplication must be a worthless mechanic in general, just because it can't affect that particular kit, despite that said kit would already be notoriously bad and should be reinvigorated.

Healers also map out all their healing oGCDs too.
I'm aware. I've already said as much. Note, though, they still have at-cost sustain available to them, which at least allows for fight design to permit higher healing requirements, greater variety between fights, and a degree of slack for less experienced healers even while challenging more veteran healers in maximizing their rDPS.

Tanks no longer have those options.

Like it or not, everything is mapped out. That is the reality.
Here's the difference, though: If you remove all flexibility from tools on the basis that those rigidly timed tools are all that could ever be required of XIV's (current hyperscripted) fights, you're now stuck with those hyperscripted fights from then on. You cannot have variances in damage output from one fight to another without the lesser simply giving healers excess oGCDs because if you tune the lesser up to the level of their "free" healing, there's both zero room left for mistakes and anything above that literally wipes you.

Is that really the only kind of combat you'd ever want? Because if you increasingly narrow the toolkits available solely to those contexts, you're then stuck with those contexts forever.
  • Dungeons can't be bothered to regularly give any use for CC? Oh, we can just get rid of them.
  • The lack of short-term DPS checks means that CDs are only ever used on CD, which then greatly increases the value of consistent sync? Well, rather than ever giving back short-term DPS checks, we'd best get rid of anything that isn't easily synced.
  • Oh, people prefer the simper job (if it typically outperforms any other in its sub-role that isn't played perfectly)? May as well just simplify all its competitors, too.
Those simplifications escalate, and making it impossible ever to reverse course is rarely a good idea.


Again, unless Healers having access to GCD heals somehow makes them less like healers, I fail to see how having similar options that allow for tanks, ultimately, the same combined sustain+offense output but a higher maximum individually for either (more ability to choose between offense and sustain) would be awful for tanks, especially given the increased sustain requirements and diversity among fights' incoming damage that added flexibility would allow.

Defining what should ever be possible off of a narrow present context only acts to make those contexts permanent. Is the current healing situation something we really want to make permanent? Do we never want to attempt things outside of entirely scripted fights?