Quote Originally Posted by Carighan View Post
Because if well designed
No. I'm saying that physical/magical only mitigation tools are intrinsically poorly designed. And that's after ten years of putting up with them.

The devs are of the mindset that hotbar space is at a premium, to the point where they generally refuse to add new actions without replacing old ones. It does not make sense to have a button on your hotbar that is completely unusable on certain fights. The end result of Heavensward's approach to conditional mitigations was that PLD/DRK was treated as a singular 'slot' where you were expected to swap between both jobs on a fight-specific basis, and you'll see that on pretty much all early clear videos from that era. WAR was a guaranteed slot, similar to how PCT is today.

If you want to see a really blatant example of why this is a problem today, look at Shake it Off vs. Dark Missionary and Heart of Light. It really only takes a mechanic like Harrowing Hell to make the imbalance incredibly obvious. PCT is in a similar boat with Tempera Grassa for Casters. I don't think having a second button press to toggle between personal mitigation and raidwide mitigation is a skill check, especially not when it's on the slowest job in the game.

There's no reason for having physical/magical only mitigation. Flat damage reduction vs. percentage based damage reduction can create flavor and variety, because they're still useable across different fight conditions. But mitigation effects should work against all damage types.