Tanks need more than just TankBusters

[Carighan]

This is in the same vein as RNG mitigation, you assume everything is going to hit. It isn't changing anything about how you interact with the fight. As for crits, depending on the frequency, it might be something you need to worry about, it might not, who knows. But this also has to come with the caveat that getting an unlucky string of crits isn't going to kill a tank as you cannot plan for that as you cannot mitigate everything. It should be noted that this is based on the fact all mechanics are designed to always hit and never crit, if these could crit, that is just a stupid idea and I shouldn't have to explain why.

Why not?

The core issue, as I see it, is in the automatic assumption that boss-crits ought to work like player crits, you cannot plan for that.

Ah, but what if you could?

What if, on each auto-attack, the boss randomly gains a self-buff that makes the next attack crit? You could react to that, you'd eat the first, but if that crit buffs again, maybe you ought to start mitigating. Could even take it further, and make it an animation/stance change instead, you can see the boss wind up a bigger punch or something. Could even have varations, like instead of critting, maybe the next X autoattacks have only half the delay, making stuff like Haima stronger and Corundum weaker in mitigating it.

There's tons of possibilities to handle this. The bigger issue in the devs unwillingness to massively change - or more likely management's unwillingness to budget for such change - the underlying combat system.

But this is still a spreadsheet. Everything will be planned around, those randomised party hits are going to be done at the same time each fight, so you already have the resources allocated to deal with it, it is just you hit player 2 rather than player 1.

Again, that's an assumption. Could very well make it so that the boss, on each autoattack, does one of three things and you see it from a self-buff:

* Crit the tank.
* 360° cleave in melee range for high damage (melee DPS would take 60%-80% damage).
* Fire two-four ranged bolts at random party members for 25%-40% of their health.

There is no planning for that, not more than one autoattack ahead. You could be getting the bolts the entire fight.