Quote Originally Posted by PyurBlue View Post
I don't see rigid encounter planning as a necessary part of the game's design.
I mean, I kinda even do. Or rather in the context of FFXIV I do, it's kinda "its thing". It's what you'd tell people about how FFXIV differs, "it's a ballet for 8-14 minutes", like you tell people about GW2's open world focus, that kind of stuff.

But even then, rigid encounter ability sequencing (Seat of Sacrifice EX was amazing but I think a lot of players hated it :'( ) does not preclude randomized player-affecting damage or abilities. That is, you can very much have "For these 20 seconds, the boss just autoattacks + does some form of raid damage on each autoattack" as a rigid step in the raid, but at the same time what the boss will do there you do not know. Likewise bosses randomly critting is only relevant around times non-random tankbusters happen. Which, as is expected, could just be removed if tanks take high damage anyways from random crits. And since full-raid AoEs as part of the ability sequence already affect tanks less than anybody else (at least most, which are a flat amount of damage not percentual) there's no need for tanks to intuitively always mitigate around those. You may want to, or not. Probably have to react to whether the 1-2 hits right before were crits.