Tanks need more than just TankBusters

[Mikey_R]

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.

The question is, where does the mitigation come from? If you have to mitigate this random string of crits, could that not pull mitigation away from something where it is needed more, like a tank buster? If you were to add a mitigation that is designed to be used for these situations, what does that then look like, most importantly, the cooldown. If the cooldown is short enough, what is stopping someone from just using it off of cooldown etc. We also then have to look at healers and how these changes impact them, mainly looking at would it increase the frequency of having to use GCD heals.

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.

Whilst possibilities are numerous, it doesn't mean potential solutions are and that is the issue. How do you, as a tank/healer, deal with these RNG mechanics in a way that doesn't impact the more major mechanics of the fight. I would also be interested to know what your take on 'massively changing the underlying combat system' looks like.

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.

And that sounds horrible for the healers. 60-80% of a melee's HP every 2-3 seconds is just going to delete them in an unlucky situation, not to mention parties tend to group together so it will more likely be damage on the full party. Even your ranged bolts would just amount to full party healing because you wouldn't have the time to heal everyone up individually. Since these 2 are handled in the same way, 2/3 times you will just do a full party heal. Rather than spamming Glare, you are now spamming Medica 3. I know there is a lot of healer talk about how they want to change the healer role, but I'm pretty sure that isn't it.