What kinds of "active" mitigation would you like to see among tanks?

[Shurrikhan]

In contrast its a lot harder for healers to make up for a tank lacking % Reduction.

This part is definitely true, as %DR is going to increase the value of each point of health, effectively appreciating the value of healing done, while just stacking flat sustain atop flat sustain will lack that synergy. But...

WAR's % Reduction game is really bad.

This isn't ultimately going to matter until regularly up against very high overall in-window damage intake and/or what would otherwise be OHKOs. As it stands, even with that "really bad" %DR game... WAR's still typically putting out 130 - 160% the sustain (yes, including DR) of what DRK is, and nothing is going to kill OHKO a WAR that a DRK could uniquely survive when acknowledging that each has a co-tank (even if just another WAR) in said content.

It's therefore typically less that WAR has to "play its %mits way closer to its chest," specifically, as simply that one has the more frequent --even if typically numerically inferior both individually and overall-- short(er)-CD tool(s), and that frequency of deaths/panics prevented can make for an easier time than the depth of sustain (including from damage nullification) collected/"padded".

1.Is of the 3 types of Mitigation (% Reduction, Shields, Regen) , Health Regen is by FAR the worst one. Dark Knight being weaker than the other tanks barely matters here, Healers can more than make up for Dark Knight's short comings in health regen.

Calling regen mitigation is a stretch, as it doesn't actually secure your own health pool and is itself a sub-type of healing (which in its broader form typically gives us our 4 categories of sustain:

• "%DR" -- scaled and max-eHP-increasing but duration-limited,
• "Shields"/"Barriers" -- flat and max-eHP-increasing but (somewhat) duration-limited,
• "%Recovery -- scaled but not max-eHP-increasing and window-limited (as per Death Knights in WoW),
• "Healing" -- flat and not max-eHP-increasing but without duration limits).

Because the duration of shields tends to be so high (apart from perhaps TBN) relative to the amount of time required to break them, meaning that shielding can rarely ever go to waste, heals tend to just feel worse. Give every barrier only 7s to be popped or cause them to decay over time, though, and things might not feel quite so skewed against pure healing. Just some food for thought.

:: Further, if by Regen you did mean a HoT, then aye, that is purely a limitation. At least, in itself, just as DoTs are weaker than direct damage... unless buffed accordingly (thereby allowing for one to effectively double/triple up on the density of their high-ppgcd soft-CDs by fighting multiple enemies at a time to a higher total damage than others can manage). (Similarly, %Recovery is generally the 'worst' of the above main categories unless overpowered in terms of maximum output. Again, see WoW's Blood Death Knights.)

I think M6S was a great example of this, where even if you make a Savage with 4+ Targets for the WAR to leech life off of, as soon as Bloodwhetting falls off you just melt. Despite the insane healing WAR wasn't the optimal pick in the area its supposed to excel in, and honestly didn't get broken there until enough gear was handed around to make up for its lack of % mit.

I can't see a way to go back now to see how its number of parses early in the tier to see if they were in fact below GNB and DRK back then (while now only PLD has more than it), but... are we sure this had nothing to do with WAR's damage also falling way behind in M6S compared to 5, 7, and 8?

[Carighan]

The actual mitigation/survival part of classes based an self-rehealing damage is usually an increased health pool. Just look at games that already have done this successfully, such as Blood Death Knights in WoW in the first 2-3 expansions of their existence.

Which makes sense. You can passively survive more punishment, but you lack tools to reduce the damage intake you have. Your overall survivability is similar (less controllable, more passive), but now you're a healing-sponge, so you also get strong self-healing to compensate and that's your controllable active gameplay to not aggravate your healers.

This also feeds into the "usual" types of tanks:

* A "standard" tank. This is usually the tank that takes the least damage per attack, but lacks other specific tools. Their reduction might also be more passive than of other tanks, being the plate armor wearing shield wielding tank that constantly blocks damage and has the highest passive reduction, in return for weaker active tools.
* A "selfhealing" tank. As above this is an HP sponge but not an eHP one, lacking reduction tools, in return being able to survive the higher damage they suffer and being able to re-heal that extra amount and then some. This tank usually excels against DoT damage or other unavoidable damage as in many games this ignores the first tank's passive reductions.
* A reduction/immunity tank. This has frequently become a dedicated anti-magic tank, but the idea here is basically the opposite of the one before. Takes more damage than the first tank, can't re-heal it themselves, but has stronger active tools for mitigation, or can even fully ignore specific attacks like having "active dodge"-skills or seconds-long magic invulns or so.
* (Sometimes) The AoE/aggro tank. In games were aggro is not trivial, you usually find a tank that trivializes it (compare TBC-era Paladin in WoW). This is their thing then, they allow DPS to deal more damage and more aggressively, shortening fights as their way of avoiding damage, and making tank swaps tricky but raising the threat-ceiling so fights don't drag out as DPS wait for their threat-shedding skills to cycle. It's also an important tank for situations with frequently spawning adds as they pick up faster and better than other tanks.
* The sponge-tank. In games that differentiate their damage types, you'll find tanks that are a bit like the self-healing tank only with even more raw health, little passive damage reduction, no or little self-healing, few active skills. The idea here is that against damage that is difficult to avoid, these provide superior survivability and a reliable survival length, but they eat healing and mana off your healers like crazy, and their survival is capped by when the healers become unable to sustain the healing they need, not when they themselves run out of tools. The TBC-era - an insanely good source for tank setup differentiation, tbh - Bear Druid was explicitly built this way. Sum durids is bare ,to quote Alamo.

[TouchandFeel]

I personally feel TBN is perhaps one of the better designed defensive abilities in the game specifically because it does have elements you have to consider about it and does have potential drawbacks to improper usage. I find the other short recast defensives to be a bit too simplistic in that they have little to no extra considerations to their usage asides from "hit button -> benefit" in pretty much any situation.

I will however point out that measuring just TBN against the other short recast defensives isn't actually an equitable comparison and you really should be grouping together both TBN and Oblation when comparing them since Oblation is the closest thing to the upgrade that the other defensives get at lvl.82. It was just separated out for a couple of reasons, not making the TBN shield harder to break in all instances where that extra defense may not be needed and to provide DRK with an additional low-end "all rounder" defensive as this was something players had been asking to get for a long time although that was originally to compensate for Dark Mind being magic damage only before they changed it to also include 10% physical damage reduction. Anyways, I digress. Point being you need to look at the combination of both TBN and Oblation when comparing against Holy Sheltron, Bloodwhetting and Heart of Corundum.

In my opinion TBN itself is pretty much fine, although I would love to be able to cache more than one charge of Dark Arts to reward good usage of it and add an extra element of strategy to prepping for your burst.
Oblation on the other hand could honestly use some tweaks to make it align better with TBN as well as the other short recast defensives. Mainly I would like to see Oblation's recast get reduced to 30s so that it could be paired with more TBNs in instances where you would want to do that, making it more akin to the automatic boost that the other defensives have baked into every use with the lvl.82 upgrades.

As for the balance of defensives between the tanks overall, particularly DRK versus the rest or WAR versus the rest, I generally feel what many others do in that the self-healing on most of the tanks has gone a bit too far and probably need to get reined in.

On the topic of "active mitigation", I wouldn't be opposed to reducing the 20% damage reduction that tanks just get through the Tank Mastery trait and then to compensate buffing the defensive elements provided by their weaponskill combos, such as the heal from Soul Eater or shield from Brutal Shell, or some other part of the job's regular rotation. That could maybe even help with reducing the situation of some tanks having too much self-healing where some could be left as is and then other tanks can have that slight defensive boost to their combo or whatever and that change reducing the base % damage resistance from the Tank Mastery trait acts as the equalizer.

[Terhix]

I think DRK/PLD having 2 decent active mits and letting GNB/WAR have one strong active mit is a nice way to differentiate their kits, but as it stands, Oblyat is utter dogwater in comparison to Intervention and feels super clunky to use, let alone waste time casting it on other teammates. It's hard to brainstorm different forms of active mitigation without knowing that the devs will choose to do with the combat and jobs come 8.0, but all I can say for certain is that the current TBN feels good to use and I would like it if tank gameplay expanded on that risk-reward factor that makes TBN so fun to use

Oblation isn't as strong as Intervention since DRK can put TBN on other people, while Holy Sheltron is self only. Intervention is really really good for double-tank busters, meanwhile DRK can potentially save up to 3 people from dying to a raidwide with TBN + 2 Oblation stacks, the kit is very versatile.

[Carighan]

Exactly. And the CD is also different, but then there's so many more differences such as Dark Mind vs Bastion, it's difficult to compare these. Like, would some DRK players be fine with changes to Oblation if they also imply Dark Mind is now weaker and on a longer CD?

[bundythenoob]

I do quite like how flexible Oblation is, especially in the current mana-starved DRK kit, but I still think it feels terrible to use on its own, especially for a lv 82 skill. Had Oblation originally been a low level skill, then I think that Dark Mind/Missionary might not have needed the buffs they received. I don't think buffing Oblation with a shorter recast and Vigil-type heal would hurt the game, as we have reached a point where the slew of DDR mechanics means that someone is bound to take a hit, and giving tank jobs a way to support teammates during those high movement phases would feel nice imo.

Cover is a skill I enjoy trying to minmax in all forms of content, and I think it would be nice if all tanks had access to some form of party utility around the ARR levels, not just PLD/GNB. If the Tank Mastery trait was removed, we might be justified in having these tweaks to our lower level kits. WAR might even be able to keep its current healing kit, since it would now need the extra HP/healing to make up for this.

The only passive mitigation I would like to see would be baking job-specific effects into our tank stances. Defiance could get back the Thrill of Battle trait, Royal Guard inheritly increasing parry rate, Iron Will giving a higher Block rate, and Darkside receiving a passive lifesteal effect might be nice too. This could let us get Scourge and Power Slash back! (this is copium of the highest degree)

[Oizen]

This part is definitely true, as %DR is going to increase the value of each point of health, effectively appreciating the value of healing done, while just stacking flat sustain atop flat sustain will lack that synergy. But...


This isn't ultimately going to matter until regularly up against very high overall in-window damage intake and/or what would otherwise be OHKOs. As it stands, even with that "really bad" %DR game... WAR's still typically putting out 130 - 160% the sustain (yes, including DR) of what DRK is, and nothing is going to kill OHKO a WAR that a DRK could uniquely survive when acknowledging that each has a co-tank (even if just another WAR) in said content.

It's therefore typically less that WAR has to "play its %mits way closer to its chest," specifically, as simply that one has the more frequent --even if typically numerically inferior both individually and overall-- short(er)-CD tool(s), and that frequency of deaths/panics prevented can make for an easier time than the depth of sustain (including from damage nullification) collected/"padded".

This comes up a lot in Ultimates and week 1 savages, during my time in FRU pf I saw so many warriors just die to the tank busters, they are by far the most reliant on needing outside assistance for them, of which DRK is a very strong ally for them because it has TBN/Oblation on a shorter CD to spare. GNB and especially PLD do not struggle with this, WAR is uniquely over-invested in healing itself that its becoming a detriment in high end content. Waste one of your mits as a WAR and you're dead. Meanwhile if Dark Knight accidentally blows a mit, you're probably fine. If you don't touch the highest end content of this game, you'll never hit your head on this ceiling, and I find basically all of the "DRK HEAL BAD, WORSE WAR" come from casual players.

This isn't me saying the job is unplayable in high end content, it definitely is. But the harder the content gets, the more Dark Knight edges out Warrior

Calling regen mitigation is a stretch, as it doesn't actually secure your own health pool and is itself a sub-type of healing (which in its broader form typically gives us our 4 categories of sustain:

• "%DR" -- scaled and max-eHP-increasing but duration-limited,
• "Shields"/"Barriers" -- flat and max-eHP-increasing but (somewhat) duration-limited,
• "%Recovery -- scaled but not max-eHP-increasing and window-limited (as per Death Knights in WoW),
• "Healing" -- flat and not max-eHP-increasing but without duration limits).

Because the duration of shields tends to be so high (apart from perhaps TBN) relative to the amount of time required to break them, meaning that shielding can rarely ever go to waste, heals tend to just feel worse. Give every barrier only 7s to be popped or cause them to decay over time, though, and things might not feel quite so skewed against pure healing. Just some food for thought.

:: Further, if by Regen you did mean a HoT, then aye, that is purely a limitation. At least, in itself, just as DoTs are weaker than direct damage... unless buffed accordingly (thereby allowing for one to effectively double/triple up on the density of their high-ppgcd soft-CDs by fighting multiple enemies at a time to a higher total damage than others can manage). (Similarly, %Recovery is generally the 'worst' of the above main categories unless overpowered in terms of maximum output. Again, see WoW's Blood Death Knights.)

Yeah thats why I meant to say healing/regen is significantly worse than shields or % mit. It goes to waste and doesn't actually help you survive anything unless its a damage over time.
But Shields and %Mit are completely applicable to all types of damage, Healing is exclusively only good against multi-hits or damage over times so it ends up being a fluff stat on WAR's buttons a lot of the time. WAR is busted in dungeons because dungeons not only do no damage, its almost entirely damage over time. Thats where it thrives. WAR crumbles under high burst damage scenarios.

I also know nothing about WoW, nor do I plan to learn anything about Blizzard games, so I dont know what a death knight is. Nor do I use WoW termanology. Fuck Blizzard.

I can't see a way to go back now to see how its number of parses early in the tier to see if they were in fact below GNB and DRK back then (while now only PLD has more than it), but... are we sure this had nothing to do with WAR's damage also falling way behind in M6S compared to 5, 7, and 8?

Its a bit of personal experience watching my WAR main friend flex onto GNB and make the fight significantly easier as a result, not only through superior AOE damage, but also just just dying outright to either sides of the mob pack.

I beleive the World 1 parties were completely dominated by PLD/DRK.
If damage was the sole factor it would have been GNB/DRK, but PLD brings the most defensive toolset of any tank to the team and generally makes content easier for everyone.
PLD does what people pretend WAR does while not sacrificing real mitigation for it imo.

[Shurrikhan]

I also know nothing about WoW, nor do I plan to learn anything about Blizzard games, so I dont know what a death knight is. Nor do I use WoW termanology. Fuck Blizzard.

These aren't WoW terms. WoW has no unique hold on a term as general as "%Recovery". Theirs just happens to be the only broadly known example of a tank that uses enemy-scaled healing. In XIV, the obvious example of %Recovery is Macrocosmos; it just doesn't happen to be on a tank and is a long CD instead of a gauge spender, making it feel almost unrelated to discussion of tank active mitigation.

But the harder the content gets, the more Dark Knight edges out Warrior.

For ease, perhaps. Or if fighting strong enough one-hit TBs and few enough windows of high damage during adds. But that's just a matter of different scaling factors, no?

The harder enemies hit during its mitigated windows, the more DRK can get out of its advantage in %DR, but likewise the less of a bottleneck WAR's maximum HP becomes to its theoretical maximum self-healing. What ultimately serves DRK best in that is simply the staleness of fight types and that, for the moment, WAR lacks the AoE damage to complement any advantage in AoE sustain even if it had the CD-flexibility to reliable leverage that advantage.

And that seems the sad part to me. We really see such little variety in encounters as they'd more interestingly interact with differing tank profiles.

[Carighan]

That's never going to be something where you will see much differentiation, though.

Look at how unwilling the community is to already accept the minor differences that exist between tanks. Look at the number of threads being jealous about WAR's selfhealing, DRK's burst, etc etc. The constant ceaseless nerf/buff threads, for something that, comparing other MMORPGs, makes no difference. From the perspective of anybody else outside FFXIV, all 4 tanks are EXACTLY identical. 100% same kit with cosmetic differences.

If we wanted actually differentiating content, this could more readily be achieved via actually differentiating the tanks themseves (and both have to happen either way). But uuuugh would the community be in shambles if they do that. If we had an actual "Boss tank", as in, bosses are balanced to be tanked by this class, if you bring somebody else, expect extra wipes or it being impossible. If we had actual add-tanks, as in, everyone else will struggle to pick up and hold onto this many mobs, expect DPS taking hits or being dead if you do this. Etc etc. Like in any other MMO, it's not like we cannot readily look at the past and current competition to see how this works. I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class diferences. >.>

[Shurrikhan]

That's never going to be something where you will see much differentiation, though.

Look at how unwilling the community is to already accept the minor differences that exist between tanks. Look at the number of threads being jealous about WAR's selfhealing, DRK's burst, etc etc. The constant ceaseless nerf/buff threads, for something that, comparing other MMORPGs, makes no difference. From the perspective of anybody else outside FFXIV, all 4 tanks are EXACTLY identical. 100% same kit with cosmetic differences.

If we wanted actually differentiating content, this could more readily be achieved via actually differentiating the tanks themseves (and both have to happen either way). But uuuugh would the community be in shambles if they do that. If we had an actual "Boss tank", as in, bosses are balanced to be tanked by this class, if you bring somebody else, expect extra wipes or it being impossible. If we had actual add-tanks, as in, everyone else will struggle to pick up and hold onto this many mobs, expect DPS taking hits or being dead if you do this. Etc etc. Like in any other MMO, it's not like we cannot readily look at the past and current competition to see how this works. I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class diferences. >.>

There is, however, still an ocean of difference between...

1. "Every tank can differ only cosmetically"
   
   and
   
   
2. "each fight requires 1-2 specific tanks for it to be cleared (such that there's really only two tanks... merely rotated on a per-fight basis, and every tank main must maintain at least 3)".

I prefer that, but I bet the FFXIV-community, seeing what a dealbreaker 3% damage difference or one minor element of one minor tank skill supposedly make here, would go foaming at the mouth over actual class differences. >.>

This is true, but I feel context is important, too.

When the numbers are obviously consequent to different features and significantly varied by context (e.g., on a phase-by-phase basis), people tend to be more accepting of numeric differences (especially if there's some sort of counterpressure against easy swapping and the given job can redeem itself with an advantage in a specific progression bottleneck or in overall performance even if it might do worse in some other fight).

When the numbers are ALL that seemingly distinguishes the jobs, though, it makes sense that players wouldn't be okay with being at all pushed out over something that provides so little difference in identity.

We're in the/a "sour spot", so to speak. There's not enough identity to feel like the performance differences are warranted, nor then enough difference seemingly permitted to encourage further differentiation.

But I don't think we get out of that by letting things spiral ever closer in terms of HOW tanks contribute...

...and I don't think the trick to diversifying that will come simply from, say, making DRK the only one with shields or WAR the only one with self-heals, or any such categorical divides of what (if not thereby almost purposely imbalancing tanks in prog or farm) will be ultimately identical results in sustain. I think it'll probably have to come from building fights around features that could look at feel really cool to (seemingly creatively) pull off as tanks without being mere gimmicks, amping tank kits accordingly, and so on, back and forth -- something that brings out a sort of variable "puzzle-solving" of a given fight in place of "{Any shape} goes in the {Square Hole}", with equal coverage for each mechanic instead of just roughly equal value over the fight's whole course.

Granted, the concretes of what all can be pushed closer in equity --let alone by what categories or sub-categories or sub-sub-categories of throughput-- without hurting identity is complicated, yes. As would managing to include interesting features that can be used creatively without being relegated to mere gimmicks.