Opinion on tanking design

[Duelle]

With a couple of weeks having passed since 2.1 and the changes to WARs, I have been thinking about some of the changes to WAR as well as their implication on tank design.

As we all know, Holmgang was changed to be a mini-invincibility to help WARs match up with PLD in coil (and kill off the stigma of WAR not being a good tank in all other content). I was at first surprised at the change, and while I was pleasantly surprised at it as well as the other changes to WAR, I did eventually start thinking of the implications this had on tank design.

While Holmgang was a godsend to all WARs, it also tells me that an invincibility cooldown may have just become required in any future tanks.

The reason I say this is because in the event SE decides to implement a new tank in the future, you do run into the risk of WAR's problems at launch repeating themselves if the content is balanced around invincibilities while not giving the new tank an invincibility due to not making sense on a concept level.

The main question I want to ask to our side of the forums is: where do we go from here?

I only see two possible scenarios play out.

a) Keep the invincibilities: Basically, every tank from here on to the day the servers shut down will have an invincibility move. As I said, there's a major risk of it clashing with the concept of certain jobs. It also seems like an extremely limiting approach, since one of those abilities you're giving the new tanks will have to be an invincibility for them to keep up with PLD and WAR

b) Nerf invincibilities and instead make the common denominator between tanks damage reduction: You're gonna hate me for this, but nerf Hallowed Ground from an invincibility to a major damage reduction cooldown (maybe an 80-90% damage reduction?). Change Holmgang to be a major damage reduction or add some form of damage mitigation in addition to what was given to WAR.

The funny thing about B is that I called for Hallowed Ground being turned into a damage mitigation before alpha, and that didn't go over well with people despite my saying that invincibilities tend to cause trouble if not kept on a leash.

I just wanted to see what were the tanking community's thoughts on this. I'm aware that Hallowed Ground is called by its FFXI name (Invincible) in the Japanese version of ARR, but I do see a risk to where we're going with tank design. Then again, maybe I'm just being paranoid. >.>;

[IndigoHawk]

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.

If Hallowed Ground only reduces damage by a percentage, then why not get rid of Hallowed Ground? Buff Sentinel a bit and lower its cooldown. Then use Sentinel for large mitigation and Rampart for small. Does there really need to be 3 levels of mitigation? If so, doesn't that force every future tank to have 3 levels of mitigation? I'd rather have skills that do different things. Hallowed Ground does something unique, so it's fun.

What's your concern with new tanks having tank abilities? Which future job concerns you? For example, a ninja tank could make so many shadows they can't be hit for a couple seconds. Etc. It's easy to come up with a unique way to give each tank some common tanking abilities.

[Duelle]

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.

If Hallowed Ground only reduces damage by a percentage, then why not get rid of Hallowed Ground?

Because there is such a thing as degrees of damage reduction. 90% damage reduction on a 5 minute cooldown would be useful in different situations than 20% damage reduction for 20 seconds or 30% damage reduction on a 3 minute cooldown.

If so, doesn't that force every future tank to have 3 levels of mitigation?

Yes and no. The thing about damage reduction is that it can be implemented differently per job without being as cut and dry as an invincibility. Blood DKs in WoW, for example, have damage reduction via Blood Shield (absorbtion shield based on amount healed from Death Strike), Bone Shield (reduces damage taken by the next 6 attacks by 20%) and Icebound Fortitude (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds).

Compare that to prot warriors, who have Shield Block & Shield Barrier (active mitigation with no cooldown), and Shield Wall (40% damage reduction). Or prot paladins that have a 20% damage taken cooldown but rely more on self heals (and prot pallies have an invincibility but it reduces damage dealt by them by 50% and removes them from the mob's aggro table for the duration). Or monks who reduce damage taken in part by Stagger, in part by dodges and parries, and in part by Guard (damage absorbtion) and Dampen Harm (50% damage reduction to incoming attacks that deal damage equal to or greater than 20% of your max HP).

What's your concern with new tanks having tank abilities? Which future job concerns you?

I can't picture a Samurai with an invincibility. Same for Beastmaster, and same for Mystic Knight. On a concept level it doesn't look right.

If we run into an issue where you have a batch of content that only two tanks make possible (much like turn 4 of coil with PLDs pre-2.1), we're back to square one and now have given any of the three a bad stigma until the next patch.

Holmgang is a god send? Did I miss some change where they made it less... rubbish?

Holmgang tries to do too many things, does none of them well and just ends up being a rubbish cooldown.

Compared to what you had before, yes, it is a godsend.

That said, I never pushed for WAR getting an invincibility via Holmgang. What I was pushing for was WAR getting active mitigation. I mean, more than what you got from Inner Beast.

[Kitru]

That said, I never pushed for WAR getting an invincibility via Holmgang.

Describing Holmgang as an "invincibility" doesn't quite grok with me. Yes, it prevents you from dying for the duration, but it's not *true* invincibility, like Hallowed Ground, which is what it always gets compared to. The survivability value of Holmgang, even if the bind were removed, is *very* different from what Holmgang provides.

I do understand that it's necessary to group abilities of that level together; I just don't like the category being referred to as "invincibility CDs". A better term, as I see it, would be "uber-CD" or "super CD", since that's really what they are. I've sometimes heard of them referred to as "survivability nukes" ("nuke" referring to a single massive attack on a long CD, which we don't really have in ARR).

As a design point, I *do* think that it's appropriate for all tanks to have a *single* ability that exists in that category. It doesn't necessarily have to copy HG or Holmgang, but I think it behooves the devs to make sure that all tanks have some massive last-resort CD. Even if PLD and WAR didn't start with one, I still think it would be apt to include them, just because it's an appropriate functionality for a tank to have. Unlike DPS, tanks and healers are both classes that often have compressed need for functionality. Burst DPS doesn't really matter in the course of PvE content, but burst survivability and burst healing are very important. Healers have abilities like Lustrate and Benediction to fulfill their need to adapt to the situations that require *incredible* compression and Divine Seal, Sacred Soil, Rouse, and Fey Illumination for times when functional compression is needed, but not on the same scale; tanks have their normal CDs for basic compression, but HG and Holmgang are needed for those "shit hits the fan" moments when you need to have absolute survivability for a short window. Building tanks without last resort CDs would be like building healers without Benediction/Lustrate: they *can* get away with it, but it's a niche functionality that deserves at least a single tool to cover.

[Paikis]

As a design point, I *do* think that it's appropriate for all tanks to have a *single* ability that exists in that category. It doesn't necessarily have to copy HG or Holmgang, but I think it behooves the devs to make sure that all tanks have some massive last-resort CD.

Take Holmgang back to just the attract-bind. Add a new ability in:

Unyielding Fury
The Warrior's rage allows him to ignore wounds and fight on past the endurance of normal fighters.
5 minute recast, 10 second duration
Places a buff on the Warrior that prevents death once. In the event of death being prevented, all damage received over the next 5 seconds is instead converted to a heal.

So if you 'die' while this buff is active, it will trigger and all damage done to you instead heals you. If you don't die, it does nothing but burn a timer.

[Kitru]

Unyielding Fury
The Warrior's rage allows him to ignore wounds and fight on past the endurance of normal fighters.
5 minute recast, 10 second duration
Places a buff on the Warrior that prevents death once. In the event of death being prevented, all damage received over the next 5 seconds is instead converted to a heal.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. Dropping to 0 and then getting healed from damage seems more than a little wonky to me. I think it'd be more appropriate for it to bring you back to 75% hp (or 25% with a 50% DR buff for 10 seconds).

The "cannot die" aspect of Holmgang is perfectly fine, in my opinion. It *does* need to be split from Holmgang, though, and have the duration increased so that it's long enough to actually serve as a viable "uber-CD". Other ideas that could replace it are, to me, just brainstorming potential uber-CDs for other tanks.

[IndigoHawk]

I can't picture a Samurai with an invincibility. Same for Beastmaster, and same for Mystic Knight. On a concept level it doesn't look right.

I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

I can envision abilities for samurai, beastmaster, and mystic knight that could make them invincible by not taking damage, instantly recovering, refusing to die, avoiding hits, etc. Samurai dazzles or interrupts attacks with a gil barrage or performs so many feints no attack can get through, beastmaster summons something to intercept hits for a few seconds, mystic knight drains a crystal/uses a rune to enhance their defense or imbue their blade to intercept/absorb all attacks, etc.

If you want to have an ability that gives limited invincibility, you can come up with an excuse without affecting the rest of the class design.

[Duelle]

I guess I'm still not seeing the problem. Invincibility is game breaking design to you in a way that's not clear to me.

Well, the reason for my distaste for invincibilities is two-fold. First because invinciblity was a major player in the negative image WARs had prior to 2.1, and that was due to Hallowed Ground making certain content possible to clear that was not possible with a WAR tank (remember that the devs expected people to throw themselves at coil and die forever much like WoW's devs purposely overtuned C'thun in AQ40 to be mathematically impossible to kill). Even Yoshida admitted this during an interview.

His answer to this was to give WAR an invincibility. Sure, it may not count to some because you have to hit 1 HP and lasts 6 seconds compared to Hallowed Ground's 10, but the decision to even do this in the first place is what has me wondering over what would happen if say SAM was introduced and SAM was given no invincibility. I'd wager it would turn into lolSAM much like WAR was frowned upon pre-2.1 if the issue with coil were to repeat itself.

The second part has yet ot rear its ugly head, but invincibilities tend to be double-edged swords because they can hold back class design. Thankfully, SE's devs haven't gone in that direction.

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As far as classes and jobs, I don't think invincibility would suit a samurai. I could see it gaining a major damage reduction buff by making the SAM parry like crazy and counter attack with every parry. Might work with Mystic Knight, but then you'd have someone cry that it's too similar to PLD. I've always pictured a BST tank working through shared HP pool between the master and pet, though I guess it may work as you suggested.

[Zakalwe]

Every tank should have tank basic: taunts, provokes, mitigation, emergency mitigation/cover, threat builders, etc.
[snip]

...except that in this game tanks don't have a genuine forced taunt. Nor, for that matter, do we have threat leech skills. We have aggro builders, we have one threat copy (Provoke), and we have plenty of mitigation skills. I'm not saying we need taunts and leeches, just noting they aren't here.

[IndigoHawk]

...except that in this game tanks don't have a genuine forced taunt. Nor, for that matter, do we have threat leech skills. We have aggro builders, we have one threat copy (Provoke), and we have plenty of mitigation skills.

The lack of basic tank abilities is one of the downsides to tanking in this game. For example, taking over an existing mob is a nuisance. A forced taunt would allow tanks to take over for a few seconds, copy threat, build threat, position, and then have no problems once the taunt wears off, regardless of what the party is doing. FFXIV doesn't provide abilities like this, which makes tanking more annoying than in other games. Positioning in FFXIV is more prone to failure, because a dps or healer who doesn't read the tank's mind and unloads at the wrong moment can accidentally ruin the next few seconds of the fight with an out of control mob.

So, all tanks should have basic tank abilities, even if no tank in FFXIV has them.