rank cross class abilities

[bokchoykn]

*snip*

I wouldn't judge Second Wind solely on the amount healed. Yeah, 550HP every 2 minutes is nothing. Featherfoot, Mantra and possibly even Awareness will grant more HP in the long run, but you can't simply crunch the numbers and decide that Second Wind isn't as good.


The value in Second Wind is in the way it delivers the HP. Unlike Featherfoot and Awareness, it gives it to you when you need it. Unlike Mantra, it will help you in the absence of a heal and can be activated in reaction to needing a heal instead of having to do it before hand. What's better? 500 HP when you need it or 1000HP whenever it feels like giving it to you?

Not topped off before a burst? One hit away from death after a burst? Second Wind basically grants you the equivalent of about 30 Vitality in these situations.

I'm currently working on Turn 9 right now, we're using a two-tank strat for the first phase so I'm required to take Ravensbeaks in DPS jewellery. The Ghost of Meracydias in the third phase are also hitting me very hard. Second Wind is really coming in handy in this fight. It has saved my life twice in the last few days of attempts (My HP dropped to an amount less than what the Second Wind healed me for seconds earlier).

One ability I don't get is Awareness. Boss auto attacks have a less than 5% chance to crit. It will crit you once every 50-60 seconds. Awareness is more likely to do nothing than it is likely to do something. When it does do something, you are still taking damage from the attack so it might not even save you.

[Kitru]

One ability I don't get is Awareness. Boss auto attacks have a less than 5% chance to crit. It will crit you once every 50-60 seconds. Awareness is more likely to do nothing than it is likely to do something. When it does do something, you are still taking damage from the attack so it might not even save you.

And, to make it even less sensible, I'm pretty sure that an attack that is parried or blocked cannot score a critical hit either. When you get down to it, the chance of an individual attack scoring a critical hit on you is almost entirely negligible.

Of course, the value of Awareness isn't so much in the fact that it mitigates your incoming damage as much as it stabilizes it; while Awareness is up, the maximum potential damage you can take over an period of time is capped out much lower. It's not going to do a good job of making you take less damage, but it will do an excellent job of making sure that your incoming damage is more predictable.

People were saying it at release and it still holds true now: the only way that Awareness is going to be anything more than the absolute worst tank CD in the game is if they create some specific boss mechanic that basically *forces* you to use Awareness, such as an attack that hits as hard as DS and applies a buff that causes the next attack to be an automatic critical hit (it would also be an effective way to force a tank swap since, if it happens every minute, you'd have to swap tanks because Awareness has a 120 sec CD) or a boss that has an increased chance to score critical hits that, every time it scores one, it gets a stacking buff that increases damage by 10% for 15 seconds (the only way to get rid of those stacks is to either get really lucky or to use Awareness to become immune to crits long enough for the stacks to fall off).

[Instrumentality]

*snip*

I would rather they completely removed Awareness from the game than introduce a mechanic that forced it to be used, being honest. Also make tanks uncrushable because being crit as a tank is pretty dumb.

[Kitru]

I would rather they completely removed Awareness from the game than introduce a mechanic that forced it to be used, being honest.

Well, they could either add mechanics that force tanks to use it, or they could simply increase the crit rate on bosses so that you can actually expect to get some benefit out of it (which would require reducing the standard damage). As it stands, it's pretty much useless, which is what pretty much everyone agrees upon.

Also make tanks uncrushable because being crit as a tank is pretty dumb.

I, personally, don't mind being crit as a tank because it leads to a level of unpredictability in incoming damage rate which makes it more interesting to heal. The problem is less so in being crit and moreso in the fact that crits are so rare that you can go entire fights without ever being crit. If crits actually occurred more often, they would actually have to be accounted for by both the players and the devs (which also means decreasing planned spike hits so that you don't have RNG gibs).

[Instrumentality]

I, personally, don't mind being crit as a tank because it leads to a level of unpredictability in incoming damage rate which makes it more interesting to heal. The problem is less so in being crit and moreso in the fact that crits are so rare that you can go entire fights without ever being crit. If crits actually occurred more often, they would actually have to be accounted for by both the players and the devs (which also means decreasing planned spike hits so that you don't have RNG gibs).

Underlined is why I said as a tank. As a tank I want the smoothest possible damage income minimized as much as possible by mitigating abilities. RNG damage is the opposite of that, so I don't want it.