Tank Balance

[Reynhart]

Swapping str and vit.... U serious?

Well, if you're the OT and VIT doesn't change your HP pool anymore...yeah, I'd be serious about it.


Another crazy idea...YES, I'm bored at work

What if tanks mitigates by accumulating a "Barrier" ?

Nowadays, mitigation is, mostly, a passive thing. Pop you CD, wait for the blast...even WAR has it a little.
BUT, like DPS constantly attacking to build greater DPS and healers constantly healing to build greater HPS, tanks could constantly use skills to build greater BPS (Barrier Per Second).

The barrier would work like Stoneskin or Addlo, meaning that, as long as you have that barrier, you won't take any damage. This way, tanks could have skills with potencies, even combo, that would give them higher and higher barrier numbers. Rampart, Sentinel, Vengeance...all those skills would work like Flight of Fight or Internal Release by increasing your numbers for a short period of time, adding more chance for them to crit, etc...

With a system like that, tanks would have a rotation to master to accumulate the highest BPS, and harder content could throw higher and higher damage against your barrier meaning you'd really have to master your skills to reduce/prevent your HP from dropping as long as you can.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Yeah, that's called "active mitigation". WAR has some of it with Wrath building and IB usage. DRK kinda with Souleater but not really.

But yeah, active mitigation is a lot more fun than passive mitigation. This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

I feel I should be adding more to my posts but too lazy and tired to elaborate. haha. I should sleep.

[Reynhart]

This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

[Alahra]

And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

Which is by design, I think. They realize that in terms of social pressure, tanking is seen as an "important" job and a lot of people who don't tank choose not to because of that pressure. That's why the tank jobs (with WAR being something of the exception for variety) aren't as demanding rotationally as DPS classes are, so that they have less to worry about and (hopefully) more people can learn to like tanking.

The current setup works pretty well, I think: serious tanks can go all in for DPS maximization, and those that are just tanking for their roulettes or friends can get by just doing the meat shield thing. They need to do something regarding parity in the OT role and probably to make PLD more desirable in 8-mans, though.

[Reynhart]

The current setup works pretty well, I think: serious tanks can go all in for DPS maximization

For me, the second part of your sentence completely contradicts the first.
And I fear this will bite us really hard if they decide to add other tanks in the next expansions.

Adding a real "gameplay" for mitigation would lift a lot of complains because player skill would "blur" the gap between each tank, like it does with DPS.

[Alahra]

For me, the second part of your sentence completely contradicts the first.
And I fear this will bite us really hard if they decide to add other tanks in the next expansions.

Care to explain how it's a contradiction? SE wants tanking to be approachable, and at it's base level, it is. You don't have to optimize damage to tank beyond knowing your enmity combos. However, those tanks that are dedicated to the job and want to get more out of it have a lot of room to push for damage, learn how to squeeze in periods in DPS stance while MTing, and so on. In my mind, it's a solid enough compromise and ultimately probably good for keeping tanks available for content.

[Reynhart]

Care to explain how it's a contradiction? SE wants tanking to be approachable, and at it's base level, it is.

I don't think it works to make "serious tanking" solely focusing on DPS, because it puts all tank in a bottleneck.
We should have more ways of improving so that each player can pick the tank that match their playstyle.