Thread: 3.1 PLD Changes

Originally Posted by Reynhart

I think "focuses" is a tricky word. Yes, it's the main goal of the tank, but it's also its most basic role. So, again, if you don't offer something else, you'll always be less interesting.

Mileage varies. I'm perfectly happy with tanking being about holding aggro and surviving hits. I'm also happy with utility being optional and not mandatory, since utility should never take away from your main role. Which means if you're a tank and happen to have heals, those heals have to come at an opportunity cost and be inconvenient enough to not intrude on what you're there to do. It's one of those things that come with being or leaning towards being hybrid (the latter being the case for PLD), hence why I have trouble understanding how people continue to struggle with the concept.

Technically, if Blind really affects the ability, it means that there is an Accuracy check. So, there is a slight chance that you could dodge the ability, even without Blind. Since most of physical abilities can be parried or blocked, we can assume that the parry/block check are rolled, and thus that the Accuracy check is not bypassed. If we never saw a Dodge on physical buster, maybe those buster have an accuracy bonus so high that you ensure 100% hit. This way, Blind could help mitigate lower hits, without trivializing tank busters.

Boss damage output is tuned around all its abilities, not just tank busters. Trivializing any major hit or ability would still be too much. Toying with accuracy in this case would get a pass if we were talking about dodging auto attacks, but auto-attacks from boss mobs don't really matter here the way they do in other games.

Since Titan seems to be a popular example, even if you're not trivializing (AKA entirely avoiding or negating) the damage from Mountain Buster, you also have stuff like Rock Buster and Tumult to worry about. And chances are the expected damage tanks take per the design involve those abilities, not just whether the tank survives Mountain Buster or not. Hence why trivializing ANY aspect of the fight outside of abilities that the raid has to react to is too much (imagine if for example, Pacification prevented Titan from using Tumult; that's a shit ton of raid damage you're trivializing over the course of the fight). It'd be another story if the fight had been designed so that, say, the raid had to absolutely interrupt every Landslide (which instead of a line ability would be something that covers the entire arena) in order to get the clear. Then the strategy prioritizes getting through phases and DPS (or whomever has the plentiful interrupts) interrupting what they need to interrupt in order to actually kill Titan.

Well, I wasn't really debating on your point. It just reminded me that PLD is the only tank whose most debuffs can be fully resisted after a while. So, even our situationnal utility is further weakened...

As I said, there is such a thing as leeway to prevent cheesing boss fights.