Fixing Tank's Invulnerability Abilities Thread

[InfiniDragon]

The outlier here is Holm, we all know it. That move needs to be in line with the others at higher CD timer, even if it means making it longer due to no more rooting you.

The alternative would be lowering the CD on the others, but I think SE is trying to avoid having the death defying moves just negate busters. Living also needed to be changed, I think between 30-50% of the HP needing to be restored would be fine, and add regen to all DRK's attacks during it so they can actively help themselves.

[Cabalabob]

To me holmgang and hallowed are fine, representing the 2 ends of the spectrum, high cd high safety vs. Low cd low safety.

Living dead is an inferior holmgang and now superbolide is an inferior hallowed. This is where it gets silly, why should these tanks have inferior versions? If LD was just a 10 second holmgang with 5 min recast, that’s fine, if superbolide had a 5 min cd, also fine. The power of the move needs to match the recast timer and it just doesn’t for these moves.

[ForteNightshade]

People really need to stop emphasising the supposed risk of Holmgang. The chances of you dying are extremely low because you'll only ever use it on a tank buster. Any healer who isn't asleep should already be preparing to heal you since they know busters hurt. Yes, yes, there are dumb healers who don't pay attention, but that can be said of every job. The benefits of Holmgang far exceed any risk. A prime example of how absurdly powerful it is can be seen in Godka, where Warrior is the only tank who can invuln three out of five busters. It utterly trivializes one of Godka's mechanics.

Frankly, one could argue all four invulns need an even longer CD than they currently have—essentially making them a one use per fight outside maybe Ultimate. If nothing else, Holmgang needs to be 5min, especially not that you can use Equilibrium freely. That's a 20-30k (currently) heal. This allows WAR to literally Tetra themselves—something DRK and GUN have no answer for.

[Kalise]

I'd probably do something along the lines of:

Holmgang - 6s duration - Can't go below 1HP - Additional Effect: Forces Enemy to attack you for the duration (Basically like a Taunt from other MMO's) - 240s CD

Living Dead - 10s duration - Can't go below 1 HP. Damage that would otherwise cause you to go below 1HP instead creates a shield that absorbs healing for the amount of damage prevented. If this shield remains at the end of the duration, you die. - Additional Effect: Increases healing received by 30% - 300s CD

Superbolide - 8s duration - Cannot take damage. Reduced to 1HP. Additional Effect: Refreshes the CD of Aurora - 300s CD

Hallowed Ground - 10s duration - Cannot take damage - 360s CD

Basically, streamline the CD's so they're closer to each other and put some additional effects onto some. Now the biggest difference in CD is 2 minutes (Between WAR and PLD) but the rest are +/- 60s so they're more on par.

Warrior gets some extra utility in that instead of having mostly redundant Binds, that they instead get forced taunt for the duration which can give them some utility to "Tank Swap" just to soak a TB with Holm. It also fits the theme of "Holmgang" better (Which is a ancient Norse duel). It gets a lower CD than other TB's at the cost of lower duration.

Dark Knight basically gets Purgatory from WoW DK's. Where instead of needing to be healed 100% of their max health (Therefore being penalized for having higher HP pool) they instead only need to be healed for the overkill damage, this allows them to do things like use TBN to help minimize the amount of overkill damage as well as improving as their health pool increases and so the amount of overkill damage from an attack decreases. To add a little extra to the mix, give them increased healing taken so that even less healing is necessary to save them, also without this dispelling the skill itself, meaning they can get full 10s (Well, more like 9s) of hits that bring them below 1HP so long as they get enough healing.

Gunbreaker gets not a ridiculous CD for being literally worse Hallowed Ground. Also, some extra self synergy with the Aurora refresh, allowing them to use the skill even if it was on CD from a prior use. Thus allowing them to tick up their own HP over the duration.

Hallowed Ground just gets a reduced CD to fall more in line with other invulns. No other additions are necessary as it's already very strong as is.

[Kreyd]

My idea follows simple rules:

Short duration = short cooldown.
Long duration = long cooldown.
Strong effect = strong drawback

Holmgang - duration: 6s, cooldown: 180s, effects: invunerable, drawback: none
Living dead - duration: 10s, cooldown: 300s, effects: invunerable, received increased healing during duration, drawback: dies if not healed to X% of full live
Superbolide - duration: 8s, cooldown: 240s, effects: invunerable, immune to dmg, drawback: hp gets set to 1 at activation.
Hallowed ground - duration: 10s, cooldown: 420s, effects: invulnerable, immune to dmg, drawback: the drawback is the +120s on cooldown in comparison to living dead

As you can see, all the cooldowns are duration x 30s. (except for hallowed ground)

Holmgang has the weakest effect, since it only makes you invulnerable, so it got no further drawback.
Living dead also makes you invulnerable and you receive increased healing, so the drawback is the possibility of dying.
Superbolide makes you immune to dmg, but sets your hp down to 1 at the start.
Hallowed ground doesn't have a drawback, but it got +120s on cooldown.

I know it doesn't fix all the things people address like "LD is the only one that can kill you." or "WAR can cheat too many mechanics because of the low cooldown.", but it's the most balanced thing I can come up with.

[Kaedan]

Living Dead needs the "not die" requirement to be healed 50% of HP, not 100%.

Superbolide needs it's cooldown lowered to at most 300 seconds.

[whiskeybravo]

snip

Indeed, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Too scared to change Hallowed, too scared to change Holmgang, and also apparently too scared to listen to last 3 years of DRK feedback lol

If they are in fact removing the bind & target requirement from Holmgang then I suppose it's worthy to reconsider it's CD. Yes it has the superior recast now but it's simply not as flexible as the others regardless of how you slice it, the most obvious for me is that it was practically unusable for large dungeon pulls. It's still not a meaningful duration for dungeons, but at least now maybe we won't get rooted in aoe. Additionally, since we've had all our fluff mitigation taken away I imagine it'll see more use.

From a raid perspective, planned LD usage isn't really an issue anymore than Holmgang. But much like how unusable Holmgang is/was for dungeons, LD is borderline unusable there as well. Removing or adjusting the healing requirement is mainly a QoL adjustment more than it is asking for anything to be buffed, but if they aren't going to remove it then the cooldown does indeed need to be adjusted.

I don't particularly like the suggestion of making them all equal cooldowns of 7 or 5 mins or whatever, because - all else being equal - people are still going to gravitate towards the one perceived as the strongest. So all the effects would have to be the same, too. They need to have their own advantages and disadvantages and cooldown & duration should properly reflect that. Perhaps one of the problems holding them up on LD is the 20 sec duration, 10 sec to die and 10 sec to be rescued. It's a fairly long invulnerability but it can also be cut short with quick heals, or of course not proc at all with too many heals. A longer cooldown in light of such duration would make sense on the surface, but it doesn't play out that way in reality. Hallowed by comparison you always get 10 sec regardless. Holmgang you always get 6. GNB will always get 8. Maybe they can find some middle ground here to re-consider that DRK isn't always enjoying a 20 sec window on his CD, or the 10-sec invulnerability window, and that it's simply not an advantageous cooldown in all situations because of the way it actually functions. I mean, if you get one or 2 of these a fight they better be worthwhile, right? They are supposed to be OUR ULTIMATE SKILLS.

Cooldown for Living Dead needs to be reduced, or the effect needs to be adjusted to compensate for actually having as long of a cooldown as it does. Period. I don't have any great suggestions to offer but it's pretty obvious that if they don't do something that DRK will be doomed for the 2nd expansion in a row. And it's supposed to be the poster boy for this one lol

[Dualblade]

As a non-raider I don't really have a lot of ideas.

Hallowed Ground is kinda OP, but there would be riots if it was changed to much. Its longer CD though seems fine though I'd prefer at 360s instead.

Holmgang, I don't play WAR much and it seems fine enough to me. At most a slightly longer CD for it would be the only thing it would need. Or for WARs to lose a different defensive option to make its increased use more important but I don't like that idea.

Superbolide: Reduce its CD to 300s and its fine.

Living Dead: I know a lot of people want it changed but I honestly love the differences it has in relation to the other tanks. I think the best thing to do is have Walking Dead give a 20% damage reduction as well as causing all actions done by the Dark Knight heal them until they reach full health or die. It'll give a bit of relief on the healers and depending on how much the healing does could even let the Dark Knight do it completely on their own atleast in their burst windows.

[TouchandFeel]

Some off-the-cuff thoughts on bringing the invulnerables more in line with each other focusing on just duration and recast tweaks except for Living Dead.

Holmgang simply needs a longer recast time and it should be changed from 180s to 240s. To compensate for the longer recast, the duration should be increased slightly from 6s to 8s, not much but enough to maybe catch an extra auto attack or to provide that slight timing cushion.

Living Dead just needs to be redone. I understand Yoshi-P's desire to have it be "unique" due to "job identity" but you can still have that without it working the way it currently does.
Here is a rework off the top of my head.
Rise Again - recast 360s - duration 8s
If your HP drops to 0 while under the effect of Rise Again, instead of being KO'd you gain the effect of Risen
Risen - duration 8s
Your HP cannot be reduced below 1 and heals you upon activation.
Cure potency: 1200
Basically the same as Living Dead without the excessive death penalty, a small self-heal added in and an increased recast and shortened durations to compensate for the other buffs to the ability. Just something I thought of on the spur of the moment. By no means perfect but it shows how easy it would be to redo the ability but keep the general "unique" feel of it for the purpose of "job identity".

Superbolide can have it's effects stay the same but have it's duration increased from 8s to 10s and it's recast dropped to 360s.

Hallowed Ground can have it's effect stay the same but have it's duration reduced from 10s to 8s. Recast stays at 420s.

[ValentineSnow]

Well, apparently when asked about living dead Yoshi said he didn't want to change it because "job identity".

So let's look at these moves and think about what would fit each jobs identity.

PLD and WAR, I think their effects fit them well.
Hallowed ground, complete mitigation, PLD is the shield wall, complete mitigation makes sense.
Holmgang, you can't die, WAR has always been about self healing, so having the ability to not drop below 1hp and just be able to heal itself up just fits.

So DRK and GNB, these don't fit. So let's think about these jobs identity.

Gonna start with GNB, it basically got a gimped hallowed ground. How does that fit it's identity? It looks to me based on their kit, they're kind of setup as a barrier tank focused more on party support. So, simple adjustment. Superbolide: reduce your HP to 1 and render yourself impervious to most damage, party members within range gain a barrier equivalent to HP consumed.

I think the main issue with GNB's invuln, aside from being gimped hallowed, is that it means the healers have to focus on the tank because they're dropping to 1 HP. So if it made it so that the rest of the party was protected so the healers ONLY had to focus on the GNB, I feel like that would balance it out somewhat.

On to DRK, living dead is just brokenly bad and it boggles my mind that it hasn't seen ANY adjustment since it's release. To me, this move needs a ground up rework or complete replacement. So first, let's looks at DRKs identity.

DRK's lore is that it struggles with its darkside for power, the darkside wanting to take over. I think living dead could represent that perfectly. When you pop living dead, your MP is restored to full and you no longer take HP damage, but MP damage instead (since MP represents your darkness), but you don't take direct MP damage (a 50k buster won't instantly reduce your 10k MP to 0 MP), instead you take a set amount of MP damage per hit, so every hit would reduce your MP by 1k for example. This would mean you could take 10 free hits assuming you don't spend or restore MP in that time.

I feel this would be a fair compromise between DRK's lore and it's gameplay as a tank, giving it's own unique identity while giving it an effect that it can manage by itself. It would also give DRK some nuance to it's invuln skill, letting you decide if you want to spend extra MP on damage or hold back and recover MP while the effect is up.

So you may have noticed I didn't mention any recasts or durations. That's because I think they should all be 5min recast and 10s duration. Tank cooldowns have been really homogenised with this expansion, all having rampart, all having a 2min 30% mitigation, all having a short CD mitigation. So why not do the same for invulns? The effects would be the only thing that varies based on the jobs identity but they would all be 5min recast and 10s duration.