Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Shurrikhan]

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1. Tenacity and Piety

Tenacity being a subpar stat is due to lack of granular damage. Against the instances of damage we actually receive, there is virtually no chance that Tenacity can save a heal or protect against what would otherwise kill you. Not dying is as much a "test of the tank's ability to survive" without Tenacity as it is with. The stat is simply of inappropriate design in the context of XIV's damage in raid settings. Piety, similarly, suffers from the oversight that (1) MP regeneration is overabundant because most players don't want to be over-dependent on any given stat just to be able to perform actions and (2) it has no other use than the usually superfluous niche of MP regeneration. Turn it into a hidden resource system that is consumed based on %HP damage that would otherwise have been taken and restored over time (while offering proportionately less of its passive mitigation as it recharges) and voila, you'd have a stat that can actually do something. Though, you'd either then be crippling dependent on it or will have simply traded out SCH/AST shields and/or a single CD mistake for it.

2. DPS checks only as short burst mechanics, and never with an impact across multiple mechanics.

Removing any lasting impact of how well a party handles a given mechanic, as to have continued consequence over the mechanics to come, only leads to haphazard design and incongruity.

• Mechanic Type 1: Quality of performance only partly matters in this first mechanic because one need only dodge; they can just as optimally touch no keys except WASD and Duty Action.
• Mechanic Type 2: Quality of performance only partly matters in the next mechanic because one need only damage; you can stand in as many AoEs as you need in order to focus on your rotation.
• Mechanic Type 3: Quality of performance actually matters to this last mechanic because it has both damage and survival requirements. You must dodge or you will almost certainly die hereafter and you must deal damage or all will die at the end of the mechanic.

Hard enrages simply allow any mechanic to be a soft Type 3, allowing consequences to be carried over and recovered against without entirely removing said consequence. Took an unnecessary vulnerability stack? Well, now a healer is going to have to shield you specifically so you can survive the next mechanic. That in turn will cost healer DPS, which in turn means your requirements just got higher.

I don't understand how people keep mistaking that for some sort of flawed system only to then ask for the very things hard enrages already provide and which the removal of hard enrages would in turn remove. Hard enrages encourage survival. Hard enrages encourage damage. They just allow you to perfect your performance over time without smashing your head against one particular mechanic at a time, all while ensuring that by the time you can complete the fight, you feel like you deserved it, i.e. that you had a decent handle on the mechanics involved.

3. Alleged terrain-based issues with Twister as precedent for removing any and all raid environments that aren't flat circles or rectangles.

The Twisters issues were due to an entirely separate and well documented bug. No one dealt with Twisters while standing on the palm heel. The heel was only used to exploit the firepatches. Bug aside, the combination of the two mechanics was technically easier before they flattened out the map.

4. Renaud adds allegedly necessitating Ranged dps as precendent for removing all kiting and similar special mechanics from fights.

Across ARR, Ranged were already considered necessary for their access to Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon, so I don't see why such a requirement would suddenly have broken the camel's back here. That being said, I don't believe it was necessary. I'd cleared several times before the Echo buffs in a DRG, MNK, MNK, BLM party. We just had the boss move clockwise or counterclockwise as the Renaud approached and had the SCH Aetherial Manipulation taxi the BLM. Stone handled the rest with ease. The other MNK and I didn't even lose GL over the Shriek mechanic. It required some creative thinking compared to simply having the Bard take it and Shadowbind, but it was entirely doable. And I liked the fight more for that very fact. Could we please stop pretending that something is critically flawed just because it variably asks a bit more ingenuity for the playerbase?