Invulns: Problems and Solutions

[Lyth]

Invulns are a problem.

In essence, they allow you to negate either a tankbuster or group mechanic. Each tank has the capability of doing this roughly two to three times per fight. They're much too accessible.

At the same time, invulns are one of the remaining flavour differences between tank (even if certain invulns, like Living Dead, are terribly designed). They also create dramatic moments where you can try to 1v1 a boss down in the last few seconds to either stall a wipe or get a clutch clear on the encounter. And when every job has a limited number of actions, nobody wants to have an action slot dedicated to an ability that can only be used once per fight.

So how do we keep invulns in check?

If I'm to be realistic, the solution that is most likely to be successful is to simply remove invulns from the game. A part of me very strongly wants to see this happen, even if only to put an end to Living Dead.

There is an alternative solution, though. Make invulns into actual ultimate abilities: i.e. Personal Limit Breaks, with their own gauge. There are several advantages to this:
- They're no longer actions. So even if you can use them only once in an encounter, it doesn't feel like a wasted slot.
- You can control access to them on a fight-by-fight basis. If you only want one invuln use in a given fight, slow down the rate of generation.
- Decision-making around invulns becomes more complex when it is gauge driven instead of recast driven.
- You can remove a lot of the really bad drawbacks from them (i.e. Living Dead) and let them feel different in positive ways, instead of negative ones.

You could do something similar for raises on healers as well, such that we don't have access to unlimited numbers of raises.

Either way, I'd like to see invulns be addressed. They're too strong in their present implementation. Thoughts?

[Lucy_Pyre]

Non-issue. Invulns are completely fine as is. Thread is just a thinly veiled "I hate LD so every other tank should lose their special button too" thread.

[ItMe]

I think it'd be easier if they just added something you'd need an invuln for. That way you don't have it available for whatever mechanic you wanna cheese.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The invulns are not the problem; the fight design is.

If a mechanic that can be cheesed by invulns only comes up once every 210 seconds or more every single tank comp can cheese it with their 2 invulns. Those types of mechanics need to appear more often than once every 120 seconds for tank invuln cheese not to be a viable tactic.

[Lyth]

..

Sure, you can make tankbusters happen more frequently. My point here moreso is that if invulns were on a personal LB gauge, then fights could be designed such that your invuln only shows up when the fight designer wants you to have access to it, much like the group LB works.

...

I think the point here is that if invulns were less accessible, the rest of your defensive kit would matter a whole lot more. So you'd have to actually ration your defensive cooldown use to survive.

[Kabooa]

There is no short way to go about this, but I'll give it a shot.

The primary reason we divide up into archetypes / roles / 'classes' is so that we divide up responsibility, particularly into packages that complement each other and focus on a particular area of the game.

It is about creating packages that provide an individual the most interaction in what they find fun and the least amount of interaction in what they don't.

This means that anything that is put into the package that actively takes away from the rest is a problem. I don't think that's controversial.

However, deciding what each "Package" consists of is where there will be disagreements.

Edit: Turns out there is a really short way to go about it.

Replace them with Super-States, in which the Super States are temporary phases of high durability with an offensive pay off. More interactive and it satisfies "DaMaGe Is KiNg".

That was way easier than writing an essay.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Sure, you can make tankbusters happen more frequently. My point here moreso is that if invulns were on a personal LB gauge, then fights could be designed such that your invuln only shows up when the fight designer wants you to have access to it, much like the group LB works.

At that point Invulns might as well not exist or exist only as a duty action.

I think the point here is that if invulns were less accessible, the rest of your defensive kit would matter a whole lot more. So you'd have to actually ration your defensive cooldown use to survive.

Right now every tank has more than enough cooldowns to handle a 110% max hp tank buster every 25 sec or a 150% max hp tank buster roughly every 60 secs even without the invulns thanks to their 25s cooldown (Sheltron/HoS/TBN/Raw Intuition), 90s Rampart and 120s 30% (Sentinel, Vengeance, Shadow Wall and Nebula).

Limiting the Invulns wouldn't change this.

The Invulns get problematic when they get used instead of the other defensive cooldowns so that other mechanics can be ignored. Invulns get used to negate the need for a tank swap, tether swap or stack on the tank mechanic. Those are the mechanics that need to come more than every 2 minutes not just simple tank busters.

[Nefimmyr]

Doesn't PLD already have to do that as it lacks personal cooldowns out of the 4 tanks? As well as the other tanks to some degree. So that notion seems unnecessary, especially since they've removed a lot of mitigation skills from Stormblood and previous xpacs so tanks universally have fewer to each job they already ration out. Each "spammy" mitigation they do have even comes with a downside or limitation inherently: Sheltron uses Oath gauge, limiting you to 2 in a row at a time; Heart of Stone is the weakest as far as protection; The Blackest Night costs 3000 mp, which you only can pull of 3 ideally before bottoming out your MP (capped at 10000); and is a WAR uses Raw Intuition, it costs a usage of Nascent Flash and to use Nascent Flash costs a usage of Raw Intuition.

[Absurdity]

Doesn't PLD already have to do that as it lacks personal cooldowns out of the 4 tanks? As well as the other tanks to some degree. So that notion seems unnecessary, especially since they've removed a lot of mitigation skills from Stormblood and previous xpacs so tanks universally have fewer to each job they already ration out. Each "spammy" mitigation they do have even comes with a downside or limitation inherently: Sheltron uses Oath gauge, limiting you to 2 in a row at a time; Heart of Stone is the weakest as far as protection; The Blackest Night costs 3000 mp, which you only can pull of 3 ideally before bottoming out your MP (capped at 10000); and is a WAR uses Raw Intuition, it costs a usage of Nascent Flash and to use Nascent Flash costs a usage of Raw Intuition.

Tank cooldowns are actually more abundant due to the relatively low tank damage and the very spread out tank busters. You pretty much always have your 30% or 20% ready for each tankbuster and your short, fast recast mitigation like Raw. So you don't really "need" invulns for a fight, it often just frees up mitigation for fluff damage.

[Lyth]

...

Thinly veiled attempt to derail thread. Also irrelevant to points made.