Invulns: Problems and Solutions

[DWolfwood]

That can quickly turn the gameplay into a chore as well. Take ESO for example, you're constantly spamming abilties, like every 0.5 seconds constantly, either to keep up several buffs with different timers, several dots with different timers, spamming spells or magicka/stamina regen abilities all while spamming light or heavy attack at the same time. This might be more engaging than XIV for a while but you quickly get into handcramps territory and doesn't exactly require many braincells either because everything has such a low or non-existent cooldown.

I'm not saying to transfer XI gameplay to here.

What I'd like here if the rotation was simply replacing the DPS rotation with a tank rotation. No fewer or more button presses.

[Quintessa]

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

Because I'm tired of hearing complaints about it.

[Absurdity]

I'm not saying to transfer XI gameplay to here.

What I'd like here if the rotation was simply replacing the DPS rotation with a tank rotation. No fewer or more button presses.

Our dps rotations are already so basic that replacing them wouldn't give us more engaging gameplay, it would simply be the same as it is now just with us doing no dps whatsoever.


I did play WoW back when tanking was mainly about mitigating as much damage as possible and looking back at it it wasn't more engaging than XIV is, you stacked as much defense, block and parry as you could and spammed Sunder Armor and Shield Block. The thing that was a whole lot more engaging was everything around it. The scale of the raid, the 24-39 other people with you, the spectacle of it and the fact that your job, while extremely mundane, was important. If you died it was most likely the end for everyone else.

[DWolfwood]

It's actually entirely relevant; thus the "invulns are fine" bit. Because, well, invulns are completely fine. They're actually one of the things that most differentiates tanks in this game from a lot of other MMOs, because in all the MMOs I've played over the years I've almost never seen a "I can't die" button on tanks in others.

You should try XI, where they do differentiation much better. Invulns came from there, where they were referred to as "1-hr" CDs before they got buffed to be 30min CDs.

[Vyrerus]

You should try XI, where they do differentiation much better. Invulns came from there, where they were referred to as "1-hr" CDs before they got buffed to be 30min CDs.

They were originally 2hr abilities. And they weren't even all true invulnerability. Invincible didn't block magic. Perfect Dodge didnt' dodge magic. No idea about now though, with all the stuff you can get from Job Master skill tree enhancement.

My favorites were always Chainspell and Mighty Strikes. Chainspell was almost true invulnerability if you used it to cast defensive spells. Mighty Strikes went under the radar for a long time cause people didn't believe that it affected weaponskills, which I never understood, because it was easily observable firsthand heh.

[DWolfwood]

They were originally 2hr abilities. And they weren't even all true invulnerability. Invincible didn't block magic. Perfect Dodge didnt' dodge magic. No idea about now though, with all the stuff you can get from Job Master skill tree enhancement.

My favorites were always Chainspell and Mighty Strikes. Chainspell was almost true invulnerability if you used it to cast defensive spells. Mighty Strikes went under the radar for a long time cause people didn't believe that it affected weaponskills, which I never understood, because it was easily observable firsthand heh.

oh yeah dang you're right. It's been so long since they buffed them that I forgot 2 hours, not 1 haha.

But that's what I mean though, Rune Fencer's ultimate blocked all magical incoming damage whereas PLD's blocked all physical, and unlike XIV, that actually means something in that game since there's different optimal setups for different bosses and all.

But yeah, once they came out with Rune Fencer, the endgame tank balance really found its stride imo. Ninja and Thief are great to see how they work, but with the subjob system in place, you could just go /NIN49 and be good to go as RUN or PLD if you needed shadows.

[Lyth]

It feels like invulns have become a progressively more focal part of mitigation strategy with each expansion. I'm not sure if that's because there's less to mitigate, or because we're more inclined to swap.

[Hierro]

You know what I like about the current tier? Tank busters aren't the only thing that use cooldowns. First phase of E8S, for example, is an awesome instance of where using your ramparts and 30%s are encouraged for auto attacks because they hit pretty hard. You -could- forgo using them, and you wouldn't die per se, but mitigating them is much appreciated and does have rewards for rDPS. You could also look at the add phase of E7S for another such instance.

Point is, invulns becoming the de-facto solution to tankbusters doesn't have to be a bad thing if you look at the context of a fight. Now, a fight like E6S, on the other hand, yeah that is very much so lacking in damage both in terms of autos and tank busters, but w/e, you can't have it all especially for a lower tier fight.

[ForteNightshade]

If we would just use them on cooldown you could holmgang the 3rd buster if you used it on the 1st but this would mean you 100% have to share the 4th which means less mitigation for Black Smokers.

Honestly, Leviathan sort of hurts your argument. Black Smokers does comically low damage for a pseudo-tank buster. A healer needs to slap little more than a Regen and you'll be fine. Saving your invuln for it is a waste unless you have nothing better to use it on. Which segues into the actual problem this expansion: tanks aren't taking nearly enough damage. Idol of Darkness may be even worse than Leviathan for how pathetic the outgoing damage is. Even Shiva, despite having a reasonably tight DPS check, deals surprisingly little damage to tanks. This is what has made invulns feel more overpowered than they have in the past, Holmgang notwithstanding. We simply have too many options between tanks and healers nowadays. And the bosses aren't being designed to compensate but rather made easier.

That all said, I get your intended meaning. Invulns can be interesting, and I generally prefer them staying as is. I think the root of the problem is more the lackluster damage we're seeing in Shadowbringers. If bosses had more mechanic that "scared" the party, invulns become more of a decision. "Do we want to ignore mechanic x or y?" At the moment, you just use them on nearly everything.

[Vyrerus]

Black smokers comically low damage

I mean, Spilling Wave deals roughly 23000 damage per wave without mitigation, and each tank gets hit by these 12 times. When it was new that was like between 1/6th and 1/5th of your total HP per hit, and so it was enough to kill both tanks twice over with no healing/mitigation. Even with 50% mitigation you'd still take your maximum HP in damage, in i450~i460ish gear., if you could keep that mitigation running the entire time, which you can't. If they sped up the interval any further the healers wouldn't be able to keep up with healing all of the DPS/themselves for dealing with the actual smokers while also keeping the tanks alive, without holding more oGCDs than they do already for that.

I mean, sure, it's more than manageable, but I wouldn't call it comically low.