Is it Time for Active Mitigation?

[Jpec07]

So a number of the top threads in this forum have been describing a good bit of discontent with how tanking plays currently. It's become mindless, and the core functions of tanking (controlling enemies and surviving) have become trivialized by content design and job design. Indeed, those core functions of tanking have become so homogenized that, when you focus on them, there is no fundamental difference in how tanks accomplish them.

Where tanks DO have variety these days is in their DPS rotations, and how they accomplish their damage output--and in that design, SE has actually done a pretty good job at making them feel different. WAR is slow and steady, PLD has DoTs and has to do a bit of weaving, DRK has an interesting resource management system, and GNB is fast-paced and a bit spammy (from what I've heard - don't have that one up, yet).

For new tanks and for people who haven't played tanks because they thought it was intimidating, this design paradigm is probably a good thing. The focus is mostly on your rotation, and you don't really have to worry too much about whether or not you'll survive or whether or not you'll hold aggro. But for career tanks? For people who liked managing enmity and survivability? This paradigm is painfully dull.

This is an idea to fix that.

Back in my WoW days, when they launched Mists of Pandaria, they introduced a notion to tanking called Active Mitigation, which replaced the previous idea of gear-based mitigation and combat table coverage that had grown since Wrath. The gist of it was that, through your rotation and normal gameplay output, you would build up resources that you could then spend on mitigation--basically taking the design of Blood DKs and trying to make all tanks play in a similar fashion. To support this, they made it so that gear-based mitigation had diminishing returns, such that tanks would fundamentally take more damage, and need to use this new mechanic to survive. In theory, it was a decent idea, but in practice, it was a mess, and made tanking very broken for the classes that hadn't already employed such a system.

I honestly strongly dislike the notion of Active Mitigation, of having to do a specific dance just to survive in content, but I also know that I had a bad experience with it. WoW's implementation of Active Mitigation was and has been (to my knowledge) shaky at best, but I also know that there's a strong chance that such flaws are because the system was designed by Blizzard. To date, SE has done a very good job at making the game enjoyable, and I think that, if they tried their hands at adding something like Rotational or Active Mitigation into FFXIV, they could actually make it work.

Instead of having shared buttons for mitigation, each tank could have a unique method of mitigating incoming damage, which could be built around how the jobs play. Some of the jobs have a bit of this already, but making it more impactful, more relevant, more necessary, more engaging, and then expanding it to all of the tanks, would go a long way towards making tanking fun again.

What are your thoughts?

[shao32]

I don't consider they did a pretty good job on the dps department of the tanks when DRK and WAR are basically the same job on they core and just have a small diferent mechanic on top of that wich is WAR generating more fell cleaves and DRK throw all his oGCD every 60s and the job don't have any real resource management considerating they just load MP without overcap it and shoot it in a almost perfectly determinated amount of time to just load and shoot every min.

On topic idk how well that active mitigation system from wow was and work but i agree that having all tanks mitigating the same way it's pretty dull and would love if they reform and add extra effects to certain mitigation skills so feel more fresh and unique mitigate damage with each tank.

[MelinShoot]

I disagree with almost everything you said. For example: PLD and WAR have the same exact rotation. you do your main rotation, you hit your buffs, you do your special ability spam, in WAR's case it's fell cleave, in PLDs case it's holy spirit. Even with Royal Authority/Sword oath, it still feels the same. There are some minor use case differences between the two, but more or less they are mechanically the same. So similar that my PLD and WAR chotbars are setup identically. DRKs and GNBs are sort of similar, in that you have build-up and the you spam ogcds between your main rotation. Mitigation ways, DRK also has another difference from the other tanks, in that they have magic mitigation. (as in, does not affect physical damage) which makes DRK superior defensive-ways, but only sometimes. War also has a differing mechanic as it relies heavily on HP recovery and HP manipulation as mitigation tools. While the other classes have similar mechanics in them, none of them replicate what war can do with it's tools.

In heavensward Each tank had 3 variants to their combo. One mitigated damage, PLD physical, DRK magical, and WAR all damage. The fundamental problem of this was that *some* players would forgo that particular rotation in order to maximize damage, and then pin it on the healer for not mitigating properly. On DRK SQEX has mitigation tools side by side with DPS tools, making the player decide which is best at a given moment. (TBF a lot of ppl actually use DRKs stackable mitigation. that one worked real well) But if you keep down that path the tanks different enough from each other. If there was a tank dedicated to just that active mitigation idea. A basic rotation, and your ogcds were mitigation. It'd be different enough, and maybe just interesting enough, to be a competitively fun tank, as well as different.

With your active mitigation idea, we actually have an example of this outside of DRK, though it is based on MP instead of stacks. It's PLD's Clemency. By timing your clemency so that it goes off immediately after big damage does, you can save yourself from a lot of pain. (Is it optimal? no. But it's worthwhile to at least know how to use it.) It's what separates Big Deeps PLD from Raid Saver PLD. The flaw in SQEXs design philosophy. By making the content easy enough everybody could do it with enough dedication, the community tends to lean more towards DPS than not DPS. But every time they implement mechanics like these, it's at the cost of DPS.

[Absurdity]

I'd actually say that GNB is the only outlier with it's 30/60 seconds quick oGCD burst that needs some setup before execution.

PLD is "do your basic rotation (wether you have fight or flight changes nothing), press oGCDs and every 60 seconds you get to spam the same ability 5 times (or I guess in Shadowbringers it's 4 times and then another ability once)"
Warrior is "do your basic rotation, press oGCDs and every 90 seconds you get to spam the same button 5 times, also don't overcap on gauge"
DRK is "do your basic rotation, don't overcap on gauge or mp, press oGCDs and every 90 seconds you get to spam the same button 5 times, but with less impact than warrior"

Neither Delirium nor Inner Release require any setup, you just press the button when it's ready and I would argue that even PLD's MP cost is negligeable since you're always at full MP when Requiescat comes up as long as you do your basic rotation.

Technically all tanks in XIV already have active mitigation, you have to press an ability to mitigate damage for a set amount of time which requires you to know when high tank damage is going to happen. The active mitigation in WoW might as well be passive since damage is constantly high and you're trying to keep your mitigation rolling as much as possible, not all that different from earlier versions of the game where you just stacked defensive stats to have said mitigation at all times.

[Jpec07]

With your active mitigation idea, we actually have an example of this outside of DRK, though it is based on MP instead of stacks. It's PLD's Clemency. By timing your clemency so that it goes off immediately after big damage does, you can save yourself from a lot of pain. (Is it optimal? no. But it's worthwhile to at least know how to use it.) It's what separates Big Deeps PLD from Raid Saver PLD. The flaw in SQEXs design philosophy. By making the content easy enough everybody could do it with enough dedication, the community tends to lean more towards DPS than not DPS. But every time they implement mechanics like these, it's at the cost of DPS.

Clemency doesn't really count as active mitigation, though, because (1) it isn't really necessary to survive, and (2) it isn't exclusive to the PLD using it. Don't get me wrong; saving a group that's going south with some well-placed Clemency casts is one of the most satisfying things in the game, but it doesn't count as active mitigation. Now, could SE retool PLD such that self-casting Clemency becomes one of the most central components of its gameplay? Certainly, but I don't think that would really be that engaging.

Technically all tanks in XIV already have active mitigation, you have to press an ability to mitigate damage for a set amount of time which requires you to know when high tank damage is going to happen. The active mitigation in WoW might as well be passive since damage is constantly high and you're trying to keep your mitigation rolling as much as possible, not all that different from earlier versions of the game where you just stacked defensive stats to have said mitigation at all times.

Defensive cooldowns != active mitigation. The FFXIV model of mitigation centers entirely around ordering and managing your cooldowns, and in high-end content around stacking them appropriately, but that method of managing incoming damage is neither engaging nor fun. Most tanks do have some form of active mitigation in the form of self-healing based on certain attacks in their rotation, but it could be removed from the game and no one would notice.

To give an example of what I'm talking about, I'll describe how I remember Blood DK working the last time I played it (roughly - and my memory is shoddy af right now due to the state of the world at large). Over time, you slowly generated runes. Spending those runes gave you rune power, and you could then spend that rune power to create your Blood Shield, which was a massive shield that sat overtop your normal HP pool. A well-geared Blood DK could tank entire dungeons without needing healing once, and this was a big deal because healers didn't really have any oGCD heals (outside of an "ohshit" button or two). But the entire blood DK gameplay was built around the idea that, in order to survive the dungeon and do a good job at your role, you needed to pour everything into your Blood Shield and keep up as best as you could.

As it stands, there are a few clear obstacles that would need to be overcome in order for FFXIV to be able to entertain the notion of active mitigation as a design paradigm. Tanks would need far less passive mitigation and far fewer defensive cooldowns, healers would need to be nerfed, oGCD heals would basically need to be scrapped, and instances would need to be designed in such a way that tanks actually needed to care about incoming damage from mobs and bosses. Unfortunately, with the 2.5s GCD in this game, I'm not sure that such a design could actually work (WoW has the benefit of having a generally ~1s GCD, which makes the gameplay much more fast-paced).

[Absurdity]

Defensive cooldowns != active mitigation. The FFXIV model of mitigation centers entirely around ordering and managing your cooldowns, and in high-end content around stacking them appropriately, but that method of managing incoming damage is neither engaging nor fun. Most tanks do have some form of active mitigation in the form of self-healing based on certain attacks in their rotation, but it could be removed from the game and no one would notice.

To give an example of what I'm talking about, I'll describe how I remember Blood DK working the last time I played it (roughly - and my memory is shoddy af right now due to the state of the world at large). Over time, you slowly generated runes. Spending those runes gave you rune power, and you could then spend that rune power to create your Blood Shield, which was a massive shield that sat overtop your normal HP pool. A well-geared Blood DK could tank entire dungeons without needing healing once, and this was a big deal because healers didn't really have any oGCD heals (outside of an "ohshit" button or two). But the entire blood DK gameplay was built around the idea that, in order to survive the dungeon and do a good job at your role, you needed to pour everything into your Blood Shield and keep up as best as you could.

As it stands, there are a few clear obstacles that would need to be overcome in order for FFXIV to be able to entertain the notion of active mitigation as a design paradigm. Tanks would need far less passive mitigation and far fewer defensive cooldowns, healers would need to be nerfed, oGCD heals would basically need to be scrapped, and instances would need to be designed in such a way that tanks actually needed to care about incoming damage from mobs and bosses. Unfortunately, with the 2.5s GCD in this game, I'm not sure that such a design could actually work (WoW has the benefit of having a generally ~1s GCD, which makes the gameplay much more fast-paced).

I guess it depends on what you define as active mitigation. Is it a really low cooldown like feral druid's Ironfur? Because then we can take Heart of Stone or Raw Intuition. Is it no cooldown but resource cost like current blood DK's Bone Shield? Shelltron. A bit of both? Blackest Night.


As an example, protection warriors in WoW currently have two types of mitigation, Ignore Pain which absorbs 50% of the damage you take until a certain amount of damage has been absorbed (costs rage) and Shield Block which blocks 100% of all physical attacks for a few seconds (costs nothing, has 2 charges and a short cooldown). It is already very similar to the short mitigation we have on DRK and PLD, just with an even shorter cooldown.


What you remember sounds like Cata or MoP blood DK, can't quite remember which one but it wasn't exactly the most balanced. You were either a wet paper bag or overpowered to the point where as you mentioned, you didn't need a single heal. You generated blood shield just by using your runes on Death Strike which coincidentally was also your go-to rune spender for dps. It would be kinda like adding an absorb shield to warrior's Fell Cleave, it's something you press anyway just by playing your job.


If it's just part of the rotation you're doing anyway, like it was the case for blood DK, then I honestly think it wouldn't add more to the gameplay, because we'd still be doing the same thing we're already doing, just with slightly less control over when we want to mitigate.
And as you said, it would basically still require SE to change how most of combat currently works, increasing tank damage, reducing oGCD healing tools, basically what some healers have already been asking for.

[Alisto]

Adding an active mitigation system to tanks would, imo, make them more fun. At least for me xD Though I won't speak for other players, my DRK right now really just feels like a DPS with extra defenses. There's no...regular 'feedback' that lets me know I'm tanking and not DPSing. For healers, that 'feedback' in combat is having to pay attention to health bars and the wibblywobbliness of them when there's damage going out. DPS get pretty numbers and such, and to a degree one can tell when something dies faster.

That isn't to say DPS and healers don't have similar issues somewhere - but it seems tanks have gotten the short end of the stick. There's almost zero 'okay, what exactly is telling me, from moment to moment, how good a job I'm doing while tanking'? Outside of damage reduction cooldowns every tank has, there really isn't anything. Blood DK from WoW, imo, is the best example - you can very, VERY easily see and have a direct impact on your mitigation from moment to moment, from the way your health bar is wiggling, the barrier you generate, etc. With, say, DRK, I don't really feel like I have any sort of influence over what my health bar is doing from moment to moment - while I do have damage reduction cooldowns, those aren't really engaging to use - they're just there to make sure my healer isn't overwhelmed and they don't change what -I- am doing. It's just a 'dear god I hope my healer is paying attention'. And then I just get a watered down DPS rotation where I dump everything every so often and then go back to 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3...etc.

On another note - I think it's important to note the differences between (because I've played it recently I'm gonna use WoW >.>) blood DK and, again, DRK, and active and passive mitigation. Rotations exist. I really don't see FFXIV getting away from them in the future. If a game does come out with a truly dynamic way of doing that sort of thing, more power to them, but I think it's...oversimplifying to say it's something you get from doing what you'd be doing anyway. The difference is, imo, most easily seen when someone asks the question - what happens when you DON'T press the button? If a Blood DK doesn't press Death Strike, it's immediately noticeable - both to the healers because now their tank is getting chunked, and to the DK (hopefully) because they have impact on their tankability from moment to moment and now they are not doing The Thing(TM).

The lowest CD thing a DRK has that impacts their mitigation is...a minute? And you press it once and done. We can count Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Souleater, which takes..Frick, that's like 7.5 seconds? I think? But there's a difference between what is pressed and why it's pressed. I press HS -> SS -> Seater because the last one doesn't work without the previous too. There's no interactive system there I have to play with - it just doesn't work unless I press two other generic damage buttons first.

It's important to avoid oversimplification - Blood DK generates runic power with heart strike, which has interaction with the class's AoE skill. Death Strike, the dmg mitigation skill, has interaction with other skills (such as another AoE skill, Blood Boil, that can increase the healing). It has interaction with a buff the class has to maintain, Bone Shield, because it decreases the cost of Death Strike. And ALL of it - by virtue of impacting Death Strike - interacts with a 1min (ish) CD of Vampiric Blood, which gives a +healing% and more HP, so it directly empowers Death Strike.

THAT is the kind of synergy and interaction I at least am looking for in a tank. There's much more to it than just adding mitigation whatsits to something a class is already doing. They definitely aren't the same.

Edit: @ OP. Blizz definitely had some issues with their active mitigation ideas early on, though I do think they should get some credit for (relatively) successfully polishing it up over the years. Hope my ramblings have contributed somehow.

[Sarkhane]

Id even be down with making our spenders feed mitigations in a unique way for each class. Ex: Fell Cleave activates a passive mitigation (like say next few boss autos do 10% less damage) and feed our active mitigation like reducing the CD of equilibrium which would be become WAR more active mitigation . Itd be nice to see tanks more about controlling and mitigating the damage for the party and themselves, so the party can see/feel the damage smoothing between a good tank and a bad one.

[Absurdity]

I wouldn't be against that either, the question is if they want those aspects back in the game since they removed them in Heavensward, tanks were able to reduce the damage the boss does with a specific combo finisher.

[Jpec07]

I wouldn't be against that either, the question is if they want those aspects back in the game since they removed them in Heavensward, tanks were able to reduce the damage the boss does with a specific combo finisher.

I don't remember that being the case. As I remember it, tanks had an aggro combo and a damage combo, with PLD also having a DoT combo. WAR might have had something like what you're describing (I didn't really pick it up until just before 4.0), but I didn't think it was rotational.