Preventing homogenization in tank mitigation

[Tribezer0]

While tanks in the game in Shadowbringers have probably all been at their most balanced and viable in all raid encounters as they have ever been. I feel like a lot of people can agree that from a mitigation standpoint, things are all starting to feel very much the same and the homogenization between the jobs is really starting to become apparent.

So I thought maybe the community could brainstorm some potential styles of mitigation that could at the end of the day be easily balance, while still providing unique playstyles separate from each other...

I'll start off with some suggestions, but for the most part I don't plan on getting too specific on percentages and potencies. More or less I just want to get ideas out there for tank playstyles that would fit the class fantasy of each tank best.

My first thought is to break all the tanks into two categories and base their mitigation off their category. Tanks with heavy OGCD (Gunbreaker & Dark Knight) and tanks with fewer OGCD (Paladin & Warrior). Due to weaving mitigation in with your normal DPS rotation being such a major factor, I think a lot of people might agree that the tanks with a heavy amount of OGCDs in their rotation should not be having to rely much on using 2 cooldowns at a time due to their kit already being so busy. While PLD and WAR have much more flexibility to have opportunities to double weave in their mitigation. If SE made no changes to tanks other than follow this approach I think a lot of the gripes with clipping on tanks would be solved.


Paladin

Paladin's class fantasy has always been the tank who can cure, and the tank who steps between the party and danger. So I think POA is a great class fantasy skill while Clemency is lacking since it is almost never used. Making clemency an OGCD insta cure (perhaps with charges) would not only play into class identity more but also give PLDs a chance to double weave the cure in with Divine Veil, allowing them to proc their own veil and relying less on other group members. In fact Veil could also be turned into a healing skill or a weaker shield + heal to lean more into Paladin's healing identity. Intervention while obviously a strong skill in its incoming version could lean more into the Paladin identity by instead sharing the damage with the target (which I realize could be an OP type skill but could be more or less adjusted with percentage values).

Warrior

Warrior has always been the stand your ground and heal via damage tank. I think the self-healing via damage is covered well already. However, I think the warriors self mitigation tools should be different as in they are longer cooldowns with small percentage of mitigation that then increase the percentage of mitigation greatly towards the end of its duration. Essentially rewarding warriors who know in advance when upcoming tank busters are. And for anyone suggesting this may be too difficult, Earthy Star already exists.

Dark Knight

Outside of TBN I feel like Dark Knight would be the master of pain redirection by turning damage into beneficial effects. Sorta like how TBN is now, but unlinking it from their damage output is key. Dark Knight are also the yang to Paladin so a damage proc'd group shield would be a great form of mitigation highlighting their opposition. Also, a lot of people want Salted Earth gone... but I think we could save it. First of all remove all potency from it, add on a percentage of mitigation when standing inside the bubble. Then turn Salt & Darkness into a short mitigation boost or a heal in order to play on the bonus for proper timing route SE is taking. Finally to make TBN in line with the newer tank skills and give it synergy with Living Dead.... instead of proc'ing Dark Arts, have it proc a HOT or heal that can help cure out of living dead. I know it goes against my initial statements of Dark Knight needing less double weaving mitigation skills but this is better than nothing at this point.

Gunbreaker

Honestly I am pretty dry on ideas on how to approach the Gunbreaker class identity via mitigation but I am curious to hear what others suggest.

Other Mitigation Styles

Debuff Mitigation - Drop users max hp temporarily but provide massive mitigation boosts.
Proximity Mitigation - Provide buffs to single party members or whole party based on different ways of positioning and distance. (ie 15% witin 6 yalms, 10% within 10 yalms, 5% within 20 yalms)
Sharable Damage - Sharing damage with a party member or applying a percentage of party wide damage to self (with mitigation).
Dome Mitigation - Just like healer bubble but for tanks. Could play with different effects like mitigation percentage divided between players inside the bubble. (ie 20% for 1 player, 15% if 2, 10% 3 and up).
Spread-able Mitigation - Being able to take a tank buster and spread the damage amongst other players or whole party.

Anyways, I wrote a ton more than I originally planned on but I think you get the idea I was aiming for. I am sure plenty of what I listed will get criticized but overall I just wanted to get fresh ideas out there and get a conversation started. There are tons of ways SE could make tanks play differently and still manage to keep them on equal grounds. I am curious to see what other styles people here come up with.

[347SPECTRE]

You can edit your initial post to make it longer than the original limit.

[VictoriaLuv]

Gunbreaker got a super busted migation ew. only only got socks for chrismas was darkwar

[AziraSyuren]

Making DRK the master of pain reduction would be doing DRK mains a huge favor after all these years of making the job worse or not changing it at all.

[Tribezer0]

Gunbreaker got a super busted migation ew. only only got socks for chrismas was darkwar

Agreed but we already got threads talking about that. I wanted to focus on how we can make tanks feel different from one another.

[Valknut]

I wish they would have went the healer route with tanks, just split the down the middle. ATM it seems like PLD and GNB just get everything, WAR gets a lot of everything and many things that should belong specifically to DRK.

Honestly, adding GNB was the mistake. HW didn't have great tank balance either, but they did have tank identity. If PLDS would have got an AOE combo, and higher dmg it would have been pretty damn tight race. Now we have DPS tank = GNB the best Off tank = PLD and 2 useless choices with 0 identity DRK and WAR.

[Aluja89]

I wish they would have went the healer route with tanks, just split the down the middle. ATM it seems like PLD and GNB just get everything, WAR gets a lot of everything and many things that should belong specifically to DRK.

Honestly, adding GNB was the mistake. HW didn't have great tank balance either, but they did have tank identity. If PLDS would have got an AOE combo, and higher dmg it would have been pretty damn tight race. Now we have DPS tank = GNB the best Off tank = PLD and 2 useless choices with 0 identity DRK and WAR.

What does having a new class have anything to do with homogenized mitigation tools?

It was going to happen with or without GNB. They simply took the easy way out, same with gap closers.

[Tribezer0]

What does having a new class have anything to do with homogenized mitigation tools?

It was going to happen with or without GNB. They simply took the easy way out, same with gap closers.

If they were more creative with their toolkits it should have no impact. But they literally gave DRK and GNB identical raid wide mitigation because they refuse to get creative with mitigation. DRK just got the crappier version that can not be brought to 2 of the 3 ultimates.

[Cabalabob]

I think the ship has sailed on tanks getting unique mitigation. I like the idea, I just think it’s too late.

PLD to me worked well in stormblood, lacking personal mitigation in favour of group mitigation, intervention to support the MT with the ability to give up their personal mitigation to enhance it further and then using cover as their go to cooldown where other tanks would have to do a swap so they won’t need that personal mitigation anyway. I hear a lot of people say they feel like PLD should be the defacto MT because it has a shield. But I point out to them if you look at classic FF titles, how does a PLD protect their party? Do they take aggro? No, they cover them. Provoke and taking aggro has always been the job of the WAR, while the PLD provides support mitigation.

On the same note I liked the idea of the WAR being more about generating large aggro and rather than mitigation it would focus on just having a huge HP pool. I always think they overcompensated in ARR when it came to WAR, the change to holmgang letting them prevent themselves from dropping below 1HP was enough. They didn’t need the change to vengeance or inner beast, it could have just been a tank that focused on keeping aggro and staying alive (with support from the PLD).

DRK I think could have been a drain based tank. In FFXI DRK was essentially a melee job that could use dark magic, it had a line of spells that absorbed enemy stats to buff their own, this would have been a great concept to build on for a tank iteration of DRK, absorb strength to lower enemy damage dealt, absorb vitality to reduce damage taken, drain to self heal, dread spikes to absorb damage taken as HP and blood weapon to drain HP with every attack. They also had other dark magic like bio that lowered enemy attack power, this could have been a full uptime DoT similar to WARs old storm’s path. They also had some moves like scarlet delirium that increase their damage dealt based on how much damage they took from the next attack, this could have been reworked into a mitigation tool that decreased your damage taken more after a big hit.

GNB could have been an evasion and parry tank. I know people cringe at the sound of that but if the game had evolved in a different direction it could have worked, look at ninja in FFXI. It could have had moves that allow it to dodge 50% of the time, so rather than mitigating damage consistently it would just negate damage half the time. Abilities that allow it to force a parry, abilities that allow it to guarantee a dodge. Similar to WAR it would be a tank that focuses on keeping aggro and staying alive with the help of the support tanks like PLD and DRK.

[Duskane]

Gunbreaker got a super busted migation ew. only only got socks for chrismas was darkwar

Bloodwhetting is way better than Heart of corundum