Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

As you might have guessed, I also think that vampiric holy magic is an equally bad design decision,

But healing-bundled-on-offense is not inherently "vampiric". You're literally just taking one particular name for the mechanic and conflating it any and all attachable theme.

and largely comes down to the fact that if one tank has something, everyone wants it, and the dev team tends to indulge these demands to try to please everyone even at the cost of job identity.

...Like?

You could say the same for mitigation in general. You could say the same for discrete healing options-at-cost (which DRK once had via DA-AD, too). You could say the same for %healing taken increases (for which WAR had the highest total effect and average effect over time, but PLD had the strongest ability). You could say the same for flat current-and-maximum-HP increases. You could say the same for RNG-based mitigation (PLD built itself around it, then DRK). Even pure, flat shiel-- wait, no, no one else took anything like TBN to run with it.

So what is it about just self-healing bundled to certain attacks that's so wrong if it steps out of DRK's narrow box?

Thrill of Battle is just a kinder version of Last Stand. It thematically fits, and there's no damage to HP conversion involved. You're just increasing your capacity to shrug off damage. I also think that Wolverine style regeneration is fine for Berserker types as well. There's just no logical explanation for why a pure physical attacker should be able to use magical barriers or lifesteal.

While I'm no fan of barriers on WAR, per se, there is such a thing as physical damage-absorbing effects. They're just representations of the difference between "I can take a hit," and "I can take a hit so solidly I stifle its minor incoming status effect." That's the sole "not even going to flinch" element on Warrior; and you'll note they're pretty minor: a 400p shield on the EW upgrade to the on-demand, and on a raidwide for which they (overly, imo) favored parity over identity.

And sustaining oneself off adrenaline per Warrior's core theme is no more "vampiric" than is Second Wind.

There have been a couple of iterations of DRK which have specifically involved life steal, most notably FFT, which was the inspiration for PLD's Stasis Sword type spells, and FFXI, where Dread Spikes converted damage taken into HP. You don't need to go into an undead theme to do it (although they seem to have done this anyways with Living Dead).

Right, but 1-2 abilities like healing on Blood Weapon or via Dread Spikes do not in themselves make a necessary theme (nor were they, for that matter, chosen for this DRK), let alone necessitate that the job be the sole possessor of some capacity, chopping past and future job design at the knees wherever they may overlap.

Multiple jobs can be allowed self-healing, even on attacks. They needn't be nearly so thematically limited as you make out.

[Lyth]

...

Sure. And what is the lore mechanism by which a non-magical Warrior heals themselves on every attack? Or constructs a magical barrier around a party member that negates incoming damage? You can put whatever actions you like on any job, sure. But the execution of it tells a story of sorts. If you don't want to create the impression of a vampiric Warrior, then you need to convey whatever alternative explanation that you're offering through the animations and effects.

I don't think that self-sustain is a unique (or even necessary) tank concept. There are many non-vampiric ways that you can do it. But you have to tell that story through the animations.

Even take something standard and mandatory like mitigation. Mitigation doesn't always have to be fixed %DR. Perhaps excess healing over cap gets converted to temporary HP. Perhaps you have a flat damage shield barrier. Perhaps your %DR ramps up as you take more damage. Perhaps incoming damage gets delivered in a delayed fashion by being converted into a DoT. If you come up with something fun, why not make it a theme across the whole job? Shadow Wall, TBN, Oblation, and even Dark Force have a running visual theme across them featuring magical bubbles with inscriptions on them. That's great, but what if it was a consistent visual signifier of something like 'absorbs flat damage'?

Going in a different direction, the first DRK quest carries a vivid description of a Dark Knight, armor soaked in their own blood as well as the blood of their opponent, transforming itself into a twisted aura. Could you create a tank mitigation theme around that? Absolutely. Just develop it and expand on it in a consistent fashion through the skillset and animations. But when you start throwing in random vampiric effects, random barrier effects, random %DR effects without any real consistency, then there's no coherence to the job. That's what players are getting at here with 'identity'. What is the story that you're trying to tell?

There are plenty of directions that you can take individual jobs, but you have to have a clear idea in your head about the visual story that you want to tell through the job actions and animations.

[Lyth]

A quick search through your post history shows that even you consistently refer to WAR's 'self-healing by attacking enemies' as life steal. So I'm not sure what we're basing this new fictional explanation off of, even if you manage to successfully fabricate one just for the sake of the argument. If you want WARs that heal themselves by hitting things, that's perfectly fine with me. Perhaps every time they punch someone, they make their opponents drop potions, bandages, and medkits that you can pick up. But that should be part of the visual storytelling of the action itself.

Like I've said multiple times, I have no problem with Thrill of Battle. I actually think that it's thematically great and could easily be the basis of WAR's identity. I'm a bit iffy on Equilibrium, primarily because the naming choice is somewhat random. But you could convince me that perhaps it's something thematically similar to a Second Wind type effect. I just don't get the lifesteal bit. And there's nothing in the visual storytelling of the actions that explains it how a barbarian is capable of absorbing someone's life force, potency caps on life absorbed aside. You might as well give them sparkly spell casting and pretend that it's not holy magic. Er, that's, um... the physical manifestation of channeled rage, not magic! Maybe give them Bio Blaster while you're at it too! Oh, that's not poison coming out of a machinist's tool, that's, er... angry flatus! Good work.

HP boosts in this game are a functionally better version of flat damage shields, because they translate into a shield + heal. That's why Thrill is on a longer cooldown. You'd actually need to be careful to make sure that it's not too broken. That being said, I can tell you for a fact that players found comparing massive HP pools to be ridiculously good fun. And I think that designing jobs in ways that make them all individually feel fun to play should always be a priority. And that really comes down to identify the visual story that you want to tell through each job's ability set.

[Shurrikhan]

A quick search through your post history shows that even you consistently refer to WAR's 'self-healing by attacking enemies' as life steal.

Not consistently, no. But, yes I will call it that often enough, as shorthand, when those I'm talking to aren't purposely leveraging a rough term to conflate a mechanic with a motif. Just as "healing" doesn't necessarily make for a White Mage, Holy Priest, or pure-hearted, saintly oracle-mage, healing through offense doesn't necessarily make for a vampire. "Shielding", likewise, doesn't require a technomancer motif and sci-fi shield battery.

Perhaps every time they punch someone, they make their opponents drop potions, bandages, and medkits that you can pick up. But that should be part of the visual storytelling of the action itself.

It's. Literally. Right. There. Every bit as blatantly as Souleater. How is "I gutted this man from low to high, and did a spin-flip" any more a clear visual indicator of "I just sucked out this guy's lifeforce" than progressively increasing angry red glow, some backchanneling yellow energy on heals, etc., from one's strikes?

HP boosts in this game are a functionally better version of flat damage shields, because they translate into a shield + heal.

You do realize that shields likewise increase both your current and maximum HP, right? They don't convert HP into the shield. It goes... on top.

An 20k HP boost does not increase your maximum eHP at that moment by any more than a 20k shield. The shield just has the further benefit of preventing status effects, including knockback, if its applying damage is less than the shield value.

I'm a bit iffy on Equilibrium, primarily because the naming choice is somewhat random.

It makes sense less today; it was literally a matter of balancing throughput vs. sustain when it was made. The job was previously very much about trading out how to use Wrath stacks.

And there's nothing in the visual storytelling of the actions that explains it how a barbarian is capable of absorbing someone's life force.

They're not. It's not someone else's lifeforce. It's the Warrior own aether being stimulated.

That being said, I can tell you for a fact that players found comparing massive HP pools to be ridiculously good fun.

I literally just agreed to that.

And I think that designing jobs in ways that make them all individually feel fun to play should always be a priority.

I've never argued with this.

And that really comes down to identify the visual story that you want to tell through each job's ability set.

Which apparently will be ignored unless it falls into your rather narrow constraints:

"Is this job obviously magic (must use MP and have actual spells)? If not, it cannot have access to barriers or self-healing because all the lore put forward to say how and why should be held suspect" despite being in a game where all physical combatants, and indeed virtually all people, inherently channel aether within themselves to surpass normal limitations.


That's the issue at hand here. We do not need to restrict all seemingly "physical" jobs to the scraps of whatever mechanics the ostensibly "magic" ones leave behind in a world in which every person capable of taking a teleport or over level ~15 is habitually using aether manipulation to some extent. You may as well watch some Martial Arts B-movie and take offense at someone leaping a larger gap than is normally human could just because they're "not a wizard."

If you just look that larger span of jobs, Dancer being capable of heals, Monk and SAM of mitigating even magic damage, etc., etc. WAR's visual tells are still (less than they were, but still) mostly cohesive and sufficient. Yes, I'd rather WAR build more upon and around its old core, but it's not a problem that it heals as it attacks.

[Lyth]

I think that you're needlessly digging a hole for yourself here purely for the sake of saving face. Most people do see WAR's lifesteal as actual life steal, and you yourself are on record as stating the same. There's nothing particularly clever about this; it's just the way the actions are designed. I have nothing against WAR being the best at self-sustain, but I do want to see an appropriate visual theme around it. There are plenty of other ways of doing it other than vampirically siphoning off someone's life force. Honestly, there's no shame in just dropping this particular argument. I won't hold you to it, but I don't think it lends anything constructive to either your case or this discussion.

The reason why Thrill is better than a flat shield is because it still has value if you don't mitigate any damage with it. When the effect expires, you still retain the HP gained from it. There are plenty of ways of doing interesting temporary HP mechanics, including having your overheals persist as HP. But that's a different conversation.

There can be multiple ways of achieving the same goal. WAR is a purely physical job focused around raw strength. They don't need magic. Why cast healing spells on yourself when you have enhanced wound healing and regeneration? Why shield yourself when your skin is as tough as iron? Why teleport across the arena when you can simply jump? Why cast a barrier on your allies when you can give a rousing battle cry that raises their stats? Why cast offensive spells when you could punch the ground and make rocks fly out? There's no limitation on that. It's literally one of the easiest jobs to come up with a consistent theme for, and you don't need to introduce magical elements to keep it competitive.

I suppose the bottom line is that I would like to see the development team sit down and think about the visual story that each job is telling through the action set, even if it means reworking some actions. It's probably something that would be helped if they had specific design 'leads' for each job who have a sense of the overarching 'theme'. When players complain about identity, it usually indicates a lack of a focused 'vision' behind the job's playstyle. It really needs to be coherent and consistent. The means are every bit as important as the ends here.

[Shurrikhan]

I think that you're needlessly digging a hole for yourself here purely for the sake of saving face. Most people do see WAR's lifesteal as actual life steal, and you yourself are on record as stating the same.

By all means quote me on where I've said as much. Not "they heal through damage dealt," but actually "stealing the lifeforce of their enemies" vampirism.

The reason why Thrill is better than a flat shield is because it still has value if you don't mitigate any damage with it. When the effect expires, you still retain the HP gained from it.

A current-and-max HP bonus will only ever outperform a shield if...

1. you're not already topped off, and
2. you wouldn't consume the shield within its 30-second duration.

That is not likely to happen. That is much less often the case than a hefty shield preventing a debuff, which simple added max-and-current HP cannot do.

They don't need magic. Why cast healing spells on yourself when you have enhanced wound healing and regeneration?

They naturally manipulate aether, just like every other physical job in this game. That is the only way anyone has superhuman strength in XIV. Have you never seen a Bard? They're not a "mage" --they're a physical combatant-- but still very, very obviously manipulate aether. Warrior's product/form of that aether manipulation is self-enhancement and self-healing.

But, no, Warrior does not have "magic" in the sense of casting spells. Warrior has no spells. Warrior has no casts.

Equilibrium, meanwhile, is that regeneration. I'd be fine with turning it into temp HP and a HoT. But it is not a healing spell any more than Second Wind would require a Sharlayan dissertation and complex spellforms. Not all healing abilities have to be "magic" in the sense of magecraft or magic swordsman.

[Lyth]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'. I'm really not sure where you'd want to start, and anyone can see this with a simple search. I don't mind that you're playing the devil's advocate here as usual, but it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

What you're describing with temporary HP is just an eHP problem. If I'm at 1 HP going into a tankbuster, TBN isn't going to save me any more than a 125% max HP boost will. If TBN was a Thrill of Battle effect and not a barrier, it would be broken.

Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'. You're going to end up going into an aether vs. dynamis discussion with this next, I can sense it.

Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.

[Mikey_R]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'. I'm really not sure where you'd want to start, and anyone can see this with a simple search. I don't mind that you're playing the devil's advocate here as usual, but it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

How would you describe Bloodbath?

[Shurrikhan]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'.

Within this sub-forum I have only 22 posts that include at least one, at least once, among the words "life steal," "lifesteal" or "life-steal". Of those, only 13 also discuss Warrior and actually include the words in my own text (rather than only in the quote blocks):

• The first few come from this very conversation, quoting you, having to meet your term and specifically arguing against you using it deliberately as a loaded/conflated term.
• Only in quoting Luin, in drawing DRK/WAR comparisons; motifs were not in question.
• Using the term because that's the term Arch used; motifs were not in question.
• Appears only in the quote before pointing out that it's a loaded term:

Because it's not "life-leech" per se. It's, quite definitively, living off the thrill of battle. (If we're going to consider technicals, at expense to all lore, like "but it's healing based on damage dealt" then note still that life-leech wasn't originally that; it was bonus damage that happened to heal you by the same amount, quite literally leeching that HP out of the enemy.).

• Using the term specifically because of, and to contrast, Anahalise's use of the term.
• Post discusses WAR, but only uses "life-steal" in the phrase "People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but...."
• Appears only in quoting you. Specifically does not call it lifesteal.
• Term used only in response to your idea that as a WAR, if meeting Kalise's description of a more WAR-thematic raidwide than SiO, you must...

magically drain life from your enemies and generate party-wide barriers

rather than, say, a simple raid-wide Bloodbath buff via War Cry with overhealing turning into temp HP. "Lifesteal" is only used in saying what did not exist. Positives used the term "self-sustain" only.

• Used the conventional term for concision and because that was the term used by the previous 3 posts made in reply to one another.
• Quoting you, noting that "Granted, I do think there's space for them both to have 'lifesteal,' in very different ways."
• Quoting Whiskey while specifically pointing out the differences between (A) content-based throughput and purely state-based throughput and (B) healing as portion of damage dealt vs. bundled effect.

it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

I just summarized for you the one given in the job quests and across the job's description since 1.x.
__________________

Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'.

Then load your terms how you will, but stick with it. If any and all healing comes down to...

You might as well give them sparkly spell casting and pretend that it's not holy magic

...then wtf is Abyssal Drain doing? And are all physical melee holy magic casters because they have Second Wind?
______________________

Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.

Warriors are not "magical" (to any extent beyond Pugilist, Archer, Lancer, Rogue, or Gladiator are "magical" in the sense of casting specific schools of magic despite, yes, manipulating aether to do more than would otherwise be humanly possible).

Nor are they vampires. That doesn't mean they have to be barred from having self-healing.

(By this point, you have called WAR thematically unfit to have HoTs, healing-via-attacks, burst heals, shields/barriers, or burst mitigation. Because it is "physical," anything short of piñata-popping enemies to "drop potions, bandages, and medkits" isn't a permissible use of healing. Anything beyond gradual hardening and temporary bonus HP, apparently, is a no go. But I have to wonder if suddenly those, too, would be thematically "unfit" if they could hold a candle to other capacities. Would they then just be next on the chopping block?)


Again, I'm right there with you in terms of reshaping WAR's throughput slightly to better center its theme --I'd love to head back to early Stormblood Warrior, stylistically, as an anchor or guide, perhaps even bringing Berserk back nearer to the fore-- but when you play out the "physical jobs can't have X, Y, Z" basic forms of throughput to that extent, thematic cohesion does not seem to be your main objective.

[Lyth]

????

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

I actually vastly preferred the 2.0 direction for Warrior.

[...]

People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but they never no-healed the entirety of dungeons like WAR could. StB mass-pulls made DRK look invincible, but in single-target, their self-heals were kinda garbage, and it wasn't much better in HW, either. WAR, on the other hand? That job was popping itself from critical to full HP off meaty crits since 1.x. and... right up until they decided to copy PLD twice over instead of allowing PLD to better scale with its own gear and allow for actually distinct ways of tanking instead.

1.x Warrior was about "big honking crits" to instantly heal you to full HP along with doing some of the best AoE in the game.

[...]

...It's never not been a major part of its identity. That was originally tied hand-in-hand with self-healing/lifesteal, but even if Warrior's mostly lost the first there's no reason to claim that the other shouldn't be considered a core component.

...

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I personally feel that simply continuing to do something 'because tradition' means that you lose out on opportunities to improve. There are many, many ways that you can do self-sustain on a tank that do not involve vampiric effects. I listed out multiple examples in my last post of this.

There are certain jobs that you can get away with more magical effects without making them spellcasters. MNK, for example, has a Fire/Wind/Earth elemental motif running through the job. DRG has a blood-related magic theme. NIN invokes Wind/Fire/Water/Earth elemental effects. Again, visual consistency is key. Could you make vampiric barbarians who drink the blood of their fallen foes? Sure! But make it visually and thematically consistent across the entire job.

What I dislike is this dilettantism that we currently have. Oh, here's my lifesteal move. Here's my barrier shield. Here's my heal spell. You don't need multiple approaches to self-sustain on the same job. Pick something and roll with it.

You want lifesteal? That's great. Make that the centerpiece of its sustain. My attacks heal me. Overhealing gets converted to temporary HP. I time up my burst phases with tankbusters to mitigate more damage. Fantastic. Find some sort of a unifying concept that ties things together. And find something visually and thematically that justifies it for the job in question.