[Discuss] Bringing back mitigation-damage interaction

[Mikey_R]

There is. Do you not track your healer's oGCDs? ...

NGL, if you can track the oGCD usage and potentially cooldown of every healer in your party, whether it is 4 man or 8 man, all I can say is you are far and above some reasonable level of expected play and I applaud you for that. However, what about the rest of us where we either cannot effectively track all of that, or lack the knowledge for such a feat? Is such a thing actually reasonable to expect of someone? However, surely it would be better for the healer do deal with the situation as they have the direct knowledge of what they have in their kit, exactly what cooldowns they have and how to best use them. In this case, shouldn't the onus for the healing be on the healer?

If an at-cost tool would not nonetheless create a net increase in party damage, you do not use it. If an at-cost tool would create a net increase in party dps despite its direct cost to personal DPS, you use it. It's that simple.

But, as I said, you cannot guarantee the increased DPS. Noone has that sort of control over someone else.

You're working under the assumption that the sustain tools tanks have already would so diminish the value of any additional tools that they could never break even. But that is only true of content that is already notoriously undertuned.

No, if I have a tool that mitigates damage and I have another tool that mitigates damage but also reduces my own damage, the tool that mitigates damage is going to be the favourable one and people will ask, why does this second one have some sort of damage loss associated with it.

Even in that all-mitigation-has-a-cost model, the only change is the ability to spend would-be excessive mitigation offensively and to get through more difficult eHP checks at even lower gear levels, given sufficient skill. *

We had that sort of model before, it didn't work, as I am sure you are fully aware. DPS always wins.

It's the likes of Energy Drain and Verraise. They aren't going to be used all the time, but having them is a boon to flexibility. And, more importantly, it increases the reward of being aware of your team's opportunities and incoming damage beyond a mere prescribed CD schedule. That, in turn, helps Tanks feel more like Tanks, rather than merely Blue DPS, and tanking a more frequent and active part of their kit.

You have to remember, Energy Drain was initially taken away and was only added back in as Scholars complained it felt like a waste of Aether Flow when they had to use Aetherflow for their MP but still had stacks left. Energy Drain was easy to add back in, so they did. It does mean it effectively isn't there for the whole damage vs healing thing, that is just a side product from a slight design mishap. As for Verraise, outside of prog, they shouldn't use it, with the healers being the ones to sacrifice their GCD instead. So, if the healer should sacrifice in the case of DPS, why not have the same philosophy with tanks?

? Not "taking a damage hit" is already an illusion, so long as there is any intent at balance between roles. If you're a healer, you're already giving up more and more of your would-be potential as a greater portion of your total output gets allocated towards those "free" healing tools. That tank dps wasn't reduced despite such large sustain increases (especially, to all but DRK) in Endwalker is largely why tanks feel so OP and healers so redundant.

With tanks having much better sustain and mitigation tools, the expectation would have been an increase in the incoming damage to warrant the increase, not a reduction in DPS. The same could be said for the increase in healing tools, give more tools, expect more healing.

However, it is curious that you assume a greater defensive/healing kit necessitates a reduction in DPS as opposed to a change in the incoming damage.

That "hit" is simply the degree to which you can move your outputs as you see fit, letting your total value produced scale that bit more with player agency. It's no more a "bad" or "antithetical" action than a healer actually having reason (and ability) to use a GCD heal.

Which would be to use this tool as little as possible, getting the usage down to 0, unless I go back to the whole forced usage thing, in which case I go to why does this defensive cooldown suck compared to others. So, why? Why do you, or anyone else, want this tool in the first place?