[Discuss] Bringing back mitigation-damage interaction

[Luizgazen]

If you want an ability that trades dps for survivability, there is already Clemency, and we all know how much people love using Clemency all the time...

[Shurrikhan]

If you want an ability that trades dps for survivability, there is already Clemency, and we all know how much people love using Clemency all the time...

Clemency is worth less than any Cure II equivalent, though, due to its lacking the 30% extra healing from Healer's Main and Mend traits, while PLD's offensive ppgcd is higher than most healers' and PLD has a strict macrorotation for which adjustment disproportionately sacrifices its highest ppgcd actions. Under that tuning and context, of course it will see little use.

Compare that, however, to say, old Equilibrium, which was more often used for healing instead. Or Inner Beast, which still saw decently frequent use while being the current Tank. Or if Holy Shelltron were a spender opposite a ~250p oGCD attack.

Do you really think players consistently would forgo over 1200p worth of personal sustain value, whenever it could make a difference larger than what they could do directly (e.g., that 250p) just so they could pad their ACT numbers at expense of clear time?

The problem is, there is no feedback to let you know you saved a healer a GCD, or that you have increased party DPS by using Inner Beast over Fell Cleave.

There is. Do you not track your healer's oGCDs? Would you not know how much damage is being mitigated by, say, a defensive that grants 30% mitigation for 4s, 15% mitigation for the 4s thereafter? If you have that awareness, and you know that your healer has exhausted their oGCDs and yet, despite your coming near death, there were no GCD heals used on you, you'd know pretty damn well that GCDs would otherwise have been needed.

Ngl, that seems like a skill/knowledge/awareness issue.

This compounds when you have alternate mitigation that has no drawbacks to DPS. Why would I use Inner Beast when I can Rampart or Vengeance, which have no impact on DPS, and also save the healer that GCD.

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.

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.

That such would very rarely find use in the most overgeared of the most casual of content... does not mean that the design is unworkable. It simply means that maybe places that drop i605 really don't need to allow for up to i665 gear, nor that endgame content needs to baby players harder than leveling content. That's a content tuning issue, not a fundamental one.

The other way is this damage/mit tradeoff is your ONLY form of mitigation. Then it is how often does it come up? How strong? How long does it last? How is it going to affect other content, ie. dungeon trash?

Why are you acting like these are novel concerns? That literally applies to every form of sustain existing tanks have right now. You simply, in effect, pre-pay for them. The existing kits have a set amount of combined sustaining + offensive output, with the only variance being the volume of input to fall under percentile Damage Reduction or Damage Amplification.

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. *

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.

Why is it the tank that has to take the damage hit and not the healers

? 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.

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.

[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?

[Shurrikhan]

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

Then hold the existing system to that same standard.

If using a defensive is "pointless" unless it produces rDPS or newly prevents a one-shot, but you "cannot guarantee" that a healing GCD will be trimmed for having used it, then what are your defensives doing against any attack that wouldn't one-shot you (regardless, apparently, of whether they're actually nullifying more damage over their whole duration)?

Are they likewise just bloat, despite the difference their "optional" (not required to survive) use being almost half of tank's total sustain, equating to about a fifth of an average healer's sustain output, which... even under the present "pathetic" healing requirements of this Savage tier, do not each have a fifth of their output to spare before using GCDs.

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

It was a blatant tuning issue atop a cluster**** of a mechanic, wherein only one tank could actually change stances without crippling cost in more than a single direction per fight. How is that remotely a sane test case?

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.

I'm not saying what it should be; I'm pointing out what has happened.

Healer and tank's maximum portion of rDPS relative to DPS has decreased over time, probably because the sheer amount of pre-allocated outputs (via CDs that can ONLY be used towards sustain) are increasingly less able to flex around the demands of a given situation.

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.

Again, no, that's not the case. You're conflating tuning issues based on what is probably the most overpowered period tanks have ever experienced and, more importantly, the most banal period healing gameplay has ever experienced.

Why would you want to cement either? Why is that the state you want to build any and every possible design around?

Slightly wind back Healers' glut of oGCD healers and give them back greater swing to and control over their rDPS. Pull back a bit of Tanks' timing-insensitive or -inflexible sustain added in Endwalker (Holy Shelltron, Req healing, GNB ExCog, Bloodwhetting/Nascent no longer scaling with damage), so that performance varies more around timely use of cooldowns and/or setup around them -- i.e., the things that make tanking feel like tanking -- rather than being so padded by random-ass HoTs or Benedictions-per-25s in AoE. Both of those things are beneficial changes regardless.

From there, if you want healers to further imbalance towards barrier healers just being objectively better at basically everything and to make healing increasingly centered just around AoE heals, by all means, go increase damage in general. Otherwise, though, you're going to have to look more analytically into relative sustain requirements.

Yes, if tank sustain and damage to tanks increase equally, they cancel out... so long as you can't also trade out other roles for the one you most scaled to match that increased strength of content. But, you can. And we do. In which case just increasing damage to deal with excess tank strength, or vice versa, just increasingly means that you replace healers with tanks.

So, why? Why do you, or anyone else, want this tool in the first place?

Because, much like a situation where at-cost (i.e., non-Lily, GCD) heals can be of use (net gain) can let healers feel more like healers, having a place for at-cost tools on tanks rewards awareness of their party's output and opportunities relative to their own personal outputs, which can make them feel more like actual Tanks.

Consider if DPS had the current Tank treatment here:

Rather than depending at all on uptime, especially back when uptime could actually require some skill to maintain, or any other more varied level of optimization... you instead just have a set of CDs by which to do your damage. No more, no less. You quickly map out or look up online what the best time is to hit those CDs, and that's it. That's your role -- done. Anything else is shared mechanics. For your own role, there's no nuance, no shifting priorities, no real awareness checks; you just follow your schedule.

That's what your insisting is a preferable state for tanks and healers.

[Mikey_R]

Then hold the existing system to that same standard.

Current system doesn't sacrifice DPS from the tank in order to use a defensive, whether the healer takes advantage of that or not to increase the parties DPS is then down to the healer and, if they do not, you effectively aren't losing out on DPS.

I also never said using a defensive is pointless unless it produces rDPS, I said that a defensive that costs you DPS is inferior when you have defensives that do NOT cost DPS.

It was a blatant tuning issue atop a cluster**** of a mechanic, wherein only one tank could actually change stances without crippling cost in more than a single direction per fight. How is that remotely a sane test case?

I don't know why, but a bit got missed off, Paladin using Sheltron to proc Shield Swipe, Warrior using Vengeance only for the stack, Dark Knight using Dark Dance to proc Low Blow IIRC (I don't remember fully how their interaction worked), all cases where defensives were used to prioritise DPS. In the case of Warrior, there was a caveat where you could do it as long as you didn't need it, of which groups would work around it as much as possible.

Again, no, that's not the case. You're conflating tuning issues based on what is probably the most overpowered period tanks have ever experienced and, more importantly, the most banal period healing gameplay has ever experienced.

No I didn't. You said it could be moved around, I meerly stated that the goal would be to reduce the usage down to 0, which is what the goal would be, assuming you can cover everything with the other defensives. That is literally all i said on that point.

Because, much like a situation where at-cost (i.e., non-Lily, GCD) heals can be of use (net gain) can let healers feel more like healers, having a place for at-cost tools on tanks rewards awareness of their party's output and opportunities relative to their own personal outputs, which can make them feel more like actual Tanks.

What is it about something that reduces the tanks DPS to increase their mitigation makes it feel more like a tank? In the case of healers, they try and reduce the amount of GCD healing as much as possible, choosing to GCD heal in downtimes where possible. However, even if the healer has to GCD heal when they could DPS, the difference here is that you aren't sacrificing your GCD for the chance that someone else might have a higher GCD, you do it because the party would be dead, so it is a guaranteed party DPS increase. As opposed to tank mitigation which is a maybe, maybe not situation (unless you can effectively communicate with the healer, but that isn't feasible in all scenarios and is limited to statics that use voice comms).

Consider if DPS had the current Tank treatment here:

Rather than depending at all on uptime, especially back when uptime could actually require some skill to maintain, or any other more varied level of optimization... you instead just have a set of CDs by which to do your damage. No more, no less. You quickly map out or look up online what the best time is to hit those CDs, and that's it. That's your role -- done. Anything else is shared mechanics. For your own role, there's no nuance, no shifting priorities, no real awareness checks; you just follow your schedule.

That's what your insisting is a preferable state for tanks and healers.

That is what defensives look like now, that is what defensives will look like after. Mapping out defensives to use the DPS reduction as little as possible (ideally 0) to help the healers more effectively use their healing tools, because guess what? Healers also map out all their healing oGCDs too. And really, when you get down to it, DPS do map out everything as well, when to use Feint, Second wind etc. Anyone who has progged a fight can probably tell you where they are in a fight based on where they are in their rotation. Like it or not, everything is mapped out. That is the reality.

[Shurrikhan]

Current system doesn't sacrifice DPS from the tank in order to use a defensive, whether the healer takes advantage of that or not to increase the parties DPS is then down to the healer and, if they do not, you effectively aren't losing out on DPS.

Then, by your warrant, it does nothing, because the Tank "cannot guarantee", as you put it, that the Healer won't still use GCD unnecessarily.

It's the same thing here: You have the occasional opportunity to produce a net advantage, with potency varying with your ability to maximize the damage intake affected.

I also never said using a defensive is pointless unless it produces rDPS, I said that a defensive that costs you DPS is inferior when you have defensives that do NOT cost DPS.

Which I already said. The difference is, again, whether you strictly want tanking and healing requirements to be as pathetic as they are now, or are open to having more. Otherwise, the fact that there are preferred options that can be used first, just oGCD heals, does not mean that your will never use at-cost options. You simply use the latter when it is gainful to do so.

And unlike flat sustain, as per basic heals, time-sensitive sustain like %Damage-Reduction or %Recovery (think Death Strike), there can be gainful actions even without those actions being strictly required for survival in that precise moment.

No I didn't. You said it could be moved around, I merely stated that the goal would be to reduce the usage down to 0

This is like saying you'd want to reduce the usage of GCD DoTs (which are at-cost to GCD filler casts) down to 0 just because you wouldn't want to spam them. In the same way, though based on incoming damage instead of a fixed interval, you would use at-cost mitigation when it is gainful, not necessarily never.

For at-cost defensives to be never be gainful, the skills themselves have to pathetically undertuned or the damage intake relative to your combined tanks+healers sustain resources has to be pathetically low, which is a particular balance state which is not required of the game. So yes, that's conflated tuning with something fundamental. They're separate.

It's like looking at a theoretical 7.0 AST with no offensive output outside Malefic spam and saying that %Damage Amplication must be a worthless mechanic in general, just because it can't affect that particular kit, despite that said kit would already be notoriously bad and should be reinvigorated.

Healers also map out all their healing oGCDs too.

I'm aware. I've already said as much. Note, though, they still have at-cost sustain available to them, which at least allows for fight design to permit higher healing requirements, greater variety between fights, and a degree of slack for less experienced healers even while challenging more veteran healers in maximizing their rDPS.

Tanks no longer have those options.

Like it or not, everything is mapped out. That is the reality.

Here's the difference, though: If you remove all flexibility from tools on the basis that those rigidly timed tools are all that could ever be required of XIV's (current hyperscripted) fights, you're now stuck with those hyperscripted fights from then on. You cannot have variances in damage output from one fight to another without the lesser simply giving healers excess oGCDs because if you tune the lesser up to the level of their "free" healing, there's both zero room left for mistakes and anything above that literally wipes you.

Is that really the only kind of combat you'd ever want? Because if you increasingly narrow the toolkits available solely to those contexts, you're then stuck with those contexts forever.

• Dungeons can't be bothered to regularly give any use for CC? Oh, we can just get rid of them.
• The lack of short-term DPS checks means that CDs are only ever used on CD, which then greatly increases the value of consistent sync? Well, rather than ever giving back short-term DPS checks, we'd best get rid of anything that isn't easily synced.
• Oh, people prefer the simper job (if it typically outperforms any other in its sub-role that isn't played perfectly)? May as well just simplify all its competitors, too.

Those simplifications escalate, and making it impossible ever to reverse course is rarely a good idea.


Again, unless Healers having access to GCD heals somehow makes them less like healers, I fail to see how having similar options that allow for tanks, ultimately, the same combined sustain+offense output but a higher maximum individually for either (more ability to choose between offense and sustain) would be awful for tanks, especially given the increased sustain requirements and diversity among fights' incoming damage that added flexibility would allow.

Defining what should ever be possible off of a narrow present context only acts to make those contexts permanent. Is the current healing situation something we really want to make permanent? Do we never want to attempt things outside of entirely scripted fights?

[Mikey_R]

I think a lot of stuff is getting lost or obfuscated here, so I want to bring it back to the start.

The initial idea was, a tank defensive that reduces the tank's damage in some way in order to use a defensive action.

The first thing we need to ask is why? The tank role has never had the expectation of reducing their own damage in order to increase their own defence, except maybe in the early days of the game where tanks used tank stance. Getting towards the end of Final Coil, tanks did start using DPS stance when tanking but it didn't really catch on until HW where it was expected of tanks to use DPS stance, especially when you had WAR and DRK who were 2 powerful tanks that were fully capable of doing so. From then on, it has been DPS stance all the way through, including SB. This distinction is now no longer present.

This is one reason why I say it is a bad idea. It isn't something that has been drilled into people from the start and so adding it now is just going to cause backlash. You mention simplifications escalate, yes, they do, however, this is something that has been simplified from the past, this is just how it has always been.

Onto the next point. Why does the tank have to sacrifice their own damage for the potential for a healer to gain damage? No other role or job in the game does this. You can say a healer might have to waste a GCD on healing to save a DPS from dying, but that has a much higher tangible reward to DPS and it is expected of the healer to sacrifice some of their damage for the betterment of the group. It has never been the case for tanks to do the same. Even if we were to assume tanks did have that responsibility, you cannot guarantee the healer takes that chance, which then leads to a raid damage loss and you have reduced your own DPS for the potential for more damage, but it wasn't taken. I can compare that to raid buffs. In theory, you put out a raid buff and everyone else has the potential to utilise it. However, there is the potential someone does not, which is obviously bad, however, I have not sacrificed my own DPS to get the raid buff out there, it is down to the other player to make use of it.

Again, gong back to mitigation kits. Tanks have these tools that can use to mitigate damage at no cost to damage, why suddenly add something that does? For something 'different'? Maybe, try different defensive means to make them more exciting rather than reducing the tanks damage first. This will make tanks feel more unique and it won't be a button you want to avoid.

Going to fight flexibility, I don't see how the idea comes into this at all. You say it reduces fight flexibility, but the only way that can happen is if you throw several hard hitting attacks in sequence where your defensives cannot cover it, which also then implies this damage reduction is readily available fairly frequently. However, if you go from a fight like that to a fight where there are less hard hits and your normal defensive kit will suffice, this second fight will likely to be favoured by not only tanks, but healers too, as they have their own cooldowns to worry about as well. This is before the fact that, if healers do run out of cooldowns and have to resort to GCD healing, it gets rid of the initial benefit you set out to achieve anyway. There is a reason you cannot just spam out tank busters, or constant raid wides, it just isn't fun.

Again, unless Healers having access to GCD heals somehow makes them less like healers, I fail to see how having similar options that allow for tanks, ultimately, the same combined sustain+offense output but a higher maximum individually for either (more ability to choose between offense and sustain) would be awful for tanks, especially given the increased sustain requirements and diversity among fights' incoming damage that added flexibility would allow.

Defining what should ever be possible off of a narrow present context only acts to make those contexts permanent. Is the current healing situation something we really want to make permanent? Do we never want to attempt things outside of entirely scripted fights?

How the healing kit currently operates, or potentially operates has no implications as to whether a tank's mitigation tool should or should not reduce said tank's damage output. I have said it in this thread, healers should be rewarded DPS wise for their GCD healing contribution (as, again, forcing a healer to GCD heal isn't expected unless in high end content, so people will want a reward for it). Which is also funny because if you want healers to GCD heal more, by reducing the tanks damage for mitigation, you heal with a GCD heal, which is another way the benefit isn't taken advantage of.

Again, it might have worked in the past, but it just will not work now.

Yeah like HH. It would put back some of the tank responsibility of good positioning into play, especially with how often raidwides happen in relation to tank busters. It would also necessitate some good cd usage since the first two ppl to be hit with the raidwide will always take a majority of the dmg. Falling back on reprisal might not be effective since you want to save those for situations where there are partner splits and raidwides. Situations where the tanks can only cover half of the party.

Regardless, the increased hitbox, stationary and re-centering bosses really has shifted tanks into pusedo dps since they don't have to do anything outside of swap for TB's. You gotta give the tanks something to do and wild charge raidwides are a good start. It doesn't have to be like HH but the idea is that the tank needs to protect the party and they can do that by standing in front and taking the brunt of the hit.

This, on the other hand, is what is missing from tanks. The potential to feel like a tank by protecting the party and not just necessarily just by popping your raid wide mitigation. In wild Charge, you take an active role in mitigating damage by not only your own defensives, but also in your positioning. I have also stated a few times how CC could be used to make fights more interesting by having them change how boss attacks work. There are plenty of things than can be done to make a tank feel like a tank without having to resort to reducing the tanks damage. If you want to point out simplifications to the game, you should be concentrating here, where it matters most. The tank gameplay.