[Discussion and Feedback] Incoming damage vs. Utility

[Zairava]

I mentioned this in the 'boring dps rotations for healers' thread, but I wonder what it would be like if when a boss does an attack that also applies damage over time, that mitigation buffs/debuff no longer affect the damage over time component placing more responsibility on the healers. Overall I do think that mitigation buffs/debuffs are bit too strong/prevalent.

This is also a good point, regarding bleeds (or DoT in general), more bosses could use that imo. Doing that while reducing how potent our party mit(or debuffs) could serve to make healers more engaged with healing GCDs..maybe. Depends on the tuning.


Regarding the topic of tank swaps, not to derail the subject of the OP, but I do wish we had to tank swap more in normal mode content..I have fond memories of learning to do that via Ex-death back in Deltascape as a New player.

[Jeeqbit]

This is also a good point, regarding bleeds (or DoT in general), more bosses could use that imo. Doing that while reducing how potent our party mit(or debuffs) could serve to make healers more engaged with healing GCDs..maybe. Depends on the tuning.

They did do that with Abyssos Savage at least so there is some evidence of what happens there.

Regarding the topic of tank swaps, not to derail the subject of the OP, but I do wish we had to tank swap more in normal mode content..I have fond memories of learning to do that via Ex-death back in Deltascape as a New player.

That was never actually necessary, but a lot of tanks did it anyway. PLDs could simply use Cover to take one of them. Tanks were meant to stack together in Deltascape 1 as well, but nobody remembers that now.

It continued in Shadowbringers. E4 normal has a vulnerability that you get from the tank buster and at minimum item level it is rough, but overall, not impossible to survive if you don't swap. Same happens in E10 normal and people did try to swap there but it was not required on release if you were good at tanking.

We could go backwards instead and look at alex, which has A6 with the cuff mechanic, which was particularly rough if there weren't swaps either for the TBs or when vuln stacks got high which continued into the next boss, but I do remember finding ways to get through the fights if I used my cooldowns well and had good healers. There was also A7 where people used to swap because the vulns made it rough, but once again this wasn't absolutely essential. There was also A8, where you stack with the other tank for the double tank buster, but using the power of tank mitigation you can make up for the lack of a co-tank. Oh A5 also had that big boss attack that applies vulns then hits hard if you don't swap, but this one you could prepare for by combining lots of mits ahead of the stun. Overall this was the tier where it probably mattered most in normal content.

The point here is most of these normal mode swaps only slightly matter at minimum item level and at release people are not usually minimum item level anyway. But that takes us to the discussion of how story content is designed for a minimum item level that is far below what any active player that does more than just MSQ would have.