Warrior Rework to Balance the job

[Crafoutis]

They'd have to have a system by which the hit they are about to take is mitigated by what the mitigation value of their HP as it would be if the hit went through. This should solve the problem below

Describing the problem:

(We assume there is a new tank that has greater mitigation the lower their HP is)
(We assume for simplicity that this mitigation is linear between [0% mit] to [50% mit], and relates to the Tank's HP between [100% hp] to [0% hp])
(Lastly, let's assume the tank has 1,000 HP)

If the Tank is full HP receives a hit from the boss that does 900 damage. They are now at 100hp, and their mitigation is now at 45%. The tank buster that hit them for 900 damage was unmitigated by the Tank's passive due to the fact that it front-loaded all of that damage.

If the Tank is at 900 (90%) HP when he receives that same hit for 900 damage, that hit would be mitigated by 5% due to their passive mitigation they gained from being at 90% HP, therefore making the hit do 855 damage instead, and letting them live with 45 HP.


Solution, as described in the beginning: Mitigation for this theoretical new Tank (Or let's be honest, DRK, since they're sorely lacking), should be calculated based on the damage of the pre-mitigated hit against their current HP, prior to damage being applied. Then their mitigation reduces the incoming damage appropriately.

What does the above scenario look like under this system?

Tank, 1,000 (100%) HP, incoming tankbuster for 900 (90%) damage.

IncomingDamage * ( 1 - ( 0.5 * ( 1 - (( CurrentHP - IncomingDamage ) / MaxHP ))))) = PostMitDamage

900 * ( 1 - ( 0.5 * ( 1 - (( 1000 - 900 ) / 1000 ))))) = 495

The 900 damage is turned into a 495 damage hit. This way, regardless of the size of the hit, monsters can't 'skip' the tank's mitigation, and in fact it would be more effective to load on more frequently smaller ticks of damage against this tank for the same time expenditure value per hit. New encounters could be tooled to allow different tanks to shine in different ways, all useful, but different in their application of their survivability.

[Lyth]

No. Flat shields are a variant of the standard %DR mitigation that have been on tanks since forever. The key differences are that flat shielding:

• is more effective than equivalent %DR when the incoming damage is less than 100% of your total HP
• is less effective than equivalent %DR when the incoming damage is greater than 100% of your total HP
• can keep you alive indefinitely if and only if you can mitigate all incoming damage

Healing is not equivalent to mitigation because it cannot stop a tankbuster from oneshotting you. However, it can keep you alive indefinitely so long as you can outheal the incoming damage. It's fine for tanks to have some access to self-healing, but if they can outheal all the incoming damage, then you no longer need a 'healer' role.

If you want to identify a situation where flat shielding would be equivalently excessive, then you would need to mitigate all incoming damage through shields. But at that point you're just playing with invincibility mode on. Hence

I bet lol, so were Game Shark owners back in the day

[whiskeybravo]

It's fine for tanks to have some access to self-healing, but if they can outheal all the incoming damage, then you no longer need a 'healer' role.

Sure you do, for the other 3-6 members of the team.

Even if in the unusual 4 tank m4s or 1 war/3dps dungeons type shenanigans it's possible to "outheal (mit) all incoming damage" with tanks instead of healers, that's not the common circumstance the majority of players will find themselves in, and I doubt it's something one could just jump in and complete without practice. Rare occurrences or exploits like this don't invalidate the entire healer role, not everyone had or used Game Sharks. And all that says nothing of encounter design itself.

Dungeons are designed to be quick and casual daily content that any level of player with a minimum level of job experience can complete. They aren't a grinding wheel to make you shine like a diamond before going into raid content. If the expectation is that you're going to use dungeons to hone your skills, or doing it for a "challenge, well you have to be aware not everyone is partaking in that endeavor with you because that's not the purpose of said content. It's going to range from boring to interesting/challenging on a case by case basis.

As for current raids.. By my count there are 2 major heal/mit checks, one in 2s and one in 3s. It is possible to mit through transition on 4s, but my healers, at least, preferred to keep using LB. That may change as we finish gearing up, and the alpha/beta in 2s will probably just start getting skipped. As I mentioned previously there are no heavy bleeds, hp to 1, doom, etc style mechanics, coupled with the (lack of) frequency of raidwides basically everything is being over-mitigated right now. Again encounter design can't be discounted here.

If they aren't going to make encounters lethal enough require all the abilities we have, it's inevitable that all these abilities will perceived as OP and "ruining" the game. So do they just starting yeeting these abilities, or actually design content around the fact that we have them?

[AmiableApkallu]

If they aren't going to make encounters lethal enough require all the abilities we have, it's inevitable that all these abilities will perceived as OP and "ruining" the game.

The funny thing is... DRKs, as they currently exist, are brought into all the content that the other tanks are, and yet, there's no similar outcry that DRKs are "over-powered" and "ruining" the game.

Why is that?

[ApolloGenX]

Why do healers think the only ones that need healing are tanks?

Also, why do they think gimping tanks is fun for anyone?

All the talk is just tanks.... what about the rest of the party???

[whiskeybravo]

Also, why do they think gimping tanks is fun for anyone?

Nah, it's just WAR specifically. Gimp WAR enough that PLD takes it spot, while WAR joins DRK in the abyss and GNB just keeps doing what it's doing (I guess).

[Shurrikhan]

Its already been nerfed to the ground.

It's still in the strongest state it's ever been in. It has received no nerfs.

Ironically they solved this issue back when tanks had two stances. If you wanted to heal yourself you had to be in defiance and take a damage hit in exchange for staying alive.

And I'd love to see that available agency returned and expanded upon.

I'm sitting here wondering why SiO got a regen when all it needed was higher % on the shields when sacrificing your buffs. Equilibrium also didn't need the regen imo. It would have been better if it was a 1200 potency heal when HP below 50% or 1200 potency barrier when HP above 50%.

Ironically, the HoT would actually make SiO less brain-dead... if it weren't so much larger a buff than everyone else got to their raid-wides (if any). At least with the HoT you can't just pop it any time within 30s of a raidwide to get full sustain (even if not necessarily life-saving) value out of it.

But yeah, between keeping healing from damage/attacks dealt strong (though, I'd still want it to scale from ST to AoE in a reasonable fashion) and getting regens (i.e., if Warrior were balanced and I therefore had to choose), I'd take the healing from damage/attacks dealt every time.

Nah, it's just WAR specifically. Gimp WAR enough that PLD takes it spot, while WAR joins DRK in the abyss and GNB just keeps doing what it's doing (I guess).

I've never seen "reduced from a lead of 30-50% to a lead of ~20%" referred to as "gimp" before. Learn something new every day, though, I guess.

[whiskeybravo]

I've never seen "reduced from a lead of 30-50% to a lead of ~20%" referred to as "gimp" before. Learn something new every day, though, I guess.

Come on now, surely that's not enough to make healers feel relevant again.

Even 1 heal per gcd, or 80% reduction beyond first in AoE, or max of 2 or 3 targets. Anything this low would still be roughly equivalent to Equilibrium with half the CD. This alone is not enough to change any paradigm. All it does is "gimp" WAR in order to make healers (and DRK) feel better about themselves.

[Shurrikhan]

Come on now, surely that's not enough to make healers feel relevant again.

No one has said it would be enough by itself, and several posts in this thread thus far have explicitly said (and likely only because running into so many whataboutisms and false dichotomies somehow made the obvious necessary to restate) that reining WAR in back towards a balanced state would not fix healers on its own, but not having one job randomly be able to put out half more than others in all content and up to 3x more in certain content forms is a fairly necessary first step for setting up any broader paradigm shifts regarding how, and how much, healing needs to be done by healers.

I.e., not sufficient in itself, but nonetheless necessary. Most cool fun things a game might add... require at least a decent degree of balance in whatever capacities they would be centered around.

Again, you seem to be treating anything less than being significantly overpowered (and whether it uniquely permits success in normal circumstances or no, Warrior is that) as inherently and significantly less fun. On that is already disagree, but fair enough: preferences don't have to be logical, broad-minded, or anything else. But, if you're not willing to imagine out the game as a healer with every tank being similarly overpowered, that's literally just "Don't take away my advantages!" And I don't think that instinct is worth placating. Especially when it has hurt Warrior's and others' gameplay alike.

[PyurBlue]

Why do healers think the only ones that need healing are tanks?

They don't have to be, though dungeons are designed such that tanks are the primary healing target. If a tank can survive easily with no assistance, something is wrong and existing dungeons tend to get boring. Going back and updating all the content to take self sufficient tanks into account is possible, but unlikely. It's a lot more work than fixing 1 or 2 skills on one class.

Also, why do they think gimping tanks is fun for anyone?

Correcting something that is blatantly overpowered isn't gimping at all. I'll also point out that I don't limit myself to healing. I play all the roles. WAR in its current state is a mistake no matter how I look at it.

All the talk is just tanks.... what about the rest of the party???

When other classes are as problematic as WAR they will be treated the same. It's clear that there are some differing opinions here, but a balanced and engaging game is fun. Breezing through dungeons while paying the minimum amount of attention the game has no appeal to me, and dungeons being casual content doesn't make that a reasonable expectation. If you're suggesting to shift the healing focus from tank to DPS, then why is the tank even in the party, and what prevents DPS from becoming self sufficient if tanks are allowed to be immortal bystanders that just happen to be there with the rest of the group? Doing this amounts to giving up on the established roles in the game and starting over. It can be done, but I don't see it as realistic.

At this point maybe there needs to be a hard mode roulette or duties. Make those out of the same dungeons we have now, but with some harder enemies and balancing factors (like the healing down enemy I mentioned before for example). If I could queue for that and avoid normal dungeons where party dynamics don't matter, that would work for me. It would also fill the gap of missing mid tier content. Savage and Extreme already exist, but they retain the same scripted difficult that they always have, which requires a different approach than jumping into a roulette with a random group.