Mitigation types

[BabyYoda]

FFXIV usually design healer/tank jobs with different type of mitigations:

1- shield: which is extra HP pool.
2- reduce damage received.
3- increase defense.
4- healing or regen.

I see that there is no different between reduce damage or increase defense.

The differences are clear with Shields and healing/regen.

But when to choose between shield or increase defense?
Or why we have increase defense or reduce damage received?

I wish that we can have a clear way to decide which to choose and when as we currently we have one type of attacks and 1 type of tank busters

[Supersnow845]

We basically already have this. There is 4 true types of mitigation of which 2 act exactly the same in all circumstances

1) shields- their unique characteristic is shield cheesing where if you take zero damage because it was entirely absorbed by the shield you can avoid some negative debuffs
2) increased damage resistance (eg sacred soil) or
3) reduce damage dealt by boss (eg disassemble)- these two always act exactly the same in all instances and their unique characteristic is that they snapshot reduced damage for flow on effects like DOT busters while shields don’t (not 2 and 3 do actually have one point of difference. 3 doesn’t work if the boss isn’t the origin of the damage)
4) true invulns (HG and SB)- mostly just flavour here but they technically can erase certain debuffs due to taking zero damage like shield cheesing (the big example I can think of is queens doom tankbuster in DRN/S)

If you want to snapshot reduced damage for flow on effects use mitigation, if you want to shield cheese debuffs or increase max HP (which can also overcome HP based damage like evens gravity) use shields

[Tunda]

We basically already have this. There is 4 true types of mitigation of which 2 act exactly the same in all circumstances

1) shields- their unique characteristic is shield cheesing where if you take zero damage because it was entirely absorbed by the shield you can avoid some negative debuffs
2) increased damage resistance (eg sacred soil) or
3) reduce damage dealt by boss (eg disassemble)- these two always act exactly the same in all instances and their unique characteristic is that they snapshot reduced damage for flow on effects like DOT busters while shields don’t
4) true invulns (HG and SB)- mostly just flavour here but they technically can erase certain debuffs due to taking zero damage like shield cheesing (the big example I can think of is queens doom tankbuster in DRN/S)

If you want to snapshot reduced damage for flow on effects use mitigation, if you want to shield cheese debuffs or increase max HP (which can also overcome HP based damage like evens gravity) use shields

I feel like there is missing opportunity by not giving mitigation types more use cases in fights,

Like for multiple AoE attacks I feel like shields are just better no? and reduce damage received is just a buff to shields which is much more powerful mitigation

[Supersnow845]

I feel like there is missing opportunity by not giving mitigation types more use cases in fights,

Like for multiple AoE attacks I feel like shields are just better no? and reduce damage received is just a buff to shields which is much more powerful mitigation

The opposite actually, many raidwides one after another benefits mitigation more than shields, shields are better for a single massive damage AOE

10% mitigation on 5 100,000 damage AOE’s is better than 10% mitigation on 1 300,000 damage AOE.

[PyurBlue]

I wish that we can have a clear way to decide which to choose and when as we currently we have one type of attacks and 1 type of tank busters

As in there is one correct mitigation type for a given attack? I like having some amount of ambiguity, it allows for some creativity and can potentially make situations more dynamic. If instead you want each mitigation type to have meaning advantages over others then I can agree with that, although I don't find the current mix of options too bad right now.

Shields can block debuffs and I think this should be used more often in content. They can also be applied proactively while heals can't without losing some of their effectiveness and in the few cases of attacks that directly subtract HP, shields are unaffected and very effective at reducing risk when HP is initially reduced. Reducing damage received and increasing defense are the same thing, but they differ from shields in that they can't be consumed, ie they will have an effect for as long as they are active, yet they don't lose effectiveness from being cast early like heals (unless they are needed to mitigate a long series of attacks) and importantly they don't contribute to overheal. That last trait is one of the reasons why I think tank healing should be far less than healer healing, even with overpowered mitigation (which should not exist) heals would at least still have some purpose, while overpowered tank healing leaves no room for external heals as it becomes overheal.

So the current defense system has a good foundation. What we need in my opinion are encounters to make the most of it and of course a balancing of abilities to allow defense and healing to feel interesting.

[Daralii]

As in there is one correct mitigation type for a given attack? I like having some amount of ambiguity, it allows for some creativity and can potentially make situations more dynamic. If instead you want each mitigation type to have meaning advantages over others then I can agree with that, although I don't find the current mix of options too bad right now.

That used to be a thing when block(and I think parry) didn't work on magic damage, so if a tankbuster was magic you were making things harder by having a PLD. DRK still has a vestige of that in Dark Mind, since part of its identity originally was being the anti-magic tank.

[Azurarok]

Between defense up and damage down I've been told that the latter may not work on attacks that involve bosses using adds, like Shadowed Messengers in P11S.

[Supersnow845]

Between defense up and damage down I've been told that the latter may not work on attacks that involve bosses using adds, like Shadowed Messengers in P11S.

That is correct, I guess that does count as a point of difference, damage down on the boss only works if the boss actually does an attack, something like the icicles in junction shiva in E12S doesn’t originate from the boss so only defence up works while boss damage down doesn’t

[Azurarok]

That is correct, I guess that does count as a point of difference, damage down on the boss only works if the boss actually does an attack, something like the icicles in junction shiva in E12S doesn’t originate from the boss so only defence up works while boss damage down doesn’t

Meanwhile defense up skills have to care about range so the party actually receives the buff. Or at least had to.
I'm sure Kerachole would've had an advantage over Sacred Soil for mechanics that involve the party to spread back when the latter was smaller.

[BabyYoda]

As in there is one correct mitigation type for a given attack? I like having some amount of ambiguity, it allows for some creativity and can potentially make situations more dynamic. If instead you want each mitigation type to have meaning advantages over others then I can agree with that, although I don't find the current mix of options too bad right now.

Shields can block debuffs and I think this should be used more often in content. They can also be applied proactively while heals can't without losing some of their effectiveness and in the few cases of attacks that directly subtract HP, shields are unaffected and very effective at reducing risk when HP is initially reduced. Reducing damage received and increasing defense are the same thing, but they differ from shields in that they can't be consumed, ie they will have an effect for as long as they are active, yet they don't lose effectiveness from being cast early like heals (unless they are needed to mitigate a long series of attacks) and importantly they don't contribute to overheal. That last trait is one of the reasons why I think tank healing should be far less than healer healing, even with overpowered mitigation (which should not exist) heals would at least still have some purpose, while overpowered tank healing leaves no room for external heals as it becomes overheal.

So the current defense system has a good foundation. What we need in my opinion are encounters to make the most of it and of course a balancing of abilities to allow defense and healing to feel interesting.

I agree current design lack of reactiveness.. tactical choices.. when actually to use shield over mitigation? If you are a math bro you can calculate X% mitigation = xxx shield which is not what I would see interesting..

If there is 3 different attack types thta healer and tanks can manage with their mitigations to get 50% extra effectivness over others that would be cool to see