How should tbn get changed/updated?

[Carighan]

I see. Still not sure why is this a sudden problem. Are we also complaining that DPS do more damage as they gear up, or that healers do crank more healing as their gear gets better, or that people take less damage as their defenses go up?

No and to be fair it's a similar problem TBN can find itself in: As your gear improves and fights get shorter, it becomes tougher and tougher to "pop" TBN. Likewise as a Warrior takes less and less damage, the healing they got from pre-change thingy goes up, but their need for it evaporates so that counterintuitively it becomes weaker in a net-calculation. This is why it's fine in PvP where our HP and stuff is unaffected as we don't go up in item level.

It's of course easy to fix, and the fix is the same one as for healers as a whole role: Make fights actually deal actual amounts of damage to people, not just the tanks, but yes, also them. Like actually tax defenses and make tanks sweat a little bit. Of course it's not entirely simple in that the ilvl-curve also needs flattening to within a single expansion the effect of each new tier of gear is less overall effective as the previous one, and this has to rapidly compound (so weak->okay gear is noticable, but okay->great is far less so).

[Oizen]

Considering they were able to patch that on invuls to some extent, I do think TBN should be given the faster application too if possible.

[Carighan]

Considering they were able to patch that on invuls to some extent, I do think TBN should be given the faster application too if possible.

I have a feeling they did this by allowing the client a very limited "optimistic" snapshotting of abilities. That is, the client records the timestamp when you pressed invuln, and sends that timestamp to the server, where it is compared to the timestamp of the point where the server wants to record you as having died. This is of course something most systems don't want to do, as it gives clients a limited amount of "truth" influence. You should always keep that to the server if possible.

Of course, unless they want to actually provide usable netcode overall (and there's a caveat to this, see below) this is probably the best they can do; but they'll also want to keep it very very limited to not allow people hacking their client to cheat the combat system.

Could they "just" switch to better netcode implementations? Of course. It was Starcraft that first brought in predictive netcode, right? Where the client assumes what is going to happen and then the server "corrects" it, with smoothing and interpolation to prevent the kind of jittery jumping back&forth of characters and units and such?
But, imagine them doing this in FFXIV: We're so used to this innate "delay" to everything. Not TBN-delay, but the little delay everything has. Imagine they patch this. Imagine if things happened near-instantly when you press a button. If dodging boss AoEs had to happen on-time, like in most other games. We are so used to this delay, we'd all be dying left and right and center to the simplest fights as we all intuitively account for this delay with everything we do.

[Derio]

Honestly the only thing that needs to change with TBN is there needs to be a lower level version(Just reuse shadowskin animation) unlocked before lvl 50 and then it upgrades to TBN at 70.

If they keep the risk vs reward factor for TBN then it needs to do more, whether that is adding mitigation, adding healing or increasing the duration to 10s to allow more time for the skill to break.

We compare TBN to other short mits. TBN provides a shield, that is it. Others have some combo of shield and heal or heal and mitigation or all 3. I dont think the 10s shorter cooldown with risk/reward factor is strong enough to justify it's current strength compared to other tanks.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...] We compare TBN to other short mits. TBN provides a shield, that is it. Others have some combo of shield and heal or heal and mitigation or all 3. I dont think the 10s shorter cooldown with risk/reward factor is strong enough to justify it's current strength compared to other tanks.

Strictly from a mitigation standpoint? That 25% HP shield is a lot mightier than it lets on. "That is it" like as if it isn't strong. I mean:

- if you use TBN vs a single hit, it provides equal effective HP (eHP) as rampart, as 20% mitigation mathed out is +25% eHP
- unlike other %-type mitigation, TBN actually scales in value when paired with one or more %-type mitigation effects rather than having diminishing returns
- even with prolonged damage taken, that is a 25% HP shield on a 15s cooldown. If MP pool allows, that's a benediction's worth in shields over the course of a minute.

Pre Lv82, thats TBN vs base Sheltron, Raw Intuition and Heart of Stone. TBN is incredibly powerful here. Post Lv82, thats TBN + Oblation vs the upgraded short mits, which is still quite potent because DRK also has Dark Mind on a 60s cooldown rather than 90s like Bulwark, Thrill of Battle and Camouflage. Being able to have a 19%/28% mitigation + a 25% HP shield every minute without even considering Rampart, Shadowed Vigil or Reprisal is extremely potent.

For context, with 19% (Dark Mind + Oblation vs physical) and TBN, you sit at 154.32% eHP, with 28% (same but vs magical) that amounts to 173.61% eHP.
For comparison, Holy Sheltron + Bulwark or Rampart (15%, 15%, 20% mitigations) is 173.01% eHP, with both of them having a longer cooldown/chargeup.

Quite close numbers, but with drastic cooldown differences. Technically, it is more than fine - but if we really want something "added" or improved...

1.) Extend the timer of TBN to 8-10 seconds (from 7 seconds) to at least match the short mitigations)
2.) Add whatever healing/utility you may want on Oblation instead

[Oizen]

TBN only being a shield is a good thing, and another thing I've started to feel with it is that because its always a 25% cut of your HP, it scales through expansions and powercreep a bit more gracefully than healing tools do.
I dont know if its just me but tools like Heart of Corrundum or Equalibirum don't feel as powerful as they did in Endwalker, it feels like the older skills get the more their healing potency gets left behind. Its not that significant yet but I remember loving HoC a lot in Endwalker, while when I revisit Gunbreaker it just sorta feels lesser than I remember.

Soul Eater has fallen off like this for DRK, It feels a lot stronger in low level content than it does into later levels.
I did some basic testing and found that it used to restore ~15% of your health in old content(lv 28), drops to 8% by lv 50, then restores as low as 5% in current ilv content. Given how wildly stats balloon between Shadowbrings to Dawntrail I think this is probably what I'm feeling, and it makes sense that TBN feels a lot more consistent across level ranges than healing tools on WAR or GNB as a result.

Hopefully they modernize healing potencies across the board at some point like they did for Abyssal drain

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You're not alone Oizen, this has been occuring since Shadowbringers. Essentially, HP and damage taken has scaled up at a similar scale, but healing (and damage done) scaled slower. While it comes with the side effect of healing from tools like Heart of Corundum and Souleater or even Healer actions (that dont get upgraded via trait) feeling weaker, I believe that is intentional.

For example, if healing scaled at equal rate, new tools like Lithurgy of the Bell and Macrocosmos would be complete overkill and you could just use what you had at Lv70/80 to heal your party to full in like 2 seconds. Scholar's Adloquium spread with a guaranteed crit would also be absurdly powerful.

Having upgrades and additions to the healing & mitigation suite like we had can only be justified if what we had before is borderline or at all not enough.

I do wish for Souleater to feel better though, or for DRK to actually go a dedicted lifestealer route with oldschool HP spending (PvP does this pretty well). Can only cross fingers until 8.0 and hope PvP dev team breaks containment... their job designs are amazing imho.

[Mercury_Grey]

Change on GNB superbolide applyign faster in ShB- Great, now uses drops to 50% of max hp amazing. But TBN beign suggested to hurt allies adn enemies that would be either removed or change super fast makes it higher risk for less reward. Change TBN that if it break scoul dgive a 9 second regen, gives the DrK a weaker version of raw intutuin for set number of skills or next aoe is a crit.

[Terhix]

The main gripe I've with TBN is that if you actually decide to use it proactively as MT to mit as much damage as possible and figure out exactly where in the fight it's guaranteed to break and where not, you still lose DPS doing it by not pooling all your resources into 2 minute window, comparted to the "correct" use of TBN which is to drop it on a random person during a raidwide before 2 minutes to slide an extra Edge into the burst window. I'm not going to suggest specific changes since nobody cares and Square doesn't read this, but if DRK has to have dps and mitigation tied together, that relationship should be reversed: give us better mitigation for doing dps correctly instead of punishing dps for mitigating better.

[Valence]

Attaching damage bonuses to support abilities in a damage focused meta/gameplay, and people using said support only during raid buffs? Who could have expected that I wonder.
It's almost like people don't do the same already with gap closers...