GNB feedback.

[Carighan]

I think Jobs should try to appeal to different players, they should do things such as make a Proc based Tank, Proc Melee, a core hard GCD tank, Healers with more then one damage buttons, instead of copy and pasting a very similar formular for each job because it gets insanely boring very quickly.

I'll stick to the fact that of the four basic gameplay types used in MMORPGs (or even RPGs in general) (proc-based, resource-based, dynamic branching and static rotation) it's insanely boring how everything in FFXIV has to be static rotation. Even Dancer and Red Mage got their proc chances meddles with (and the effects trivialized enough) so that they play exactly like a static-rotation-job does.

It's soooo sad. It should be the rarest type, usually reserved for the purest variant in each job as it lends itself well to the "simple enough in concept, difficult in perfect execution"-creed and hence works well with conceptionally pure and hence simple setups. Samurai, Black Mage, Paladin maybe, White Mage. Those could fit it. Everything else ought to be of a different basic type!

And then there's the identity differences we're also missing. We don't have a drain tank, not even warrior. We don't have an anti-magic tank, we don't have an anti-physical tank, we don't have a damage tank, we don't have a dodge tank, etc etc. It's so lame and boring!

At the absolute bare minimum, I'd focus:

• Paladin more in support. A lot more!
• Dark Knight as a retaliatory punisher.
• Gunbreaker as a preprogramming gameplay job where you load different cartridges in sequence and then have to use them as-loaded.
• Warrior as the ultimate bash bash job, virtually no combos, 0 resource management, lots of 5-15 second CDs to juggle all at once.

[CidHeiral]

I completely agree with you, I totally despise what they did, I used to play 2.45 which was my comfy middle sks. It actually challenged me to think about how to use all my GCDs on p1 FRU to fully optimise my rotation, and now I feel like I've been lobotomized. I know they'll never revert it but I can hope...

Yeah, fast GNB was my favorite and now it's dead.

For me as much as GNB changes are easier for me to play, I do not main GNB, I mostly play PLD or DRK if im tanking I really think GNB changes should only really appeal to GNB players rather then warrior mains who want to get into GNB and have that job simplified for them.

Totally agree. The devs seem to be going down the list and simplifying every job to appeal to people who hate it while giving the finger to the mains of the old design. This is a very shortsighted strategy as I outlined previously when they gutted DRG:

Say you have three jobs: Job A, Job B, and Job C. Keeping in mind you can play every job on the same character, Job A is played by 50% of players, Job B by 40%, and Job C by 20%. The devs look at those numbers and think "Job C is so unpopular, let's redesign it to be like Job A and Job B." They do so and sure enough Job C is now played by 50% of players as well. However, that increase in player count is mainly comprised of people who like the design of Job A and B and are now playing the reworked job as well. People who liked the old design of Job C now have nothing to play so they're driven away from the game. All you've ultimately accomplished is alienating that 20% of people — it's a net negative in player count.

I think every time the devs lobotomize a job they see positive feedback from Job A and Job B enjoyers and take that as a huge success without realizing they're losing the Job C crowd every time. Or maybe they do realize it and they just don't care, who knows?

I think Jobs should try to appeal to different players, they should do things such as make a Proc based Tank, Proc Melee, a core hard GCD tank, Healers with more then one damage buttons, instead of copy and pasting a very similar formular for each job because it gets insanely boring very quickly.

Definitely. When your job is boring you're only going to have fun the small percentage of time you're figuring out a new encounter. When your job is fun and engaging you can find the fun doing almost anything. There should be a mix of different playstyles and complexities in each role so there's something for everyone.

I'm a big fighting game fan and I often think of job design like a fighting game roster. Most noteworthy fighting games have a couple easy straightforward all-rounder characters that are extremely popular, like Ryu in Street Fighter or Sol Badguy in Guilty Gear, but the larger roster will have all sorts of wacky characters with wildly different playstyles to cater to different player preferences, even if some are very niche. Right now FFXIV is like a fighting game where every character is Ryu. That's awesome for people who like Ryu, but if you like grapplers, puppet characters, stance characters, etc your only option is to learn to love Ryu or quit. That's is not good for the long term health of the game.

[Rithy255]

Snip

Here's a simple concept Magic vs physical damage tank, Back in HW (I think anyway i did not play that far back, ive only done some reasearch into it) Pld was physical and Drk was magic, but the main issue with that is fights used magic 90% of the time, So PLD became useless

But Imagine if a fight used both? The PLD and Drk would synergize and have to use cooldowns to cover for each other, that could be a semi intresting dynamic, Heck I know it might be silly but I had a idea of DRK being able to augment their defensive skills such as turning Dark mind physical which would reward fight knowledge Because DM has a shorter cooldown ect. Instead 10% physical was slapped on which somewhat undermines what made it different and don't get me wrong It did suck to have no way to get value out of a physical only fight I don't want to defend a skill just being useless sometimes or really good sometimes for no reason other then someone made a fight physical or magic.

I think the main primary point I'm making is theirs actually room to have Tanks shine in different areas; Maybe not a magical or physical split because it would turn out somewhat similar to barrier Healers, But I don't like people saying it can't work at the very least because it was never tried in a balanced way, kinda like tank stances people complained so they got removed but I feel like it could have worked if it was more the tanks job and less the parties job to aggro manage. Now will anything like that be added? No. I think SE has made it very clear they will not return to HW or SB which is honestly fine, aslong as the direction they take is interesting.


I think tanks having stronger niches and also having different dps styled kits would breathe a lot of life into them which is needed, I won't get into the flaws of 2 minute meta much, but that needs to go and not be replaced by a "1 minute meta" or any set buff timer meta, you might aswell not have buffs if all it does is restrict job design and its something a DPS/healer presses once every 2 minutes and forgets about.

PLD being a support tank would be fun, I love it already for being highly supportive more of that would be amazing it honestly fits the tank who's a knight protector with holy white magic, DRK rewarding timing and punishing enemies would be fun, TBN kinda does that but it's more of a neutral cost, GNB having a wild gameplay loop with different catridges sounds pretty interesting, warrior like that also sounds so much more interesting.

They just need to try stuff, 5.0-7.4 has been so bland with job changes everything feels boring the only shake up to a job design has been to make it easier, name one job design that's got more interesting or complex? not always necessarily bad changes all the time but theirs not been a single change to a job that has been bold or took it in a direction that's interesting as of shadowbringers. I'm fed up with dreading expansions seeing "what jobs next?" or I would be but theirs hardly anything unique left anymore, maybe that's the goal because its very easy to balance jobs when they are all the same and fit the same niche, but frankly it just makes for a very poor job design system, and for a game that puts jobs and being different jobs on the same character as a centre choice just makes no sense sure Balance is important but at the same time having a fun game to begin with is even more important then balance, because if it's not fun why bother.

[Carighan]

I mean to a degree I get it.

We know from multiple generations of MMORPGs that the tighter players want their balance to be, particularly in high-end content, the more homogenized classes of a single role have to effectively be. We also know that FFXIV uniquely wants to produce its combat complexity and difficulty via the encounter, not the class you play.

And look at the DPS forum. Despite only a +/-5% variation in damage output across all damage jobs (so including PRanged+Summoner!), clearly some want even more homogenization and hence tighter numerical balance. Though to be fair WoW said they're happy with 3% variation to not have to overdo homogenization, not 5%, and also they were far less homogenized at the time than FFXIV is right now.

But, there's an important detail lost here, maybe: WoW seems to be less homogenized, especially back then late TBC / early WotLK. But it ain't. It's highly homogenized, but it hides that part. It pretends to be unique. Instead of all 4 tanks having exact equivalences ("This is my long CD", "This is my 1-2-3 combo", etc), they can be wildly different, so long as they effectively homogenize when used in an actual fight. Whether somebody can press a 40% damage reduction every 3 minutes versus whether someone suffers 40% less damage automatically against big enough boss abilities and that has a 3-min-ish CD... sounds like a big deal, but actually makes zero difference if the fight isn't designed to particularly produce said difference. And yet playing the class it feels like a huge difference since a whole - rather important! - button isn't there on one class!

That's where I wish they'd do more, "pretend variation". I'm alright if they have to effectively homogenize because well, players clearly want even more numerical balance than we have right now already. But I don't need to produce that balanced DPS with a roughly equivalent rotation with roughly equivalent CDs on every job, it can be produced any number of ways!

[Mikey_R]

We don't have a drain tank, not even warrior.

I don't know why not Warrior, but I will assume you mean a tank that heals itself based on the damage they do and not a fixed potency value. The problem, you cannot balance it as it will either be too strong, which further pushes healers away (which is already an issue), or it is too weak to mean anything. As a reference from my PLD, Fast Blade does ~5% of my max HP in damage and Sepulchre does ~10%. How much healing would you want out of this? As another point of reference, the 400 potency heal off of the magic attacks is ~7.5% of my max HP, we then have to consider burst, which has stronger attacks, so more healing.

I cannot see it being balanced and if you go the way of it being weak, so it is essentially flavour, can you really call that an identity?

We don't have an anti-magic tank, we don't have an anti-physical tank,

Every tank has to be able to tank everything as SE do not want to discriminate against certain tanks. From there, if you were better against magical damage, does that provide any benefit to the healers in saving resources? In most cases I would say it wouldn't, so again, it becomes more of a flavour thing rather than an actual benefit.

we don't have a damage tank

If a tank does too much damage ahead of the other tanks, it will be an automatic pick, especially combined with the fact that it has to be able to tank everything.

we don't have a dodge tank, etc etc. It's so lame and boring!

Dodge tank would be pointless. You cannot dodge any major mechanic, so you still need the defensive profile to be able to take a hit, so all you would really do is evade the odd auto attack here and there.

At the absolute bare minimum, I'd focus:

• Paladin more in support. A lot more!
• Dark Knight as a retaliatory punisher.
• Gunbreaker as a preprogramming gameplay job where you load different cartridges in sequence and then have to use them as-loaded.
• Warrior as the ultimate bash bash job, virtually no combos, 0 resource management, lots of 5-15 second CDs to juggle all at once.

1. PLD already has more support than the other tanks with Passage of Arms and Cover that the other tanks cannot replicate. They can also Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in a short timespan. The closest another tank gets to that is Dark Knight with TBN on themselves and Oblation on someone else, but Oblation is far weaker than Intervention, even ignoring the extra mitigation that Intervention can be given via Rampart/Guardian.
2. Which would mean DRK would want to MT as much as possible, where, anytime they have to OT, they lose damage. You could add in a skill that still allows the retaliatory action whilst OT, but that then that just proves the initial premise was flawed.
3. So, Mudras for Gunbreaker? I thought people didn't want the jobs to be the same. Oh, different combo enders give different resources? Just like Samurai then, except it is a mash up of the Mudra and Samurai concepts. With what I have read, many people would just make the claim that you are making the jobs play the same (I'm not going to make that claim though). Also, if there is any damage focused options, they will be used over the supporting ones, every time.
4. Line up your GCDs from highest priority to lowest priority, hit in that order as they light up. Sorry, it might appeal to some, but that doesn't sound exciting at all. Current Warrior would be better and it is simple as anything.

You can have your own ideas about jobs and what you want out of them, but unless it fits in with the game's framework, it isn't going to work.

[Rithy255]

1. PLD already has more support than the other tanks with Passage of Arms and Cover that the other tanks cannot replicate. They can also Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in a short timespan. The closest another tank gets to that is Dark Knight with TBN on themselves and Oblation on someone else, but Oblation is far weaker than Intervention, even ignoring the extra mitigation that Intervention can be given via Rampart/Guardian.
2. Which would mean DRK would want to MT as much as possible, where, anytime they have to OT, they lose damage. You could add in a skill that still allows the retaliatory action whilst OT, but that then that just proves the initial premise was flawed.
3. So, Mudras for Gunbreaker? I thought people didn't want the jobs to be the same. Oh, different combo enders give different resources? Just like Samurai then, except it is a mash up of the Mudra and Samurai concepts. With what I have read, many people would just make the claim that you are making the jobs play the same (I'm not going to make that claim though). Also, if there is any damage focused options, they will be used over the supporting ones, every time.
4. Line up your GCDs from highest priority to lowest priority, hit in that order as they light up. Sorry, it might appeal to some, but that doesn't sound exciting at all. Current Warrior would be better and it is simple as anything.

You can have your own ideas about jobs and what you want out of them, but unless it fits in with the game's framework, it isn't going to work.

1. PLD while having the highest support/utility doesn't make it that far ahead, sorry but cover isn't even apart of the equation it's a niche skill that will maybe get a use once in a blue moon, Passage of arms while nice is still very much only useful in situations where party members are actively behind you (in high end not a lot due to how mechs work) Intervention Does not get extra mitigation it gets equal to holy sheltron mitigation IF you have rampart/guardian it's kind of a odd point to make, like yeah PLD can mit for a extra 10% instead of 20% but gnb can just mit 30% and provide a excog without rampart/Nebula, 2 charges of holy sheltron/intervention (which is holy sheltron for a friend) gauge is a actual benefit to the job other then when passage is good its good.

2. Depends how its designed DRK could obviously put skills onto the MT and punish players, so your point about them being OT doesn't seem correct, which is weak reasoning to be against the premise

3. Mudras for gunbreaker would make it unironically unique compared to how any tank plays, though I don't think they suggested that, I think by jobs being the same DPS-wise its fine if a Tank has a somewhat similar system to a DPS, like I would find it very fun if there was a RNG based rotation similar to how DNC feels on a tank, what makes jobs stale and boring is that they have very samey rotations in the same category.

4. To be fair im not 100% sure on what changes for what warrior they've suggested would look like but I think most things to me seem exciting then current warrior, though I'd at least have to see it first and how it work before I have a strong opinion on it, either way I appreciate the idea of a unique direction to take warrior.

Games framework is a buzzword, PLD having more or better support/utility options doesn't break the games frame work, nor does "mudras for GNB" The games framework should also change sometimes, while we haven't seen big changes in a long time so its likely realistic to expect nothing changing anytime soon but at the same time lets not pretend anything they said was out of this world, your acting like they're asking for TP and cleric stance back lol.

[Mikey_R]

I'm going to hide replies to specific people, just to prevent the post from getting too long.

Rithy:

1. PLD while having the highest support/utility doesn't make it that far ahead, sorry but cover isn't even apart of the equation it's a niche skill that will maybe get a use once in a blue moon, Passage of arms while nice is still very much only useful in situations where party members are actively behind you (in high end not a lot due to how mechs work) Intervention Does not get extra mitigation it gets equal to holy sheltron mitigation IF you have rampart/guardian it's kind of a odd point to make, like yeah PLD can mit for a extra 10% instead of 20% but gnb can just mit 30% and provide a excog without rampart/Nebula, 2 charges of holy sheltron/intervention (which is holy sheltron for a friend) gauge is a actual benefit to the job other then when passage is good its good.

2. Depends how its designed DRK could obviously put skills onto the MT and punish players, so your point about them being OT doesn't seem correct, which is weak reasoning to be against the premise

3. Mudras for gunbreaker would make it unironically unique compared to how any tank plays, though I don't think they suggested that, I think by jobs being the same DPS-wise its fine if a Tank has a somewhat similar system to a DPS, like I would find it very fun if there was a RNG based rotation similar to how DNC feels on a tank, what makes jobs stale and boring is that they have very samey rotations in the same category.

4. To be fair im not 100% sure on what changes for what warrior they've suggested would look like but I think most things to me seem exciting then current warrior, though I'd at least have to see it first and how it work before I have a strong opinion on it, either way I appreciate the idea of a unique direction to take warrior.

Games framework is a buzzword, PLD having more or better support/utility options doesn't break the games frame work, nor does "mudras for GNB" The games framework should also change sometimes, while we haven't seen big changes in a long time so its likely realistic to expect nothing changing anytime soon but at the same time lets not pretend anything they said was out of this world, your acting like they're asking for TP and cleric stance back lol.

1. Your comments about Cover and Passage just show that adding more 'support' doesn't matter, so why would you want to design a tank around having more of it? As for Intervention/Holy Sheltron, it was specifically talking about using both in quick succession. Yes, Heart of Corundum is powerful, however, you cannot use it on yourself and someone else in quick succession, which is why I only bought up Dark Knight and compared it to Oblation, so you didn't address what I said at all.

2. Have reprisals as MT, ok, what about when they are OT, well, add an action that still allows the use, even when OT. You are literally adding in a button to solve an issue. That proves the initial implementation had flaws, and you wanted to fix them, so why not just improve the initial implementation rather than adding a band aid fix.

3. This wasn't meant to be a comment for or against it, it was more a bit of tongue in cheek about how many players will call things the same (despite them not being the same) then cry out homogenisation, SE have no creativity etc. Which I hoped my caveat that I didn't necessarily agree with what I said should have given that impression.

4. From what I can gather, 1 combo, a few extra buttons between 5-15 seconds and that is it (ignoring the other things that all tanks get like defensives and utility etc.). There wouldn't be any beast gauge to manage, no damage buff, not even Inner Release, just, every button is damage. Which is ironic considering one complaint people have is everything is damage and what was suggested looks like, everything is damage. I haven't read further than this post at the time of writing this, but more info would be needed to potentially clarify in more detail what was meant.

Carighan:

I'm going to assume you have comparatively little knowledge of other MMORPGs, yes?

I have never hidden the fact that FFXIV is the only MMO I have played. However, I do hear things from others about other MMOs and, as long as it sounds logically reasonable, I can use that and compare it to FFXIV and how such a thing might work in FFXIV.

Hence why you instantly lock up when you read something like "damage tank", "That cannot possibly work!", or why a tank that dodges instead of reducing damage seems impossible to you? But let me assure you, it's not only possible, it is actively working. Both in past and in present MMORPGs. It doesn't even take much imagination to consider how these would work in FFXIV.

Then tell me. Rather than just berate. However, bear in mind we had what I consider a 'damage tank' with Warrior in HW and that, along with a variety of other things, made it really unbalanced. So I really would be interested to know how you envision these things to be added.

In particular:
Paladins does not have any meaningful amounts of "more support", particularly so because they don't actually perform support. How many GCDs do you spend on healing, shielding and rezzing again as a Paladin? Do you weave songs like a DAoC Albion Paladin for mixed group buffs? Do you swap out of tank mode to provide HoTs and rezz people like a TBC bear druid? Do you move negative effects on partymembers to yourself like a GW2 Guardian?

And that's how I feel reading all of your comments, tbh. You seem to completely either lack knowledge of, imagination for or trust of anything that isn't the current FFXIV set of class design. But the entire criticism is that this class design is very, very, very bad, even comparing non-successful past MMOs, nevermind successful ones. It's understandable how we got to where we are, sure. The intention the devs have for it is also easy to see. But it's not good, that is the point!

I do not have time to look into specific jobs here, however, how do these fit in around the rest of the game? Are there periods in your rotations that allow you to have the time to do these things, how strict are DPS checks, how much damage do tanks do relative to DPS etc. It isn't just a simple case of adding them into FFXIV and expecting them to work, you need to know how they would be implemented, how would that affect how the jobs play etc.

(also as Rithy says Mudras would actually be interesting on a tank, in particular if they're for the defensive stuff so you have to plan ahead)

Just to copy my response to that from Rithy:

This wasn't meant to be a comment for or against it, it was more a bit of tongue in cheek about how many players will call things the same (despite them not being the same) then cry out homogenisation, SE have no creativity etc. Which I hoped my caveat that I didn't necessarily agree with what I said should have given that impression.

[Carighan]

You can have your own ideas about jobs and what you want out of them, but unless it fits in with the game's framework, it isn't going to work.

I'm going to assume you have comparatively little knowledge of other MMORPGs, yes?

Hence why you instantly lock up when you read something like "damage tank", "That cannot possibly work!", or why a tank that dodges instead of reducing damage seems impossible to you? But let me assure you, it's not only possible, it is actively working. Both in past and in present MMORPGs. It doesn't even take much imagination to consider how these would work in FFXIV.

I also am sorry, but I have to laugh about how FFXIV-skewed some of you readings of sentences are. The whole point is to be less like FFXIV because that is bad. That's the entire point of these statements, of the whole thread maybe. So naturally any solution to the problem has to be "not FFXIV-y" in nature. That's the entire solution, the devs don't have to invent anything as 30 years of MMORPGs have done all the R&D for them, they just have to mark what didn't work for other MMOs, remove that, then copy what other MMOs did that worked. It's fun if the space is explored and the problems already solved, means the solution is trivial insofar that you already know the wrong from the right answers.

In particular:
Paladins does not have any meaningful amounts of "more support", particularly so because they don't actually perform support. How many GCDs do you spend on healing, shielding and rezzing again as a Paladin? Do you weave songs like a DAoC Albion Paladin for mixed group buffs? Do you swap out of tank mode to provide HoTs and rezz people like a TBC bear druid? Do you move negative effects on partymembers to yourself like a GW2 Guardian?

And that's how I feel reading all of your comments, tbh. You seem to completely either lack knowledge of, imagination for or trust of anything that isn't the current FFXIV set of class design. But the entire criticism is that this class design is very, very, very bad, even comparing non-successful past MMOs, nevermind successful ones. It's understandable how we got to where we are, sure. The intention the devs have for it is also easy to see. But it's not good, that is the point!

(also as Rithy says Mudras would actually be interesting on a tank, in particular if they're for the defensive stuff so you have to plan ahead)

[Shurrikhan]

Agreed on the other comments, but...

I don't know why not Warrior, but I will assume you mean a tank that heals itself based on the damage they do and not a fixed potency value. The problem, you cannot balance it as it will either be too strong, which further pushes healers away (which is already an issue), or it is too weak to mean anything.

This is funny as heck to me. Heals can crit, the same as damage. Heals scale with certain buffs, the same as damage. Heals scale with gear, the same as damage. (Unless this has been changed since EW and I've forgotten that change, they even inherit auto-crits.)

The only differences between healing for a flat rate per hit and healing based on damage actually dealt are (A) whether its scales with the likes of Temperance and Mantra or Battle Litany and Battle Voice and (B) whether you want to them to depend on rotational/maintained damage buffs.

As a reference from my PLD, Fast Blade does ~5% of my max HP in damage and Sepulchre does ~10%. How much healing would you want out of this?

Fast Blade does 220 potency. Divine Magic (Mastery II) does 400. Sepulchre does 540 and would, it healing based on damage dealt, heal for more than Holy Spirit. Clemency is 1000, the same as Confiteor and Blade of Valor.

That's not a matter of whether it came from an attack. It's simply a matter of potency.

Dodge tank would be pointless. You cannot dodge any major mechanic

"Dodge tanks" do not necessarily have to use a gamewide basic RNG-dodge as a significant portion of their actual sustain. It's just a visual theme for whatever sustain they may have, where any RNG can be as modest as parry has been, or even lesser. It more often just implies simply that beyond some extent of mitigation, no debuffs are taken, similarly to what's possible on a "barrier tank", and may imply some extra benefit to mostly-reliable mitigation against numerous small attacks compared to other tanks, in exchange for needing to be (a bit) better topped off or shielded than other tanks before big hits to reliably meet their checks in turn (or else needing some manner of purgatory mechanic to provide that reliability now and then without being OP).

[Mikey_R]

This is funny as heck to me. Heals can crit, the same as damage. Heals scale with certain buffs, the same as damage. Heals scale with gear, the same as damage. (Unless this has been changed since EW and I've forgotten that change, they even inherit auto-crits.)

The only differences between healing for a flat rate per hit and healing based on damage actually dealt are (A) whether its scales with the likes of Temperance and Mantra or Battle Litany and Battle Voice and (B) whether you want to them to depend on rotational/maintained damage buffs.

The point here wasn't about the result, but about the execution. One, the healing is based on the damage you do, the other is a fixed value based on the attack. This could be enough to make someone point to a job and say, they aren't a drain tank, just because it wasn't based on damage done.


However, just to clear up things about auto crits, it depends. If the attack naturally does auto-crit, it will be a crit heal, however, if the attack is forced into an auto-crit state, it does not mean the heal will be an auto crit. This can easily be tested by using Inner Release on Warrior along with Bloodwhetting. The heal from the Fell Cleaves are not guaranteed to crit, however, heals from Primal Rend, Primal Ruination and Inner Chaos do.

Also, none of the tanks have the ability to increase their healing. Fight or Flight, Surging Tempest etc. all increase damage but not healing.

Temperance only affects the White Mage and only affects the spells, NOT abilities, ie. Cure 2 gets buffed, but not Tetragrammaton. Contrast this with Asylum that does provide the extra healing benefit to everything (the difference is 'Healing Magic Potency' is only spells and 'Healing Actions' is everything).

Mantra does increase the heals from things like Second Wind, however, I cannot test if it also affects things like Storm's Path or Bloodwhetting.

I do not know if Battle Litany or similar things the affect crit rate of healing spells/actions, or if they increase the healing potency of auto heal actions (Bloodwhetting certain attacks or Scholar's Recitation I think are the only auto crit heals).

Bloodbath is the odd one out in all of this as it heals a direct proportion of damage, what that proportion is seems to vary wildly though. Running a quick test, thinking it would be a fixed value, I got weird results. Auto attacks seem to be about 18.9% of the damage but GCD seemed to ranged from about 12.87% from Dragon Kick to 6.38% on a crit Leaping Opo. Importantly though, it is not affected by Mantra, though who knows how things like Battle Litany will affect things.

Fast Blade does 220 potency. Divine Magic (Mastery II) does 400. Sepulchre does 540 and would, it healing based on damage dealt, heal for more than Holy Spirit. Clemency is 1000, the same as Confiteor and Blade of Valor.

That's not a matter of whether it came from an attack. It's simply a matter of potency.

Yes. The whole point of this was to determine what % of damage dealt should be healed on each attack for a 'drain' tank. As I said, I put in these values as a reference point to try and help place what they would consider to be an acceptable value.

"Dodge tanks" do not necessarily have to use a gamewide basic RNG-dodge as a significant portion of their actual sustain. It's just a visual theme for whatever sustain they may have, where any RNG can be as modest as parry has been, or even lesser. It more often just implies simply that beyond some extent of mitigation, no debuffs are taken, similarly to what's possible on a "barrier tank", and may imply some extra benefit to mostly-reliable mitigation against numerous small attacks compared to other tanks, in exchange for needing to be (a bit) better topped off or shielded than other tanks before big hits to reliably meet their checks in turn (or else needing some manner of purgatory mechanic to provide that reliability now and then without being OP).

Any important debuffs are going to be applied regardless of shield or dodge potential. This game really doesn't have many cases of numerous, small, attacks outside of dungeon trash, which is the only place it is reliable. A healers current ability to shield is not going to be enough to allow the tank to survive in any serious content, they need some way to reduce damage, at which point, even if it is a case of 'dodging' 40% of the damage, that is effectively the same as mitigating 40% of the damage. You could say the theme behind it is different, but also, how would people actually see it. It's just another 40% tank mitigation. Even going so far as to have their big cooldown being dodge almost all attacks, that is functionally the same as Paladin's Hallowed Ground (cue the cries of homogeneity).

And that's kinda the point: FFXIV needs to look to other MMOs why certain things didn't work, for nobody else. And while sure, hey, maybe 10th time the charm. Chances are, it's not. :P

Yes, and they might have done already, we do not know. They might have looked at the shields on Blood Death Knight from over 13 years ago, seen that WoW has changed the job for reasons and decided well, it didn't work for them, so we won't bother, or, they might have looked at it, tested it, and decided, it did not work. Ultimately, we do not know what has and has not been tested and that is the thing to keep in mind.