Adressing the issue with Defense, Vitality, Bloodtanking and more.

[Antithesis]

As many who have played this game for quite a while have seen; Defensive ratings and such are just awkward. Anyone who has played Paladin knows how ineffective Bloodtanking can be in certain / most situations. Its not MP cost effective and thus leaves it quite unreliable. Some key points:

- As charcters progress further in levels the amount of damage taken from enemy attacks no matter how much Defense and Vitality amor is on are increasingly strong to the point where even Warriors wearing Tanking armor cannot witstand so many hits.

- A substantial amount of Defense must be added to the Defense rating to see any noticable changes in damage taken.

- Many high level enemies hit so hard that straight tanking makes it almost impossible to survive. Thus Kiting is neccesary. Although this is an acceptable type of Defensive tactic (used in many other types of games also.) Monsters of only a couple of levels above the players current level (82+) hit amazingly hard.

- Although mages are not made to be tanks they shouldent be killed in 2 to 3 hits by a monster. Sometimes a monster can literally kill ,in one hit, a badly Defensive equiped mages (Taru smns etc.)

- This also creates a problem for Xp parties. Since the only two Jobs capable of efectivly tanking beyond 50 are Ninja (shadows) and Paladin (One of the few jobs to have amazing defensive abilites) it leaves other jobs at a disatvange to help there party tank when no tank is looking for party. (Even though some Warriors have tanked beyond 50 with proper party set ups.)

To be honest everyone knows and probably accepts the fact that Defensive ratings and calculations might never be fixed (hence PLD/NIN) So they don't bother saying anything. I'm not a tank (Brd) but I have been recently curious as to why exactly this is like this. How can this be corrected / made better?

I'm intrested to see what type of fixes can be made to make bloodtaking / staying alive a little more viable.

I apologise if this does not meet "Advanced" standerds and if this questions is a little redundant. ^^;

Edit: Spelling.

[isladar]

Moved from Advanced.

[The Stig]

I think that if it was to be fixed, even a PLD who has, say, 400~500 DEF at 75 with no buffs/job abilities, any other job can somewhat reach that value quite easily (or close to it). This might have an effect where all jobs might be potential tanks because of the reduce in damage taken dependant on your defense. Mobs that were once OMG STRONG might appear very weak then.

Of course, it might be slightly different if they were to fix VIT on top as well, where it will then make PLD and/or WAR pull ahead with its defensive values. (Other jobs may not be able to stack as much VIT as a PLD and/or WAR can).

Just my opinion/thoughts.

[fantasticdan]

It's not just the damage taken that makes blood tanking inefficient in most situations, it's also the enmity lost in the process.

[Meian]

Friend of mine, a Paladin, said even if they reached 999 defense it wouldn't be enough to justify the bloodtanking in those "certain" situations where it wouldn't work well.

If a Pld wore all VIT (including koenig), Defender (or maybe Coccon), ate tacos, how does the the damage look then (ignoring enmity issues in this setup)?

Other than that I agree with Stig entirely.

Edit: Hmm, if not VIT fixes maybe more PLD only -% gear that is decent? I know when I do Blu tanking in Campaign I wear Homam + defense/-% and I take similar damage to a normal PLD when not shielding. Bit tired to think more right now.

[Sanjiyan]

I think that if it was to be fixed, even a PLD who has, say, 400~500 DEF at 75 with no buffs/job abilities

My Mithra PLD don't have that. With my emnity setup, I have 375 base DEF without buffs/food. With protect IV it goes up to 430, and just over 500 with a taco. It's even less when I hit my haste/shield gear macro, for when I'm casting shadows (and most likely time to get hit). The defense bonus job trait adds a <sarcasm>whooping 47</sarcasm> def (iirc), but most "ideal" gear for a PLD (emnity, homam) doesn't have as high of a def compared to say koenig, and it's conterproductive to gear for vit/def these days.

But it is true, other jobs can reach that rather easily. The number is meaningless anyway.

Another problem with blood tanking is the rapid emnity loss when getting hit. No amount of def/vit formula changing will fix that, unless the tank is getting hit for trivial numbers, or SE fixes the emnity loss from taking damage (as well as emnity gain from doing damage so DDs don't get hate so fast even if a tank doesn't bleed emnity everytime they're hit).

[Ashira]

Actually, some tests Kaeko did with "supertanking," as he terms it, buffing someone to 999DEF, were pretty interesting. But it was also specifically one mob, and we don't know if it's something we'd actually go for... but still, results came out surprisingly better than I think we'd figured on.

[Kaeko]

DEF is very useful if you want to take less damage on Ixion.

Rampant Stance damage formula is roughly

1100 - DEF until about 800 DEF (which is pretty hard to reach).

You can shield block it too, but this is why rampant stance form Ixion has a very large damage range. It can also go berserk mode and do more than normal as well but DEF plays a big roll on it.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I would like to see them change the VIT:: Defense ratio for characters that are wearing a shield much like they changed the DEX::Accuracy ratio for two-handed weapon wielders. That would be really cool and give Paladins mainly a bigger defensive advantage, even if it does amount to just 20-30 more defense.

[Max™]

Problem with Def and Vit.

Turn it around the other way.

Monsters, for the most part, have retarded base damage apparently.

I mean SERIOUSLY retarded, on top of silly high pDif caps for some of them (seems to vary monster to monster?), toss level correction being in their favor, and it is a losing battle.

Most mobs you fight don't have a bunch of attack, and they don't have super duper str, but they're wielding a 100+ Dmg weapon which is level corrected in their favor.

Lower your Str as much as you can, use Defender, and put on an Apocalypse or just set your fStr up to give around 100 base Dmg, then go hit a lvl 70~ Crab.

You're going to kick it's ass pretty badly, even when it buffs it's defense up, the weapon damage gives too much "punch-through" power to guard against.

Without enough Vit to neuter that damage (hint: you can't get enough) to a reasonable level, and with your level corrected Defense still giving a positive pDif roll for the monster, you're just going to get the shit kicked out of you.

Make Defender give a -Dmg% effect, reduce mob base damage somewhat, while adjusting their Str stats to produce similar damage on unbuffed targets, but actually make Vit matter, and blood tanking will suddenly flourish.

[mikazuki]

it's not really the level difference which is the problem, or the strength-vitality; just the pdif range.

defense bonus lolvalues being replaced by an equivalent modifier to that which large mobs have is about the most elegant fix i can come up with.

for example:
defense bonus I : 0.90 modifier
defense bonus II : 0.80 modifier
defense bonus III : 0.70 modifier

i think SE would be satisfied with a method which allowed bloodtanking for intended classes (pld) and kept the one-shotting of mages.

[Starr]

IMO Protectra 2 should have been -% physical damage increasing with merits or would that be overpowered still?

[Niiro]

Do you mean Protectra 5?

And yes -2% damage taken per level would be sweet, thought maybe a bit too powerful with the recent increase in Cat 2 merit caps, maybe 1%.

[Starr]

Do you mean Protectra 5?

And yes -2% damage taken per level would be sweet, thought maybe a bit too powerful with the recent increase in Cat 2 merit caps, maybe 1%.

yeah 5 idk how I managed to write 2

[RKenshin]

Do you mean Protectra 5?

And yes -2% damage taken per level would be sweet, thought maybe a bit too powerful with the recent increase in Cat 2 merit caps, maybe 1%.

This made me think, has anyone ever even tested this?

All I know as far as Protectra V goes is people thought it was cool at first, realized it only added like a small amount of defense per upgrade, and then decided it was shit (rightfully so). But I don't think anyone ever tried to see if it added -damage taken, and while it doesn't say that in the description I wouldn't put it past SE to include something they don't mention.

And it sure would make it a lot more interesting as an upgrade.

[fantasticdan]

I think someone would have noticed with 1k needles or something similar by now if that were the case.

[Max™]

The pDif range is a problem because of two things, the weird distributions monsters seem to have (which vary from one to another by family it seems), and level correction skewing a bad thing in their favor more.

The Str-Vit would help reduce the min/max range we get hit for, except that monster base damage is oddly high, and you can't give them enough of an fStr penalty to help.

If they had higher Str, but lower weapon damage, and conformed to a more normalized pDif function like we do, it wouldn't be so ridiculous to try and bloodtank.

[mikazuki]

all other merits (to my knowledge) do what they say on the tin, but i'm sure you could find someone with pro-raV if you wanted rukenshin. although - if each merit in it gave -1% physical damage for example, it would become slightly more useful than a jelly ring, (reasoning that you don't get the merits in another area, just as jelly ring is deficient in its own special way).

max, because fSTR makes up the minor part of the damage equation you are right in saying we would take less damage if mob DMG was lowered, but because mobs start off with very low DMG ratings and don't actually go that far beyond what is available to players - there isn't much room to change those ratings without using non-integers.
fSTR has a parity for players and mobs which i don't think SE would be keen to get rid of, while you could fix the equation at this point, it's not mathematically satisfactory.

the best way to state the problem is that the defense values of equipment don't scale with level and there is an assumed cap of 999 (is this actually true? ) defense, you can fix this and partly alleviate the damage taken (depending on where the non-crit cap is for mobs, higher being better).

using -physical damage sadly doesn't improve the situation on its own because of course it works the same way as adding slightly more defense; when you are doing:
X+dX * Y+dY
then slightly more defense is the dX part, slightly more physdmg-% is the dY part, that's why i suggested a solution which adds a third term:
W+dW
which is multiplicative with the first two, and incidentally concentrated on SEs tank class preferences.

note:
-use your imagination as to the application of physdmg-% to Y+dY

and finally, you'd still be in a better situation facing a single target spell casting enemy with utsu if you had fixed physical damage to the point where something other than /nin was more efficient, a really dirty fix would be to have utsu absorb half any damage or scale the damage reduction with ninjutsu skill.

[Apelila]

If prot 5 has a hidden effect damage minus then I've missed the memo, unless you mean when you bump it to level 2 or above. If thats they case, it would be the only merit ability with a 'hidden' effect.

But duo boxing with it (A LOT) since it was introduced, there is no noticable increase between a IV from PLD and then a V from WHM on those times where I "god dammit I canceled protect' and couldn't be bothered to ask the WHM to rebuff.

Just my 2 cents, I'm sure as hell not about to merit it to test it out.

[Aymee]

In case you don't want to read everything below, here's a really short answer in the form of a question: The numbers might be tilted against us, but how do you respond to the fact that a well-organized PT/group can do extended straighttank operations on, heay-hitting mobs (re: salvage and nyzul bosses) and win despite indeed having the risk of dying in just a few hits, and a limited MP pool?

...

Even though it's true that the mob dmg formulas are really freaking weird and are stacked against us wildly (I totally love getting smacked for crits for 500 on a chariot, really), you should not underestimate how much even an 'enhanced' defense adds up over time.

Try going through the same activity with a NIN main, WAR main, and PLD main to tank... the differences are gigantic. Mind you I have no idea how to back this up with numbers, but clearly there's something at work. Ask your friends who play each of these jobs and you should get interesting answers from them.

I think SE kinda realizes this and has been slowly changing how stuff works... PLD has been constantly upgraded for almost 4 years now to keep adding methods for them to mitigate damage--there's now so much that they can shrug off a more 'casual' NM (like, dynamis mnk trigger NMs in cities come to mind) using hundred fists without getting scratched. Since I'm not a PLD I cannot testify to how this actually feels, but their survivability is tenfold better than anything else [that's not a rdm/nin].

Me... well I find NIN to be laughably frail. Generally speaking, I use my nin in my dynamis group and for heavy campaign time wasting and my war for assault and salvage (in tank spots)... so I get a good view on the differences between the damage-avoiding tank jobs. Even though it isn't expressed via massive VIT gaps, hundreds of defense different or any other numerical measurement... The differences are just incredible. Unless I know I have a direct healer on me on NIN, I just assume I'll die if I manage to make more than 1 mistake with shadows or have bad luck on mob behaviour (magic, tp)... on WAR I know I actually have time to stand and recover and I won't get 1-shot.

...I would assume stepping up to PLD would be an even bigger jump, especially with the gigantic amounts of -dmg% available now. As a BRD you likely won't ever be able to understand the difference and the 'feel' of taking insane amount of damage from things, but people have seemed to make absolutely anything work.

Lastly, I'd like to note that--though dmg taken is an issue in tanking--matters of enmity imo add up to a lot more in the long run when it comes to straighttanking. As you said, a WAR will get smacked around regardless of DEF efforts, but they have gotten more and more +enmity gear over time... and combined with their damage the can hold a mob even while getting beaten up senseless. Retaliation has worked wonders with this since added. MNK/NIN works similarly. Knowing there's one person to focus cures on make outlasting stuff much easier. ...Since not everyone has HNMLS-level gear and perfect setups for a lot of mobs and events, it's important to return to basics instead of just look at numbers.