[Autumn]

I want to be clear that this is mostly a discussion piece to be considered if it receives a positive response mostly.

Some time ago a discussion came up in general chat about the balance of tanks mostly in that it is much different than it was back in GR, in post-GR tanks instantly became incredibly hard to just balance overall given that there is no solid enough weakness for them, they can build both Defense and Resistance to subvert many of their problems by just being effective HP walls towards anything that dares to threaten their existence. Numerically a tank is usually much much more efficient than a dodge character might be given all of that.

One suggestion to balance all of this is to rework armor classes into being much much more important to your character's chosen defensive type, if a tank should choose to deny a lot of magical damage it would leave them more vulnerable to physical damage, and vice versa, this would in some sense impact dodgy characters only minorly, but there may be ways to assist them anyways through further buffs to specific DRs in favor of powering them up accordingly, I do relate to the armor triangle though which typically sees:

-Heavy armor as bearing the most armor of any class of armor
-Light armor as bearing the most magic armor of any class of armor
-Unarmored as bearing the most evade of any class of armor, as well as having the highest evasion damage reduction value.

Bearing this mind the following changes could potentially be taken into effect:

-Heavy Armor allows you 100% DEF value, this would mean 50 scaled DEF = 50% P.DR, however heavy armor would have 50% RES value which would mean 50 Scaled RES = 25% M.DR
-Light armor would be the inverse, 50% DEF value and 100% RES Value
-Unarmored would have neither, and instead have 50% DEF and RES value

But Amber, wouldn't this mean that unarmored is practically useless to tank characters? Yes, it would in some sense, I could see a passive in the typically tanky mage class (Hexer) give additional DEF/RES Value to unarmored torsos so this wouldn't be as much an issue, however I do feel as though a mage wearing unarmored to make the most of their magic should feel a little uneasy defensively, and they always have the option of investing into light armor or heavy armor as well at the cost of perhaps an Evoker's offense. (Mutation would also favor them here too.)

I would love to discuss this in further detail over the course of this thread, because that is something I am invested into at the current moment, however I have two more thoughts I would like to share.

What about classes that typically split their damage? Most classes in the game are currently capable of swapping between physical and magical damage on the fly!

This is a tough answer, because of how many classes in the game have split damage sources I think I would go about this in a fashion that goes back and decides if a class should be allowed to do this or not, the answer is typically not, but depending on the context like with Magic Gunner and with Martial Artist, some exceptions can apply, this would mostly go about doing stuff like the following:

-Black Knight should deal physical damage only, this would convert Board Shaker/Crescent Rook/Bright Bishop to physical damage instead of magical damage.
-Any skill in a physical oriented class that is considered "Magic" that is cast from a martial weapon such as Scarlet Twister/Blood Spike/Lift Off would remain magical damage.

Specifically the classes I'd deem to be physical/magical/split orientated would be:

Physical:
-Soldier
-Demon Hunter (Retaliate/Bellowing Stag/Crashing Bull)
-Black Knight (Crescent Rook/Bright Bishop/Board Shaker)
-Duelist (Eclair Lacroix)
-Kensei
-Firebird (Feathers become physical damage)
-Ghost (Reaper Scythe becomes physical damage)
-Archer
-Arbalest
-Rogue
-Engineer (Bombs/Grenades/Flamethrower/Electro shield would all be changed.)
-Boxer (Nachenbeben becomes Physical Damage)

Magical:
-Mage
-Evoker
-Hexer
-Rune Magician
-Tactician
-Spellthief (Flying Dagger would become magical damage)
-Priest
-Grand Summoner (Youkai Tamer would also give spell power)

Split (Basically stays the exact same):
-Curate
-Lantern Bearer
-Verglas
-Monk
-Summoner
-Bonder
-Shapeshifter
-Ranger
-Magic Gunner
-Void Assassin

Now I know I'm gonna meet a lot of groans by proposing this, having split damage is incredibly nice to have given even now physical/magical DR is not always the same, but in accordance to streamlining damage types to be more effective vs certain folks this will certainly help mitigate the impact that effect would have on how people dish out damage overall.

For example a black knight having access to both damage types alone would upset a lot of balance given it is meant to be a very durable class, so it having the versatility of dishing out both damage types would be very hard to deal with

Conversely most DRs in the game would be empowered and tailored towards specific damage types instead of universal damage types, this would include things like

-Ogata Waraji becoming 15% Physical damage reduction instead of 10%, already helping towards the roughly 5-10 phys DR that an unarmored user would lose from this change.
-Weathered Body becoming 15% Physical damage reduction instead of 10% all encompassing DR
-Wraithguard becoming 30% Magical damage reduction

-Stand Off now becomes M.DR and is no longer mitigated by how much RES you have
-Weir Kounen now becomes P.DR and is no longer mitigated by how much DEF you have

And so on and so forth, some things obviously will not translate as well like One Vs One but all-encompassing DRs can remain minor in the first place.

This is for the most part what I wanted to bring up today, I would like to have a serious discussion on the matter and see what people's thoughts might be, the main goal of a damage rework like this is to make it so tank balance may become easier by disallowing them perfect matchups based on how much effective health they have, and instead opening up to them a bigger weakness than critical evade/status resistance, and with indignant idol existing, stacking resistance onto a hyper physical tank still makes them have a magical damage weakness.