The following solution retains the buy Maple story M Mesos ideology that squishy (low defence) courses should perish in fewer hits than tank classes as seen with all the horizontal damage strikes, but it takes it one step further and provides tanks a method to "shield" squishy players out of harm. Bosses deal level damage with all their attacks, for example Gollux's purple breath assault might deal 20k harm, but the damage is broken across all players struck by the attack based on their greatest HP before defence is factored in.
Using the Gollux example, if participant A with 10k hp and player B with 30k hp are struck with the purple breath attack then player A will require 5k damage before defence is applied and player B will require 15k damage before defence is put on. Sounds pretty near a 50% hp attack, but defence would really have meaning. If there were players fighting with the boss then their harm taken would be lowered further if all 3 of these were hit by an attack.
Note: When I say defence I mean abilities that Maplestory M Mesos reduce harm taken like "Iron Body".On the flip side if player A managed to stop the strike but player B didn't then player B would take the complete 20k damage. Bearing that in mind I presume certain courses constructed especially as tanks (Paladin, Maplestory Battle Mage, Mihile) should have skills that permit them to take a portion of the harm regardless of whether they were actually hit with the attack or not.
They probably should not just take as much as though they were really hit, that provides incentive to stay as a group and "body block" the boss.With this system in place I think it's only fair the chaos/hard mode of bosses dish out significantly more damage, to the point where grouping up with three or four people is compulsory, not optional. It would make fighting these challenging bosses more celebration concentrated, rather than it simply being two or three players soloing the boss at precisely the same moment.
The Wall