Boycotting Warrior 4.0 (Let's do it!)

I'm prepared to switch to DRK for 4.0... yet i do not like this job. War is the only job i found very interesting and that i am able to play correctly :D
I hope they will (re)think what they did with the warrior.

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Originally Posted by Didje

I'm prepared to switch to DRK for 4.0... yet i do not like this job. War is the only job i found very interesting and that i am able to play correctly :D
I hope they will (re)think what they did with the warrior.

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why not try PLD? DRK isn't in better situation than WAR currently

Important question , since every1 is so scared about the stance that costs 50% gauge... are you able to switch stance if your gauge is 0?

Yes you can, based on what we've seen on the skill descriptions.

Just a tip: Boycotting a job is probably the worst thing you can do if you want the job to improve post-4.0. The best thing you can do it play the job, put together an informed opinion based on your experience both before and after 4.0, then place that opinion on the forums and discuss it with others in a calm and rational manner. Then, do whatever. This will give the dev team both your informed opinion and perhaps a decline in WAR usage, the former being more important than the latter.

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

Just a tip: Boycotting a job is probably the worst thing you can do if you want the job to improve post-4.0. The best thing you can do it play the job, put together an informed opinion based on your experience both before and after 4.0, then place that opinion on the forums and discuss it with others in a calm and rational manner. Then, do whatever. This will give the dev team both your informed opinion and perhaps a decline in WAR usage, the former being more important than the latter.

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Not really, if SE sees a large amount of players playing DRK or WHM to 70, they think the jobs are OK as is. If they see a severe drop in DRK/WHM players, they see something is wrong and requires attention.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Not really, if SE sees a large amount of players playing DRK or WHM to 70, they think the jobs are OK as is. If they see a severe drop in DRK/WHM players, they see something is wrong and requires attention.

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Yeah, the best thing right now is for a ton of tanks to just walk away to other classes so they can see the error of these changes.

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Originally Posted by Ghald

WAR flavour has been to combine our defence with offence that's why we have less mitigation utility than PLD, if I wanted to play a traditional tank job then I would play PLD because they are the king of mitigation.

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For the love of all you consider holy and the cheese cakes... That CAN'T BE MORE ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Please stop spreading the meme.

PLD mitigates more damage than WAR for 10 seconds ONLY, every 7 minutes. Outside of those 10 seconds WAR just flat out wins. Over an entire fight it might be 5~7% now, in HW it might be even more.


Inner Beast vs Rampart alone shows 50% more up-time + healing. You can use 4 Inner beasts per minute, that's 6 Inner beasts in 90 seconds. 6 x 6s = 36 seconds. Rampart lasts 20 seconds. 300 (will be 350 in SB) potency healing x6? 1800 potency healing. Oh but in SB WAR gets Rampart on top of IB.

Sentinel vs Vengeance? You can use 3 vengeances when PLD uses 2 Sentinles. that's 45s of vengeance vs 20 of Sentinel.

Bulwark Vs Raw Intuition? WAR uses 2 RI vs 1 Bulwark, that's 40s of RI vs 15 of Sentinel. Also 100% vs 60%. Okay, Bulwark will block magic. have fun.

Invencible vs Holmgang? Yes Invencible is stronger, but 7 minutes vs 3.

CDs WAR has PLD doesn't: Thrill of Battle, Second Wind.

CD both tanks had but PLD could't use well: Bloodbath.

Block eats at PLD's parry so PLD's parries less. WAR parries more at base but there's also the defiance bonus.

If you want to stack CDs, PLD can't afford to (doesn't really need to), but WAR can because he doesn't gaf. And even then, if PLD stacks all CDs and blocks vs WAR stacking all CDs, WAR is 13% ahead in effective health.

Boss has too many frequent tank busters? PLD is forced into tank swaps, WAR doesn't really need to. But guess what? ALL mitigation is down the drain if you just "survive" by tank swapping and using ultimates..... Of which PLD sucks at because lol7minute CD.

Stop falling for the meme that PLD mitigates more. What PLD has now is more utility and seemingly more DPS.

WAR's flavour for me is: The power house that doesn't care and just pumps out as much damage as it can take in and survive. If that stays true in SB, I'm sold.

The fact that WAR loses half their beast gauge hurts WAR the most though because their abilities are locked behind the stances.

PLD losing gauge doesn't hurt as much simply because they can just spend it on Shelltron or whatever then switch. WAR doesn't have the luxury of using Inner beast to mitigate damage as you switch to Defiance. Switching at 100 rage means I lost a potential cleave/IB. And spending it on FC before going Defiance means I won't have IB and vise versa is just as bad. This is my problem with its changes atm.

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Originally Posted by Ghald

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Im absolutely with you.. When yoshi said " We havent forgotten you Tanks and Healers." i believed him even though i was extremely disapointed with Samurai being no Tank. But Hell what is this? Yesterday i had a Weeping City Run with 2 new healers. I was the only one Surviving the entire fight ( as a WAR ofc) Thanks to Bloodbath. This made it even more clear to me how much this nerf will hurt.

Also: the lack of Flash will hurt in bigger Pulls and we got no other Aoe Enmity Skill that fills it.

IF i keep tanking i gotta switch to Paladin... but im looking at that sweet Katana...

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Please stop spreading the meme.

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I think PLD will be the king of protecting others, and that's nice :)

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

For the love of all you consider holy and the cheese cakes... That CAN'T BE MORE ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Please stop spreading the meme...

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Y-you're wrong...! PLD is a PALADIN and has SHIELDS. Defiance doesn't reduce damage l-like Shield Oath.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Im absolutely with you.. When yoshi said " We havent forgotten you Tanks and Healers." i believed him even though i was extremely disapointed with Samurai being no Tank. But Hell what is this? Yesterday i had a Weeping City Run with 2 new healers. I was the only one Surviving the entire fight ( as a WAR ofc) Thanks to Bloodbath. This made it even more clear to me how much this nerf will hurt.

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No new tanks/healers because they wanted to properly balance the tanks and healers present. PLD slated to be OP, WAR crippled and DRK dumbed down.
SAM being the cloth wearing variant with a complete nonsense romanticism because somehow a historically terrible weapon like the katana is more destructive than literal fire explosions?
SAM having a completely selfish design with it's pure damage and no utility forcing all buffs to be funneled onto them and potentially making tanks have to tank stance more just to cater to them specifically?

Thanks Yoshi P.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

SAM having a completely selfish design with it's pure damage and no utility forcing all buffs to be funneled onto them and potentially making tanks have to tank stance more just to cater to them specifically?

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Hmmm, what's the problem with that ? Are you angry of losing part of your DPS to allow real DPS to go medieval on the ennemy ? You'd prefer SAM to do a lot less damage so you can do more, and in the end, having a weaker party setup ?

I'd generally prefer a synergistic team so that everyone can perform at their peak rather than sucking the {Full Thrust} of an arguably poorly designed class because they require everyone else to cater to/gimp themselves so THEY can do their best.

I just hate the katana fantasy. MUH GLORIOUS NIPPON STEEL triggers me oh so greatly. Katana more impactful than a GREAT AXE or GREAT SWORD? Stop it. Faster? By all means. But this stupid cut through anything meme makes me so anger as a immersion player.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

I'd generally prefer a synergistic team so that everyone can perform at their peak rather than sucking the {Full Thrust} of an arguably poorly designed class because they require everyone else to cater to/gimp themselves so THEY can do their best.

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That's still a synergy. Having a SAM do so much personal damage that it will take hate off a DPS-stance tank and focusing that tank on keeping enmity is a team effort. More importantly, that's actually asking a tank to...tank.
You're still asking DPS to do less damage so you can do more, that's not bad design or lack of synergy...for me, that's selfish.

It's raid boosting sure. I never said I wouldn't do it, doesn't mean I'll like doing it.

I get less Fell Cleaves because I have to put on the punishing Defiance Stance so my friend can enjoy his whatever confusingly named skill more? Wow. I truly do feel much more rewarded.

And please, don't give me your "real tank" nonsense. We have different definitions so lets leave it at that.
I'm not asking a DPS do less damage. I'm asking that a DPS class be designed in a way that doesn't take away the enjoyment from others because their full potential is stepping on someone elses toes.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

We have different definitions so lets leave it at that.

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If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

I'm asking that a DPS class be designed in a way that doesn't take away the enjoyment from others because their full potential is stepping on someone elses toes.

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Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

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*Eye roll*

I'm an immersion player. I enjoy fighting enemies head on like a Fighter/Warrior. I enjoy defending AND attacking rather than pure assassination techniques. So I play XIV's tank. I play WARRIOR and not ShieldBot5000.

There is nothing inherently fun about a stance that boosts 2 of your mandatory to a certain point roles slightly but greatly diminishes your generally always good third one. Worse off yet on WAR with half it's skill set locked behind each stance. (Believe it or not, I'd like to use IB and Defiance more if they didn't suck.)

Defiance, Grit, and ShO frankly suck and never feel good to use. I don't even understand why they punish you for using them and lock you out of your skills, most notably WAR's job toolkit and DRK's Blood Weapon and now Blood Price. It's all passive gains too so it's even less interactive to use.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Snips of lots of posts here.

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I like this person...

Btw you never told me what happens if that hyur touches me. I'm curious.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

Frankly, if enforcing more tank stance time is enough to take away your enjoyment, why don't you just play a DPS ?

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That's the exact problem. Forcing me to NOT optimize just so you can is just lame. Why should YOUR fun in doing twice my DPS come at the cost of mine being lowered to even half of that? lol

And in any case. Tank stances' penalties are stupid. I'd rather both stances have penalties of one form or another. Or just have tank stances go away and have some skills deal damage while others generate enmity and be enough on their own. I mean the tank stances don't change much in game play anyways.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Forcing me to NOT optimize just so you can is just lame.

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If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

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We'll just agree to disagree about what optimizing a job means then.

As for for tank stances, there are many ways to keep balance while still allowing you to solo. Locking mitigation behind GCDs that push the DPS GCDs away is one of them. Take TERA for example, tanks do insane batsh*t damage, but only if they're not tanking. Bosses will always keep a lancer behind his shield and Warrior couldn't finish its combos while bosses wailed at them, but when in solo, lancer and warrior kill things almost as fast as anyone else. Tanking in that game was the most fun I had as a tank in any MMO. Too bad the MMO itself flops when it comes to everything other than combat. (While this game gets so much right but not the combat imo lol).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

Tank stance penalties are not stupid. Their only purpose is to keep balance while allowing you to comfortably play solo. In games whithout a dedicated tank stance, tank jobs do absolute crap damage all the time.

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"Hey why is your aggro so gosh darn high?"
"Because I have no utility so yeah, you're gonna have to press that nasty grit button and do more power slashes just for me. :/"

Yeah... I'd much rather play with a MNK/DRG/NIN/BLM/SMN/BRD/MCH... "We can boost yours and our own damage!" Nice!

The slight issue with spectrum scaling is that, the massive raid utility class becomes stronger and stronger the larger the party and the major personal DPS gets weaker and weaker the larger the party becomes. So it's a case of SAM op in dungeons but terrible in raids but Dancer(Placeholder) is god-like and virtually mandatory in raids.

Tank jobs doing absolute crap damage in other games is irrelevant. And I'd wager that is something that adds to why Tanking is unpopular. You don't need a tank stance to exist since the numbers can be tuned on the jobs entire toolkit instead.

If they were going to simplify tanks, they should have just simply removed Grit/Defiance/Shield Oath. The only reason they are even considered because of arbitrary requirements from the design justifying their existence. Much like how I forsee Shake it Off will be utilized. A rather lackluster skill that needs content design to make it useful.

Or even better, reward me for mitigating more or using tank stance right instead of breaking my legs, nerfing my damage, and making me feel bad all around with that terrible, terrible damage penalty/skill lock. Make excess mitigation useful. Have bonus aggro do something. Why do I need to create more aggro if it does absolutely gosh darn nothing?

I want to use Defiance, Grit, Shield Oath and have it feel rewarding.

@P

I'd get banned.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

I want to use Defiance, Grit, Shield Oath and have it feel rewarding.

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Oh definitely, if tanking stances did ACTUAL gameplay changing effects and abilities behind them instead of existing for the sake of existing and locking a couple abilities behind them (which let's face, is almost exclusive to WARs).

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

@P

I'd get banned.

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Uh-oh. S-some things better remain unknown then.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If you lose aggro because you want to do more damage, sorry, but you're not optimizing your job.

When you want to balance DPS jobs, you automatically analyze the scale of personal DPS vs utility. So, it's only logical to design jobs on the whole spectrum, and thus, at the extreme tip of the scale. On the opposite of SAM, it would be interesting to have a job that has very low personal DPS but massive raid utility. It's absolutely not a bad design choice.

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Being optimal on an individual level is different from being optimal in a group. As of now, there's one optimal way of pulling. If your war is not pulling, it's not optimal. If your war doesn't start with tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance, it's not optimal.

However if you don't have the optimal group composition you can't do that. If I'm in a group without nin then I'll accept the loss and use a suboptimal unchained opener. If a group doesn't have a war then the pld/drk has to accept the loss and pull in grit/shield oath. It's a tradeoff between members of the group. Just because it's suboptimal to pull with unchained doesn't mean we won't do it. It's just that our optimal play requires a nin (for now at least), just like how other jobs rely on each other to be optimal (brd/mch rely on drg, blm/smn rely on brd, etc). Even if sam has so much personal dps that it's optimal for the group to have the tank in tank stance longer than if they brought nin instead, it doesn't change the fact that bringing sam prevents the tanks from using their optimal rotations. It's just that the sam's optimal rotation is a dps gain over the tanks'.

I see every job's optimality come at a certain cost, like mnk being prioritized when it comes to boss uptime, hence the drg/nin does mechanics and LB, blm being prioritized to stay at the same spot, hence the others cover the blm for mechanics. The current optimal comp is very good because it allows everyone in the group to be optimal on an individual level as well, including the raid buffs buffing each other.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

"Hey why is your aggro so gosh darn high?"

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Because I'm the most powerful personal DPS and thus, I'm doing my job

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Yeah... I'd much rather play with a MNK/DRG/NIN/BLM/SMN/BRD/MCH... "We can boost yours and our own damage!" Nice!

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Even if what MNK offers as a damage boost for the whole party is weaker than what the SAM does on its own ? Because that's clearly the idea behind SAM.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

The slight issue with spectrum scaling is that, the massive raid utility class becomes stronger and stronger the larger the party and the major personal DPS gets weaker and weaker the larger the party becomes. So it's a case of SAM op in dungeons but terrible in raids but Dancer(Placeholder) is god-like and virtually mandatory in raids.

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Except that a job with raid utility will also increase the damage of the selfish DPS. If your Dancer increase eveybody's damage by 30%, then it's better to pair it with a SAM.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

You don't need a tank stance to exist since the numbers can be tuned on the jobs entire toolkit instead.

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Yes, you do. Tanks need to do significantly less damage than DPS in group composition, or else, DPS are useless. But if a tank does too little damage, then killing stuff in solo content is boring as hell. So, what do you do ? Give them decent DPS in solo but force them to reduce it in group content.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Why do I need to create more aggro if it does absolutely gosh darn nothing?

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In that case, it does something. It allows the SAM to do its optimal DPS without being killed instantly as retaliation.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Being optimal on an individual level is different from being optimal in a group.

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As a tank, doing the optimal DPS is very different from being optimal. I think more and more people forget about that.

Let me be perfectly clear, sitting on your tank stance 24/7 building so much aggro that you could AFK without losing the boss is useless, and shouldn't be enforced. But, having a higher aggro requirement to let the DPS do their optimal job is more important and more centric to a tank job than doing your personal best DPS.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If your definition is not "Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third", then you're not defining a tank.

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Your definition doesn't define a tank at all either. A tank is all about taking massive amounts of damage no assistance required and being able to survive for extended periods of time which the only Tank I can see here in 4.0 is PLD. With high mitigation and high sustain.

A tank isn't defined by holding hate, a healer topping you off because you can't mitigate shit in the long run and never is a tank known for damage output.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Your definition doesn't define a tank at all either.

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Yes, it does. Holding hate is the only thing that is 100% your job. No tank can survive on its own, so staying alive is also the responsibility of the healer.
Spamming only Storm's Path because it helps you heal and mitigates damage is a the first bad thing a WAR can do.

On a sidenote, I didn't say that a tank is only defined by holding hate, but by holding hate first. On that specific topic, risking losing hate to do more personal DPS is the the exact opposite of tanking.

It occurs to me that with the TP cost removed from Sprint it'd probably be better to have Equilibrium just always act as a heal and put a TP restoration effect on Steel Cyclone and its counterpart. If FC/IB still cost 0 TP then it might be impossible for a warrior to run dry in a non-AOE situation. It's kinda dumb that that's one of the few skills that would really have to change if stances were removed.

In 4.x, every role has some form of enmity management under the shared-role actions. That's because if you're trying to play optimally as a team, then it's everyone's responsibility.

That being said, if a dps decides to never use those tools, you're still going to find a way to hold aggro. But that's not because it's your sole responsibility, but rather because skilled support players will always try to find a way to work around underperforming teammates to get the team the clear. If you're in a situation which requires a high level of performance, though, there's generally no room for slack.

Tanking cannot be neatly defined, because you will always expand out to fill your team's needs.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

As a tank, doing the optimal DPS is very different from being optimal. I think more and more people forget about that.

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Semantics. "If your war is not pulling, your pld/drk isn't doing their optimal dps opener. If your war doesn't start with tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance, they aren't doing their optimal dps opener."

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Let me be perfectly clear, sitting on your tank stance 24/7 building so much aggro that you could AFK without losing the boss is useless, and shouldn't be enforced. But, having a higher aggro requirement to let the DPS do their optimal job is more important and more centric to a tank job than doing your personal best DPS.

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Yes it's more important and contributes more to the group, as I've said. But the way I see it, if (and this is a big if, since we're assuming quite a lot of stuffs) sam does enough dps above the rest of the dps jobs to make tanks have more issues with aggro, that's a weakness of the job, or if you want to twist words, you can consider "not making tanks have aggro issues" as a pro for every other dps job. In this case you'll simply weigh the benefits brought by sam (high personal dps) vs the cost (no raid buffs, prevents tanks from doing their optimal dps rotation). Yes tanks' most important jobs are aggro and mitigation management, but you can't deny that under our assumptions (again, big assumptions) sam's personal dps comes at the cost of reducing tank dps. Whether that'll be a good tradeoff or not remains to be seen. A lot of people forget that aggro is one of the issues with mnk as well right now. Every other dps job has ways to mitigate their aggro. Excluding extremely short fights like faust z and refurbisher, even a drg needs to use elusive jump to not rip aggro from the tank. Ranged dps and casters need to use quelling everytime they do their big burst rotations.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

In 4.x, every role has some form of enmity management under the shared-role actions. That's because if you're trying to play optimally as a team, then it's everyone's responsibility.

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I might have missed it, I don't think ranged dps will have the renamed quelling strikes or any other aggro control.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

No new tanks/healers because they wanted to properly balance the tanks and healers present. PLD slated to be OP, WAR crippled and DRK dumbed down.

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I see it.... in a not so distant future... where Warriors are going to be Extinct and DRK's only exist since the static Already has a PLD... Or maybe there will be nothing but Paladins at all.

With putting in 2 heavily requested jobs wich turned out to be both DPS and nerfing 2 of the Tankjobs.. i mean.. common sense? Anyone?

Yes it might all turn out differently than we theorycraft it.. but that doesnt matter to most people. They see the nerfs on Paper and go on to other jobs.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Yes, it does. Holding hate is the only thing that is 100% your job.

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You heard it here folks. Tanks don't need to tank. Only hold hate. :P

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

You heard it here folks. Tanks don't need to tank. Only hold hate. :P

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You're quoting him out of context. He meant that aggro is 100% tank's job (I disagree, since we have shade, quelling, smoke, etc), not that your job is only to hold aggro. Survival comes with mitigation (tank's job mostly, with minor help from others like apoc, virus, adlo) and healing (healer's job mostly, with minor help from tanks' self heals), so it's not 100% tank's job.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

You heard it here folks. Tanks don't need to tank. Only hold hate. :P

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Why do I keep trying to make a point if you misunderstand such a basic sentence ?
Again, since it's the second time you're ignoring part of what I say just to make your point, a tank is :

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

"Keep aggro first, survive second and kill third"

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Semantics.

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It's not really semantics when you have to decide your priority.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

(I disagree, since we have shade, quelling, smoke, etc)

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So, if a PLD refuse to use Flash because he wants to spam Total Eclipse and big packs of mobs rush to the healer, it's partially the healer's fault ?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

It's not really semantics when you have to decide your priority.

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You're arguing my use of "optimal" and I simply corrected it. As I've said before optimality in a group is different from individual optimality. If you don't have a nin then the optimal group strat would be the war using unchained, but that's not the optimal rotation for a war. The lack of nin costs the war their ability to perform their optimal rotation.

Let's stop this argument here, I've said my thoughts on the matter. If sam requires higher tank stance uptime then I'll do it if I get a sam in my group. That's the best course of action for the group. But that doesn't change that if sam is the only job to require that, then that's their weakness compared to other jobs, just like how one of mnk's current weaknesses is their lack of aggro management (though it's overshadowed by the fact that mnk doesn't do much more dps than other dps jobs anyway).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

So, if a PLD refuse to use Flash because he wants to spam Total Eclipse and big packs of mobs rush to the healer, it's partially the healer's fault ?

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Not if the healer does what they can to prevent it, e.g. not casting regen mid pull. But there are cases where a tank's failure to keep aggro is due to someone else's fault. If a nin refuses to shade me at pull for no good reason then he's partially to blame if I lose aggro because I used my opener under the assumption that I'll get shade. If a whm uses medica2 and 2x cure3 for the first bomb aoe in a10s it's not my fault if the boss turns to them. If a blm refuses to use quelling during their opener it's not entirely my fault if I lose aggro 10s into the fight.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

But that doesn't change that if sam is the only job to require that, then that's their weakness compared to other jobs

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How can it be "their weakness" ? If a SAM requires much more tank stance than any other DPS, it means their also do much more damage, resulting in faster kills.

Not quoting all the different posts I want to reply to as that would take too long but I want to share my thoughts on this argument about tank dps.

I found myself getting caught up in the potencies and the possible nerfs, the cost of high threat gen by sam and monk. I think perhaps the tanks so focused on optimizing their dps have maybe lost their focus on what tanking really is.

It's about mitigating damage, keeping the incoming damage as low as possible. Now you can certainly argue that you can do that by killing the enemy faster, but by scaling back damage as they have, I think SE is trying to push us in the direction of mitigating damage by focusing on defense rather than offense.

In my opinion, that is what tanking should be about and appears to be the design the devs are aiming for.

Can't edit on mobile.

By having us focus on defense to decrease incoming damage it brings us back to what the role was designed for. The costs/penalties added to stance dancing, once again on my opinion, is being done as an opportunity cost to discourage us from swapping often unless we overhear content.

Based on what we've seen so far they're ultimate goal appears to be defense stance for group, offense stance for solo. Obviously all this goes out the window once we inevitably overgear the content, but that's a ways off.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Snip.

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Thing is, there is no real cost in switching stances for PLD or DRK. PLD in Sword Oath with gauge? Sure, use Sheltron then switch to Shield Oath. DRK doesn't lose blood gauge when switching into or out of Grit. It costs these two classes MP to switch, but that can be fixed with 1 or 2 MP combos.

Now let's look at WAR: WAR has 50 gauge, he needs to mitigate damage but is in Deliverance. Here's the delimma: Switch to Defiance right away? Oh I have 25 gauge and can't use Inner Beast. Stay in Deliverance and pop FC then go back to def--.. Nah, screw it, I'll just pop Rampart. This is worse than back when Grit and Oaths broke combos.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

How can it be "their weakness" ? If a SAM requires much more tank stance than any other DPS, it means their also do much more damage, resulting in faster kills.

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Because their dps comes at the cost of someone else's? I'm not saying sam's necessarily bad because of it. If the tanks' dps loss are so minor compared to their personal huge dps gain compared to other melees then sam might be in the optimal group composition.

It's the same way I'd consider drk's weakness in a7s being their lack of physical mitigation, which may cost healers' dps unless you're skipping a lot of things, but in the end their higher dps prevailed over pld's superior physical mitigation in speedkills, since you can skip a lot of things and the lack of physical mitigation doesn't become a big problem.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

If the tanks' dps loss are so minor compared to their personal huge dps gain compared to other melees then sam might be in the optimal group composition.

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We can't have actual proof before the actual release, but I'm pretty sure that's what will happen. That's why, as a tank, I'm perfectly OK to stay more in tank stance if it allows the group to attain its optimal DPS. That's why I said that, for a tank, optimizing its DPS is not the same as being optimal, since you need to also consider the other members.