I'm thinking Dark Knight's rework will be more extensive than I initially thought.

lol I bet it's dark arts + aetherflow.

Aetherflow to fill up on bullets, Dark Arts to spend 'em.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I'm thinking some inspiration has come from Nero in DMC4, whose weapon, Red Queen, utilized a gauge for both basic attack improvement but also enabled his strongest swings.

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If anything, Nero is inspired by Squall's gunblade mechanic which existed in 1998~1999. :p

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

If anything, Nero is inspired by Squall's gunblade mechanic which existed in 1998~1999. :p

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From a base concept, sure. From a mechanical implementation, not so much.

I honestly do hope it's something along the lines of Ammo Arts. From a flow perspective that alone can differentiate Gunbreaker, then make the stance flavor being the type of Ammo they load.

Tank stance ammo being more point blank effects with heavier expenditures while the DPS stance ammo is more variable (Cuz uptime). A slower bulwark style when tanking with point blank Megumins while a more mobile, all-range capable fighter when not.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

From a base concept, sure. From a mechanical implementation, not so much.

I honestly do hope it's something along the lines of Ammo Arts. From a flow perspective that alone can differentiate Gunbreaker, then make the stance flavor being the type of Ammo they load.

Tank stance ammo being more point blank effects with heavier expenditures while the DPS stance ammo is more variable (Cuz uptime). A slower bulwark style when tanking with point blank Megumins while a more mobile, all-range capable fighter when not.

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With the way this game's "meta" works (encounter design and patterns), it is bad to lock abilities behind the stances of a tank, just look at WAR and its Inner Beast vs Fell Cleave (Guess which move is considered to not exist at all?). DRK's Blood Pact and Blood weapon, anyone? BS that PLD doesn't have to deal with at all which makes PLD a lot more comfy.

While the concept in itself might seem interesting, the game itself doesn't lend to such opportunity cost play-style. There is little reason to use Inner Beast when Fell Cleave exists. The mitigation is not needed because you have a gazillion other CDs to use.. And holmgang. Due to the game's nature of predictable damage and emphasis on DPS, if you remove some of these CDs or nerf Holmgang in order to force WAR to use Inner Beast, it will be shelved and the other 2 tanks will be favoured since they do not have to deal with stance-locked BS. I call it BS because, while cool in concept and identity, it is merely a hindrance and/or clunk from a game-play perspective.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

With the way this game's "meta" works (encounter design and patterns), it is bad to lock abilities behind the stances of a tank, just look at WAR and its Inner Beast vs Fell Cleave (Guess which move is considered to not exist at all?). DRK's Blood Pact and Blood weapon, anyone? BS that PLD doesn't have to deal with at all which makes PLD a lot more comfy.

While the concept in itself might seem interesting, the game itself doesn't lend to such opportunity cost play-style. There is little reason to use Inner Beast when Fell Cleave exists. The mitigation is not needed because you have a gazillion other CDs to use.. And holmgang. Due to the game's nature of predictable damage and emphasis on DPS, if you remove some of these CDs or nerf Holmgang in order to force WAR to use Inner Beast, it will be shelved and the other 2 tanks will be favoured since they do not have to deal with stance-locked BS. I call it BS because, while cool in concept and identity, it is merely a hindrance and/or clunk from a game-play perspective.

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This is sort of a self defeating overview. "The game doesn't support it so don't do it", but then you can't do things because the game hasn't previously supported it.

So you can't do anything.

Okay. I'll sill enjoy Gunbladadin then.

I think the better solution is to not have stances at all. If you try your hardest to force players to use defensive stance through mitigation requirements, there's still going to be a subset of us who manage to get by without it (remember i270 accessories?) So you just create a performance gap.

The take home message should be: stop punishing players for playing the game. People don't like defensive stances because they're effectively just a penalty slapped on to extra mitigation. They're also cumbersome and costly to switch in and out of if you're not playing WAR.

The discussion about MT and OT doesn't really make much sense because nobody really tanks with that mindset in raid content. There are often two "roles", but it's less of "you tank, I pick up adds and afk for the other 8 minutes" and more of "I do these mechanics, you do the other ones".

The instant you say "this content should be able to be cleared by any combination of tanks", your two "OT" tanks are going to be meta.

I'm more concerned about how many times Gunbreaker gets described as a "slashing" damage tank. Please, just kill the 100% uptime slashing debuff. This game can't survive another expansion of forced WAR dominance.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

This is sort of a self defeating overview. "The game doesn't support it so don't do it", but then you can't do things because the game hasn't previously supported it.

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This.

Each time we're asking for a new job -- i.e. one that is not a remapped copy from parts of those already existing and mostly indifferentiable from any other in role -- we're asking the game to make new things, i.e. things it does not yet support.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think the better solution is to not have stances at all. If you try your hardest to force players to use defensive stance through mitigation requirements, there's still going to be a subset of us who manage to get by without it (remember i270 accessories?) So you just create a performance gap.

The take home message should be: stop punishing players for playing the game. People don't like defensive stances because they're effectively just a penalty slapped on to extra mitigation. They're also cumbersome and costly to switch in and out of if you're not playing WAR.

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Except, stances and stance dancing easily could be a vital and enjoyable part of tank gameplay. They just need to design it as such rather than as a set of training wheels that need a power-tool to assemble and remove each time you want to swap.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

While the concept in itself might seem interesting, the game itself doesn't lend to such opportunity cost play-style.

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This is not an intrinsic aspect of the design and is more to do with how the game has been balanced.

Currently, Tank Stances and their associated skills are unwanted because they're unnecessary because Tank mitigation and Healer output is high enough that damage is never a concern outside of Tankbusters which are conveniently mitigated through CD's.

The skills tied to Tank Stances aren't inherently bad in design, it's just that numbers are overtuned so that they're never necessary.

Like, why should a WAR care about the self heal and 20% damage mitigation buff from Inner Beast, if Healers themselves don't even care about spending actual GCD's on healing in the first place, let alone wanting assistance from the Tank to mitigate incoming damage...

I honestly think that this situation should be fixed, rather than fed into. We shouldn't get more Tanks that don't have anything cool with Stances just because everyone is just going to be tuned so that the meta is for Tanks to sit in DPS stance 24/7 and healers will just DPS 24/7 and rely on oGCD's for healing.

Instead, there should be changes so that Tanks can be incentivised to actually use Tank stance and active mitigation skills while MT and where Healers are incentivised to use GCD heals and want Tanks to actively mitigate damage to make things easier for them.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think the better solution is to not have stances at all. If you try your hardest to force players to use defensive stance through mitigation requirements, there's still going to be a subset of us who manage to get by without it (remember i270 accessories?) So you just create a performance gap.

The take home message should be: stop punishing players for playing the game. People don't like defensive stances because they're effectively just a penalty slapped on to extra mitigation. They're also cumbersome and costly to switch in and out of if you're not playing WAR.

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Honestly, there's room to actually have stances be meaningful.

As it currently stands, most of Tanks mitigation is passive. Through inherent defence and passive mitigation from stats. This means that there's really little difference between the stances and it mostly comes from the paltry mitigation (Or health in the case of WAR) boost on the actual stance at the cost of massive damage down.

If stances were made more important for gameplay as well as less punishing to swap between, it could be an improvement to Tanking without having to feel like you're being "Punished" by going into Tank stance.

For example:

• Make stances for all tanks oGCD like WAR.
• Remove the damage penalty from Tank Stance (DPS stance already has BONUS damage and damaging skills, it doesn't need Tank Stance to have a massive penalty on top of this).
• Adjust WAR's Tank Stance bonus so it doesn't suck when you swap into it (Max health is kind of lame when you swap in and you're just missing that extra health until the Healer tops you off)
• Put some active mitigation skills into Tank Stances, so the reason you're in Tank Stance isn't just extra passive mitigation while you spam less effective DPS combos, but so you can access skills that keep you alive while you're MT.
• Put more Damage and Supportive skills into DPS Stance so it's the go-to stance when you're OT (Also, when not having adds or a secondary target to engage with)
• Take Unchained and rework it (Also, create thematic alternatives for the other Tanks) to allow access to some of the DPS Stance tools while in Tank Stance so that good players will find ways to push out extra damage.

Or you know... Delete stances and any kind of active mitigation from tanks and keep just giving them a ton of passive defences so that they just mongo smash as Beefy DPS while healers continue to only care about oGCD heals...

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Put some active mitigation skills into Tank Stances, so the reason you're in Tank Stance isn't just extra passive mitigation while you spam less effective DPS combos, but so you can access skills that keep you alive while you're MT.
Put more Damage and Supportive skills into DPS Stance so it's the go-to stance when you're OT

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The other ideas are intersting, but this solves nothing. If they took away Grit's damage penalty but it still locks me out of Blood Weapon, I'm still not touching it beside opener and dungeon trash.
If you lock DPS abilities behind OT stance, people will optimize their play / teamplay to stay in OT stance as much as possible, unless the defensive part of the MT stance becomes mandatory.

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Originally Posted by Megguido

The other ideas are intersting, but this solves nothing. If they took away Grit's damage penalty but it still locks me out of Blood Weapon, I'm still not touching it beside opener and dungeon trash.
If you lock DPS abilities behind OT stance, people will optimize their play / teamplay to stay in OT stance as much as possible, unless the defensive part of the MT stance becomes mandatory.

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Making the defensive aspect of the Tank Stance mandatory for MT is a requirement for this yes, but the hope is that it wouldn't feel so bad in order to make such a change if Tank Stance felt less like a punishment (Such as not having the penalty associated with it, as well as access to interesting skills instead of being almost entirely passive such as how it currently is for DRK/PLD)

In addition, that's why I also mentioned about making Unchained work to allow access of alternate stance skills, so for example, as a MT DRK you could choose to gain access to Blood Weapon while MT in order to push out extra DPS but at the cost of maybe not having access to some other supportive skills instead due to spending your "Unchained" for BW. So that there's more choice and min/max play that isn't just "Lel DPS stance 24/7"

Since, as long as Tank Stances aren't mandatory to survive, they'll always be unwanted and seen as "Training Wheels" or a "Punishment" with people trying to make Healers work harder in order to make their non-use feasible.

This hampers Tank design heavily because it severely limits diversity between MT and OT roles as well as limits design because they can't make mitigation skills meaningful if people don't need them...