4.0 Changes/Removal of Tanking Abilities

Hey guys. During the Fanfest, they mentioned they'd reworking or removing some abilities "unused/ineffective" abilities for 4.0. Examples they showed included the Dragoon's Feint, and the Monk's Feather Foot.

I'm curious to see what abilities you can see getting removed or altered.

For example, I could see Dark Knight's "Living Dead" being simplified, although probably not removed. Right now, it's needlessly complicated compared to Holmgang or Hallowed Ground. It requires your healer to avoid healing you at low health so you die and it goes off, then heal you to full before the doom condition kills you. Without a lot of coordination, it usually just doesn't go off at all, since healers often panic and try to prevent you from dying in the first place. It suits its purposes in a well-coordinated team, but with most PUGs it just doesn't prove useful. I could see it just become a "Can't die for 10 seconds" cooldown, or otherwise simplified.

As another example, I could see Tempered Will being removed entirely. While it can be useful in some cases, in any battle without knockback or meaningful Bind/Heavy, it's literally useless. It lets you cheese a mechanic every three minutes, and then stops helping you entirely. I could see it being simply removed, and allow a more generally useful cooldown to take it's place.

What skills do you think should reexamined or removed for 4.0?

Awareness : Possibly make it so that you can't get crit from the front as a tank. RI will be a bit worse, (unable to cheat its side effect) but you might feel less cheated when a random crit decimates you.

Foresight : This ability could possibly legitimately be removed from the game. Warrior doesn't really need it, and the other tanks possibly don't either, though some might cry foul at that.

Fracture: Removing it entirely might be a good idea. It hurts monk sort of, but it's not being used at all aside from the opener for WAR, or for delaying attacks a little bit so that you can line up better with Decimate and Fell Cleave. People will argue that it's mathematically best to keep Fracture up 100% of the time, but there is no proof in numbers that this winds up being particularly advantageous in the end.

Tempered Will is OK, but I'd not cry if it went away.

And if Cover got a buff (cough cough they replaced it with Testudo) I wouldn't complain.

Remove Fast Blade/Hard Slash/Heavy Swing.

Combine Foresight, Bloodbath, and Convalescence into one skill.

Remove vestigial crossclasses like Internal Release, Awareness, Stoneskin, and Fracture can go as well.

Unleash and Abyssal Drain are almost the same attacks. Okay, Abyssal Drain is a ranged aoe and Unleash only around yourself. But since DRK also has a gap closer i don't see any problems here. Plus DRK is the only tank with a ranged aoe, so you don't need such a thing for tanking. Abyssal Drain makes more damage, but the enmity generation is the same as Unleash's enmity generation.

So they can get rid of Abyssal Drain, put the Dark Arts selfheal effect onto Unleash and maybe increase the potency of Unleash by 10. OR they can get rid of Unleash, wich means they have to unlock Abyssal Drain at lvl 8 instead of Unleash. But since Abyssal Drain needs a target i think Unleash is way easier to use. So i recommend the first option.

The only change I can think would be necessary would be for DRK, change Blood Price to not rely on taking damage for MP regen, to be more like WHM's Shroud of Saints where it is constant +MP over time. This is because it works against DA-DP and DA-DD, and for cooldowns, there really shouldn't be any way to make them negate one another.

PLD could use some energy to make it more interesting to play, but it is hardly broken; Tempered Will, though, could really use some love.

SE tends to do iterative design, so I doubt we'll see too big a change, but I do look forward to what they're going to do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sweetgrass

Combine Foresight, Bloodbath, and Convalescence into one skill.

Remove vestigial crossclasses like Internal Release, Awareness, Stoneskin, and Fracture can go as well.

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No.

Either buff Fracture so it isn't so situational or remove it entirely.

Tempered Will is too niche, either give it something else or get rid of it.

Make RoH/PS less of a burden to use, PS especially since it literally just gives you aggro and nothing else.

Cover, similar to TW, is great when it works but wasted space when it doesn't. Buff it or remove it.

Equilibrium should still be nerfed - this isn't necessarily a problem now as very rarely is a WAR in Defiance but it's the most underrated OP ability in the game. Either increase the CD or lower the potency.

As a whole I'd like if they made tank stances actually worth something - right now they're just the "take less damage" button that you occasionally turn on if things go sour. An ideal change that wouldn't be too drastic is to completely remove the damage penalty from them and rework Unchained into a straight up buff to damage dealt. Other numbers would have to be messed with but atm you're far too punished for entering tank stance, and that especially sucks for WAR since IB has literally disappeared from our toolkit because of it.

Fix PLD/DRK stances so they're less clunky.

Kinda agree w/ Sweetgrass @ the current combo starters being wasted space, though I feel like straight up removing them would result in an accidental buff to WAR. Then again it greatly depends on what else they tweak, so if they manage to work out the numbers then I can agree with getting rid of those buttons.

War- Leave as is instead bring up PLD/DRK to it's level.

PLD- Make clemancy instant cast, Royal authority should add a 10% physical down debuff(OT utility).
Tempered will should recover TP each time you take damage when it's active.
Give them a trait to add holy element to their flashes for damage.

DRK-Rework living dead completely. Living dead should use your current MP as a shield and when it falls off your MP is reduced to 0.
Give power slash a magic defense down debuff(for ot)
Souleater should sap HP even when not in grit for better self healing while maintaining dps