Tank Stances and the Return of Job Flavour

I believe that the current Tank stances get the job done, but thats about it. They are lacking the original perks that helped give each job its own gameplay identity, and in terms of gameplay impact, were what separated good tanks from great. The emnity generation buff was a welcome change imo that helps new tanks get used to the role, but the removal of the traits that made those tank stances unique are holding back job gameplay identities. I thought of some basic ideas that could return flavour to the tanks gameplay, but I'm interested to see if any other ideas are floating around out there.

The button bloat issue could be bypassed by having Tank and DPS stances be placed into their own unique buttons on the job gauge, which could function similarly to duty actions. they could sit somewhere to the side of the screen, mappable to any key on the keyboard, customisable by the UI elements, and for controller players the stances would be activated by pressing either L3 or R3 while holding down a trigger, just like duty actions.

EDIT: Only one stance can be active at a time. both stances are OGCD, 10 sec recast. OT stance does not generate emnity. some ideas have been adjusted to allow both MT and OT stances to deal relatively same amount of damage while letting certain tools shine

PLD - shield is defencive stance based on making sheltron/sentinel more useful. sword is dps stance that makes support skills easier to use. Shield swipe introduced as MT skill only, shield bash OT skill only (acquired lv 30)

Shield Oats - lv 10
Generates emnity (lv 10)
block rate +20% (lv 10)
~transforms shield bash into shield swipe, 200 potency 6 sec pacify, 50 gauge, does not break combo. 5 sec recast (lv 30)
~generate 10 oath gauge each time you block an attack during sentinel (lv 45)
~divine veil can proc off of any healing "ability", not just spell (lv 66)
~Generate 10 oath gauge when blocking under passage of arms (lv 70, max 50 gauge)
~Holy circle generates 10 gauge when used (lv 72)
~lowers cost of sheltron and shield swipe to 30 gauge (lv 74)

Sword Oats - lv 30 (unlocked via job stone acquisition)
shield bash, 200 potency 6 sec stun. cost 50 gauge to use, does not break combo. 5 sec recast (lv 30)
~spells cast by PLD no longer break combo (lv 58)
~lowers cost of cover to 30 gauge (lv 62)
~holy spirit generates 10 oath gauge when used (lv 64)
~lowers cost of intervention and shield bash to 30 gauge (lv 74)
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WAR - basically a lot of hp regen due to no passive def bonuses. deliverance helps build more beast gauge. ideally you wanna switch to defiance during high healing moments or deliverance for certain burst windows.

Defiance - lv 10
generate emnity (lv 10)
30% base HP boost (lv 10)
20% self recovery boost (lv 10)
~adds 20% bloodbath effect to all attacks while under vengeance or berserker. (Lv 30)
~all attacks generate 5 beast gauge under berserker (lv 45, max 50 units. generates 10 units, max 100 after lv 62)
~restores 20% of damage dealt from all beast gauge attacks (lv 52. Increased to 35% at lv 64, 50% at lv 76)

Deliverance - lv 30 (acquired with job stone, similar to PLD)
~transforms storms path into butchers block, grants 10% skillspeed for 30 secs (lv 30)
~all attacks generate 5 beast gauge while under infuriate (lv 54, max 50 units. generates 10 units, max 100 after lv 72)
~allows you to target other party members for thrill of battle (lv 56, only 50% effective. boosted to 100% at lv 76)

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DRK - grit helps maximise hp regen while keeping mana regen ticks, darkside boosts mp regen while removing mana ticks. flood and blood weapon moved to lv 30, edge lv 35, stalwart lv 40. both edge and flood would share potencies and would have to be lowered to adjust for more mp building. flood/edge/abyss drain each cost 3k mana. tbn would still grant free edge/flood/abyss casts via dark arts proc.

Grit - lv 10
increase emnity (lv 10)
increase magic defence 20% (lv 10)
~allows BW to regenerate 5% health per attack (lv 30)
~adds blood price effect to Shadow Wall (max 1500 MP at lv 45. up to 25 blood lv 66. 3000 mp and 50 blood at lv 74)
~grants walking dead 30% healing received increase (lv 50)
~transforms edge of darkness into abyss drain, same potency but with high single target hp restoration effect (lv 56)
~quietus now restores 200mp per enemy (lv 64)

Darkside - lv 30
~transforms Souleater into Power Slash (lv 30, applies mana leech effect that restores 1000 mp over 30 seconds)
~extends Blood Weapon duration from 10s to 15s (lv 45)
~allows you to target other party members for Dark Mind (lv 54)
~doubles mana regen from Blood Weapon, Syphon Strike, Stalwart Soul, and Carve and Spit (lv 60, always active. from 600 to 1200mp)
~allows bloodspiller to restore 1000mp (lv 76)

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GNB - Defencive stance helps buff defences, dps stance helps with utility. tbh I can't think of any other way to make this job feel more tanky than to introduce arbitrary powder gauge costs to its utility, so a max of 3 cartridges was needed, up to a max of 6 at lv 80. This meant that heart of stone and aurora needed to cost 2 cartridges.

Royal Guard - lv 10
generates emnity (lv 10)
Parry rate + 30% (lv 10)
~each time an attack is parried under camouflage or nebula, generates 1 cartridge
(max 3 at lv 30. 4 at lv 52, 5 at lv 66, 6 at lv 80)
~Aurora cooldown reduced from 60s to 30s (lv 52)
~Heart of stone cost 1 cartridge to use, 15s cooldown (lv 68)
~Aurora costs 1 cartridge (lv 78)

Trickster - lv 30 (Yes name is a blatant DMC ripoff, but isnt the Tank stance that too?)
~blasting zone now generates a cartridge (lv 30)
~can target other party members for camoflauge (lv 52)
~sonic break now generates 1 cartridge (lv 60)
~heart of stone and aurora cost 4 cartridges, but have 1 sec recast (lv 68)
~each successful part of continuation combo shortens cooldown of bloodfest by 5 secs (lv 76)

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Let me know if you guys have any ideas of your own, or if you think my ideas are too blatantly OP. I tried to keep most of the potencies in line with each other by transforming skills I believe to be more on the tank side into skills that are more on the dps side. who knows if any of these ideas are balanced though. most of these passive effects would have to be unlocked via traits received with the corresponding skills of course. I think that skill transformation has the potential to solve button bloat + introduce skills that would be balanced by being only active on MT or OT stances. what do you guys think?

there was no loss of job identity imo. we don't need to be going backwards.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

there was no loss of job identity imo. we don't need to be going backwards.

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Don't know what jobs you've been playing to come to that conclusion but it certainly weren't tanks or healers.

I really don't like this idea. Tanks not only get their work done but now they can do more thanks to the adjustments. Specially for high end duty raids, your only focus there is to kill the damn thing asap, so instead of just keeping emnity and defence cooldowns, you can also do your share of damage. I understand in normal dungeons and normal trials sometimes it feels bland but raids would be annoying imo if I had to change stances to either defend or attack. And I've heard many raiders expressing relief from not having to do so.

I would rather give each tank more identity by improving their support to the group or their ability to react to mechanics. Everyone has more or less the same mitigation CDs and the PLD is known to be the best to keep things flowing if everything gets out of control, at least for a bit. But that's all, other than very specific situations of the raid/trials some have become creative and do interesting things with their tanks. It would be interesting to see what else each tank can bring to party compositions instead of "tank identity".

Honestly? I thought that WAR worked really well with the stance system, and I'm surprised that they didn't give it something to mimic that after the stance dancing system was removed from the role.

I agree with the majority who already made their posts. That would be regression because I played both tank and DPS in SB and taking less responsibility off the NIN for threat mitigation on the party free'd up thought processes to DPS better and do mechanics rather than keeping my eye on the aggro list. Same with my tank, I wouldn't have to worry as much about anyone ripping threat off of me which I now see in ShB which frees me up to help contribute to the DPS more consistently (not reduced damage depending on the DPS in the fight) and to focus more on things that eventually help the team out as a whole. In a way they made tanking more appealing to people who had tank anxiety.

As for tank identity, they all still have plenty of things that make them unique in the way all their rotations works, what they synchronized was the cooldown timers with the same amount of mitigation other than their job specific mitigation tools. Could each one have more unique identity? Sure, but that's any job, I just don't have those ideas in my head XD

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Originally Posted by XanderNyx

I really don't like this idea. Tanks not only get their work done but now they can do more thanks to the adjustments. Specially for high end duty raids, your only focus there is to kill the damn thing asap, so instead of just keeping emnity and defence cooldowns, you can also do your share of damage. I understand in normal dungeons and normal trials sometimes it feels bland but raids would be annoying imo if I had to change stances to either defend or attack. And I've heard many raiders expressing relief from not having to do so.

I would rather give each tank more identity by improving their support to the group or their ability to react to mechanics. Everyone has more or less the same mitigation CDs and the PLD is known to be the best to keep things flowing if everything gets out of control, at least for a bit. But that's all, other than very specific situations of the raid/trials some have become creative and do interesting things with their tanks. It would be interesting to see what else each tank can bring to party compositions instead of "tank identity".

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so this idea was born in my head because I wanted to find a way to improve all of the tank's defencive capabilities while they are Main Tanking, while still letting Off Tanks find a way to deal damage and contribute via the jobs separate support utility. none of these stances would be meant to be changed constantly. MT PLD or GNB would sit on tank stance, and swap to OT stance after a tankswap of some sort. WAR and DRK would be able to keep both up simultaneously if they are MT, but would drop their OT stance during moments of higher damage intake, or drop their MT stance if they are not MT.

the emnity changes made in SHB wouldn't allow MT to tank in DPS stance for the entire fight since nothing really generates aggro, so I tried to get MT stances to boost the defencive attributes of the jobs, and the OT stances to help with the utility side of the tank jobs. like if a PLD needed to offtank, he could generate gauge to spend on intervention a little easier, and he could clemency members without suffering a combo break in case it was needed asap. if a DRK needed to swap in after a tankbuster, he could turn MT stance on and generate emnity while making his self sustain higher. little things like that

you could still tank in offtank . cause you can just put mt for a bit and no dps or heal will ever get aggro cause of the dumbed down aggro mechs. what youve proposed is just how aggro used to work during stormblood, without every job having a say about it.
personally id rather they revert the aggro changes cause it wasnt replaced with anything and the stances was what i loved about tanks.

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Originally Posted by EliciaVenom

I agree with the majority who already made their posts. That would be regression because I played both tank and DPS in SB and taking less responsibility off the NIN for threat mitigation on the party free'd up thought processes to DPS better and do mechanics rather than keeping my eye on the aggro list. Same with my tank, I wouldn't have to worry as much about anyone ripping threat off of me which I now see in ShB which frees me up to help contribute to the DPS more consistently (not reduced damage depending on the DPS in the fight) and to focus more on things that eventually help the team out as a whole. In a way they made tanking more appealing to people who had tank anxiety.

As for tank identity, they all still have plenty of things that make them unique in the way all their rotations works, what they synchronized was the cooldown timers with the same amount of mitigation other than their job specific mitigation tools. Could each one have more unique identity? Sure, but that's any job, I just don't have those ideas in my head XD

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I'm actually a big fan of the SHB emnity changes. I believe they were a good step in making tanks more accessible, so thats why I didn't remove anything like that from the main tank stances. on top of that, because of the SHB emnity changes, there would be no way for main tanks to use their offtank stance the entire time without getting their party killed. these thoughts were what led to my idea that the MT stance would help buff the jobs main defencive cooldowns, while OT stance would help buff their damage and party utility, by making one more available than the other during main tank and offtank situations.

for example, a PLD who is MTing would need sheltron and block rate much more than an OT PLD, so I tried to move some of the sheltron and block power to MT stance, whereas OT would use their clemency and intervention more often to help the party out. something along those lines.

If we keep enmity generation the way it is now then yes, you would probably just generate enmity in your opener and then switch to dps stance for the rest of the fight.


Another issue is that if we would make the tank stance mandatory for mting but the dps stance vastly superior in terms of damage performance you're probably gonna end up with a shortage of people wanting to actually tank the boss.

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Originally Posted by HeulGDarian

you could still tank in offtank . cause you can just put mt for a bit and no dps or heal will ever get aggro cause of the dumbed down aggro mechs. what youve proposed is just how aggro used to work during stormblood, without every job having a say about it.
personally id rather they revert the aggro changes cause it wasnt replaced with anything and the stances was what i loved about tanks.

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this is exactly what i proposed. I wanted to return stances and stance dancing without having to worry about how the party would be affected. I would hope that a new tank would stick to MT stance, and would swap when they're comfortable. this would allow more experienced tanks to show off their knowledge. by putting more responsibility on the tank to know when to boost their defences, and when its ok to go on the offence, newer tank players will have a form of skill they can work towards, while more experienced tanks get to have their old playstyle returned to them, but in a different way.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

If we keep enmity generation the way it is now then yes, you would probably just generate enmity in your opener and then switch to dps stance for the rest of the fight.


Another issue is that if we would make the tank stance mandatory for mting but the dps stance vastly superior in terms of damage performance you're probably gonna end up with a shortage of people wanting to actually tank the boss.

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so the idea was for new players to keep their tank stance on and get defencive benefits to help them when they are tanking, but that veteran players who got the hang of the content could switch to the OT stance whenever they needed certain boosts to their damage or utility. in teh case of DRK and WAR, they would have a slightly tougher time choosing when to drop OT stance since they can have both active, but that would only give new players some goals to work towards. With the current SHB emnity changes, tanks could eventually learn to swap between the stances at the right time. I tried to make both stances equally appealing in terms of what part of the kit they would bolster, but I didn't try to make OT stances do too much more damage, since you ideally would be trading defence for damage when u swap stances.

what im trying to say is it doesnt matter, cause of the need to always push for dps. people would always stick to dps stance after the first combo no matter the defensive benefit.

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Originally Posted by HeulGDarian

what im trying to say is it doesnt matter, cause of the need to always push for dps. people would always stick to dps stance after the first combo no matter the defensive benefit.

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I see what you mean, which is why I tried to get the OT stance to not push so much damage out that it makes the defencive utility of the MT stance irrelevant. i'm sure theres a way to tweak the stances so that damage doesn't matter, but I couldn't think of anything to do so for PLD and GNB. WAR and DRK would effectively play with both on if theyre MT and only drop it to gain the defencive benefits, so I guess it's more to do with balancing GNB and PLD OT stances to include more utility maybe?

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

I see what you mean, which is why I tried to get the OT stance to not push so much damage out that it makes the defencive utility of the MT stance irrelevant. i'm sure theres a way to tweak the stances so that damage doesn't matter, but I couldn't think of anything to do so for PLD and GNB. WAR and DRK would effectively play with both on if theyre MT and only drop it to gain the defencive benefits, so I guess it's more to do with balancing GNB and PLD OT stances to include more utility maybe?

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5% dps was enough for warrior to always stay at his dps stance.

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Originally Posted by HeulGDarian

5% dps was enough for warrior to always stay at his dps stance.

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30%.

Defiance still had the 20% penalty.

105 / 80 = 31.5%, not counting the raw difference in potency between the Not-The-Same abilities, or the 5% or so that came from proper Beast management.

Another person mentioned it in another thread aggro as if stands does not really matter. I get having to manage aggro was not fun depending on your group having to weave aggro dumps on cooldown was tedious for some players, and if a tank wanted to maximize damage aggro became a group effort.

I truly miss the old system, but I get in the grand scheme the current system remoces group variance, and creates a baseline experience that everyone can expect out the gate.

ARR's WAR is the only iteration of a tank job that actually used stance dancing. And that was only because Defiance with Unchained up was a dps gain due to IB and the crit bonus. From Heavensward on, you generally just stayed in Deliverance if you were playing optimally, unless the dps loss from an Unchained pull translated into a raidwide gain.

Stances, as they have previously been implemented, don't work. The best setup is where you swap from one oGCD stance directly into another. Clicking off a stance has latency associated with it and does not function as a true oGCD. GCD stances are even worse. Stances with dps costs associated might as well not exist.

Stance dancing doesn't exist, especially when one stance is a dps loss. In order to have a job built around "stance dancing", swapping stances needs to be part of the core rotation of the job, such that it's optimal to rotate through your stances to access different abilities. The instant that one stance has a consistent dps advantage over the others, you just stay in that stance permanantly. You need to provide incentive for players to rotate between stances in order for it to become part of a job identity.

The easiest way to make switching to tank stance mandatory would be to make it so that defensive cooldowns of all types could not be used without having your stance on. No one would like that.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Don't know what jobs you've been playing to come to that conclusion but it certainly weren't tanks or healers.

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sch still has shields, fairies, and resource management, ast still has stars and cards, and whm has flowers and big numbers....those seem pretty distinct to me.

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

so the idea was for new players to keep their tank stance on and get defencive benefits to help them when they are tanking, but that veteran players who got the hang of the content could switch to the OT stance whenever they needed certain boosts to their damage or utility. in teh case of DRK and WAR, they would have a slightly tougher time choosing when to drop OT stance since they can have both active, but that would only give new players some goals to work towards. With the current SHB emnity changes, tanks could eventually learn to swap between the stances at the right time. I tried to make both stances equally appealing in terms of what part of the kit they would bolster, but I didn't try to make OT stances do too much more damage, since you ideally would be trading defence for damage when u swap stances.

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I get the idea and I would love to get some flavour back in the form of stances. But the unfortunate reality is that DRK and WAR only ever used their tank stance for like 9 seconds after pulling, PLD never wanted to be in tank stance at all and as long as one stance is more of a gain than the other then there is effectively only one stance.


You could probably make stance dancing a thing if bosses had mechanics that absolutely required your tank stance to survive but you would have to make tank stances provide roughly the same baseline mitigation and of course SE would need to change encounter design.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

sch still has shields, fairies, and resource management, ast still has stars and cards, and whm has flowers and big numbers....those seem pretty distinct to me.

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They have a visual distinction but barely any mechanical. Shields are useless in most cases since they're so weak you need to heal anyway, the fairy is a braindead oGCD, the star theme of AST is just a different coat of paint for "aoe heal here" and SCH as well as WHM have resource management in the form of aetherflow or lillies, AST being the only somewhat unique one with it's cards...and it's MP issues lol. All healers spend their downtime, which is a lot this expansion, pressing a dot every 30 seconds and spamming one button for the rest of it.


Making their abilities have a different sparkle doesn't make for very engaging gameplay.

I'd rather have it they give tanks other new interesting things to do than switching between stances.

I'm not against giving tanks more aggro management stuff, but I didn't like what we had with the tank and dps stances, as only dps stance was actually viable. It wasn't fun, and didn't work properly, what with having to use tank stance was a sign of bad play for some people.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

You could probably make stance dancing a thing if bosses had mechanics that absolutely required your tank stance to survive but you would have to make tank stances provide roughly the same baseline mitigation and of course SE would need to change encounter design.

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They did once actually, that not stopped people of switchign regardless and blame the healer or others, Orbonne Monestary as example, without tank stance no tank survived the tankbuster on the third boss, but people ignored it because they were not MT, yet people still only looked at damge, the worst in this how SE gived in changing tank accesoires to strength because people cried, it is ironic how people call others whining if things are hard but if they cry for such "elitism" it is ok. Now we have this mess we are in.

I've updated the OP with some ideas to curb a bit of the damage from the DPS stance and to try to give it some form of utility.
Thanks for the input guys. I'm really upset at the execution of the job homogenisation, but I would hope that some flavour in the future can be returned. there's nothing wrong with making the jobs easier to perform, but when it comes at the cost of the unique gameplay identity, that's where it gets upsetting.

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Originally Posted by Saix027

They did once actually, that not stopped people of switchign regardless and blame the healer or others, Orbonne Monestary as example, without tank stance no tank survived the tankbuster on the third boss, but people ignored it because they were not MT, yet people still only looked at damge, the worst in this how SE gived in changing tank accesoires to strength because people cried, it is ironic how people call others whining if things are hard but if they cry for such "elitism" it is ok. Now we have this mess we are in.

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Huh? No tank needed their tank stance to live through TG Cid's tank buster. You just needed a strong cooldown and to be topped off, like with every tank buster. Like, if you needed the 20% mitigation from a tank stance, then WAR would be unable to tank it lol.

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Originally Posted by Saix027

They did once actually, that not stopped people of switchign regardless and blame the healer or others, Orbonne Monestary as example, without tank stance no tank survived the tankbuster on the third boss, but people ignored it because they were not MT, yet people still only looked at damge, the worst in this how SE gived in changing tank accesoires to strength because people cried, it is ironic how people call others whining if things are hard but if they cry for such "elitism" it is ok. Now we have this mess we are in.

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1. no you did not need tank stance for that buster, I know because I tanked the thing...
2. they put strength on tank accessories because duh, tank damage scales with strength and once your HP reaches the threshold where you can easily survive mitigated busters and raidwides vitality has barely any use. In HW you simply used dps accessories (except for that brief time where tanks actually scaled with vit) because you did not need the extra HP but with Stormblood that wasn't an option anymore due to accessories being job specific. That has less to do with elitism and more to do with people not wanting to gimp themselves by wearing gear that's essentially useless, or would you be fine if melee dps suddenly only had intelligence on their accessories?


Elitism is apparently now used interchangeably with "common sense"

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

1. no you did not need tank stance for that buster, I know because I tanked the thing...
2. they put strength on tank accessories because duh, tank damage scales with strength and once your HP reaches the threshold where you can easily survive mitigated busters and raidwides vitality has barely any use. In HW you simply used dps accessories (except for that brief time where tanks actually scaled with vit) because you did not need the extra HP but with Stormblood that wasn't an option anymore due to accessories being job specific. That has less to do with elitism and more to do with people not wanting to gimp themselves by wearing gear that's essentially useless, or would you be fine if melee dps suddenly only had intelligence on their accessories?


Elitism is apparently now used interchangeably with "common sense"

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Also worth noting, levelling tanks during early SB was an absolute nightmare for tanks in dungeons due to aggro issues from missing a significant amount of main stats. SE had to buff enmity generation on tanks AoE skills. I actually advised some players to use i270 STR accessories as they were struggling with aggro, and it made a world of difference.

But as you said, apparently common sense = elitism, its a sad time we live in.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

Also worth noting, levelling tanks during early SB was an absolute nightmare for tanks in dungeons due to aggro issues from missing a significant amount of main stats. SE had to buff enmity generation on tanks AoE skills. I actually advised some players to use i270 STR accessories as they were struggling with aggro, and it made a world of difference.

But as you said, apparently common sense = elitism, its a sad time we live in.

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I remember the days of the struggle as a tank all the way back to ARR. I always thought that tanks should get their tank stance at lv 15 and their dps stance at lv 30, but at least we got that now... even if it is just a blue emnity button

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Originally Posted by Saix027

They did once actually, that not stopped people of switchign regardless and blame the healer or others, Orbonne Monestary as example, without tank stance no tank survived the tankbuster on the third boss, but people ignored it because they were not MT, yet people still only looked at damge, the worst in this how SE gived in changing tank accesoires to strength because people cried, it is ironic how people call others whining if things are hard but if they cry for such "elitism" it is ok. Now we have this mess we are in.

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Not only did you never need tank stance. Cid auto targets the three tanks. You literally don't need aggro at all that fight as he will always target a tank so long as they're alive. I know because I tanked him in full Deliverance day one.

Tank accessories were changed to strength because tanks scale off that stat. They subsequently made them job specific because tanks were still using slaying accessories for Susano and Titania. It was pretty much inevitable outside of initial prog, they'd attempt it in Savage too. Damage has always been king in this game because you only need enough HP to survive the scripted mechanics. Having an extra 10k means nothing if you don't actually need it.

I think you meant Lakshmi, not Titania. xD

I'm all for job identity but don't think bringing stances back is the way to do it. Tanks giving up survivability to push MOAR DPS has never felt right to me and I don't want to go back to the days of 'only use defensive stance for initial enmity lead then be in dps stance all day.' Partly because I played paladin where our sword oath benefit was just doing extra auto attack damage anyway and not something that really changed up our rotation at all.

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Originally Posted by XanderNyx

I really don't like this idea. Tanks not only get their work done but now they can do more thanks to the adjustments. Specially for high end duty raids, your only focus there is to kill the damn thing asap, so instead of just keeping emnity and defence cooldowns, you can also do your share of damage. I understand in normal dungeons and normal trials sometimes it feels bland but raids would be annoying imo if I had to change stances to either defend or attack. And I've heard many raiders expressing relief from not having to do so.

I would rather give each tank more identity by improving their support to the group or their ability to react to mechanics. Everyone has more or less the same mitigation CDs and the PLD is known to be the best to keep things flowing if everything gets out of control, at least for a bit. But that's all, other than very specific situations of the raid/trials some have become creative and do interesting things with their tanks. It would be interesting to see what else each tank can bring to party compositions instead of "tank identity".

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I agree with this. classes need to be more unique and have their own identity. giving everyone stances is too similar. maybe only one of the tanks gets stances.

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Originally Posted by PeppermintBrown

I'm all for job identity but don't think bringing stances back is the way to do it. Tanks giving up survivability to push MOAR DPS has never felt right to me and I don't want to go back to the days of 'only use defensive stance for initial enmity lead then be in dps stance all day.' Partly because I played paladin where our sword oath benefit was just doing extra auto attack damage anyway and not something that really changed up our rotation at all.

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the point i was making wasnt to make DPS stance MOAR DPS, it was to make the utility part of the kit a little stronger to compensate for the fact that MT skills won't be buffed, and the Tank stance was to get MT skills (such as defencive CDs) to be more powerful while trying to keep DPS the same between the 4 jobs. I too remember the Sword Oath days, which is why I would like the stance to help OT skills be better.

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Originally Posted by Tokyozombie

I agree with this. classes need to be more unique and have their own identity. giving everyone stances is too similar. maybe only one of the tanks gets stances.

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the current tank stances make classes much more similar than what I proposed. the current ones only give emnity generation, and that's it. they do not offer any different job playstyles, different job utility, or different job flavour whatsoever. are you suggesting that we remove all tank stances currently because they are too similar?

My suggestions were made to try and bring back some of the older playstyle flavours, while helping buff different parts of the kit.
under my ideas, a tank in MT stance would buff their personal cooldowns and resource generation from those skills, while OT stances would buff the utility they could bring to the party while buffing their resource generation to compensate for the extra damage that the Mt stances would allow. of course the numbers i proposed would need to be balanced, but i tried to take "party utility vs personal cooldowns" into account

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

the point i was making wasnt to make DPS stance MOAR DPS, it was to make the utility part of the kit a little stronger to compensate for the fact that MT skills won't be buffed, and the Tank stance was to get MT skills (such as defencive CDs) to be more powerful while trying to keep DPS the same between the 4 jobs. I too remember the Sword Oath days, which is why I would like the stance to help OT skills be better.

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Unfortunately, without a complete overhaul of their current battle design. We simply do not need more powerful defensive abilities. Shadowbringers has the lowest damage output in the game's entire history despite healers and tanks having a plethora of options. I mean just look at E7S. Healers can literally AFK for two full minutes as he does nothing. This, in turn, means any offensive benefit a DPS brings will immediately be meta. It could just meager 5% Determination boost and people will still tank primarily in DPS stance because you don't need the extra mitigation. Until SE decides to actually make content reasonably threatening or downright force you to give up offense, people aren't going to.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Shadowbringers has the lowest damage output in the game's entire history

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That's an interesting claim.
Can you show me your data?
How big is the disparity?
And how did you come by this information?

Big problem with this is that tanks pre-change believed that it was more important to switch off their "Tank Stance" for a "DPS stance" in any instance. Generate enough enmity and turn it off meaning you get hit harder. Coupling this with mass pulls leads to a lot of "Oh God" moments for healers. The culture of this game seems to be centered on the idea that everyone is DPS and only has to do their specific jobs occasionally. I'm not advocating for healers to never DPS - far from it - but a healer's main role is, always, healing. When everyone's in a good enough standing to DPS, then yes, please do. Having tank stances that reduced the damage done to increase defense and enmity caused tanks to believe they were an "inconvenience" and the change implemented has made tanks better able to maintain their role while their abilities discern the class. I've got all 4 tanks at 80 and have mucked around with all of them. They definitely have their own identities.