A new tank stance to fit Dark Knight better

[Ceodore]

The only thing that was stated is that they thought of skills that directly sacrifice HP for doing damage. And that was counter-productive for a tank.

From several replies here, it seems like people forget that tank already take a lot of unavoidable damage. A DRK with Dread Spikes will not search for damage, it will benefit from the one he already take.

As for the "theme", what bothers me most is that out tanking stance is exactly the same as PLD. Only three tanks is the game and two of them already share the same basic mechanic for mitigation.
You want a parry or magical tank ?
Parry : The problem with parry is reliability. Either you parry everything...and it's basically a renamed Shield Oath that already use your parry proc, which makes it weaker than Shield Oath in real fights, or you don't parry everything and that spot of unreliability will kill you.
Magical tank ? What is a magical tank. Someone who reduce magic damage ? What good is it when others tanks reduce all types of damage ? Someone who use magic to reduce damage ? By spells ? By losing MP each time it is hit ?

The issue with players is they ask for originality, but when it is given, there are fundamental flaws with certain original skills. Tank toggles, toggles in general, are one of the hardest things to make truly original without copying something from somewhere. Even the Dread Spikes idea has been done before, and it's just like a permanent form of Vengeance. So please, tell me, what's actually original here? That it's a toggle? At some point, for the purpose of actually making the class viable, originality might have to be sacrificed. However, there is an original idea that could ACTUALLY work that has not been seen in the game, and it is kind of like what the OP suggested, but at the same time, not.

A tanking stance that works fluidly. Essentially, as damage in increases, the benefit of the buff increases. Essentially, this works for things like healing received and damage received. For attacks that do a significant amount of damage, usually indicated by a % of hp the attack will damage for, the buff reacts stronger. The formula essentially goes like this.

((Damage/Max HP) * .5) * 100 = Damage % reduction. So say you have an HP pool of 15000, and you take a hit for 3k. So that's 3k/15k = .2 then .2 * .5 = .1. .1 * 100 = 10, so the hit would then be reduced by 10% to 2700. Or, say you have a hit coming in for 5000. That would be reduced to 4167, a reduction of 16% of damage. The only problem arises with a threshold. There will become a point where the damage reduction equals 100%, which is when damage is double your HP pool. Of course, a fix to that would be a limit formula. Essentially, set the limit to be a maximum of like 25%. So the formula would look more like this.

((Damage/Max HP) * .5) * 100 = Damage % reduction to a maximum of 25%.

This same thing can be applied to healing, but can be created without a maximum, but also requires a duration that the calculations are based on. Essentially All damage taken in the past 10, 20, 30 seconds, (whatever duration you want to choose) divided by HP pool then multiplied by a percentage and then multiplied by 100 to be converted to another percentage would equal increased healing received.

So... ((Damage total in the last 10 seconds/HP maximum) * .1*) * 100 = % of increased healing received. This can also be changed to be the total damage received in the last number of hits as well.

These are what's known as fluid buffs, as they change continuously based on the situation of the fight. The name Grit is entirely fitting for this as well, since it is essentially man moding your way through things. The higher the damage, the higher the buff's effects. The lower, the lower the effects.

Edit: Another fluid toggle I almost forgot is the fluid shield. A % of damage received = the amount of damage reduced on the next attack received. This is particularly good against tank busters, as say 25% of 10k might absorb the next auto attack. But it isn't so over powered as when it reduces damage, it also reduces the amount of damage that the next shield can be calculated with.