Tank adjustments we can agree on?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

This is completely missing the point. Inner Beast is separate from the passive effects of Defiance that make it a tank stance. He and I were talking about the passive effects of each Job's tank stance, not the overall tanking ability of each Job.

Having only Sword Oath off-GCD is an interesting idea, and perhaps that's all that's needed so that it's like DRK. Related, I think that Grit costing MP, or at least as much as it does, is a little stupid. I still think no tank stance should be on the GCD as long as Defiance isn't because this is supposed to be a casual game at heart, and tank stances being on the GCD feels like a frustrating punishment. However, I do understand his point of view.

Dark does not have an offensive stance. Also, why are you and everyone trying to make Paladin and DRK like Warrior? That is boring, you know why I want to play other classes? So they are not like one class.

If you want to play "Warrior" why not be a "Warrior?"

Warriors are high risk stance tanks. Play a Warrior if you want to be a Warrior. =P

[Exodus_Kenpachi]

Dark does not have an offensive stance. Also, why are you and everyone trying to make Paladin and DRK like Warrior? That is boring, you know why I want to play other classes? So they are not like one class.

If you want to play "Warrior" why not be a "Warrior?"

Warriors are high risk stance tanks. Play a Warrior if you want to be a Warrior. =P

Darkside bro.... Darkside. Also WAR is not a high risk tank lol.

[Freyyy]

Darkside bro.... Darkside. Also WAR is not a high risk tank lol.

Darkside is not a DPS stance. It's a Maim equivalent. A stance cannot be used alongside another stance, and usually doesn't constantly drain a resource. Darkside is more something like a personal "aura" than a stance.

What would be a DPS stance for DRK is something that would cancel Grit when used, share the same recast timer (which is currently the GCD), have the same MP cost, and wouldn't interfere with Darkside either.

[Brian_]

Here is what people don't understand.

Job design is about overall balance.

Yes, WAR does not get immediate mitigation purely from stance dancing to Defiance.

That's irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Why? Because Defiance doesn't exist in a vacuum. Neither does Deliverance. If you want to view WAR stances in a vacuum, then you should also look at stuff like Inner Beast, Fell Cleave, Decimate, Equilibrium, etc. in a vacuum. Defiance might be worse than Shield Oath when removed from its context. But, if you view IB, FC, Decimate, etc. with the same standards, WAR skills would deserve to be nerfed into the ground because they are so much better than what PLD and DRK have.

The point is that Defiance and Deliverance have to be weaker because you have to factor in the value of stacks and stances allowing otherwise completely overpowered skills like IB, FC, Decimate, etc. to exist. There might not be an upfront gain in mitigation when activating Defiance, but you gain access to a number of incredibly strong skills that only exist because of your weaker stance. That's a persistent strength of the stance just like how mitigation is a persistent strength of Grit and Shield Oath. Imagine PLDs / DRKs with IB, FC, and Equilibrium. It would be ludicrous.

[Teiren]

Right, Defiance doesn't exist in a vaccuum. It is about overall design and balance, so that's why Inner Beast is irrelevant to Defiance being off-GCD and PLD/DRK's stances being on-GCD.

However, Defiance isn't weaker than Shield Oath/Grit. They're already equal. That's what I've been talking about this whole time. You still require almost EXACTLY the same rate of healing to survive as a Warrior in Defiance as a PLD/DRK in Shield Oath/Grit. I did concede that technically you would be more susceptible to dying than a PLD/DRK in the moment you switch to Defiance before you receive any healing, but that's a completely ridiculous technicality; it doesn't matter. If you were that close to dying, then healers would be already healing you anyway.

Yes, I understand that you could save 5 Abandon for Inner Beast if you knew for sure that you were going to take a lot of damage the moment you switch to Defiance, but that's such an unrealistic scenario, and, again, Inner Beast is separate from Defiance because it's a tool just like Rampart or Dark Dance, so I'm dismissing it.

And yes, if Sword Oath/Grit were off GCD, of course I would expect them to have at least a 10 sec cooldown. This isn't about making PLD/DRK just like WAR. I don't know how that could happen from this simple change. I just think the game should stay casual and fun to play instead of frustrating or awkward.

Anyway, at this point I think our opinions of game design are just plain different, and we're being fueled by that rather than considering practical applications of different designs. That's okay, but I'm going to quit this now.

To get back on topic: I think we can at the very least all agree that Oaths/Grit should not break weaponskill combos. Sorry for bringing too much game design discussion into this. This topic should be about common sense fixes to the game's systems instead of game design which is much more subjective.

[Duelle]

Hypothetical question: how would the balance of the game be skewed if the three tank stances didn't come with -20% damage?

So Shield Oath/Grit was literally less damage taken and extra threat, and defiance was threat, health, healing and access to different moves. Paladins and Dark Knights would stay in stance 100% and only drop stance when they wanted to tank swap and dps something without having huge threat. Warriors would probably sit in Defiance a lot more and mostly just stance dance to use specific moves.

I would welcome this to a degree, as that would put a dent on stance-swaps while MTing (something I want to very much see be tossed into the void to never return).

It'd bring the 3 tanks closer in personal DPS since with slashing debuff PLD and DRK are supposedly around 10% behind WAR. This would however also call for Unchained to be redesigned since it'd serve no purpose if your suggestion was implemented, and that would potentially cause problems if it were turned into yet another DPS booster for WAR.

The issue right now is that as Freyyy has stated, Warriors are designed to stance dance because they have a kit that allows access to different moves in different stances. Stance swapping is accessing different parts of the toolkit. A Fel Cleave is -far- more damage than an Inner beast both due to the potency AND the damage down of Defiance. Equilibrium has both uses. I guess steel cyclone/decimate is fairly similar. But in general, Warriors have been designed with the dancing in mind.

I'll contest this. Deliverance, Fel Cleave and Decimate are there to give WAR an answer to Sword Oath while off-tanking. My guess is something in the way abilities are programmed required Deliverance/Defiance be off-GCD so as to not lose stacks (since losing 5 stacks of Abandon/Wrath when swapping is a much stiffer penalty than interrupting combos and losing some MP). The way Equilibrium works also hints to this, since it's a self-heal in Defiance (turning it into a decent recovery cooldown while tanking) and TP recover in Deliverance (to help TP upkeep while off-tanking).

If the job were truly designed around stance dancing, the cooldowns on Deliverance and Defiance would be 2.5s instead of 10s. You'd also have more diverse abilities per stance instead of essentially DPS versions of Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone. It's pretty clear the devs felt WAR not having access to something akin to Wrath stacks while off-tanking was a bit of a waste, and it was corrected with the HW skills.

Paladins and Dark Knights -seem- like their stances are merely a "role designation" from the view of the devs - they're either in "I'm tanking something" or "I'm the OT and just DPSing at the moment" modes, as they're so much clunkier to toggle and they don't have anywhere near as much impact in the skill use. They're purely a "do I want 20% damage or 20% less damage taken" toggle that doesn't flow with their abilities, but the player base has minmaxed to the point where they're using a clunky kit in an optimal way that -probably- wasnt how the devs intended the class to be played.

Looking at PLD and DRK, one can see they were designed to stay in Shield Oath/Grit while tanking and going Sword Oath/Darkside-only while off-tanking/DPSing.

What if, for example, they hugely buffed the threat and damage of Shield Swipe and made it apply the Slashing Down Debuff.... but you could only use the skill in Shield Oath? Something like that so paladins and drks feel like actually being in their tanking stance isnt for the most part an entirely negative thing.

This sounds like a good idea.

[ArdorGrey]

Here is what people don't understand.

Job design is about overall balance.

Yes, WAR does not get immediate mitigation purely from stance dancing to Defiance.

That's irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Why? Because Defiance doesn't exist in a vacuum. Neither does Deliverance.

Blows my mind how someone can say something like this and use it as an argument for why drk and pld should have on demand toggleable pseudo sentinel.

[SpookyGhost]

Blows my mind how someone can say something like this and use it as an argument for why drk and pld should have on demand toggleable pseudo sentinel.

Ah, but you see, you're looking at DRK and PLD in a vacuum. What you need to do is look at them in a toaster, then you'll see where the balance comes into play.

[Freyyy]

Blows my mind how someone can say something like this and use it as an argument for why drk and pld should have on demand toggleable pseudo sentinel.

It's already on demand toggleable since it's on the GCD and it's far from being as strong as Sentinel. Making it oGCD wouldn't change anything about that, it would just make it more smooth and actually enjoyable to do.

But I personally ask to atleast make Grit/Oaths not breaking combos anymore. That's for me the real issue, the real reason why it's so clunky.

[NFaelivrin]

Blows my mind how someone can say something like this and use it as an argument for why drk and pld should have on demand toggleable pseudo sentinel.

I didn't know 20% mitigation = 40% mitigation but I'm sure this makes sense to you, somehow. WARs can cry about how PLD and DRK don't deserve off-gcd stance dancing when they stop being the best tank in the game by an absolutely ridiculous margin. You know what blows my mind? That the physical class with the absolute lowest TP consumption in single target of all was given pseudo invigorate when they absolutely had no need for it, while the other tanks have to cry for goad 3 minutes into a fight.