Four Ways to Die - why the Tank Meta feels "off".

[Jpec07]

Was mostly referring to situations where they neglect use of their mitigation rotation in favor of heavier damage (i.e. Tanking in Deliverence, dropping Grit, etc.). I guess I don't really count cooldown usage as "Active Mitigation," though the sheer number of defensive CDs tanks have to use certainly makes it feel like it sometimes.

Tanks are not ignoring their active mitigation in the meta. Show me any parse where tanks are clearing content and not using shadowskin, shadow wall, rampart, sentinel, hallowed ground, living dead, vengeance...

"More damage" might just make it so you're locked into tank stances for an entire fight (nullifying everything the expansion gave WARs, for instance, outside of Equilibrium) but it wouldn't change optimal play which focuses on how to most effectively use your GCDs, and all tank GCDs currently deal damage. There'd still be the VIT/STR trade off analysis because of this and so on.

Tuning fights so that you can be suboptimal and clear won't change how to optimally play, either ("I can stack passive mitigation and sit in tank stance and not care about anything else"); it'll just let suboptimal players clear without having to be concerned with improving their performance given the game's design.

To realistically impact the meta you must change the way tank GCDs work, full stop.

When you say "GCD," are you referring to cooldown abilities like the ones you listed? Or are you referring to things like the RoH combo? "GCD" usually means "global cool down," which is the minimum amount of time that must lapse between any attack, where a cooldown is a temporary self-cast buff that can only be cast with low frequency. If you're saying we need to change tank defensive CDs, I'd be onboard with that, but it might be too drastic a change for them to consider making.