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

[Sapphidia]

The above responses are the perfect example of the points I made in my original post.

The issue isnt that the tank meta is -wrong-, it's that it's different to what a lot of people expect. This has the consequences of attracting a different kind of player to the tank role, but also turning off some people who would naturally gravitate towards the tank role anyway.

The only way to fix it so both parties are happy is to ensure that there's positives and negatives to both styles of tanking - that you CAN run a squishy dps stance tank that does a buttload of dps, and that this is viable and a good strategy if your healers can cope. But conversely, there needs to be reasons for the super tough brick wall tank that maximises their mitigation to ALSO be viable.

Right now only the first is catered for, so there's dissension in the ranks.

[Cynric]

snip

Then my question to you is. How do you balance the Str tank getting hit for the tank buster meant for the higher health tank, while keeping the DPS checks somewhat heavy, without making the Higher Health/low DPS tank a burden for having low DPS.

It's very hard to strike a middle ground without changing the design philosophy not only behind the mechanics of fights but of the tanks themselves. If you require too much health and enforce passively using CD's and not DPSing to your fullest, you lose the tanks who enjoy this meta. If you make it so the lower health tanks can survive but tank DPS is important, you lose the tanks that enjoy the main portion of what tanking is.

You could say well have the DPS oriented one OT and the defense MT, however due to the way the game is currently designed Warrior is absolutely the best OT and usually you won't see the other 2 tanks OT except when a Warrior isn't available. However the balance between the 3 tanks definitely doesn't encourage this. Especially considering some moves are absolutely useless OT. (Reprisal,Shield Swipe)

It's very easy to say well we need to fit both styles in. But due to the way the game is it's a lot harder to actually do so.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Then my question to you is. How do you balance the Str tank getting hit for the tank buster meant for the higher health tank, while keeping the DPS checks somewhat heavy, without making the Higher Health/low DPS tank a burden for having low DPS.

Best way (which seems to be SE's goal) is to shrink the gap. The Str tank would still have a slight kill speed advantage while the Vit tank would have a survival advantage without feeling that they are far behind. Currently the Str Tank has a 27% DpS advantage over the Vit tank.

[Alahra]

Best way (which seems to be SE's goal) is to shrink the gap. The Str tank would still have a slight kill speed advantage while the Vit tank would have a survival advantage without feeling that they are far behind. Currently the Str Tank has a 27% DpS advantage over the Vit tank.

If they don't approach it this way, they're more likely to just merge the two styles to some degree by making VIT contribute to damage in some way. My assumption is that they want tanks wearing Fending gear, so when all is said and done, I suspect Fending accessories in 3.2 will provide the same rough increases to attack power and HP that a full set of pentamelded accessories do now, resulting in a meta that's somewhere in between the two extremes.