SE must be drunk.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Which would only cause one thing - healers entering cleric stance less often. Mitigation is essential to prevent one-shot protection, but once you can't be one-shot anymore, the healers can pick up the slack far more efficiently than any mitigation stat could. Try running a dungeon once without a tank and once without a healer, you'll see why people rather let a healer do the job than mitigation.

You didnt really counter his statement. You just said WHMs wont DPS as much, which is close to a counter argument, and then used an example not applicable.

[Reynhart]

Which would only cause one thing - healers entering cleric stance less often. Mitigation is essential to prevent one-shot protection, but once you can't be one-shot anymore, the healers can pick up the slack far more efficiently than any mitigation stat could. Try running a dungeon once without a tank and once without a healer, you'll see why people rather let a healer do the job than mitigation.

If each auto-attack can eat a good chunk of your HP, like when a fresh ilvl70 faced Caduceus for the first time, then having a fair chance of reducing this by 20-30% would greatly help healers. And I think parrying and blocking should reduce way more than 20-30%
And you say it would require healers to focus more on healing ? Without being called lazy for not having Cleric Stance activated most of the time ? Yeah, two birds with one stone.

Oh, and if bosses hit much harder, your "dungeon without a tank" will end very quickly.

[Sarcatica]

Parry just sucks for anyone to stack. This type of game emphasizes more on active CDs to use while parry is just "oh that hit parried, okay" and mostly also because it's not on demand which contributes more towards tank busters. Basically parry needs more punch for people to start stacking it. The only part where parry is any close to useful is to proc Reprisal. Anything else doesn't feel as impactful, I haven't have that many instances where parry actually saved my life (except for that one Flatten back in 2.4, and even then it's just not any reliable).

[Reynhart]

it's not on demand which contributes more towards tank busters.

The main reason why auto-attacks should not be trivialized by simple healing. Creator is already far heavier than before on this, and I think it's a good thing. It's not unusal to see the tank's HP going lower and lower with auto-attacks only.

Here's another way how parry could be revamped.

I'd change every mitigation skill to give them a potency (Except HG, Holmgang and LD, obviously). And, like having good offensive/healing potency is useless with poor stats, having low parry would reduce the effectiveness of all mitigation skills when compared to now.
BUT, having high parry would actually make Rampart and Inner Beast reduce more than 20%, Vengeance reduce more than 30%, etc...

And to feel less awkward when dealing with magic damage, the name could be changed too...

[Neela]

Which would only cause one thing - healers entering cleric stance less often.

wasnt yoshi talking about this with HW? Rework tanks & healers to focus on their job and not on dps? Here we go : )
and to be honest i would love it... if it would ever be the case. even it's common and used by the community – it's absolut unlogical that Wars and Schs are equal with DDs or even beat them in off stance. but i guess im nearly alone with this opinion...

[DaulBan]

wasnt yoshi talking about this with HW? Rework tanks & healers to focus on their job and not on dps? Here we go : )

If I was forced as a tank to do no damage 'because I am a tank' I'd quit being a tank period. I sincerely believe that if you play a tank and get your CD rotation down to the point where you can DPS comfortably while A) holding aggro B) not dying and C) not giving your healer a heart attack there's no reason why you shouldn't be rewarded with doing good damage. Sitting in tank stance and spamming aggro combos is boring. Cooldown planning is boring after you've worked it out. At least doing good DPS requires a bit of thought and is more exciting as a goal than not being dead.

As to SCH and WARs out-DPSing other classes, consider that no good DPS should be swamped by a tank or healer in damage at comparable gear levels. If a DRK/PLD/WAR is doing more damage than a comparable DPS, that means the DPS needs to step its game up, not be dragging its feet and complaining that tanks are OP.

[Neela]

you are absolutely right with your points – but in reality most of the wars/schs you meet in df are just playing like a full dd cls not being able to get their prios right. yesterday i died 3 times as ilvl 235 Drk with the latest Anima on a simple 60 roulette cause the healer didn't want to quit cleric - uh yeah let them dps as they like. some hours later i went to S3 to get my last weekly loot where a War grand us 2 wipes cause he thought tanking in dps stance would help the group to be "faster".

if prios are hold up i don't care and welcome extra dps but talking about stat weights for tanks/healers i can't get used to all the crying about loosing det on tank gear or acc on sch gear. thats all im talking about.

[Lyth]

Finding the best combination of stats is an optimisation problem (i.e. optimise a given function subject to some constraints). Stats in this game generally fall into one of two categories: objectives and constraints. Objectives are things that you try to maximise. Crit, det, and skill speed are examples of these. When there are multiple stats like this, you tend to prioritise them based off of whichever carries the highest weight (i.e. if you can't meld crit because of stat caps, meld det/sks).

Constraints represent minimum stat thresholds that you're required to meet to avoid incurring a penalty. Accuracy is one such stat. Once you meet the minimum accuracy threshold, there's no further benefit to accumulating more. Skill speed thresholds on certain jobs can function in a similar manner. Purely "defensive" stats, such as pre-3.2 vitality, fall into this category as well, where you may need to meet a certain threshold in order to safely tank an encounter.

The problem with parry at present is that it's a constraint stat, but there's no required parry threshold to clear an encounter. As a result, tanks try to avoid it altogether. If you simply strengthen parry's defensive value and make it mandatory for tanking encounters (this might be difficult to do in practice, though, as you might just get unlucky and never see a proc), then tanks will just find the minimum threshold to tank with. It simply becomes a second accuracy stat. If you give it some offensive value in terms of counterattacks and procs, then it could function as an objective stat. The problem with this is that you would end up splitting off tank gear into "tanking" vs. "off-tanking" sets, which pushes us back towards the old MT/OT tanking setup (of course, you may end up doing this anyways, if you make parry essential).

There's also the question of where Shield Block fits into this. Do you design shields so that their contribution is relatively fixed, allowing you to shed a set amount of parry? Do you let it have some dependence/interaction with the parry stat?

Regardless of how it's implemented, though, I don't think it's going to be a terribly interesting stat, as long as it falls into one of the above patterns. I'd be much more interested in seeing gear stats that interact more directly with your skills (i.e. affecting recast and adding special effects), but these are more complex to analyse and balance.

[Reynhart]

At least doing good DPS requires a bit of thought and is more exciting as a goal than not being dead.

Then play a DPS. Why do you even play tank if you find tanking boring ?
What may seem boring to you can be interesting for someone else. Why should this game only reward one type of tank ?

The problem with parry at present is that it's a constraint stat, but there's no required parry threshold to clear an encounter.

Maintaining aggro is a constraint, surviving is a constraint. Tanking is a constraint. Why do you think so few people actually enjoy that role ?

The only problem is that the two basic aspects of tanking are too easy. Instead of pushing DPS, they should balance combat so that maintaining aggro and surviving require skill. At least, you could shine as a "Tank", and not as a would-be DPS.

[Lyth]

Maintaining aggro is a constraint, surviving is a constraint. Tanking is a constraint. Why do you think so few people actually enjoy that role?

One of the reasons why I defined the terms at the start is because "objective" and "constraint" are mathematical terms in this context. I knew that someone was bound to read that with the emotional connotation of "being constrained," but that's taking the word out of context.

Support roles, such as tanking and healing, are about finding a correct balance. When you heal a player at full health, we refer to that as "overhealing". It's unfortunate that we haven't coined a similar word for tanking (i.e. "overmitigation"). Healing or mitigating in excess of the requirements of a fight is inefficient. Playing these roles at their maximum potential requires you to identify how much is the correct amount, both for the fight and for your group. The requirements are constantly changing and you need to be flexible enough to adapt on the fly. That's the fun and the skill in the roles.

The only problem is that the two basic aspects of tanking are too easy. Instead of pushing DPS, they should balance combat so that maintaining aggro and surviving require skill. At least, you could shine as a "Tank", and not as a would-be DPS.

The reason why the idea of "DPS" tends to upset some tanks and healers is because it's an objective metric against which you can be judged. Once you get sufficiently geared, it's easy to build up a circle of friends who you consistently play with and who re-enforce the idea that you are a "good" tank, irrespective of whether you push yourself to get better. Unless you pug a lot, which is worth doing, you often won't see other players performing the exact same role as yourself, and it's easy to convince yourself that you're playing well. DPS bothers tanks because it makes them aware that they might not be as skilled as they've convinced themselves that the are.

Most tanks recognise that the role is multifaceted. You need to:
1) Obtain enmity promptly, retain it, and pass it off when needed with minimal disruption
2) Mitigate effectively
3) Move and position mobs in order to ensure raid safety and enhance raid dps
4) Where the above is met, maximise dps

A tank's dps doesn't depend on the same things as a damage dealer. You can go on about how masterful your opener is or how complex your Berserk and FoF windows are, but the truth is that most tank jobs at level 60 are less rotationally complex than your average dps job is at level 30. There are some basics to attend to and practice, but once you understand that, the single biggest contribution to your dps comes from your time out of tank stance.

When you realise that, you quickly see that all of the core tenets of tanking are reflected in your ability to safely dps. When you mitigate and generate enmity optimally, you are less reliant on tank stance, and your dps goes up. When you reposition mobs effectively, you don't lose autos or GCDs in the process, and neither do your dps. Both your personal dps and the raid's dps goes up.

There is a misconception that tanks who push high dps do so by ignoring mitigation. It's actually the exact opposite. You do it by having a thorough knowledge of the damage patterns and mitigation requirements of a fight. If you take such a tank and put them into a fight with higher mitigation requirements, they'll do less dps on that fight, but they'll also survive where other tanks do not. If you find a tank who has higher dps than you, it's because they know how to mitigate more effectively than you. I wouldn't see this as an affront, but as a learning opportunity. Steal their secrets.