What new class and or battle mechanics do you wish 4.0 will bring?

[Duelle]

I've played lolRet, and post-lolRet, and pre-lolRet. But that issue comes from a lot more than just that part of their arsenal is invested in raid contribution. You know, the difference between why some Legion Rets have been rerolling, yet Ninjas and Bards don't throw down their controllers when seeing that they couldn't do Monk dps. Otherwise, you'd need only attach that Blessing of Might damage to the Ret's Skada/Recount and most of them would be happy.

This is where I bring up the feel of the class. It doesn't feel good to know your damage is intentionally tuned to be lower just so that you can increase the damage of 3 people for one hour. Specially in the context of a holy knight with a big hammer that prior to Legion could smash faces with the best of them while also having utility.

Bards have the benefit of concept and connotation, because while I would be okay with a BRD dealing higher damage (definitely closer to the other ranged DPS), others are bent on seeing the job deal super low/no damage and spam songs.

This I get. I really get it. For instance, I can imagine just how many weeks it'd take for an addon to come out that dictates who the Ret should next give his Blessing to if those were to go oGCD. That'd be a ridiculous annoyance. But Word of Glory? Sheath of Light? Did either of those increased options or capabilities ever prevent the Ret from dpsing as he liked?

See, stuff like Word of Glory is something I can actually get behind. For one because it didn't intervene with the main role. For two because it was a nice thing to have but no group or raid would expect you to use it (see: the ridiculous complaints some here have about Clemency simply because PLD can't use it all day, every day). For three because it was a tactical choice that has an opportunity cost (since it cost a resource required for other attacks). If utility was designed and treated like Word of Glory, we probably would not have half of the issues currently facing class design ("X class has too much utility, Y class doesn't have enough utility, Z class matters more because of utility, R class has the wrong kind of utility").

My point is that when you center a class specifically within a role, to the neglect of all else, (1) that class then faces situational unviability

Only if overall class design is centered on niches. That's something I'm also against because, as made evident with HW's first tier, it causes more trouble than it's worth.

(2) you hugely risk the balance of throughput for the various of the game, and even go so far as to say it doesn't matter, "'Cus trinity. Amen." Why take a tank when you can outright avoid damage, and that tank is dedicated to meat shielding?

You'd have to be either incredibly desperate or not all there to implement a fight with entirely avoidable damage. Sure, there's stuff like the new Karazhan chess event that can effectively be soloed as long as you avoid the marks on the ground, except the event is VERY late in the dungeon and you still need a tank for the other 8 bosses.

Why should anything be a non-factor? If a dps can tank an add and group it for faster dps at the cost of a healer GCD or that dps's self-heal oGCD, should that also be irrelevant?

You're not taking the context of what I said into account. What I'm saying is that tank DPS shouldn't be a deciding factor on whether you bring that tank or not. In the greater scheme of things, tank damage is irrelevant because what matters is whether the tank can mitigate the boss' damage and whether the player behind that character knows what they're doing.

I'm sure you'll mention that the focus would then be on utility, and you'd be right up until I point out that said utility would likely have to be on long cooldowns so that it follows the rule of being something nice to have without becoming a crutch of any kind. That's another front where things fell apart design-wise (see the complains about how Divine Veil wouldn't be used every time the raid was taking damage, which is as silly as complaining that WHM doesn't have Benediction ready for every time the tank takes heavy damage).

Should it be irrelevant for DPS to dodge (cus frankly, healer outputs in this game are high enough that should a ballast cost a dps a damaging GCD or a mere healer GCD, and that healer has shit dps capabilities anyways, why wouldn't you stand in an AoE that has no lingering enfeeblement to your dps -- see how role fixation still has the same dps-fixation you hate, and now manifests in "shit play" because that becomes optimal with no counterpart)?

This is such a stretch in logic that it borders on ridiculous. Wanting to make the roles focus on the main reason why they're brought to fights does not mean removing hazards from fights nor punishments to the raid for not following mechanics.

Admittedly, if both the tank and the healer are staying 90% in DPS stance in a current / progression encounter, that's undertuned. It messes with aesthetics and expectations. I'll give you that. I don't think tanks should have the expectation of doing nothing but gathering enmity and popping mitigation — they are player, with tank skills, alongside whatever other 'role(s)' of skills — but, I think it's fair to say that you'd want to feel mostly like your job's take on a given role (which should be potentially varied, not just more (Dark-/Earth-/Wild-) Rampart equivalents), rather than just a dps-machine.

A tank generally has to react to the environment and be on the lookout for things as a result. While people talk about how easy it is and how they can do it in their sleep, Sophia is a pretty good example of what I mean. You hold aggro, use cooldowns and abilities when needed (like Tempered Will to cheese her Aero), pay attention to the floor for bad stuff and run to the appropriate side before the platform swings.

And you're right in that mitigation styles should be varied. I wouldn't call for WAR, PLD and DRK to have copies of Rampart. I'd expect PLD to have Rampart, WAR to have a way to match that level of mitigation without having a Rampart clone, and the same goes for DRK along with any future tanks.

But if you as a matter of course take damage-dealers out of that tank-healer equation, you're going to offset compositional viability and role throughput in ways that may be unintended for all content, which invites arbitration, or else shifts optimal playstyle to optimal role composition entirely (unless again you take out any undermechanics that can could compete with those slots, guaranteeing their use, as generally idle as they may be).

There's a reason why I'd want to tune stuff only in dungeons and raids. Tanks and healers do need to deal decent damage to handle overworld content (FATEs, leves, quests), and they have DPS stances for that. The dynamic I'm aiming for is that tanks and healers can keep their DPS stances to go pew pew when not in groups, but in groups tanks should be in their tank stances (unless the tank is designed to swap stances to actually function; see the WAR part of this post) and healers should be hard-pressed to go into cleric stance unless the group they're in notably outgears the content.

I'll agree that it can be lackluster at time in terms of feeling our particular role. But know that every role plays a part, and that the relative value of every role is dependent on the other two, and that unless you consider all three roles as skill-set augmentations on a common base, you are inevitably pushing jobs towards homogeneity. When you take out healer dps, you take out the counterpart to optional shielding, which is counterpart to any tank that isn't meant to have equal mitigation to the "turtle" tank, thereby leveling out the capabilities, niche, and to large degree the feel, of every tank.

This assumes that there's no way to have a tank that can match the mitigation of a turtle tank without actually being a turtle tank.

Going back to WoW, my prot warrior can consume resources to provide damage mitigation for themselves. Prot paladins have Shield of the Righteous and their self heal (that heals you for 30% of your missing health). Death Knights mitigate damage via their superior parries, HP drains+damage absorb shields from Death Strike and generating Bone Shield stacks. Outside of tanks with seriously flawed mitigation designs (like the poor Brewmasters), the tanks offer similar levels of mitigation despite prot warriors being arguably the turtle tank. That's an approach I'd like to see more of here, so that when we get Beastmaster or Dancer or Mystic Knight added to the tank roster, they can offer matching mitigation without having abilities copied from PLD, WAR or DRK.