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

[Shurrikhan]

It's still crappy design given how the job performed since WotLK (really, a holy knight with a giant hammer shouldn't be giving their damage away to other people, and instead should be smashing their enemies in righteous fire). It's a bottom-of-the-barrel gimmick that doesn't even follow any level of "class fantasy" for a hybrid damage dealer.

Oh, I'll completely agree that it was a toss-in mechanic (like many others added in Legion) and does very, very little for the fantasy of a Retribution Paladin (though I believe some version of the concept certainly could have instead done very well), especially since each of the components don't really make any aesthetic or individually impactful effect, even in leveling. I was only pointing out that it's no different than, say, Stormlash, except that it can attach three role-associated (Wisdom for heals, Kings for tanks, Might for dps) buffs onto the Retribution Paladin in solo content, producing a versatile and fairly strong buff set for endurance, power, and sustain, and that at the moment, overall outputs for both Retribution and Enhancement are rather high given those utility components enough for the trimmed personal dps not to annoy me, personally. (The Paladin talents, however, which don't even attempt an illusion of choice for many tiers...)

I can get behind cooldowns with situational use (like my often-mentioned design for Phalanx as an ability that reduces damage taken by a party member for 10 seconds). Something that follows the "nice to have" rule. That said, there's stuff I would want to keep self-only on RDM, largely Temper/Saber, enspells and my suggested Double/Triple cooldowns.

My personal preference is that all abilities have some (attractive) use, but their best use may vary situationally. I prefer that a given CD may be held or even speedily recharged with different tactics in mind, but is never going to sit there, recharged and ready to go, for an entire fight. In my opinion, "nice to have" abilities (that it to say, cooldowns) are generally wasted or underutilized design, that could have done better had they been made more integral to the job as a whole (e.g. Paladin Cover).

This is exactly what I mean.

Frankly, I don't mind a tank with an additional cooldown that does a better job with magic (DK had Anti-Magic Shell/Zone and that was okay because it had a decent cooldown and content was not plastered in magic damage to mitigate). Likewise I don't mind a tank with a slight edge in DPS (tank DKs and prot paladins always had an advantage in AoE damage versus a prot warrior, but that's never led to groups turning me down as a result). It's when one overpowers the other members of the roster that I have a problem and will start calling for changes.

Cool. Great.

But, just to look back at AMS/Z days... there was also a lot more hybridization back then. You had Feral Druids who could snap-tank, Arms who could swap to shields and snap-tank for some hefty Revenge spam damage, Fury who could swap in and out between self heals; Blood DPS could CD in, Frost could acclimate themselves to near spell immunity and then swap in, Unholy could provide burst raid mitigation vs. spells, and mages could even cauterize bleeds. And let's not forget the larger assemblage of Seals and their Judgement effects? Did that seem flawed design to you, in that many roles weren't quite so locked off or pure? (Even now Legion Guardian affinity Ferals have the ability to snap-tank in a pinch (I've done this for ~12 seconds on Ursoc H during a tank battle rez, very easily), but it's now more of a tossed in choice, rather than something related to the spec at hand. Does that seem better or worse for you, out of curiosity?)
To give you an example, let's take my suggested RDM build with the skill Phalanx.

To me, Phalanx (reduces damage taken by target party member by 20% for 10 seconds) should be something that may come in handy when things start going wrong (a healer got hit by Haircut and now needs to take reduced damage while they heal themselves, a tank that got CCd and is going to take a big hit, a DPS standing in the fire because they forgot to move). What I wouldn't want is Phalanx becoming a mandatory raid cooldown (either because the encounter expects you to bring a RDM for Phalanx or some yahoos trying to use it as an excuse to bring 1 tank to a raid instead of 2).

In my opinion, if the mechanics of the fight are shallow enough that the only thing preventing a raid from single-tanking is a party-member-applied Rampart (Phalanx), then I tip my hat to that raid for trimming an unnecessary tank. (To be honest, even more so if the tank mechanics aren't shallow, but the dps still find a way to handle them themselves without it costing them more dps than whatever added uptime or ease that just bringing the second tank could provide.)

However, ideally Phalanx would be used on the largest source of damage to be taken near Phalanx's cooldown. Because you've left it linear scalar. Why wouldn't it be slotted immediately to be used for the hardest hit of the fight, as an additional tank cooldown? If you instead design it to favor lower health (causes the target to take reduced damage based on the %HP that would have been lost) or use a flat amount, only then will it not be slated for tank or key mechanical usage (e.g. powerful Prey attacks, cheesing the need to slip it off onto the OT). That's just natural design --> application. That's to blame design for, rather than the community.

There might even be encounters where you wouldn't even get the opportunity to use Phalanx; and you know what? That's okay if you don't get to use it.

It's a Rampart that can be applied to anyone. How would there not be an opportunity? Maybe not a great one (e.g. you're saving it, consistently for a DoT that can kill players within two ticks if not cleansed instantly, which requires very good healer coordination and pre-healing, and that 20% is enough to give a previously topped off player an extra tick of HP, but that coordination actually happens and so Phalanx ends up unneeded -- though always worth saving), but certainly an opportunity nonetheless. ...Especially as a tank / Prey target / etc. cooldown.

That's incredibly lopsided logic. Maybe it's the fact that I've played too many of these games, but a DPS that stands in the fire = bad. A healer that is keeping them alive is simply doing their job. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue if groups and raids got punished for wasting their healers' MP.

It's not, though. It's a simple line of math. If the dps can do more additional damage by standing in the fire than the healer can do by not healing him (because he's not standing in fire), then it's a raid dps gain to stand in the fire. E.g. IF opportunity gains > costs, then do. Why isn't that case now? Because healers can dps, significantly, so we never hit that point. But if you split roles completely, and so long as the healer has no one more important to heal at the time, dps should be dpsing at all cost save damage-enfeebling debuff -- including that worst one, death (which only then comes back down to the decision of burst vs. sustain). Now, in all likelihood mana itself will be a limiting factor, in which case that healing has a cost -- they're forced to use slower, more efficient heals later on the tank or others who are actually known/set/scheduled damage targets, or risk lives by being forced not to pre-HoT/shield as often, in which case, fire again equals bad. However, we're already at the point where our ASTs and SCHs can dps, not even limiting themselves to just the most mana-efficient choices, without hardly an idle GCD, and 4.0 looks like it's only going to increase mana regeneration further.

Melee holding adds? No. Ranged DPS holding targets in the air that can't be reached by the melee and the tank? I can go for that. I'm sure BLMs, SMNs and BRDs would find it a break from routine to play ranged tanks for encounters that allow it. Since raid comps and the limit break bar force raids to include ranged (at the least a BRD or MCH), to wouldn't be difficult to fill that makeshift slot.

I gave that example because it's one where melee already do hold adds.

The main difference to me is gameplay and what the tanks need to go to attain the acceptable level of mitigation. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters. You can have a leather-wearing tank or a guy in a cloth robe doing the tanking, so long as their gameplay leads to equal EHP/mitigation as the guy in plate armor.

Then we're mostly in agreement. I just tend to prefer a larger, more hybrid range of options that focus on job identity, regardless of "role", so long as the final product is still balanced within its associated metas.