Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Reynhart]

No matter what, tanks' DPS will still be a validated metric to judge if the tanks are good enough to clear raids.

Not necessarily. It's currently a valid metric because that's the only real way you can differentiate tank players.

Let's suppose another type of tank...
Disclaimers :

• Enrage is very lazy design. It should burn in hell unless it's explained by a very good lore reason (For example,killing a boss before something explodes...)
• I won't put actual numbers because it would require ground testing. So every reader is free to imagine what "a part of", "a portion of" or "a percentage" mean to be balanced
• I'll imagine a new tank job and don't bring any changes to the existing ones, since, even if I like the more turtle approach, I totally understand why some people don't.

...that we will call the Mystic Knight.

Contrary to other tanks, this one wouldn't have a DPS mode, but instead have two tank stances: Physical Shield and Magical Shield (Yes, these names arent't very sexy, but at least, they're obvious). What theses stances do is negate the damage dealt by the tank, but instead apply a stacking shield (With current value displayed on screen) for the same amount of the damage you should have done. (Applying a shield would give enmity) The shield will reduce physical or magical damage depending on the stance you're on (See, obvious names ). Like WAR, you would lose the shield you built if you don't have any stance.

So, the basic idea would be to master your rotation to stack the highest shield possible, since every boss attack would deplete it, and switch stances depending on the type of attack you want to mitigate. On top of that, you could have "mitigation" skills, that instantly increases the current shield by a fixed percentage, negates the shield depletion for a small duration, or reduces it but apply it to the whole party...

Thus, the main purpose of this tank would be to reduce damage (on him and on the party) as much as possible...which is pretty much what a tank is supposed to do, while still needing to work on its rotation to generate good numbers. The main difference is that every room you have to improve will still be tank-oriented, wether it is generating high "per second" numbers, or stance dancing.