Lets stop fighting SE and work with them. What are your ideas?

[Gravton]

The only reason a tank stance is required is because you need decent DPS when you solo. If the game didn't have solo instances, I'm pretty sure native damage would be 20% lower and native mitigation, 20% higher.

Mobs should hit harder. If a tank has around 50k max HP, then tankbusters should do around 80-90k and tank stance should reduce damage by 50%.

Do you off tank with grit turned on? Couldn't we just turn on tank stance for the tank buster?

[Reynhart]

Do you off tank with grit turned on? Couldn't we just turn on tank stance for the tank buster?

If normal attacks also do twice the damage, you'll keep your tank stance active to keep your HP as high as possible when the TB comes.

[ADVSS]

If normal attacks also do twice the damage, you'll keep your tank stance active to keep your HP as high as possible when the TB comes.

But they dont want to scale attack power with vit, the so called main stat because of hp inflation.

If the past meta sucks so bad, and nobody is pleased, and SE is tired of using str accessories, All they really have to do is make cooldowns like rampart scale with BIT either by making them a flat potency based on vit stat or something. Then the community would value the use of vit for things like mitigation, just like strength currently voosts how much healing clemency or equilibrium gives you.

[Shurrikhan]

If normal attacks also do twice the damage, you'll keep your tank stance active to keep your HP as high as possible when the TB comes.

If normal attacks do twice the damage, you're looking at typically surviving tankbusters with huge margins because an AA can always go off simultaneously with the TB and you have to be prepared accordingly. Overall, unless AA lockouts are inserted, you'd only see less dynamics and more RNG frustrations in the tanking experience, merely offset to a higher HP amount where your active mitigation or "skill" has less to do with your survival. Accompanied, of course, by lost contribution and enmity control, unless AP were to scale with Vitality (and, in the long run, only Vitality).

[VargasVermillion]

The only way they can do the whole "tanks just tank" meta is by making optimizing your abilities, including dps ones, apart of keeping aggro and reducing damage. No one except lazy tanks or people who don't even play tank want to just use the basic system we have in place for those things.

As I've mentioned before, it'll only work if there are some big job changes almost on the level of warrior back in 2.1 as well as changing the mechanics of bosses and enemies which just won't happen.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

What ? You quoted me when I said that VIT is tank's main stat. How is that a design flaw ?!

A poster made the contention that VIT (HP) was not tank's main stat. You responded saying "nuh uh, look, it's on tank accessories!" No shit, we're well aware that it's on tank accessories; that doesn't mean it's the stat most influential to tank gameplay. I tried in vain to illustrate this possibility to you with a painfully obvious hypothetical, but you choose to remain obtuse.

I will try one last time.

If Samurai's main stat was considered, by the game, to be VIT--insofar as being locked into VIT accessories--despite it doing little to nothing to influence their core gameplay, would you consider this sound design?

[ADVSS]

A poster made the contention that VIT (HP) was not tank's main stat. You responded saying "nuh uh, look, it's on tank accessories!" No shit, we're well aware that it's on tank accessories; that doesn't mean it's the stat most influential to tank gameplay. I tried in vain to illustrate this possibility to you with a painfully obvious hypothetical, but you choose to remain obtuse.

I will try one last time.

If Samurai's main stat was considered, by the game, to be VIT--insofar as being locked into VIT accessories--despite it doing little to nothing to influence their core gameplay, would you consider this sound design?

I too, am beating my head over "they get a stat boost trait at levels" but no equivalent to "mend and maim" or anything crucial to the gameplay of the job.
Attack Power(not necessarilly strength but currently is str) influences everythig a tank does, damage, enmity generation, self healing potency(through damage for DRK) since their damage is crap to begin with they have combos that fake having a damage buff but insteads just adds the enmity that would have been generated is called a multiplier. Tank stances push a multiplier to attacks sd well as their defensive additions, but the fact remains that a tank tanks(holds aggro) better with more attack power, and self heals better with more attack powerm and originally in 2.0 str affected the amount of damage a parry or block would reduce, so back then attack power even enhanced the passive mitigation a tank had

So while technically VIT is the main stat of tanks, its actually more like piety to healers, whilst MND -THE MAIN stat for healers, affects the damage they do, the healing they do, the effectiveness of their shields, etc.

[Inuakurei]

The only way they can do the whole "tanks just tank" meta is by making optimizing your abilities, including dps ones, apart of keeping aggro and reducing damage. No one except lazy tanks or people who don't even play tank want to just use the basic system we have in place for those things.

As I've mentioned before, it'll only work if there are some big job changes almost on the level of warrior back in 2.1 as well as changing the mechanics of bosses and enemies which just won't happen.

If they want to make tanks into more of a tank and less of a DPS, then they need to start by making things hit a bit harder. People weren't pulling 2-4 groups of mobs in dungeons and stance dancing in raids just to go quicker, they did it because its completely possible and easy to do it. I still will pull 2-4 groups if I know the pulls well and I know the healer/DPS are up to it, because a singular pull does so little damage I can forget cool downs and be just fine, just tax/anger the healer a bit more.

They also need more tank secondary stats. I tanked in SWTOR and they had 3 tank secondaries. One that was essentially parry, one that would affect how much damage you blocked through 'parry', and one that was for evasion. Meanwhile, we have tenacity, and the numbers haven't looked great from it yet. But even if it was, then it would mean we stack it, then fill in with DPS secondaries.

There's just no incentives to be tanky tanks in this game.

@OP
I will admit SE does listen to feedback. However, I have been against the way SE has designed tanking from the start. See my comment here. They would need to make drastic changes to the whole system for me to actually consider tanking fun. Like giving tanks active mitigation, making bosses do constant damage, make it so you'd have to do an optimized rotation to hold aggro, etc.

tanking is indeed fun but ppl like to make a drama just bcs they need to use tank stance how hurt they parsers.

i read you post and yeah tank stances need to change, the actual system is not working with the comunity and if stay like now the drama never go to stop, they need to make you dealt the same performance in both stances but with some extras for tank stance that help you as a MT and meaby some gameplays diferences but still being able to dealt the same performance, just make a one true way to tank

I pretty much agree with all of you. The big issue is that pure tanking is not very engaging and the only engaging part about tanking is when we are optimizing dps.

Originally I thought that's just how SE wanted their tanking classes to work. Its not my cup of tea but w/e I like to tank so I stuck with it anyway. However recently they've shown they actually don't like this mentality and are trying to change it. (I think they had their hands full with the mess they made out of AST and MCH after 3.0 so they left us alone... until now).

Now I'm concerned though because if things are going they way they seem, its possible SE will just take away things to force us in line, and not add anything to compensate.

So instead of arguing about things that probably won't happen (we aren't getting our str back) and massive redesigns aside, what are some ways they could feasibly make pure tanking in tank stance better / more engaging?

[YitharV2]

I pretty much agree with all of you. The big issue is that pure tanking is not very engaging and the only engaging part about tanking is when we are optimizing dps.

Originally I thought that's just how SE wanted their tanking classes to work. Its not my cup of tea but w/e I like to tank so I stuck with it anyway. However recently they've shown they actually don't like this mentality and are trying to change it. (I think they had their hands full with the mess they made out of AST and MCH after 3.0 so they left us alone... until now).

Now I'm concerned though because if things are going they way they seem, its possible SE will just take away things to force us in line, and not add anything to compensate.

So instead of arguing about things that probably won't happen (we aren't getting our str back) and massive redesigns aside, what are some ways they could feasibly make pure tanking in tank stance better / more engaging?

I actually do think it is how SE wanted their tanking classes to work. They want healers and tanks to be easy to play for newer players. I've seen the bad tanks out there that have problems holding aggro with the simple and boring system we have now.

I think it's more they saw the complaints and they saw players stopped playing tanks so they made some fixes to hopefully get tanks playing again.

The reason why I think they want it to be easy is this.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123199385?t=22m38s
"So personally when it comes to raids, when we have a lot of players saying "ah it was too easy," that's actually kind of what we're looking for. That's good for us."
Now Yoshi was talking in the context of raids, but I get the feeling he has the same mentality when it comes to tanks and healers. On the flip side, I have seen what happens when aggro is really challenging to hold. You get tons of complaints on the forums from the lesser skilled players so I do understand his perspective, but I don't quite agree with it. I think there's nothing wrong with having a learning curve.

That being said, I'd be happy to be wrong and for SE to make some changes to make tanking fun.

[AziraSyuren]

I'd be happy with something as trite and effortless as buffing Strength VI materia. It wouldn't be ideal, but it'd harmlessly solve my core problem with having to use STR accessories to maximize my damage output.