Why penalities to change stances?

[Kalocin]

I'd probably just not use grit after I have enough enmity.

Also mana is dark knight's lifeblood. They use it for dark arts and the blackest night (free bloodspiller and our mitigation was destroyed for it). Turning grit on is losing one of those. Losing mana feels worse then if it was blood gauge (and don't even suggest both or else I'll remove grit from my bar).

I think the idea behind tank stance punishment is to make it a bit of a decision but honestly it's a bit archaic. They should just make it so you take less damage in tank stance with high enmity, and dropping tank stance should be optional if your during phases that don't do a lot of damage.

There would be a higher level of play for people who utilize their enmity well enough to be able to drop stance for damage but eh, I doubt we'll see that.

[Faeon]

Because SE wants you to make a choice when tanking in a game where DPS is everything? But SE poor design with mechanics makes it like why have a tank stance anyways. So what they do is gate abilities behind it.

In the end if you read between the lines of multiple threads, player base does not really see the reason why there is a tank stance and a none tank stance, when all they really want to-do is do as much DPS as a pure DPS Job. This was by design in 3.X with WAR, where you could tank in Deliverance and pump as much DPS as a DPS job and even more than them and only swap for a tank buster and pop IB and then back to Del, also we were melding CRIT/STR because there was nothing better to have, so in the end tank dps was SE intent.

SE needs to make a choice in where they want to go, but it is abit to late to change it since they made two tanks in the previous expansion the meta, with great ability and the other one was the lol tank. So how do you fix this now? if you remove the stance penalty from WAR where you can freely change without the loss of your gauge and split IR from unchained, that will be a good start I reckon. But you will need to-do something with the other two, utility from tanks that does not increase dps from the raid comp is irrelevant in this game, since the intent is to push more DPS to skip phases.

[Kalocin]

Snippets.

I'd take tank stance damage reduction baked into the job if I could use say blood weapon anytime because the mana return and the speed increase just feels good to use. It's an odd irony but being out of stance is more fun then being in stance, which by design is a horrible idea. I don't think it's quite a "strong dps" mentality so much as it's a "I feel punished" or "Less effective" in tank stance. Inherently by design, tank stance feels like "training wheels" to people rather then a hard requirement or more important: Exciting or fun to use. It's actually kind of unfortunate because it would be nice if tankmode was more exciting then dpsmode.

Now mind you, I use grit when needed (enmity, undergeared healers, party struggling to stay alive etc) and I'll drop it when it's safe to. While yeah the increased dps is nice, I really, really like the increased speed of blood weapon. Likewise, sometimes being out of grit will ensure the blackest night actually pops (ie: raid aoe, auto attacks) as in grit sometimes it won't.

[Dzian]

the 'stay in tank stance' thing makes 0 sense for me. Paladins Oath Gauge fills 10x faster in sword oath than shield oath and it makes me ?? because Sheltron, a skill you use as mt, is more reliably available in dmg stance than in tank stance

Not at 70. At 70 you can fill the oath gauge from 0-100 in a little over 10 seconds in shield oath.

Every holy spirit cast is 20 oath gauge. You can typically build oath fast enough to hit shelltron 4 times in 30 seconds if you need it that often.

[Duelle]

While yeah the increased dps is nice, I really, really like the increased speed of blood weapon. Likewise, sometimes being out of grit will ensure the blackest night actually pops (ie: raid aoe, auto attacks) as in grit sometimes it won't.

I guess in the case of Blood Weapon, they could probably tie the speed up effect to something else. Like changing the Dark Arts effect of Syphon Strike into an "increases attack speed for 30s" effect, so that it is usable in and out of Grit, then balance your damage output around keeping that buff active. TBN shouldn't require a popped bubble to get gauge, but incremental gains depending no how much damage the bubble takes.

SE needs to make a choice in where they want to go, but it is a bit to late to change it since they made two tanks in the previous expansion the meta, with great ability and the other one was the lol tank. So how do you fix this now? if you remove the stance penalty from WAR where you can freely change without the loss of your gauge and split IR from unchained, that will be a good start I reckon. But you will need to-do something with the other two, utility from tanks that does not increase dps from the raid comp is irrelevant in this game, since the intent is to push more DPS to skip phases.

I feel they can go one of two ways. One would be to just remove stances from PLD and DRK, but let WAR keep theirs (remove everything but the +parry for Defiance and the +crit for Deliverance). Design WAR around stance dancing by splitting effects between both stances.

The other would be to alter raid design to make tank stances mandatory. Things like the boss auto-crits you if you don't have a tank stance up, and tie all enmity generation to tank stances.

[garret_hawke]

The other would be to alter raid design to make tank stances mandatory. Things like the boss auto-crits you if you don't have a tank stance up, and tie all enmity generation to tank stances.

Or make bosses counter with potency based on damage taken.

[_Pigzig]

Well I personally feel like they want you to be in tank stance unless you are outside of dungeon content and it's due to failure in design that people don't, but idk.

[Tegernako]

I never said WARs didn't lose anything. Just pointed out that DRKs did take some sort of loss, because it's being implied WAR is the only one who loses anything by stance dancing. Never said it was more or less severe than WAR either.

oooooh. So let me clarify something.

Do you REALLY think people are saying DRK loses nothing? Or do they just not feel like adding a disclaimer to EVERY SINGLE POST.

"WAR loses the most." *on a side note DRK also loses some stuff too!

It goes without saying that every tank loses something and that if someone says "they lose nothing" they are really saying "What they lose isn't as bad as bad in comparison"

Hopefully this clears that up =D

Uh.... at level 61, the cost of a DRK toggling Grit on is 1347 MP... there's no way at 70 it's less than that. Darkside should always be on, and there's no need to toggle it on or off anymore since they removed the MP drain.

Maybe this is in reference to PLD's Oaths, but DRKs do lose a bit by toggling Grit back on. 400 more MP at 61 is the cost of a Dark Arts+Souleater, so a 420 potency attack plus the MP drain.

So I'm not saying that you said (insert class suffers more) but I did want to add something to your post.

WAR can lose access to a 500 potency attack, its level 70 skill, a 275 potency aoe, a 300+ potency attack, a 200 potency aoe, unchained, and a 350 potency attack that's its biggest form of damage mitigation by switching. We lose all gauge if we turn off a stance too unlike DRK.

DRK loses some MP ONLY when turning on Grit and maybe a combo. And DRK has ZERO mitigation abilities locked behind stance and NO dps ones.

No matter what people say, it's factually incorrect to say WAR is not the most punished class for switching stances. It is literally the job with the most stance specific moves in the entire game. The entire class revolves around the gauge.

WAR is the only tank to have a stance specific level 70 move. It's the only tank where the majority of its damage comes from using the gauge. PLD/DRK make extensive use of useful/powerful abilities that use mana whereas WAR has zero moves that make extensive use of the TP vs the gauge. WAR is the only tank that has dps moves gated behind behind a stance (that all require the gauge), WAR is the only tank to have its major source of mitigation attached to the gauge.

Losing TP like the other loses MP? WAR wouldn't CARE about losing TP, which is why they didn't add it losing TP, because again, NO MOVES make big usage of it. It doesn't spam a self heal with its TP, it doesn't use TP to make its attack more powerful. Making it use TP on a switch wouldn't bother WAR at all. That's why it only loses gauge on switch which is STILL far to harsh because everything we do is dependent on the gauge whereas the gauge simply accentuates and adds to how DRK/PLD play.

[Dizzy_Derp]

Actually it's only Warriors who really have a penalty. Dark Knights get NO penalty switching out of their tank stances. And Paladin stance swaps have no effect on their overall damage - just a temporary setback to their utility. The only job that really suffers from this are Warriors. As for why they did it, yeah...The people in charge of this change were probably healers who got fed up of having to take care of Warriors in Deliverance, so they decided to screw the job over and make sure this doesn't happen as often.

Well it's not true to say they have NO penalty it's just that pld and Drk's penalty is negligible when compared to war. pld loses around 50 overall dps swapping to sword drk has no penalty at all for dropping grit but there is one going in which they shouldn't be doing anyways, and depending on where you are in your rotation war will lose between 300-500 dps

[Tegernako]

Well it's not true to say they have NO penalty it's just that pld and Drk's penalty is negligible when compared to war. pld loses around 50 overall dps swapping to sword drk has no penalty at all for dropping grit but there is one going in which they shouldn't be doing anyways, and depending on where you are in your rotation war will lose between 300-500 dps

Don't forget the time WAR has to spend to make up for the gauge loss if at 50 or 100 gauge. 2-3 combos vs 1 at most for PLD/DRK (mainly for mana loss, if they even bother to do so since they can just continue their damage rotation since they can use virtually all their skills in any stance)