Request: Move all stances off the GCD, remove all mana/gauge costs, and buff Defiance

[Poison_Rose]

...

I know we've disagreed about some things, but I like this idea. Would love to see it implemented.

[YitharV2]

Well, we're back to square one. I'm for OP's suggestion. As I've stated, the only reason Shield Oath and Grit are on the GCD because of their instant mitigation is because that's what SE thinks that's the way it should be. The reason I keep comparing FFXIV to TERA is to prove a point that stances don't have to be like this. Sure, maybe they should cost a resource. I can agree with that. I don't agree with the fact that they shouldn't be instant cast.

[eagledorf]

Honestly, it's an extremely important suggestion for tank design right now.

I want to reiterate:

A Dark Knight loses 425 potency for turning on Grit. A PLD loses 506 potency for turning on Shield Oath and back again. 470 and 560 respectively if you have a NIN/SAM in your party.

Turning on your tank stance is literally worse than costing your healer 2 GCD by taking more damage. If this isn't resolved, tanks will continue to refuse to turn on the tank stance even when healers fall behind because the cost is just too big. How is that a good thing any way you look at it?

Not to mention it's poor balance. It's always been poor balance. It was a major sticking point for all of Heavensward. SE even knows it's poor balance or they wouldn't have done what they did to WAR for 4.0 in the first place.

[Lyth]

I'm not a fan of making stance dancing free, but if they've done it for WAR, they should definitely consider removing the MP costs from PLD and DRK, including the cost of toggling Darkside on and off. The GCD penalty is enough of an offset as it is.

[DWolfwood]

I want to be in favor of this, but the fact is, tank stances can effectively be considered CDs for DRK and PLD. It definitely makes it a bit more complicated. I would rather they reduce the MP cost to be honest, or even better reduce the damage penalty...

Or even better, they should move towards the stances having no real penalties or bonuses and simply increase enmity generation, balancing defensively around this and maybe giving us more CDs and defense.

[Shurrikhan]

No thanks, homogenisation shouldn't be the first solution to balance problems less than a month into the expansion.

Hmm, and here I was thinking that added Role Skills and near-identical gauge systems, atop already near-identical combo paths and CDs, were designed with exactly homogenization in mind.

Certain universal quality of life adjustments can actually open up the abilities of tanks to further differentiate themselves through the rest of their previously restricted toolkits—just something to note.

[YitharV2]

I want to be in favor of this, but the fact is, tank stances can effectively be considered CDs for DRK and PLD. It definitely makes it a bit more complicated. I would rather they reduce the MP cost to be honest, or even better reduce the damage penalty...

Or even better, they should move towards the stances having no real penalties or bonuses and simply increase enmity generation, balancing defensively around this and maybe giving us more CDs and defense.

OP is suggesting making Defiance a real CD for Warrior so they would be equal in parity. It's true they could remove the damage penalty which I'm in favor of, but I don't see much difference with that and making them instant cast? If they don't have a damage penalty there's not much reason to switch out of them. At least for PLD I'm pretty sure this is the case (besides the fact that Sword Oath increases auto attack potency). For WAR it's more complicated because a lot of their kit is locked behind Deliverance.

[Lyth]

Actually, all tank stances can be functionally treated as cooldowns. On WAR, Defiance is functionally more powerful than either an on-demand Thrill of Battle or TBN, in that it gives you a 25% boost to your eHP. The key difference is that the HP has to be filled (usually by your healer). In order to prepare for this, you need to swap into Defiance slightly earlier than you would on the other tanks. There are two costs associated with using Defiance: 1) the cost of healing, borne by your healer, and 2) the cost of switching into stance earlier, which is borne by you.

What is the value of this time cost? If we assume an average cast time of 2 seconds for your healer (i.e. no spell speed reduction at all), a ping of 0.2s, and an average human reaction time of 0.25 seconds, then you have to be in Defiance roughly 2.45 seconds earlier than you would on PLD or DRK (basically, a GCD earlier). The damage of penalty is 0.2, so you're losing 20% of a GCD worth of damage over the other two tanks. Both PLD and DRK spend a GCD to swap into Shield Oath and Sword Oath, respectively, so even just keeping these on the GCD is a 5x bigger penalty than it is for WAR, even before you include the MP costs.

What about swapping into Deliverance? First, it costs nothing to do this. Second, if you time your swap just as you take damage from an AoE, the damage is "absorbed" in the HP drop. So you reinburse your healer for the first cost.

In short, even if you made it so that there were no MP costs associated with switching, Grit and Shield Oath would still be costlier than Defiance, while offering the same eHP advantage and the same activation delay. There are only two fair solutions: either have Defiance cost 20% of your gauge and boost Shield Oath's cost to a similar number to keep the costs on par with Grit, or remove the MP costs associated with activating Grit, Darkside, and Sword Oath, and take Sword Oath off the GCD.

[DWolfwood]

If they don't have a damage penalty there's not much reason to switch out of them.

What I mean by only providing an enmity boost is, obviously you won't want to use the stance if you're off tanking, but you'll clearly want to stay in it while main tanking. The only problem I see here however is that WAR loses access to certain abilities if in Defiance, so there would have to be some adjustment there. However, I still think I would favor it over what we have now.

[YitharV2]

Actually, all tank stances can be functionally treated as cooldowns.

Well, yes I don't disagree. If you don't have anything else Shield Oath and Grit are still cooldowns. My point wasn't that they're not cooldowns, just that I don't see that big of a difference for PLD if they were to remove the damage penalty from Shield Oath, since he was disagreeing with OP's suggestion in favor of that.

And I don't disagree with your analysis of Defiance. It is powerful; it just requires your healer to be paying attention. That being said, I'm in favor of OP's suggestion.

What I mean by only providing an enmity boost is, obviously you won't want to use the stance if you're off tanking, but you'll clearly want to stay in it while main tanking. The only problem I see here however is that WAR loses access to certain abilities if in Defiance, so there would have to be some adjustment there. However, I still think I would favor it over what we have now.

It is actually what I favor as well, since that's what I'm used to. But changes would have to be made to Warrior, after they took the time to prune ability bloat. So considering that, I think it would be easier to just take them off the GCD than undo all that work.

Also some OTs stay in tank stance when it's not needed. >_>