It's about time Shield oath and Grit become Abilities instead of Spells. (off-GCD)

[Saeno]

I hadn’t really considered that and as a fat finger voker myself, I can see how this could be a very big problem. Once I get on a pc I shall delete my suggestion. And I’m serious. I random voke way more than I should. Probably need to move it to a different location on my HB lol

I dont think you should delete your post, because it's something people have legitimately asked for.

Personally, I would like to see Ultimatum gain the effect you have just listed, because I feel like in an AoE situation you dont care about being +1 aggro, instead you would want to be way far ahead in aggro on a few mobs since it's more often than not something you use in a 4 man dungeon, and as such you will be the only tank so it doesnt matter if your enmity is absurd. Although realistically this wouldnt happen because it would just make tanks bring Ultimatum instead of provoke for raids.

[Aana]

Free AND OGCD is plainly to much. You can say its free because of Equil on war all day, but that is still an opportunity cost. Using equal as a part of the tank stance removes it as a stand alone action and tacks that cost onto stance dancing. Changing stances on war you still pay the toll. You pay the HP toll or pay an Equil toll instead. War stance dancing is not free. Using IB instead of FC is not free. All of these things are opportunity costs. Nothing about tank stance swapping for any tank is free. You might be able to go with OGCD or no MP, but certainly not both.

I'm gonna get flak for this, but it doesn't make it less true. Deliverance war is flat out squishier than Drk/Pld in offense mode. Defiance war is tougher than Pld/Drk in tank stance. The ability for Drk/Pld to buff war via intervention/TBN is a silly argument. If war is in a 4 man you don't have it. If you replace that war in an 8man with the other tank then the MT gets BOTH TBN+intervention/Shelltron. Deliverance war will always be squishier than any other MT in offense stance. Period. The freedom to use unchained is the only way to make up that ground and it still costs damage to use. There is no free ride, even for war.

You could make an argument that War full time defiance is OP relative to Drk/Pld full time tank stance, but that doesn't matter in high end raids and SE doesn't seem to care about which tank is OP in trial roulette playing hyper safe tank mode.

[Jandor]

Sword/Shield Oath is ok. I'd probably just make it one button that swaps between the two though, never any reason for PLD to not be in stance.

For DRK I'd make Darkside a trait, sometimes it's worth turning it off but honestly I'd prefer just removing the 'no MP refresh effects' penalty (and the red swirls) and baking it into the job.
Just a Grit on/off button would be fine, making it a proper oGCD with like 20s CD would probably be ok.

[WhyAmIHere]

can we also make darkside not fall off upon death? That'd be great.

[Lyth]

I think that the implementation of stances in this game needs to be revised.

1) Disengaging stances: Removing a stance (i.e. Grit, pre-Stormblood Cleric Stance, pre-Heavensward Defiance) doesn't act as a true oGCD. It doesn't consume a GCD to use, but it can't be disengaged while the global cooldown is still rolling. You end up having to finish your present GCD, pause, disengage the stance, and then activate your next GCD. If you go to the next GCD too quickly, the stance "sticks" and stays on. One of the reasons why the addition of Deliverance made things much better was that you always went from an oGCD stance to another oGCD stance, bypassing this problem.

If 'Grit on' was a GCD action that gets replaced by a button for an oGCD "Grit-off" ability, for example, it would execute much more smoothly than simply letting the player disengage Grit the traditional way.

2) Stanceless: Setting aside niche oddities like pre-Stormblood No Oath, jobs like PLD, WAR, and MNK almost always want to have some stance active. Disengaging a stance instead of activating the opposite stance can have harmful effects, like removing your gauge and resetting it to zero. You also don't need to have two separate hotbar buttons to switch between two stances when they are mutually exclusive.

oGCD stances
Making the stances oGCD is a bit of a controversial issue, and it's a fairly jealously guarded asset on WAR. I do think that as long as DRK's abilities are gated behind stances, we need more freedom to stance dance than we presently do. We get double taxed for both the 18% MP cost for activating Grit as well as the GCD cost. I also think that universally removing the GCD cost from all stances creates some difficult problems. Shield Oath is a 15% penalty instead of a 20% one. Exactly how much damage penalty reduction on tank stance is required to offset the loss of Sword Oath autos? How do you re-balance the MP costs so that both PLD and DRK have similar potency costs for changing stance?

I think the easiest approach, from a DRK perspective, is to give us more ways to work around using tank stance. A lot of this revolves around not locking abilities behind stances (i.e. Blood Weapon, Blood Price, Souleater lifesteal), and providing more burst enmity tools (i.e. oGCD enmity through a shorter recast ability like Plunge or Dark Passenger, much like you see with Onslaught and Circle of Scorn, and reassessing DRK's enmity in general). We're clearly not designed for stance dancing, so just give us more ways to bypass it.

[Alexalibur]

I doubt it's gonna hurt WAR when they are the best MT, best OT, best puller, has best self-mitigation kit and best DPS.

[Saeno]

Free AND OGCD is plainly to much. You can say its free because of Equil on war all day, but that is still an opportunity cost. Using equal as a part of the tank stance removes it as a stand alone action and tacks that cost onto stance dancing. Changing stances on war you still pay the toll. You pay the HP toll or pay an Equil toll instead. War stance dancing is not free. Using IB instead of FC is not free. All of these things are opportunity costs. Nothing about tank stance swapping for any tank is free. You might be able to go with OGCD or no MP, but certainly not both.

I'm gonna get flak for this, but it doesn't make it less true. Deliverance war is flat out squishier than Drk/Pld in offense mode. Defiance war is tougher than Pld/Drk in tank stance. The ability for Drk/Pld to buff war via intervention/TBN is a silly argument. If war is in a 4 man you don't have it. If you replace that war in an 8man with the other tank then the MT gets BOTH TBN+intervention/Shelltron. Deliverance war will always be squishier than any other MT in offense stance. Period. The freedom to use unchained is the only way to make up that ground and it still costs damage to use. There is no free ride, even for war.

You could make an argument that War full time defiance is OP relative to Drk/Pld full time tank stance, but that doesn't matter in high end raids and SE doesn't seem to care about which tank is OP in trial roulette playing hyper safe tank mode.

You're right in that when a tank uses their defensive stance , they always have something to pay, this is true. However the cost that PLD/DRK need to pay is much higher in that an MP cost and a GCD (DRK loses more MP than PLD but PLD needs to waste another GCD to go back into sword oath, equally awful for both tanks). For a WAR, they simply use up two oGCD slots to activate Defiance+Unchained and then another oGCD slot to activate Equilibrium. They lose very little DPS comparatively to the other tanks and gain an effective cooldown in the form of Defiance thanks to having such a low penalty. They are also forced into Defiance for 4 globals, but that not a lot of time at all especially since you can stay in Defiance for much longer than that worry free thanks to Unchained. As for WAR's losing their Deliverance exclusive skills in Defiance, while this is true, you can just store your gauge so that when you switch back to Deliverance, you can resume cleaving.

As for WAR's being squishier in Deliverance than PLD/DRK in their DPS stance, Im going to give this a hard no. The entire community agrees WAR is the tankiest tank and their stances having very little to do with this since their main source of mitigation comes from abusing Vengeance and Holmgang's insanely short CD and Rampart. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

And you are right in that WAR full time Defiance is much stronger than PLD/DRK in full tank stance in terms of tanking. This should also be looked upon but that isn't the matter of this thread. It is about PLD and DRK not being so penalized for using a tank stance.

[Aana]

You're right in that when a tank uses their defensive stance , they always have something to pay, this is true. However the cost that PLD/DRK need to pay is much higher in that an MP cost and a GCD (DRK loses more MP than PLD but PLD needs to waste another GCD to go back into sword oath, equally awful for both tanks). For a WAR, they simply use up two oGCD slots to activate Defiance+Unchained and then another oGCD slot to activate Equilibrium. They lose very little DPS comparatively to the other tanks and gain an effective cooldown in the form of Defiance thanks to having such a low penalty. They are also forced into Defiance for 4 globals, but that not a lot of time at all especially since you can stay in Defiance for much longer than that worry free thanks to Unchained. As for WAR's losing their Deliverance exclusive skills in Defiance, while this is true, you can just store your gauge so that when you switch back to Deliverance, you can resume cleaving.

As for WAR's being squishier in Deliverance than PLD/DRK in their DPS stance, Im going to give this a hard no. The entire community agrees WAR is the tankiest tank and their stances having very little to do with this since their main source of mitigation comes from abusing Vengeance and Holmgang's insanely short CD and Rampart. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

And you are right in that WAR full time Defiance is much stronger than PLD/DRK in full tank stance in terms of tanking. This should also be looked upon but that isn't the matter of this thread. It is about PLD and DRK not being so penalized for using a tank stance.

The 'entire community' doesn't agree, but I wont derail into yet another war vs the world. Agree to disagree.

On topic, I didn't say drk/pld are penalized the same as war for stance dancing. Just that the common trope of 'war is free' isn't true. That's why I said moving to ogcd AND 0mp is plainly too much. Tanking in this game is fundamentally built around 2 options. Offensive and defensive. Moving between those costs stuff. Just making it utterly free will have a lot of unintended consequences, mostly 'flashing' tank stance for defense for a moment then turning it right back off for virtually zero cost for defense. No CD used. No MP used. No damage lost. SE would need to increase the damage from encounters and increase the HP of encounters because tanks just became tougher with no hit to damage.

Free is to much. You could argue ONE of ogcd or MP, but not both (or a hybrid reduction like Pld leaving shield as is but make sword OGCD and reduce MP cost some amount etc or something). Truly free tank stances with instant mitigation tied to the stance will not be a good thing. Drk/Pld costs more because its true mitigation and immediately impactful vs wars. It costs TIME because instant mitigation toggle not tied to any CD is immediately problematic. With the state of tanks there is an argument to REDUCE the cost of swapping, but not remove it entirely. Making mitigation OGCD and free is only going to make problems.

[kashi11]

I think most people would agree that turning them oGCD would come with at least a 10s CD. Which is between 4-5 GCDs in tank stance, at 20% damage reduction that equates to 3.2-4 DPS GCDS. Right now we lose a full GCD turning on Tank stance which is only 0-.2 GCDs lost compared to a 10s OGCDs, I dont think it would be a breaking change. The loss of MP I have a problem with, It's frustrating not having enough MP to immediately go into tank stance in an unexpected pinch or when revived.

They should definitely be either:

1. Free and on GCD
2. Free and oGCD with a 10-12s recast

[Aana]

I think most people would agree that turning them oGCD would come with at least a 10s CD. Which is between 4-5 GCDs in tank stance, at 20% damage reduction that equates to 3.2-4 DPS GCDS. Right now we lose a full GCD turning on Tank stance which is only 0-.2 GCDs lost compared to a 10s OGCDs, I dont think it would be a breaking change. The loss of MP I have a problem with, It's frustrating not having enough MP to immediately go into tank stance in an unexpected pinch or when revived.

They should definitely be either:

1. Free and on GCD
2. Free and oGCD with a 10-12s recast

The revive thing is just stupid. A revived tank should immediately have the resources to put on stance of choice and fundamentals (darkside) to get back into the fight. Why this isn't the case is beyond me.